In a post apocalyptic future, North America has been quarantined by the rest of the world, a backwater eddy of primitive culture and no knowledge of the outside world. When a young Colorado girl discovers the mother she thought dead has instead been sold into slavery, she braves a sprawling, misogynistic city in order to rescue her, only to discover her mother hides a terrible secret, and doesn't want to be found.
Chapter 1:
I suppose at some level I always knew, or at least suspected. Sure, I was young and naïve, and wanted my pa to be a good man. He was a good man, sometimes. But underneath his smiles and pats on the head, his hard work making sure we almost had enough to eat, beneath it all lay something horrible, something I tried to ignore, something that the drink would bring out of him. Something I couldn’t deny that day I killed him.
We’d barely finished burying Mildred. Never a strong girl, the Fever took her pretty quick. Three days prior she’d been running through the upper meadow with me, our skirts raised, full of new apples. Healthy and smiling. Now she lay under a few feet of black earth and a puny cairn.
Such was life in the hills.
After we piled on the last rock, pa stood looking at the grave a few minutes, quiet. A dirty finger wiped his eyes.
“Shouldn’t we say something?” I asked.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. It don’t seem right to just walk away. Aren’t you supposed to say something when you bury someone? A prayer or somethin’?”
He pulled his hat off, gave me a squint-eyed look. “You believe in any gods?”
I couldn’t take his staring at me, and looked at my bare feet, toes covered in dirt. “I don’t know.”
“Hell, I sure as shit don’t. If there were a god, shit like this wouldn’t happen.” With that, he turned and stormed off down the path through the box elders, headed toward the house.
I watched him go but didn’t follow. I wasn’t going to just leave Mildred alone in the dirt without saying something.
“Dear God, or gods, or whatever is up there lookin’ down on us.” I didn’t know who to address specifically. We didn’t talk much about religion in our house. “Please take care of Mildred. Somebody has to. She’s a good girl. She was, I mean.” I sighed, tried not to cry but couldn’t help it. I don’t know why I tried not to. I suppose I thought as the last kid left, I had to be strong. Ma was gone. Jack had died of some sort of nasty infection the year before. A simple cut in his leg swelled up and turned blue. Then he died. Now Mildred was gone, too.
It was just me and Pa. At least for a little while longer.
I turned, shuffled back down the slope the way pa had gone. Leaves, green going gold, were already starting to cover the earth. Winter was coming. I shuddered, thinking about it.
Pa had already been drinking since morning, so I wasn’t surprised to see him head up to the loft above the tiny barn. I knew he kept his stash up there, buried in Cleopatra’s hay. Mildred and I had snuck up there a month or so earlier, took one of the jugs and ran out into the thick woods where we wouldn’t be seen. We’d each took a long sip, stared at each other a minute, then sprayed whiskey and spit out across the ferns in a fit of giggling. How could anyone drink the stuff? We’d made a show of making bad faces and spitting until Mildred dropped the jug on the rocks. It’d shattered, of course. We stared at each other, then without a word dug a hole and buried it, wide-eyed and scared about what Pa would do if he found out. No need to promise not to tell. We’d walked back holding hands.
Cleo gave a low, lolling greeting as I peered up, into the darkness. “Pa, should I start heatin’ water for a bath?” Once a week we took baths. Ma’s tradition that Pa only agreed to with a lot of cursing. I don’t know why he complained, he always got to go first, when the water was still hot and still clean.
“We ain’t taking no baths no more. What’s it matter. Ain’t no one ever come here.”
He had a point. In my memory, I could count the number of different visitors we had on one hand. Folks were few and far between in the hills. And the effort it took for visiting just wasn’t worth it. I knew a world existed out there, Ma would tell me about it late at night as we watched the embers smolder in the fireplace. I knew there was cities, places where people lived stacked up on one another and there weren’t trees and bears and wolves. Where you couldn’t even grow food. I knew it, I’d just never seen it.
I also knew there were oceans. Ma would talk of her childhood, with the firelight reflecting in that far away look in her eyes, of wide strips of sand and water as far as you could see, rolling waves, and of being a little girl, standing on the beach, waiting for her father to come home.
Pa would grumble about there being no such thing, then something about having seen a city, and it not being much. Ma would shout over her shoulder at him, short and crisp, about him never seeing anything bigger than a trading post.
They shouted at each other a lot. I suppose that should have been a clue.
But those nights were gone. And so, apparently, were the baths.
“Why don’t you up here a minute, Becky.”
I thought maybe he realized that one of his jugs were gone. I climbed the old ladder and crawled back into the hay. He smelled like sweat and whiskey in the dark closeness of the loft.
“How old is you now, Becky?”
“I don’t know. “
“What do you mean you don’t know? Ma kept track of your birthdays!”
“I know, but mine is somewhere round now, but I ain’t exactly sure. I’m either twelve or thirteen.”
“Almost growed up.”
I nodded, proud and mistaken. “Yep.”
“Almost a woman.” The way he said it scared me. Told me to keep my mouth shut.
“I miss Mildred already.” It wasn’t a lie. And it changed the subject.
“So do I. She was already a woman.”
That certainly didn’t help none, the way he said it, soft and far away. Like the way I’d expect him to talk about Ma. “I guess.”
Mildred had already had her period. She’d had her first one right before ma left, she’d showed me the stains in her breeches, said it’d happen to me in a few years. I kinda hoped not, it didn’t seem right. So I guess she was a woman. I just never saw her in that kind of light.
“C’mon over here and snuggle with your pa a little.” He reached up, held out a hand for me.
I took it. A hug would feel great. Make the world a little less lonely. I would’ve preferred ma or Mildred, but pa would do. He pulled me to him and I snuggled in the hay beside him, head in his chest. He did hug me awhile, in a way that he hadn’t in a long time. Made me feel good and warm.
“You’re growin’ into a beautiful woman, Becky.” He smelled like hot whiskey when he breathed into my face.
Something wasn’t right. I knew I wasn’t pretty. I knew I’d never be pretty. Large and square with hands like a man ain’t pretty, my pa used to say to me. I was stronger than Jack before he died, and he was two years older than me.
“I guess” was all I could mumble as his fingers started stroking my long hair.
“You the only woman in my life, now, Becky.” His lips got too close, right against me ear, and I could feel his hand fumbling with the hem of my dress.
“Pa? Pa? This ain’t right!”
He rolled up over me so I couldn’t move. “C’mon now, Becky. You’ll like it. You’re sister never complained.”
Mildred? I remember her crying sometimes in the middle of the night. We shared blankets and hay in our loft in our tiny house. I’d whisper what was wrong and she’d just roll away. The only secret she kept from me.
Pa started fumbling with his breeches, pressing his greasy head down on my chest so I couldn’t move. I squirmed but he was just too much.
“Pa, ain’t this something you’re supposed to do with your wife? With Ma?”
He stopped his hands, got his eyes so close I could see the red in the corners. “Your ma was a cold, useless woman. Why do you think I got rid of her?”
“Got rid of her?” I managed to whisper. It was hard to talk with his weight on me.
“Sure as shit. She was nothin’ but trouble since the day I bought her. ”
“She didn’t run off?”
He started pulling up my skirt again, trying to get himself in position. “Course not. Not shut your mouth and let me get to it.”
I won’t go into what happened next. There’s no need to talk about things like that. I blocked it out, thinking about Ma. About how she hadn’t run away from her family like pa had said. How she did still love me. I imagined myself a little girl, sitting on her lap by the fire while pa did what he’d been doing to Mildred probably for years.
Once he finished and rolled off he fell into whiskey sleep, snoring so loud it upset Cleo down below. I stood up. Straightened my dress. Grabbed the pitchfork and drove it through his chest.
Chapter 2
I didn’t know what it was that woke me that night. When I opened my eyes with a start, breath coming fast, only the sound of Katydids and the rustle of the wind in the pin-oaks whispered outside. I held my breath and listened for something, anything, out of the ordinary, the inside of our cottage lit up like a silver dream from moonlight seeping through the crack where the wall met the roof.
Then I realized. I heard nothing. That was what woke me up. The sound of nothing. For the first time in my life, no snores or sighs or shifting in the straw filled the room. No miss-matched chorus of deep breathes. Nothing but silence.
I wrapped myself tighter in the old wool blanket Pa’d brought me when I was a tiny girl in pigtails. He’d made a big show of giving it to me as a surprise, pulling it out of his pack and hiding it behind his back as he gave me that big smile of his. A smooth blanket, thick but woven tight, made on something he’d called a loom. He’d traded six red-fox pelts for it. Coulda got tobacco, but got a blanket instead, he’d said.
Pa really tried, sometimes.
‘Course he ignored me the rest of the time. Barely saw me other than to tell me what chores I needed to do. Maybe mumble good mornin’ as he circled the garden on the way to the outhouse. I was alright by that. Mostly.
He’d seemed to at least kind of like Jack. At least he’d spent some time with him, teaching him to hunt and fish. He’d even traded for a nice hunting knife for Jack’s eleventh birthday. He’d always made sure Jack got enough to eat, said he needed it to grow up big and strong. Mildred and I didn’t hold it against Jack; he couldn’t help our pa liked him. And he’d sometimes take something he’d caught and we’d sneak it out in the woods and cook it instead of takin’ it home to pa. Squirrels or rabbits or trout. Those were good days, the three of us around some tiny fire we’d built out in the woods, burning the roofs of our mouths on charred meat and giggling together.
Jack died right about the time Mildred started blossoming. You could always tell she was gonna be pretty, but when the changes started, it had been clear she’d be more than just pretty. She looked nothing like Mama and me. Light hair. Blue eyes. A whole lot more delicate looking. The type of girl that made you happy just looking at her.
All of a sudden pa had started talking to her. Smilin’ at her. Even getting her real shoes. I’d tried not to get jealous; I knew it wasn’t her fault she was so pretty. But it didn’t seem fair, sometimes.
I rolled over and stared at the wall. I really didn’t want to be mad at Mildred. I climbed down from the sleeping loft and crept out into the shadows of a harvest moon. Luna hung just over the eastern ridge, looking bigger and closer than ever. Her little sister wouldn’t be out till close to dawn that time of year, a black blot sneaking across Luna’s face right before she sat down below the trees. The sounds of the forest, the constant drone of insects, the faraway, lonely call of a coyote, seemed louder in the bright moonlight. I pulled my wool blanket tighter over my shoulders even though it wasn’t all that cold.
The barn silhouette stood out against the tree line, a squat, ugly thing. Not much use anymore. The pigs were gone. The chickens got eaten one by one by coyotes once our dogs disappeared. Just Cleo inside.
And Pa, of course.
Mamma named Cleo. After some lady back in history, in the beginning of the Before. Pa had always said Mama was full of shit, that she made stuff up. That there weren’t no “Before”. The Before was just an old wives’ tale. Ma would clench her jaw and stare at him and he’d shut up. She coulda taken him, I’m pretty sure, being a good head and a half taller and definitely broader. Built kind of like me. I think pa knew she coulda taken him. That’s part of why he was so mean all the time, I think.
Cleo seemed a bit confused when I lead her out and up the path to the winter stall, a ramshackle construction stuffed with straw that leaned against our cottage. Was basically part of the cottage, I suppose. Winters we all kept warm, animals and people, by living under one roof. It wasn’t cold enough yet, but it would be soon enough.
Besides, I was done with the barn.
I went back to the fireplace and stoked the coals, got ‘em good and hot. I lit the end of a thin log and took it out to the barn. Tossed it up into the loft. I tossed the blanket pa gave me into the hay and went back inside.
That old barn burnt to the ground in probably less than ten minutes. Nothing left but smoldering ashes.
Morning snuck up on me, so I must have fallen back asleep sitting at the table, Cleo calling gently from her stall. I climbed out of the chair and stoked the coals to get the fire going. Then I went about the business of another day; milking Cleo, gathering firewood, pulling the last beets from the tiny plot behind the cottage. I knew didn’t have much chance of surviving the winter. I made sure not to think about it.
I’d just come from putting the beets up in the fruit cellar when I saw him. Standing at the edge of the clearing, half hidden in noon shadow under a wide oak. A stranger. Staring at the smoldering ashes of the barn.
“Who are you?” I made sure to make a show of grabbing the shovel that leaned against the rock face of the fruit cellar.
Short and squat, he stepped out of the shadow and into the sun, spit a large gob of tobacco onto the ground between his legs and squinted at me as he said, “Don’t matter none to you. I’m here to see your pa?”
I stood there looking like an idiot.
“Well?”
“He’s out checking the traps. Be back any minute.” Ma had always taught us that strangers were dangerous. Would even have us practice how we’d react in different situations. Pa always said it was a waste of time. Not that strangers weren’t dangerous, that much he’d agreed on. But he said there weren’t no strangers ever gonna make it back to our neck of the woods.
“Bullshit! It’s too late in the day to be checkin’ traplines. Where is he?”
I set my jaw and glared at him, trying to look meaner. Didn’t say nothing.
“You might as well tell me, cause I ain’t leavin’ till I talks to him.”
“Alright. He ain’t checkin’ traps. He’s headed down to the tradin’ post. He’ll be gone at least two weeks.”
“Two weeks? The post ain’t but a two day walk, even less if you ain’t leadin’ a mule. And your pa ain’t got no mule, judging by your barn.” He poked a chin toward the black remains with smoke still curling up.
“Two days?” Pa had always said it was five days of hard walking, each direction. Way too long for us kids to go. And ma had never said nothing about it being closer, either.
“So where’s he hidin’?”
“What you want with him?”
The man glared with dark brown eyes, deep-set in wrinkled skin. He looked old, but hell, everyone looked old in the hills. He spit again, this time like he hated tobacco, like he wanted it out of his mouth as fast as possible. “I’m here to kill him.”
I suppose at some level I always knew, or at least suspected. Sure, I was young and naïve, and wanted my pa to be a good man. He was a good man, sometimes. But underneath his smiles and pats on the head, his hard work making sure we almost had enough to eat, beneath it all lay something horrible, something I tried to ignore, something that the drink would bring out of him. Something I couldn’t deny that day I killed him.
We’d barely finished burying Mildred. Never a strong girl, the Fever took her pretty quick. Three days prior she’d been running through the upper meadow with me, our skirts raised, full of new apples. Healthy and smiling. Now she lay under a few feet of black earth and a puny cairn.
Such was life in the hills.
After we piled on the last rock, pa stood looking at the grave a few minutes, quiet. A dirty finger wiped his eyes.
“Shouldn’t we say something?” I asked.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. It don’t seem right to just walk away. Aren’t you supposed to say something when you bury someone? A prayer or somethin’?”
He pulled his hat off, gave me a squint-eyed look. “You believe in any gods?”
I couldn’t take his staring at me, and looked at my bare feet, toes covered in dirt. “I don’t know.”
“Hell, I sure as shit don’t. If there were a god, shit like this wouldn’t happen.” With that, he turned and stormed off down the path through the box elders, headed toward the house.
I watched him go but didn’t follow. I wasn’t going to just leave Mildred alone in the dirt without saying something.
“Dear God, or gods, or whatever is up there lookin’ down on us.” I didn’t know who to address specifically. We didn’t talk much about religion in our house. “Please take care of Mildred. Somebody has to. She’s a good girl. She was, I mean.” I sighed, tried not to cry but couldn’t help it. I don’t know why I tried not to. I suppose I thought as the last kid left, I had to be strong. Ma was gone. Jack had died of some sort of nasty infection the year before. A simple cut in his leg swelled up and turned blue. Then he died. Now Mildred was gone, too.
It was just me and Pa. At least for a little while longer.
I turned, shuffled back down the slope the way pa had gone. Leaves, green going gold, were already starting to cover the earth. Winter was coming. I shuddered, thinking about it.
Pa had already been drinking since morning, so I wasn’t surprised to see him head up to the loft above the tiny barn. I knew he kept his stash up there, buried in Cleopatra’s hay. Mildred and I had snuck up there a month or so earlier, took one of the jugs and ran out into the thick woods where we wouldn’t be seen. We’d each took a long sip, stared at each other a minute, then sprayed whiskey and spit out across the ferns in a fit of giggling. How could anyone drink the stuff? We’d made a show of making bad faces and spitting until Mildred dropped the jug on the rocks. It’d shattered, of course. We stared at each other, then without a word dug a hole and buried it, wide-eyed and scared about what Pa would do if he found out. No need to promise not to tell. We’d walked back holding hands.
Cleo gave a low, lolling greeting as I peered up, into the darkness. “Pa, should I start heatin’ water for a bath?” Once a week we took baths. Ma’s tradition that Pa only agreed to with a lot of cursing. I don’t know why he complained, he always got to go first, when the water was still hot and still clean.
“We ain’t taking no baths no more. What’s it matter. Ain’t no one ever come here.”
He had a point. In my memory, I could count the number of different visitors we had on one hand. Folks were few and far between in the hills. And the effort it took for visiting just wasn’t worth it. I knew a world existed out there, Ma would tell me about it late at night as we watched the embers smolder in the fireplace. I knew there was cities, places where people lived stacked up on one another and there weren’t trees and bears and wolves. Where you couldn’t even grow food. I knew it, I’d just never seen it.
I also knew there were oceans. Ma would talk of her childhood, with the firelight reflecting in that far away look in her eyes, of wide strips of sand and water as far as you could see, rolling waves, and of being a little girl, standing on the beach, waiting for her father to come home.
Pa would grumble about there being no such thing, then something about having seen a city, and it not being much. Ma would shout over her shoulder at him, short and crisp, about him never seeing anything bigger than a trading post.
They shouted at each other a lot. I suppose that should have been a clue.
But those nights were gone. And so, apparently, were the baths.
“Why don’t you up here a minute, Becky.”
I thought maybe he realized that one of his jugs were gone. I climbed the old ladder and crawled back into the hay. He smelled like sweat and whiskey in the dark closeness of the loft.
“How old is you now, Becky?”
“I don’t know. “
“What do you mean you don’t know? Ma kept track of your birthdays!”
“I know, but mine is somewhere round now, but I ain’t exactly sure. I’m either twelve or thirteen.”
“Almost growed up.”
I nodded, proud and mistaken. “Yep.”
“Almost a woman.” The way he said it scared me. Told me to keep my mouth shut.
“I miss Mildred already.” It wasn’t a lie. And it changed the subject.
“So do I. She was already a woman.”
That certainly didn’t help none, the way he said it, soft and far away. Like the way I’d expect him to talk about Ma. “I guess.”
Mildred had already had her period. She’d had her first one right before ma left, she’d showed me the stains in her breeches, said it’d happen to me in a few years. I kinda hoped not, it didn’t seem right. So I guess she was a woman. I just never saw her in that kind of light.
“C’mon over here and snuggle with your pa a little.” He reached up, held out a hand for me.
I took it. A hug would feel great. Make the world a little less lonely. I would’ve preferred ma or Mildred, but pa would do. He pulled me to him and I snuggled in the hay beside him, head in his chest. He did hug me awhile, in a way that he hadn’t in a long time. Made me feel good and warm.
“You’re growin’ into a beautiful woman, Becky.” He smelled like hot whiskey when he breathed into my face.
Something wasn’t right. I knew I wasn’t pretty. I knew I’d never be pretty. Large and square with hands like a man ain’t pretty, my pa used to say to me. I was stronger than Jack before he died, and he was two years older than me.
“I guess” was all I could mumble as his fingers started stroking my long hair.
“You the only woman in my life, now, Becky.” His lips got too close, right against me ear, and I could feel his hand fumbling with the hem of my dress.
“Pa? Pa? This ain’t right!”
He rolled up over me so I couldn’t move. “C’mon now, Becky. You’ll like it. You’re sister never complained.”
Mildred? I remember her crying sometimes in the middle of the night. We shared blankets and hay in our loft in our tiny house. I’d whisper what was wrong and she’d just roll away. The only secret she kept from me.
Pa started fumbling with his breeches, pressing his greasy head down on my chest so I couldn’t move. I squirmed but he was just too much.
“Pa, ain’t this something you’re supposed to do with your wife? With Ma?”
He stopped his hands, got his eyes so close I could see the red in the corners. “Your ma was a cold, useless woman. Why do you think I got rid of her?”
“Got rid of her?” I managed to whisper. It was hard to talk with his weight on me.
“Sure as shit. She was nothin’ but trouble since the day I bought her. ”
“She didn’t run off?”
He started pulling up my skirt again, trying to get himself in position. “Course not. Not shut your mouth and let me get to it.”
I won’t go into what happened next. There’s no need to talk about things like that. I blocked it out, thinking about Ma. About how she hadn’t run away from her family like pa had said. How she did still love me. I imagined myself a little girl, sitting on her lap by the fire while pa did what he’d been doing to Mildred probably for years.
Once he finished and rolled off he fell into whiskey sleep, snoring so loud it upset Cleo down below. I stood up. Straightened my dress. Grabbed the pitchfork and drove it through his chest.
Chapter 2
I didn’t know what it was that woke me that night. When I opened my eyes with a start, breath coming fast, only the sound of Katydids and the rustle of the wind in the pin-oaks whispered outside. I held my breath and listened for something, anything, out of the ordinary, the inside of our cottage lit up like a silver dream from moonlight seeping through the crack where the wall met the roof.
Then I realized. I heard nothing. That was what woke me up. The sound of nothing. For the first time in my life, no snores or sighs or shifting in the straw filled the room. No miss-matched chorus of deep breathes. Nothing but silence.
I wrapped myself tighter in the old wool blanket Pa’d brought me when I was a tiny girl in pigtails. He’d made a big show of giving it to me as a surprise, pulling it out of his pack and hiding it behind his back as he gave me that big smile of his. A smooth blanket, thick but woven tight, made on something he’d called a loom. He’d traded six red-fox pelts for it. Coulda got tobacco, but got a blanket instead, he’d said.
Pa really tried, sometimes.
‘Course he ignored me the rest of the time. Barely saw me other than to tell me what chores I needed to do. Maybe mumble good mornin’ as he circled the garden on the way to the outhouse. I was alright by that. Mostly.
He’d seemed to at least kind of like Jack. At least he’d spent some time with him, teaching him to hunt and fish. He’d even traded for a nice hunting knife for Jack’s eleventh birthday. He’d always made sure Jack got enough to eat, said he needed it to grow up big and strong. Mildred and I didn’t hold it against Jack; he couldn’t help our pa liked him. And he’d sometimes take something he’d caught and we’d sneak it out in the woods and cook it instead of takin’ it home to pa. Squirrels or rabbits or trout. Those were good days, the three of us around some tiny fire we’d built out in the woods, burning the roofs of our mouths on charred meat and giggling together.
Jack died right about the time Mildred started blossoming. You could always tell she was gonna be pretty, but when the changes started, it had been clear she’d be more than just pretty. She looked nothing like Mama and me. Light hair. Blue eyes. A whole lot more delicate looking. The type of girl that made you happy just looking at her.
All of a sudden pa had started talking to her. Smilin’ at her. Even getting her real shoes. I’d tried not to get jealous; I knew it wasn’t her fault she was so pretty. But it didn’t seem fair, sometimes.
I rolled over and stared at the wall. I really didn’t want to be mad at Mildred. I climbed down from the sleeping loft and crept out into the shadows of a harvest moon. Luna hung just over the eastern ridge, looking bigger and closer than ever. Her little sister wouldn’t be out till close to dawn that time of year, a black blot sneaking across Luna’s face right before she sat down below the trees. The sounds of the forest, the constant drone of insects, the faraway, lonely call of a coyote, seemed louder in the bright moonlight. I pulled my wool blanket tighter over my shoulders even though it wasn’t all that cold.
The barn silhouette stood out against the tree line, a squat, ugly thing. Not much use anymore. The pigs were gone. The chickens got eaten one by one by coyotes once our dogs disappeared. Just Cleo inside.
And Pa, of course.
Mamma named Cleo. After some lady back in history, in the beginning of the Before. Pa had always said Mama was full of shit, that she made stuff up. That there weren’t no “Before”. The Before was just an old wives’ tale. Ma would clench her jaw and stare at him and he’d shut up. She coulda taken him, I’m pretty sure, being a good head and a half taller and definitely broader. Built kind of like me. I think pa knew she coulda taken him. That’s part of why he was so mean all the time, I think.
Cleo seemed a bit confused when I lead her out and up the path to the winter stall, a ramshackle construction stuffed with straw that leaned against our cottage. Was basically part of the cottage, I suppose. Winters we all kept warm, animals and people, by living under one roof. It wasn’t cold enough yet, but it would be soon enough.
Besides, I was done with the barn.
I went back to the fireplace and stoked the coals, got ‘em good and hot. I lit the end of a thin log and took it out to the barn. Tossed it up into the loft. I tossed the blanket pa gave me into the hay and went back inside.
That old barn burnt to the ground in probably less than ten minutes. Nothing left but smoldering ashes.
Morning snuck up on me, so I must have fallen back asleep sitting at the table, Cleo calling gently from her stall. I climbed out of the chair and stoked the coals to get the fire going. Then I went about the business of another day; milking Cleo, gathering firewood, pulling the last beets from the tiny plot behind the cottage. I knew didn’t have much chance of surviving the winter. I made sure not to think about it.
I’d just come from putting the beets up in the fruit cellar when I saw him. Standing at the edge of the clearing, half hidden in noon shadow under a wide oak. A stranger. Staring at the smoldering ashes of the barn.
“Who are you?” I made sure to make a show of grabbing the shovel that leaned against the rock face of the fruit cellar.
Short and squat, he stepped out of the shadow and into the sun, spit a large gob of tobacco onto the ground between his legs and squinted at me as he said, “Don’t matter none to you. I’m here to see your pa?”
I stood there looking like an idiot.
“Well?”
“He’s out checking the traps. Be back any minute.” Ma had always taught us that strangers were dangerous. Would even have us practice how we’d react in different situations. Pa always said it was a waste of time. Not that strangers weren’t dangerous, that much he’d agreed on. But he said there weren’t no strangers ever gonna make it back to our neck of the woods.
“Bullshit! It’s too late in the day to be checkin’ traplines. Where is he?”
I set my jaw and glared at him, trying to look meaner. Didn’t say nothing.
“You might as well tell me, cause I ain’t leavin’ till I talks to him.”
“Alright. He ain’t checkin’ traps. He’s headed down to the tradin’ post. He’ll be gone at least two weeks.”
“Two weeks? The post ain’t but a two day walk, even less if you ain’t leadin’ a mule. And your pa ain’t got no mule, judging by your barn.” He poked a chin toward the black remains with smoke still curling up.
“Two days?” Pa had always said it was five days of hard walking, each direction. Way too long for us kids to go. And ma had never said nothing about it being closer, either.
“So where’s he hidin’?”
“What you want with him?”
The man glared with dark brown eyes, deep-set in wrinkled skin. He looked old, but hell, everyone looked old in the hills. He spit again, this time like he hated tobacco, like he wanted it out of his mouth as fast as possible. “I’m here to kill him.”
