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They Thought Her Hay Bales Were Crazy—The Blizzard Left Her Cabin at 52° When Theirs Hit 18° — Transcript

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0:00Dakota territory, October 1886. The
0:04northern plains stretch flat and pale
0:06under a sky the color of old tin. And
0:08somewhere on a gravel road that hasn't
0:10seen a wheel in 3 days, a single wagon
0:12is moving. Two draft horses pull it
0:15slow. Their breath rises white against
0:17nothing. Behind them, stacked six high
0:20in the wagon bed, sit bales of cured
0:22prairie hay, bound so tight the twine
0:24cuts grooves into the grass. The woman
0:26holding the rains is 58 years old. Her
0:29gloves are cracked. Her knuckles
0:31underneath are worse. She has not spoken
0:33to another human being in 4 days. And
0:35she is not driving toward town. She is
0:38driving toward a farmhouse on a lowrise.
0:40A house with a stove pipe. A dead man's
0:43cedar shingles and two flower boxes
0:45still holding last summer's ghosts. She
0:47pulls the brake, steps down, lifts a hay
0:50hook forged before she was born, and she
0:52begins to build something no one asked
0:54for against a winter no one believes is
0:56coming. The gravel road into Bramble
0:58County was empty that October morning of
1:001886, except for a wagon loaded down
1:03with tightly bound cured prairie hay
1:05drawn by two patient draft horses whose
1:08breath rose in slow white plumes against
1:10the pale sky. On the seat of that wagon
1:13sat a woman of 58, tall and lean as a
1:16length of split cedar, her gray hair
1:18tucked beneath a wool bonnet that had
1:20seen better decades. Her hands wrapped
1:22in cracked leather gloves held the
1:24reinss with the steady economy of
1:26someone who had driven that team so many
1:28thousands of miles. She no longer
1:30thought about the driving at all. Behind
1:32her stacked six high in the wagon bed
1:34sat the bales that would become the talk
1:36of three townships before the week was
1:38out. Her name was Hattie Ellsworth and
1:40she had run the Ellsworth homestead
1:42outside the small town of Cold Water
1:44Creek Dakota territory since the summer
1:46her husband was thrown from a green
1:48horse and never rose again. That was
1:51four winters back in the years since she
1:53had learned to load a wagon alone, to
1:55birth a calf alone, to sit at the long
1:58pine table in the kitchen alone, and eat
2:00a supper cooked for one. What she had
2:02not learned, what perhaps no widow of
2:04the northern plains ever fully learned,
2:07was how to stop expecting the sound of
2:08Silus Ellsworth's boots on the porch
2:10boards at dusk. She turned the team off
2:13the county road and onto the rutdded
2:14lane that led up to the farmhouse. The
2:17house itself stood at the crest of a
2:18low-rise, a plain two-story frame of mil
2:21pine and weathered clapboard roofed in
2:23cedar shingles that Silas had split with
2:26his own hands. The summer of 1878,
2:29a single stove pipe rose from the north
2:31wall, and on the porch a pair of flower
2:33boxes still held the withered stalks of
2:35last summer's patunias. Hattie had not
2:38gotten around to pulling them yet. There
2:40were things you meant to do on a place
2:41like this and things you did instead.
2:43And every autumn the meaning twos got a
2:45little longer. She halted the team
2:47beside the foundation on the north side
2:49of the house. Set the brake climbed down
2:51with the care of someone whose knees
2:53remembered every hard winter, then
2:55walked to the tailgate. A single hay
2:57hook forged 40 years earlier by a smith
3:00in Minnesota hung from a nail on the
3:02wagon rail. She lifted it, sank it into
3:04the top bail, and began the slow,
3:06patient work of building. By the end of
3:08that first day, one full course of bales
3:11ran the length of the north wall, wedged
3:13tight against the fieldstone foundation,
3:15rising to just above the sill of the
3:17parlor windows. She had left a hands
3:19breath of open air between the hay and
3:21the clapboard, a narrow channel
3:23deliberate as a mason's mortar line. She
3:26had thought that gap through carefully,
3:28and she meant to explain it to no one,
3:30because in her long experience
3:31explaining a thing rarely convinced
3:33anyone who had already decided you were
3:35peculiar. She unhitched the team at
3:37dusk, rubbed the horses down in the
3:39barn, forked them each a slab of loose
3:42hay, then walked back to the kitchen
3:44through air already sharp enough to
3:46sting the inside of her nose. At the
3:48pump, she washed her hands in water so
3:50cold it made the bones ache. She set the
3:52kettle on the wood range Silas had built
3:54from a Montgomery Ward catalog kit the
3:56second year of their marriage. a black
3:58gang of cast iron that took an hour to
4:00warm and half a day to cool an appliance
4:03her daughter had wanted her to replace
4:04with something newer at least three
4:06times. By the second morning, the wagon
4:08was rolling again down to the south
4:10field where the cured bales lay stacked
4:12under canvas. And by the second dusk,
4:14the north wall of the house was two
4:16courses high and rising. That was when
4:18the first buggy slowed on the county
4:20road, then stopped altogether, its
4:22driver leaning forward against the
4:24dashboard to squint up the lane. Word
4:26travels a particular way on the northern
4:28plains. It does not run. It drifts the
4:31way wood smoke drifts from a chimney on
4:34a still evening, curling into every
4:36window it passes. By the third day, when
4:39Hattie was stacking the western wall
4:40half of Cold Water Creek, had already
4:42heard that the Ellsworth widow was up to
4:44something out on the old place, and half
4:46of what they had heard was wrong, and
4:48all of it was interesting enough to
4:50repeat. She was setting the fourth bail
4:52of the West Wall second course when the
4:55first visitor of consequence turned into
4:57the lane. The buggy was Deline's a light
4:59two- wheeled trap that her son-in-law
5:01August had bought used from a livery in
5:03Yankton, and the woman driving it was
5:05Hadtie's only living child. Delphine
5:07Whitaker was 32 years old, sharp of eye,
5:10and sharper of tongue, and she rained up
5:12short of the porch with the particular
5:14set to her shoulders that Hattie
5:16recognized as the prelude to a difficult
5:18conversation. Deline climbed down,
5:21walked the length of the wagon, slowly
5:22stood beside her mother, folded her
5:24arms, and looked up at the rising wall
5:26of hay. Then she looked at her mother.
5:28Then she looked back at the hay. Her
5:31breath came out white and long. "Mama,
5:33what in the name of every saint are you
5:35doing to this house?" Hadtie set the
5:37bail in place, tamped it down with her
5:39palms until it seated flush against its
5:41neighbor, then straightened up and
5:42rested one gloved hand on the small of
5:44her back. For the cold. We have a stove.
5:48We have two stoves. You have a wood pile
5:50out there tall enough to see from the
5:52county road. Wood burns down. Stoves go
5:55out. When the wind comes hard from the
5:57northwest, a stove holds a room. Maybe
5:59it doesn't hold a house. Delphine opened
6:02her mouth, then closed it, then tried
6:04again. Mama, you are 58 years old and
6:07you are out here alone stacking hay
6:09bales that must weigh 80 lb a piece. If
6:12August finds out I let you do this by
6:14yourself, he will lose his mind. then
6:16don't tell him. That was the end of the
6:18exchange for that afternoon, or nearly
6:20so. Delphine stayed for supper, and over
6:22cornbread and beans, she watched her
6:24mother across the pine table with the
6:26careful attention of a woman trying to
6:28decide whether she was looking at the
6:29wisdom of her childhood or the beginning
6:31of its own making. She left before full
6:34dark, and on the drive back to town, she
6:36went over the visit three separate times
6:38in her head. And by the time she reached
6:40the little frame house on Elm Street,
6:42where August was waiting with the lamp
6:43lit, she had a headache behind her right
6:45eye that would last well into the
6:47following morning. August Whitaker was a
6:50blacksmith by trade, a broad man of 36,
6:53with hands like split roots, and a voice
6:55that rarely climbed above the murmur of
6:57a banked forge. He listened to his
6:59wife's account without interrupting,
7:01which was his particular gift, and when
7:03she was done, he turned a coffee cup in
7:04his hands for a long moment before
7:06speaking. His words came out slow. Your
7:09mother has forgotten more about that
7:11country than most men in this town will
7:13ever learn. If she's stacking hay,
7:15there's a reason. That is what frightens
7:17me. He didn't answer that. He didn't
7:20need to. They both understood in the way
7:22farm-raised people understand such
7:24things, that a reason could be sound and
7:27terrifying at the same time. Out at the
7:30homestead in the yellow circle of a
7:31kerosene lamp on the kitchen table,
7:33Hattie was already at the reason. from a
7:36locked pine chest at the foot of her
7:37bed. She had drawn a stack of
7:39leatherbound ledgers, six of them
7:41cracked and stained and smelling of old
7:43tobacco and older sweat. The topmost
7:46book was her own, its early pages in the
7:48tight schoolgirl hand of a bride of 18.
7:51Its later pages in the looser blunter
7:53script of a woman who no longer had time
7:55for penmanship. The others belong to her
7:58father-in-law, and their spines bore
8:00dates that ran back to 1849.
8:02Ambrose Ellsworth had been dead 19
8:05years. She had known him only in the
8:07last decade of his life, a shrunken man
8:09with wet blue eyes who had spent his
8:11final winters in the small back bedroom
8:13of the farmhouse, coughing and reading.
8:16And when he could hold a pen, adding a
8:18line or two to the ledger open on his
8:19knees. He had pressed those books into
8:22her hands 3 days before he died. And
8:24what he said then she had never repeated
8:26to anyone, not even Silas. The land
8:29keeps score. These are the tallies.
8:32Learn them or don't, but don't burn
8:34them. Someone will need them. She had
8:37learned them. Every winter for 26 years,
8:39she had opened one of the older volumes
8:41in November and read straight through to
8:43March, comparing his weather to hers,
8:45tracking the patterns that repeated on
8:478-year cycles and 20-year cycles and the
8:49great slow ones that a single lifetime
8:51was scarcely long enough to see through.
8:53And this fall of 1886, three separate
8:56patterns that Ambrose had marked with
8:58heavy black underlines had all lined up
9:00in her own book for the first time since
9:02she had started keeping it. The woolly
9:04caterpillars in the pasture had bands of
9:06brown so wide they were nearly all
9:08brown. The Canada geese had gone south 3
9:10weeks ahead of their usual date, and
9:12they had gone in the kind of long silent
9:15hurring skaines that Ambrose had noted
9:17in the autumn of 1855.
9:19A herd of prongghorn that ordinarily
9:21wintered up near the Grand River had
9:23come drifting through her south quarter
9:25in late September. Unbothered by weather
9:27that had not yet arrived, and the older
9:30cows in her own dairy string were laying
9:31on fat in a way she had seen only twice
9:34in her life. She traced the entries with
9:36a fingertip that had thickened over the
9:38decades into something more like a small
9:40blunt tool than a human digit. She did
9:43not pray exactly. Hattie Ellsworth had
9:45not been on speaking terms with the
9:46Almighty since the afternoon in 1882
9:49when a barnand rode into the yard with
9:51Silas across his saddle. But she did on
9:54that night tip her head slightly toward
9:56the lamp and murmur a thing that was not
9:58quite a prayer and not quite an apology.
10:01All right, Ambrose, I hear you. The wall
10:04rose. By the end of the first week of
10:06October, both north and west sides of
10:08the house were an unbroken bullwark of
10:10tightly bound prairie hay, 7 ft high at
10:13the peak, tapering to five at the
10:14corners, its outer face already
10:17softening under the first serious frost.
10:19Hadtie left the south wall almost bare a
10:22narrow single course laid only along the
10:24foundation itself, so that the low
10:26winter sun could still fall across the
10:28porch boards and the black shingles and
10:31lend the house its small daily gift of
10:33solar heat. the east side sheltered by
10:35the barn in the twin cottonwoods Silas
10:37had set out in the spring of their fifth
10:39year together. She wrapped only around
10:41the kitchen. She had not in all of this
10:44spoken to a single neighbor about her
10:45reasons. The neighbors, of course, had
10:47reasons of their own to be curious. Cold
10:50Water Creek was a town of 200 souls, and
10:52change laid out on a low bench above the
10:55shallow silt brown creek that gave the
10:57place its name and its economy ran on
10:59three churches, four saloons, a great
11:02northern rail depot, a livery, a
11:04Corrian's general store, and the
11:06constant patient traffic of homestead
11:08families coming in for coffee, calico
11:10lamp oil, and news. The news that
11:12October ran to two topics roughly equal
11:15in volume. the price of beef on the
11:17Chicago boards which had been dropping
11:19for two years and was breaking men who
11:21had been solvent since the war and the
11:23widow Ellsworth's remarkable project out
11:25on the section road at the counter of
11:28Corgans on a Saturday afternoon. Mabel
11:30Corrian who had been Hadtie's closest
11:32friend since their girlhood in a shared
11:34one room schoolhouse east of the
11:36Mississippi was fielding the topic for
11:38the 11th time that week. She was a
11:40broad, capable woman of 59 with hands
11:43that could weigh out a pound of nails to
11:45the ounce without troubling the scales.
11:48And she had a look she reserved for a
11:49certain kind of gossip that most of the
11:51men in Cold Water Creek had come to
11:53recognize and dread. The current
11:55recipient of that look was Cyrus Bowen,
11:58a lean young cattlehand of 24 in a fine
12:01new hat who had ridden up from a spread
12:03in the southern part of the county to
12:05fetch a spool of wire and had lingered
12:07to enjoy his own opinions in front of an
12:09audience. I'm just saying, Miss
12:11Corrigon, there is such a thing as a
12:13woman being too long alone on a piece of
12:15ground. Man dies, the wife ought to go
12:17into her people. Stands to reason. Mabel
12:20weighed his wire with the patience of a
12:22coroner. The last time you stood to
12:24reason Cyrus, you rode a green colt into
12:27the front of the depot. $220 cash. He
12:31paid tipped his fine hat and left with
12:33the tips of his ears burning. Behind him
12:35the bell over the door jangled and
12:37admitted a broad stoop shouldered man of
12:3960 in a canvas coat gone gray at the
12:42elbows, who paused on the mat to knock
12:44the mud off his boots before crossing
12:46the boards to the counter. Thaddius
12:48Moldro farmed the section directly north
12:50of the Ellsworth place and had done so
12:52in one arrangement or another since
12:541866.
12:56He had known Hattie longer than that. He
12:58had known her since the two of them were
13:006 years old in a schoolhouse in Winona
13:02County, Minnesota, where his desk had
13:04been three rows behind hers, and he had
13:07spent the better part of one autumn
13:08learning the exact set of her shoulders
13:10when she was concentrating. I had
13:12married a good woman named Ellswith in
13:141852 and had not looked at another
13:16since. But the shape of Hattie
13:18Ellsworth's shoulders remained a piece
13:20of information he carried without
13:21effort. The way a man carries the shape
13:23of his own hand. He set a coin down for
13:26a bag of coffee, exchanged three quiet
13:28sentences with Mabel about the weather,
13:31then said more quietly still, "Has
13:33anyone been out there to Hadtie's Deline
13:37twice this week?" And Mabel looked at
13:40him a long moment before she answered.
13:43Thaad, when was the last time you saw
13:45Hattie do a thing without a reason for
13:47it? He didn't have to think about that.
13:501849 or thereabouts. She was six. Put a
13:53garter snake in the school master's coat
13:55pocket. Never did have a reason for that
13:57one that I could see. Then trust her
13:59now. He nodded, tipped his hat, walked
14:02out. But he stood a long while on the
14:04boards of the porch with the paper sack
14:06of coffee under his arm, looking north
14:08toward the low rise on the horizon where
14:11he knew the Ellsworth roof stood, though
14:13at this distance it was only a smudge
14:15against the pale sky. That evening in
14:17her own kitchen, Elizabeth Moldro put a
14:19bowl of stew in front of him and watched
14:21his face while he ate. You went by
14:23Corrians? I did. And you did not go out
14:26to see Hattie. He set down his spoon.
14:29Elizabeth, that woman has been telling
14:31this county what the sky is doing since
14:33she was 30 years old, and this county
14:35has been ignoring her since she was 30
14:37and one. I am not going out there to add
14:39my ignorance to the pile. If she is
14:41stacking hay against a wall, then in the
14:44spring I will know why she was stacking
14:45hay against a wall, or I will not, and
14:48either way, I will still be her
14:49neighbor." His wife considered him
14:52across the lamp. "That is a longer
14:54speech than I have heard out of you
14:56since Grover Cleveland was elected. Then
14:58I shall not require another for some
15:00time. He picked up his spoon, the
15:03subject of the hay igloo, as the men at
15:05the depot had already taken to calling.
15:07It was set aside in the moldro kitchen
15:08for the remainder of the evening. Hadtie
15:10herself, meanwhile, was standing in her
15:12upstairs bedroom, looking out through
15:14the north-facing window at the top edge
15:16of her haywall, which now rose to within
15:186 in of the sash. She had left that 6-in
15:21gap on purpose so that from inside the
15:24house, she could still see out and up
15:25toward the horizon, and so that the room
15:28would still catch a little of the
15:29reflected light off the snow when the
15:30snow came. She had thought about that 6
15:33in for the better part of an afternoon
15:36before she settled on it. She had
15:38thought about most things twice. The
15:40channel behind the bales, the deliberate
15:421-in breathing space between the hay and
15:44the clapward existed because she had
15:46once, as a girl of 12, watched a
15:48neighbor sodi sag inward and rot along
15:51one wall, because the man of the house
15:53had banked snow directly against the
15:54boards to save on firewood, and the trap
15:57moisture had eaten the wood from the
15:58outside in over the course of one wet
16:00winter. She had never forgotten the
16:03smell of that wall when they had torn it
16:05down in the spring. A smell like a root
16:07seller gone wrong, sweet and sour, and
16:10faintly alive. Her haywall would not do
16:12that to her house. The 1-in gap was
16:14narrow enough that no true convective
16:16current could form within it. Not with
16:19the outside of the bales packed tight,
16:21and the inside face of the clapboard
16:23cold to the touch, but wide enough that
16:25any moisture that did seep out through
16:27the interior walls in the deep cold of
16:29January would have somewhere to go
16:31besides into the fibers of Silus's
16:33shingles and studs. She had run the
16:35reason past herself three times before
16:38she trusted it and once passed Ambrose's
16:40ledgers where an entry from 1858
16:43described the loss of an entire poleb
16:45barn to the same wet rot phenomenon in a
16:48single hard winter. Ambrose in that
16:50entry had written a sentence she now
16:52knew by heart. A wall wants to breathe.
16:55A wall that cannot breathe will drown
16:57before it freezes. She turned from the
16:59window and went downstairs to bank the
17:01stove for the night. The following
17:03morning, a Sunday, she did not go to the
17:05little Clapboard Methodist Church at the
17:07edge of town. She had not gone regularly
17:09since the funeral, and the Reverend
17:11Josiah Ketering had by now stopped
17:13mentioning it in his weekly courtesy
17:15call at Corrians, though he had not, she
17:17suspected, stopped noticing. I was a
17:19well-meaning man of 45 with a wife and
17:21no children of his own, and he had made
17:23a small project of the widow Ellsworth's
17:25soul in a way that had he found tender
17:28and tiresome in almost equal
17:30proportions. On the following Tuesday
17:32afternoon, the reverend drove out. She
17:34saw the buggy from a long way off black
17:36against the tawny grass, and she stopped
17:39what she was doing, which was tamping
17:41cedar splits under the porch to keep the
17:43mice from wintering there. She dusted
17:45her hands, walked to the pump, drew a
17:47dipper of water, drank half poured the
17:50rest over her wrists, and by the time
17:52the buggy pulled up in the yard, she was
17:54seated on the porch steps with the
17:56composure of a woman who had never been
17:58surprised by anything. Ketering climbed
18:01down carefully. He was a slight man in a
18:03black coat and a hat that was almost too
18:05large for him, and he had the deliberate
18:07sad manner of a preacher who had spent
18:09the previous night rehearsing a
18:11difficult conversation in front of a
18:12hand mirror. Mrs. Ellsworth, Reverend, I
18:16wonder if I might trouble you for a cup
18:18of coffee." She rose. She led him
18:21inside. She set the kettle to hot and
18:23put out two cups and a small blue
18:25crockery bowl of sugar. And while the
18:27water heated, she stood at the range and
18:29did not speak because she had learned
18:31decades earlier that a nervous man in a
18:33kitchen will fill any silence you leave
18:35him. He filled it after two minutes.
18:37Hattie, I hope you will forgive the
18:39presumption. It has been observed by a
18:42number of your neighbors that this fall
18:44has been a difficult one, and that the
18:46work you have undertaken with the hay is
18:47strenuous, and I have been asked in a
18:50way whether it might be time to consider
18:52whether a lady of your years alone on
18:54this section might not be more
18:55comfortably situated with your daughter
18:57in town." She poured his coffee, she
19:00poured her own, she sat down across from
19:02him at the pine table, and folded her
19:04hands in front of her, and looked at him
19:06with the steady, unblinking attention of
19:08a hen looking at a hawk.
19:10Josiah, do you believe I am losing my
19:13faculties? I would never. You would?
19:16That is precisely what you would or you
19:19would not have driven 3 mi in a cold
19:21wind to sit at this table. Answer the
19:22question. He looked into his coffee. He
19:26looked at the window where the top of
19:27the west wall of hay was visible beyond
19:29the glass. He looked at his own hands.
19:32He was a decent man, and she knew he was
19:34a decent man, which was the only reason
19:36she had not already sent him back out to
19:37his buggy. No, I do not believe you are
19:40losing your faculties. I do believe you
19:42are grieving. I have believed that for
19:45four years. I am. And I believe grief
19:48can take a shape that resembles
19:50preparation. It can. Then Josiah. She
19:54reached across the table, opened the
19:56pine chest that stood beside her chair,
19:58and drew out the oldest of Ambrose's
20:00ledgers. She set it in front of him. She
20:03opened it to a page dated November 12th,
20:051849, and turned it so he could read it
20:08right side up. That is the hand of my
20:10late husband's father in his 40th year
20:12in the second month of the winter that
20:15killed nine men in 1900 head of stock in
20:17the eastern part of this territory. Read
20:19what he writes at the top. Ketering read
20:22it silently, moving his lips slightly
20:24the way certain readers do. Then he read
20:27it again. Then he closed the book and
20:29pressed one hand flat on the leather
20:30cover. May the Lord forgive us our
20:32shortness of memory. That would be the
20:35sentence. Yes. Hadtie, I did not know he
20:37kept these. No one knew he kept them. He
20:40gave them to me because there was no one
20:42else in this family who would open them.
20:44Silas would not. Silas loved his father,
20:47but Silas believed the past was a
20:49country a man visited only to fetch his
20:51tools out of, and he did not visit
20:53often. I have opened these books every
20:56winter for 26 years. This is the first
20:59winner in which every sign in my own
21:01book matches a sign in his. The reverend
21:04sat very still. Every sign. Every sign I
21:07know how to read. I do not say a storm
21:10is coming. I say a storm has come before
21:12in a year that looked like this year.
21:14And I would rather stack hay in October
21:16than dig a grave in January. I was
21:18silent a long time. At last, he said
21:20quietly, "May I ask the Lord to spare
21:23us?" "You may. I would appreciate it. I
21:26would also appreciate you telling the
21:28men at the depot that the widow
21:30Ellsworth is not at present in need of a
21:32removal to town. He rose. He put his hat
21:35on. At the door, he turned back and said
21:37a thing that surprised her and that she
21:39would remember for the rest of her life.
21:41If you are right, Hattie, I will stand
21:43in the pulpit and say so. If I am right,
21:46Josiah, you will not need to. The buggy
21:49left. She stood on the porch until it
21:51was out of sight. Then she went back
21:53inside and put Ambrose's ledger away in
21:55its chest, and she thought in a way that
21:57was not quite thought, and not quite
21:59feeling of the old man who had pressed
22:01those books into her hands, and she said
22:03aloud into the empty kitchen. Ambrose
22:05Ellsworth, I would trade a great many
22:08things for one more afternoon of your
22:09company." By the third week of October,
22:12the wall was complete. She stood in the
22:14yard on a still cold morning, and walked
22:16the perimeter of it once slowly, the way
22:18a mason walks the perimeter of a
22:20finished chimney, running one gloved
22:22hand along the outer face of the bales,
22:24and testing here and there for a loose
22:26one. She found none. She had built it
22:28well. She had built it as well as any
22:30wall Silus had ever built, and better
22:33than most. And the thought came to her,
22:35standing there in that thin sunlight,
22:37that this was the first substantial
22:39thing she had made alone since the
22:40funeral, and that she had made it
22:42against something rather than for
22:44something, and that the making of it had
22:46done a kind of work inside her that she
22:48had not known needed doing. She stood a
22:51long while. She had not cried in the
22:53yard of that house since the day they
22:54carried Silas up onto the porch. And she
22:57did not cry now, but she did lay her
22:58hand flat against the top course of the
23:00north wall and hold it there until her
23:02fingers went numb through the leather of
23:04the glove. And she did say a sentence
23:06that came out of her without her
23:07permission. You would have thought I was
23:10out of my mind, Silus Ellsworth, and you
23:12would have helped me anyway. The wind
23:14moved once through the dry hay with a
23:16sound like a slowdrawn breath. She
23:18walked back to the house. That
23:20afternoon, Delphine drove out again, and
23:22this time she did not ask questions. She
23:25parked the buggy, walked up to the wall,
23:27laid her own gloved hand against it in a
23:29gesture so exactly like her mother's
23:31from the morning that Hattie felt for
23:33one dizzy instant that she had somehow
23:35watched herself from a distance. Deline
23:38held her palm there for a slow count,
23:40and then she turned and looked at her
23:42mother, and her eyes were wet, and she
23:44said only, "Tell me what you need me to
23:46do."
23:47They spent the afternoon together,
23:49mother and daughter, banking straw
23:50around the foundation of the hen house,
23:52then around the base of the pump, then
23:54around the north face of the smokehouse.
23:57The work was easier with two in the
23:58plain arithmetic way that all work is
24:01easier with two. But there was another
24:03arithmetic underneath the plain one, and
24:05neither of them named it. Deline had
24:07been a girl of 10 when her father taught
24:09her how to fork loose hay onto a rick,
24:12and she had not done such work with her
24:13mother in nearly 20 years, and there was
24:15something in the wordless coordination
24:17of their hands that afternoon that
24:19neither of them had known they were
24:20missing. At dusk, Delphine stood in the
24:23doorway with her coat halfbuttoned and
24:25looked at her mother across the warm
24:27kitchen, and she said in a smaller voice
24:29than she had used earlier, "I told
24:32August you were losing your senses. I
24:34want to say that so you hear me say it.
24:36I know you did. How? Because you are my
24:39daughter. And because I said the same
24:41thing about your grandfather, Ambrose,
24:43the first winter I lived under this roof
24:45with him. He kept a jar of pebbles by
24:47his bed, one for every hard freeze he
24:49could remember by year, and I thought he
24:51was 3/4 mad. He gave me the jar the week
24:54before he died. I still have it
24:56upstairs. Deline leaned her forehead
24:58briefly against the door frame. I am
25:00sorry, Mama. Don't be sorry. Be here in
25:03January. I will be. she went. The buggy
25:07lamp receded down the lane, a small
25:09yellow eye that shrank and shrank and
25:11finally slipped over the horizon. And
25:13Hadtie stood on the porch, listening to
25:14the night close in over the fields. And
25:17she thought that if the winter did not
25:18come at all, if the caterpillars and the
25:20geese and Ambrose's ledgers had all
25:22somehow been mistaken together, then
25:25this one afternoon with her daughter
25:26would have been worth the whole of the
25:28work. By the 1st of November, the county
25:30road was ringing with frost every
25:32morning, and the wagons that had been
25:34hauling grain to the depot for 6 weeks
25:36were beginning to haul the last of it,
25:38and the men at the loading platform had
25:40entirely lost interest in the widow
25:42Ellsworth's haywall, because they had
25:44their own barns to prepare, and their
25:46own beef to move, and their own tallies
25:48to reconcile before the ground froze
25:50past digging. The hay igloo as a topic
25:53had been supplanted by other topics as
25:55all topics eventually are in a country
25:58where survival requires attention.
26:00[snorts] Only one man in Cold Water
26:01Creek continued to think about it daily
26:04and he did not speak of it. Thaddius
26:06Moldrose was every morning at 5 as he
26:09had for 34 years. And every morning he
26:12stood for a moment on his own north
26:14porch and looked south across the flat
26:16gray dawn toward the Ellsworth place. He
26:18could not at that distance see the hay
26:20wall itself. He could see the roof line
26:22of the house and beyond it a smudge that
26:24might have been the barn and above the
26:26whole small silhouette, a thin, steady
26:28threat of smoke from the kitchen
26:30chimney. That threat of smoke was to him
26:32a piece of information as important as
26:34the direction of the wind. As long as it
26:37rose, he did not need to ride over. He
26:39rode over anyway on the second Saturday
26:41of November, ostensibly to return a
26:43socket wrench he had borrowed from Silas
26:457 years earlier and had somehow
26:47forgotten to return. The wrench had
26:49lived in the top drawer of his tool
26:51chest for the entirety of the
26:52intervening period. And both he and his
26:54wife had known for the last four years
26:56of it, that its purpose was no longer to
26:58be used, but to be returned, and both
27:01had known that its return was waiting on
27:03the right day, and that the right day
27:05would announce itself. The right day, as
27:07it turned out, was cold and bright and
27:09windless, and the smoke from the
27:10Ellsworth chimney rose straight up into
27:12a sky the color of wash denim, and
27:14Thaddius came up the lane at a walk with
27:16the wrench in a small canvas sack at his
27:18knee, and he found Hattie on the south
27:20porch, scraping the last of the mud off
27:22a pair of boots she had worn out to the
27:24far pasture. She looked up. She did not
27:27smile. Hattie Ellsworth had not made a
27:29habit of smiling at men in dooryards
27:31since she was 18 years old. But she
27:33nodded and she stood and she wiped her
27:35hands on her apron and said, "That he
27:38climbed down. He set the sack on the
27:40porch railing. I have a wrench of
27:42siluses. I imagine that was what it
27:44might be. It is not why I came. I
27:48imagined that as well." He looked at the
27:50wall. He looked at it for a long time,
27:53walking a slow half circle around the
27:55corner of the porch, so that he could
27:57see the way the west face joined the
27:58north face, the small deliberate offsets
28:01in the courses, the neat taper at the
28:03corner, the 1-in breathing gap between
28:05the hay and the clapper. He did not say
28:07the word remarkable, though it went
28:09through his mind twice. He said at last,
28:11"You have done a piece of work here. I
28:14have alone." Deline came out on Tuesday.
28:18You have done a piece of work here. She
28:21let him have that one. There was no
28:23point in arguing with a man who had
28:24known her for 52 years about the nature
28:26of what she had and had not done alone.
28:29He turned back to her. He was a large
28:32man, and the cold had put a high color
28:33in his weathered cheeks, and he stood
28:35for a moment on her porch as if he were
28:37about to say something he had rehearsed,
28:39and had now at the moment of delivery
28:41misplaced. What he finally said was not
28:43what he had rehearsed. Hattie, if it
28:47comes hard this winter, if it comes the
28:49way your father-in-law used to say it
28:51could come, you send someone, you send
28:53anyone. You put a lamp in that north
28:56window, and I will see it from my own
28:58porch, and I will come. She looked at
29:00him a long moment. The wind moved once
29:02through the dry hay behind him, that
29:04same slow and drawn breath. Thaddius
29:07Muldro, I have not asked a man for
29:09anything since June of 82. I know it. I
29:12am not asking now. I know that, too. I
29:15am telling you what I will do
29:16regardless. She held his eye. She did
29:19not answer. She did not need to. He
29:21picked up his hat from the porch rail
29:23where he had set it, settled it
29:25carefully on his head, walked back to
29:27his horse mounted, and rode down the
29:29lane at the same unhurried walk with
29:31which he had come up it. She watched him
29:33until he reached the county road, and
29:35she thought without quite letting
29:37herself think it, that there were still
29:39at 58 one or two things in the world
29:41that a woman could not entirely predict.
29:44That night, the wind shifted. She
29:46noticed it while she was banking the
29:47stove for bed, a small change in the
29:50pitch of the sound around the eaves from
29:52a steady low draw to something a half
29:54note higher and more restless. She stood
29:56with the poker in her hand and listened
29:58for a full minute. Then she set the
30:00poker down, put it on her coat, and her
30:02wool bonnet, walked out onto the porch,
30:04and stood in the sharp cold, looking up
30:06at the sky. The stars in the west were
30:08sharp and clean. The stars in the
30:10northwest were smeared. She stood a long
30:13time. The smear was low still hours, or
30:16perhaps a day out, a haze rather than a
30:18cloud. The kind of thing a man riding
30:21through the country in daylight would
30:22not notice at all. The kind of thing
30:24that in Ambrose's ledger from the winter
30:25of 1855 had been noted 3 days before the
30:29storm arrived in a single line of blunt
30:31black ink. Air changed at nightfall.
30:34High cloud out of the northwest thin, no
30:36glow to the moon, threw it. He had
30:38underlined the phrase, "No glow to the
30:40moon." She looked up at the moon. It was
30:433 days past full riding low in the
30:45southeast, and its light fell cleanly on
30:47the yard on the top course of her hayw
30:49wall, on the black shingles of the roof,
30:51on the frost white boards of the porch.
30:53It fell without haze or halo. But when
30:56she turned her head to the northwest,
30:58she could see very faintly that the
30:59stars in that quarter were not quite as
31:01sharp as the stars anywhere else, and
31:03the ones nearest the horizon were
31:05smeared into a kind of milkiness so thin
31:08that a person who did not know to look
31:09for it would not know it was there. She
31:12stood on that porch until her hands and
31:14feet went numb. Then she went inside,
31:16banked the stove, climbed the stairs,
31:18and lay down in the cold upstairs
31:20bedroom under three quilts. And she did
31:22not sleep for a long while. But when she
31:25did sleep, she slept the deep still
31:27sleep of a woman who has done everything
31:29she can think of to do and has at last
31:32run out of preparations. Somewhere on
31:34the far side of the Missouri River in a
31:36station house at Fort Buford, a
31:38telegraph key was clicking out a
31:40bulletin about a system of low pressure
31:42gathering above the Alberta Plains, and
31:44a young operator was frowning at the
31:46tape as it spooled into his hand, and no
31:48one in Cold Water Creek would hear about
31:49it for another 48 hours. Outside in the
31:52yard, the wind moved once more through
31:54the dry haywall, and the sound it made
31:56was no longer a slow, indrawn breath. It
31:59was the sound of something beginning to
32:00gather itself for a run. The smear that
32:03had shown on the northwestern horizon
32:05that November night did not, in fact,
32:07deliver a storm. It slid east across the
32:10territory over the following 48 hours,
32:12thickened over Minnesota, then dropped a
32:14modest 6 in of dry snow on southern
32:16Manitoba before dissipating. By the
32:19following Monday, the sky above Bramble
32:21County was again the pale wash blue of
32:23high autumn, and the men at the depot
32:25had gone back to talking about beef
32:27prices, which had dropped another 12
32:29cents on the hundred weight, breaking
32:30two more solvent ranches down along the
32:33Cheyenne. The widow Ellsworth's haywall,
32:35briefly a source of quiet vindication in
32:38one household north of hers, receded
32:40once more into the general category of
32:42eccentricities that a neighbor tolerated
32:44in a country where eccentricity was
32:46often the only thing keeping a person
32:48upright. Hadtie herself noticed the
32:51reprieve the way a general notices a
32:52probe that failed to breach the line.
32:54She adjusted nothing. She had watched
32:56the smear pass. She had read the
32:58barometer she kept nailed to the kitchen
33:00wall behind the range she had marked in
33:02her ledger. The phrase first warning
33:04held short, and she had gone about the
33:06business of banking. Hay around the
33:08smokehouse, ordering an extra 100 pounds
33:10of coffee from Corrians on the pretext
33:12of Christmas, and moving the 15 best
33:14cows in her string closer to the barn
33:16than she ordinarily would have kept them
33:18in mid- November. Deline noticed the
33:20reprieve differently. She had not slept
33:23well the night after the wall's
33:24completion. Her mother's steadiness on
33:26the porch that afternoon had unsettled
33:28her in a way she was still weeks later
33:30working out. On the Wednesday before
33:32Thanksgiving, she drove out again with a
33:34basket of preserves under the buggy seat
33:36and stayed for supper and over cornbread
33:38and dried apple pie. She asked the
33:40question she had been carrying in her
33:42chest for a fortnight. Mama, if it
33:45doesn't come, if the whole winter passes
33:47and it doesn't come, what then? Hattie
33:51set down her fork. She looked at her
33:53daughter across the pine table for a
33:54moment before answering, and Deline had
33:57the strange experience of feeling
33:58herself examined the way her mother had
34:00once examined a cult for soundness at
34:02auction. Then in the spring, I feed the
34:04wall to the cows. I sit in this kitchen
34:07through May. I plant the garden. I take
34:09out the ledgers next October the way I
34:12have taken them out every October since
34:13your father was alive. And I read them
34:16again. Some years the caterpillars are
34:18wrong. Most years, in fact, they are
34:20wrong. The point is not that they are
34:23always right. The point is that when
34:25they are right and you have not
34:26listened, there is no letter you can
34:28write in April that will bring back what
34:30December took. Deline turned her coffee
34:33cup slowly in her hands. That is a hard
34:35arithmetic. It is the only arithmetic
34:38this country runs on. Your grandfather
34:41knew that. My mother knew that, though
34:43she died before I was old enough to ask
34:45her about it. Your father knew it,
34:47though he did not like to say so out
34:49loud, because saying it out loud gave it
34:51a power he preferred not to grant it. I
34:53am telling you now because you will
34:55outlive me, and one day you will stand
34:57on a porch of your own and look at a sky
35:00you don't quite trust, and you will need
35:02to know how to do the arithmetic without
35:04asking anyone." Delphine did not answer.
35:06She did not in that moment quite trust
35:08herself to answer. She stayed a second
35:10night sleeping in the small back bedroom
35:12that had once been Ambrose's. And in the
35:14morning, she rose before her mother, and
35:16made the coffee for the first time in
35:18that kitchen since her wedding. Hadtie
35:20came down the stairs, saw her daughter
35:22at the range, said nothing, sat at the
35:24table, drank the coffee her daughter
35:26poured her. It was better than the
35:28coffee she made herself. They both
35:30noticed. Neither remarked on it. Deline
35:33drove back to town at midm morning, and
35:35on the drive, she found herself, for
35:36reasons she could not name, weeping
35:38quietly for the last 5 miles. December
35:40came on with the false gentleness. The
35:43first two weeks brought only a few
35:44skiffs of snow, none deep enough to
35:47cover the stubble in the harvested
35:48fields, and daytime temperatures climbed
35:50on three separate afternoons into the
35:52middle 40s. Ranchers who had been braced
35:55for hard weather began cautiously to
35:57unbrace. The talk in the saloon shifted.
36:00The hay igloo, when it came up at all,
36:02now came up as a joke, and the joke had
36:04a sharper edge than it had carried in
36:06October, because the men making it had
36:09themselves been half persuaded in the
36:11fall that Hattie Ellsworth might be on
36:13to something, and they resented in a
36:15small way, having been made briefly
36:17foolish by their own credul. Cyrus
36:19Bowen, the young cattleand with the fine
36:21hat, made the joke most often, and made
36:24it loudest. and by the second week of
36:25December, he had refined it into a small
36:28routine that could reliably earn him a
36:30laugh at the bar of the Antler Saloon.
36:32His refined version involved a great
36:34deal of business about a woman so afraid
36:35of a winter breeze that she had wrapped
36:38her house in her own bedding. It was not
36:40a good joke. It was successful anyway
36:42for the reason that most successful bar
36:44jokes are successful, which is that its
36:47audience wanted it to be true more than
36:49they wanted it to be funny. Word of the
36:52routine reached Mabel Corrian by the
36:5315th, delivered by a chasened teamster,
36:56who had thought it uporious in the
36:58moment, and was regretting it by the
37:00time he reached her counter. Mabel
37:02weighed his order of nails without
37:04hurry. She said, "Only, Cyrus Bowen will
37:06be cold this winter, Amos, and the widow
37:09Ellsworth will not. You mark it." Word
37:12did not reach Hattie at all. She had
37:14stopped going to town after
37:15Thanksgiving, and she had asked Mabel to
37:17hold her mail at the store until she
37:19came in herself, and Mabel had complied
37:21without asking why. The particular armor
37:24that Hattie had built around herself
37:25over four winters of widowhood did not
37:27require the reinforcement of local
37:29gossip, and Mabel understood that armor
37:32as well as anyone alive. Reverend
37:34Kettering, meanwhile, did an
37:35uncharacteristic thing. On the second
37:38Sunday of December, he preached a sermon
37:40on the book of Proverbsap 6:6 on the ant
37:42and the slugard. He did not name Hattie
37:45Ellsworth. He did not name anyone. He
37:47spoke of preparation as a form of
37:49humility of memory, as a form of prayer,
37:51of the sin of laughing at those who had
37:53done in September what the laugher would
37:55need in January. It was the best sermon
37:58he had preached in three years, and half
38:00his congregation nodded through it
38:01approvingly without recognizing
38:03themselves in it, and the other half
38:05recognized themselves and did not nod.
38:07Elizabeth Moldro, sitting three rows
38:09back, reached over and squeezed her
38:11husband's hand once briefly at the line
38:12about memory of prayer. Thaddius did not
38:15squeeze back. He kept his eyes on the
38:17pulpit and his jaw set because he had
38:19not since a certain fall morning at a
38:21schoolhouse in Winona County been in the
38:23habit of squeezing anyone's hand in
38:25public, including his wife's. On the
38:2718th of December, Hattie made her single
38:30trip into town for the month. She loaded
38:32a crate of eggs, three lbs of cured
38:34butter, and a small string of dried
38:36choke cherries into the wagon, drove
38:38into Cold Water Creek by way of the
38:40section road tied up at Corrians,
38:42delivered her goods, took her mail,
38:44drank a cup of coffee at the counter
38:45with Mabel, and drove back out. The
38:47whole trip took 2 hours and 40 minutes.
38:50She did not go into any saloon. She did
38:52not pass the depot. She did not, so far
38:55as she was aware, exchange a word with
38:56any man in town except the boy who took
38:59her hor's heads at the hitching rail.
39:01She did, however, hear the joke. It came
39:03to her in the cleanest possible way,
39:05which was through Mabel's careful
39:07refusal to repeat it, and through the
39:09particular expression on Mabel's face,
39:11when Hadtie asked her over the second
39:13cup of coffee whether there was anything
39:15she needed to know. Mabel looked at her
39:18friend of half a century and said
39:19quietly, "Cyrus Bowen has been running
39:22his mouth, "It will keep. Let it keep."
39:25Hadtie considered the counter for a long
39:27moment. Then she said in the tone she
39:29had used on her father-in-law's ledgers
39:31when a particular entry disturbed her.
39:34Mabel, if a hard cold comes, and if
39:35Cyrus Bowen has been running his mouth
39:37about a woman preparing for it, then
39:39Cyrus Bowen is going to look like a
39:41fool. That will be his cross to bear,
39:43not mine. What I would rather not have
39:45on my conscience is a young man freezing
39:48in a bunk house because he was too proud
39:50to bank his walls after November. Send
39:53him word if you can find a way. Tell him
39:56from me that I do not require an apology
39:58and I do not require his laughter to
40:00stop, but I do require him to check his
40:02stove pipe." Mabel looked at her a long
40:04moment. "Hatty Ellsworth, I do not know
40:07another woman on the northern plains who
40:09would say that sentence out loud. Then I
40:11will say it once, and you will pass it,
40:13and we will be done." She drove home in
40:16the early dark of a December afternoon,
40:18and by the time she turned into her own
40:20lane, the first of the small hard flakes
40:22had begun to spit out of a lowg gray
40:24sky, and she stabled the team and forked
40:27them their evening ration, and stood in
40:29the doorway of the barn for a long
40:30minute, watching those flakes come down.
40:33They were not the flakes of a storm.
40:35They were the flakes of a country making
40:37up its mind. The country made up its
40:39mind on the 9th of January. That
40:41morning, she rose in the still dark an
40:43hour before her usual time without
40:45knowing why. She lit the kitchen lamp,
40:48poked the banked fire in the range to
40:49life, put the kettle over, and walked to
40:52the north window of the parlor. She
40:54could not have said afterward what had
40:55woken her. She could have said only that
40:58when she pulled the curtain and looked
40:59north, the sky above the top of her
41:01haywall was the color she had been
41:02waiting on since October. The flat gray
41:05of a fresh sheet of lead not yet lifted
41:07from its mold. And that in the yard, the
41:09two cottonwoods on the east side of the
41:10house were absolutely still, in a way
41:13that no cottonwoods in Dakota territory
41:15are still, except in the hour before
41:17something arrives. She stood at that
41:19window for what felt like a very long
41:21time, and was in fact less than 2
41:23minutes. Then she turned, walked to the
41:25pine chest, opened it, took out the
41:27topmost of Ambrose's ledgers, opened it
41:30to a page she had marked with a strip of
41:31blue calico. She read the entry there.
41:34She closed the book. She said aloud to
41:36no one in the empty kitchen. Right then,
41:39by 7:00, she had done four things. She
41:42had drawn every bucket she owned full at
41:44the pump and set them along the north
41:46wall of the kitchen. 12 gallons of water
41:49banked against the possibility that the
41:51pump handle would freeze past thawing.
41:53She had carried 3 days worth of split
41:55cedar and oak in from the woodshed,
41:57stacking it in a low wall beside the
41:59range that would function as both fuel
42:01and additional insulation. She had gone
42:03out to the barn, shifted every one of
42:05her 28 remaining cows into the leeward
42:08side against the earth, banked north
42:10wall, checked their water, forked them a
42:12double ration of hay, then closed the
42:14double doors and dropped the crossbar.
42:17She had penned the six laying hens who
42:19still had the sense to earn their keep
42:20inside a strawline box in the corner of
42:22the kitchen behind the range where their
42:24small body heat would add itself to the
42:26household budget. She had also written a
42:29letter. It was three sentences long. It
42:31was addressed to Delphine Whitaker in
42:33care of the smithy on Elm Street in Cold
42:35Water Creek. It read, "Weather is
42:38turning here. Do not come. stay in town
42:40with August until it clears, and mind
42:43that Mabel has a spare room if the
42:44smithy chimney draws poorly." She sealed
42:47it, walked to the county road, and
42:49pinned it to the mail flag with a wooden
42:51clothes pin. She did not know, could not
42:54have known that the boy who ordinarily
42:56rode the mail route between the section
42:57roads in the town, had left Cold Water
43:00Creek at first light on his own
43:01initiative, having noticed the same
43:03lowgrade lid on the sky that Hattie had
43:05noticed at her window. He collected her
43:07letter at 10:00 in the morning. He
43:09delivered it to the smithy at 10 11. By
43:12that time, August Whitaker had already
43:14on his own initiative, laid in an extra
43:16half court of coal against the forge,
43:18told his one apprentice to go home to
43:20his mother, and walked back to the
43:22little frame house on Elm Street, where
43:23his wife was standing at the kitchen
43:25window looking north. Deline read her
43:27mother's letter twice. She folded it.
43:30She said it on the pine sideboard. She
43:32turned to her husband. Her voice when it
43:34came was even in the way that certain
43:36voices are even only because their owner
43:38has decided in advance not to let them
43:41shake. I need to go to her. August sat
43:44down his coffee. He did not raise his
43:47voice. He had over 11 years of marriage
43:49learned that his wife could be steered
43:51but not stopped and that steering worked
43:53only if the man doing it kept both hands
43:56loose on the wheel. Dela, you read the
43:58letter. I read the letter. Then you know
44:01what she is telling you. I know what she
44:04is telling me. I am telling you what I
44:06am going to do. He was quiet a moment.
44:09Outside, a first thin skiff of snow had
44:11begun to move across Elm Street in
44:13horizontal streaks. It was not yet cold
44:15enough to be dangerous. It would be cold
44:17enough within 4 hours. If we leave now
44:20in the buggy, we make her place by 2. If
44:23the storm comes at noon, we make her
44:25place at dusk in white out in cold that
44:28will kill the horses before it kills us.
44:31If we do not leave and the storm holds
44:32off, we are foolish for one afternoon.
44:35If we do leave and the storm hits on the
44:37section road at 3:00, we are dead by 5
44:40and she is alone anyway and knows we
44:42tried and carries it the rest of her
44:43life. Deline put both her hands flat on
44:46the kitchen table. She had large capable
44:49hands, the hands of her mother and her
44:50grandmother, and she was looking at them
44:52now as if they belong to a stranger.
44:55August, she is 58 years old and she is
44:58alone on that section. She is 58 years
45:01old and she has spent 4 months preparing
45:03that section for exactly this day. She
45:06has more sense in her left thumb than
45:08you and I have between us. And if she
45:10has told you to stay in town, she has
45:12told you so because she has already run
45:14every road in her head and chosen this
45:16one for you. Dela, look at me. Your job
45:19right now is not to reach her. Your job
45:22right now is to be reachable. If she
45:24needs you tomorrow or the day after, she
45:26needs you to be alive to send for
45:28Delphine looked up. Her eyes were bright
45:30and dry. August Whitaker, that is the
45:34longest run of sentences you have ever
45:35spoken to me at once. Then I trust it
45:38will be the last required. She began
45:40quietly to cry. She had not cried since
45:43the afternoon they carried her father up
45:45onto the porch, and she cried now the
45:47way certain people cry without sound.
45:50tears simply arriving at the corners of
45:52her eyes and running the length of her
45:53face without her seeming to notice them.
45:56August did not touch her. He sat across
45:58the table and let her have the crying
46:00because he had learned again over 11
46:02years that his wife's grief was a thing
46:04that did its own work if you let it and
46:06became a different and worse thing if
46:08you tried to shorten it. Outside the
46:10horizontal streaks of snow began
46:12imperceptibly at first to thicken. By
46:14noon, the wind had shifted a full
46:16quarter of the compass, coming now hard
46:18out of the northwest, and the
46:20temperature at the depot thermometer had
46:21dropped from 18° at first light to 7 at
46:24midday, and the streaks of snow had knit
46:27themselves into a solid moving wall of
46:29white through which nothing across the
46:31street could be seen. The mercury kept
46:33falling. It reached zero at 2. It
46:37reached 10 below at 3. The wind was
46:40gusting past 50 by 4:00. And by 4, the
46:44town of Cold Water Creek had ceased in
46:46any practical sense to exist as a place
46:49through which a person could move. Doors
46:51were locked, stoves were stoked,
46:54children were kept in from the
46:55schoolhouse an hour early on the say of
46:57a school master who had grown up in
46:59Vermont and knew the color of that sky.
47:02Reverend Kettering alone in the little
47:04parsonage behind the church, sat at his
47:06kitchen table with an open Bible and did
47:08not read it, and his lips moved in a way
47:10that would have surprised his
47:11congregation had they seen it, and the
47:13words he was forming were the name of a
47:15woman he had not been able to persuade
47:17to move to town in October. Out at the
47:19Ellsworth Place, Hattie sat in the
47:21kitchen with her hands folded on the
47:22pine table and watched through the small
47:25east window as the yard she had known
47:27for 23 years disappeared in the space of
47:2940 minutes into a blank white nothing.
47:32The wind against the north wall of the
47:33house rose in stages, each stage
47:35announcing itself with a low shuddering
47:37moan through the eaves that she
47:39recognized from three previous hard
47:41winters and one truly terrible one. What
47:44she did not recognize and what caused
47:46her to lay her palm flat on the pine and
47:48hold it there for a slow count of 10 was
47:50the sound the wind did not make. The
47:53sound of it striking the clapboard
47:55directly. That sound was gone. Between
47:58the wind and the house stood a wall of
48:00tightly packed prairie hay two bales
48:02deep and the wind was breaking against
48:04that wall the way ocean surf breaks
48:06against a jetty and the house itself for
48:09the first time in any Dakota storm of
48:11Hadtie's memory was not shuttering. she
48:13thought in a small clear way at the edge
48:15of her fear. Ambrose, you were right.
48:18She rose, added a split of oak to the
48:19range, checked the six hens in their
48:21straw line box behind it, refilled the
48:23water in the small crockery bowl she
48:25kept for them. She lit both kerosene
48:28lamps, one on the pine table and one on
48:30the mantle above the parlor stove, and
48:33she opened the parlor stove and added to
48:35it as well. The house at that hour stood
48:37at 62° on the thermometer nailed beside
48:40the kitchen door. The world outside
48:42stood at 15 below and falling. She was
48:45reading at 8 in the evening when she
48:48smelled it. The smell was faint at
48:50first, a sharpness at the back of the
48:52throat, the particular smell of wood
48:54smoke that has been in a room too long.
48:56She looked up from Ambrose's ledger. She
48:58looked at the range. The fire in it was
49:01burning clean and hot, a good bed of
49:02orange coals under a fresh split. The
49:05stove door was closed. Everything at the
49:07range was right. Everything at the
49:09ceiling was wrong. A thin gray haze had
49:12begun to gather along the upper foot of
49:14the kitchen, so faint that a person
49:16entering the room would not have seen it
49:18so unmistakable to a woman who had lived
49:20under that roof for a quarter century
49:22that she was already on her feet before
49:23she had consciously identified it.
49:26Smoke, not from the stove itself, but
49:28from the pipe. Something in the flu was
49:30not drawing. She crossed to the range,
49:32laid the back of her hand near the stove
49:34pipe where it exited the wall. The pipe
49:37was hot. The draw at the base was fine.
49:39She followed the pipe with her eyes up
49:41to where it disappeared through the
49:43ceiling, and she understood in the same
49:45instant what had happened, and what
49:47would happen if she did not act on it
49:48within minutes. The wind out of the
49:51northwest, hitting the chimney above the
49:52roof at 50 mph, and driving snow at a
49:56temperature of 20 below had begun to
49:58pack that snow against the leeward side
49:59of the chimney cap, and enough of it had
50:02accreted there to begin choking off the
50:03draw. In a mild storm, the heat rising
50:06through the pipe would keep the cap
50:07clear indefinitely. In a storm of this
50:10order, with the wind driving the snow
50:11faster than the heat could melt it, the
50:13cap would ice shut. When it ice shut,
50:16the flu would back up. When the flu
50:18backed up, the fire in the range would
50:20begin to smolder rather than burn, and
50:22the smoke that ordinarily rose 16 ft
50:24into the Dakota sky would come instead
50:27down into the kitchen. She had window
50:29sheated of perhaps 40 minutes before the
50:32room became unfit to breathe. she said
50:34aloud in the empty kitchen. Well, that
50:37is a thing I had not thought of. She
50:39went upstairs at once. In the low,
50:41unfinished attic above the second floor
50:43bedrooms, reached by a narrow ladder
50:45from the hall, was a small dormer window
50:47on the north face of the roof. A window
50:50that Silas had cut in the summer of
50:521879, for reasons Hadtie had never
50:54entirely understood at the time, and had
50:57blessed him for annually since. Through
51:00that dormer on a still day, a person
51:02could reach out with a long tool and
51:04standing on the top rung of the ladder
51:06touched the base of the kitchen chimney
51:08where it rose 2 ft above the roof line.
51:10She had not made that reach in 11 years.
51:13She had in every one of those 11 years
51:15checked in the fall to make sure the
51:17pole she had inherited from her
51:18father-in-law was still leaning where it
51:20belonged in the back of the attic, and
51:22every fall she had found it there. She
51:24climbed the ladder in a night dress with
51:26a wool coat pulled over it and a pair of
51:28Silus's old work gloves on her hands. At
51:31the top, she paused for a moment with
51:32her palm flat on the attic floorboards
51:34and let her heart, which was hammering
51:36against her ribs in a way she did not
51:38care for, settle to a rate she could
51:39work at. She was 58 years old. She had
51:42not climbed a ladder in a hurry since
51:44the year of the funeral. Her knees
51:46tonight would have opinions about this
51:48in the morning if she gave them a
51:49morning. The pull was where it had
51:51always been. It [clears throat] was ash
51:539 ft long with a small iron hook at one
51:56end that her father-in-law had forged
51:58himself in a Minnesota smithy in 1842.
52:01She took it in her right hand, crossed
52:03the attic on her knees to avoid catching
52:05her head on the low rafters, reached the
52:07dormer, worked the sash catch loose, and
52:09pushed the window open. The cold that
52:11came through the opening was of a kind
52:13she had not felt since 1873.
52:16It was a cold with a shape to it. A cold
52:18that had physical presence. A cold that
52:21moved into the attic and displaced the
52:23air already there. The way a river
52:25displaces a footprint. Snow came with
52:27it, driven horizontal, striking the far
52:30wall of the attic with a sound like
52:32handfuls of thrown sand. The wind,
52:35unmuffled by any wall of hay at this
52:37height, screamed past the dormer with a
52:39note that Hattie recognized from the
52:41winter of 1866, and had not expected to
52:44hear again. She wedged her left elbow
52:46against the frame of the dormer,
52:48extended her right arm out into the
52:49storm with the ashpole angled up and to
52:52the right, and felt for the base of the
52:53chimney by memory. Her arm was inside
52:56the storm to the shoulder. Her face from
52:58the cheekbones down was exposed to a
53:00wind that would freeze exposed skin in
53:02under two minutes. She could not see the
53:04chimney. She could not see anything. She
53:07could only feel through the ash pole in
53:09her right hand the moment when its iron
53:11hook clanged softly against masonry. She
53:14worked the hook up the shaft of the
53:15chimney, feeling for the flared cap at
53:17the top. She found it. She hooked under
53:20the leeward edge. She pulled down.
53:22Nothing gave. She pulled again harder,
53:24using the frame of the dormer as a
53:26fulcrum against her elbow, and this time
53:28she felt a large section of packed ice
53:30and snow break free and tumble away down
53:32the roof into the yard. She hooked once
53:35more, ran the pole around the base of
53:37the cap in a slow scraping circle,
53:39dislodged what felt like another 6 in of
53:41builtup rhyme, then withdrew the pole in
53:44one long deliberate motion, dragged the
53:46sash of the dormer shut with fingers
53:48that were no longer entirely her own,
53:50and dropped the latch. She sat on the
53:53attic floor with her back against the
53:54north wall for a long moment. Her right
53:56arm from the elbow down was numb. Her
53:59face burned in the way that skin burns
54:01just before it stops feeling anything at
54:03all. she said into the small dim space
54:05above her in a voice she did not
54:07entirely recognize as her own. Silas
54:10Ellsworth, I would like to know why you
54:12cut that window in 79, and I would like
54:15to know now. She crawled to the ladder.
54:18She got down it more slowly than she had
54:20come up it. In the kitchen, the gray
54:22haze at the ceiling had already begun to
54:24thin. She stood at the range with her
54:26hands wrapped around a cup of water she
54:28had drawn hot from the kettle, and she
54:30waited until she could feel the fingers
54:32on her right hand again before she
54:34trusted herself to sit. Her face, when
54:37she looked at it in the small mirror by
54:38the back door, was blotched red and
54:40white in patches that would ache for a
54:42week. Her hair had come loose from its
54:44pins. Her night dress had a rhyme of dry
54:47snow across the front of it that had not
54:49yet melted. She banked the range low so
54:52that the draw would not have to work as
54:54hard against any remaining ice, then
54:56dragged one of the parlor chairs into
54:58the kitchen and sat in it with a quilt
55:00across her knees. She did not go back
55:02upstairs to bed that night. She sat by
55:04the range with Ambrose's ledger open on
55:06her lap, and she read, "And every 20
55:09minutes she rose to check the ceiling,
55:10and the ceiling stayed clear. At 10:00,
55:13she heard something new above the wind.
55:15It was a small, dull thump against the
55:17north wall of the house. Then another,
55:19then a third.
55:20She rose crossed to the north window of
55:22the parlor, cuped her hands against the
55:24glass. Snow was building against the
55:26outer face of the hay wall, now in
55:28earnest. What she was hearing was the
55:30sound of the drift itself, pressing
55:32against the bales, packing them tighter
55:34against the clapboard, and she
55:35understood with a slow spreading warmth
55:37in her chest, that a thing she had not
55:39planned for was becoming a gift. The
55:42snow was becoming a second wall. Every
55:44additional inch of it packed against the
55:46hay was another inch of insulation,
55:49another layer of dead air trapped in a
55:51lattice of ice crystals, another buffer
55:53between her house and the 20 below air
55:56beyond. What she had built as a single
55:58wall, the storm itself was doubling for
56:01her and doubling it for free. She
56:03thought of the igloos of the far north
56:05of which she had read once in a magazine
56:07article in the parlor of a hotel in
56:08Bismar in 1874. And she thought of how
56:11their builders had understood a truth
56:13about snow that most of the planes had
56:15forgotten, [clears throat] which was
56:17that snow, given the chance to sit
56:18still, was not an enemy of warmth, but a
56:21friend of it. She wrote a single line in
56:23her ledger in a hand that was still
56:25shaking slightly from the cold. The snow
56:27is helping. At midnight, the wind rose
56:30again another notch, and the moaning in
56:32the eaves climbed from a low shuttering
56:34register to a higher whining one, and
56:36the thermometer beside the door dropped
56:38for the first time all night below 50
56:40inside the house. She added a split of
56:42oak to the range. She added another to
56:44the parlor stove. She checked the hens
56:47who were sleeping in a small, warm heap
56:49in their straw. She sat down.
56:51[clears throat] The room stabilized at
56:5252. She read another entry in the
56:55ledger. She rose. She checked the
56:57ceiling. She sat down. Somewhere in the
57:00small hours she must have dozed because
57:01she came to herself with a start and no
57:04memory of the intervening minutes, and
57:06the lamp on the pine table had burned
57:07down by an inch. The wind was still
57:10there. The house was still not
57:11shuttering. She rose refilled the lamp
57:14put more oak on the fire. The dawn, when
57:16it came at 5:30, did not so much arrive
57:19as it did make itself faintly visible
57:22through the driven white outside the
57:23east window. The wind had not slackened.
57:26The temperature outside had dropped at
57:28some point in the night to 28 below, and
57:30it did not rise more than 3° all
57:32morning. By 10, she had made her second
57:35discovery of the storm, which was that
57:37at some point in the pre-dawn, her cows
57:39in the barn would be thirsty enough to
57:41become a problem, and no cow that had
57:43gone unwatered for 24 hours and 20 below
57:45cold would be a healthy cow 12 hours
57:48after that. She stood at the kitchen
57:50door with her hand on the latch for a
57:52long minute before she opened it. She
57:54had a coil of half-inch hemp rope over
57:56her shoulder, one end already tied
57:58around the sturdy porch post outside the
58:00door, the other end knotted around her
58:02own waist over three layers of wool.
58:04Silas's furline cap was on her head, her
58:07head and his old buffalo coat, which she
58:09had not worn since the winter he died,
58:11was pulled down over her ears. She was
58:14carrying a small iron pick and two
58:16wooden buckets empty. She stepped into
58:18the storm. The wind hit her the way a
58:20horse hits a fence. A single hard slap
58:23that drove her back against the door
58:24frame before she could set her feet. She
58:27braced. She lowered her head. She
58:29stepped down off the porch. 40 ft lay
58:32between the porch and the barn door. She
58:34could not see the barn. She could see
58:36faintly the top of the hay wall to her
58:38right in the shape of the porch post
58:40behind her. When she looked back, a head
58:42was white. She began to walk. The rope
58:45paid out behind her. She counted paces.
58:4810, 15, 20. On the 23rd pace, she walked
58:53hard into the barn door, which was
58:55exactly where it had been for 23 years,
58:58in which she had not seen until her
59:00forehead was against it. She fumbled the
59:02crossbar up with hands that were already
59:04going stiff inside two pairs of wool
59:06mittens under Silus's leather work
59:07gloves, dragged the door open against
59:09the drifted snow that had piled halfway
59:11up. It slipped inside, dragged the door
59:14shut behind her. The barn was 15° warmer
59:17than the yard, which meant it stood at
59:19approximately 5 below zero. It smelled
59:21of cow and old hay and wet wool, and the
59:25particular sweet sour warmth of 28
59:27breathing animals crowded together
59:29against a north wall banked with earth.
59:31She counted them. Every cow was on her
59:34feet. Every cow was looking at her.
59:36Every cow had ice in her whiskers and
59:39frost on the tips of her ears. and none
59:41of them look good, but none of them
59:43looked like an animal about to go down.
59:45She broke the ice on the trough with the
59:47pick in six hard strokes. She filled the
59:50buckets from the water barrel she had
59:51brought inside the barn on the 3rd of
59:53November for exactly this contingency.
59:55She poured them into the trough. She
59:57refilled. She poured. She refilled. She
1:00:00poured. She did it 11 times before the
1:00:03trough was 3/4 full and the cows crowded
1:00:06around it and began to drink in the slow
1:00:08measured way of animals that had been
1:00:10thirsty for longer than they liked. She
1:00:12forked them a fresh ration of hay from
1:00:14the loft, checked the calves in the
1:00:16small pen at the east end, put her hand
1:00:18on each of the six heers she was
1:00:20watching, most closely felt the good
1:00:22hard warmth of their winter coats under
1:00:24the rhyme of frost, and turned back
1:00:25toward the door. The trip back to the
1:00:28house took 22 minutes. It should have
1:00:30taken three. Twice she went down on one
1:00:32knee in a drift that had built above her
1:00:34waist since she had passed through it
1:00:37going the other way. And once she lost
1:00:39the rope for a moment and had to feel
1:00:41for it with her mitten hand along the
1:00:42snow at her hip until she found it
1:00:44again. And by the time she reached the
1:00:46porch her face had gone past the burning
1:00:49stage and into the numbness that a
1:00:51person raised on the plains recognized
1:00:53as the beginning of real danger. She
1:00:55fell into the kitchen. She dragged the
1:00:57door shut behind her. She sat on the
1:00:59floor with her back against the door for
1:01:01a full 10 minutes before she trusted her
1:01:03legs to rise. Then she rose. She put
1:01:06water to hot. She stripped off Silus's
1:01:09coat and cap and gloves. She sat by the
1:01:11range with her hands wrapped around a
1:01:13mug of tea, and she said aloud in a
1:01:15voice that had steadied again to
1:01:16something like her ordinary voice. That
1:01:19is enough of that for one day. The storm
1:01:21ran through the 10th and did not slacken
1:01:23until the afternoon of the 11th. By then
1:01:26Hattie had made three more trips to the
1:01:28barn along the rope, each one shorter
1:01:29than the last, and every cow in her
1:01:31string was still standing. The house had
1:01:34held. The chimney after that first
1:01:36crisis had drawn cleanly all through the
1:01:38second night, though she had climbed the
1:01:40ladder to check it twice more in the
1:01:41small hours. Her right hand had not
1:01:44fully thawed until the following noon,
1:01:46and it would ache in cold weather for
1:01:47the rest of her life. But it worked and
1:01:50it held the ledger open now on her lap
1:01:52on the afternoon of the 11th as she made
1:01:54her entry for the storm. 11th January.
1:01:57Wind slackening after 56 hours. Snow
1:02:00drifting past the eaves on the north
1:02:02side. All stock alive. All house sound.
1:02:05Chimney iced at 8:30 on the 9th. Cleared
1:02:08with AE's ash pole through the dormer s
1:02:11cut in 79. May the Lord bless the men
1:02:14who cut windows they cannot afterward
1:02:17explain. In town on the 11th, the news
1:02:20that began to come in as the road slowly
1:02:22opened was of a kind that Cold Water
1:02:23Creek would talk about for a generation.
1:02:26A rancher named Pomeroy 12 mi south had
1:02:29lost 60% of his herd animals found in
1:02:31the days that followed piled against
1:02:33fence lines they had drifted into and
1:02:36could not walk out of. Two families of
1:02:38homesteaders in the western part of the
1:02:40county had spent the storm in their root
1:02:42cellers because the wind had carried
1:02:44away the stove pipes from their saudies
1:02:45on the first night and both families
1:02:47were alive though the Macandless
1:02:49children had frostbite on their cheeks
1:02:51and the Macandless barn had lost its
1:02:53roof. The great northern was not moving.
1:02:57Three sections of track east of town had
1:02:59drifts to the top of the telegraph poles
1:03:01at the moldro place. Thaddius had spent
1:03:03the storm keeping his own house from
1:03:04what had been spared. The water line
1:03:07from the pump into his kitchen, an
1:03:09inside run of soft lead pipe that Silas
1:03:11had once helped him install and had told
1:03:13him at the time to lag with better felt
1:03:15than he had used, had burst at 3:00 in
1:03:17the morning on the second night. He and
1:03:20had spent 4 hours ankle deep in freezing
1:03:22water in their own cellar, closing off
1:03:24the line at the main before the seller
1:03:26had begun to freeze in earnest, and they
1:03:28had retreated upstairs. They had lost
1:03:30the cellar. They had lost the potato
1:03:32crop stored in it. They had not lost
1:03:34each other or the house above them. And
1:03:37Thaddius, standing in his kitchen on the
1:03:38morning of the 12th, with his boots
1:03:40still wet, had said the sentence. A man
1:03:43says once in a marriage, and thereafter
1:03:45refers back to for years afterward,
1:03:47without repeating,
1:03:50I should have listened to Silas about
1:03:51the felt in 81. Elith had put a hand on
1:03:54his cheek. Thaad, you will listen to
1:03:57Hattie next time. I will. At the smithy
1:04:01on Elm Street, August had spent the
1:04:02storm keeping his forge banked and his
1:04:04wife from the door, and Deline had spent
1:04:07it at the north window of the little
1:04:08frame house, looking at a wall of white
1:04:10through which she could not see the
1:04:12church steeple two blocks away, let
1:04:14alone the section road, let alone the
1:04:17low-rise 9 mi out where her mother's
1:04:19roof stood. She had not slept more than
1:04:21an hour at a stretch. She had prayed,
1:04:23though she would not have used the word
1:04:25for it, and the shape of her praying had
1:04:27been a single sentence repeated in her
1:04:29head like the beads of a rosary she had
1:04:31not owned since her wedding. Let her be
1:04:34all right. Let her be all right. Let her
1:04:37be all right. On the afternoon of the
1:04:3912th, when the wind had slackened enough
1:04:41that a man in Cold Water Creek could
1:04:43walk the length of Main Street without
1:04:45holding onto the buildings, Reverend
1:04:47Kettering came out of the parsonage. He
1:04:49walked to the smithy. He knocked on the
1:04:51door of the little frame house behind
1:04:52it. When Delphine opened it, he said
1:04:54without preamble, "I am organizing a
1:04:57party to ride the section roads. I would
1:04:59like your husband. I would like also to
1:05:02tell you that I intend to reach your
1:05:03mother's place today, God willing,
1:05:05before dark." Delphine took hold of the
1:05:07door frame with one hand. Her voice when
1:05:09it came was very small. Reverend, if she
1:05:12is, we do not yet know anything. That is
1:05:15why we are going. I want to come. You
1:05:18will not come. You will stay here. Your
1:05:21husband will send word by the fastest
1:05:22rider we have as soon as we know. That
1:05:25is the arrangement. Mrs. Whitaker, your
1:05:27mother would not thank me for bringing
1:05:29you onto that road today. She would
1:05:31thank me for keeping you off it. Do you
1:05:34understand me? Deline understood him.
1:05:36She let go of the door frame. She said,
1:05:38"August is in the smithy." By 2:00 in
1:05:40the afternoon, a party of six men on the
1:05:42two best horses the livery had, and four
1:05:45sturdy mules from Corrian Stockyard had
1:05:47left Cold Water Creek on the section
1:05:49road, moving northwest in single file
1:05:52along a track that no wheel had touched
1:05:54in 3 days. Snow lay to the belly of the
1:05:56lead horse in the deepest places, and in
1:05:58the shallow places the wind had scoured
1:06:00the ground to bear frozen earth streaked
1:06:02with the yellow of last summer's grass.
1:06:04The party included August Whitaker,
1:06:06Reverend Kettering, three men from the
1:06:08depot, and Thaddius Moldro, who had
1:06:10gotten word at his own place at 11 that
1:06:12the town was riding and had saddled his
1:06:14best mayor and cut cross country to
1:06:17intercept them at the fork. They rode in
1:06:20silence for most of the way. There was
1:06:22nothing to say. Every man in the party
1:06:24had at some point during the storm
1:06:26thought about the woman on the section
1:06:28road ahead of them. And every man had
1:06:30thought about her differently, and every
1:06:32man was in his own way, afraid of what
1:06:34they would find at the top of that
1:06:35lowrise. At half three, cresting the
1:06:38last swell of ground before the
1:06:40Ellsworth Lane, they saw the house, or
1:06:42rather they did not see the house. They
1:06:45saw the barn, and they saw the two
1:06:47cottonwoods, and they saw where the
1:06:49house should have been, a great white
1:06:50mound, out of which rose a single dark
1:06:53thread of smoke. August Whitaker made a
1:06:55sound that was not a word. Thaddius
1:06:58Moldro rained up beside him. He did not
1:07:00speak. He did not need to. He was
1:07:02looking with the particular attention of
1:07:04a man who had spent 40 years reading
1:07:06such signs at that threat of smoke. It
1:07:08was rising straight. It was the color of
1:07:10a fire that was being tended by a person
1:07:12who was tending it correctly. It was the
1:07:15color of a chimney that was drawing
1:07:17clean. The mound moved, that is to say,
1:07:19a section of the mound's south face,
1:07:21which none of the men had recognized as
1:07:23a door, because it was banked to a depth
1:07:25of 4 ft in windpack snow opened outward,
1:07:28and the snow before it fell away in a
1:07:31slow, silent sheet. And a woman in a
1:07:33furlined cap and a buffalo coat stood in
1:07:35the opening with a lamp in her hand. And
1:07:37she raised the lamp once in greeting.
1:07:39And her voice came across the yard
1:07:41perfectly level and perfectly ordinary,
1:07:43as if she had been expecting them at
1:07:45exactly this hour and no earlier. You'll
1:07:48want coffee. Come in. August Whitaker
1:07:51sat on his horse for a long moment
1:07:53before he could move. The reverend
1:07:55beside him took off his hat and held it
1:07:57against his chest. Thaddius Moldro made
1:08:00a small sound at the back of his throat
1:08:02that no one in the party quite heard,
1:08:04and he touched his heels to his mayor,
1:08:06and he was the first man down the lane.
1:08:08Thaddius Moldro's mayor took the last 20
1:08:10yards of the lane at a stiff-legged trot
1:08:12she had not been asked for in 9 years.
1:08:14He was down out of the saddle before the
1:08:16horse had fully halted, dropping the
1:08:18rains in the snow, crossing the yard
1:08:20with a stride that had lost the small,
1:08:22careful hitch age, had put into it, and
1:08:24he stopped 3 ft short of the porch, and
1:08:26simply looked at Hattie Ellsworth. He
1:08:29did not embrace her. He would not have
1:08:31embraced her under any weather. He
1:08:33looked at her the way a man looks at a
1:08:35photograph he has carried in his pocket
1:08:36for so many years that he has forgotten
1:08:39what the original face actually is and
1:08:41then finds himself unexpectedly in the
1:08:43same room with it. She lowered the lamp.
1:08:46Thad Hattie, there is a coffee pot on.
1:08:50There are seven of you. It will need to
1:08:52be a strong one. Behind him, the other
1:08:54five men were coming down the lane in
1:08:56single file. August Whitaker in the
1:08:58lead. Now the reverend behind him, the
1:09:00three depot men bringing up the rear on
1:09:02their borrowed mules. They rode into a
1:09:04yard that had in the last three days
1:09:06become a place none of them quite
1:09:08recognized because the wall of hay
1:09:09Hattie he had built in October was no
1:09:11longer visible as a wall. It had become
1:09:13under the wind steady packing the base
1:09:15of a single great white drift that ran
1:09:18along the entire north and west sides of
1:09:20the house and rose in places to within a
1:09:22foot of the eaves. The house appeared
1:09:24from outside to have been half
1:09:26swallowed. From inside, as the men would
1:09:28learn in the next 30 minutes, it had not
1:09:30been swallowed at all. It had been
1:09:32wrapped. August dismounted last. He
1:09:35walked to his mother-in-law with a
1:09:37stride he did not remember choosing. He
1:09:39stopped short of her the way Thaddius
1:09:41had stopped short, and he opened his
1:09:43mouth to say something he had been
1:09:44rehearsing since the moment he saw the
1:09:46smoke. And what came out instead was
1:09:48three words in a voice she had not heard
1:09:50him use since the day he had asked her
1:09:51permission to marry Deline.
1:09:53Ma'am, thank God. Hadtie looked up at
1:09:56him. He was a foot taller than she was.
1:09:59She had known him for 11 years, and she
1:10:01had thought of him in that time as a
1:10:02good man, a plain man, a man who did not
1:10:05waste words on ceremony. What she saw in
1:10:08his face now was something else,
1:10:10something she recognized because she had
1:10:11seen it four winters earlier, on the
1:10:13face of the barnand who had ridden Silus
1:10:16home across a saddle. and she understood
1:10:18that whatever this large young
1:10:20blacksmith had been carrying since the
1:10:22storm broke had come very near to more
1:10:24than he could carry. She reached up and
1:10:26put her gloved hand briefly against his
1:10:28forearm. August, go tell my daughter I
1:10:31am upright. Send the fastest of these
1:10:33men back to town. She will be at the
1:10:36north window of your kitchen and she
1:10:38will not have moved from it since noon.
1:10:40August turned. The youngest of the depot
1:10:43men, a lean rider named Howerin, who had
1:10:45a good horse under him, was already
1:10:47swinging back into the saddle without
1:10:48being told. He touched his hat brim to
1:10:51had he wheeled his mount, took the lane
1:10:53at a caner. He was gone into the low
1:10:55afternoon light before the last of the
1:10:57men had made it up under the porch. In
1:10:59the kitchen, the six remaining men stood
1:11:01in a rough semicircle with their hats in
1:11:02their hands and their beards frosted
1:11:04white. And the smell of coffee filled
1:11:06the room from a pot that had been kept
1:11:08warm on the back of the range since noon
1:11:10in the small, stubborn way of a woman
1:11:12who had decided that when men eventually
1:11:14came up her lane, she would not send
1:11:16them home cold. She poured. She did not
1:11:19sit. She took each cup around herself
1:11:21because she was a hostess in her own
1:11:23kitchen, and she was not tonight going
1:11:25to be anything else. Reverend Ketering
1:11:27was the first to find his voice. And
1:11:29when he did, he found it in a register
1:11:31lower than the one he used in the
1:11:32pulpit. Mrs. Ellsworth, I would like at
1:11:35some point, when it is not this
1:11:37afternoon, to sit down at this table and
1:11:39be told exactly how you managed the last
1:11:413 days. You will be told, "Not this
1:11:44afternoon." Thaddius, standing by the
1:11:46range with his hands wrapped around his
1:11:47cup, said only, "Every cow. Every cow.
1:11:51The heers took it hardest. Two are off
1:11:53their feed today. They will be back on
1:11:55it by Thursday. The chimney. She smiled
1:11:58for the first time in the exchange. A
1:12:00small tight smile that did not entirely
1:12:02reach her eyes because her right cheek
1:12:04was still tender from the second night.
1:12:06The chimney had opinions that it was
1:12:08persuaded.
1:12:10He looked at her for a long moment. He
1:12:12did not ask the follow-up. He had
1:12:14noticed as any farmer of that country
1:12:16would have noticed the raw red patches
1:12:18on her cheekbones and the way she was
1:12:20carrying her right hand a little curled
1:12:22against her ribs. and he had made in
1:12:24that moment a set of accurate guesses
1:12:26that he would keep to himself for the
1:12:27rest of his life. The men drank their
1:12:30coffee. They did not stay long. There
1:12:32were four more homesteads to reach
1:12:34before dark in full dark on the 12th of
1:12:36January in Dakota territory came at 5.
1:12:39Ketering rose after 10 minutes set his
1:12:41cup on the pine table said Mrs.
1:12:44Ellsworth Howerin will have reached town
1:12:46by 4. Your daughter will be here before
1:12:48nightfall or she will be here at first
1:12:50light depending on the road. May I say
1:12:53one thing before we ride? You may. In
1:12:55October, I sat at the same table and
1:12:57told you the community was concerned for
1:12:59you. I would like the record to show
1:13:00that the community was concerned for the
1:13:02wrong person. Had he considered him, she
1:13:05said evenly, "Reverend, do not stand in
1:13:08the pulpit and say so. It was not for
1:13:10the pulpit. It was for the ledger. Let
1:13:12it stay there." With respect, ma'am,
1:13:15that is not going to be your decision.
1:13:17He put on his hat. He touched the brim.
1:13:20He went out into the yard. The six men
1:13:23rode away down the lane in the failing
1:13:24light, and Hattie stood on the porch
1:13:26until the last of them was over the
1:13:28rise. And then she went back inside and
1:13:30sat down at the pine table in the empty
1:13:32kitchen for the first time in 3 days
1:13:34without a task in front of her. And she
1:13:37found to her own faint surprise that her
1:13:39hands had begun to shake in a small,
1:13:41steady way that she could not stop. She
1:13:44let them shake. She did not try to fold
1:13:46them. She sat with her hands lying loose
1:13:48on the pine and she watched them shake
1:13:51and after 10 minutes they stopped on
1:13:53their own and she rose and put more
1:13:55coffee on for the arrival she now
1:13:57expected before nightfall. Delphine's
1:13:59arrival in the end was not before
1:14:00nightfall. Howerin reached Cold Water
1:14:02Creek at 10 4 with the news and by 4
1:14:06August had a team hitch to a wagon
1:14:08rather than the buggy on the reverend's
1:14:10advice so that if they went into a drift
1:14:12they would have the weight to break
1:14:13themselves back out of it. By the time
1:14:16they reached the section road, the sun
1:14:18was down behind the western horizon in a
1:14:20sky so cold and clear that the stars
1:14:22were already burning through the last
1:14:24blue of it, and the temperature was
1:14:26falling again in the way that Dakota
1:14:28temperatures fall after a storm is
1:14:29cleared, and the two horses in the
1:14:31traces were working through drifts that
1:14:33had begun in the last hour to set up
1:14:35like plaster. Deline did not speak on
1:14:38the ride. She sat on the wagon seat
1:14:40beside her husband with her hands folded
1:14:42in her lap and her eyes fixed on the
1:14:44road ahead and she did not turn her head
1:14:47and she did not, so far as August could
1:14:49tell blink more than was strictly
1:14:51necessary. He let her have the silence.
1:14:54He had in the last 3 days learned a
1:14:56thing about his wife that he had not
1:14:58previously understood, which was that
1:15:00her silences were not empty rooms but
1:15:02full ones, and that she needed the room
1:15:04to be still while she worked out what
1:15:06she was carrying in it. They reached the
1:15:08Ellsworth Lane at 7:00 in the evening.
1:15:10The lamp Hattie had set in the north
1:15:12window of the parlor was visible from
1:15:14the county road. A small yellow eye
1:15:16against the black bulk of the house and
1:15:18the great white shoulders of the drift.
1:15:20And Deline saw it and made a sound in
1:15:23her throat that was neither word nor
1:15:25sobb. And she was down out of the wagon
1:15:27before August had brought the horses
1:15:28fully to a stop. And she ran the last 30
1:15:31yards to the porch through snow that
1:15:33came past her knees. and she came in
1:15:35through the kitchen door in a rush of
1:15:36cold air and lamp smoke, and she did not
1:15:39stop until she had her arms around her
1:15:40mother's shoulders and her face pressed
1:15:42into the wool of her mother's collar.
1:15:44Hadtie stood very still. She did not say
1:15:46anything for a long moment. She let her
1:15:49daughter hold her, then she raised her
1:15:50one good hand and laid it flat between
1:15:52her daughter's shoulder blades, and she
1:15:54said quietly into the top of Delphine's
1:15:56head, "There, Dela. There now, your
1:15:59mother is upright. Your mother is
1:16:01upright, and the coffee is hot.
1:16:04Deline did not laugh at that, but the
1:16:06shape of a laugh went through her once,
1:16:08and she lifted her face and looked at
1:16:10Hadtie, and she said in a voice that had
1:16:12come apart at last, "Mama, I told him
1:16:15you were losing your senses." I said it
1:16:17out loud to my own husband twice. You
1:16:21said it three times, Deline, I have
1:16:23counted. Mama, come and drink your
1:16:26coffee. There is enough of the day left
1:16:28for the two of you to eat before you
1:16:30drive home. It is too cold to stay
1:16:32tonight. and I would not have you on
1:16:34that road after moonset. Deline sat.
1:16:37August came in from stabling the team.
1:16:40They ate a supper of ham and cornbread
1:16:42and dried apples at the pine table in
1:16:44the yellow light of two lamps. And
1:16:45outside the wind had gone entirely, and
1:16:48the silence that came in through the
1:16:50walls now was the deep still silence of
1:16:52a country that had exhausted itself and
1:16:54was resting. And inside that silence,
1:16:57the small ordinary sounds of a family
1:16:59eating together in a warm kitchen had a
1:17:01weight none of them had quite ever felt
1:17:03before. They did not speak much. There
1:17:06was no need. Deline twice during the
1:17:08meal reached across the table and
1:17:10touched the back of her mother's left
1:17:11hand with her own briefly in the way of
1:17:13a woman confirming for herself that a
1:17:15thing she had feared lost was in fact
1:17:17still there. At 9, August and Delphine
1:17:21took their leave. Hattie stood on the
1:17:23porch and watched the wagon lantern out
1:17:25to the county road. And this time she
1:17:27did not go inside as soon as it was over
1:17:28the horizon. She stood a long time in
1:17:31the cold looking up. The sky above the
1:17:33yard had opened out into a black shot
1:17:35through with more stars than she had
1:17:37seen in one place since a night in 1859
1:17:40on the ridge above the old Minnesota
1:17:41homestead. She picked out three
1:17:43constellations by name, though she had
1:17:45not thought of their name since
1:17:47childhood. she said aloud to no one at
1:17:49all in the tone of a woman finishing a
1:17:51private conversation. You would have
1:17:53said I did fine, Silus Ellsworth. You
1:17:55would not have said it to my face. You
1:17:57would have gone out to the barn to say
1:17:59it to the horses. She went in, she
1:18:01banked the range, she went upstairs, she
1:18:04slept for 11 hours without moving. The
1:18:06news of what had and had not happened at
1:18:09the Ellsworth place traveled through
1:18:10Bramble County over the following 10
1:18:12days in the particular way that
1:18:14important news traveled in that country,
1:18:16which was slowly and with corrections
1:18:19and through kitchens rather than through
1:18:21newsprint. The Cold Water Creek
1:18:23Sentinel, the small weekly that came out
1:18:25every Thursday, ran on the 21st of
1:18:27January. A two column account under the
1:18:29headline, "A widow's preparation,"
1:18:32written by a young editor named Fenwick,
1:18:34who had ridden out to the Ellsworth
1:18:36place on the 18th and had sat at the
1:18:38Pine Table for 2 hours drinking Hadtie's
1:18:40coffee and asking careful questions. He
1:18:43had made only one mistake in the piece,
1:18:45and Hadtie corrected it in a note
1:18:47delivered to his office by Mabel
1:18:48Corrian. The following Monday, the
1:18:50ashpole had been forged in 1842, not
1:18:531849, and it had been her
1:18:55father-in-laws, not her fathers. Fenwick
1:18:57ran the correction in the next issue in
1:18:59a small box on page two, and he ran it
1:19:02word for word as she had written it,
1:19:04because he had understood by then who he
1:19:06was correcting. The correction was
1:19:07itself passed handtoand around the
1:19:09county for weeks. Something in its
1:19:12precision, in the plain refusal to let a
1:19:14small fact go unmended, even in the
1:19:16middle of what the paper had begun
1:19:18openly calling a miracle struck people.
1:19:20Mabel later told her husband that in her
1:19:22opinion, it was the correction rather
1:19:24than the article itself that had finally
1:19:26settled the matter of Hattie Ellsworth's
1:19:28mind for anyone still uncertain about
1:19:30it. Because a woman who was losing her
1:19:32senses did not spend a Monday afternoon
1:19:34writing to a newspaper about the
1:19:36difference between 1842 and 1849.
1:19:40The stories from the rest of the
1:19:41territory came in over the same period
1:19:43and they were in aggregate terrible. The
1:19:46Sentinel ran a full page of them on the
1:19:4828th. The eastern part of the territory
1:19:50had lost stock in numbers no man on the
1:19:53planes had seen since the winter of 49.
1:19:55Whole ranch outfits along the White
1:19:57River were reported to have lost 70 and
1:19:5980% of their herds. A telegraph operator
1:20:02at Fort Pierre had frozen his hands to
1:20:04the point of losing three fingers while
1:20:06keeping the wire open during the peak of
1:20:08the storm. Two men in me county had been
1:20:11found alive in a hay stack they had dug
1:20:13themselves into when their wagon went
1:20:15off the road on the second night. And
1:20:17they had survived because one of them
1:20:18had thought to cut the horses free
1:20:20before the animals went down. And the
1:20:21horses had walked home in the storm and
1:20:23drawn the search party back along their
1:20:25own tracks. A homesteading family named
1:20:28Van Dusen out toward the Cheyenne had
1:20:30spent the storm huddled in the small
1:20:32root cellar under their kitchen floor.
1:20:34Six of them together in a space meant
1:20:36for potatoes. and they had come out on
1:20:38the 12th to find their Saudi standing,
1:20:41but their barn gone entirely, the roof
1:20:43lifted off in the first hour of the wind
1:20:45and not seen since. No one in Bramble
1:20:48County itself had died. That was the
1:20:50sentence Reverend Ketering used from the
1:20:51pulpit on the last Sunday of January in
1:20:54the sermon he had promised himself he
1:20:56would give and had not in the event
1:20:58needed Hadtie's permission for. He
1:21:00preached that morning to a full church,
1:21:01including at the back a woman who had
1:21:03not attended his services in four years.
1:21:06She sat in the last pew in a black wool
1:21:08dress that had been made for the funeral
1:21:10and had not been out of the cedar chest
1:21:12since. She did not sing the hymns. She
1:21:15sat straight and listened. When Ketering
1:21:17spoke the sentence about no one in
1:21:19Bramble County having died, he did not
1:21:21look at her, but every other head in the
1:21:23church turned some slowly, some quickly,
1:21:26and she looked back at each of them with
1:21:27the level, unblinking attention she had
1:21:29used on a young preacher across her own
1:21:31pine table 3 months earlier. and one by
1:21:34one they turned back to the pulpit.
1:21:36Cyrus Bowen was not in the church that
1:21:38morning. He had gone on the 15th out to
1:21:41the small line camp where he had been
1:21:43keeping 30 head of his employer's cattle
1:21:45through the winter and he had found 16
1:21:47of them dead against the north fence. He
1:21:49had reported the loss to the ranch
1:21:50foreman in a state of unconcealed shame.
1:21:53And the foreman, an old hand named
1:21:55Pertie, who had ridden the chisel in 74,
1:21:58and had opinions about young men in fine
1:22:00hats, had said only one sentence to him,
1:22:02which was, "You will make it right by
1:22:04working it off." Bowen, and you will do
1:22:07it without complaining, and you will not
1:22:09open your mouth in a saloon about
1:22:10anything for the next 12 months, or you
1:22:13will make it right somewhere else."
1:22:15Cyrus had gone back to the line camp and
1:22:17had worked quietly all through February.
1:22:19Mabel had in the end not needed to pass
1:22:21Hadtie's message about the stove pipe.
1:22:23Pertie had checked the stove pipe
1:22:25himself on the 16th and had found it
1:22:27clear and had cuffed Cyrus lightly on
1:22:29the back of the head as he came down off
1:22:31the roof and had said, "Widow Ellsworth
1:22:34would like to see you alive in the
1:22:35spring. Boy, though God alone knows
1:22:38why." Cyrus had not answered. He had
1:22:41thought about the sentence for a long
1:22:42time afterward in the long quiet hours
1:22:45of a line camp in February, and it had
1:22:47done in his own small case the same work
1:22:49that Ketering's sermon did in the case
1:22:52of others, which was to move a piece of
1:22:54him from one column of the ledger of his
1:22:56life into another. On the 9th of
1:22:58February, Thaddius Moldro came again to
1:23:00the Ellsworth place, and this time he
1:23:02brought his wife. He had spent the
1:23:04intervening weeks putting his own house
1:23:06back to rights. The lead pipe in the
1:23:08cellar had been replaced by copper on
1:23:10the recommendation of a Corgan's clerk
1:23:12who had been reading the merkantile
1:23:14journals, and else had ordered new
1:23:16felting for every exposed run of it, and
1:23:18Thaddius had installed the felting
1:23:20himself with a care that his wife
1:23:22recognized as penitential. The potato
1:23:24loss had been made up by a trade with a
1:23:26neighbor for two barrels of turnips
1:23:28against half a hog in the fall. The
1:23:30seller itself had dried out and was
1:23:32being whitewashed. The Moldro household
1:23:35was by early February on its way back to
1:23:37what it had been. What had changed in
1:23:39the Moldro household was not visible in
1:23:41the cellar. It was visible in the fact
1:23:43that Thaddius on the morning of the 9th
1:23:45had said to his wife over breakfast,
1:23:47"Elizabeth, I have not in 52 years
1:23:50brought you out to visit Hadtie."
1:23:52Elizabeth Moldro, who had known
1:23:54everything about her husband's
1:23:56schoolhouse memory since the third year
1:23:58of their marriage and had made her peace
1:23:59with it long before their first child
1:24:01was born, considered him mildly over her
1:24:04toast. That is true, Thaad. I would like
1:24:07to bring you today. I would like to
1:24:09come. They rode out together in the
1:24:11small buggy, and Elizabeth carried on
1:24:13her lap a covered dish of stewed apples
1:24:15from her own cellar, and neither of them
1:24:18spoke on the drive because they were
1:24:19both in their own ways, considering the
1:24:21small, large thing that was happening in
1:24:23the buggy without either of them naming
1:24:25it. Elizabeth Moldro had never disliked
1:24:28Hattie Ellsworth. She had understood her
1:24:31position in her husband's history
1:24:32without resenting it because was a woman
1:24:35of unusual clarity, and clarity in a
1:24:38wife of that country was worth more than
1:24:40beauty by a factor of about 10. What she
1:24:43had never done in 52 years was sit at
1:24:45Hattie Ellsworth's table. Today, she
1:24:47would. They found Hadtie in the yard
1:24:50with a shovel, working slowly at the
1:24:51last of the great drift that had
1:24:53swallowed the north face of the house.
1:24:55The drift had begun to settle in the
1:24:57mild afternoons of late January and had
1:24:59opened on its own into a hollow along
1:25:01the outer face of the haywall, and
1:25:03Hadtie was engaged in the patient work
1:25:05of clearing that hollow, so that when
1:25:07the true thaw came in March, the
1:25:09meltwater would run away from the
1:25:10foundation rather than into it. She
1:25:13looked up as the buggy came up the lane.
1:25:15She rested the shovel against her hip.
1:25:18She lifted one gloved hand to shade her
1:25:20eyes against the low winter sun. When
1:25:22she saw who was in the buggy, she was
1:25:24for a moment entirely still. Then she
1:25:27smiled. It was a smile Moldro had not
1:25:30seen on Hattie Ellsworth's face since
1:25:32the day of Deline's wedding. Elizabeth,
1:25:35you have come at last. I have Hattie. I
1:25:38have brought apples. Then you have come
1:25:40at exactly the right hour because I was
1:25:42going to eat cornbread standing at the
1:25:44range and now I will not. The three of
1:25:46them went into the kitchen. That stayed
1:25:49to unhitch the mayor and put her in the
1:25:50barn against the cold, which was still
1:25:52real, though the wind of January had
1:25:54gone entirely, and the sun in early
1:25:56February had begun again, to have a
1:25:58small warmth in it at midday. When he
1:26:01came in from the barn, his wife and
1:26:02Hattie were sitting at the pine table
1:26:04with cups of coffee between them and the
1:26:06covered dish of stewed apples open, and
1:26:08they [clears throat] were speaking in
1:26:09the low, unhurried voices of women who
1:26:11have known each other by reputation for
1:26:13half a century, and are only now in the
1:26:15second half of their lives, discovering
1:26:18that they might have been friends the
1:26:19whole time. He stood in the doorway with
1:26:21his hat in his hand and looked at them,
1:26:24and [clears throat] he thought a thing
1:26:25he did not say out loud, because he was
1:26:27not a man for such thoughts out loud.
1:26:29What he thought was, "I have wasted 52
1:26:32years being careful about the wrong
1:26:34thing." He sat down. He drank his
1:26:36coffee. Had he brought out at Ellmith's
1:26:39request one of Ambrose's ledgers, and
1:26:41the three of them spent an hour bent
1:26:42over its pages, and Ellith, who had been
1:26:45raised on a farm in Wisconsin, and knew
1:26:47a good hand of penmanship, when she saw
1:26:49one, said at the end of it, "That man
1:26:51loved this country the way most men love
1:26:54their wives." Hadty considered the
1:26:55ledger. He loved his wife, but he did
1:26:58not have as much time with her as he had
1:27:00with the country. She was carried off in
1:27:02her 24th year by a fever. He kept the
1:27:05ledgers in part because he could not
1:27:06bear to keep only her. Elizabeth reached
1:27:09across the table and laid her hand
1:27:11briefly over Hadtie's. She did not say
1:27:13anything. There was nothing that needed
1:27:15to be said. The molds left at dusk. In
1:27:19the yard, as Thaddius was helping his
1:27:20wife into the buggy, Hattie came down
1:27:22off the porch with something in her
1:27:24hands. It was small and heavy wrapped in
1:27:26a piece of blue calico. She held it out
1:27:29to Elizabeth. For your kitchen, it has
1:27:31been in mine long enough. Elizabeth
1:27:34undid the calico. Inside was a small
1:27:36pewtor salt cellar worn smooth around
1:27:39its rim by decades of use of a design.
1:27:42Ellith did not recognize, but Thaddius
1:27:45standing at the horse's heads,
1:27:46recognized immediately from a shelf in a
1:27:48schoolhouse in Winona County in 1834.
1:27:53Beth looked at her husband. Then she
1:27:55looked at Hattie. Her voice when it came
1:27:57was firm and warm at once. Hattie
1:27:59Ellsworth, this is a good gift, and I
1:28:01will use it every day, and I will tell
1:28:03you now that I understood what it was
1:28:05before I looked inside the calico.
1:28:07Hadtie nodded once. She did not answer.
1:28:10She did not need to. [snorts] The two
1:28:12women embraced briefly in the yard.
1:28:14Thaddius mounted the buggy without
1:28:16speaking. The buggy went down the lane.
1:28:18Hattie stood on the porch until it was
1:28:20out of sight, and then she went inside
1:28:22and closed the door behind her, and she
1:28:24sat down at the pine table in the empty
1:28:26kitchen, and did not move for a long
1:28:28while. And what she was feeling was not
1:28:30sadness exactly, though it had the shape
1:28:32of sadness. It was something else. It
1:28:35was the feeling of a debt of 52 years,
1:28:38having finally, in a single unhurried
1:28:39February afternoon, been paid. March
1:28:42came. The thaw came with it slower than
1:28:44usual because the drifts of January had
1:28:46been so deep that they took until the
1:28:48second week of the month to give up
1:28:50their water, and Hadtie spent those
1:28:52weeks moving her attention from the
1:28:53house back to the barn. The two heers
1:28:55who had gone off their feet in the storm
1:28:57were bred by the third week. 12 of her
1:29:00cows were carrying calves that would
1:29:01drop in April and May. She began on the
1:29:0410th of March to feed the haywall. She
1:29:06did it in the same patient, methodical
1:29:08way she had built it. Every morning she
1:29:11pulled two bales from the south end of
1:29:12the west wall, forked them apart,
1:29:14carried them to the barn, distributed
1:29:16them among the cows. The bales came
1:29:18apart in her hands with a faint dust of
1:29:20old August in them. The smell of a
1:29:23haymaking that seemed to her standing in
1:29:25the barn with a forkful in her hands to
1:29:27belong to another century rather than
1:29:29the previous summer. The cows ate, the
1:29:32wall shortened. The house began day by
1:29:34day to reappear. Deline came out on the
1:29:3712th of March and stayed for 3 days. She
1:29:40helped with the feeding on the first
1:29:41morning, and on the second she asked her
1:29:43mother a question she had been carrying
1:29:45since January, and the two of them sat
1:29:47down at the pine table with the third of
1:29:49Ambrose's ledgers open between them, and
1:29:51Hadtie began at 58 to teach her daughter
1:29:54to read a sky. The woolly caterpillars
1:29:56are not the answer, Dela. They are one
1:29:58letter of the answer. You will look at
1:30:00them every fall. You will also look at
1:30:03the fat on the deer that come through
1:30:04the south quarter in October. You will
1:30:06look at how early the elk come down from
1:30:08the black hills into the plains if you
1:30:11hear reports of them. You will look at
1:30:13the way the geese move, whether in short
1:30:14skans or long ones. You will look at the
1:30:17barometer. You will look at the sky
1:30:19above the sunset in the third week of
1:30:20September. Your grandfather Ambrose has
1:30:23an entry in this book from 1854 that
1:30:26describes such a sunset, and he calls it
1:30:28the sunset of a long winter. He was
1:30:30right that year. He was right again in
1:30:3272.
1:30:34Deline took notes on the back of an
1:30:36envelope. She would keep those notes and
1:30:38add to them for the rest of her life,
1:30:40and she would in turn pass them in a
1:30:42form neither of the two women at the
1:30:43pine table that afternoon could yet have
1:30:46imagined onto her own children when the
1:30:48time came. But that was decades away. On
1:30:51the 12th of March in 1887, in a
1:30:53farmhouse in Bramble County, a mother
1:30:55and a daughter sat over a book, and the
1:30:58mother did the thing that her
1:30:59father-in-law had done for her in 1861,
1:31:01and the chain of it continued. By the
1:31:03first week of April, the wall was gone
1:31:05entirely. Every bale had passed through
1:31:07a cow, and every cow was walking the
1:31:09south quarter with a good spring coat
1:31:11coming in over her winter one, and the
1:31:13yard around the house looked from the
1:31:15county road exactly as it had looked in
1:31:17September, except that now the flower
1:31:19boxes on the porch held two pots of
1:31:21onion sets that Hattie had started in
1:31:23the kitchen window in February. On the
1:31:25fourth Sunday after Easter, Reverend
1:31:27Kettering did the thing Hadtie had asked
1:31:29him not to do. He preached briefly and
1:31:32without naming her on the parable of the
1:31:3310 virgins from the 25th chapter of
1:31:36Matthew on the difference between those
1:31:38who kept oil for their lamps and those
1:31:40who did not. And he took as his
1:31:42particular text the verse, but the wise
1:31:45took oil in their vessels with their
1:31:46lamps. Hadtie was not in church that
1:31:48morning. She was at home with a cow who
1:31:50had gone into labor 2 weeks early and
1:31:52needed her. And the calf came at midm
1:31:54morning and lived. and she named it
1:31:56Ambrose because it was the first calf of
1:31:58the year and because she was in a
1:32:00certain kind of mood. When Deline came
1:32:02out that afternoon with news of the
1:32:04sermon, Hattie did not answer directly.
1:32:06She was in the barn drying the calf with
1:32:08a piece of old sheeting, and she looked
1:32:10up at her daughter through the open door
1:32:12and said only, "Jossiah has done what
1:32:14Josiah needed to do. That is not my
1:32:17business. I have a calf named for your
1:32:20grandfather. That is my business."
1:32:23Delphine leaned against the doorframe
1:32:24and watched her mother with the calf,
1:32:26and she thought a thing she did not say
1:32:28out loud. What she thought was that her
1:32:31mother had done a piece of work in the
1:32:32last 6 months that would outlast every
1:32:35one of them, and that the piece of work
1:32:37had not in the end been the wall. The
1:32:39wall had been the visible part of it.
1:32:41The invisible part had been the
1:32:43willingness to build the wall in the
1:32:44face of the town's laughter, and the
1:32:46willingness before that to read the
1:32:48ledgers in the face of her own grief,
1:32:50and the willingness before that to be at
1:32:5258, and alone the kind of woman who did
1:32:55not require anyone else's belief to act
1:32:56on her own. Deline understood, standing
1:32:58in the doorway of the barn on that April
1:33:00afternoon, that she was watching a way
1:33:03of being in the world that would end
1:33:05when her mother ended, unless she chose
1:33:06to carry it. She chose in the same
1:33:09afternoon to carry it. She did not tell
1:33:11her mother that. It was not a thing that
1:33:13needed to be told. The summer came on
1:33:15hot and dry in the way that summers in
1:33:17the plains often follow hard winters,
1:33:20and the county turned its attention to
1:33:21hay. Every farmer with a mowing machine
1:33:24was out in his south fields by the
1:33:26middle of June, and the yield that first
1:33:28cut of the year was heavy because the
1:33:30ground had been well soaked by the melt,
1:33:32and the spring rains had been generous.
1:33:34Hattie brought in 80 tons off her own
1:33:37120 acres of hay ground, which was more
1:33:39than she had cut in any single season
1:33:41since Silas's last summer. And she
1:33:43brought it in with the help of a hired
1:33:45hand named Folk, who had ridden into the
1:33:47yard in early June looking for work, and
1:33:49had proved over the 8 weeks he stayed to
1:33:51be a quiet, capable young man from Iowa,
1:33:54who reminded her mildly of the way Silas
1:33:56had been at 23. By the first week of
1:33:58September, the hoff was full and the
1:34:01surplus was stacked in three great cured
1:34:03ricks in the south pasture. Folk drew
1:34:05his wages, tipped his hat, rode south
1:34:07toward a job on a ranch in Nebraska, he
1:34:10had been holding an offer from. Had he
1:34:12stood in the yard and watched him ride
1:34:14out and thought without saying it aloud
1:34:16that if she were 30 years younger, she
1:34:18would have asked him to stay. On the
1:34:2015th of September, in a private
1:34:22conversation over coffee at Corrigon's
1:34:24counter, Mabel said to Hattie, "There
1:34:27are men in town this month asking
1:34:28questions. What sort of questions?
1:34:31Whether you will do it again this year?
1:34:33Whether you have advice for the ones who
1:34:35have decided to try it themselves?"
1:34:37Hattie considered her coffee. How many
1:34:40are trying it? That I can count for
1:34:42certain 11. That I have heard rumors of
1:34:44closer to 20. Then I will not go into
1:34:46town to advise them. I will not stand on
1:34:49a soap box and be a spectacle, but if
1:34:51any of them cares to drive out on a
1:34:53Saturday afternoon between the hours of
1:34:552 and 4, I will be on my porch and I
1:34:58will have coffee on." Mabel smiled a
1:35:01slow smile. "That is a wise arrangement.
1:35:04It is the only arrangement I am willing
1:35:05to make." By the end of September 13,
1:35:08farmers had driven out on Saturday
1:35:10afternoons. Some came alone, some
1:35:13brought their wives. Two of them brought
1:35:15their fathers, in one case a man in his
1:35:1780s, whose hands trembled around his
1:35:19coffee cup, but whose eyes were as clear
1:35:21as a boy's, and who told Hadtie before
1:35:24he left that he had been a boy of 10 in
1:35:25the winter of 49, and that his own
1:35:28father had built a wall of straw against
1:35:29the west side of their Saudi that
1:35:31winter, and that he had not thought of
1:35:33that wall in 70 years until he had heard
1:35:35in a saloon in Cold Water Creek in
1:35:37February about a widow who had built one
1:35:39against a farmhouse. he said in a voice
1:35:41that had gone thin with age. "Thank you,
1:35:44ma'am, for remembering what my father
1:35:45knew." Hadtie held his hand for a long
1:35:47moment on the porch. She said, "Thank
1:35:49your father, sir. I am only passing it
1:35:52forward." By the middle of October 16,
1:35:54homesteads in Bramble County were banked
1:35:56in hay against their north and west
1:35:58walls. Not all of them were done well.
1:36:00Some were stacked too close to the
1:36:02clapboard without breathing gap. Two
1:36:04used loose hay rather than bailed. And
1:36:06Hadtie, when she drove past those places
1:36:08on her way to and from town, said
1:36:10nothing but made a small mark in her
1:36:12ledger about the addresses. She would go
1:36:14to those two houses on the first
1:36:15Saturday of November uninvited, and she
1:36:18would offer a suggestion, and the
1:36:19suggestion would be taken because a
1:36:21suggestion from the widow Ellsworth in
1:36:23the autumn of 1887 was not a thing
1:36:25anyone in that county was declining. The
1:36:28winter of 1887 to 1888 came on cold, but
1:36:32not in the event catastrophic. There
1:36:34were three storms of consequence between
1:36:36December and March. None of them the
1:36:39equal of the 9th of January, and the
1:36:41county lost stock, but not lives, and
1:36:43the 16 banked homesteads all came
1:36:45through the season without a burst pipe
1:36:47or a frozen well among them. It was not
1:36:50a proof of anything. Hadtie knew that a
1:36:52single mild winter proved a system no
1:36:55more than a single wet spring proved a
1:36:57drought over. What the winter proved was
1:36:59only that people had done the work and
1:37:01that when they had done the work they
1:37:03had not been sorry to have done it and
1:37:05that the work had gone into the habits
1:37:07of a county in a way that would outlast
1:37:09anyone storm. On a morning in the third
1:37:12week of March in 1888, Hattie stood on
1:37:14her porch in the thin new light and
1:37:16looked out across a yard that was
1:37:18showing its first patches of black earth
1:37:19through the receding snow. The two
1:37:22cottonwoods had begun to reen along the
1:37:23tips of their branches. In the south
1:37:26pasture, 17 new calves stood beside
1:37:28their mothers in the wet grass. In the
1:37:30kitchen behind her, on the pine table,
1:37:32the topmost of Ambrose's ledgers lay
1:37:34open at a fresh page, and the entry at
1:37:36the top of that page written the
1:37:38previous evening read, "A mild winter."
1:37:40Ground worked easy in the garden by 20th
1:37:42March. Every cow accounted for. DNA
1:37:45expected Sunday. She turned the mug of
1:37:47coffee in her hands. She was 59 years
1:37:50old. Her right hand achd in the cold and
1:37:53would ache in the cold for the rest of
1:37:54her life. And she had over the past year
1:37:57grown a little stiffer in the shoulders
1:37:58and a little slower on the stairs. What
1:38:01she had also grown over that same year
1:38:03was a kind of peace she had not carried
1:38:05since 1882. It was not the piece of a
1:38:08woman who had forgotten anything. She
1:38:10[clears throat] had forgotten nothing.
1:38:12Silas Ellsworth was as present to her on
1:38:14that march porch as he had ever been.
1:38:17What had shifted was that his absence no
1:38:19longer felt to her like a room she was
1:38:20locked out of. It felt like a room she
1:38:23now lived beside and could visit and
1:38:25could leave and could return to. The
1:38:28county road at that hour was empty
1:38:30except for a single figure walking north
1:38:32on foot. A slow, easy walk, the walk of
1:38:35a man who had all morning to arrive
1:38:37somewhere. Hadtie watched him without
1:38:39recognizing him for a full minute. and
1:38:41then she recognized him and she set the
1:38:43coffee down on the porch railing and
1:38:45stepped down into the yard. Reverend
1:38:47Ketering came up the lane at the same
1:38:49easy pace. He had left his buggy at the
1:38:51county road on purpose because the
1:38:53ground on the lane was soft with melt
1:38:55and because he had wanted he told her
1:38:57later to walk the last quarter mile
1:38:59through the country. His October sermon
1:39:01of two years earlier had been about
1:39:03without knowing it. He came up to the
1:39:05porch. He did not take off his hat. Mrs.
1:39:08Ellsworth. Josiah, I have come to tell
1:39:11you something, and I would like to tell
1:39:13you standing rather than sitting. Then
1:39:16tell me. He looked at her. His eyes
1:39:18behind the small round spectacles he had
1:39:20begun to need in his 40s were tired and
1:39:22kind. You are the reason my ministry has
1:39:25been worth anything in the last 12
1:39:27months. That is not flattery. That is an
1:39:29entry in my own ledger. I wanted you to
1:39:32have it. I will now go home. He touched
1:39:35his hatbrim. He turned. He walked back
1:39:38down the lane the way he had come. She
1:39:40stood in the yard until he was out of
1:39:41sight. And then she went up onto the
1:39:43porch, picked up the coffee mug, and
1:39:45went inside. And she wrote his sentence
1:39:48word for word on a small piece of paper,
1:39:50and she folded it, and she put it inside
1:39:52the front cover of the topmost of
1:39:53Ambrose's ledgers, where it would remain
1:39:55for the next 31 years. Some autumns in
1:39:58Bramble County, the caterpillars are
1:40:00wrong. Some autumns, the geese leave
1:40:02late, and nothing much comes of it. Some
1:40:05autumns the wall goes up and comes down
1:40:06without a single hard night, having
1:40:08tested it, and the neighbors driving
1:40:10past on the county road smile a little
1:40:12at each other in a way that is not
1:40:14unkindly meant. But in the autumn, when
1:40:16it matters when the sky above the sunset
1:40:19in the third week of September takes on
1:40:21that particular color, the old ledgers
1:40:23warned about the wall is there. It has
1:40:25always been there. It will be there next
1:40:27October and the October after and the
1:40:30one after that for as long as an
1:40:32Ellsworth stands on the porch of that
1:40:34house and looks north. That was the
1:40:36widow's gift. That is the gift still.

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