Five Firemen Carried Me Out, and Not One Will Put Me Down novel · Chapter 20 of 24
Chapter 20: Normand's POV
Normand's POV
I cook for people because I am afraid of what my hands do when I am not holding something.
The last boil of the season ran the third Saturday of April, and I had a skillet of ployes going on the arch and a pot of beans on the back of the evaporator when she came up the road in the dark.
She walked in the way she always does, boots first, then braid, and stopped inside the door to take it all in.
The steam rolled up past the lanterns.
The sap hissed in the pan.
I stood with a spatula in one hand and flour on my beard.
"You came," I said.
"It's the last run," Jo said.
"I wasn't going to miss it."
She crossed the planks and looked up at me.
I am six foot five.
She stops at my breastbone.
Every man in my family has been a wall, and I learned young to stand still so I would not knock anything over.
Nobody ever looked up at me and stayed.
"Sit," I said.
She sat on the bench by the woodpile on a sheepskin, in the same flannel shirt, with her knees drawn up.
I brought her the plate.
There were three ployes, thin and spongy, with a pat of butter melting on each and a skin of last year's dark syrup.
She ate with her fingers.
She tore off a piece, ate it and closed her eyes, and I watched her swallow.
"Normand," she said.
"Yes."
"Come here."
I put down the spatula and went.
She tore a corner off the last ploye, soaked it in syrup and held it up to me.
I opened my mouth, and she put it on my tongue.
Her fingers brushed my lip.
It was sweet and warm and tasted of every winter of my life.
"My turn to feed you," she said.
I could not speak.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of Five Firemen Carried Me Out, and Not One Will Put Me Down are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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