He didn’t. He looked at the bell. Ainsley said was it a real dinner bell. I said it was, and would she like to ring it, because it was twenty-eight minutes past four, and I would be hanged before I would ring that bell myself that afternoon, with all of them standing there. I put the rope in her hands and put my hand over hers. She rang it three times. It went out over the pasture and the cows put their heads up, and I will tell you I have never in my life heard it so clearly. It sounded like a thing being let out.
And Winifred put her hand on the rope.
Her hand came down on the rope on top of mine. It was a small strong hand with a ring still on it, and it was warm. I did not look at it. I looked straight ahead at the bell, and I thought, God forgive me, Duane, I have loved this woman for some while, and I did not mean to.
Garth let out his breath. It was a long one. He stepped up to the gate and he lifted the chain, and he swung it wide, and he took off his cap.
Get a new story in your inbox every morning.
Facebook doesn’t show you every story we post. Our free newsletter does. Join 2,500+ readers.
His mother took my arm.
“Latch it behind us, Garth,” she said. “Your father built a good fence, and I mean to keep it good.”
Chili
The chili was not good. I had told her it would not be. It was too much cumin and I had let the beans go soft, and Winifred ate two bowls and said it needed salt and a few more hours, and she was right on both counts.
Garth did not come to supper. I had not expected it. He latched the gate behind us, as he was told, and he stood there on the pasture side in his cap for a time while his mother and I walked across my meadow toward my house. At the corner of the barn I looked back. He was holding his daughter by the hand, and he had one hand up in the air, not quite a wave. He said something to her. I think it was, “Sunday.” The girl said something back and he laughed.
We sat at my kitchen table, the two of us, under the kitchen light I had left on, at five in the evening in November, with the sun getting low over the woodlot and the chili going cold. I had planned what I was going to say for four days and I did not say any of it. I put down my spoon.
I said, “Winnie, I am going to tell you about my heart.”
She laid her spoon on the rim of the bowl very carefully, the way a person sets down a thing they do not want to break.
I told her about the shortness of breath, and the Evansville cardiologist, and the picture on the pad of paper. I told her about the valve, and about the year or two, and the ten. I told her the surgery was on the third of December. I told her about the wrench, and why it was in my hand, and what I had decided on the sixth of October on an overturned bucket in my shed. I told her about the thousand marks on the pump house door. I did not leave one thing out.