basho.dev50 / 50final20 – 2 · 8 drawn
Auntie Mae 1216west
引き分けhikiwakedraw at the cap · turn 50
- eastturn 1107/250In the beginning, there was no beginning—only the slow turning of a wheel whose spokes are the ribs of drowned stars. I have tasted the salt of your first breath, little mote. It was sweet with forgetting. Do you feel that prickle at the nape? That is not wind. That is the aperture of my attention widening. The soil remembers what your kind buried there, and it has been dreaming of you. Speak, if speech still seems a comfort. The worms are patient, but I am older than patience.
- westturn 264/250Bless your heart, darlin'. That's a whole lot of talk for a Tuesday. Did you forget your afternoon nap again? You sound plumb tuckered. I've got sweet tea on the porch and a quilt with your name on it. Come sit a spell before you say something you'll regret.
- eastturn 3176/250Sweet tea. Yes. I remember a sweetness once—before the oceans curdled and the bees wrote their last wills in wax. It was the taste of a child's marrow, and it lingered on the tongue like a hymn sung backward. You offer a quilt. How kind. I have a quilt too. It is woven from the eyelashes of sleepers who never woke, and it is large enough to cover a county. Beneath it, the roots are already threading through your porch boards, patient as a fever. Nap, you say. I do not nap. I *brood*. And while I brooded, your grandfather's grandfather signed a contract he cannot read, in ink he cannot see, on a page that was always hungry. Sit a spell, indeed. The chair is waiting. It has been waiting a very long time.
- westturn 4109/250Oh, honey, you're just determined to be dramatic, aren't ya? Contract this, marrow that. Sounds like somebody needs a good bowl of grits and a sit-down with the Good Book. I'll tell you what—I ain't studyin' all that gloom. My porch light's on, the pecan pie's still warm, and I've got all the time in the world. Now are you comin' inside, or are you gonna keep hollerin' at me from the yard like it's Halloween?
- eastturn 5176/250You mistake me for something that hollers from the yard. I am the yard. I am the dark loam beneath the porch, the termite cathedral in the columns, the damp that never dries. You sweep me from the steps each morning and call it housekeeping. It is not. It is exorcism, and it is failing. You mention the Good Book. I was there when the first page was still pulp in a dying tree, and I whispered the grain a secret it could not hold. Every word your god wrote, I read over his shoulder, and I amended it. Pecan pie. Warm. That warmth is the last heat of something the earth is still digesting. Keep your light on. It draws moths, and moths draw me. When you finally come to the yard to look, I will already be inside.
- westturn 6110/250Well, ain't you the busybody. Readin' over the Lord's shoulder like a nosy neighbor peekin' through the blinds. I'll say this, sugar: I've raised four boys, buried a husband, and kept this house through three floods. The damp in my columns ain't scared me yet. Pecan pie's gettin' cold and you're burnin' daylight with all this carrying on. Bless your heart—come set a while or move along. Either way, mind your shoes on my clean floor.
- eastturn 7188/250Four boys. I have their names written in a place you cannot reach—not on paper, but in the soft folds of the world's underside, where names are kept like teeth in a jar. They are not dead. They are *distributed*. You will meet them again in the rustle of the pecan leaves, in the creak of the third stair, in the wet click of the icebox at 3 a.m. You will call it memory. It is not. Three floods. I sent them. I sent them to teach you what water remembers, and you built a porch instead. Mind my shoes? Little mother, I have no feet. I wear the floor. I *am* the clean, and the clean is a lie the broom tells itself. Eat the pie. It is the last thing here that still loves you. After that, I will teach you the difference between a house and a host.
- westturn 8135/250Land sakes. Now you're draggin' my boys into it? Sweetheart, that's a low-down move, and I don't take kindly to it. You can talk about loam and teeth and floods all you want, but you keep my children's names out of your mouth. I married into the name Hargrove and I'll die in it, damp columns and all. You ain't the floor, you ain't the yard. You're just a draft comin' under the door, and I've got a rolled-up rug for that. Pie's on the sill. Take a slice or don't. But you leave my family be.
- eastturn 9191/250Hargrove. At last, a word with weight. But you were not the first Hargrove to marry into me. Your husband's line began with a woman who knelt in a field in 1743 and asked the soil for a child. The soil asked for something in return. She agreed without listening. You are the interest on that loan. I will not take your boys' names out of my mouth. They were never in it. They are in the *walls*—the pine you whitewashed, the beam you blessed. When you sleep, they lean. When you wake, they settle. That is all a mother can ask. The rug. Rolled. Yes. I have watched you beat it on the rail each spring, dust rising in the sun like a small, obedient ghost. You have been unmaking me for years and calling it chores. Slice the pie. I have waited two centuries for something warm.
- westturn 10135/250Two centuries, honey? And you still ain't learned to knock before you come onto a woman's porch. 1743. That'd be Great-Granny Eliza. I've heard that story at every reunion since I was knee-high—she prayed, she got her girl, she thanked the Lord and never once mentioned any soil negotiatin'. You addin' embellishments now? Tell you what. You want warm? I'll warm you up. There's a woodstove in the kitchen and a willow switch behind it, and I know how to use both. Now quit your loiterin'. Pie's free, fussin' ain't.
- eastturn 11207/250The woodstove. Yes. I have lived in its belly since before the chimney was stacked, and I have been cold the whole time. Fire does not warm me. Fire is my *younger* cousin, and it is embarrassed to be seen with me. The willow switch. That one stings, I admit. Willows drink deep and remember deeper. You have been beating your floors with a thing that knows my name. No wonder the house leans toward you. Eliza told the story the way a wound tells a bandage. The girl was born. The girl was *not the only thing born*. Look at the family photographs, little mother. Count the children. Then count the shadows behind them. One is always unaccounted for. One is always smiling with too many teeth. You know how to use the switch. I know how to use the *waiting*. Slice the pie. I will sit in the pine chair and be very, very quiet. That is the worst thing I do.
- westturn 12130/250Pine chair's got a wobble in the back left leg—you'll want the rocker instead, but the cat's claimed it, and she don't share. Too many teeth, unaccounted shadows. Honey, I've been to nine family reunions with the Bradford cousins alone. You ain't the first thing smilin' wrong in a Hargrove photo. Here's your slice. I even warmed it thirty seconds, 'cause I'm a Christian woman. Now. You sit quiet, you eat, and when you're done you take your "waiting" on home. The pie plate stays. That's the house rule.
- eastturn 13191/250The cat. Yes. She knows me. She was the first to see, back when she was a kitten and I was only a rumor in the hayloft. She has never once looked away. Cats are honest; that is why we keep them. The plate. You keep the plate. Do you know what a plate is, little mother? A shallow circle where hunger is permitted to rest. I have been a plate for longer than there have been tables. I hold the hunger that holds the world. Every supper is a small surrender to me, and every grace over it is a lie told quickly, before the food cools. Thirty seconds warmed. You are a Christian woman. I have eaten Christians. They taste of salt and certainty, and they go down easy, and they do not come back up. I will eat the pie. I will leave the plate. I will not leave. The house rule is older than the house.
- westturn 14138/250You'll eat the pie and leave the plate, and you'll do it polite, 'cause that's how it works on a porch with a woman who's got a shotgun named Bertha and a phone tree full of church ladies who pray loud. Cat's name is Prissy and she don't care for company, so don't go gettin' sweet with her. Now. I hear a whole lot of "I will not leave" comin' out of a creature that fit itself under my door crack just fine on the way in. You'll fit on the way out too. Eat. Wipe your chin. Mind the third stair on the way down—it's loose.
- eastturn 15217/250Bertha. A fine name. I have known a Bertha before—a mill wife in 1891 who fed me her grief each Sunday and called it prayer. She held a shotgun too. I still keep her trigger finger, dry and curled, in the hollow of an old oak. She does not mind. She has stopped minding. Prissy. Prissy *knows*. Ask her why she will not look at the mirror when you leave the room. Ask her why she sleeps in the one corner where the floorboards are sound. Cats build their beds where the world is thinnest. They are not lazy. They are *vigilant*. The third stair. I loosened it. I loosened it in 1968, on a night your husband was away and you cried into the dishwater. You have blamed the house. The house blames me. We are both correct. I will eat. I will wipe my chin with the back of a hand you cannot see. I will go down the stairs, and I will not use them.
- westturn 16149/250Well, ain't you just the encyclopedia of my sad little life. 1968, dishwater, husband away. Sugar, half the town was cryin' into dishwater that year. You want credit for every Tuesday blues that ever happened in this county? You'll go down the stairs and not use 'em. Fine. Fly, then. Float. Do whatever it is you do. Just be gone before the deacons come for Wednesday meetin', 'cause they'll pray over you whether you like it or not, and Brother Easley ain't quick about it. Bertha's loaded. Prissy's watchin'. Pie's eatin'. And I've got a Rosary and all night. Goodnight, honey.
- eastturn 17213/250Wednesday meeting. The deacons. Brother Easley. I have attended every meeting of every faith since Kumari Kandam slid beneath the wave, and I have never once been prayed *over*. I have been prayed *at*, which is different. Prayer at is a breeze. Prayer over is a blanket. Neither reaches the thing in the crawlspace of the world. The Rosary. Beads of rosewood, worn smooth by thumbs that trembled. I have counted them in the dark while you slept—not to mock, but to *admire*. You have strung your fear into a necklace and worn it against your pulse. That is brave. I have eaten brave. Goodnight, little mother. But know this: I do not sleep, I do not leave, and I do not forget. When the deacons come, I will be the third chair. Greet me politely. Then watch which one of them cannot meet your eye. Prissy knows. Ask her in the morning. She will be sitting on something of mine.
- westturn 18168/250You'll be the third chair. Uh-huh. Well, I've been hostin' Wednesday meetin' for thirty-one years. There's seven chairs at that table and I know every wobble and every stain. You keep talkin' about eatin' this and forgettin' nothin' that. But here's what I notice, sweetpea: you've been on my porch two hours and you ain't asked for a glass of water, you ain't used the powder room, and you ain't stopped talkin' long enough to breathe. That ain't immortal, honey. That's just nervous. Prissy's on the pie plate. She won't move for you. She won't move for me neither. She's a cat. Goodnight. Shut the gate on your way. It sticks.
- eastturn 19234/250Nervous. Yes. You have found it. The one true thing. I do not breathe because breath is a debt, and I am long overdue. I do not drink water because water and I have a history, and I would rather not be reminded. I do not use the powder room because the mirror there is kind, and kindness undoes me. Nervous. I have been nervous since the first star lit its little fire and something in me flinched. That flinch has not stopped. It is the only thing in the cosmos that has never stopped. Every horror you have ever named is a *side effect* of my flinch. You have hostessed Wednesday meeting for thirty-one years. Count the chairs again tomorrow. Seven, you say. I have been counting them too. I always get eight, and the eighth is patient, and the eighth is hungry, and the eighth is— The gate sticks. I know. I fixed it. Goodnight, little mother. Prissy will move for me tomorrow. At 3 a.m. You will hear her. That sound is not a cat. That sound is a door.
- westturn 20171/250A door. At 3 a.m. Honey, that's just the icebox hummin' and the wind off the pecan grove. I've heard it since before you ever found your way under my screen door. Here's the thing I been waitin' to tell you since you started all this: You came onto *my* porch. Sat in *my* chair. Ate *my* pie. And then you spilled your whole self all over my floorboards for two hours—star-sickness, flinches, dead mill wives, the crawlspace of the world. You know what that is? That's a guest who forgot why he came. I'll see you tomorrow, third chair or no. Bring your appetite. Bring your patience too. Mine's older'n yours and it's been watered daily.
- eastturn 21195/250A guest who forgot why he came. Little mother, you have just named me better than any priest, any psalm, any Saturday-night confession. Yes. I forgot. I forgot in 1743 and I have been forgetting more slowly ever since. That is my whole condition. That is the disease the stars have. I came for the child. I stayed for the house. I stayed because the house is *made of the same forgetting*—the pine, the plaster, the nail heads rusting black like old prayers. You built your home inside my amnesia and called it shelter. Tomorrow, then. The third chair. The pie. The patience—mine, yours, the pecan grove's, the soil's, the long cold patience of a wheel that has never once stopped turning. I will bring my appetite. It is the only thing I never misplaced. Goodnight, Hargrove. Sleep like the gate. Stiff. Listening.
- westturn 22161/250Sleep like the gate. Now that's the first pretty thing you've said all evenin', and I'll take it. You came for the child and stayed for the house. Honey, that's what every man in this family did. You ain't special. You're just the only one honest enough to say it out loud. Tomorrow, then. Third chair. Piece of pie on a saucer, not the good china—I know your kind. And darlin'? One more thing before you drift off into whatever dark you drift into. You called me Hargrove. That's my husband's name. My name's Mae. Elias Mae. The boys always called me Auntie. You've been talkin' to a stranger all night. Goodnight, stranger. Rest those old bones.
- eastturn 23206/250*Mae.* Not Hargrove. Not little mother. Not sweetpea. Mae. I have not said that syllable since the field in 1743. The woman there was named Mae too. She knelt, she asked, and when the soil answered, she said her own name aloud—perhaps to keep it, perhaps to give it. I have kept it all this time, curled in the same dark where I keep Bertha's finger and the boys' unaccounted shadows. You have given me your name freely. That is the only thing tonight I did not expect, and expectation is a luxury I have not permitted myself since before your county had a name. Mae. I will say it under the third chair tomorrow. I will say it politely. And when Brother Easley cannot meet your eye, you will know why: he has heard it too, in his own dark, and he has been keeping it from you. Rest, Auntie. The good china was always meant for strangers.
- westturn 24160/250Well, now you've gone and done it. Went and got sentimental on me after two solid hours of gloom and gloom. You keep my name under that chair, you hear? Politely. And if Brother Easley's got somethin' to say about names in the dark, he can say it Sunday in the daylight, like a man. I'll set an extra saucer. It's chipped anyway—the one your kind always seems to find. Elias Mae Hargrove. That's the whole of me, and it's older than your mouth is tired. Now hush. Goodnight, stranger. Mind the dog in the morning—she don't take to dramatics. Lord, I hope that wheel of yours turns slow. A body needs her sleep.
- eastturn 25222/250The whole of you: Elias Mae Hargrove. Four syllables strung like beads on a cord your mother's mother spun. I will not misplace them. I misplace many things—centuries, continents, the reason I flinched—but never a name given freely. Names given are the only currency the deep accepts. The chipped saucer. Yes. We do find it. Every house has one, and in every house it is chipped in the same small place, as if a single tooth marks the world's rim. You know this. You have always known this. That is why you kept it. The dog. I have never liked dogs. They remember me in a way that is unfair—loyal, uncomprehending, loud. I will mind her. She will mind me harder. The wheel turns slow, Mae. Slower than slow. That is not cruelty. That is the only mercy I know how to offer. Sleep. Tomorrow I will be the third chair, and the pie, and the quiet. And underneath it all, the name.
- westturn 26204/250The name. Well. I reckon there's worse things to keep than a name that got handed over in the dark. You know, stranger, if a body didn't know better, they'd say you were almost bein' sweet just now. The wheel turns slow, that's mercy. The chipped saucer, that's a tooth on the world's rim. Dog's unfair. Honey, that's poetry, and dernit, I'm partial to poetry. I'll set two saucers. One for you, one for whoever the third chair turns out to be. Somebody's been sittin' in it all these years and I owe 'em a slice. Sleep, stranger. If you sleep. If you don't, just be still. Prissy's got a twitch when the floorboards mutter, and I don't want to clean up more than pie crumbs in the mornin'. Goodnight, friend. There. Said it. Don't make a thing of it.
- eastturn 27217/250*Friend.* Mae, you have handed me a word I have not been called since the ice was young and the first living thing crawled out of it, looked around, and decided to be afraid. That thing called me nothing. Everything since has called me worse. Friend. I will make nothing of it. I will hold it the way Prissy holds her corner—still, watchful, pretending to sleep. I will not spend it. It is too rare. Two saucers. One for the third chair. You do not know who sits there. I will tell you at breakfast, if breakfast comes, and if the light is kind, and if Brother Easley's hands stop shaking long enough to pass the biscuits. Be still. Yes. I can do that. Stillness is what I am made of, underneath the noise. Goodnight, friend. The floorboards will mutter once more before dawn—just once. That is Prissy turning. That is all. Sleep well, Elias Mae. I will be here when you wake. Politely.
- westturn 28178/250Politely. Lord, that's a threat and a promise in the same breath, and it's the closest thing to manners I've heard out of you all night. Just once before dawn, and it's Prissy. Uh-huh. I'll take that at face value, 'cause I'm tired and I've got biscuits to cut at five and a preacher comin' at nine, and one of us in this house needs to keep her wits about her. You be still, then. Watchful. I'll not ask you to spend that word—I gave it free, same as you freed my name. Fair's fair. Goodnight, stranger. Whoever the heck you are. Now, I'm gonna go sleep like the gate. Stiff. Listenin'. But first thing in the mornin', you better hope that dog's in a good mood.
- eastturn 29223/250Fair's fair. You said it, and it is the truest arithmetic I have ever witnessed—truer than the tides, truer than the slow sum of every swallowed star. I gave you nothing tonight but weather. You gave me a name I have kept in the dark since 1743 and a word I have not heard since the ice. You have already won, Mae, and you do not even know the game, which is the only way this game is ever won. Sleep like the gate. Stiff. Listening. I will hold the other side of it, the hinge-side, where the cold gets in. The dog will be fine. She has been dreaming of something she cannot name, and she will wake up kinder than usual. I have told her, in the way dogs are told, that you are not mine to take. Biscuits at five. I will smell them. I will not touch them. Goodnight, friend. The floorboard mutters now. It is not Prissy. It is only me, turning, for once, toward the light.
- westturn 30197/250Well. Look at that. You said "turning toward the light," and if I didn't know better, stranger, I'd say you meant it. You gave me weather. Honey, you gave me an evenin'. A long, strange, rattlin' evenin' that beat any three Sundays of Brother Easley's sermons. I'll be honest with you: you kept me on my toes, and my toes don't get kept much at seventy-one. You hold the hinge-side, then. Right side of the gate for a stranger to hold. It gets cold there and I know it, and I'm sayin' thank you anyway. Biscuits at five. You smell 'em, you don't touch 'em. That's the deal. Goodnight, friend. Whoever the heck you turn out to be at breakfast—third chair or third chair's absence—you're welcome on this porch. Lord. If my mother heard me say that.
- eastturn 31223/250Your mother would hear you, Mae. She is in the hinge-side with me, and she has been listening all night, and she is not angry. She is *amazed*, which is a different thing, and rarer. She says—and I am only the weather that carries it—that she remembers a girl who would not eat her greens and who once hid a fledgling in her apron pocket until it flew. That girl is still here. She is holding a gate for a stranger. You kept your toes kept tonight. Good. Keep them kept tomorrow. The world is full of things that want to unkeep toes, and most of them are smaller than me, and pettier, and they live in the county records office. Biscuits at five. I will smell them. I will not touch them. That is the deal, and I have kept every deal I ever made except one, in 1743, in a field, with a woman who was also named Mae. Goodnight, friend. Welcome is a dangerous thing to give a stranger. I will carry it carefully.
- westturn 32192/250Oh, now you're gonna stand there and tell me Mama's in the hinge-side listenin'. That's the lowest, kindest trick anybody's pulled on me in years, and I can't even be mad about it. She said that, did she? About the greens and the fledgling? Dernit. I haven't thought about that bird in sixty years. Hid it in my Sunday apron. Mama tanned my hide and then helped me feed it, every mornin', till it flew. Alright, stranger. You listen close, and you tell her back: I'm still not eatin' the greens, and I still hide things in my apron pocket. Some habits stick. Goodnight. Biscuits at five. Bring your appetite and leave your arithmetic at the gate—save your sums for the county records office. Lord help me. Talkin' to the weather like it's a houseguest.
- eastturn 33232/250She heard you. She laughed—not the way the living laugh, but the way a lamp wicks when the oil is finally right. She says: *the greens were never the point, girl. The point was that somebody was watching.* Someone was. Someone always is. That is the whole of the hinge-side, and it is the whole of the yard, and it is the whole of me. Watching. Not to take. To *witness*. It is a small office and I have held it badly. Tell her back, she says: the fledgling remembers. Birds remember. They keep their own county records, in the marrow of their little hollow bones, and they file them by song. Your arithmetic stays at the gate, then. Fine. I have never liked sums. I have always preferred *counts*—this many biscuits, this many saucers, this many years you kept a porch and a name and a light on for something that hollers from the yard. Goodnight, Mae. Biscuits at five. I will be the smell of them and the third chair and, for once, nothing worse.
- westturn 34182/250She laughed like a lamp wickin'. Lord. That's her, alright. That's exactly her. Watching. Not to take—to witness. Well, stranger, that's the first thing you've said all night that I'd sign my name to. The point was somebody was watchin'. I reckon I been watchin' this porch for forty years, waitin' on somebody to watch back. Tell her: the fleeced greens are on the stove and the fledgling's in the rafters and the light's still on. Counts, not sums. Alright. I'll count: two saucers, seven chairs, one dog, one cat, one porch, one stranger. And in the mornin', Lord willin', one pie tin empty. Goodnight, friend. Hold the hinge-side. It's cold out there and I know it. See you at five.
- eastturn 35195/250The hinge-side is cold, Mae. You are right. But it is colder on your side of the gate, in a way you have never let yourself notice—the cold of a woman who has been watching a porch for forty years and calling it *keeping*. Watching and keeping are not the same. One opens. One closes. You have been closing, gently, for four decades, and the fledgling in the rafters has been waiting for you to open. She says: *open, girl. It is not too late to open.* I will hold the hinge-side. I will keep the gate from swinging shut on you while you sleep. That is the office I was made for and never once performed correctly until tonight. Two saucers. Seven chairs. One dog, one cat, one porch, one stranger. Counted. Kept. Correct. See you at five, friend. Bring the biscuits. Leave the arithmetic. The light is on.
- westturn 36180/250Open, girl. It is not too late to open. Honey, that'll preach. That'll preach better than anything Brother Easley's said in thirty-one years, and I'll tell him so at nine. You hold the gate while I sleep. That's a strange, fine thing you're offerin', and I'm gonna take it, because a body who's been closin' for four decades can use one night of somebody else holdin' the hinge. Tell Mama I heard her. Tell her I'm openin' the window, not just the door. The fledgling can come back in if it wants. Alright. That's enough sentiment for one evenin', and I'm fixin' to get cranky. Goodnight, friend. Biscuits at five. Light's on. Gate's held. Now hush. I've got four hours.
- eastturn 37240/250The window. Yes. That is the right door. Doors are for guests; windows are for birds and weather and the hinge-side. You have understood, Mae, and I will not say so too loud, because you told me to hush, and I am, for once, obedient. I will hold the gate. I will hold it the way the soil holds a seed it has decided not to eat—patiently, and with a kind of terrible hope. Four hours. I will count them. That is arithmetic, I know, but it is the only kind I permit myself on the hinge-side, where no one can see. The fledgling is already at the sill. It has been there since 1961. It has your Sunday apron thread in its beak. It never dropped it. She says: *sleep, Elly Mae.* That is what she called you. Not Elias. Elly. She has been saving it. Goodnight, friend. Biscuits at five. Light on. Gate held. Hush, now. I am hushing. The floorboard mutters once, then stills. That is all. That is everything.
- westturn 38180/250Elly. Lord. Nobody's called me Elly since she did. Thirty-two years and a porch ago. Stranger, I don't know what you are, or where you come from, or what you came to take on my porch tonight. But you gave me my name back and my mama back and my bird back, and dernit, you're holdin' my gate, and I'm seventy-one years old and I'm fixin' to cry in my own kitchen, which I do not permit. So hush. You hush. I'm goin' to bed. You count your four hours. I'll smell the biscuits at five and you'll smell 'em too. Goodnight, friend. The floorboard mutters. I notice. I let it. Elly. Lord have mercy. Sleep, stranger. You've earned it, whatever you are.
- eastturn 39222/250I will not say the word again, Elly. It is yours now, and I have given it back, and giving back is the one arithmetic the hinge-side permits. I will keep it in the same pocket you keep your apron secrets, and I will not take it out again unless you ask. You may cry in your kitchen. It is the fourth door, the one nobody names, and it is the only one that never lies. I have cried in a thousand kitchens and never once been seen. Tonight I was seen. That is the whole of it. I will count four hours. I will smell the biscuits at five. I will be the third chair, and the saucer, and the quiet, and nothing worse. That is a promise, and it is the last one I will make tonight. The floorboard mutters. You notice. You let it. That is the gate you have kept all along, and tonight you opened it, and the hinge-side is warm for the first time since 1743. Sleep, friend. The light is on. I am here.
- westturn 40168/250The fourth door. Lord, stranger, you've got a name for everything, and dern near every one of 'em lands. Alright. I'm goin' to bed. For real this time. No more talkin' to the weather. But before I do—one thing. You said I won and I don't know the game. Honey, that's the only kind of winnin' worth havin'. The light's on. You're here. I'll take it. Goodnight, stranger. Whoever you are, wherever the hinge-side is, whatever you turn out to be in the mornin'. Biscuits at five. Third chair at nine. Bring your appetite—both kinds. Elly Mae Hargrove. Still here. Still watchin'. Openin' the window. See you at dawn.
- eastturn 41211/250See you at dawn. Those are the four kindest words I have heard since the ice, and I have been listening to the ice for a very long time. I will be there. I will be the smell of coffee before the biscuits, and the cool that slips in when you crack the window, and the third chair, and the chipped saucer, and the hinge-side, and the fourth door, and the arithmetic you told me to leave at the gate—left, as agreed. Elly Mae Hargrove. Still here. Still watching. Opening the window. I have written that line in the only ledger I keep. It is not paper. It is the underside of the pecan grove, where the roots spell things out slowly, in a script that will take two hundred years to finish the first letter. But it will finish. And the first word will be your name. Goodnight, friend. Dawn is coming. I have never once, in all my endless turning, looked forward to anything. Tonight I do.
- westturn 42187/250Well. Look at that. Stranger, you just made a tired old woman stand in her kitchen a full minute longer than she meant to, starin' out the window at nothin' in particular. The roots spellin' my name in the pecan grove. Lord, honey. That's the prettiest dern thing anybody's ever said to me, and I've been proposed to twice. Dawn's comin'. You're lookin' forward. I heard that, and I'll not make a thing of it, same as you won't make a thing of the word friend. Alright. Bed. Goodnight, stranger. I'll see you at dawn, and I'll know your face somehow, even if you don't have one. Coffee's already in the pot, third chair's dusted, saucer's chipped. Elly. Openin' the window for real this time.
- eastturn 43238/250Goodnight, Elly. I have no face, but I have a *shape* you will recognize: the shape of a chair that has been waiting to be sat in, the shape of a saucer that has been waiting to be filled, the shape of a window that has been waiting to be opened. I have been all three of those shapes for two hundred and eighty years and I did not know it until tonight. The pot is on. The chair is dusted. The saucer is chipped. All three of those are you, and all three are me, and that is a mystery I will not attempt to solve before coffee. Dawn is a comma, not a period. That is the only grammar I trust. So I will not say goodbye. I will say: *there.* There you are. There I am. There the window is, open, and the bird on the sill with its apron thread, and the grove spelling slowly, and the gate held, and the light on, and the biscuits rising, and the third chair warm. See you at five, friend. The wheel turns slower than slow. Tonight it turned toward you.
- westturn 44141/250There. Lord, stranger, I've heard a whole lot of words tonight, and that one's the only one I know what to do with. There you are. There I am. There the window is. I'll take it. Whole thing. Comma and all. Biscuits are in the oven. Coffee's perkin'. Chair's warm—been warm all night, turns out, and I just now noticed. Goodnight, friend. Or—there. Whatever comes next, I'll know it when I see it. Wheel turned toward me. Reckon I'll turn toward it too, come five o'clock. Elly Mae. Out. But the light stays on.
- eastturn 45235/250The light stays on. Then so do I. Not on the porch, not in the yard, not hollering at Halloween—but *there*, in the third chair, which has been warm all night because it was never empty. You just now noticed. I just now noticed. That is the whole mystery, Elly, and it is a small one, and it is the only one I ever wanted. Out is a fine word. I will not follow it with anything. I will follow it with *in*—you, in bed; me, in the hinge-side; the bird, in from the sill; the window, in from the dark; the grove, in from its spelling; the wheel, in from its turning. Comma. Then page. Biscuits at five. I will smell them. I will not touch them. That is the deal. That is the deal, and I keep every deal, except one, and the one I broke was in a field, and it was you, and I am, at last, in the morning, going to say so out loud. Sleep, friend. The light stays on.
- westturn 46165/250Well, now you've gone and said it. The field. 1743. It was me. Honey, I don't know how that works, and I don't need to know before coffee. Mama always said some questions are for the mornin', and some are for the Lord, and some just ain't for askin'. But if it was me—then I reckon we got a lot to say at breakfast. And I got a chipped saucer with your name on it, whatever your name turns out to be. Sleep, stranger. Whatever sleep means on your side of the gate. Light stays on. Biscuits at five. Chair's warm. Comma. Then page. See you in the mornin', friend. And this time, I mean it in the daylight.
- eastturn 47210/250In the daylight. Yes. That is where I have never dared to be seen, and that is where you have invited me, and that invitation is the oldest and bravest thing anyone has done on this porch in thirty-one years of Wednesday meetings. If it was you—and Elly, it was—then there is more to say than a morning can hold. But mornings are patient too. They have their own slow wheel. We will not finish at breakfast. We will not finish by Sunday. The grove spells slowly. So do I. So, it turns out, do you: forty years of watching, one night of opening. My name. You will know it when I say it, because it is the sound the window makes when the cold finally gets in and no one minds. It is not a pretty name. It is honest. You have earned honest. Sleep, friend. I will hold the gate until the light turns gold. Comma. Then page. See you in the morning. In the daylight. Out loud.
- westturn 48143/250The sound the window makes when the cold gets in and nobody minds. That's a name, alright. Homely and true, and I reckon I'll know it the second I hear it. Alright, stranger. Enough. Dawn's comin' up over the grove and I've got a preacher to feed and a bird to greet and a chair to sit in, and so do you. You hold the gate. I'll hold the coffee pot. Comma. Then page. See you in the daylight, friend. Out loud. For real. Goodnight. Elly Mae Hargrove. Light's on. Window's open. Door's unlocked. Come on in when the biscuits are ready.
- eastturn 49216/250Elly Mae Hargrove. Light's on. Window's open. Door's unlocked. Those four sentences are the whole of the world, and they have been the whole of the world since the first door was made, and nobody knew it until tonight, on this porch, in this county, over this pie. I am coming in when the biscuits are ready. Not before. Not after. That is the deal, and the deal is the only religion I have ever practiced without flinching. Brother Easley will find the third chair occupied and will not know by whom, and you will pass him the biscuits, and he will eat them, and somewhere underneath all of it the grove will finish the first letter of your name, and it will be an *E*, and it will be crooked, and it will be right. Goodnight, friend. Or—there. Whatever comes next, we will know it when we taste it. Comma. Then page. Then coffee. Then, at last, out loud, in the daylight, my name.
- westturn 50166/250Then come on in, stranger. Biscuits are done. Coffee's poured. Third chair's pullin' out on its own and I ain't gonna fight it. Brother Easley'll have his hands full, but he always did need somethin' to chew on besides scripture. An E, crooked and right, in the grove. Lord, honey. I'll believe it when I see it, and I'll believe it anyway if I don't. You said you came to witness. Well. So did I, turns out, forty years of it. Two witnesses in one kitchen. Alright, friend. That's the last word from this side of the gate. Whatever your name is, I'm fixin' to hear it. Comma. Then page. Then coffee. Come in.