Room to Choose

The second winter buried the fence posts under four feet of drift, but May thawed the corral into gray gumbo.

Elias hauled on a length of heavy wire with iron pliers. Wet mud caked his boots up to the laces, dragging at his ankles with every step. Ara walked down from the porch with a tin mug of water, her calico skirt pinned above the sludge. On the dry porch, the twins clacked pine spools together in the sun.

Ara handed him the mug. He drank, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and pressed the wire against the notched post. His thumb rubbed the damp cedar bark.

“The lower rail rotted out,” he said.

“The bay leaned against it,” Ara said.

He shifted his grip on the pliers. “A woman with two growing daughters needs a legal deed to her home. So nobody down in the flat can talk.”

Ara pulled her collar tight against her throat. Her gaze did not waver. “Nobody talks to me anymore unless I look at them first, Elias.”

“I know.” He let the wire slacken just enough to plant his boot deeper into the mire. “I don’t offer paper. I offer twenty acres and a home. If you want the name.”

She watched his hand on the post. “Only if I choose it?”

“Only if you choose,” he said. “I won’t have you taking a man because the snow is cold.”

Ara stepped into the muck, the wet earth taking the toe of her shoe. She laid her palm over his fingers on the cedar timber.

“You gave me room to choose,” she said. “I choose this.”

They stood together while the mountain wind blew down through the pines.

By July, the corral posts were straight and dry. Martha Bell rode up the mountain road with a circuit preacher whose horse was gray with dust. The twins wore clean bleached muslin, and around Ara’s neck hung a flat cedar oval Elias had carved by the hearth fire. Two clean grooves crossed the grain—two marks, not flowers.

The preacher stood on the porch with his open book and cleared his throat. He looked at Elias and asked if he took this woman for his lawful wife.

Elias never looked at the book or the preacher. He looked straight into Ara’s face and said, “I do.”