The Receipt on the Feed Store Board

Three widows on Otter Creek Road. Mrs. Hartmann at the far end past the creek, who was eighty-six and had taught fourth grade at the elementary school for thirty-four years. Donna Peterson, whose husband had gone through the ice on a snowmobile when their kids were small. Marlene Olson, who had lost Art to cancer and whose hip was so bad she could not carry more than three sticks at a time.

Every October for as long as we had been married, Jim split their wood first and ours second. He delivered it and stacked it on their porches, and he would not take a dime. He would take a pie, if the pie was already made. That was his whole rule.

I stood there with the water jug, and I counted the daylight.

We had the splitter until dark. Dark was about ten after six. At the rate we were going we would have four cords by then, if nothing broke and neither of us quit. Four cords was not close to my winter.

And I thought: I will pay forty dollars again next Saturday if I have to. But there are three old women down this road who have been looking out their windows since the leaves turned, and not one of them has called me, because how do you call a new widow and ask where your free firewood is.

I came out with the jug.

“Three of these are going down the road,” I said to Cole, over the engine.

He looked at the truck, and at the pile, and at me. He had been on those deliveries since he was big enough to carry kindling. He knew which three.

“Dad’s list,” he said.

“Dad’s list.”

He nodded. He rolled the next round over.

My son had spent most of that year angry at everything that moved. But he split wood that afternoon like a grown man, and when we traded off at four o’clock he said, “I’ve got the lever, Mom, you stack,” because he could see my arms were shaking and he did not want to say that he could see it.

We finished the fourth cord at twenty minutes to six. The clouds had come down low over the pines and the light was going blue. I shut off the Honda, and the quiet came in so fast that both of us just stood there in it.

Four face cords. One in the truck, three on the ground in rows. My hands would not close all the way.

“We have to take it back now,” Cole said.

“We do.”

“That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”

“I know it,” I said. “Hook it up.”

We pulled the splitter back down the road with a cord of oak riding in the bed over it. Dale came out of the shed wiping his hands. He looked at the wood in the truck, and I watched him do the figuring, the way any man up here would.

“Got some done,” he said.

“Four cords.”

“Four.” He looked at Cole, and then back at me. “In an afternoon. The two of you.”

“Thank you for the use of it,” I said.

He unhooked it himself and rolled it back into the shed by the tongue. From the door he said, “Same time next week, if you want it.”

“I’ll let you know,” I said.

Cole had his hand on the door handle. I put my hand on his arm, and he stayed in the truck.

We went straight on down the road, past our own driveway, across the creek, to the last mailbox.