Shrugging, because if I said no, he’d tell me to go away and sit down, I said, “It’s okay.”
“Maybe you could—” He paused to point at the snow that had accumulated on the threshold and that was now melting in small piles on the wooden kitchen floor. “Maybe you could sweep out the snow. I just redid those floors last summer.” He nodded at the boot tray near the door. “Put those rubber boots on. They won’t fit, but they’ll keep your feet dry.”
Glad to be of use, I made myself busy. My feet swam in the boots, but they had good traction, and I felt a whole lot more helpful, sweeping out snow and keeping the tea kettle full.
I started a pot of tea and, when he paused, shovel jammed into the packed snow, I brought him a mug of it, made sweet and milky, as he seemed to like it. He grinned as he sipped at it.
“This is very good,” he said.
I remembered that first mug of tea with lemon and brandy, the flavor of citrus mixing with the quiet flavor of smoke. Andknew that forever afterward, I would associate that taste with him.
He made us stop around dinner, just as the wind was picking up, sending fleece-streams of snow from the top of the tunnel, opening it up to the sky. A sky that, just before the sun set, was blending from eggshell-gray to eggshell white and, while I couldn’t swear it, I thought I saw patches of dark blue.
Dinner was quick. Fried egg sandwiches. He ate two to my one, and then got up from the small table, looming over me, in a hurry, rinsing off the dishes before setting them to soak, even though they didn’t need it.
“I’m itching to get out there,” he said. “The storm cut me off from my work.”
Out there was his workshop, which he’d mentioned to me but only in passing.
“Can I come?” I asked, standing up, using the table for balance.
His face told me he didn’t want to let me. A hard narrowing of his eyes, the stillness in his body. A tightness in his shoulders. The way he paused, the odd creaking sound of his weight on the wooden floor.
That’s when I realized that the reason I could even hear this was because the wind had died down. If he went into the workshop, I would be alone in the cabin with the silence.
“Please?” I asked. “I won’t touch anything.”
As he looked away from me, casting his eyes over the dishes in the sink, the frying pan cooling on the stovetop, I realized that touching wasn’t the issue. It was the looking. Theseeing. A man who lived all the way out in the country, away from town, certainly wouldn’t want anyone in a building that was separate from his home. That I realized, as he pulled a ring of keys from his jean’s pocket, was locked up. Even though there was nobody for miles who might even be a little bit curious about it.
I opened my mouth to sayNever mind,when he made a gesture with his hand, low, almost unseen. Shuffling into the oversized rubber boots, I followed him along the short, sheltered path, the outdoor light over the back door laying glowing shadows across the snow.
He unlocked the workshop and stepped inside, pausing for a moment, blocking me from entering. I was ready to turn around and go back into the cabin, a dutiful guest who had no curiosity whatsoever, when he reached to turn on the light.
In the space, a small triangle between his raised arm, his body, and the wooden doorjamb, I saw flickers of images. Brass. Neat tools on a pegboard. Bottles of liquid in a row. Like a treasure room, it beckoned me in. But I needed to wait. I had enough manners for that.
He went into the room, and I followed him, and then he shut the door behind us, locking out the cold. Two walls were lined with narrow shelves, those pegboards that contained hammers, pliers of various sizes, spools of leather, dark, light, shiny. Spools of narrow thread. Clear sleeves containing different sizes and types of needles. Glass bottles of amber liquid. Slender containers with labels so grease-stained that it was impossible to see what was inside.
On the other two walls hung articles in various states of creation or repair. A slender peg of leather belts. Braided strips. Circular strips of leather, decorated with embossed stamps, colored on the inside, possibly by hand, one green, one blue. Two bridles, one fancy, one plain.
In the corner, sitting on a saddle horse with a strip of velvet beneath it, was a saddle. The saddle was old, even I could tell that, but well cared for. The leather along the saddle horn had been decorated, but the stamps and designs had been worn to ghost images. The curved seat of the saddle shone as if it hadbeen polished for years by a patient man. Or by a million cowboy bottoms.
“This is it,” he said, his voice almost perfectly level, as if the room had no meaning to him whatsoever.
“Oh,” I said.
The look Wolfe gave me over his shoulder was that of a man who wanted to tell me to get out.
I could easily see that not only was the workshop important, it was Wolfe’s heart. The tidiness. The sense of industry. The smell of leather oil, the old metallic smell of two floor heaters, one under the scarred table that was bare except for a canister of pencils, a metal ruler, and a clipboard, and the other heater in the corner, far from the saddle. Both plugged in and ready to go.
There was a tea kettle, and an open, plain tin canister of tea bags. Two mismatched mugs, one with a dragonfly etched into the green surface, the other with a printed image of a running horse, now faded. There was also what looked like a black speaker, plugged into the wall. I guessed it might be a player of some sort and swallowed a sudden, very urgent need to know what kind of music he listened to.
“What are you working on?” The question escaped me, and he looked at me with a slow gaze, a kind of tenderness growing as he shifted his gaze from me to the wall of tools.
Maybe this was okay then. To be interested in the work itself. Rather than wanting answers to questions he might not want to answer. Such as why was he all the way out here, when surely being closer to town and potential customers might be of more use. Especially when I could see little paper price tags dangling from some of the items. They were meant to be sold. But who could he sell them to out here?
“I’ve got sketches inside,” he said, running his fingers through his dark hair, making it stand up. Making him look wild. As though allowing me to stand in the room with him wasa little like watching him peel off and step out of his own skin. “Mabel wants a new collar for her dog.” He looked at me, a bit of laughter in his eyes. “You might not think that kind of sale would make a difference, but it does. She might be older, but her opinion carries weight. And she—” He paused, blinking.
There was more to what he wanted to say. But he stopped. Maybe because it’d been a while since he’d said much of anything to anyone. Maybe I was the only person besides himself to step into this place in a long while. Maybe I was the only person ever.
