He filled the woodshed side of the entry way with split stovewood, five tiers running from the outer door all the way to the wall of the house where three steps led up into the kitchen, the tiers stacked to the shed rafters. So when you walked in you passed alongside a dense wall of wood, the smell fresh and sharp against the old must and machine oil of the shed. Not even a quarter of the stacked cordwood behind the house but all there was room for. The other side of the walkway, beside the workbench with the old tools oiled and hung each in its place on the wall, he sat afternoons to whet the axe bits on the grindstone, pumping the treadle, the stone whirling roughly in place as he held the bits against the edge, his fingers knuckled back to keep them from the wheel. The water in a slow drip from the thin spout over the wheel, the smell of wet stone and steel. The bit when he turned it over a fine bright crescent shaved down to a wafer edge. The day he carried in the last armload of wood to stretch up and cram in against the rafters he sat afterward and sharpened the axe a final time and with a rag spread a thick coat of oil over the sharpened double bits and set the axe up in a corner by the door, the handle against the wall, the oiled head resting off the ground on a block of wood. So whoever used it next would find it ready.

Using his grandfather’s tools, looking around for the ways and methods for their care, finding what he needed, he was surprised by what he knew. His own father’s tools had been few, ordinary everyday hammers and screwdrivers with no particular attention paid. Yet he possessed understanding of these older, more dangerous tools. As if it were passed down without language. He realized you might know something without awareness until the knowledge was called for.

This was not so different from the woods. Peering close at each leaf fall, each white bird-spoor splash on the duff, as at the same time hearing the wind move through the trees, seeing the angles of light change, imprinting without effort the terrain ahead; all these things marked the way you turned and walked, not only the direction taken but where you’d come from. Seeing behind and ahead at once. Because, when the hunting was done you had to find your way home.

Pru was up in the sheep pasture picking the early apples from the three old big trees and he hiked up to help her, the dogs loping out and back as he called to keep them close, to not worry the sheep, who were bunched together higher up, watching the dogs. She had a pair of round-bottomed bushel baskets and a yoke to carry them with. The apples were rust-red, scabbed, small, knobbled. Flesh bright white stained pink and sweet and crisp. He worked alongside her for a time. Ducking under the heavy branches hanging with still-ripening fruit. All they gathered were the early windfalls. It would be another week, ten days, another frost before the rest were ready. But Pru was after some cider, maybe even a pie.