Hannah Mitchell's Arc

Chapter 7 of 8

Two tables now filled the room. Every guest had a seat, but the door stayed open to the dark. That night sixteen travelers came. The two tables held twelve. Four stood outside on the cold ground, waiting for a place. Hannah went to them with cups of tea, but she had no chair to offer and no floor left inside. The room was full to its walls. Hannah looked at the packed room and knew the problem was not seats now. It was walls. One room could hold only so many bodies. She could not shrink the travelers. She could not widen stone. But she could build a place outside the door where new arrivals sat while they waited their turn. At dawn she walked back to the grove cottage one last time. She had stripped it of chairs and planks already. Now she looked harder. Behind the cottage she found a whole set left in a heap. A wide table with clean, curved legs. Three matching chairs, their backs carved in simple lines. The wood was worn but sound. She rocked each piece and it held. A gathering set, meant for a family that had long gone. Hannah could not carry the table alone. When the winged horse came she loaded it slow. The table first, then the three chairs bound tight with cord. The horse walked steady through the roots and mud. Hannah steadied the load with both hands and watched the branches. Back at the house she set the table just outside the door, under the eave where the roof reached past the wall. She placed the three chairs around it. Now the space outside was not bare ground. It was a porch, a waiting place, close enough to the door that the warmth of the room spilled out. That night the travelers came in a long line. The two inside tables filled first. When the twelfth seat was taken, Hannah did not send the rest into the dark. She waved them to the porch. Four sat at the outside table with hot cups, sheltered under the eave, watching the door for a place to open inside. Hannah counted the faces against the seats. Sixteen travelers, and every one of them sat. No one pressed a cold wall. No one stood alone on the ground. The porch had bought her room she did not have before. But Hannah stood in the doorway and looked at the two seatings. Inside stayed warm. The porch stayed cold. The waiting travelers held their cups against their chests and shivered while they waited their turn to come in. She had given them a place to sit. She had not given them a place that was warm. The eave kept off the rain, but the night still reached the porch, and the cups went cold faster than the guests could drink.