Eduardo's Arc

Chapter 36 of 60

Eduardo went back to the wall after the collector left, but his hands would not stop shaking. The tin on the rail was empty. Every dollar he had saved was gone in one afternoon. He set the hammer down and sat on the top step. He had thirty days to find two hundred more, and no cushion under him if anything went wrong. He counted the risks in his head. A slip on the feed store loading dock. A slow week when the ranchers did not come in. A cold he could not shake. Any one of them would end the wages, and the wages were all he had. He needed a second line of income, small and honest, before the month closed on him. He washed his face at the pump and walked into town. He climbed the porch steps of the round tea house with its curling roof and lace-covered tables. He had come here every Friday to have his ledger signed. Today he came for something else. Inside, the tea doctor was pouring hot water into a clay cup. Her white hair fell past her waist, and the stones on her belt caught the lamplight. She was younger in the face than in the eyes. She had never asked him a question he could dodge. "You are early," she said. "And your color is wrong." Eduardo told her about the marker and the six hundred and twelve dollars. He told her he needed work he could do in the afternoons, after the feed store. He asked if she needed a hand around the tea house. Wood split. Porch boards nailed. Anything. She set the cup down and looked at him for a long moment. Then she shook her head. "I have a boy who splits my wood. I will not take his hours from him." Eduardo felt the floor drop. He had counted on her. He nodded once and turned for the door. "Sit," she said. He sat. She poured him a cup of something that smelled like bark and honey. She pulled a card from a small deck on the table and laid it face up between them. He did not know the picture, and he did not ask. "You are trying to carry the month alone," she said. "You cannot. Go to the widow at the feast hall. She feeds the town on Fridays and her back is bad. She will pay you in coin and stew to haul her flour and scrub her pots. Tell her I sent you." Eduardo drank the tea. It was bitter and then sweet. He put the cup down and said thank you. He walked to the feast hall before the light went. Gwen opened the door with flour on her sleeves. He told her what the tea doctor said. She looked him over once and pointed at a stack of sacks by the wall. "Start with those," she said. "I pay Fridays." Eduardo bent and lifted the first sack. The cushion was gone. He would build a new one, one sack at a time.