Chapter 4: The Board

Petroc was gone before I woke, and the snow outside the window was already to the porch rail.

He had left a note on the table in square block capitals.

PLOWING. BACK AT NOON. THE DRY WANTS YOU BY NINE.

Under it, in smaller letters, he had written: EAT.

There was a cold pasty on a plate and a thermos of coffee, and I ate every crumb standing at the sink.

The lamp still burned in the window.

I looked at it for a while, and then I put on my coat.

The Dry was warm and loud when I walked in.

Solange had both of the big iron stoves going and a pot of something on each one.

She wiped her hands on her apron and looked me up and down.

"You're thin," she said. "You'll eat at my table every day, and you won't argue."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Solange."

She took me by the elbow to the Board.

Up close, the wall was larger than it had looked the night before.

Two hundred and ten hooks hung in rows, each with a brass check on it.

Every check was stamped with its number and rubbed bright by years of thumbs.

Under the Board stood the Box, a squat iron locker with a padlock.

Solange saw me looking.

"Thirty-one in there," she said. "I polish them every Sunday. He's never told me to stop."

She took a blank brass tag from her apron pocket and set it on the bench with a steel number punch.

"Two forty-two," she said. "The next hook on the last row."

I held the tag still, and she struck the punch with a hammer, once for each digit.

The metal was cold in my palm.

She hung it on the hook herself.

It swung once and settled.

I stood looking at it, a small bright thing between a Cornish miner's grandson and a French-Canadian timber cruiser.

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