Gable

The first hard wind of autumn came up from the valley, and Nyra took the girl to the end of the house where the gable rose to its point. “Stand here,” Nyra said, “and tell me what you feel.” The girl felt the wall at her back hold steady while the air pushed and pulled at the orchard below.

“A gable is the one wall that gives the weather something to argue with,” Nyra said. “The long slopes let the roof shed the rain, but the gable stands square to the wind and does not flinch.” She laid her palm flat against the boards, as if listening through them.

The girl asked whether the book kept a record of such a wall. Nyra answered that it kept the pitch and the height and the year the boards were set, and that these were worth the keeping. A book gathers what can be set down in a line and counted, and leaves the rest to the one who was there.

“What it cannot keep,” Nyra said, “is the sound the gable makes on a night like the one that is coming. It will groan a little, high up, where the two slopes meet, and you will learn to tell a groan that means rest from a groan that means repair.” The girl nodded, and promised to listen for the difference.

They stood a while longer as the light went down the valley. Nyra said that a good gable asks for nothing but a true line and an honest nail, and gives back years of quiet standing in return. The book keeps the pitch of the gable, and you keep the listening of it.