'Afternoon, sir.'
Mr. Kane produced a hybrid between a hum and a grunt.
'Tell me, sir. Does Mr. Delanny have a slate with you?'
'He does. He settles up monthly.'
'That's good, 'cause I want to put some flour on his account. And some baking powder. Oh, and do you keep honey?'
'No.'
'How about molasses?'
'I have corn syrup.'
'And butter?'
'No one uses butter up here in the summer. Everything comes up from Destiny, and butter would melt on the way.'
'Oh, I see. Well then, I'll just have the flour and the baking powder and the corn syrup.'
Mr. Kane was up a ladder fetching down a quart tin of corn syrup when Ruth Lillian came down from their kitchen. 'I thought I heard voices and-Pa, you know you shouldn't climb ladders! How things going, Matthew?'
'Just fine, thank you, Ruth Lillian.'
'You sleep good last night?'
'Never better. But you know something funny? I think you and Mr. Kane showed up in my dreams.'
'You think? You ain't sure?'
'Not rightly. When I first woke up, the dream was clear as clear, but as soon as I tried to think about it, it started to crumble away, and the harder I tried to remember, the faster it crumbled. Do dreams ever do you that way? But I remember that in my dream Mr. Kane was kind and friendly, telling me interesting things about how to run a store and all. And you were sweet and smiling, and you had your hair up, like it is now.' He chuckled. 'Funny how the good dreams slip away before you can get a grip on them, while bad dreams… hoo-birds! Once they sink their fangs into you, they never let go. Oh, Mr. Kane? Speaking about dreams and sleeping and all, you know those deserted buildings between here and the railroad? Do they belong to somebody? Or could a body just move into one of them?'
'I don't see why not,' Ruth Lillian said. 'That's what Reverend Hibbard did when he came to town. He took over the abandoned railroad depot.'
'Reverend? I haven't met anyone that looked like a- Oh yes! I remember B. J. Stone saying something about a Reverend Somebody-or-other.'
'No, you wouldn't have met him. Sundays he sleeps over up at the Lode. He won't get back until this evening.'
Mr. Kane put the tin of corn syrup, the sack of flour, and the box of Calumet baking powder on the counter. 'The only place fit to live in is the old marshal's office. The roof is still good, and the miners haven't shot out the windows.'
'Which one's the marshal's office?'
'This side of the street, down from the big burned-down building across from the hotel.'
'Well, I'll be darned! That's the very one I sort of picked out for myself when I was out early this morning. It's got an old stove that looks like it might still work. And I saw some sticks of furniture left in some of the other places. Do they belong to anybody?'
'I guess they belong to you, if you want them,' Ruth Lillian said.
'It's going to be fun, making a little nest for myself.'
That thought had occurred to Ruth Lillian at the same instant. Like playing house.
'You know what I'm going to do? Soon as I get my place fixed up, I'm going to ask you two over to dinner to repay your kindness.'
'We'd be honored to come,' the girl said with a firmness that dared her father to say otherwise. 'People in Twenty-Mile never do anything social like having people over to their houses. They're all so… small. I think it's a good thing to invite people to dinner.'
'No, I couldn't, Ruth Lillian. Thanks, but I really couldn't. The only way I could take my meals with you folks would be if you let me pay board money. 'Course, I suppose you could take my meals out of what you pay me for the jobs I do around the place. That way you'd be saving money, and I'd be having the pleasure of your company. But it'd only be two meals a day. Noon and evening. 'Cause I'll be having breakfasts over to the hotel, after I feed those folks.'
Mr. Kane had been blinking, trying to catch up. Now he cleared his throat sharply. 'We're not in the boardinghouse business.'
'Of course you're not, sir. What was I thinking about? There's nothing in the world more natural than a father and daughter wanting to be alone at mealtimes, so's they can talk and such.'
'Shoot!' Ruth Lillian said. 'We eat a whole meal without saying more than 'pass the salt.' '
'But last night we talked and talked and talked.'
'You mean Pa talked and talked and talked.'
'All I know is that it was real interesting and I learned a lot. Well look, I really got to get to getting.' Matthew collected his purchases and went to the door. 'I'll ask Mr. Murphy to pay me for my day's work so's I can drop by this evening and buy vittles for my supper.'
'THAT WAS FINE, SIR. Mighty fine.' Matthew pushed his chair back from the table and pressed his hand to his stomach with mock tenderness, as if too much pressure would make it burst. 'You could of knocked me over with a feather when you said you'd decided to take me on as a boarder. Even if it is for just a few days. To see how things work out.'
'It was more Ruth Lillian's doing than mine,' Mr. Kane said pointedly.
'Well then, let me thank you, too, Ruth Lillian. How come you're so good a cook, Mr. Kane?'
Mr. Kane waved the compliment away. 'I'm not a good cook. I only know how to make four or five things, and we have them one after the other. Nothing fancy.'
'Well, it's fancy enough for this ol' boy, believe you me! Don't you ever give a hand with the cooking, Ruth Lillian?'
'Only when Pa's sick. And he always tries to get well quick, so he won't have to eat my cooking any longer than he has to.'
'I don't believe one word of that,' Matthew said.
'Ah, but it's true,' Mr. Kane affirmed. 'My daughter has never shown any interest in the domestic virtues, other than making herself dresses from pictures in catalogues. She doesn't like to clean up either. But she'd rather clean up than cook, so I do the cooking, and she does the cleaning up.'
This might have been the time to ask about Mrs. Kane, but something warned Matthew to avoid that subject. Instead, he said that it must take buckets of know-how to make a dress from a picture in a catalogue, and Ruth Lillian said it wasn't all that hard, once you got the hang of it, and Matthew said shoot, nothing was hard once you got the hang of it, the hard part was getting the hang of it; then he turned to Mr. Kane and asked how he got started in business, but Mr. Kane shook his head, saying it wasn't all that interesting, but Matthew just sat, smiling, his expression open and eager, until Mr. Kane shrugged and said reluctantly that he had been born in Germany-in the old ghetto section of a city-but the only memories he had of it were smells of rich cooking-oh, and a curiously carved wooden clock that looked like a bird with a multicolored tail that swung back and forth to the rhythm of its ticking. He was five years old the very day their ship arrived at New York Harbor, and he grew up playing on the floor of the two-room basement apartment where his father and mother toiled from early morning until late into the night, doing 'out work' on garments they delivered to the great, barn-like sweatshops of the Lower East Side. His father's most treasured possession was the pair of fine tailor's scissors he had brought from Westphalia-none of this cheap-jack American stuff. You want to do good work? Use good tools. The only time his father ever hit him was when he caught him cutting paper with the precious scissors, and that was only a cuff on the side of his head. His mother never completely got over feeling homesick. She often wondered if they had done the right thing in leaving the safety and comfort of Germany for a chance at success in the New World. She sometimes sighed and envied those who had stayed behind. But, after years of hard work and careful scrimping, they managed to save enough to launch themselves into the business of supplying buttons, thread, and imitation lace to garment-making enterprises owned by immigrants who had arrived a few years before the Kanes.
