make yet.”
Relief washes over Everett. Already the woman’s presence and the gentler reverberations of her voice have calmed the baby, who is driving her nose into the woman’s chest and rubbing her eyes with the backs of her wrists.
“See how she root,” the woman says. “Is just tired and hungry.” It shames him to watch, so Everett drops his eyes. The woman follows his gaze down to his naked foot, black with soil, then invites him inside.
Her house is light-filled, well ordered, the airy kitchen’s bead-board walls recently whitewashed. A wooden crucifix stands sentinel over a sturdy maple table. She sets a copper kettle on the cookplate and carries the child to the icebox. She takes out a pitcher of buttermilk and pours some into a small jug, but when she tries to feed the baby, it gets a defiant look and screams some more and won’t suckle at the spout.
“She likes goat’s milk?” Everett offers. “She only had it the once, but she was pleased by it. You keep any goats here?”
The woman nods, fetches a bottle of goat’s milk, and refills the jug, which the child soon slurps at greedily.
When the kettle boils, the woman sets a galvanized tub on the table and adds the hot water. She peels away the jute sacking to reveal the baby has fouled itself, except the woman seems unbothered.
“This why she cry,” she says, pointing to the red welts in the seams where her legs attach to her impossibly tiny body. In the tub, the woman buoys the child with one hand and scrubs with the other. Afterwards, she applies yellow suet between the baby’s legs. “Should keep the rash down,” she says. Then she swaddles her in a dishtowel, carries her into the adjacent bedroom, and shuts the door.
Alone in the kitchen, Everett examines the entranceway and finds no little shoes, just two pairs of shiny black loafers—one man’s and one woman’s—probably only worn to church. The woman is near Everett’s age. There’d be a child by now if there could be.
After some minutes, the woman tiptoes from the bedroom, latching the door softly behind her while putting a single finger to her lips. She prepares him a cottage cheese sandwich and a glass of milk. The bread is seeded and soft, the curds salty and rich. Everett eats in silence and has to restrain himself from dispatching the sandwich in a single bite. Soon there’s clomping on the porch and a man enters, wiping his hands with an oilcloth. He’s tanned, with thick eyebrows and a lethal-looking nose, and wears the same overalls as the farmer who’d shooed Everett away. The couple speak to each other in low voices, the woman pointing with unmasked glee to the next room as the man nods seriously, with neither displeasure nor excitement.
The man shakes Everett’s hand and joins him at the table. He pinches his nose between finger and thumb and offers a lengthy grace before eating in silence, occasionally refilling his and Everett’s glasses with milk.
“I appreciate the meal, sir,” Everett says afterwards. “I’m eager to work if you have anything that needs doing.”
The woman translates and the man returns from the cellar with a pair of old toe-capped boots. Everett pushes his filthy feet inside, which knock around a little, but they’ll do, and the two spend the afternoon slopping hogs and shovelling out stalls. With good food in him the work passes easily. The farm boasts thirty head of dairy cattle, goats, hogs, mules, a coop of chickens. Everett spots some sugar maples edging the pasture, over-tapped for their size, the collection buckets all hung too high, yet he holds his tongue regarding the error for fear of appearing ungrateful.
At day’s end they find the woman in the porch swing, its brass chains creaking in time with the French tune she trills for the baby, which is wrapped in her lap, clutching a sock critter the woman must have stitched, and suckling from a bottle with a red rubber nipple. “From the neighbours,” the woman says of the bottle. The men remove their sweat-stained hats and sit listening to her sing, as the maddening aroma of home cooking seeps through the window. After a while they retire inside and hitch their clothes over the stove to dry. Everett accepts the clean trousers and shirt the man offers, and it’s while he’s changing out on the covered porch that he notices it. Mounted low, beneath their coats. A single wooden peg.