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At <strong>this</strong> Tim’s heart opened a little to the big, slump-shouldered man with the reins in his hands—in spite of himself, really—but be<strong>for</strong>e the feeling<br />
had any chance to grow, Big Kells spoke again.<br />
“Ye’ve had enough of books and numbers and that weirdy Smack woman. She with her veils and shakes—how she manages to wipe her arse<br />
after she shits is more than I’ll ever know.”<br />
Tim’s heart seemed to clap shut in his chest. He loved learning things, and he loved the Widow Smack—veil, shakes, and all. It dismayed him to<br />
hear her spoken of with such crude cruelty. “What would I do, then? Go into the woods with <strong>you</strong>?” He could see himself on Da’s wagon, behind Misty<br />
and Bitsy. That would not be so bad. No, not so bad at all.<br />
Kells barked a laugh. “You? In the woods? And not yet twelve?”<br />
“I’ll be twelve next m—”<br />
“You won’t be big enough to lumber on the Ironwood Trail at twice that age, <strong>for</strong>’ee take after yer ma’s side of things, and will be Sma’ Ross all yer<br />
life.” That bark of laughter again. Tim felt his face grow hot at the sound of it. “No, lad, I’ve spoke a place <strong>for</strong>’ee at the sawmill. You ain’t too sma’ to<br />
stack boards. Ye’ll start after harvest’s done, and be<strong>for</strong>e first snow.”<br />
“What does Mama say?” Tim tried to keep the dismay out of his voice and failed.<br />
“She don’t get aye, no, or maybe in the matter. I’m her husband, and that makes me the one to decide.” He snapped the reins across the backs<br />
of the plodding mules. “Hup!”<br />
Tim went down to Tree Sawmill three days later, with one of the Destry boys—Straw Willem, so called <strong>for</strong> his nearly colorless hair. Both<br />
were hired on to stack, but they would not be needed <strong>for</strong> yet awhile, and only part-time, at least to begin with. Tim had brought his father’s mules,<br />
which needed the exercise, and the boys rode back side by side.<br />
“Thought <strong>you</strong> said <strong>you</strong>r new step-poppa didn’t drink,” Willem said, as they passed Gitty’s—which at midday was shuttered tight, its barrelhouse<br />
piano silent.<br />
“He doesn’t,” Tim said, but he remembered the wedding reception.<br />
“Do <strong>you</strong> say so? I guess the fella my big brother seed rollin out of yonder redeye last night must’ve been some other orphing-boy’s steppa,<br />
because Randy said he was as sloshed as a shindybug and heavin up over the hitchin-rail.” Having said <strong>this</strong>, Willem snapped his suspenders, as<br />
he always did when he felt he’d gotten off a good one.<br />
Should have let <strong>you</strong> walk back to town, <strong>you</strong> stupid git, Tim thought.<br />
That night, his mother woke him again. Tim sat bolt upright in bed and swung his feet out onto the floor, then froze. Kells’s voice was soft, but the<br />
wall between the two rooms was thin.<br />
“Shut it, woman. If <strong>you</strong> wake the boy and get him in here, I’ll give <strong>you</strong> double.”<br />
Her crying ceased.<br />
“It was a slip, is all—a mistake. I went in with Mellon just to have a ginger-beer and hear about his new stake, and someone put a glass of<br />
jackaroe in front of me. It was down my throat be<strong>for</strong>e I knew what I was drinking, and then I was off. ’Twon’t happen again. Ye have my word on it.”<br />
Tim lay back down again, hoping that was true.<br />
He looked up at a ceiling he could not see, and listened to an owl, and waited <strong>for</strong> either sleep or the first light of morning. It seemed to him that if<br />
the wrong man stepped into the marriage-loop with a woman, it was a noose instead of a ring. He prayed that wasn’t the case here. He already<br />
knew he couldn’t like his mother’s new husband, let alone love him, but perhaps his mother could do both. Women were different. They had larger<br />
hearts.<br />
Tim was still thinking these long thoughts as dawn tinted the sky and he finally fell asleep. That day there were bruises on both of his mother’s<br />
arms. The bedpost in the room she now shared with Big Kells had grown very lively, it seemed.<br />
Full Earth gave way to Wide Earth, as it always must. Tim and Straw Willem went to work stacking at the sawmill, but only three days a<br />
week. The <strong>for</strong>eman, a decent sai named Rupert Venn, told them they might get more time if that season’s snowfall was light and the winter haul was<br />
good—meaning the ironwood rounds that cutters such as Kells brought back from the <strong>for</strong>est.<br />
Nell’s bruises faded and her smile came back. Tim thought it a more cautious smile than be<strong>for</strong>e, but it was better than no smile at all. Kells<br />
hitched his mules and went down the Ironwood Trail, and although the stakes he and Big Ross had claimed were good ones, he still had no one to<br />
partner him. He consequently brought back less haul, but ironwood was ironwood, and ironwood always sold <strong>for</strong> a good price, one paid in shards of<br />
silver rather than scrip.<br />
Sometimes Tim wondered—usually as he was wheeling boards into one of the sawmill’s long covered sheds—if life might be better were his<br />
new step-poppa to fall afoul a snake or a wervel. Perhaps even a vurt, those nasty flying things sometimes known as bullet-birds. One such had<br />
done <strong>for</strong> Bern Kells’s father, boring a hole right through him with its stony beak.<br />
Tim pushed these thoughts away with horror, amazed to find that some room in his heart—some black room—could hold such things. His father,<br />
Tim was sure, would be ashamed. Perhaps was ashamed, <strong>for</strong> some said that those in the clearing at the end of the path knew all the secrets the<br />
living kept from each other.<br />
At least he no longer smelled graf on his stepfather’s breath, and there were no more stories—from Straw Willem or anyone else—of Big Kells<br />
reeling out of the redeye when Old Gitty shut and locked the doors.<br />
He promised and he’s keeping his promise, Tim thought. And the bedpost has stopped moving around in Mama’s room, because she doesn’t<br />
have those bruises. Life’s begun to come right. That’s the thing to remember.<br />
When he got home from the sawmill on the days he had work, his mother would have supper on the stove. Big Kells would come in later, first<br />
stopping to wash the sawdust from his hands, arms, and neck at the spring between the house and the barn, then gobbling his own supper. He ate<br />
prodigious amounts, calling <strong>for</strong> seconds and thirds that Nell brought promptly. She didn’t speak when she did <strong>this</strong>; if she did, her new husband<br />
would only growl a response. Afterward, he would go into the back hall, sit on his trunk, and smoke.<br />
Sometimes Tim would look up from his slate, where he was working the mathmatica problems the Widow Smack still gave him, and see Kells<br />
staring at him through his pipe-smoke. There was something disconcerting about that gaze, and Tim began to take his slate outside, even though it<br />
was growing chilly in Tree, and dark came earlier each day.<br />
Once his mother came out, sat beside him on the porch step, and put her arm around his shoulders. “You’ll be back to school with sai Smack<br />
next year, Tim. It’s a promise. I’ll bring him round.”<br />
Tim smiled at her and said thankee, but he knew better. Next year he’d still be at the sawmill, only by then he’d be big enough to carry boards as<br />
well as stack them, and there would be less time to do problems, because he’d have work five days a week instead of three. Mayhap even six. The<br />
year after that, he’d be planing as well as carrying, then using the swing-saw like a man. In a few more years he’d be a man, coming home too tired