Nell tried to lift the stove and left it where it was.
Abram watched her put her hands under the iron stand a second time. He had cleaned the edges. There was nothing to catch a glove or tear a skirt. He had curled the four feet outward, very slightly, so the weight would sit well on uneven ground.
She straightened.
“I asked you for a leg.”
“You’ve got four.”
“The little one that broke.”
“This is better.”
She looked at him. He pointed out the way the feet were spread.
The stove had arrived at his shop on Monday, carried by Nell and the boy from the boardinghouse. It was an oblong box of sheet iron with a removable cast-iron top. The short legs came off. The lengths of stovepipe fitted inside for travelling. Nell had bought it used, and one of the fittings that held a leg had broken. She had shown Abram how it packed.
He had measured the damaged fitting. Then, after she had gone, he had looked at the little legs and decided he could do better.
His stand was handsome. Two low rails crossed beneath the stove. Each end rose in a clean curve to hold it steady. He had put a small leaf at the front, not so large as to be foolish. Now the leaf pointed at Nell’s boot.
“How do I pack it?” she asked.
“You don’t need to. Put it in the wagon as it is.”
“With my trunk, my bedroll, the flour, and everything Mrs. Skeen’s taking?”
He had not thought about Mrs. Skeen. It had been pleasant not to.
Nell set her gloves on his bench. Her hands were broad at the knuckles, red from washing dishes. She was thirty-eight and had cooked for other people since she was fourteen.
“Mrs. Skeen said she’d room for a packed stove,” she said. “Not a whole hearth.”
“I can take you up myself.”
“You have orders.”
“They can wait.”
“They’ve been waiting while you did this.”
At the back of the shop, three wagon irons lay beside a broken gate latch. A farmer had come for the latch twice. Abram had told him good work took time, a statement he generally believed and had not enjoyed making on the second occasion.
Nell put her hand on the little iron leaf. It was cool now. He had finished before dawn.
“It is pretty.”
He wished she had said that first. He wished she had not said it at all.
For six months Nell had brought supper to the shop on Wednesdays. She took it out of the boardinghouse kitchen after the boarders had eaten, carrying two covered plates on a tray. Abram had made a shelf for the tray. The tray fitted between its raised ends.
He washed at the pump before she arrived. He kept a clean shirt on a nail behind the door. On the first warm evening in March she had pulled his chair outside, into the strip of light along the wall, and asked whether he meant to work until they put him underground.
“Somebody’ll need the latch on the box,” he said.
She had laughed. He liked how she laughed with her mouth full, one hand raised too late to conceal it.
Afterward she had kissed him behind the open shop door. He had spent the rest of the night unable to decide where to put his hands.
In April she told him about the new boardinghouse at the iron mine, two days north by wagon. Mrs. Skeen would run it. Nell would have charge of the kitchen, buy her own supplies and keep a share of what remained after expenses. She had written to ask about the work in February.
Before the kiss. Abram had counted that backward more than once.
“There’ll be a stove there,” he had said.
“Yes. This one is mine.”
She wanted to use it on the journey and outside when the kitchen grew too hot. When the job ended, she would have it for wherever she went next.
He had pictured her kitchen as he made the stand: room for a table, a window, a door opening into his yard. He had a room behind the shop that he used for timber and old rims. With the rubbish out, it would have made a tolerable kitchen. He had measured the space behind his shop twice.
Now she lifted the stove off his stand. It came free. That, at least, he had remembered.
“Fix the fitting,” she said. “Keep your stand.”
“The wagon goes tomorrow.”
“I know.”
“It’ll take—”
“How long?”
He looked at the broken piece on his bench. It had not become more difficult since Monday.
“An hour. Perhaps two.”
“Then please do it.”
She put the stove back on the floor and took up her gloves.
“Nell.”
She waited.
“Stay to eat.”
“I have to pack.”
He nodded. She got as far as the door.
“I’ll come at six,” she said. “Have something ready.”
He repaired the fitting. He used the sound one opposite it as his measure, and tried the leg in its place before he finished. All four legs stood level. He took them off, packed them and the stovepipe inside, and put the top on.
The stove was small again.
Then he did the gate latch. The farmer came near closing, looked it over, and said he had begun to think Abram was making him a whole gate. Abram said nothing. He accepted the money and watched the man carry the latch away in one hand.
At six the forge was quiet. Abram had banked the forge and swept the space around the little table. On it he had put bread, a jar of pickled onions, two plates, and a piece of cheese from the store. He had forgotten a knife. When Nell came in, he was examining the cleanest of his files with an expression she misunderstood.
“You can’t cut cheese with that.”
“I know.”
She took a folding knife from her bag. He had seen her use it to cut string, peel an apple and trim a wick. She wiped it, cut the cheese, and gave him the larger piece.
They ate with the door open. A wagon passed, one wheel squeaking. Abram knew whose it was and which wheel. He had told its owner what needed attention. It went on squeaking down the street.
“The stove’s ready,” he said.
“I saw.”
“You can carry it.”
“Yes.”
He had wanted her to test it again. She had tested it while he was fetching the onions. He had missed the moment.
Nell cut another piece of bread.
“Come with me.”
He put his cheese down.
“There’s work up there,” she said. “You’ve said so. They send things all the way here to be mended.”
“They do.”
“We wouldn’t have to marry on the road.”
“Nell.”
“I mean it. You could see the place. Rent a room. Decide.”
He looked into the shop. The bellows hung dark behind the forge. Above the bench, the tongs stood in their rack, each shaped for a particular piece of iron, some made by him, some by the man who had taught him. In the back wall there was a crack he watched after every hard rain. He knew where the afternoon light fell on the anvil and at what time in winter he had to light the lamp.
“My shop is here.”
“I know.”
“I built it.”
“You could build another.”
He turned toward her. She put the bread down.
“That’s what you think about my kitchen,” she said.
“It isn’t yours yet.”
“No. I’ve cooked in enough that never were.”
A fly walked around the lip of the onion jar. Nell put the lid on. Neither of them was eating now.
He had imagined telling her that he needed her. It seemed a poor offer when she had just asked him to come and he had not even needed time to answer.
“I don’t want to go north,” he said.
She nodded. For a while he thought that was all she meant to do.
“I don’t want to keep waiting on Mr. Dace’s boarders.”
“You wouldn’t have to. Here—”
“I’d be keeping house for you.”
“You make that sound—”
“Different from running a kitchen? It is.”
He reached for the bread because his hands wanted work. The loaf had gone hard along the cut edge. He broke a piece from it and put the rest down.
Nell looked at him.
“I would like to have breakfast with you,” she said. “I have thought about that. A whole morning without carrying plates across this road.”
He could not look at her just then.
“But I want the other thing too.”
“So do I.”
She reached across the table. Her hand rested on his, not tightly. He could have turned his palm to hold it. He left it there beneath hers.
Outside, the squeaking wagon returned in the other direction. Its owner had forgotten something at the store. They listened to it coming, passing, going away.
“Stubborn fool,” Abram said.
Nell began to laugh. She tried to stop. He laughed too, though he could not have said which of them she thought he meant.
Mrs. Skeen’s wagon stopped outside at eight the next morning. Nell sat beside her with a hat tied under her chin. In the back were boxes, a rolled mattress, a sack of potatoes, and a chair upside down over everything else.
Abram brought out the packed stove. He handed it to Nell. She took the weight, passed it behind her, and found the place she had left for it.
There was room.
She climbed down to settle the bill.
“The price we said,” he told her.
“And the stand?”
“That wasn’t your order.”
She counted the coins into his hand. He put them in his pocket without looking.
Mrs. Skeen was studying the shop front. She asked whether he had a sound pair of hinges to sell. He said he did. She told him to send them along with the next freight, with a bill. The kitchen’s back door at the mine had been hung badly. People would leave it open rather than fight it, and she meant to keep flies out.
Abram went inside for paper. When he returned, Nell was standing by the wagon with one hand on the wheel.
“You can write to the boardinghouse,” she said. “Mrs. Skeen’s, at the mine. They’ll know.”
He wrote down the name.
“I didn’t mean about the hinges.”
“I know.”
She came close enough to kiss him. This time he knew where to put his hands. He held her by the elbows, then let go when she moved away.
She climbed up. Mrs. Skeen gathered the reins. The wagon went north, the chair legs swaying above the boxes.
Abram stood in the road until a rider asked him to move.
Inside, the unfinished wagon irons waited. He set one across the anvil, then took it off again. There was no fire ready. He had known that before he picked it up.
He sat on the low bench by the open door. Across the street Mr. Dace was carrying two dirty plates back to his kitchen. Abram watched him go inside and let the shop remain quiet.
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