Page 7 of Mail Order Moose

“I can.”

Lula looked at the crate, then at Ella. “You can. I am still carrying it.”

That was the sort of argument Ella did not know how to win without seeming ungrateful, so she let Lula take the box and carried the ledger instead. At the mercantile, Katie came around the counter with her sleeves rolled to her elbows and her hair coming loose from its pins.

“Tell me what I owe you,” Katie said.

Ella opened the ledger and read the amounts. Katie listened, repeated them, and wrote them in her own book.

“This will help,” Katie said. “Men will buy meat they can carry if they don’t have to ask where it came from or who is owed for it.”

“People should know where things came from,” Ella said before she could stop herself.

Katie’s mouth curved. “Then it is a good thing you do.”

Ella looked down at the ledger again. Compliments were easier to survive if she could pretend they were only remarks about ink.

When Ella returned to Maggie’s cabin the next morning, the first thing she saw was that one bundle had shifted places. It was not obvious. To anyone else, the crates near the wall likely looked exactly as they had the night before, wrapped parcels stacked together beneath a canvas and the larger pieces marked for the cold houses. But Ella remembered the order. Mrs. Peabody’s bundle had been second from the left. Now it sat third, and the bundle in its place bore a scrap marked Sanders.

Her own name, or David’s, depending on how a person looked at it.

Maggie was stirring something at the stove and talking to Sally about soap. Lula and Belle had already gone out again. Josie was folding clothes by the window. No one seemed troubled. No one seemed to know there was anything to be troubled about.

Ella set down the ledger and opened it to yesterday’s page. Belle, two stew portions, one soup bone, one strip to save for winter. Peabody, one roast, three stew portions, bones. The bundle marked Belle was too large for what she had assigned. The string was tied differently as well, with a loop at the top instead of a knot tucked beneath.

For one moment, Ella did nothing. If she spoke, everyone would look. If she said there was a mistake, someone would ask who had made it. If she answered, even without blame, the room might change. She couldn’t risk losing her friends. Their efforts were tied too closely together for it to be safe. No, she wouldn’t say anything.

She checked the marks, then the twine, then the smear of fat on the canvas where one bundle had been dragged instead of lifted. Near the door, a small scrap of paper lay beneath the table leg. Ella bent as if to retrieve a dropped pencil and found Peabody written on it in Maggie’s hand. The tag had come loose. Someone had seen the unmarked larger bundle, found a tag nearby, and tied it wrong. No malice. Only one small error placed where it could grow teeth.

She untied the bundles and corrected them. The Belle portion returned to its smaller place. The Peabody roast went back where it belonged. She rewrote the loose tag on a cleaner scrap and tied it twice. Then she checked every other bundle, because correcting one error without looking for its cousins was not correcting. It was hoping.

Only when she had finished did Maggie notice her near the crates. “Did something need changing?”

Ella’s fingers tightened around the pencil. “A tag came loose.”

Maggie glanced toward the crates. “Oh. I’m glad you saw it.”

That was all. No accusation. No asking who had done it. No room full of women turning to search one another’s faces. The mistake shrank back into the size it should have been all along.

Ella nodded and returned to the ledger, but her pulse took longer to settle.

By dusk, the cold had deepened. Ella carried their own small portion home wrapped in cloth beneath her arm. It was not much, and that pleased her. The larger portion had gone to Mrs. Peabody, where it was needed. David would understand if she told him. He had a way of understanding practical things without making them into grievances.

She found him outside the cabin, splitting the last of a round of wood. His coat was open despite the cold, and his breath showed white in the fading light. He stopped when he saw her and set the axe aside before she came near.

“You’re late,” he said, but there was no complaint in it.

“There was more to record.”

David looked at the bundle under her arm. “Is that ours?”

She nodded. “Only stew meat and a bone. Mrs. Peabody needed the roast.”

“Then Mrs. Peabody should have the roast.”

Relief moved through her before she could reason with it. Of course he would say that. She had thought he would. Still, hearing it made the cold around her feel less sharp.

Inside, while the stew simmered, David washed at the basin and asked about the day in the careful way he had, as if a question were a cup he could set near her without forcing her to drink.