The pages in the back of the leather folder don’t run in order, so I read them the way Amos must have wrote them, one tired evening at a time. The second page I can make out clean is dated Tuesday, January 20, 1903, and the ink is different, thinner, like he’d cut it with creek water to make it last.
Tuesday, January 20, 1903
Cold got in under the door last night and I aint found which crack it come through yet. The ground’s froze two inches down and the well rope’s stiff as a sawed bone. Went out at first light to knock the ice out of the trough with the back of the axe and it rung like a bell all the way down the holler, til the mule pricked his ears up thinkin dinner was on the way. It werent.
Amos, in his nervous little script at the top of the margin: “a cold mule is the honestest thing the good Lord ever made. he dont pretend the weather suits him. he stands there and looks at you like you ordered it and he’s waitin on you to send it back.”
The boy brought in three rats froze stiff by the corn crib and laid em out on the step like he’d been huntin somethin. I told him a rat aint a deer and he aint got no cause to be proud, but I let him keep em a while on account of the walk back in was long and his hands was raw. Martha set a pan of water on the stove and the whole house filled up with steam til you couldnt see the far wall, and she said a warm house aint got a thing to do with the walls holdin it. Its the steam and the people.
Amos, down near the bottom of the page where the pencil had dulled: “i spent the whole day choppin wood i split last fall and it wouldnt of all fit in the shed to save my life. winter dont ask how much you got stacked. it just keeps comin in, and the answer is always one cord short.”
Split the last of the hickory after dark under the one light, and the axe bit clean every swing til the handle give a little in my hand, and I said to myself that’s enough for one night. Tomorra I’ll find that crack the wind come in through and stuff it with a rag. A man can chase a cold through his whole house and lose, or he can sit still and let the stove do the arguin. I been doin the first one most of my life, so tonight I reckon I’ll try the second.
