Later, after Jamie had telephoned the Franconia doctor to drive down and complete a certificate of death and telephoned a telegram to the new widow’s sister and family in New York and then carried a heavy basin of water up the stairs so the woman could wash her dead husband, pausing a moment beside the bed, Binter in death smaller, composed, calm—after all this Jamie sat at the kitchen table and took up the woman’s untouched glass with three fingers of whiskey in it and drank it down and looked at Carrick, who had been waiting for him.

“So what do we do now?”

“Do? We don’t do anything. I’m going home. I don’t need to be here for the doctor or when the neighbors start coming in. You’re fine; you’re the hired man.”

“Not what I’m asking.”

“I guess it depends then.”

“On what?”

“On how much you managed to learn these three months.”

“I know it. Start to finish. He was good that way. Slow, explaining things just enough but not too much. I’m set. I’m good to go.”

“Where’s things stand?”

“We got a run barreled off and a new one just started.”

“Well, we’ll see then.”

See.

“How it turns out.”

“It’ll be fine.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“Pelham, you’re fucking with me.”

“How’s that, Jeeter?”

Carrick spread his arms wide. “I’m talking about all this. We don’t need this setup anymore.”

Jamie shook his head. “What I’m going to do is, wait a decent time, a week, maybe two. Then make her an offer. And you, you’ve learned your business, then stick to it and do it well. Not fuck with me. You’ll be able to pay me off for the farm, three maybe four years, you look sharp to things. It’ll be gravy then. Pure gravy.”

“Aw shit, Jamie. These shitty cows. I can’t stand it.”

Jamie leaned forward across the table, his forearms flat on the surface. Looking at Carrick. “Wake up boy. Never again in your life will anybody offer you something as good as this. Pull your eyes out of your asshole and look around.”

They were driving, Jamie and the girl, a weekday afternoon, Foster in school. The first thing she told him, going out the long uncurling drive of the Mount Washington in Bretton Woods, was that she liked children. A plainfaced girl with a soft mouth, redblond hair, not pretty but for her youth, something reptilian in the beak of her nose, her arms soft, freckled—they would thicken quickly—Amelia Hewitt. Amy, she liked to be called. Finding her had not been so hard as he’d feared. He’d gone to Bretton Woods, where as far as he knew Jeeter Carrick was unknown. It was October; everyone was thinking of what came next. He told her, “And you’ll have a raft of your own one day soon, I’d bet. But all I’ve got in mind is a nice drive on a pretty day. I’d like to tell you about a friend of mine. That’s all.”