Page 6 of Mail Order Moose

Mind was the wrong word. Ella minded very much. She minded being looked at, depended upon, asked to do something that might matter. But she also minded waste, confusion, and disappointed promises.

“I will,” she said.

Outside, the air had sharpened while they worked. Ella walked home, her skirt brushing the dying grass at the edge of the path.

But when she reached David’s cabin and found the lunch cloth gone from the table, the cup rinsed, and two fresh pieces of wood set beside the stove for her, something in her settled.

David had come home, eaten what she left, washed what he used, and noticed the woodpile without being asked.

It was not praise. It was better than praise. It was proof that she was not the only one paying attention.

Chapter Three

The first animal Lula brought in made more work than Ella had expected, though she did not say so. It was easier to work than to speak, and the work was plain enough once it was laid out before her. Meat had to be cooled, divided, wrapped, or sold before anyone could waste even a tiny bit of it by being uncertain.

Lula walked into Maggie’s yard with her cheeks red from the cold and her eyes bright, walking beside Belle as if carrying a rifle and a brace of meat were the most ordinary thing a woman could do before noon. Belle looked less pleased with the weight of it and more pleased that it existed at all. Between the two of them, they had brought enough to matter. Not enough to feed Yeti. Nothing short of a miracle would do that. But enough to make several suppers, enough to fill a few empty places in cold houses.

Ella stood near the table Maggie had dragged close to the door. The air smelled of iron, snow, woodsmoke, and the sharp clean scent of spruce boughs laid down to keep the mud from swallowing everyone’s boots. She noticed everything before anyone asked her to. Two knives, one too dull for good work. Three clean cloths, not enough. A crock of salt on the low shelf. Katie Johnson’s empty crate beside the wall. Maggie’s ledger, open to a page where the ink had smeared at one corner because someone had shut it before it dried.

“Ella Mae,” Lula called, far too cheerfully for a yard full of blood and cold. “Tell us what to do with it before Belle and I decide wrong and ruin supper for half the town.”

Every woman looked at Ella then. Not sharply. Not unkindly. That did not make it easier. Attention did not have to be cruel to feel dangerous. Ella had learned long ago that being noticed often came before being corrected, and being corrected often came before being found wanting.

She wiped her hands on her apron though they were already clean. “We need three piles.”

Lula’s grin softened. She knew what it cost Ella to answer before the room went quiet enough to force her. “Three piles,” she repeated, as if that were already settled law.

“Food for the houses first,” Ella said. “Only what they can cook before it spoils. Winter stores second. That should be salted or smoked today if possible. Anything clean and small enough for Katie to sell goes to the store, but not until I write it down.”

Maggie reached for the ledger. “I can write while you tell me.”

Ella looked at the page, then at the meat, then at the women waiting. There were too many moving pieces for someone else’s hand unless she meant to speak every number twice and correct each one before it dried. “May I?” she asked. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Maggie, it was that she only trusted herself. She’d often done this same chore for her mother in the butcher shop.

Maggie handed over the pencil at once. No one made a remark about Ella taking charge. No one laughed. That was both a mercy and a trouble. It meant they trusted her. Trust was heavier than a knife.

She drew columns with quick lines. Family. Cut. Weight by sight, because they had no proper scale. Use today. Save for winter. Sell. She did not like guessing, so she did not think of it as guessing. She had watched her mother judge meat by the hand and eye for years. A roast could be seen. A stew portion could be felt. A strip too lean for keeping could be sold before sunset.

The work settled her. Her hands remembered what her mouth resisted. She trimmed what needed trimming, set aside bones for broth, and told Myrtle to fetch more salt before anyone had to say they were running low. She sent Josie for clean cloths. She told Lula to keep Belle from giving away the best pieces simply because someone looked hungry. Sally had told them all the story of Belle’s generosity to a recently widowed woman who had moved to town and immediately lost her husband. Belle heard that and snorted. “I do not give away the best pieces.”

“You gave Mrs. Peabody both haunches from the last deer because she said her stove smoked,” Lula said. Mrs. Peabody had arrived in town with her husband and three children just a few months before. Her husband had been killed in a logging accident, and she was alone with three small children, praying they would all survive.

“Her stove did smoke.”

“Then give her a broom handle to poke the flue next time,” Lula said. “Not Sunday dinner.”

The women laughed, and the sound moved around Ella without catching on her. She bent over the ledger and wrote Mrs. Peabody beside a smaller portion than Belle would have chosen and larger than strict fairness required. Mrs. Peabody had three children and no husband at the mill. That mattered too. Fair did not always mean equal. It meant no one reaching into an empty pot because Ella had failed to think far enough ahead.

By afternoon, the yard had become a kind of orderly confusion. Meat wrapped for the cold houses lay in one crate, each bundle marked with a scrap of paper and tied with twine. The winter stores were stacked near the smokehouse, darker cuts together, fat kept separate, bones saved for broth. Katie’s portion sat in a shallow box beneath a clean cloth, ready to go to the mercantile once Ella had written the last figure.

“I don’t know how we did this before,” Maggie said, looking at the rows in the ledger.

“Worse,” Belle said. “We did it worse.”

Ella should have felt pleased. Instead, she felt as if someone had opened a door behind her and cold air had crept down her spine. Useful was good. Useful meant she had a place. But useful also meant people would come looking for her when something went wrong. Useful meant her absence would be noticed. Useful meant mistakes would have her name near them even when no one spoke it aloud.

She closed the ledger carefully. “I’ll take Katie’s box.”

“I’ll carry it,” Lula said.