Ed in a week is as constant in the grapes and bramble or on the deck at the hose or out in the grass cramming insatiable mouth with cheese and ham sandwich, apple, chestnuts, late cucumber, pepper, hard egg, pear, plum – the brothers’ old orchard producing a blightless, abundant season – as any of the valley’s parts, this home, what Finn’s grown accustomed to since arriving, have ever been, his exactitude and silence enviable and, when Finn isn’t careful, intoxicating, Ada seeming often to appear from the road when needed: to break the plane of air they’ve built, Finn and Ed, together working the day down, the plants with his help finished neatly, tidied to rows, their dusty, dark bunches over-sampled, and the old planted borders so many years overrun by weeds dealt their time, each aspen in the front grove looking suddenly naked, trunks exposed and pale, gold October leaves beginning to fall in a globe, the crowded calla given room to breath and fan again, wisteria-noose clipped from the corner magnolia and that same flowering tree returned to a bed of just gladiola bulb, iris, the lacey wild carrots and prolific daisies generously thinned, a second magnolia found by Ed with a cry of Here she is! as if he’d expected it, had known all along to go looking right where he did.
Finn comes from clearing thistle towards the bridge, hands bit through gloves by the toothy, reedy stalks.
Smothered, mutters Ed, but not for long.
Ed to the rescue! quips Finn, and Ed grunts, stabbing snippers into a trap of blackberry, thorns snapping holes and rips in his sleeves. To the rescue, he grunts.
You’ll hurt, warns Finn, but Ed keeps up grunting, his skin red with use, and Finn thinks: Help, and thinks, too: Steer clear, the boy’s zeal worked out rowdily, all his radius unsafe. Watch your fingers, she hisses, but he’s already sworn and yanked hands to his chest, blood beginning to seep his grasp and down his fists, beneath them, to his shirt and the dark, disturbed soil.
What color he’s been disappears so his teeth, when he smiles, look the healthiest of his face. Too late, he pants, and Finn clears of her kerchief which he takes for wrapping.
I didn’t lose it, he says, which drops Finn’s jaw and in spite of his shock, or because of, Ed snorts. That’s a good thing, okay? I won’t need it on ice. Take a breath, Finn. We’ll look on my count, okay? You have to look with me, please.
She sees his trembling from her own knees acting weak, her heart thumping wild, her eyes bossed by head which feels like it might shoot free in celebratory speed, sight paling in preparation. As if she’s the one who needs saved. She begins to nod and not stop and her teeth clatter to ache. Okay, she says. Get ready.
Hers hasn’t before been a strong body, but with its haul and lift and slash of these months, its quilt has worn and the muscle built and so when a mirror holds, and she thinks to look, there draw lines along her that haven’t, new definitions to match her new meaning, and when she thinks I should tell— she stops, because who she should tell she left behind and has done her best to make their distance a body untouched.
I’d like it here, Ed had said just that morning, behind the fog, plants disappearing a yard before their eyes and the river’s belly having begun to fill and rush with hunger. Across the way they couldn’t see Georgeanne but she was out, standing the driveway, robe clutched beneath chin and her face at the hill for the angus finishing on grass.
You are here, Finn had said. You can like it right now.
They’d each held mugs, Finn and her camp stove constants in dawns, bringing drink to boil, then simmer, then strain. You’re pretty stubborn, Ed had said the first he saw it, arriving back when Finn hadn’t given an invitation, the day after their first meeting and he was watching and standing the deck with her in a watery sun as if it were planned, Finn mannered enough to offer a drink even when irritated.
I have a routine, Finn said, and thought: You aren’t in it. You’re sure they don’t need you at home? she’d asked.
Ed sipped a long, silent time, and Finn kept quiet, too. He couldn’t be old, twenty at most, she thought while scoping the hillside past the tracks which afforded her glance to skim his face, its recent shave, lips alarmingly bright as in a pale-skinned portrait’s, something Dutch, the sort of feature that in her college art courses she would’ve latched to, professor’s voice reduced by Finn’s distraction to static as she dismantled the slide’s mouth color by color until it was merely a combination of strokes, something fathomable, a cluttered palette’s yield; then, only, would Finn in her auditorium seat see the whole screen again, its image as rich and real as it had started, almost as unbelievable but she’d had those seconds when she’d understood its bones and could, if needed, return to such a map.
Home’s a hike, Ed finally said. And over there – tilting his ear the direction she’d hoped he’d head, whether needing first to finish coffee or otherwise take it with him for the walk – those brothers have a system I just mangle. They’re a machine and I’m a kink. They’re not unkind about it but its obvious.
So you’ve come to speed me up? asked Finn, her face arched to think: The gall of boys.
Ed’s head shook. I’m here because you’re already slow, so any slowness by me won’t collapse the work.
Finn watched him: he didn’t grin or snort or quit watching her watch. I’m an idiot, she thought, and said: I guess I’ll see you at lunch, then, and Ed had nodded: Sounds like you will.
Now, she steps so she’s hung over his shoulder, ready. The kerchief is soaked and she’s sat him on the porch, having walked him across the lot to find something steady for them both. Okay, says Finn. Count.
They’d eaten lunch. They’d admired their work, Finn complimenting his improved front corner and Ed saying, I like to see that thistle gone. They’d been cordial and finished their food and headed back to the thick of it happily, feeling, each, accomplished, their walks built by shoulders and chins and strides thrown back and up and out with it.
Two, says Ed, and pulls the wrap’s edge. Finn doesn’t know what finger to expect but it’s his left first in its fattest link between the base and middle knuckle, bone a white wink when he puckers the cut.
To the car to the car to the car to the car, Finn starts to chant, hoisting him at the elbow to the hatchback to tuck him in the passenger’s seat. To the car to the car to the car to the car, she continues, feeling as if her lungs, her head, her mouth are hemorrhaging. A finger, she thinks, just, and: to the car to the car to the car to the car, she thinks, then cranks and flings them back, then grinds to first where the wheels spin uncaught until a scud of togetherness hurtles their box to the road where they pause barely before bolting left and away through the valley, Ada, if Finn looked, standing at the mailbox in the rearview, as gauzy in the dust as you ever are when we try to keep you in our cameras, our gulping lenses and audacious fingers imbeciles to think they've tricked you once the tripod's fastened, as if that’s the ticket to render your image complete at last but developed in our envelopes sit our failures, your crest and trunk as smudged and indeterminate as before, and as Ada, there, her shape acting oil-based, some thumb along to blend her, Finn in the evening’s return believing she’s dreamed the sight, Ada’s figure approximate but the mailbox stark and gleaming, them back after dark to the brothers’ drive, Ed’s finger stitched and bandaged thickly, Finn putting a shoulder in his armpit to help him to the house as if he’d been balked from a horse and chipped a bone or sprained a joint, is poor to walk which he isn’t, just tired – of being coddled, of fluorescence and thread and alarms – Ara the one to run to him and Al somewhere in the kitchen, in that raw light, with a brother and a mixer and mitts and their cheeks peeking around the doorframe, Ada on the stairs, now, watching Finn pause in the threshold, car chugging behind while Ed is led to the couch and sat and pressed to, Ara’s hair a fan on his coat’s charged wool and a fog of electrified, pale strands levitating, too.
If Finn looked she’d see the eldest’s mouth rumple, Ada’s shrug as if they were exchanging a glance. Behind her rests the darkened vineyard, the darkened building, its dark and cool upstairs whose flies, even, will be still in the dark. If there’s movement it’s in shapes darker than the dark, and when they disappear Finn might think they’ve inked the night further or were never there. I don’t even know your last name, she says.
Harris, says Ada, quietly.
Like the actor, Finn mutters.
On the nose, Ada nods, placing a finger on hers. You wouldn’t believe it, she says, waiting to twitch somewhere soon with Ed staring to mean stop, quit, but he doesn’t so she alone is stripped by her tongue that was meant to bare him.
