Читать книгу Watershed - Mark Barr - Страница 17

CHAPTER NINE

WHEN CLAIRE FELT WELL ENOUGH, SHE JOINED IRMA and the other boarders at the table for dinner. The first of the season’s tomatoes were coming in, and Irma stewed them with okra and onions and served them with ham steak and biscuits. She began to bring the food in heaped on large crockery that the men passed hand to hand down to Claire, not taking anything for themselves until she had had her portion. One man grumbled at this, complaining that he’d had to skip his lunch, but his neighbors ignored him and passed the bowl just the same. They were a serious-looking lot, Claire thought, with their knotted ties and suspenders. A few still had their jackets on despite the evening’s heat. When she had come in, they had been introduced to her, one by one, and shaking their hands she was amazed to feel how soft, how clean and free of calluses they were. Office hands, she thought.

Claire spooned tomatoes onto her plate and sent the bowl back the way it had come. More serving dishes came around and slowly the clanking of silverware on plates began to fill the room. She still didn’t have her full appetite and ate slowly, cutting her food up into small bites. This made her miss her children sorely, and she wondered what they would be eating at her mother’s.

She noticed the man sitting across from her, Smithson, had a large bruise running along one side of his jaw and was making a pained expression while he ate. When he caught Claire watching him, he gave her an embarrassed smile.

“I expect I look pretty bad,” Smithson said. “That husband of yours, he’s quite a scrapper.”

“Travis do that to you?” she asked.

“It’s nothing, ma’am,” he said.

“As hard-headed as Charlie is, I imagine it was your man’s foot that most likely came away the worse for it,” said Pugh, and there was laughter around the table. Smithson grinned weakly.

“So, what do you think of this dam?” asked a man on her left. Claire turned to him, remembering his name was Hull. He had a strong jaw and sharp nose, his brown hair oiled and combed back from his forehead.

“How do you mean?”

“What do you think about it?”

Hull had a northern accent, clipping his words off like he didn’t like the taste of them. Claire posed the question to herself and was surprised when she had an answer.

“Well, it’s keeping a lot of the boys in work, isn’t it? That’s got to be good for something.”

“Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. But what about the electricity here in Dawsonville? Aren’t you ready to have an electric oven?”

Claire thought of her house, her life with Travis, and considered all that she would be willing to go without for things to be how they once were.

“It sounds nice. Would it cook like a regular stove?”

“Without all of the work of getting the fire stoked. Wouldn’t it make your life easier?”

“But I don’t live in town.”

“Oh, this whole countryside will have electrical service.”

“Well,” she allowed. “They say it’s real nice.”

“No more fetching water from the well. Washing the week’s clothes in half the time. No more stoking. You just turn the stove on, and it’s ready to cook.”

“That does sound like an improvement.”

“The problem is, we’re sort of in a fix. We’ve got to get people to sign up for the cooperative. You see, we can’t sell the electricity to the individual families. Federal law won’t allow that. So we sell it wholesale to a cooperative of local families. They split the costs up amongst themselves, paying for the electricity with their member dues.”

“I haven’t heard anything about this,” Claire said.

Hull frowned. “Very few have. That’s why I’m here, to get the word out. But what our effort really needs is someone local, someone who knows these people and could help us convince them that signing up is going to be good for them.” He held her gaze until Claire realized he wasn’t just making idle conversation.

“Oh,” she said, blushing, “if you mean me, I’ve left my mother minding my children long enough.”

“Are you sure? We’d pay you for your work, and we’d be most grateful.”

Claire glanced at Irma. If her aunt had strong feelings about what was being said, her face revealed nothing.

“Do women even do this sort of work?” Claire asked, uncertain.

“You’d be my assistant, no different than a secretary. Only instead of working in an office, we’ll be traveling the county.”

“But I can’t walk much yet, on account of my illness. I get tired out.”

“We’ll have a car, so you wouldn’t walk any farther than from the street to the porch. With someone local like you with me, we’ll sign up lots more people.”

“I wouldn’t think people would take that much convincing.”

“Look around this table. We’re outsiders. For all they know, I’m going to take their five dollars and run off. They’re simple people,” he said, leaving it as his explanation.

Claire thought about it. Money would mean that she wouldn’t be dependent on Travis. Or her mother.

“Well, I suppose I could help,” Claire said. “But only when I’ve recovered a bit more.”

Hull nodded. “You can start only when you feel up to it.” He meaningfully offered her a manicured hand, and she shook it, sealing the deal.

“That’s enough business talk at the supper table, Mr. Hull,” Irma said. Hull smiled at Claire.

After dinner Nathan excused himself and went up to his room to work. At midweek he’d arranged with Irma for a second, larger lamp for his room. Each night since, he’d gone up after dinner to spread his work across his small table, the chest of drawers, and the bed. With the additional light, he was making progress, but it didn’t change the fact that he was a week-plus into his ninety days and he had only a livelong day’s pile of assignments to show for it. There would be no shortcut to putting his head down and doing the work and he had no strategy beyond the one that had brought him to this place. If he didn’t get picked by Maufrais to stay on at the end of his ninety days, if he couldn’t make this work, then he was out of ideas.

It had been a hot afternoon and his room was warmer than usual. He got up and opened the window as far as it would go and rolled up his shirtsleeves. The drawings smeared under his touch, and the papers glued themselves to his bared forearms.

It had been surprisingly nice to have Irma’s niece join them that evening. Her appearance at the table had altered things, had recast their bachelor meals as something more akin to a large, extended family dinner. It was a strange thing to chance upon something you’d not realized you were missing, but felt after the fact like a shock to his system. He missed his family, his friends, his old life. It wasn’t his nature to hole up with himself like this night after night, but he knew there wasn’t anything to be done. Not for eighty more days, at least.

He thought of his parents and the last time he’d seen them. His father had been white-lipped and angry with him, his mother had clung to him as if he were going into his grave instead of running away. But now that he considered it, dead or not, his old life was buried, just the same.

Downstairs someone coughed. He pictured the boarding house as if it were a child’s miniature, each of them a doll in its own compartment. There was only the cough, the scuff of a shoe, the sudden voice raised in laughter, that told you someone was really there. A half-dozen lives playing out in parallel. The cough came again, then the squeak of a loose board trod upon downstairs, and he stopped to listen. It might be somebody getting up for a drink from the ceramic jug that Irma kept in the kitchen. He had heard someone on the stairs two nights in a row earlier in the week and knew that his fellow boarders were not above creeping around in the night.

He listened for a few minutes before realizing that he’d lost the thread of the circuit he’d been drawing. Fitzsimmons would be asking after the plans in the morning, and Nathan had at least another hour’s work on them to go. He rubbed his eyes and unbuttoned his shirt’s collar, began tracing the circuit anew, but try as he might, his thoughts would not stay fixed there.

He stood and went to his dresser, opening the top drawer. His flask lay amidst his socks and underwear. He picked it up and shook it, though he knew it was long empty. He returned it to the drawer and rummaged further, until he found the torn envelope with the clipping. He unfolded the clipping and stood studying it under the lamplight, as if it might reveal some new truth that would release him, but his thoughts would not settle. He put it away.

Again, a cough from downstairs. He went to the open window and leaned out, feeling the coolness of the night air on his face. A car passed noisily on the street below his window, chasing the light it cast before it. Perhaps a walk would settle his mind. He gathered up his cast-off shoes, listened at his door, and then slipped out of his room and down the stairs.