Then Yours

The rider called the shovels stopped and put the Company's pencil into Delia's hand while it was still wet from the clay.

Cole didn't stop. He stood ankle-deep where the gravel lip was going under and kept throwing.

"Water's at the lip. Stop and it takes the clinic floor by dark. Your list needs that ground dry."

A sheet of warm water slid over the lip as he said it and ran steaming toward the clinic's doorsill. The rider looked at the water, then at Cole, and said the shovels could keep going but the pencil moved now.

Delia stepped up against the horse's neck. The list was pinned to his board, the clinic struck through in Pike's ink. She printed the eleven beds back under it in block letters and her name beside them. The pencil slid in her fingers and the last letter went crooked. She knew whose houses the eleven would push off the bottom. She'd known it before her hand moved.

The rider didn't look up. He said the line was written by the one who answered for the beds, and he took no favors from the plank. On the last board Pike heard it. Everybody did.

She shoved the pencil behind her ear, waded to the clay wall and planted the loose shovel beside Cole's.

"Eleven beds, my name. Keep throwing, I'll read you the houses while you dig."

Abel had gone to the horse. "Mister, if I fill by that list and the barrels come in full, does the Row dock me? Say it so Cole hears."

Delia read the orchard houses as they fell off the bottom, one per load. She read the Vance house last. Cole's shovel stopped in the air with its clay still on it.

Then he swung it over. "Last is dry last. Wall first." He moved to the low corner nearest the doorsill and put his back to the plank.

She threw toward the river and kept her eyes on the clay. "Fourth house down is Tolliver. Then the Pruitts. Then Hadley's. Then yours."

The low corner slumped. Steaming water licked the doorsill, and the two of them slapped loads into the gap together.

Abel stood square under the board with the chalk stub up. "Mister, the Row wants a yes or a no on the docking, and Cole's standing right here to hear it."

The rider said, loud enough for the wall, that no driver filling by this list would be docked, and that was the Company's word, and he tapped her crooked letters.

From the plank Pike called that he would put his own name under the clinic's line beside hers, in ink, and held his card out without stepping off. The rider pinned the list flat and asked if Pike meant to answer for the water coming out of that pipe, because that was the only place his name went. Pike lowered the card.

Then he stepped down into the warm water. His cuffs went dark. Behind him the pipe's mouth coughed and threw a fat steaming gush straight at the low corner. Cole drove his blade through it and packed it flat.

"Wall's holding. Doorsill's dry. That's all the water's asking."

Pike waded up and took the pencil from behind Delia's ear without looking at her. "The pipe is mine to answer for, and I will write it beneath her eleven, in my own hand."

Delia didn't watch him. "Your house is a six. Mine is a ten. I wrote it anyway, Cole, so you tell me where to stand."

The rider tilted the board and asked how much that mouth drew. Pike wrote PIPE, S. PIKE ANSWERS and stopped with the point over the blank, the gush steaming at his shins.

"I already chalked her name, mister," Abel said. "Do I get docked, yes or no?"

The rider took the pencil, said no figure meant no line, boxed Pike's words without striking them, and handed the pencil back to Delia. Pike waded back, climbed the plank and set his boot across the mouth. The gush fell to a trickle around his heel.

Cole was still digging. He hadn't said where she should stand.