Thirty-Seven Days

Willa was sitting on a stone outside the fence.

There is no fence at the drill site. What there is, is a low line of piled stones that doesn't even break the wind. She sat on top of it, looking east.

It took her a while to stand up after the cart came into sight.

And she did not run.

Marlow climbed down from the cart, walked about ten steps, and stopped.

It was the first time Willa had not come running.

Ever since she had tagged along after him in the market three autumns ago, she had always been the one to run up first.

“…Stop there.”

Her voice was hard.

“Why.”

“You talk first.”

Marlow understood at once what that meant.

There is only one thing a kid who has waited thirty-seven days is trying to find out.

Marlow thought of three things to say and threw all three away.

Then he opened his mouth.

“How many days you been sitting there.”

“…Thirty-seven.”

“Are you stupid? Work. Get to work. You're a loader, aren't you.”

Willa's face crumpled, once.

Then she came running and hit him in the stomach, headfirst.

Marlow landed on his backside. Sand flew up.

“Idiot! Idiot! Idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot! You wrote thirty days! Thirty! You wrote it yourself!”

“I did.”

“You're seven days over! Seven!”

“I wrote wait a little longer.”

“Your ‘a little longer’ is way too biiig!”

She hit him. On the shoulder. Over and over.

It didn't hurt. He didn't say that.

＊

Drag was taking delivery of the papers beside the cart.

He took them, read them, and then looked over at Marlow.

“So you lived.”

“I'm alive.”

“I was told a man with your face was coming. On the roster. Reporting next month.”

“He didn't come.”

“He didn't. So until you walked in, I couldn't tell which of you had.”

Drag handed the papers to Harlan.

Harlan read two lines with the eye on his unburned side, and stopped there.

“…This is Central's stamp.”

“Read it. All of it.”

“I am reading. I am reading, but in nine years I have never seen a paper like this.”

Harlan lifted the paper and turned it toward the light.

“One shaft worker, to be brought up. The date is today.”

Every man at the drill site stopped working. When nineteen men stop at once, the noise drops away fast.

“The worker is deceased,” Silas said from beside the cart.

“He's alive.”

“Yes. He is alive. On paper he is deceased. Both are true, sir.”

＊

The cage went down late that night.

Four oxen turned the winch. The sound of the chain paying out lasts nineteen hours.

Willa did not move from under the tower. All that had changed was the place she refused to move from.

Marlow sat down next to her.

“Hey,” Willa said.

“What.”

“The man down there. What's he like.”

“He's got my face.”

“That was in the letter. That's not what I mean.”

Willa pulled her knees up.

“What's he like?”

Marlow thought about it for a while.

“He's forgotten how to laugh.”

“…Okay.”

“And he says everything twice. Nine years with nobody to answer him.”

“…Yeah.”

After that Willa said nothing.

About five minutes later she said, in a small voice:

“I don't mind being told things twice.”

＊

Roslyn had carried a desk out under the tower and was sitting at it.

Not a board. A desk. She was set up for the long haul, in earnest.

“What were you doing out here for thirty-seven days,” Marlow said.

“Writing.”

“Writing what. Nothing happened.”

“Nothing happened. So I wrote that nothing happened. Thirty-seven days of it.”

Roslyn lifted the stack of paper. It was thick.

“A day when nothing happened still has a date. Leave it blank and someone fills it in later. Once it is filled in, it is no longer my ledger.”

“…Fair enough.”

“There is one thing I would like to ask, if I may.”

“Say it.”

“It is about the crates on the cart.”

Marlow stopped walking.

“What about them.”

“The driver said four. Thirty tubes of sea water to a crate. A hundred and twenty in all. One a day, which he says is a hundred and twenty days there and back.”

“So?”

“A hundred and twenty does not match any count of days I know. The town and back is sixty-two days. This is nearly double.”

Roslyn pushed her glasses up.

“A number that is too large usually has another count hidden inside it. That is all. I will write it down.”

＊

The sun came up, and began to sink again.

In the evening, at the nineteenth hour, the sound of the chain changed.

The winch had gone heavy. The oxen slowed, and the drover put the whip in short.

It took another nineteen hours to come up. At noon the next day, Harlan took his place at the scale.

The nineteen men of the drill site, and Drag, and Roslyn, and Willa, and Marlow gathered under the tower. Only Silas stood a little apart.

The cage came up out of the hole.

Harlan read the mark. He read it, and read it again.

“A hundred and fourteen kilos.”

For the first time in nine years, a number that was not forty-three.

End of Chapter 23