Chapter 15: Thirty-Four Names

Tobias carved the names the next morning, and he did it with his own hands.

He came out of the clinic with his leg wrapped and a wood chisel in his fist.

He walked up to the doorposts of the great hall, the two thick cedar posts that held up the porch roof, and set the blade to the grain.

I stood in the yard with Bryn and Odessa and watched him not know where to begin.

"He doesn't have the names," I said.

"He has the number," Odessa said. "That's why he's stuck."

I went up the steps, and I did not touch him.

"Start with this one," I said.

I told him the first name, and I spelled it for him.

He cut the first stroke, deep and square, and the shavings fell on his boots.

Marian.

Then Dale, then Ruth, then Wes.

It took him a long time, because his hands were not steady, and a chisel does not forgive.

When he came to the last of mine, I said, "And Biscuit."

"He was a dog."

"He was my brother's," I said. "Cut it."

He cut it.

By the time the sun cleared the roof, a crowd had gathered at the foot of the steps, without a word from anyone.

The old man from the east fence was among them.

He had walked in through the open gate with a hand over his mouth, and the gate guard had not stopped him.

He did not speak to the Alpha.

He spoke to the wood.

"The baker," he said, and he stopped, and he said the baker's full name, slowly.

I am not going to write all of them here.

They were names the whole valley had known, and the old man gave them one by one.

A schoolteacher, two brothers who shared a house, a woman who raised goats, a man who whistled while he walked.

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