Fichu at Dusk

Craig here. Fifty-five years old, pharmacist, been with Tam for four years now. Tam is fifty-two, never married, worked a livestock farm back in her twenties, and since she turned forty-eight she has been obsessed with starlings. Flocks, murmurations, whatever you want to call them. She can stand in a cold field for two hours just watching birds turn shapes in the sky and call it a good evening.

Our Tuesday nights had gotten to where I could set a watch by them. She would come over around seven, we would eat something I cooked, she would read her bird notes off the clipboard she carries everywhere, and by nine we would be in bed doing the same three things in the same order. It was fine. That was the problem, I think. It was fine the way a waiting room is fine.

That particular Tuesday she was sitting at my kitchen table going through her clipboard while I washed dishes. She had been working the cucumber fields outside Xilitla, up in San Dominic Potosi. She did harvest counts for the co-op, walking rows and writing numbers, and twice a week she checked the pickling station at the far end of the field where the vats sat under a tin lean-to against a broken concrete wall.

"You've got brine spill in vat three," she said, reading her own notes. "Somebody over-salted again. And the cloth over vat five has come loose at the corner, it's flapping in the wind every night."

"Thrilling stuff," I said, and handed her a dish towel because she always dried while I washed.

"There's more. The pipe alongside the vat line is dripping where the joint sits on the beam. I wrote it down so the crew can see it Thursday." She kept flipping pages. "Also I need to go get my fichu."

"Your what?"

"My fichu. The muslin triangle thing, the one with the tambour embroidery around the edge. I wear it out to the field sometimes, over my shoulders, when the sun gets low. I left it on a hook at the pickling station last week."

"You left a fancy scarf in a cucumber shed."

"It's not a shed, it's the lean-to. And it's not fancy, my mother made it. I want it back before somebody uses it to wipe brine off their hands."

She said it plain, no drama, the way she says everything. But she had that look she gets when she has already decided to do a thing and is only telling you about it. I dried my hands and leaned against the counter.

"I'll go with you," I said.

She looked up. "It's a fifteen minute walk through mud rows, Craig. You hate mud."

"I don't hate mud. I hate standing in a pharmacy all day and then watching you do your whole secret solitary thing like I'm a guest at it." I heard how that came out and didn't take it back. "I want to see the vats. I want to see where the fichu lives."

"It doesn't live anywhere, it's a scarf."

"Tomorrow after your count, then. You can lead me across the rows like a tour guide."

She studied me for a second. "Fine. But wear boots you don't care about."

So the next day I left the pharmacy at four and met her at the edge of the field. The light was already going gold and long across the cucumber rows. Everything smelled green and a little sour, the way the whole valley smells in harvest season. She had her clipboard under her arm and her boots were crusted white with dried salt from the vats.

"This way," she said, and cut off between two rows instead of taking the track.

I followed. The plants ran low and prickly underfoot and the ground gave with every step. She walked fast for a woman of fifty-two, or I suppose I should say she walked fast for anyone, and I had to lengthen my stride to keep up.

"You could take the track," I said.

"The track is longer. And there's a dog at the house on the track."

"There's no dog."

"There's a dog, Craig. His name is Brendan and he is unfriendly." She stepped over an irrigation line without looking down. "You'd know that if you ever came out here."

"There it is," I said. "That's the thing I'm talking about."

"What thing?"

"That tone. Like the field is yours and I'm a tourist."

She stopped walking and turned around. A branch of cold air came off the mountain and broke right through the warm field air, and for a second her voice sounded like that branch, sharp and cracking.

"The field is mine. I walked these rows for two years before I met you and I'll walk them after, if it comes to that. You want in? Fine. You're in. But don't stand there acting wounded because I know where the dog is." She turned and kept walking.

I stood there a second, then followed. I didn't have a comeback and she knew it.

The lean-to showed up before the wall did, a slope of corrugated tin on wooden posts, leaning hard to the south. Behind it the old concrete wall of the pickling yard ran broken and patched, and against the wall stood the row of vats, big ceramic ones taller than my chest, each one covered with weather-beaten cloth tied down at the corners. A steel pipe ran along the line of them at waist height, carrying brine from a pump somewhere I couldn't see. The smell was strong once we got close, sour and sharp, vinegar and salt and something vegetable underneath it. I liked it, which surprised me.

"Careful, the pipe drips," she said, and I stepped around the wet dark spot on the ground.

Inside the lean-to it was dimmer and cooler. There were more vats in there, older ones, one with a cracked rim propped against the wall, and a rafter overhead with hooks driven into it. Tools hung from some of the hooks. A long pole. A folded net. And on the hook nearest the door, a triangle of pale cloth with a stitched edge, waiting like it had been left there on purpose.

Tam lifted it down and shook the dust off. Then, instead of folding it or stuffing it in her bag, she held it up against her chest, both hands, the way you'd hold something you missed. The muslin was thin enough that the low light came through it.

"I hate leaving this here," she said. "I counted eleven hundred and thirty-eight cucumbers in row nine and my shoulders were burning and I just hung it up and walked off."

"You look like a painting," I said. "Standing there in a brine shed holding a scarf."

"Don't start."

"I mean it as a good thing. The light through the cloth and all."

She looked at me over the top of the fichu. The light in there was mostly from the open side, and it put one side of her face in gold and the other in shadow. Four years and I still couldn't always tell what she was thinking.

"There's something else in here you should see," she said.

"What, the cracked vat?"

"No." She moved down the line of vats, past the one with the loose cloth, and stopped at the last one, the biggest, against the broken wall itself. "Lift the cloth on this one. Careful, both hands."

I reached for the cloth and she watched me the whole time, arms crossed, the fichu still hanging from her fingers.

I lifted the cloth with both hands. Under it the vat was full, and the brine was dark and still, and floating on the surface was a pale flat shape.

"What is that?" I asked.

"A test batch of pickles. Last week's."

"You wanted me to see pickles."

"No, Craig. I wanted you to see that I know what's under every one of these cloths. That's what this place is. Me, knowing things." She took the fichu and folded it over her arm. "That's all."

I set the cloth back down and straightened up. She was standing at the vat edge with her back half turned to me, looking at the brine, and the gold light from the open side was on her neck. Something in me went quiet and then went hard, both at once. I stepped in behind her and put one hand on her waist, over the shirt, over the salt-crusted cloth, and I said her name the way you'd say a dare.

"Tam."

She didn't move. "What are you doing?"

"Saying your name."

"You said it like a man about to do something stupid."

"Maybe I am." My hand stayed where it was. Her waist was warm through the shirt. "Tell me to stop and I'll stop."

She turned her head, not her body, and looked at me sideways. "Four years and you never grab me in a pickle shed."

"I'm not grabbing you. I've got one hand on your waist and I'm asking."

"Are you asking?"

"Yes."

She was quiet long enough that I heard the pipe drip twice. Then she said, "Okay. Yes!"

I moved my hand around to the small of her back and pulled her against me, slow, giving her the whole length of a second to slide away if she wanted. She didn't slide. She turned all the way around and put her arms up over my shoulders, and the folded fichu dropped off her arm onto the vat lid beside us. We stood there with our hips together and the brine smell all around us and her mouth an inch from mine.

"This is weird," she said. "This is the weirdest place we've ever."

"Shut up, Tam."

She shut up. I kissed her. She kissed me back the way she does, thorough, no hurry, like she was reading a page she'd already read but liked. Her mouth tasted like the coffee she'd drunk at the field edge. I got both hands on her hips and lifted her a little, set her sitting on the vat lid, which was wide and flat and dusted with salt. Her boots swung clear of the ground. She laughed into my mouth.

"Careful," she said. "This thing is older than both of us."

"So are we." I kissed her neck. She tipped her head back and let me.

Then she put a hand flat on my chest and pushed, and I stopped. "Wait."

I stopped. I stood up straight and took my hands off her. "Done. Say it."

"Not done. Rearranging." She slid off the vat lid and picked up the fichu. What she did then was the strangest and best thing I'd watched her do in four years. She opened the scarf all the way out, a big pale triangle of muslin with the tambour embroidery running along the hem in little green leaves, and she tied one corner to the steel pipe at the near end of the vat line and walked the length of the vats and tied the other corner at the far end, so the fichu stretched taut across the mouth of the lean-to, shoulder height, catching the low light like a sail.

"What's that for?" I asked.

"Privacy we don't need and don't deserve." She came back to me. "My mother embroidered that. It's watched cucumbers all week. It can watch us."

"That's sorta sacrilegious."

"She'd laugh. She was worse than me." She put her hands on my chest again, flat, and looked up at me. "Craig. One question before this goes anywhere."

"Ask."

"Is this you proving a point, or is this you wanting me?"

I thought about it, which she deserved. "Both. But mostly wanting you. The point part is just the part of me that's an ass."

"Fair." She pushed again, both hands, and I went backward. There was a folded cloth, one of the vat covers, doubled over on a low bench against the wall, and she'd clearly seen it there