Eleven Hooks

Sabra Lumm pushed the oil cart down the avenue at dusk, squeaking, with one eye on the pole at the front.

The cart’s own lamp hangs on that pole, so Sabra can wheel oil into the dark and fill the walkers’ lamps where they hang. Tonight the hook at the top was a stub of rust. It snapped clean off on the way down, and the lamp rode among the cans now.

Sabra has wanted one thing from this cart for years. One cart that lasts a whole night of walkers, with every lamp still lit at dawn and a can left over. It has never quite happened. Every night there is one more lamp than the cart can fill.

At the avenue’s end, Fergal Brack was laying hooks out along the kerb. There were eleven of them, in a straight row, one for every bare post in the dark stretch ahead. Fergal looked as if they had not slept.

“Fergal,” Sabra said. “Look at this.”

Fergal looked at the stub, and then at the row, for a long time. Then Fergal picked up the last hook in the row, fitted it to Sabra’s pole, and closed the eye with two taps of a small hammer.

“There,” Fergal said, very quietly.

Sabra knew what it cost. Eleven posts, ten hooks. Somewhere in the stretch tonight, one post would stand bare.

On the avenue a thing given wants a thing back, and Sabra had only oil. So when the pairs of walkers came down with their lamps, Sabra filled every one of them, right to the brim, as nobody fills a lamp from a cart meant to last the night. Sabra did the sum while pouring. The cart would be empty by three. There would be no can left over, and no whole night, not this time either.

Sabra minded that, truly, and poured anyway, lamp after lamp, until the last pair said that was plenty.

Then Sabra hung their own lamp on Fergal’s hook and pushed the cart into the dark stretch. The light swung at the front, steady. Every post they passed had a lamp on it, full and bright, until the ninth, which had nothing to hang one on.