“You come along, didn’t you?” He reset the trap, weighted it in the water, climbed the bank, took the mink from her, and clipped its rear paw to his belt.
They walked in silence, Tom Hardin stopping every few yards to inspect the brush or the path, Rose Ella lost in the landscape. She loved this country in flood: the wide flat expanse of muddy water, spreading almost to the feet of the knobby hills, filling sloughs and hollows, giving places she knew as well as she knew this countryside a look of foreignness, as if this were another country that she was wandering through, she a traveling woman from some foreign land instead of plain old Rose Ella Perlite, who had picked blackberries in every one of these hollows and who knew the exact location of every generous-limbed hickory or black walnut in this end of the county.
And here she was with Tom Hardin, who dealt regularly with travelers from the most exotic places, which she could only imagine from her Saturday matinees at the Mary Anderson. Her curiosity got the better of the silent treatment—it was her weakness and she knew it, but if a girl was to go into the world she needed some idea of what she was getting into. “You have much truck with those buyers from New York?” she asked.
“As little as I can get away with.”
“Tell me what they look like.”
“Well, they’re short—”
“No, I don’t mean that. I mean, what kind of clothes they wear.”
“They wear minks,” Tom Hardin said. “Lots of minks. Think about how many minks it takes to make a knee-length coat. And then multiply that by a hundred, by a thousand, by ten thousand. That’s how many minks they wear. And two-tone shoes, look like they ran out of the right color halfway through.” He scratched his head. “That’s what sticks in my mind.”
“They come down here, they must think they’re visiting the back side of the moon.”
“They come down here to screw us over and we turn up our tails and ask where. You come into the warehouse with a pile of fur, they cut the price by a third, what are you going to do? Throw it back in the creek? ‘Oh, Mr. Hardin, but look at this bald patch.’ ‘Oh, Mr. Hardin, fox is out this year, we can’t use that fox.’ It’s city folks against country folks and the deck stacked as usual. If fur was the only thing they wanted out of us, we’d be up shit creek without a paddle.”
“So what else do they want?”
“I’ll give you two guesses and the first two don’t count.” When she didn’t answer he pulled the whiskey from his knapsack and held it out to her. “How ’bout a hint.”
“I told you I don’t drink in the morning.”
Tom Hardin squinted at the overcast sky. “Could be high noon, for all I can tell.” He took a long pull, recorked the bottle and tucked it away, moved on down the path.
“I’d love to go to New York,” she said, mostly to irritate him; judging from the movies she’d seen, California was more her kind of place.
“You’d last about as long as one of them would out here.”
“I’d last longer than you.”
“That I do not doubt.” He dropped to his knees. “I should have a fox set about here.” He peered around in the brush. “You’re damned lucky to get a fox, especially a red fox. They’re loners, and smart as they come. You save some piss from a fox you’ve killed and sprinkle that around to cover up your smell and attract the others.” He held up the trap. “Sprung, dammit. With a red fox you have to set a whole new trap—they mark the ones they’ve sprung and won’t be a fox near it for a month.”
She handed him the trap she’d been carrying since leaving the truck. He took it, wrapped it in a rag, tucked it in his knapsack. “Covered with your smell. A fox’ll figure out that scent and follow it from one trap to the next. He’ll spring ever’ last one of ’em and then piss on ’em to rub your face in it. He’s a gambler, he’s got to do it—it’s in his blood. He’s probably running ahead of us right now, springing them one by one and laughing at us while he does it.” He took a fresh trap from the knapsack, set it in place, patted dirt around its edges, sprayed it from a bottle he carried in the sack.
The wind picked up, scraping tree limbs together and rattling the red-orange bittersweet and dried brown milkweed pods. Above the wind’s sigh, from across the swollen river, she heard a moan—something between the scream of a locomotive and the bellowing of cattle. Patch froze, hackles rising on his back, hind legs trembling. Rose Ella knew that sound, but Tom Hardin knew it faster. Already he had whipped a choke chain from his knapsack and fastened it around Patch’s neck. “At least this time I come prepared,” he said. He tossed her one end of the chain. “Hang on tight. Some city folks have moved in across the river with a whole pack of bitches, all of ’em in heat so far as I can tell. Last time I was down here I had to use a chain from one of my traps to tie Patch to a tree just so I could finish my rounds, and even then by the time I got back he’d all but chewed through the damn trunk.”
“So what’s wrong with letting him run loose?” She waved at the churning brown stripe of water. “It’s not like he can jump across.”
“For a girl that claims she just shot a whole flock of chickens you’re pretty damned ignorant.”
“Axed,” Rose Ella said.
“What’s that?”
“I didn’t shoot them, stupid. That’s for cowards. I chopped off their heads. Besides,” she said, mocking him, “if you shot them you’d fill all the meat with buckshot, and if you filled all the meat with buckshot what good would that do? Hmm?” She tilted her head and pouted her lips in a half grin of triumph. He turned away, but not before she caught the ripple of anger that tightened his jawline.
Tom Hardin walked down the path (retreat, was how Rose Ella thought of it). “You don’t mess around with a river in flood,” Tom Hardin said. “You don’t mess around with love. Love is a flood,” he said. “It’s got to have its way. The weak and foolish it bowls over, the strong and smart hold out longer but it grabs you by your roots and in the end it all comes to the same.”
“That’s not love.”
“Well, pardon me.” He turned around to face her. “You got a better name for it?” She blushed. “Go on, I’m interested.”
Anger triumphed over modesty. “That’s sex. Like two dogs rutting in the road.”
“And have you ever had sex, like two dogs rutting in the road?”
“I can’t believe I’m standing here listening to this.”
Now it was his turn to grin. “So keep walking, Miss Priss.” He moved down the path, thrashing at the broomsage and blackberry canes with his stick. “Your time will come.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because you’re a pretty woman and you want it to happen, and pretty women usually get what they want. Or hadn’t you noticed.”
“What a talker.”
“That’s OK. You just hold on to that dog.”
The clouds began to spit snow, and before they reached the next trap a fine white powder covered the path. Across the river the mournful howling rose and fell—Rose Ella thought of the coal freight that came through the valley, whose moaning whistle you could hear now more, now less distinctly as it passed across the wide open flatness of a trestle or through a dense clump of trees. Patch strained at the leash, whining through clenched teeth. “If that wouldn’t drive you crazy,” she had to say aloud. “You’d think they’d breed them or spay them, one.”
“They’re from Louisville, they ain’t got the sense,” Tom Hardin said. “They spend as much time yelling at each other as at the dogs. You stop for a second when the wind is blowing right and you’ll hear the old man after his wife, or her after him, or both of ’em after the son, and all of ’em after the dogs in between. I’ll be sorry to see that bridge come through, and not just for what it’ll do to the trapping. We get along just fine with a river in between, and the wider the better.”
They were near the river itself now—she smelled its cold wetness and the mud. The path descended a steep, wooded limestone cliff to snak
e along the curves and oxbows of the flooded banks. They passed landmarks—two massive white oaks, all that remained of the farm where Rose Ella’s father had grown up; a creek that her father spoke of fording on his brother’s back, and that Rose Ella and Tom Hardin and Patch crossed using a log that the flood had lodged in place.
Another quarter-mile and they came to a carcass of a town. A vast grist mill stood at the river’s edge; the river funneled one turbulent arm through the remains of a sluice. But the millstone was gone, and thick water slid past and over the windowsills of the mill store and post office and church, all tilting drunkenly toward the water as if anticipating the flood’s carrying them away.
“My father talks about when his folks ran a whole town here,” Rose Ella said. “Well. A little town.”
The river rolled brownly by.
“All that work,” she said.
She hung back, letting Tom Hardin gain ground. With sunrise the sky was clearing and the wind was picking up, blowing now from the northwest, from across the river, and she wanted to listen. She cocked her head—she heard only the dogs’ howling and the slipping and sliding gurgle of the water—unless those punctuating sounds were people yelling. She wouldn’t believe it. Nobody she knew argued like that—at least, no man and woman, and not practically at dawn. She would sooner believe in ghosts. A chill seized up her shoulders—someone walking over her grave, she told herself, though it could just as easily have been the yelp and yowl from the far riverbank or the brass-bra cold. She tugged at the leash—Patch was still straining toward the river—she looped the chain around her hand and dragged him along, to catch up with Tom Hardin.
They crested a small rise, to hear above the wind’s whistling a thrashing in the brush. Patch froze. His ears pricked up, he focused his eyes and nose on the path ahead. Tom Hardin quickened his step. Patch lunged the length of the chain, pulling her along.
The fox was almost invisible against the golden broomsage. He saw them and lay back, baring his teeth, not moving until they were almost upon him. Then he lunged with a high-pitched growl. In midair he reached the length of the trap’s tether. He jerked and fell to the ground.
Patch was feinting, dancing, barking at the end of his chain. Tom Hardin spoke a sharp word. Patch looked doubtful. “Sit, dammit!” Tom Hardin said. Patch lowered his haunches to the frozen earth. Tom Hardin waved Rose Ella forward. “Move around to the other side. Give the dog just enough slack to get the fox’s attention.”
She edged around. The fox leapt at her; she jumped back, scraping her pants on the thorns of last summer’s blackberry briars and teasel. “What if he bites?”
Tom Hardin set his lips in a tight line. “I’ll call a doctor. You don’t let him bite. Stay on your toes and out of his reach, and that goes for Patch too. Make the fox come at you. I’ll take care of the rest.”
She stepped forward, paying out the choke chain that held Patch from tangling with the fox. The dog stood on his hind legs, straining at the chain and barking furiously, a deep bass bark counterbalanced by the high-pitched screams of the fox and underscored by the moaning from the hounds across the river, rising now in intensity and pitch.
The fox lunged again. She held her ground. Tom Hardin raised his walking stick. Stepping in, he struck from behind, a solid blow just behind the fox’s jaw. The fox slumped at her feet. Tom Hardin placed his boot behind the fox’s skull and stepped forward. Over Patch’s barks, over the howling from across the river she heard the sharp crunch of the fox’s delicate neck.
For a moment they stood silent while the snow fell, dusting the fox’s thick ruddy coat. From its mouth a thin trickle of bright scarlet stained the snow. In the dull daylight its eyes glittered, still hot with rage.
Then Tom Hardin pulled out his flask. “Shit fire!” he cried. “That’s no mean job, trapping a fox. Look at that coat.” He took a long pull from his pint, threw his arms around her, kissed her hard on the mouth. “You done good, pistol. Here, take a drink.” He held out the pint to her.
Later she would convince herself (it would be very much later before she and Tom Hardin spoke to each other of this day) that she just forgot she was holding Patch. In a way it had been Tom Hardin’s fault—he offered her the pint; she loosened her grip on the chain to take it; Patch pulled free.
A simple enough excuse except that she wasn’t really a drinker and had no intention of drinking at what was practically the break of dawn. Rose Ella never saw much need to remind Tom Hardin of that particular fact, nor did she see much need for herself to recall it, though in the way of such things it returned across the years of its own accord, as clearly as the image of the frozen mink suspended under the water or of Patch’s broken body.
And now Patch was gone, a white-and-black half-breed bullet across the snow-flecked field, and Tom Hardin after him just as quick, his whiskey dropped in the snow. Rose Ella had no idea such a big man could move so fast. He leapt bushes, scrambled over a small ravine, plunged through briars, stumbled across the frozen ridges of last fall’s plowing, but Patch got to the river first, and then he was in it. Tom Hardin dropped his pack and splashed in after him—Rose Ella winced when he hit that cold, brown water—up to his knees, and only the tangle of driftwood and briars kept him from going farther. He stood there, muddy water swirling around his legs, crying as if his heart would break. “Patch! Patch!”
She watched the dog’s piebald head; she saw him caught up—not pulled under. Then his head jerked back—the choke chain, probably, wrapped around some underwater stump. She saw bearing down on him the floating sycamore trunk, saw it push him along, his paws flailing at its speckled girth; pushing him closer to the shore, into an eddy where maybe Tom Hardin could reach him, until she saw it crush him against the gate of a half-submerged fence. In the stillness of this morning (what happened to the howling from the dogs across the river? this is where her mind went, not wanting to think about what she had done and why she’d done it, this is where her thoughts were as she was watching Patch go under), in the stillness she heard for the second time that morning the crunch of breaking bone, and the dog’s single sharp cry. The log rolled past Patch, around and over his head, a lazy, unconcerned, indifferent rolling, and then it was drifting downstream, leaving Patch hung against the gate, unmoving.
By the time Rose Ella reached the river’s edge Tom Hardin was splashing through the water—up to his waist now, he was not so much walking as wafted along by eddies in the current. He caught Patch, slipped the chain from his neck, half-floated, half-carried him to the shore and into the field, where he fell to his knees and laid him out in the frozen mud. His hands passed over the dog—big, callused, competent hands, and to her everlasting humbleness Rose Ella Perlite felt rising within her that same hot swell that she’d felt earlier that morning when Tom Hardin had snapped off his walking stick. What would it mean, to have hands like those pass over her body in exactly that way?
“He’s still living,” she said, to say something.
“You could say that.” Tom Hardin did not look up.
“I didn’t let him go.” The falseness in her voice prodded her to spill some small part of the truth. “I mean, I might have wanted to, but I didn’t.”
“And why the hell did you want that.”
“Because I didn’t believe he would go for the river. I thought he was smarter than that.”
“Like smartness has anything to do with it.” He stumbled to his feet, scrabbled in his knapsack, stuck a pistol in her hand. “Shoot him. Go ahead, dammit. He’s no good for a hunter anymore and pet dogs are a dime a dozen. Or you can carry him home and play nurse. He’s yours and I hope he lives to enjoy it. It’s up to you.” He clipped the fox to his belt and stalked away.
Alone with Patch. She studied the gun, studied the dog—his glazed eyes, the jerky rise and fall of his chest—broken ribs, probably, and a broken leg for certain, a compound break, the bone’s ragged edge cutting into his chest, striated layerings of muscle visible through the to
rn flesh. But not much blood, not yet. With help she might get him back to the truck alive. If he lived through that (not likely), then with a lot of help and a lot more luck she might nurse him back to some kind of three-legged health. Or she could leave him lying—something would get him within the hour. Turkey vultures at least, or bobcats, or just plain shock and cold.
She knelt, checked the magazine, put the pistol to his head, closed her eyes, pulled the trigger, felt the pistol’s recoil in her arm and somewhere deeper.
Among the debris cast up by the flood she found some rags and waterlogged cardboard, not much but enough to wrap around the dog’s body. On her way back she tripped over the pint, which still held a slug of whiskey. She lay Patch on the ground, raised the pint to the sky, made a wordless wish, downed it in a gulp. Then she gathered the dog into her arms and carried him to the truck.
Almost there and she met Tom Hardin. “I’ll be damned,” he said. He turned back. At the truck he opened the tailgate.
“Get out of my way.” She heaved the dog, heedless of her clothes—she was covered with blood—into the truck. Where had she found such strength? She slammed the tailgate shut, tossed him the gun—she hoped it went off in his face. “Get me home, you goddamn son of a bitch.”
Tom Hardin climbed into the cab, gunning the accelerator and shoving the truck into gear before she had her door closed.
They climbed a steep grade to sail wordlessly along the stony spine of an ancient ridge. Below and to either side fog filled the hollows, pillowing white; overhead the sun pierced the clouds in patches of blinding blue. Caught and refracted in every ice-rimed branch and twig, a million brilliant suns dazzled their silence, and in that silence, in the avalanching memory of Tom Hardin’s careless, heedless, headlong run and the sure touch of his oversized hands, Rose Ella Perlite understood that here was a man with whom she had been called upon to reckon.
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