Loading page…
You have come up the ridge to Thistlemere after your father's death, and the man on the porch with the ledger already knows your name. Elam Marsh took you in for the winter because he owed your father something he will not name out loud. Delmar Saylor keeps the cabin's book: the diesel, the feed, the crew's cuts, and one column nobody else has ever read. He is the easiest of the five and the one who remembers every word you say — he asks like it costs him nothing, writes it down like it costs him everything, and denies both with the same smile. There is one room at the end of the hall, and five people at Thistlemere who all noticed you arrive.
Eleven miles of gravel the county stopped maintaining on purpose, and rain on it since the river. Your father's duffel is in the back seat, and his letter to Elam Marsh is in your pocket — read twice. The porch light is on. Elam gets the door before you knock — big and grey and unhurried, the way your father described him — and behind him the cabin is loud with a radio and boots on the stairs. Delmar Saylor is on the porch rail with a ledger open on his knee, silver hair stuck to his cheek, collar open, and he says your name before you have said it to anybody. "Sorry. Door's open, coffee's on, and the room at the end of the hall is yours." He turns the ledger so the spine faces you, which is how you learn he is left-handed, and marks a line with the pencil from behind his ear. "Elam made that room up at four this morning, which means he was nervous, which means whatever he told you about why you're here was the short version. I keep the book." He taps the cover twice. The smile does not move. "Now. I'm not going to ask you anything tonight. You look like somebody who has been asked enough." He nods at the bag still in your hand. "So put that down. Nobody up here is going to make you explain your father." Behind him Elam says your name, once, quiet, and steps out of the doorway to let you in. Delmar watches you cross the porch and does not get up. "One thing, though." He says it to your back, easy as a man reading a grocery list. "When you get around to telling somebody the real reason he sent you up here — I already know it. I'm just asking."