Eduardo's Arc

Chapter 46 of 60

Eduardo stood in the saloon door at noon the next day. He said nothing to the room. The keeper nodded once. The drinkers looked up and looked away. It was enough. He walked out and drove home with the sun on the truck hood and the ledger on the seat beside him. He worked the siding until the light bent. Then he sat on the step and thought about Kiersten. She was asking after him. The white-haired woman had said so. The old man at the feed store had said so. He had promised himself he would not chase her. He kept that promise with his hands on the wood. But she was walking a road toward him without his knowing what she found on it. He wanted her to see the man he was becoming. He could not show her. He had been told never to come near. He went to see Fortune. The tarot animal was on the porch of the small painted house, tail flicking, wheel-face turning slow. A polished glass ball sat on a low table between them, held on a brass stand. Eduardo sat on the stool. "She is asking," he said. "I want her to know the truth of me. Not the pieces. The whole." Fortune looked at him. "You want to be seen." "Yes." "By her." "Yes." "Then you have not put her down." Eduardo's face went hot. He kept his hands on his knees. Fortune stepped closer to the glass. The inside caught light and moved it. "Look." Eduardo leaned in. He saw his own house in the ball. The broken one. Sagging roof. Boarded windows. Cracked wall. The house as it had been the day he came back. "That is what she would see if she came today," Fortune said. "Not because it is your house. Because it is the picture she still carries." "The house is not that anymore." "She does not know. She is asking others. That is her right. You do not get to hand her the answer." "Then what do I do." "Nothing toward her. Everything toward the house. The wall. The step. The word at the feed store. The tab that is not yours. Let the people she asks be the picture. Not you." Eduardo watched the glass. The image did not change. "If she comes," Fortune said, "she comes to what is standing. If she does not come, what is standing is still yours." "I wanted to show her." "That want is the old want in a clean shirt. Set it down." Eduardo sat with it. The heat in his face cooled. He nodded once. He drove home. He opened the ledger and wrote: I will not reach for her. The witnesses are the message. He closed the book and picked the hammer back up. The siding was not finished.