The Den

by Abi Maxwell

  “Why else would you come to see me,” he said while it was happening. And while she writhed beneath him, “That’s good, I like it this way.”

  Which gave her an idea, somehow. Just a little way to survive. She had read about it in one of the journals her neighbor subscribed to. Just focus herself right out of existence, that was the task. Instead of this whole reality, just choose one piece. The bit of nail that stuck up higher than the rest and rubbed now into the base of her back. Just let her entire body fall into that cold, hard irregularity in the floor. Enter that feeling and no other.

  When he was done with her he must have pulled her down the stairs, though she doesn’t remember the descent. He opened the front door and pushed her out and at the edge of the porch she fell and tumbled down the three steps.

  “Mama?”

  Her middle boy. To the others she was only Mother, but Mama always to her middle one. The one who still wanted to fall asleep with his nose buried in her neck, his face covered with her hair.

  Behind her, the door to the house had already closed. She stood herself up. My basket, she thought. Despite all else, she suddenly thought of how she had loved that picnic basket and that she would never see it again. She smoothed her dress. Evan. There he was. Her dear. Just here in front of her. Couldn’t know what had happened. Couldn’t possibly be able to tell.

  “Mama?”

  She leaned over and retched in the snow, and then she stood back up and she said, “Do not tell your father.”

  “What did that man do to you?” he asked.

  “What man?”

  They were headed up the hill now. Almost to the spot where they would turn off into the woods, onto their own path. She was shaking. “Enough,” she said, when her son asked again.

  When they reached their front door he gathered a bundle of wood from the makeshift shed to carry in and then he said, without looking at her, “I am not a child, you know.”

  * * *

  —

  She slept for three days. It snowed three feet. Evan tended to her. He told the others she had a fever. On the third day, she stood up. She said to him, “I am better now.” They cooked a pot of chicken soup together, and while the other boys tramped back and forth in their snowshoes to make the path to the road passable, the two of them worked on their Well-Well Mountain Island drawings. She thought, as they drew together, that they had never drawn people on the island, and maybe it was time to introduce them. She asked him if she ought to and he looked up at her, pen in hand, mouth hung open, eyes somehow drooped in a way she had never seen before.

  “Stupid idea,” she said. “I’m sorry I even mentioned it.”

  They kept on, drawing and drawing the entire day, and at the end of it she decided they should hang some of their pictures on the wall.

  “Now you’ve really lost it,” her husband said playfully, and he helped them to nail an entire row of Well-Well Mountain Island pictures across the kitchen.

  She slept better that night, less fitfully. But in the morning she woke before the mill bell to a freezing-cold house, but then there was something more, too. It took her only a moment to realize what. It was that strange, loud silence—Evan. His breathing was missing.

  Right away she knew where to find him. Her husband was still asleep, and the other two boys. She pulled on her boots and coat and she ran. Thank god her sons had made that path through the snow to the road.

  Not a week before, Evan had beamed while he told the family of the odd schedule the new mill owner had pledged to adopt for himself. He had found it so oddly industrious. Of course Evan would be the one to know the schedule in the first place; of course he would be the one to have asked the questions. John Smith had a new plan. After the New Year he had moved a cot into the mill, and while everyone else was home he was there, pacing the silent floors, thinking, taking notes, envisioning a mill run twenty-four hours a day. Every three hours he would lie on the cot for one hour’s rest. Evan had thought it grand, such passion and drive.

  Evan. The sun had not yet risen by the time Elspeth reached the small bridge that led into town. From that bridge, she stopped to look around, and it was then that her sensation of fear was replaced with that of immense cold. She could have frozen right there in the shadow of the mill. She almost wanted to. But then the back door to the mill slammed shut and she watched as John Smith chased her boy away from the building.

  “Evan!” Elspeth shouted. Her boy. He had been born breach and they had thought he would die, but he had lived. She ran up the back street toward him, and as she did it felt as though the echo of every single step of hers rushed up the side of the building and circled back down, encompassing her. “Evan!” she shouted again. He had been caught. The man had her boy by the shoulders, but hearing her voice, he turned. “Evan!” she shouted, and John Smith let go of him. She was twenty feet away, maybe thirty, and her boy had started to move in her direction. It was still not yet dawn, but it felt as though the cold made the dark glow. “Run!” she called, and just at that moment, as though he had misunderstood the command, Elspeth watched as Evan suddenly turned back toward John Smith, ran, and with incomprehensible force slammed his body into the man. John Smith tumbled forward, onto the snowbank, slipped on the ice, fell, and regained his footing. Elspeth expected him to go back for her son after that, but he retreated up to the top of the small snowbank above the river. Now he stood there towering over her boy, ready to pounce. “Evan!” Elspeth shouted. John Smith looked up toward her, and Evan grabbed his opportunity. He ran up the bank and once again slammed his full weight into the man. John Smith stumbled backward and fell. Elspeth did not hear a sound as she watched the new mill owner’s body tumble down the embankment, over the dam, and into the gushing, ice-laden river.

  “Evan,” she said, approaching him. She reached out, touched her mittened hand to his face. There was no evidence of what he had done, none but the atmosphere. It seemed to have inverted itself, overcome now by some dark absence.

  And yes, now that she looked around, there was in fact some evidence. Footprints in the snow, clearly a scuffle, anyone would see that. She ran her feet back and forth over the tracks, and then, fearing her prints would be traceable, she lay right down in the snow and rolled back and forth in a fury. It wasn’t until she tried to stand back up that she realized just how cold it really was. Her knees, she could scarcely bend them, and her fingers might as well have been cut off. She could not get up. It was like a nightmare in which she opened her mouth and could not scream. She held out her arm.

  “Help me,” she mouthed to her son. The mill bell would ring soon. “Help me,” she said again, and this time some sound came out, and he seemed to wake up. He looked straight at her. She said, “Do you want them to hunt us like wolves? Do you want them to hang our pelts in the center of town?”

  That did it. He pulled her arm and she rose, returning from her paralyzed state. Together they each put one foot in front of the other, faster and then faster still, and soon they had run down the length of the mill and crossed the bridge back to their road. Had they stopped to look, would they have seen the body running downstream beneath them? Or perhaps some blood? She led her son directly to Josiah Bartlett’s house. Didn’t even knock, just ran straight in and screamed his name.

  “Elspeth,” he said, coming down the stairs in his gown, a candle held before him. “Elspeth, my lord. It’s freezing. What’s happened?”

  “We have killed John Smith,” she said.

  “Mama,” her boy said. “Mama, no.”

  “I don’t know,” she said frantically. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Is it true?” Mr. Bartlett asked, but they did not answer. “How?” he tried. “Will they be able to find him?” When still they did not answer, Mr. Bartlett gathered her hands into his own. “I will keep your family safe,” he said. “Tell me now.”

  “You
won’t,” Elspeth said. “You can’t possibly.”

  “There are places a person can go,” Mr. Bartlett said without looking up at her. “There are ways to hide a person.”

  “I thought he would be sleeping,” Evan said.

  “And he was not?”

  “The dam,” Elspeth said now, unsure why she hadn’t said it straightaway. “He’s been pushed over the dam.”

  “It was I,” the boy said quickly.

  “You’ve got to leave,” Mr. Bartlett said. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”

  For a moment Elspeth thought he meant out of his house. She thought he meant to push them out onto the street and lock the door behind them. But instead he scribbled an address of a church in the West and handed the slip of paper to her. “I have a sister there. She and her husband,” he said. “They are good people.”

  “How will we get there?” she asked.

  “I will take you now to the city. From there you will catch a train.”

  “There is a train here.”

  “You can’t be seen.”

  “I don’t have the money,” she said. “My husband hasn’t the money.”

  At this her old friend went to his office and returned with a spread of blue fabric bound tightly around a stack of money. She peeked inside, said, “God, no,” and then, knowing she had no other option, tucked it against her breast.

  “Hurry,” he said.

  “He can’t have died quickly,” her son said vacantly.

  * * *

  —

  She took the path across his field, over the stone wall. The mill bell rang just as they entered the woods, its sound so clear it was as though she could see it. Already it seemed the temperature had dropped some ten degrees since she’d found her son. It seemed she could see their breath freeze before them. The top layer of snow had gone completely solid, too, so that their feet would not break through even if they stomped.

  “Water,” she said to Evan as they neared the well house. “You need a drink.” She turned to head that way, but he told her that surely the water would be frozen, and anyway that they didn’t have the time, and he was right. Just as their dark house came into view her husband came out the door. It was Friday, and though he hadn’t been called back to work yet he was going to see if maybe he wasn’t needed to keep things running on this freezing day. In the dim haze of dawn he saw his wife and son and he smiled wide. This is his last moment, Elspeth thought, and it turned out it was more or less true. She would never see him stand there so wide open, so free again.

  “There you are,” he said thankfully. “I was worried.”

  “We have killed a man,” she said right away. No need to prolong it. No time, either. She couldn’t believe how plainly it came out. “We have killed John Smith.”

  * * *

  —

  They packed only one bag—just enough food, just enough dry clothes. Her oldest stood at the door of their small house telling them to hurry, telling them the temperature would not stop dropping.

  “It is not natural,” he told them, and Elspeth understood what he meant. There seemed to be no limit to it, as though the earth itself were falling into some cold, bottomless pit. Still, Elspeth went to the cupboard, removed paper, pen, and ink. The ink was frozen, so she found herself starting a fire and huddling before it in order to write. Her husband came to her, told her to quit, told her she had lost her mind, but she would not listen. Mr. Bartlett might know this town and also know how to hide a person, but Elspeth would not ever forget those men’s hungry, smiling eyes as they’d hung pelts in the street. She would not forget the beasts they could become. She called to Evan, who stood shivering before the wall of Well-Well Mountain Island drawings. He came, and she instructed him to hold her ink. The task seemed to steady him.

  “What on earth?” her husband asked, furious.

  Her nostrils were columns of ice. She could no longer feel her hands, could not even open her palm to let go of the pen. She did not look at the words she wrote, just moved forward, singleminded before the ink refroze. She asked them all, “Are there still any wolves around?”

  “Elspeth,” her husband demanded, but knowing he was powerless, he answered her question. Told her they claimed to have killed the last one just last month. “A final bounty of thirty dollars, you remember,” he said.

  “Is there another animal like them, then?” she asked.

  “Dogs?” her youngest said.

  “Dogs are pets.”

  “Foxes?”

  “No.”

  “Bobcats?”

  “No.”

  Finally Evan tilted his head up toward her and said lightly, “Coyotes?”

  “What’s a coyote?” she asked.

  “It’s that journal of the West he loves,” her oldest called from the door. “Commerce of the Prairies. It says there’s a different kind of wolf. Coyote is the name.” He spoke calmly, and she understood that he was doing this with all his strength, that he believed his mother had lost her mind and that his acquiescence would be their quickest path to escape. So be it, she had a purpose. She said, “Tell me quickly what you know about them.”

  “Bloodshot eyes,” her oldest said. “That’s what Melville says, I think. I think they’re the same as prairie wolves.”

  “Well, what do they eat?” she demanded.

  “Scavengers, I guess. Eat anything.”

  She wrote and wrote. Her family yelled at her, but it didn’t take long. When the freezing rain started her oldest demanded she come, and finally she listened. She folded up the papers and tucked them against her breast, alongside the money. The dim morning light that had arrived less than an hour ago had vanished again, and so had the moon. Elspeth rose and crossed the room, but Evan did not follow her.

  “Come now,” she said to him, but he wouldn’t move. “Evan,” she said. Her husband looked at her and shook his head. He went to the boy, picked him up. Immediately the boy’s arms and legs wrapped around his father, and his face sunk into his father’s neck. In this way the two of them walked out. Elspeth was the last to leave. The cold air hit her like a wall. She turned against it and closed her door for the last time. Next she walked to the shed, took up one small log in each hand, and threw them at each of their two windows, breaking the glass in.

  “Elspeth!” her husband yelled, Evan still in his arms. She told him to quiet, and then she stomped in front of him and led her whole family away from their home.

  * * *

  —

  In the barn, Mr. Bartlett had already suited up his horses.

  “Cover yourselves,” he told them as they climbed into the cart. “Every inch,” he said, and then, once they were all settled, he walked around the cart to make sure that not a spot of them was visible. Surely his care was in part due to the temperature; it was already so far below freezing. But as he took his seat, Elspeth heard him talking to himself. Just out to deliver extra hay to the Johnsons, he was saying. Animals liable to die without it in this cold snap. A little rehearsal. She understood. It was just in case they should meet someone on the road.

  But there was no one, not the entire way. They reached their destination at around noon. The temperature was some 30 degrees below. Truly a wonder that Mr. Bartlett survived up there in front, driving the horses through the frozen world. When they were stopped completely he came around and drew the blankets off of them, then pointed and ran against the cold into the station to purchase their tickets. When he returned to them, he stood before Elspeth to tell her the next step, but it was as though the ungodly cold had frozen their ears, or words. She could not hear him. It took three tries before she understood: All the trains had stopped; they would have to spend the night.

  “You go,” Elspeth said, her voice high and loud against the cold.

  “I can’t go back in this.”
/>
  “You can’t be with us,” she yelled. “Goodbye.” She gathered her boys one by one, even her husband, and nudged them into a herd. All of them too frozen and shocked to protest. Then, before pushing them along toward the nearest hotel, she turned to the neighbor one last time and from the folds of her dress she removed the pages she had written. She handed them to him and leaned in close and gave him his instructions, and then she returned to her family.

  “Elspeth!” he called, but she would not turn back.

  PART THREE

  Henrietta

  SHE HAD wanted to go to Montana, but it turned out she wasn’t ready for all the effort it would take to get there. Instead, at the bus station, she asked how far the next bus was going, and the woman said, “Depends which direction.”

  “North,” the girl had said, and Bangor, Maine, was the answer.

  “Is it a big city?” the girl asked.

  The woman shrugged. “It’s way the hell up there,” she said.

  “I will give you one thousand dollars if you do not tell that you ever saw me,” the girl said plainly. She hadn’t planned to say this, but it had suddenly struck her as a necessity. She was so cold. Cold right down inside her bones.

  “Where does a girl like you get that kind of money?” The woman looked her over. “Up to no good, written all over you,” she said.