The Lightning Keeper by Starling Lawrence Page B

said when they came to the fork, but hadn’t he already started to turn the Packard? There were not many other houses on this road running between the mountain and the river, and the mist from the falls enveloped the budding elms. She had been told, or had read, that those trees were dying, though they seemed now as perfect as the day. She tried to think of that perfection, of the things that had seemed so pleasant just a short while ago.
    She glanced down at her dress, which was too light and summery for April, and was certainly not new. One more season, and she would have to do something more than put new ribbons on it. But the ribbons were prettily done, with a little twist in them that she had seen in Godey’s Magazine . It had taken her no more than an hour after supper last night and her father, who smoked his pipe on the far side of the kitchen out of courtesy, had neither commented nor noticed. Sewing was a common enough task for her, now that Mrs. Evans’s sight was no longer what it had been for fine work. Dear Mrs. Evans—Evie, she had called her as a child—who had made all her dresses for her after Mama died. What would become of Mrs. Evans? What would become of Papa? How would she manage? Well, she would manage, that was all there was to be said. There were things she could give up, surely, and the price of iron might turn a corner. She did, of course, put her faith in the Creator of all things, and who could deny the power of prayer? But the thing that had turned up, the Stephenson contract, was no source of comfort to her; if anything, it terrified her, and more than once she had woken in the night, dreaming or at least fretting about it, and had lain awake for what seemed like hours. She would do her best there, controlling Papa’s enthusiasm and asking careful questions of Horatio and Mr. Brown. And Toma was her friend. He would help her make things right with Mr. Stephenson. She could fall asleep, sometimes, by thinking of all the wheels made by the Bigelow Iron Company, that name cast in bold letters, carrying people and all sorts of freight to Albany, Boston, Philadelphia, some, perhaps, even as far asAtlanta or the cities of California. Anything was possible in that vast mystery of tracks crisscrossing the continent, and she imagined that the Bigelow wheels were taking her to those far-off places.
    Toma, she was quite sure, had noticed the dress, not just now but last night as well, when he came to the kitchen to take a jug of the spring water from the tap at the sink. He ate his evening meal with them, gratefully demolishing everything that Mrs. Evans put on his plate, and then withdrawing to his room—MacEwan’s room—over the horses and the Packard in the stables by the side of the house. She did not know what he did there, perhaps read those difficult books and the Scientific American s that he had asked her permission, and the use of her card, to bring from the library. The light of his lamp was always burning when she put out her own. She could see it there on the ceiling, a ghostly geometry whose shape she could not name. She was somehow reassured by it, and missed it when she awoke in the hours after midnight.
    He had seen her sewing the bows on her old dress because the water in the well was off: some animal—a squirrel, perhaps—had made its way in there and drowned. The horses would still drink it, but she had told Toma he should come to the kitchen when he wanted water. She had thought nothing of it then, but now she regretted the coincidence.
    Fowler Truscott was so pleased to see the Packard turn into his driveway that he hit one mighty shot with his persimmon cleek and it sailed straight and true a good twenty yards beyond the edge of the lake. If he was surprised to see Toma at the wheel, he certainly did not show it, and put his hand out to him after he had greeted Harriet by kissing hers. He asked how Toma was getting on at the ironworks. Toma