Awning

The first long rain of the week came in slantwise, and Nyra and the girl went out to let down the awning over the south door. It was a plain sheet of waxed canvas on two folding arms, faded to the colour of weak tea, and it had kept the step dry for longer than either of them had been alive. Nyra unhooked the near arm and the girl took the far one, and together they walked the awning out until it stood level over the stone.

An awning is not there to stop the rain, Nyra told her. It is there to decide where the rain may fall. The water would come down all the same, but the awning sent it past the door in a bright line instead of across the threshold, and that small change of course was the whole of its work.

The girl noticed that the canvas was not flat but tilted, dropping a hand width from the wall to its outer edge. Nyra said that was the pitch, and that an awning laid flat would belly and pool and tear itself within a season. The slope was what let the awning shed what it could not carry, and a thing that sheds its weight in time will last a long while.

They stood under it and listened to the rain run off the front edge in a row of small beads. A book gathers what can be set down in a line and counted, and leaves the rest to the one who was there. It could hold the length of the awning and the angle of its pitch, but not the sound of the water finding its line, nor the dry square of step that let you stand and watch the garden go silver.

When the shower passed they folded the awning back against the wall and hooked the arms to rest. Nyra wrote the date and the pitch in the margin, and the girl asked what she would remember instead. The book keeps the reach of the awning, and you keep the shelter of it.