Wearing the uniform, Nick returned home later that evening, when he knew his father would be there. He rang the doorbell and waited on the front porch as if he were only a visitor, a stranger. Then it occurred to him that he was an unwelcome visitor, an unwanted stranger. This had never been his home, but rather a place where he ate, slept, urinated, and defecated.
His mother opened the door. She wore her typical frown. Inattentively, she asked, “Can I help you?”
Nick cleared his throat.
His mother did a double take. “Is this some kind of joke? Get in here before the neighbors see you.”
“Yes, ma’am, it is me, Private Nicholas Eliot. And furthermore, I hope the neighbors do see me.”
“This isn’t Halloween, and you’re too old for dress-up.” She hesitated. “Don’t call me ma’am.” She pushed open the door. “Inside. Now.”
“No thank you, ma’am,” Nick said.
She stomped her foot. “Stop playing games.”
His father came to the door. “Nicholas? What the hell is going on? Why are you dressed in a uniform?”
“I’ve enlisted in the army.”
“So you’ve joined the imperialist military?” his father said sarcastically. “Well, isn’t that smart. I knew you didn’t have any common sense.”
His mother’s jaw hung slack, and her dull eyes darted back and forth between Nick and her husband. This was precisely the expression Nick had hoped for.
“What about your things, son?” his father asked. If Nick hadn’t known better, he would’ve thought his father didn’t want him to leave. “Your clothes, your music albums, your posters, your books.”
His father hadn’t referred to him as “son” in twelve years.
Nick stared into his father’s eyes. Did this man really care about him, or was this an act, intended to break Nick down?
“Do what you want with them,” Nick said. “I came to say goodbye. I’ll find a place to crash until I head out for basic training.”
His father said, “Don’t do this, son. Please. Come back inside, and we’ll talk.”
“Negative.”
“The army takes a man’s mind and body.”
“Let him go,” his mother said. “I’ll make his room into an art studio. I’ve been waiting forever to get back to my crafts.”
Before his father could say another word, his mother stormed away.
Nope. He definitely wasn’t coming back, but at least he had respect enough to tell his parents goodbye, even if they didn’t wish him well. Good riddance.
CHAPTER 19
After Nick and Margo built a fire near the entrance to the snow shed, Nick took the hare from the plastic bag. What amazing presence of mind on his part to have grabbed a pan and a table knife and a spoon from the passenger-car kitchen. Even better, in Nick’s hands, the utensils doubled as makeshift weapons. What were the odds that a person sitting in the viewing car would be a former member of the Special Forces? If Nick were some ordinary guy, they wouldn’t be eating wild hare for an afternoon meal. They would be lying dead with the other passengers, buried under tons of snow.
He removed the animal’s entrails, but left its extremities and head intact. Using the knife, he made an incision across the horizontal plane of the hare’s back and slipped a finger underneath the skin. He pulled the skin apart a couple of inches. With his bare hands, he twisted the feet until the bones snapped and then cut off the paws. He grasped the head and twisted until the spine snapped. He separated the head from the torso using the sheer strength of his hands, and through the incision, he pulled off the rest of the skin.
Though he was adept with survival skills, it was still remarkable how he was able to cut through flesh and bone with a dull knife. He and Margo had spent hours together, mostly in crisis mode, and it was clear how he operated in a disaster. That said a lot about his abilities as a soldier. But what did she know about him as a person?
“Have you always been a hunter?” she asked as he placed the meat in the pan and set it over the fire. “Who took you, your father?”
He looked annoyed. Somehow, she’d gone too far. “I’ve hunted since I was a teenager,” he replied as he began butchering the meat. “There was a boy in the neighborhood, Donnie Hollis, who used to murder animals. His idea of fun. Went from field mice to squirrels. He eventually got caught by the authorities when he started killing the neighborhood cats, including his mother’s. He liked to skin them, tack the remains to the trees in odd configurations, and then he’d put them where people could see his work, even the little kids. Said he was warding off the gods of evil, or performing voodoo rituals, or whatever. Story changed depending on his mood. He thought he was part Native American. He wasn’t.”
Her skin prickled. What did that have to do with his history as a hunter? Why hadn’t he stopped at teenager? There was no reason for him to describe something out of a scene from a bad horror film. Did he want to shock her, to make her uncomfortable? Why? If Nick wasn’t making this all up, did he have a hand in those ritual killings? She didn’t dare ask. The answer would be meaningless. An insane person would say yes. An evil yet rational person would lie and say no. For her own protection, her own sanity, she resolved to assume that Nick had no involvement in the gruesome business. She needed to trust him. The alternative was too terrifying. Whatever her thoughts, she was vulnerable.
She looked at the deep scars on his face. Though curious, she wouldn’t ask about those either. He’d been a combat soldier. Answer enough.
“Hugo Manning, the owner of a gun and tackle shop where I worked as a kid, taught me to hunt,” he continued, as if his thoughts had gotten back on track. “Hugo said there were only two reasons to kill an animal. One is to eat, and the other is to defend yourself. Killing for sport is wrong, an insult to nature. When my son is born, I’ll teach him the same.”
“Not your daughter?”
“My daughter too. I knew this soldier who …” He shook his head, as if catching himself. “Feminism or not, it’s still true that most girls don’t like to hunt the way boys do.”
“That’s a generalization.”
“Do you like to hunt, Margo?”
“No.”
“How about your sisters?”
“They don’t hunt either.” She didn’t add that her father, although a former naval officer, didn’t have the hunting gene either.
He twisted his lips into what at first she thought was a rare smile but on second thought might’ve been a smirk.
Flames flared up along the side of the pan. The meat crackled and sizzled. She’d never eaten rabbit, had always been a bit squeamish about it, but now nothing had ever smelled better. Hunger altered taste, that was certain.
“How’d you catch the …” She started to say rabbit, but that reminded her of a cute bunny who’d lived in their backyard. “The hare?”
“Luckily, the snowfall let up long enough for me to follow fresh tracks in the snow, which led me to its hideout.”
“A warren, they call it?”
He shook his head. “Rabbits live in warrens. Hares live above ground and prefer thicker underbrush for cover, which makes them easier to snare.”
“Very impressive.”
“Hugo was a good teacher.”
They paused, the anticipation of consuming the food growing. Her stomach growled, then she bent forward and sighed.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Baby okay?”
She nodded. “I can’t stop thinking about all those people on the train. I wish we could’ve done something.”
“You shouldn’t focus on that. Only wastes energy that you need to survive. There was nothing we could do. Those people are out of the reach of anyone but their maker—if people have a maker.”
She sat up and began rubbing the palms of her hands together. Her mother’s habit or not, the act was relaxing. “I believe we have a maker.”
“I thought doctors relied on science, the rational.”
“You s
ound like my father. He’s a statistician. He thinks everything fits into a slot. Yet, he’s very religious, often to the point of …” She stopped. Nick didn’t need to hear about her parents’ conservative religious views and their opposition to abortion. “I see it this way. Sometimes there are gaps in the rational. From my experience, God fills those gaps. That’s what doctors learn.”
He turned the meat, the grease popping and splattering. “Why did you become a doctor?”
She stopped rubbing her palms. “My sister Heather is eight years older than me. She got married young. Nineteen. She and her husband, Charles, wanted to have kids early, but she has polycystic ovarian syndrome. It’s a hormone disorder that affects the ovaries—essentially the ability to mature and release eggs into the fallopian tubes is reduced. There’s treatment, but it’s not curable. Her whole treatment protocol fascinated me. Anyway, I knew I wanted to help people.”
“Your parents must be very proud of you.”
She scoffed. “My mother is. My father was against my going to medical school. He hates doctors, believes all doctors are frauds. Especially after my sister Heather went through one too many fertility treatments without success. He thinks mathematics and science are the only respectable professions. Oh, and the clergy, they’re respectable too. Doesn’t stop him from going to a doctor when he gets sick though.” That she’d blurted out these words startled her. She didn’t usually speak so candidly about her family with friends, much less to a perfect stranger. And yet, this was exactly what she needed to do.
Nick shrugged. “I’ve known some bad doctors myself. Incompetent or not, physicians like yourself enjoy playing God.”
“That’s a silly stereotype.”
“The civilian doctors do. The docs in the army are different, combat teaches them that. They know they’re not God.”
“They do God’s work.”
He nodded and took the pan from the fire. When the meat was cool enough to touch, he tore a leg and thigh from the carcass and handed her the piece. “Well done. Just as ordered.”
She thanked him and took the meat. She’d never been a fan of well done, but wild game had to be fully cooked to get rid of parasites.
As soon as she took a bite, her appetite returned. She devoured the meat, even went so far as to lick the bones.
“And now you want to be a mother as well as a doctor,” he said. There was something disapproving in his tone.
She set the bone down. “It’s the natural process. Don’t you want children, Nick?”
“I told you I’d teach my son to hunt. That answer the question for you?”
“It’s a luxury that men have,” she said. “The ability to wait. There’s never a too late for a man.” What she didn’t say—what she never said—was that, for her, there’d been both a too late and a too early.
CHAPTER 20
On the day Margo’s father burst into the women’s clinic and hijacked her right to choose, father and daughter drove home in silence. Margo’s mother was in the living room when she and her father walked inside the house. Blanche was at a friend’s house on a playdate. Margo dreaded seeing her mother’s face. She’d tried so much to be like her, the perfect, chaste Southern belle. But after that day at the faculty picnic when she caught her father and Greta, chaste was the last thing she was. A cliché, of course, but a cliché that was spurred on by rage and teenage hormones.
They all sat down. Her parents on the couch, and Margo in the Inquisition chair—a hard, early American wood-slatted chair without arms.
“How did you find out?” she asked, thinking the best defense was a good offense.
“What difference does it make?” her mother asked.
“Heather,” she said. “It had to be her. I’ll never forgive her.” Margo had told only two trustworthy and loyal friends in the whole world—her older sister and her best friend, Bree. And Bree would never tell.
“Heather did you a favor,” her mother said, for once taking the lead. “How far along are you, Margo?”
She squirmed. “I’m not really sure.”
“How many periods have you missed?” her mother persisted.
“Three, maybe more.”
“Who’s the boy?” her father asked.
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it does.”
“I don’t know.” Margo was filled with the contending emotions of humiliation and defiance. How could a young girl explain that she’d hooked up in a tent with some guy at the Sasquatch! open-air concert who’d said his name was Keystone and who you couldn’t find in a gazillion years if you wanted to—which she didn’t.
“Now, here’s what’s going to happen, Margo,” her mother said. “Your father and I have made a decision. You can’t very well stay here and finish out high school. We live in a small community. We have Blanche to think about. So, you’re going to Alabama to live with your Grandmother Emma. She’s agreed to homeschool you for the remainder of this school year. You can enroll in public school the following year and get your diploma there in Birmingham.”
Margo shook her head. “I don’t believe you guys. You’re forcing me to have this baby, but now I’m nothing but damaged goods who’s being exiled?” She was such a child. If she hadn’t been, she would’ve walked out and made her own choice.
Her mother rose from the couch and walked over to Margo. “It’ll all work out fine, honey. There’s always a silver lining.” She leaned down and embraced her. Margo’s arms hung limp at her sides.
“No need to worry,” her mother continued. “Everything has been arranged.”
And, boy, hadn’t everything been arranged. Immediately after the birth, the baby was signed, sealed, and taken away.
Margo looked at Nick now. He was staring at her. That she hadn’t expected, and it forced the words from her when she said, “We should get an early start down the mountain and toward the highway first thing in the morning. Sleep when it gets dark, get up when the first light appears.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“I don’t follow.”
“We’re snowed in. Simple as that.”
“I have to get to a doctor. No one has to tell me my blood pressure is way too high right now. It’s been high for weeks. I’m at risk for preeclampsia, which means my baby’s life is at risk. I have to get back to civilization.”
“Impossible. Like I said, we’re snowed in. Try to stay calm. Worry isn’t good for you or the baby. When I was out today, I spotted lodgings.”
She was so relieved she gasped and clapped her hands like a delighted six-year-old. Real shelter meant survival.
“Let’s get going,” she said.
“We go when I say it’s time.”
Was he playing some kind of sick game? “And why not?”
“You’ve been through enough today.”
“I’ll be safer in a warm place. I say we go.”
“And I’m telling you no. Are we clear?”
She startled at the threat in his voice. His mind was made up. There would be no convincing him to leave. She glanced toward the opening of the shed. Beyond it was a dark void. There was no leaving at night without him, that was certain.
“I’m sorry, Nick, but I’m confused.”
“It’s dark. If we leave here now, we could be attacked by the whole pack of coyotes.”
“You said packs of coyotes don’t attack humans. The one that attacked me must’ve been rabid. We should get out of here.”
“You’re pregnant, hormonal. That makes you vulnerable. Do you really want to take an uncalculated risk?”
He sounded like her father, but he was dead right. Research indicated that dogs might be able to detect cancer in humans. If so, why couldn’t an animal detect the hormonal changes and smells associated with pregnancy? And besides, nature was unpredictable. What if the attacking coyote wasn’t rabid? It wasn’t just one lone coyote who’d appeared on the platform of the passenger car. The window was frosted over so they couldn
’t get a head count, but no doubt the skirmishes involved many animals. He was taking a rational stance, while she seemed to be thinking illogically, which was unlike her.
After a pause, she said, “You’re right. Thank you for helping me.”
He glanced up as though they hadn’t been conversing at all. “Like you said before, the military teaches no soldier left behind.”
“The military and the medical profession agree on that. How far away are the lodgings?”
“Half a day’s climb for you.”
“Up into the mountains? That’s the wrong way.”
“No choice. It’s the only shelter for you and the baby.”
“No one will ever find us up in the mountains. We might as well be digging our own graves.”
“If we stay here much longer, we’ll be committing suicide. No telling how long it’ll be before anyone makes it up here. Why can’t you understand that, Margo?”
Why was she arguing? In part because she was her father’s daughter and prone to arguing, and in part because as a doctor, she knew she needed medical attention. There were no doctors up the mountain. But any further argument might set him off. She couldn’t afford to do that. She was vulnerable enough.
She took a deep breath. “I’ll let you know in the morning if I’ll go. Pregnancy is playing a real number on me. I’m tired more often, need more rest. And I’ve got to get to a medical facility. No matter what I decide, the baby demands that I get some sleep. You should sleep too.”
“I’ll stoke the fire to make sure we sleep free from the smoke.”
After pulling up the hood on her coat, she stretched out on the ground near the back of the fire, lying on her left side facing the warmth. Nick added another large stick to the fire and poked the flame. He left the shed carrying the dirty pan and returned after he cleaned it in the snow. He cleared a few rocks she’d missed and then laid down. She stifled a gasp as he inched closer, cupping his body against hers. This she hadn’t expected, and her heartbeat kicked up again. She told herself it was fine, that this was survival. He didn’t need to ask permission. He was cold too. Likely colder, because his coat had only a high collar and no hood.
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