Edmund Graves's Arc

Chapter 2 of 8

Edmund woke in the log house at first light and clapped his hands in the small back room. The sound bounced off bare pine walls and carried straight through the door, down the hall, and out the kitchen window. He stood on the porch and clapped again from inside. He heard it clearly from the yard. A scream would travel farther. The county road ran a quarter mile through the trees, and a farmer in a slow truck would hear enough to remember. He had a house and a name left to find, but he did not yet have a room that would hold the work. He drove into the next town before the shops opened and parked behind a lumberyard. He bought thick felt blankets, a roll of tar paper, two boxes of nails, and six sheets of cork board meant for schoolrooms. At the feed store he bought a bale of straw and said it was for the puppy's box. The clerk smiled at the mention of the dog and asked its name. Edmund said the first word that came to him and paid in small bills. He loaded the truck and drove back through pines that hid the house from the road. He worked all day in the back room. He nailed cork to the walls in overlapping squares. He stapled felt over the cork and hung a second layer across the door. He packed straw between the floor joists through a hatch in the pantry. He unscrewed the window sash, filled the frame with tar paper and rags, and screwed a plank over the glass from inside. The puppy followed him room to room and chewed a curl of felt until Edmund shut it in the kitchen with a bowl of water. By afternoon the back room smelled of glue and hay. He shut himself inside, closed the door, and shouted at the wall as loud as he could. He opened the door and walked to the porch. He heard nothing. He walked to the tree line at the road. He heard nothing. He walked back smiling. At dusk a young man came up the drive on foot with a canvas pack on one shoulder. He wore a green jacket and carried a folded map. He said he was hiking to the next county and had seen the roof through the pines and hoped for water. The puppy ran out and pressed against his boots, and the young man crouched and scratched its ears and laughed. Edmund stood in the doorway of the log house and looked past the stranger at the empty road. No truck. No dust. No one waiting at the turn. He smiled and said the well was around back and the pump could be stiff, and would his guest like to come inside first and rest his feet.