Baluster

The stair to the upper garden had a wooden rail, and under the rail a row of balusters, each one turned on a lathe long before either of them was born. The girl set her hand on the first and began to count as she climbed. Nyra sat on the bottom step with the book open on her knee, and she wrote the number down when the girl called it out.

“Thirty-one,” the girl said from the top. “Thirty-one balusters, and not one of them loose.” “Thirty-one,” Nyra answered, and she drew the figure plain in the book.

The girl came back down with her hand trailing over each upright, slower now. “You can write the number,” she said, “but you cannot write how they feel under the hand, warm where the sun has been and cool in the shade.” A book gathers what can be set down in a line and counted, and leaves the rest to the one who was there.

“No,” Nyra said. “I can keep that there are thirty-one, and that none is loose. I cannot keep the warmth, or how the garden opens wider under you with every step you climb.” “Then the counting is only half,” the girl said. “The counting is the half that keeps,” Nyra answered, and she closed the book over the figure.

The book keeps the balusters, and you keep the widening of it.