Dust & Ember

Morning came to Calico Ridge slow and honest, a line of gold that slid across the courthouse roof and turned the dust into mica. Etta Carrow worked under that light, elbows dark with oil, sleeves rolled to a shirt stained the color of old coffee. Her shop was a lean building with a sign the size of a hope: E. Carrow — Wheels, Gears & Odds. The sign swung when the wind wanted a language; between the slats her father's name lived in a slanted hand that had outlived him. She lifted a broken axle and listened like a mourner. Each creak in wood and grind of metal told a different story, and she read them as others read prayer — with a hand on the page and a request for steadiness. Around midday Josiah Crane came in carrying a pail that sloshed with more dust than water. He was gangly and fast, a hand who made his bones at the livery. 'Etta,' he said, dropping the pail on the floor so it made a dull, heavy sound, 'they've set up tents at the east ford. Fancy men and a man with a coat that looks like it bought his respect.' He tried to be a messenger of calm and failed. She smoothed a square of brass and wiped her fingers on the rag because hands needed a reason to stop working. 'Broadwater?' she asked. His mouth tightened. The name in town was a ferry of worry; men traveling with ledgers and lawyers made homes shiver. By evening the new tents lit like small moons and a man in a whiskey-colored coat stepped out to look down Calico Ridge as if shopping for the way the wind bent. He spoke with the low politeness of a man who had practiced cruelty softly. 'Miss Carrow,' he said when she crossed paths at the hitching rail, voice even as a coin, 'we see potential in Calico Ridge.' His smile behaved like a machine. Etta kept her reply small and blunt. 'We keep what we need here.' When the new men left a paper on the mayor's desk and the windmill coughed that night, sending less water to troughs and more to rumor, she sat on the well's lip and felt the town's pulse abrade thinner. The well gave a taste of metal and something like challenge, and Etta understood that something had come to be wrestled.