by Kathryn Hoff
There were only two folding chairs, so Luis and Brandon squatted on the floor, trying not to lean against the fragile walls. At least there would be room to stretch out sleeping bags, if they collapsed the chairs and the folding card table and didn’t mind lying on the plywood panel that covered the hole in the ground Minnie used for a larder.
The storm arrived in a howl of wind. A thunder of rain pounded on the roof.
The kid began to cry. Minnie cuddled him, urging him to shush.
As the cabin darkened, Jerry lit a single kerosene lamp. “What about some supper, hon?”
Minnie glanced at the stove. “I guess I could cook some of the veg, but the stove heats the place up so bad.”
“You’ve been so kind,” Brandon said. “Let us provide the meal tonight.” He pulled from his pack four packets of chicken ramen. “Can you boil some water?”
“Oh!” Minnie flushed. “Do you have enough? We don’t want to leave you and Lou short.”
“I don’t think Bran and I will be hiking much longer. With Bigfoot around and all.”
“That’s probably best.” Jerry slouched in his chair, keeping a stern eye on the men. Gift of ramen noodles or not, he seemed to be rethinking his offer of hospitality.
Minnie, however, seemed more eager to socialize. As she boiled water on a butane burner, she asked how they met. Brandon strung out a long story that lasted into everyone slurping up ramen from none-too-clean bowls.
Luis was listening to the wind and rain, straining to hear other sounds. The mammoths had weathered storms and blizzards at Anjou’s base—while the lashing rain and gusts might unsettle them, the animals would be in no danger. But Diamond loved carrots and turnips. He might return to rummage through the garden.
The wind didn’t just howl, it moaned and screamed, driving rain into the west-facing wall and windowpanes like a cloud of monstrous mosquitoes clamoring to get in. The little shack groaned and rattled under the onslaught.
“You were right,” Luis whispered to Brandon. “I’d have hated riding this out in the tent.” Submissive behavior, to keep the peace. Brandon unbent enough to nod.
Through the evening, Minnie read to the kid from a Bible storybook. Brandon kept up a desultory conversation with Jerry about hunting and fishing and how politicians were ruining the country.
The kid whined without pause, setting Luis’s nerves on edge. Jerry’s too, judging from the tension in his shoulders. Luis wondered if that tension would have nudged Jerry into rough discipline if he and Brandon hadn’t been watching. Of course, strangers in the house might be hurting the situation, too. Here, Jerry was the alpha male, bristling at other males in his territory—Luis understood that dynamic very well.
As it grew later, Minnie carried the child up to the loft, whispering comfort to him. Jerry seemed to relax a little with his family out of sight. He began to expound grandly on the God-given rights of a man to live wherever he damn well chooses. With sly glances at Luis, Brandon egged Jerry on, knowing Luis would have preferred a root canal to listening to the man’s ignorant drivel.
Luis ignored them both, listening to the outside noises. If any of the mammoths came back, he wanted to know about it before Jerry started shooting.
Water began to drip down the west wall—rain being driven hard enough to penetrate the joint between wall and roof. The three men eyed the trickle but stayed quiet: there was no way to fix it in the midst of the storm.
More gusts battered the hut.
A tearing sound came from the roof—the wind ripping the tarp away from the nails. Minnie cried out.
Jerry jumped up, anger distorting his face. “Damn you, Bran, I told you to nail that tarp down tight!”
“Jerry, hand me a pan.” Minnie’s voice quavered. “The roof’s leaking.”
Brandon wordlessly emptied the dirty bowls from the plastic tub that served as a sink and handed it up to her. A spatter of drops on the floor told of places where the flying tarp had ripped nails out of the roof.
Minnie began to cry quietly, trying to stifle her sobs.
What did they expect? The whole homestead was ridiculous. Jerry had no business dragging his family out to the wilderness—and for damn sure he had no notion how to build a house. The shack was no better than a lean-to—no joists, no shingles, two-by-four framing set too far apart, no waterproofing, no insulation. They were lucky it hadn’t burned down the first time they fired up that woodstove. And they were on protected land—they weren’t supposed to be there anyway.
Luis pulled the ground cover from his pack and handed it up to Minnie. “Here. You can cover the bed to keep the mattress dry.”
Jerry nodded thanks and climbed the ladder to the loft to help her spread it.
Amid the drips, a sleeping bag would be nothing but a soggy mess. Brandon threw a poncho over himself and stretched out on his pad, fully clothed. He patted the floor beside him.
Luis shook his head and took a chair by the window. Fully dressed, boots on, he slipped on his rain jacket.
“Time to sleep,” Jerry said. “I need to put out the lamp.”
Luis nodded. “Go ahead. I want to watch the storm awhile. Maybe I’ll see Bigfoot come back.”
Jerry grunted. “If you do, let me know. I got my .38 loaded and ready.” He snuffed the lamp.
Outside, the clouds and rain had turned the day to dusk. The trees waved wildly in the gusts as water sheeted down.
Brandon narrowed his eyes at Luis. “Don’t go out there. Whatever’s gonna happen is gonna happen. Let it.”
“I can’t,” Luis whispered. “If he comes, I’ll try to get him away, that’s all.”
Brandon grunted and turned his back.
Luis curled up on a relatively dry patch of floor and listened.
An hour or two passed. The wind died down to blustery gusts and the rain drummed steadily. There were too many drips on the floor to count.
Then Luis heard the bone-chilling call of a trumpeting mammoth.
He got up as quietly as he could. The hut’s door had no doorknob—just a simple wooden latch to keep it shut.
“Lou?” Jerry whispered hoarsely from the sleeping loft. “You’re not going out there, are you?”
“I thought I heard something,” Luis said. “I want to see it.”
“You’re crazy,” Jerry muttered. “Go at your own risk. I ain’t coming after you.”
Good.
Brandon squinted up at him. “Me neither. But if you want to go, I won’t stop you.”
After the stuffiness of the damp shack, even the cold rain was a relief. The downpour was steady, but no longer streaming down the way it had been early in the storm. It pattered against the hood of Luis’s rain jacket as he sloshed up to the garden, his boots becoming soaked within moments.
Diamond stood in the ruined garden, big and menacing in the dark. Hump-shouldered, long hair dripping in the rain, he might be mistaken for an exceptionally large grizzly—except for the long, curved ivory tusks. At the moment, he was plowing them into the dirt, hoping to turn up another choice root.
“Hey, Di, old boy.” Luis patted Di’s trunk. Di stopped rooting for food long enough to give him a good all-over sniffing and rumble a greeting. Luis didn’t see any wounds and Di moved easily. If Jerry’s pot-shot had hit him, it hadn’t done much harm.
A snort made Luis turn. Di wasn’t alone—he’d brought Pearl to his treasure trove.
“Hey, Pearl. Did you decide you like this big lug after all?” He blew a greeting into her face. She rumbled back to him.
“Kneel.” He had to whisper the command several times before she lowered herself enough to let him clamber onto her shoulder.
No harness, no saddle, no stirrups, just a seat on the soaked fur of Pearl’s broad shoulders. Luis used heels and toes to signal her to turn, urging her away from the homestead. Uphill would be best, away from any other cabins that might have cropped up along the stream.
Good old Pearl, docile and eager to please. Up she went,
squelching through mud. He let her choose the path, so long as she kept climbing. Grunts and snorts from behind told him Diamond was staying on her heels—too close for Luis’s comfort.
Perhaps too close for Pearl’s comfort, too. At the top of a rise, she quickened to a shambling run down the slope.
Luis held on, hands grasping the coarse, long hair on her shoulders. Why was she running?
He glanced behind. Diamond was matching Pearl’s speed, staying right behind her, trunk raised, ears flared, penis extended. Oh, hell. He was in mating mode, and she wasn’t yet ready.
Diamond trumpeted, a blast that raised the hackles on Luis’s neck.
None of the mammoths had bred naturally before, they’d always segregated females in season for implanting with Anjou’s engineered mammoth embryos. Luis should be documenting this, taking notes.
But at the moment, Pearl was crashing through underbrush, determined to make Di prove his stamina before claiming his prize. And Luis was clinging to Pearl’s back for dear life.
CHAPTER 14
Mudslide
Estelle joined the dozen or so individuals running up the hill through the rain. An ugly scar marred the cliff where the dirt anchoring rocks and evergreens had given way. Below it, where the four newest houses of the village had backed onto the hillside, there were now only two. A pile of mud, rock, and fallen trees almost obscured the edge of a shingled roof that had been pushed perilously near the rushing river and terrifyingly close to the ground.
Men and women, all dirtied to a uniform brown, dug with shovels, bits of torn metal, and bare hands to clear whatever was under that roof. Even the village dogs were there, digging away.
Estelle feared there might be nothing living left to find.
One of the village women held her back. “You stay here, Doc Dupris, let others do the digging. Your turn will come when they find them.”
“Who?” Estelle demanded. “Whose houses are they?”
“Lonnie and Joan Dean. Rufus Handy.”
Sweet Jesus. Estelle shut her eyes. Rufus was a frequent patient, a tough old bird who railed against the inevitable advance of years. And Joan? She’d seen Joan just that afternoon. She had a two-year-old and her second was due within weeks.
Sera thrust the medical bag into Estelle’s hands and, without a word, joined a chain of young people piling mud and rocks onto toboggan-like cargo sleds to be hauled away by ATVs.
A shout went up. “Here’s Lonnie!”
Many hands pulled out a dazed man, coughing and sputtering. As a neighbor led him away, he cried, “Joan . . . Hannah!”
The diggers shoveled more frantically.
Estelle followed as Lonnie was led out of the rain to a neighbor’s porch. Twittering friends washed his hands and face with clean water and placed a blanket over his shoulders. His thin frame shook as he coughed, but his gaze never wavered from the drama taking place at what had been his house.
One shovelful after another, dirt and stones were dug out and tossed onto a sled to be dragged out of the way.
“Wash your mouth out, but don’t swallow,” Estelle advised. “Keep coughing.”
“Don’t you worry.” A woman Estelle thought might be a sister patted his shoulder. “They’ll find Joan and Hannah, God willing.”
Amen. “Keep him sitting up and let him lean forward when he coughs. If he needs to lie down, put him on his side or his stomach, not his back.” And hope he doesn’t get pneumonia after inhaling water and dirt.
Another shout went up. Lonnie pushed away restraining hands to stand, craning to see.
“We’ve got them!” someone called. “Both of them alive!”
Thank you, Lord. Estelle ran to where people clustered in the driving rain.
The two-year-old was crying in the arms of some cousin or auntie, her eyes wide in a filthy face. Her unh-unh-unh sobs were cries of weariness and fear, not screams of pain. She could wait.
The woman huddled in the mud was another story: half her face swollen and bloodied, lips white, the uninjured eye rolling, lid half-closed. Shock, possibly a concussion.
Her breathing seemed all right, pulse light and rapid.
A helpful neighbor held an umbrella over her. Someone tried to sit her up.
“Leave her be,” Estelle snapped. “Don’t move her further until I can see how bad she’s hurt.” She knelt in the mud. “Joan, look at me.” The eye turned her way. So far, so good. “Tell me your name.”
“Her name’s Joan,” someone volunteered.
Estelle waved him away. “Tell me your name.”
“Ju . . . Joan.” Good, able to respond verbally.
“Where are you hurt?”
Joan mumbled but her words were unintelligible. Estelle ran practiced hands over her head and neck. Just like that year in the emergency room in Chicago, except there she’d dealt with far too many gunshot wounds and DOAs.
Touching Joan’s collarbone brought a cry of pain. Limbs seemed sound otherwise. It was too noisy to listen for the fetal heartbeat, but Estelle placed her hand on Joan’s bulging belly.
No kicks, but the baby might simply be too big to squirm much. Then there was a ripple of muscle and Joan groaned.
A contraction.
“Get something to use for a stretcher,” Estelle called. “She’s in labor. We need to carry her to the clinic.”
Someone brought a sled, the kind used in winter to drag a load behind a snow machine or dog team. Guided by Estelle, the helpful neighbors rolled Joan onto her side and slipped the sled under her, using a tarp like a blanket to shield her from the rain. With neighbors walking alongside to steady her, an all-terrain vehicle slowly dragged Joan toward the clinic. Another ATV carrying Lonnie sped ahead.
Estelle paused in the rain long enough to give the child a once-over. Nothing seemed broken but she directed the aunt-or-cousin to bring her to the clinic for a more thorough exam.
She was about to follow when a hand clutched at her arm. “Doc Dupris? We found Rufus. You better come.”
Estelle followed a villager through a now-silent crowd to the scene of the disaster. Someone handed her a flashlight and directed her into a cave, barely big enough to crawl into, excavated in the pile of mud. Bits of roof and broken furniture shored up the passage, but Estelle was very aware of the weight of rock and mud overhead.
A seven-foot-high sitting room had collapsed to three feet, with portions of the ceiling now resting on the cast-iron stove. Beyond, the ceiling rested on the broken floor—but from the rubble stuck out a bit of pajama cuff and a naked foot.
The foot was calloused, gnarled, and cold. No pulse. No response to touch. She worked a scalpel out of her bag and cut into the sole. No blood flow. Her flashlight picked out splinters of the wooden bedframe—the fact that the foot was whole was a minor miracle. The body attached to it was under tons of ceiling, roof, dirt, and rock.
She backed out of the passage. “I’m sorry. He’s no longer alive. Please don’t put anyone else at risk by trying to dig the body out.”
“No, ma’am,” a villager said. “We’ll come at it from the top, once the rain stops.” Behind him, one woman sobbed while another comforted her.
“I’m sorry,” Estelle repeated. Like a parrot. A useless damn word that didn’t begin to ease the pain of loss. Just something to say when there was no real help to offer.
But she had living patients to attend to.
One of the ubiquitous ATVs gave her a lift to the clinic, where the waiting room was crowded with anxious, muddy relatives. Estelle conscripted several to wash the three living victims.
Sera appeared at her side with a steaming cup of coffee. “I figured you’d need this.”
“Oh, bless your heart.” Estelle took a long, much-needed sip. “That’s good.” Keep the coffee coming, and she could work for days. “Everybody that isn’t Joan or Lonnie, out.”
During her exam, Joan was alert and responsive, and utterly terrified.
“You’re going to be fine,�
� Estelle told her, with a reassuring smile for Lonnie. “Minor concussion and a broken collarbone. You’ll have a headache for a day or two and a stunning black eye, and you’ll have to keep that arm in a sling.”
The fetal heartbeat was quick and strong. A two-finger check showed Joan was seven centimeters dilated. Merde. The baby was on its way. Three weeks early—he would be small. If she were in Fairbanks, she’d order an incubator to be on standby, but here she’d have to make do with what she had.
“The baby?” Joan gasped. “What about the baby?”
Estelle forced herself to smile. “The baby’s doing fine. I can hear his heart. But it looks like he doesn’t want to wait. Just relax now, and when the contractions come, breathe through them like I showed you.” In the midst of life, we are in death, was the saying. The reverse was true, too.
Between contractions, Estelle checked on her other patients. Two-year-old Hannah, now bathed and wrapped in a blanket, was bruised but showed no sign of worse damage. Her mother’s broken collarbone was testimony to the maternal protective instinct. Estelle sent the child home with the cousin-or-aunt to get some sleep.
Lonnie clutched his wife’s good hand. “Do that breathing, Joanie, like Doc Dupris showed us.” He puckered up and panted.
Estelle nodded approval. “That’s right, breathe through it.”
Once the next contraction passed, Estelle taped Joan’s arm to her side to prevent the strain of labor from further displacing the bone. The contractions were running five minutes apart. After another had waned, Estelle put two tiny stitches into Joan’s forehead to reduce scarring.
Another check under Joan’s blanket: nine centimeters dilated. The baby would come soon.
Sera showed up again, now clean and in fresh clothes, with a change of clothing for Estelle.
“That could have waited until tomorrow, chérie,” Estelle said.
“It is tomorrow. And you never got any supper, either.” Sera pushed forward a plate of salmon-on-sourdough. “Annie says if you don’t eat that, she’s going to come down here and stand over you until you do.”