“What?” she asked uneasily.
He said nothing, but started laughing.
“What’s so blasted funny? You can stop thinking I haven’t been doing
anything all day. It may not look like I got much done, but I had to clean and clay the chimney –”
“Look like you been clayin’ somethin’ all right and usin’ your face and hair to
do it. You best not be findin’ your mirror today.” He reached out and extracted a
strand of slimy plant matter from her hair.
She wiped her hands over her cheeks and they came away black. “Oh Lord.
How I must look.”
“Little color in your face do you good.” He was still shaking his head and grinning when he turned to stick his head into the cabin. “See you got a fire lit. I
carry them sacks of food inside for you.”
Olivia added a few spoonfuls of salt to the rice before going to the river to clean up. She was squatting on her heels, splashing water on herself, when she
looked up and saw a graceful white swan drifting toward her. The lovely creature
seemed to be fascinated by Olivia and turned its head as it floated past. Olivia stared until it was out of sight. What a beautiful sign. Another good omen.
She rose and filled the buckets she had brought. When she started back up the
hill she saw Mourning, still shirtless, making smooth strokes with the scythe, clearing the weeds in the front yard. She stopped and stared. Those Italian
sculptors would have loved his body. Slim, but every muscle and tendon defined.
For a moment she tried to imagine him white.
Then she sighed and set her mind back on all the tasks she had yet to perform
that day. She strained the water into the barrel and went inside to check on the
rice, slice bread, and put the cheese and jam on a plate. When she looked out the
door, Mourning was lying on a sheet of canvas he had spread in the little clearing
he had made, hands behind his head and still shirtless. She walked over to him
with the plate of cold food.
“The rice will be done in a while,” she said, setting the plate next to him on
the canvas.
“Look at you,” Mourning said, shielding his eyes with one hand as he grinned
up at her. “Ain’t here but a few hours and already got a meal cookin’.”
“Some meal. It’s just plain rice,” she said, but took a great deal of pleasure in
his praise. She was smiling when she turned to check the bubbling pot again.
“That sun feel good,” he said, rising up on his elbows when she returned with
a plate of rice for each of them. “After we done eatin’ we gotta finish emptyin’
the wagon, so I can go get the trees what I cut. I found some logs too. Faces nice
and smooth, like they been cut with a two-man saw. Big ’nuff around to make nice chairs.”
He held the edge of the plate to his mouth and used his knife to scrape the rice in. “Mmm,” he said. “You gonna win first prize in the rice-cooking contest.”
“I’m sorry I was so ... you know ... when we arrived,” she said. “But I’m feeling better now. I’ll get used to things here. I can see that it’s not so bad.”
“Ain’t bad at all. It be real good, Livia. Look how wide and deep that river be.
It ain’t gonna dry up in the summer. You got your cabin up on a nice slope, so
you ain’t gonna get flooded and not too much snow gonna pile up on you. But it
ain’t so steep you think you gonna die walkin’ up it. Them things more important
