Ezra Emmett's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

Ezra did not sleep. He sat in the cellar until first light with the name printed and no ledger to back it. Then he thought of Ruby. She had watched a lamp move twice. She had seen a man in black go over a fence. A child could carry that story to the wrong porch by breakfast. He climbed out of the cellar at dawn and walked toward the mill road with two coppers in his pocket and no clear plan for what to do with her. He saw the man before he saw the girl. A tall figure in a long coat stood at the corner near her fence, hands in pockets, eyes on the log home with the white pickets. Not a neighbor. Neighbors moved. This one waited. Ezra slowed his step and crossed to the far side. He watched from behind a stack of split wood until the man walked on, slow, looking back once at the porch. Ruby had not come out yet. Ezra had minutes, maybe less. He went to the side gate and tapped the post. Ruby opened the door in her blue dress with a crust of bread in her hand. He crouched by the fence and kept his voice low. He told her a man had asked about last night, and more men would ask today, and she was to say she had been asleep by nine and had heard the bell from bed. Nothing about lamps. Nothing about a fence. Nothing about him. He gave her a copper for the lie and a second for her mother, and he said her mother should take her to the aunt in the next village until the week turned. He named the price of the coach. He counted it into her palm. Ruby repeated the rule back to him. Asleep by nine. Heard the bell from bed. Didn't see nothing. She closed her small hand over the coins and went inside without looking back. Ezra waited in the alley until he saw the mother come out with a bundle and Ruby behind her, and the two of them turn up the road toward the coach stop. Then he walked back to the cellar with his hands shaking harder than they had in a year. Ruby was gone. The lie was planted. The man in the long coat would find an empty porch and a sleeping story, and Ezra had bought a week. A week was not proof. He still had only a name. But the name was still his to print, and the girl who could have unmade him was on a coach going the other way. He went down the cellar stairs and began setting type for a second run.