Beneath the Ashes

by Sue Henry

  Heavy spiderwebs clung in the corners of the walls and windows. Near the stove was a pale, yellowing square that she knew was a Maxfield Parrish picture of 110

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  two stylized chefs. Long ago she had torn it from a magazine and pasted it to the log wall. The furniture was gone—stolen or burned. Only the frame of a built-in bunk without a mattress and the stove remained. It felt strange and a little sad to wake in a place where she had once lived and had not seen for so long—made her feel a part of two time periods.

  Anne was only a softly snoring lump, completely

  swaddled and hidden in the other down sleeping bag.

  The sight of her form brought Jessie’s confused exasperation from the night before back into her mind. It made little sense that Anne had insisted on coming all the way to this isolated place without telling her that the Holman cabin had burned down years before. In fact, a lot of what Anne said was suspect, almost, but not quite accurate—a mixture of fact and fiction. Even more important and senseless were the things she didn’t say. Why couldn’t she just tell the truth—all of it? Why and what was she still keeping to herself? She had refused to answer most of Jessie’s questions, making it impossible to know what to believe.

  Irritated anew, and distracted by her memories of her earlier life in this cabin, Jessie quietly unzipped the sleeping bag and quickly pulled on her jeans and insulated snow pants. She had slept in her thermal under-wear and socks. Now she yanked on both a turtleneck and a sweater, then padded across to gently add wood to the stove, careful not to clang the iron door or lids and wake Anne, for she wanted some time by herself to consider the situation. With the fire beginning to crackle and spit, she poured a mug of hot peppermint tea from a thermos she had filled the night before, put

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  on her parka and boots, and slipped out the door into the gray predawn light.

  Tank and Pete raised their heads and Elmer gave one short yelp that she discouraged with the wave of a hand as she walked past them toward a clear space in the few sheltering trees that grew this high along the slope.

  It was almost sunrise, the snowy crests of the mountains to the east barely rimmed with bright gilding. The valley below lay still and silent in deep blue shadow, dotted here and there with the dark shapes of spruce and brush. Far across it, west of the Talkeetna junction, she saw quick flashes like Morse code from the lights of a vehicle passing trees as it moved along the Parks Highway heading toward Willow or Wasilla, even Anchorage, but it quickly disappeared around a curve.

  It was very quiet; not even a bird called, for most were still far away in warmer places or in the early stages of their annual northward migration. Soon there would be familiar honking from chevrons of geese in the sky and the chatter of squirrels abandoning their warm winter nests to search for food.

  A scant half mile below, a hint of motion caught her attention, and she watched a long-legged cow moose meander along the slope, pausing to gather breakfast twigs from the bushes. Behind her trailed a new calf, a miniature edition of its mother, that lunged and stumbled as it attempted to follow in her tracks, having trouble moving through the deep snow.

  Jessie remembered standing there on other morn-

  ings, with Mount McKinley an immense dark bulk that filled the northern skyline. Though it usually kept its secrets well hidden in mist, infrequently, as on this

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  morning, there were no clouds, nothing but cold clear air between it and this slope in the Little Peters Hills.

  As Jessie watched, almost holding her breath, the first long ray of the rising sun was caught by the highest of all summits, and McKinley’s crest was suddenly tinted with a salmon pink, the sharp ridges brushed delicately with a gold so bright it seemed that it should burn the eye. Gradually, the whole apex of the mountain smoldered to life, ablaze with rosy hues, in stark contrast to everything still dark below it. The light slowly descended until, one by one, the lower peaks were

  touched and glowed as if they were made of rose

  quartz. The color faded as it crawled across the landscape, shadows fleeing swiftly before it, until the flat, radiant disk of the sun appeared and Jessie imagined she could feel the slightest bit of warmth on her face.

  So intent was her concentration on the miracle of sunrise that she didn’t notice the whir of the raven’s wings that soared from behind the hills to land in a nearby treetop. When it began a conversational com-mentary on the morning in deep chirps and gurgles, she turned to search out its perch and watch as it strut-ted, bobbed, and ruffled its feathers. As she listened to the untranslatable language, it paused, then suddenly began to create an odd bell-like sound that only a raven can make, an improbable thing to come from the throat of a bird. Huddling on the spruce branch, it opened its beak wide and, with a convulsive whole-body movement and a dip of its tail, hurled a tone from its throat every few seconds that reminded her of a large drop of water falling on a flat sheet of tin. Metallic and reso-nant, it seemed a thing that should belong to the ocean,

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  one strange lovely liquid note after another that was seldom heard, but always stopped Jessie in whatever she was doing to listen to the raven’s gift.

  “Well, raven,” she spoke softly, face uplifted to it,

  “you’ve found me, as you found the first men and lured them out with that particular sound. Will you carry me away, too, in a clam shell, small and feath-erless?”

  But, with a flick of its inky iridescent wings, the bird sailed away without her, gliding down toward the valley on the back of the wind, soon lost to sight.

  Amused, spirits lifted, Jessie sipped at what was left of her tea, found it almost as cold as her icy fingers, and turned to go back to the cabin with coffee for herself in mind and breakfast for her mutts.

  The rattle of a bucket full of snow hitting the top of the stove to melt for dog food brought Anne’s reluctant face up from the sleeping bag.

  “Wha time izhit?”

  “Time to get going, if we want to do—whatever it is you want to do—and make it home tonight.”

  A thrashing in the bag resulted, as Anne attempted to pull on most of her clothes without getting out. Successful at last, she sat up, buttoning buttons, then was attempting to smooth her hair with her fingers, as Jessie went back outside to brush her teeth in more of the warm peppermint tea, leaving the coffeepot just beginning to emit cheerful burbles.

  When she returned, she found Anne had put strips of bacon in a frying pan and was tending them, rubbing sleep from her eyes with the back of one hand.

  “Any eggs?”

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  “In a plastic container in the insulated bag—already broken and salted and peppered for scrambling.”

  Rinsing out both their mugs with a little of the partially melted snow, Jessie flung it out the door. Bringing both to the stove she was about to fill them with coffee, but Anne beat her to the pot, stretching around the bucket to reach it. She had neglected to button the cuff of her shirt, which fell back almost to her elbow.

  Jessie stared in astonished dismay at the exposed skin of Anne’s forearm, unable to say a word. It was crisscrossed with narrow ridges of nasty-looking scars—some old and white, some healed, yet pink, others red and tortured looking, still covered with scabs. No wonder she had dressed before climbing out of the sleeping bag.

  At her gasp, Anne looked up and, seeing what she had revealed, swiftly yanked down the sleeve and buttoned it, her face aflame with embarrassment.

  “Anne—what in the world . . . ?”

  “Greg,” she snapped. “And I don’t want to talk about it. Okay?”

  “No—not okay. Tell me. You can’t just ignore this.”

  “Yes, I can. It’s over—won’t happen again.”

  She turned back to the stove, where the bacon was rapidly grow
ing crisper than she liked, and began to lift it from the pan onto a metal plate with a fork, leaving Jessie hesitant to attempt to make her revisit old sorrows by sharing them.

  “Okay,” she said finally. “But I’m glad you’ve left him.”

  “So am I. Now all I need to do is . . .”

  “What?”

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  “Get what I came for and go away—leave you

  alone.”

  “Aw-w, Anne.”

  “No. I know you’ve got lots of other things to do besides put up with me. It’s okay. Just get me back to Wasilla and I’ll take off—somewhere safe.” She gave Jessie a long look full of something like apology and appreciation. “Thanks, Jessie. I really—ah, just thanks.”

  It was the first totally honest or generous thing Anne had said since she’d arrived.

  By mid-morning they had eaten, packed their sup-

  plies—which they left in the cabin with a small fire in the stove to keep it warm while they were gone—and were headed to the burned-out Holman cabin with

  Jessie’s team, Anne in the sled that was now lighter and easier to handle.

  The place looked worse in full daylight, though

  snow covered most of the blackened logs and the

  charred shell of what Jessie remembered had once been a tight and tidy place in which to live. The flames of the burning cabin had scorched a few nearby trees, killing some, marring others enough to turn them the rusty brown of injury. A few small spruce were beginning to grow near them, however, and would eventually take the place of those damaged by the fire.

  Jessie ran a picket line for her dogs between two healthy trees near the trail and took them out of harness for the time being. Then she walked around the wreck of the cabin in the snow, assessing the damage and figuring out where things had been.

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  “There was the front door,” she said, pointing. “That was your stove and the table was here. Why did he burn it, Anne?”

  “Wanted to be sure I understood that we were never, ever, coming back here. Didn’t want me to have any choice about leaving.”

  “Pretty disastrous way to make a point. It was a good cabin—better than mine.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Where do we need to dig?”

  “Back there.” Anne led the way beyond the ruined cabin to a spot between two trees on the edge of the slope. The branches of the spruce had sheltered it and kept much of the snow from the ground.

  “Good, we won’t have to shovel so much—just

  build a fire, and thaw the ground.”

  They collected as much dry wood as they could find under the burned trees, broke off a few dead limbs, and piled it all on the spot Anne indicated.

  “How far down is it?” Jessie questioned.

  “Not far. Two fires should do it.”

  With the small fire crackling as it burned pitch in the dry spruce wood, the ground under it slowly heating and thawing, they sat on a half-burned log and shared the last of the breakfast coffee from the refilled thermos, appreciating the warmth of the sun on their faces and the fire on their hands. In less than an hour, Anne raked off what was left of the coals and began to dig away the thawed dirt with the folding shovel they had brought. At her suggestion, Jessie wandered back down the trail to gather fuel for a second fire.

  The world was a clean, colorful, sunny place, and

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  the temperature had risen enough for her to push back her hood and half unzip her parka. Spring was definitely coming. She could almost smell it and was more than ready for it, especially after the rainy days that had kept her indoors and off the trail. Jessie loved gliding on the sled runners through the snowy wilds of Alaska behind a team of her dogs almost more than anything. But at the ragged and unpredictable end of winter, with its muddy thaws and grime, she sometimes wearied of wearing insulated boots and longed for the freedom of shoes—to have feet again. She ached to see a hint of pale green as the birch groves began to leaf out, discover one tulip blooming on the south side of her cabin, hear the buzz of one bee still chilled and bumbling.

  Finding the stump of a spruce someone, probably

  Greg, had cut to clear its branches from the trail, she sat down on it, closed her eyes, raised her face to the sun, took a deep breath of the morning air, and thought about the scars on Anne’s arm. How could anyone do something like that to another person? She couldn’t imagine. It changed her whole image of Greg and

  Anne Holman—of the relationship between them.

  Anne might not have told her everything, but who wouldn’t want to keep this kind of thing to themselves?

  Jessie was not naive, nor was she ignorant of situations of domestic abuse and violence. She had been part of one herself before she met Alex Jensen, but it had been mostly a war of words and attitude, shared with a man who had propped up his ego by making her look and feel less than adequate. She also understood

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  some of the reasons women often clung to the devil they knew, rather than leave an abusive partner for the unknown. Until the man she had lived with had destroyed the relationship with abuse, she had cared for him enough to try very hard to make things work for them. When he had unexpectedly, without warning, punched her in the face in the heat of an argument, she had immediately left him, with her mother’s words echoing in her ears and heart: “Hit me once—shame on you. Hit me twice—shame on me! ” Victim was not in her nature, nor her personal vocabulary.

  But hitting was one thing. The insidious, cruel cut-ting that produced Anne’s scars, another. The reality of them made Jessie’s skin crawl.

  How lucky I’ve been, she thought, remembering

  Jensen’s gentle ways and appealing sense of humor.

  They had come to a seemingly inevitable parting; but she had missed him, terribly at first, more poignantly now. Though she had pushed it firmly from her mind, the last few weeks had been emotionally empty, and she had kept herself very busy training the dogs and going on long runs on the back of her sled that took all her energy and brought her home tired in the evening.

  Still, while it lasted, the relationship had been a good one—never abusive in any way, not adversarial or competitive, but honest and worthwhile. Their personal dedications had simply been dissimilar, and the road they traveled together had reached a definite junction. Both would have been diminished had either of them elected to follow the other’s path. But the parting had been mutually sad.

  She couldn’t help being glad that Anne had finally

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  found the courage to leave her abusive husband and hoped she would soon find a place where Greg Holman wouldn’t find her—where she would be safe and could start over with some degree of confidence. She would do what she could to help her and stop demanding answers that Anne was unwilling to provide, ones that understandably embarrassed her. If she wanted to talk, fine, but Jessie decided she would stop probing. It was Anne’s business, after all, not hers.

  Opening her eyes, she took another long look

  around at the gleaming sun on the snow and spruce, and smiled. Whatever the reason, she was glad to have made this trip. The sunrise on Mount McKinley alone had made it worth coming all the way to the Little Peters Hills, to say nothing of the present warmth on her face and the clear air, lightly scented with wood smoke from the fire they had built.

  The fire. Anne would probably have finished digging out the thawed dirt and be ready to build another.

  Time to get back with the wood she had collected.

  Gathering it up, she headed up the hill.

  But when she reached the spot between the two

  trees, Anne was nowhere to be seen. There was part of a hole where the fire had been, but it looked as if she had stopped digging almost as soon as Jessie had left.

  She was go
ne and so was the shovel. Jessie dropped the wood she had brought and stood looking around.

  Probably taking a bathroom break, she thought, and waited a few minutes, expecting Anne to reappear, adjusting her clothes. When she didn’t, Jessie walked a little way up the hill, looking, then called her name, but received no response.

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  “Anne?” she shouted. “Anne, where are you?”

  There was no answer.

  Then she noticed the tracks in the snow that led away from the spot where they had made the fire, and she followed them through the trees to a small clearing that continued for about ten yards along the slope. Across the middle of it were the unmistakable impressions Anne had made floundering in snow that had come well above her knees. The wallowing trail disappeared between two more narrow spruce. Again, Jessie followed.

  As she neared the trees, she began to hear some-

  thing—a rhythmic sound, like a repeated cough. Stopping to listen, she realized she was hearing sobs.

  Carefully, she moved past the trees until she could see Anne’s back and shaking shoulders. She was on her knees at the base of a large, snow-capped boulder.

  Days of sun on its dark, sheltering surface had melted a small patch of ground bare of snow next to it, soft-ening the earth a little. As Jessie came up behind her, she could see that Anne had scraped away at this bare spot until she made another shallow hole. She was leaning over, looking into it, rocking back and forth and crying so bitterly she did not hear Jessie’s approach.

  “Anne. What is it? What’s wrong?”

  The woman swung around defensively, eyes swollen and streaming tears, wiping at her nose with a parka sleeve, but staying on her knees.