I freeze. Turn slowly to see one of the boys, standing at the barn entrance. Noah.
“Nowhere!” I glance down the road, gesture merrily with my walking stick at nothing. “I thought I’d get some fresh air.”
Noah peers down the road. I know that look of consideration on a little boy’s face: he’s considering the merits of such an adventure. “Can I come?”
“Of course,” I say, though my heart sinks.
I don’t have a plan. Clearly I don’t have a plan. I’m a one-legged woman with an eight-year-old sidekick walking at about a mile-an-hour pace. Regardless, we walk along the path together for several minutes. I don’t say anything to Noah, and he doesn’t say anything to me. This doesn’t surprise me; my Samuel and Stetson are just the same.
Were just the same.
Are just the same.
I send a little prayer to the Lord for my boys right as Noah starts to whistle. He doesn’t seem to mind walking at this pace. He’s holding a long stick, waving it in the air occasionally, but mostly dragging it through the dirt behind us while I limp steadily forward. Atone point, I glance back at the house to see how far we’ve gone, and I notice a long, shaky line in the ground, as if the boy is carrying a tether to the farm, slowly unspooling it while we walk.
Soon we’re at the base of the hill, beneath the trees. This is the farthest I’ve been from the house. Noah’s whistle slowly peters away. He gazes around with interest. A strange thought occurs to me: Is this the farthesthehas ever been from the house, too? Or is he acting? Trying to fool me?
“Do you come here with Pa?” I say, as calmly as I can manage. “Down this road, toward the highway?”
“Highway,” he repeats, frowning. Then he looks up at me and nods quickly. “Mhmm. O’course.”
He’s lying. A shot of adrenaline rolls through me. “What else do you do with Pa these days?”
“Lots of stuff.”
“Lots of stuff, like what?”
“All the manly chores. Fence work and wood chopping and stall mucking and the like. I’m growing up, you know. I’ll be a man soon.”
I glance at his tiny little arms. “Chopping wood?”
“Well.” He shrugs abashedly. “I guess I mostly watch that. But I’m in charge of the horse, completely. I brush him and shave his hooves and keep him in good health.”
“What’s his name?”
“Whose name?”
“The horse.”
He snorts. “Horses don’t have names, Mama. Don’t be silly.”
“Ah,” I say after a moment. “Of course. Silly me.”
“Verysilly,” Noah says happily. “But yes. The horse is my job. And it’s a very big job if you really think about it. I have to feed him twice a day, and check him for scratches or injuries, and keep him occupied so that he doesn’t chew on the fence on account of boredom.”
“What about Abel?”
“Abel’s better at chopping wood than me,” he admits. “Pa saysAbel’s almost old enough to go out with him into the far woods. Thirteen is when it happens. I can’t go yet ’cause I’m not old enough.”
“Where will they go?”
He shrugs. “Everywhere. All over the place.”
“All over the place, like, where?”
Suddenly my ears ring with silence, the sudden absence of sound. Like a radio has been turned off. I turn around and see Noah standing ten feet back, stick paused in the dirt. The spool, apparently, has run out of thread. “We can’t go any farther,” he says.
“Why not?” I laugh lightly, a flimsy trinkle of sound.
