“Can You Read This to Me?” He Asked the Woman the Town Called Simple—And She Read It All

Chapter 2

The road to the mill was two miles of ruts and pine shadow, and for most of it the man said nothing at all, which she was learning to expect from him in advance.

He told her the children’s names. June, who was nine, and Jesse, who was five. He told her June was particular about certain things, and he did not say what things, and she understood she was meant to discover them and that discovering them was part of the job. He told her Jesse would follow her everywhere if she let him, and that she should not feel obliged to let him. He told her where the larder was, and that the pump in the yard needed a firm hand, and that he took his coffee before first light and again at midday.

She listened to all of it and said “I understand” at the appropriate places, and watched the trees, and the light coming down through them in long pale bars, and the way the land opened out at the last bend. And then the mill appeared — the whole shape and clatter of it, the long shed with the sawdust pile smoking softly at its edge, the water race running bright — and behind it, square and plain among the pines, the house.