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It was clear that the young sisters had very little to give. Few possessions and getting by on the kindness of others and what they could make or bring forth from the hard ground that was left to them.
And yet, they treat this night the meal like a special occasion. Sicilia prepared a thin barley soup with a little meat in it cut in to small cubes and some bread a piece for each of us. There in the center of the table is a dish that holds two candles. One is untouched and the other nearly run out. Only enough to last another hour or less than that.
She scrape a match stick across the box and light the old candle with it that make a small warm sphere that glow around the table and enclose the three of us within it. The space of the room beyond the reach of the candle is fixed to the rest of the world and the night air that follows the sun over the horizon.
With the light fill the sphere come the smell of the charcoal on the wick burning away and melting wax flow on to the dish and into my nostrils and heart fill them with the memory of the last day in the store back in Thomaston. I'd gone to the store to purchase provisions, I said to the young sisters. Preparations for leaving the farm in the spring are only beginning which still seem far off by the cold temperature and the clean air of that day. Leaving the town all together and all things I had come to depend on. To say nothing, because I can’t, of leaving Bethany and James. This will be a hard thing. And the dog too, of course. And the horses. But it is a long way off. It is not to day. These are only plans to be, when on my own again and to enter my desert when the time comes. I have not made a list. Only a general idea and walk all the aisles of the store to look at what there is rather than what I think I need. It is Sunday and the store is empty. Plenty of time.
How I got on before with out as much as a pocket knife, I shake my head. I carried one every day from the old man and up to that day was never with out the knife. The right hand goes automatically to the pocket when I see the new knives for sale and have come so used to mine I only reach for it when I need it. Return it to the pocket and forget it’s even there. It’s there and I know what it can do, how to do, and so move on along the aisle smiling to myself with watery eyes.
The man behind the counter ask if he can help. I know when I see it, I say over the shelves to him, and thank him and there is a small area of books here and near them some candles. White candles at first, or yellowish anyway and take one from the shelf. No, they are like the color of flesh translucent at the edges when you rotate it in the fingers, I tell Agail and take her hand bringing her fingertips to the candle dish. The candle wax is soft like this, I say, and rubs off an oil on the thumb. The same color as the ones on the table and this one from the shelf I bring it to my face and it smells like this room, I tell the sisters.
It meant nothing to me then. Except the smell and the touch of the candle wax returns the feeling of the day in the store exactly. The bright winter day is brought forward. The bracing air of that morning and the smell of the wood floor creaking is wet from the melting snow from my shoes and the tracks of some one else besides the man behind the counter who sweeps our muddy prints out the open door and the smell of the grittiness mix with the clean air.
I’m startled by the old man Kitner. He place his hand on mine and asks, can you get me a candle, he says. And the thin skin of his hand feels like wax. But it is cold, the day is cold and we are, including the man behind the counter, carrying ourselves about as if it is a warmer day than it really is. Kitner waits supporting himself with his two hands on his cane. It is a short cane about half the regular length in front of him and his elbows are straight. I give the candle and old Kitner take it. Who buys one candle, I think.
That is when suddenly the boy is not there. That is the thing about it. For the missing boy is exchanged a sharp pain at the bottom of my stomach, as I have to go badly and ears fill with blood that I have forgotten something very important. A critical thing. I’m certain that the boy is standing behind me and I turn around blushing but he is not there. The numbness that he is there stays all the time I watch the old Kitner shuffle away on his shoes scraping across the wood floor and to the man behind the counter. The scraping cuts my stomach.
Kitner pays at the counter. And the man help Kitner down the steps with his things and onto the road. A truck passes close and fills Kitner’s foot prints with mud churned up. Another customer enters the store and looks at me. The man behind the counter is there and looks at me. I don’t have anything in my hands and wish I had never come to the store. Wish I could leave. Want to leave without a trace of any thing to show I ever come to the farm or to the town and bring trouble with me. I’m sorry Leo and Bethany. But can’t tell them. That would be a trace.
The boy was there, I tell the sisters. But he was not there. That was the thing about it. It felt as if the boy’s head was right beside my head, to the left of mine and he watch me and we watch every thing that happen together. I hold my two hands beside my head as if holding the boys head there on my left shoulder. As if it is right here, I say to Sicilia. And then I take Agail’s hands and hold them in the same shape next to her head, so she would know. As if he is right here, I say to her, and that the boy is not unhappy with me. Agail smiles understanding with watery eyes fixed on the very small candle at the center of the table.
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