The Errand Answered

A neighbor came up the path in the middle of the morning, wanting to know how much fruit the far vines had given the autumn before. In earlier seasons the question would have gone to Nyra, who kept every such number in the book. This morning Nyra was down at the low bed with the trowel, loosening the soil around the young kale, and she did not rise. The girl set down her cup and went to meet the neighbor at the gate.

The girl carried the book to the table under the eaves and turned to the right page without hurry. She had copied those rows herself, and she knew the shape of them. She ran a finger down the column until it stopped at the line for the far vines, then read the figure to herself twice to be sure. The neighbor waited nearby while she checked the season and the total against the note in the margin.

When she was certain, she took a clean strip of paper and copied the number onto it in her own plain hand, adding the season beside it so there could be no muddle later. She did not guess and she did not round the figure to something tidier. She wrote what the book held, no more, and passed the strip across the table.

From the low bed Nyra watched the whole of it over the tops of the kale, saying nothing. She did not come to check the page, nor to see whether the figure was right. She turned back to the soil and worked her way along the row, leaving the girl and the neighbor to settle the matter between them.

The neighbor thanked the girl and went back down the path, the strip of paper folded into a pocket. The girl set the book back on its shelf, squared its cover, and returned to her cup, which had gone cold. Nothing about the morning had waited on Nyra. The keeping of it had been hers from the first knock at the gate to the last, and the book had answered a stranger through her hand alone.