Chapter 8: What He Said to the Stone

The owner rented Anton the room over the store for forty dollars a week, and made him stack sacks to pay it.

By Monday evening he had stacked a ton of feed without complaint.

The owner told me he was the first man in the county who hadn't tried to talk her down on the rent.

At sundown I walked out along the tracks to the fence by the water tank, and he was already there.

He had taken off his hat and was holding it on his knee.

He stayed on his side of the fence rail, a good four feet away.

The sky had gone orange and green over the Glass Mountains.

I sat down on the rail and put my hands on my stomach.

"I was at the cemetery," I said.

Anton went very still.

"All Souls," I said. "I lay in the cedars. I was ten yards from you."

"You heard," he said.

"All of it."

He turned his hat in his fingers one full time and set it down on the rail.

I watched his throat move, and told myself he was sick from the drive.

"Then you've heard me say it wrong," he said.

"I heard you say it to a pecan board," I said.

"Yes."

"A board can't say no. That's a safe place to say a thing."

"I know that," he said.

"You said my name once in that hall," I said.

My voice had gone low and rough, and I let it.

"Two hundred people watched me stand there, and you looked at a plate of bread."

"I asked for one word, Anton, and you gave me my own name back."

"I know," he said.

"Why?"

It was the first question, and I asked it under the third term.

He took a long time.

He looked down at his own hands, and then at mine, and then out across the flat to the dark mountains.

"I waited," he said. "I stood there and waited for something in me to tell me not to let you go."

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