Nine Carts and a Pot of Soup
Tolliver wrote his letters at the end of Nessa’s kitchen table, late, after the bowls were washed and the travelers had gone up to bed. He pulled the kitchen lamp close and wrote the way he talked, which was grandly. Then he read each line back and crossed out the grandest word in it. He looked at the gap for a while. Then he wrote the word back in above, a little smaller.
“That’s the third time you’ve put in ‘legendary’,” Nessa said, banking the stove for the night.
“It’s the same ‘legendary’,” Tolliver said. “I keep giving it another chance.”
Tolliver was a guide, and a good one, though nobody had ever licensed him. He knew the dry path round the ford. He knew which inn on the harbor road had a roof that didn’t drip, and which had a roof that only dripped on the bed. What he did not know was how to get anybody to pay him. His old handbill had hung in Nessa’s front window for two years. It said TOLLIVER, GUIDE, ASK INSIDE. In two years exactly one man had asked inside, and he wanted the well. Tolliver walked him round the back to it, showed him the knack of the bucket, told him the best way up to the ridge while he was there, and charged him nothing at all.
“People don’t believe a handbill,” Nessa had said, taking it down to wipe the glass. “They believe a name at the bottom of one.”
So Tolliver wanted a name at the bottom of his new one, and the name he wanted was Hobb’s. Hobb the Carter had been there on the night. Everyone on the road knew that Hobb could not be talked into anything: not a faster mule, not a shorter lunch, not a new opinion about parsnips. That made Hobb the best witness there was.
Dear Hobb,
I am having a new handbill made, and I would be honored to have your name at the foot of it, as witness. You will remember the legendary Night of the Hundred Carts. A fog came down on Kettlebridge so thick a man could have leaned on it. No driver could see his own mule’s ears. I walked to the head of that queue and led them over, all hundred, by my voice alone. I have drawn a little line for you to sign on.
Your friend in the fog, Tolliver, Unlicensed Guide
The letter went off with the morning post. Hobb was over the bridge every week with flour and could have answered in person. But Hobb liked a thing written down, where it could not be argued with. The answer came back eight days later, in the top of Nessa’s flour sack.
Every one of Hobb’s letters came that way. Each was folded small and smelled of flour, and each had a floury thumbprint in the bottom corner, like a seal. And each had its postscript written on the outside.
Nessa lifted the letter off the flour before Tolliver could reach it and read the outside aloud. “P.S. It was a Tuesday. Nothing legendary happens on a Tuesday.”
“Why does Hobb put the postscripts on the outside?” Tolliver said.
Nessa handed it over and began to fold the sack. “Hobb says nobody reads a postscript at the bottom. This way the carrier reads it first. And me.”
Inside, in pencil:
Tolliver. (1) Nine carts. I counted. I was fourth. (2) Not fog. (3) You did not lead them. The mule led them. She smelled the flour shed on the far side. (4) Your ink is too thin.
The mule was there.
Hobb
Tolliver knew perfectly well what Hobb meant by “not fog”. He had been there. But fog is a word that sells a guide, and he thought he could still save it.
Dear Hobb,
Nine, then. Nine of the finest carts on the road. But you must allow me the fog. It lay on the bridge all evening, white as a sheet and twice as wide, and it glowed. I have walked through a great many fogs and never one that glowed. A traveler will want to hear about the glow.
Your friend, and a man who knows a fog when he is standing in one, Tolliver
He crossed out the last part. Then he put it back, because it was true that he had been standing in one. He used a good deal more ink this time.
The answer came in the flour sack again. The outside said: “P.S. Nessa. The parsnip was good. What was the other thing?”
Nessa looked at the letter for a moment. “No,” Nessa said to it, and carried the flour through to the larder.
Tolliver. (1) Steam. (2) Off Nessa’s soup pot. A star fleck came down the chimney into it, no bigger than a seed, and after that the pot would not stop steaming. It came out of the kitchen window and lay on the bridge thick as wool. (3) Parsnip and one other thing. Nessa will not say. (4) It glowed blue because the rail lamps were lit inside it. Lamps light steam. Everybody knows that. (5) Rook stopped the queue. Nobody crossed while it was thick. Rook was right. (6) Ink better.
The mule was there.
Hobb
Tolliver read it twice by the lamp, and found that he could see it again. The steam had rolled out of the kitchen window in one long soft bank. The rail lamps had been lit inside it all down the bridge, blue and blurred, like lamps packed in wool for the post. The whole river had smelled of parsnip from one bank to the other. It was the loveliest thing he had ever seen on that bridge. He did not see how anyone would pay a guide for it.
Dear Hobb,
Steam, then. Soup steam. I grant you the soup. But the voice, Hobb. You cannot take away the voice. I went down the whole length of that queue in the white, calling out—
He crossed out “calling”. He looked at the gap for a while. Then, for the first time that week, he did not put the word back. He wrote “talking” instead, and the rest of the letter came out shorter than he meant it to.
This time the outside of Hobb’s reply said only: “P.S. Read all of it.”
Tolliver. (1) Talking. Yes. (2) You had a ladle, and Nessa’s bowls stacked up your arm to the elbow. You came down the queue and gave every driver soup. (3) You told every driver where the rail was. Left hand. Four steps. There it is, lean on it if you like. Then the next cart. Nine times. You did not make it sound like anything. (4) Nobody worried after that. It was quiet except for you and people eating. The mule sneezed once. She does not like parsnip. (5) The pot went down a bowl at a time. When Nessa could see the bottom, there was the fleck, and Nessa had it out with the tea strainer. Then the steam thinned. (6) Then the mule went over at a walk, for the flour shed, and the rest came behind. I was at her head. That is your handbill. Not the hundred.
The mule was there.
Hobb
Tolliver put the letter down. “Nessa,” he said. “That’s why you kept filling the bowls? To get to the bottom of the pot?”
Nessa was setting out bowls for the morning. “Nine drivers, one roadwarden, and you twice,” Nessa said. “I made more after. Different soup.”
Dear Hobb,
Would you sign that one? The true one. I have written it out below the way you told it, and I have not put anything in.
Tolliver
He had put one thing in, near the end, and it was “legendary”. He looked at it a long while. Then he crossed it out, and this time it stayed out for good.
Nessa read the outside of the last letter from the doorway, with the flour sack still on one hip. “P.S. Signed.”
Tolliver was across the kitchen before the sack touched the floor.
Hobb had copied the whole thing out again in pencil, in Hobb’s own words, because Hobb did not put a name under other people’s sentences.
I, Hobb, carter, was fourth in the queue at Kettlebridge on a Tuesday, when a star fleck fell in Nessa’s soup and the bridge filled up with steam. There were nine carts. Rook stopped us, and was right. Tolliver came down the queue with a ladle. He gave every driver soup and told each one plainly where the rail was, so nobody worried. When the pot was empty Nessa took out the fleck, the steam thinned, and we went over at a walk behind my mule. All of this is true. I would hire him. For the sensible way.
Hobb
The mule agrees.
And there in the corner was the floury thumbprint, like a seal.
Tolliver lettered the new handbill that night at the kitchen table, in good thick ink. It said: Tolliver, Unlicensed Guide. Once led nine carts through soup. Sensible routes only.
“The mule led,” Nessa said, reading over his shoulder.
“The mule led them over,” Tolliver said. “I led them through.”
He pinned it in the front window with Hobb’s statement underneath it, thumbprint and all.
The next morning there was a knock. A woman stood on the step with a new pack and new boots. She had the look of someone who had read the window twice.
“I want to go up to the ridge,” she said. “The sensible way. Is that you?”
“That’s me,” Tolliver said. “It’s the only way I do. It’s in writing.”
He named a price. From the kitchen, without looking up from the bread, Nessa said, “Double it.”
Tolliver doubled it. The woman paid without blinking, and asked if they could start tomorrow instead, because she wanted one more of Nessa’s breakfasts first.
That night Tolliver wrote one more letter at the end of the kitchen table, with the lamp pulled close.
Dear Hobb,
I have a customer. She asked for the sensible route. Thank you, and thank the mule.
Tolliver
He read it through once and did not cross out a single word. “Not one,” Nessa said. “I was counting.” Nessa turned the lamp down. Tolliver went up to bed glad, with a customer for the morning and the true story in Nessa’s window, and if he dreamed at all that night, he dreamed of nothing grander than soup.