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seemed to do it without knowing they were doing it, the way a seasoned woodsman would detour around a poisonthorn bush, even if he only saw it<br />
from the corner of his eye.<br />
Maybe I’m only making that up, he thought.<br />
“I don’t know,” he said again. “A rope that’s slipped in church can’t be unslipped.”<br />
Nell laughed nervously. “Where in Full Earth did thee hear that?”<br />
“From <strong>you</strong>,” Tim said.<br />
She smiled. “Yar, p’raps thee did, <strong>for</strong> my mouth’s hung in the middle and runs at both ends. We’ll sleep on it, and see clearer in the morning.”<br />
But neither of them slept much. Tim lay wondering what it would be like to have Big Kells as a steppa. Would he be good to them? Would he take<br />
Tim into the <strong>for</strong>est with him to begin learning the woodsman’s life? That would be fine, he thought, but would his mother want him going into the line<br />
of work that had killed her husband? Or would she want him to stay south of the Endless Forest? To be a farmer?<br />
I like Destry well enough, he thought, but I’d never in life be a farmer. Not with the Endless Forest so close, and so much of the world to see.<br />
Nell lay a wall away, with her own uncom<strong>for</strong>table thoughts. Mostly she wondered what their lives would be like if she refused Kells’s offer and they<br />
were turned out on the land, away from the only place they’d ever known. What their lives would be like if the Barony Covenanter rode up on his tall<br />
black horse and they had nothing to give him.<br />
The next day was even hotter, but Big Kells came wearing the same broadcloth coat. His face was red and shining. Nell told herself she<br />
didn’t smell graf on his breath, and if she did, what of it? ’Twas only hard cider, and any man might take a drink or two be<strong>for</strong>e going to hear a<br />
woman’s decision. Besides, her mind was made up. Or almost.<br />
Be<strong>for</strong>e he could ask his question, she spoke boldly. As boldly as she was able, anyhap. “My boy reminds me that a rope slipped in church can’t<br />
be unslipped.”<br />
Big Kells frowned, although whether it was the mention of the boy or the marriage-loop that fashed him, she could not tell. “Aye, and what of that?”<br />
“Only will <strong>you</strong> be good to Tim and me?”<br />
“Aye, good as I can be.” His frown deepened. She couldn’t tell if it was anger or puzzlement. She hoped <strong>for</strong> puzzlement. Men who could cut and<br />
chop and dare beasts in the deep wood often found themselves lost in affairs like <strong>this</strong>, she knew, and at the thought of Big Kells lost, her heart<br />
opened to him.<br />
“Set <strong>you</strong>r word on it?” she asked.<br />
The frown eased. White flashed in his neatly trimmed black beard as he smiled. “Aye, by watch and by warrant.”<br />
“Then I say yes.”<br />
And so they were wed. That is where many stories end; it’s where <strong>this</strong> one—sad to say—really begins.<br />
There was graf at the wedding reception, and <strong>for</strong> a man who no longer drank spirits, Big Kells tossed a goodly amount down his gullet. Tim<br />
viewed <strong>this</strong> with unease, but his mother appeared not to notice. Another thing that made Tim uneasy was how few of the other woodsmen showed<br />
up, although it was Ethday. If he had been a girl instead of a boy, he might have noticed something else. Several of the women whom Nell counted<br />
among her friends were looking at her with expressions of guarded pity.<br />
That night, long after midnight, he was awakened by a thump and a cry that might have been part of a dream, but it seemed to come through the<br />
wall from the room his mother now shared (true, but not yet possible to believe) with Big Kells. Tim lay listening, and had almost dropped off to<br />
sleep again when he heard quiet weeping. This was followed by the voice of his new steppa, low and gruff: “Shut it, can’t <strong>you</strong>? You ain’t a bit hurt,<br />
there’s no blood, and I have to be up with the birdies.”<br />
The sounds of crying stopped. Tim listened, but there was no more talk. Shortly after Big Kells’s snores began, he fell asleep. The next morning,<br />
while she was at the stove frying eggs, Tim saw a bruise on his mother’s arm above the inside of her elbow.<br />
“It’s nothing,” Nell said when she saw him looking. “I had to get up in the night to do the necessary, and bumped it on the bedpost. I’ll have to get<br />
used to finding my way in the dark again, now that I’m not alone.”<br />
Tim thought, Yar—that’s what I’m afraid of.<br />
When the second Ethday of his married life came round, Big Kells took Tim with him to the house that now belonged to Baldy Anderson,<br />
Tree’s other big farmer. They went in Kells’s wood-wagon. The mules stepped lightly with no rounds or strakes of ironwood to haul; today there<br />
were only a few little piles of sawdust in the back of the wagon. And that lingering sweet-sour smell, of course, the smell of the deep woods. Kells’s<br />
old place looked sad and abandoned with its shutters closed and the tall, unscythed grass growing up to the splintery porch slats.<br />
“Once I get my gunna out’n it, let Baldy take it all <strong>for</strong> kindling, do it please ’im,” Kells grunted. “Fine wi’ me.”<br />
As it turned out, there were only two things he wanted from the house—a dirty old footrest and a large leather trunk with straps and a brass lock.<br />
This was in the bedroom, and Kells stroked it as if it were a pet. “Can’t leave <strong>this</strong>,” he said. “Never <strong>this</strong>. ’Twas my father’s.”<br />
Tim helped him get it outside, but Kells had to do most of the work. The trunk was very heavy. When it was in the wagonbed, Big Kells leaned<br />
over with his hands on the knees of his newly (and neatly) mended trousers. At last, when the purple patches began to fade from his cheeks, he<br />
stroked the trunk again, and with a gentleness Tim had as yet not seen applied to his mother. “All I own stowed in one trunk. As <strong>for</strong> the house, did<br />
Baldy pay the price I should have had?” He looked at Tim challengingly, as if expecting an argument on <strong>this</strong> subject.<br />
“I don’t know,” Tim said cautiously. “Folk say sai Anderson’s close.”<br />
Kells laughed harshly. “Close? Close? Tight as a virgin’s cootchie is what he is. Nar, nar, I got crumbs instead of a slice, <strong>for</strong> he knew I couldn’t<br />
af<strong>for</strong>d to wait. Help me tie up <strong>this</strong> tailboard, boy, and be not sluggardly.”<br />
Tim was not sluggardly. He had his side of the tailboard roped tight be<strong>for</strong>e Kells had finished tying his in a sloppy ollie-knot that would have made<br />
his father laugh. When he was finally done, Big Kells gave his trunk another of those queerly affectionate caresses.<br />
“All in here now, all I have. Baldy knew I had to have silver be<strong>for</strong>e Wide Earth, didn’t he? Old You Know Who is coming, and he’ll have his hand<br />
out.” He spat between his old scuffed boots. “This is all <strong>you</strong>r ma’s fault.”<br />
“Ma’s fault? Why? Didn’t <strong>you</strong> want to marry her?”<br />
“Watch <strong>you</strong>r mouth, boy.” Kells looked down, seemed surprised to see a fist where his hand had been, and opened his fingers. “You’re too <strong>you</strong>ng<br />
to understand. When <strong>you</strong>’re older, <strong>you</strong>’ll find out how women can get the good of a man. Let’s go on back.”<br />
Halfway to the driving seat, he stopped and looked across the stowed trunk at the boy. “I love yer ma, and that’s enough <strong>for</strong> <strong>you</strong> to be going on<br />
with.”<br />
And as the mules trotted up the village high street, Big Kells sighed and added, “I loved yer da’, too, and how I miss ’im. ’Tain’t the same wi’out<br />
him beside me in the woods, or seein Misty and Bitsy up the trail ahead of me.”