He was such a sneak, but really when you thought about it, who wasn’t a sneak when it came to internal matters. But today, him sneaking up to her room, that was a surprise. A delicious one, though, because she’d stolen up there for her own reasons and there he was, and wasn’t it perfect that she could expose him over dinner and in one fell swoop make him the likely suspect. She was glad that Neva had said that about the tornado and made Aldine laugh, and she was glad he’d gotten out of it with his puppy love intact, because that game was just beginning.
She’d begun wiping the dishes dry. She was anxious now to be done before Clare brought the separator. She wanted to ring up Opal and tell her and anyone else listening what she’d gotten for Christmas. She would tell them how it was made by the Eschle Company in the Black Forest and she would wind it up and hold it close so they could all hear it and then she would ask Opal if she knew what sonata it was or at least what composer but of course she wouldn’t so then she would tell her and anyone else listening that it was Mozart. And then when that fun was all played out, she would arrange to meet with Opal somewhere in private so she could tell her—she’d already worked out the phrase—what strange turns a scheme might take.
29
The days passed, and weeks, and then, on a bitter-cold day near the end of January, something happened. Ansel was in the barn. Outside, the wind was a long, slow, ceaseless moan that sometimes, if he closed his eyes, could put him in mind of a distant train passing, which was strangely comforting and, in any case, the best you could do with a sound like that. From time to time the wind struck the side of the barn as if with a huge flat hand, and the barn shook and made a rumbly sound. It was only four o’clock in the afternoon but his father had built the barn without windows—a mistake that Ansel meant one day to correct—so the dimness made it feel later, almost night. He’d gotten a fire going in the old burner near the workbench and fed in a lump of coal and a few cobs. Artemis had slinked in, ribby and ancient seeming, and settled herself by the fire. “Where’s your Lottie, old girl?” Ansel said gently. “Have you lost your Lottie?”
This morning Jimmy Sweeton had stopped by with his center-door sedan filled with everything he could carry. He’d had the haunted look for a while now so it was no surprise. He pointed to an ancient caned rocker roped to the roof. “My mother brought that across the prairie,” he said. “Now I’m hauling it to California.” His face was a windburned red and he was trying to grin but his eyes were dull and lay deep in his face. He said, “When will you be heading out?”
Ansel said, “Well, it wouldn’t be now.” He would’ve added, Or ever, which was the truth, but he didn’t want to make Jimmy Sweeton feel any worse than he did. Jimmy’s wife and children had already gone by train. There was nothing for it now but to go. Ansel reached forward and shook his hand. “I’ll be looking for you when the drouth ends, Jimmy,” he said, which was what he said to everyone who was leaving.
Before starting the hack again down the lane, Jimmy Sweeton pulled something out of his pocket to give to Ansel.
“A spark plug?”
Jimmy nodded. “Except this one comes with a primer valve attachment. Makes starting a Ford easier when it gets cold . . . as it sometimes does hereabouts.” He was again trying to grin. “Won’t need it where I’m going.”
For how long Ansel had been staring into the fire, he didn’t know, but when he heard the Scottish girl’s voice, it gave him a turn.
“Mr. Price?”
She was peering into the darkness of the barn with the wind to her back, so it gave the impression of her having been blown there, and under the beret her face was a luminous circle.
“Over here,” he said, but as she approached, he turned and poked the fire, afraid to look at her further. He had begun to have dreams about the girl, strange, unbidden dreams, and they stayed in his body all day, like a bird inside a darkened cage.
Aldine stepped forward uncertainly. “My heel broke,” she said, and took in the adjustment in warmth, the dog by the fire, the scent of horse and straw and machine oil. His, she thought. More than any other place on the farm this was his, and she felt out of place. Though her heel had truly broken, and it really did need fixing, and she surely couldn’t pay the cobbler. She’d taken Neva inside the house because she wasn’t feeling well—coughing again—and she’d looked for Charlotte but hadn’t found her. She didn’t want to bother Mrs. Price—that was what she told herself—so she’d walked out to the barn. Besides, if they were alone, she could ask him some questions that were rightly hers to ask. “I thought you might have glue or tacks,” she said.
He motioned her closer to the stove and lamp. “Here. Let’s have a look.”
Aldine sat down on a sawhorse to unlace the boot. She felt him watching her, felt it keenly. Deep beneath her heavy coat she felt her heart beating a little too fast. And what did it mean that she wished her wool stocking less shapeless and ugly? But it was clean, and mended, so there was at least that. She handed Mr. Price the dusty boot and he sat down with it on an old backless chair. While he turned it in his hands, she looked about and, beyond the stove and sleeping dog, she found a surprise: beneath a hanging lightbulb a book lay open on the workbench, a thick book, and something about it—its size, its situation here on his workbench in the barn, the desperation of their circumstances—made her take it for a Bible, but then she saw that the edges of its cover were red, unquestionably red, and it was in the exact moment that she knew it was the Riverside Shakespeare that she felt something within her lifting as if in defiance of gravity. The book, laid open as it was under the soft light, seemed a secret she only now realized she’d been in search of. She needed to pull her eyes from the book—now! this instant!—but she could not.
Ansel, looking up from the boot, following her gaze to the book, felt a sordid humiliation suffusing him and then rising through his skin in the form of sweat. Explain yourself, he thought. Tell her why you brought it out. But he could not. He could not tell her that he wasn’t quite sure what all the exotic phrases meant and that he needed to parse them slowly, one word at a time. Vanity, and he knew it. It would be the same as announcing himself a fool, and that was worse than being suspected one, as he supposed he was now. So he said nothing and rustled noisily through several boxes before coming up with a bottle of glue.
“Here we are,” he said.