by Beth Lewis
Smoke streamed out his nose and his hands made tight fists by his sides. I ducked quick behind a fat alder tree and watched him climb, awkward-like with that load in his arms, but he didn’t put him down. His mouth was stretched into some kind a’ smile and it made me sick and fearful to see it. All ’cause I seen it before. Too many times. When we had a fresh deer on the gutting table, when he’d come back bloody from his wolf hunts.
Kreagar got himself over that log and was gone, running, lumbering like a bear with a salmon ’tween his teeth.
In truth, I couldn’t make no sense a’ my thoughts or feelings right then. I was stuck behind that alder. I didn’t know nothing. I couldn’t a’ given you a straight answer if you’d asked me my name or what I had for breakfast. It was a muddle and all I remember, with any true clearness, was the steps that got me A to B, the throw what caught me a murderer.
All my instincts came right to the front a’ my head and took control a’ my arms and legs. I weren’t human no more in them woods. I was wild. My blood was coursing. My heat rising. All my senses fizzled and I climbed up the alder, ran along a branch, moved in them trees like I’d been born off the ground. I followed Kreagar through the treetops but he was quick, and moving branch to branch was slow. He was getting farther ahead a’ me, I was losing sight and had only my hearing as a guide.
We was far away from Tucket now, too far to hear shouting or cries out for the boy; tracks been covered up and them townsfolk didn’t have a chance a’ finding us. The snow was falling fat flakes on the world, silencing everything what weren’t me or Kreagar’s crunching footsteps.
I careful and quick stepped across branches, trying to keep ’em in eye. Panic rushed through me quick and hard as a dam breaking. My hands were shaking, sending a tremble up my arms, down my legs. I raced ’cross a gap too big and jumped onto icy lichen covering the oak branch ’neath my feet. I slipped soon as my foot touched it and fell right out the tree, landed on my back in white powder. Didn’t hurt. Fresh snow’s a pillow. But it cost me time and a mite a’ pride. Far ahead, right at the limit I could see ’tween the falling flakes, Kreagar and the quiet bulk over his shoulder vanished behind a snowbank.
“No, no, no, no,” I said over and over, smoky breath puffing, scrambling up to my feet.
Despite the weather, Kreagar’s deep tracks was easy to follow, easy to see. He wanted me to find him. He wanted me to see it.
But when I got to that snowbank, feet sinking deep in the cold, I saw two sets of tracks. One straight down the hill, one veering left. Weren’t no telling which to follow. Devil set me a trap and I didn’t have no clue how he did it. All this fresh snow should a’ covered up anything more’n ten minutes old. It didn’t make no sense. None of it made a lick a’ sense. Fear for the boy burned up in me so hot it could a’ melted the world. Panic and anger and hate, all of it. That boy was meant to be safe and back in his home with his daddy and Penelope.
Everything was bubbling up in me and clouding up my head. I followed one set a’ Kreagar’s boot prints, then turned back and followed the other. I couldn’t think in straight lines. The boy was going to die if I didn’t figure it. That darling little fella, that curly black hair, them smiles he had. I saw that pencil scratch a’ me on his drawing. Part a’ his family. Part of a pack and I was ’bout to lose him.
I swore up something fierce. Turned myself ’round and ’round and ’round till I heard it. The sound what broke the whole damn world.
No more’n a second of a scream. Cut short. Life cut short.
I homed in on that sound. Ran like it was my life being taken, like the hounds a’ hell were snapping at my heels. I dodged ’tween trees, kept my breathing quiet as I could. Didn’t hear no other sound. No kicking a’ young legs. No crying out.
There’s a thing that happens in the forest when life is snuffed out afore it’s meant to. There’s a silence that comes down on everything like a blanket. Happens for a mite when you take a rabbit out the snare, break its neck. There’s a deeper silence when you take out your blade or pull the trigger on a moose or deer. Deepest silence for a child.
The forest was weeping blood and so was I.
I was too late.
I caught a flash a’ metal in the trees. A knife twisting, changing grip. Felt that knife right in my heart, slicing cold. My legs buckled up ’neath me. I fell down onto my hands and knees and wanted more’n anything to scream all that pain, all that guilt, right out into the winter air.
But that wouldn’t do that boy no good. Dying on my knees wouldn’t honor no memory a’ him.
My tears sizzled on the snow.
My fists clenched white.
My head set firm.
“Goddamn you,” I whispered. “Goddamn you, Kreagar Hallet.”
I clambered up in a tree and moved through them branches. Not that far ahead, I saw Kreagar in a clearing ringed with thick brush. I didn’t see nothing else, maybe my head wouldn’t let my eyes take it in, like it didn’t all them times Kreagar brought home a pig.
I didn’t see the boy. All I saw was Kreagar and a world turned red. My heart, my whole being, was broken up like someone took a hammer to thin ice. You can’t put ice back together. Even killing Kreagar wouldn’t put me back together now.
He breathed out smoke and I saw in him a thick line a’ evil, black and festering.
That son bitch snatched the boy’s life, like he was just borrowing it to begin with. I closed my eyes. I wished to high heaven, to all that’s holy and good in this world, that time would turn back so’s I could a’ saved that boy even if it would a’ lost me the devil. It would a’ been worth it. I would a’ saved that boy and chased Kreagar all the way to the top a’ the world if I could.
But that decision been made for me, and I hated them heavens for it. I got there too late, too damn late, useless as a damn toothpick ’gainst a raging river. I cursed myself every which way till I didn’t have no more words for myself. Only way I had even a sliver of a chance to pull my soul or spirit or whatever I got in me out a’ the clutches a’ the devil was to send that devil back to the pit.
That boy what I’d built a snowman with not an hour ago, all that life he had bundled up inside him was let out, like a tire letting out air.
How easy it was for Kreagar to take living away. Easy as a garter snake swallowing a mouse. It’s always easy to kill what ain’t you. Easy for a bear to kill a salmon, easy for a wolf to take a caribou calf. Ain’t easy for a bear to kill a bear or a wolf to kill a wolf or a man to kill a man. Kreagar couldn’t a’ been a man, not down deep. He was something else. Some new type a’ animal.
I was back at Trapper’s hut with Lyon ’bout to burn it down. Felt now like I did then. That my little bubble was burst. That all them things I thought I knew as true weren’t nothing even close. Some a’ them chains over my last door slipped off.
I lost Mark his son.
Josie and Jethro their nephew.
I didn’t even want to think ’bout what I lost Penelope.
I was frozen. Couldn’t lift my arm to throw the knife. Couldn’t open my mouth to shout my sorrows. What was the point in me? What in the hell was I going to do ’gainst Kreagar fucking Hallet?
From the middle a’ the clearing, he paced ten strides north, then with just his hands started digging in the snow. Got himself a shallow hole then took something wrapped up in his shirt, something else my eyes wouldn’t let me see, and buried it like a goddamn squirrel buries nuts. He was making a larder. One final fucking insult. My stomach heaved and churned and it took all I had to keep it down. Here’s your boy, they’d say when the body was found, but he ain’t whole. The rest a’ him’s just sitting there, few feet away, and you ain’t never getting that back.
One thought hit me harder’n anything, felt like it would knock me out the tree, push me into the snow till all I saw was white and cold. I couldn’t save him. I was too slow. My stump legs couldn’t get through the snow fast as Kreagar’s.
I could a’
shouted.
I could a’ roared at him through the forest, made him turn and come at me ’stead a’ that boy.
But down deep, pure primal fear, covered up with dumb hunter’s logic, stopped me: If I shout he’ll bolt. If I scream his name, he’ll disappear into the woods for the rest a’ winter.
Bullshit.
It was boot-quaking fear and nothing else. If I shouted, he’d turn them evil eyes and that snarling rage right on me and he’d kill me no question. Damn coward I was. All the rest a’ my days, I’d see the Thompson boy’s face behind my eyes and I’d have to live with it.
I don’t remember when the snow stopped but I remember when I stopped crying. I saw Kreagar’s face, head-on, spattered with red, smoke coming out his mouth like some demon climbed straight out a’ hell. And shit, he looked happier’n I ever saw him. He looked like he was finally at peace with the world, and that ain’t something I ever thought ’bout. I never got to ask him why but in that look I thought I figured it out. Kreagar’s got something in him that’s snapped, some bit deep inside that’s broke or missing. Doing this maybe that fixes that break, patches up the crack for a spell. I suppose it’s a choice, ain’t it? Live all your life broken or take moments a’ wholeness where you can, no matter what that means. This is a world a’ hurt and shit and blood and bullets. This is a world where a strong arm is a’ more value than a strong mind. The Damn Stupid changed up all the people a’ this country, changed up coin to mean not much, changed up cities, changed up the law, it made murderers a’ all us what’s left. I’d killed a man to survive, maybe Kreagar had too, to survive inside his own head. What kind a’ person was I to judge him? To take his life like he weren’t nothing more than a trapped wolverine? Hundred times over I’d said I’d kill him, but something stopped me throwing that knife and dropping him dead like he deserved. Now I faced him, now I saw what he was behind all that blood and bile, and I pitied it. I damn well pitied him. Killing him weren’t my job. It was Lyon’s. She’d lost a son to his rifle and she deserved the pleasure a’ seeing the light leave his eyes.
Kreagar left the clearing, breathing heavy off into the forest. I set the flare burning right in the middle a’ all the blood, and followed. Didn’t take long to get ahead a’ him. I figured his path quick.
“You’re a long way from home, Kreagar,” I said, oak branch ’tween my knees. I kept all the fury and tears out my voice. Couldn’t show him weakness, not now not never.
He stopped, bared them teeth a’ his, and looked all ’round for me.
“Who’s that talkin’ at me out in the trees?” he shouted, blood dripping off that knife and the scrap a’ hair and skin I now seen hanging off his belt.
“Saw what you did to that boy,” I said, couldn’t say his name, my heart tightened and didn’t want to beat no more, “saw where you put him. See his curly hair on your belt.”
“That you, Elka girl? That my Elka playing squirrel in the trees?” he shouted.
Hearing him say my name, the name what he gave me and a year ago was the only one who ever spoke it, sent a yearning through me for them days. Them simple days a’ hunting and chopping wood and tending the hut. Them simple days what turned to shit with one trip to Dalston.
“I ain’t yours,” I said, wondered brief if he could hear the sad in my voice. “Never was, never gonna be.”
I took out my knife. Weighted right nice for throwing.
Soon he started threatening me, saying all the nasty things he would do to me if he caught me, but he wouldn’t never catch me. I was a ghost in them trees. He’d killed something in me when he took the Thompson boy, and I’d be his specter now, haunting him for what little life he had left. He leaned ’gainst a cottonwood tree right in front a’ me.
I stood up on the branch. Weren’t no slipping now. I raised up my knife and set my sight right on his heart. One hit on target and that’d be the end a’ Kreagar Hallet. I gripped the blade ’tween my fingers. Tightened up all my muscles.
I thought ’bout building the snowman with the boy. Thought ’bout Mark thanking me for keeping his son busy and laughing. Rage ate through me like fire through paper.
I threw my knife right on target. Through that soft spot in his shoulder. Heard the wood-thud what said the blade went right into the tree. He howled and shouted and tried to pull the knife out but he was a coward for pain. Them barbs cut deep. Deep into his flesh like he’d cut so many others.
“I’m gonna find you! I’m gonna kill you slow, Elka!” he roared, sending birds out their nests.
I let out something like a laugh. There he was, murdering, kid-killing Kreagar Hallet. The man what was a ghost to me this last year who I never thought I’d see again. I’d built him up in my head as some kind a’ god what I couldn’t touch but when I looked at him, he was just a man, bleeding out his shoulder. A broken man what needed justice and a place where he couldn’t hurt no one else.
“Magistrate Lyon’s going to find you first,” I said. I cast my eye back to the clearing and saw plumes a’ red smoke showing the way. “Told her where you is and where the boy is too. She’ll see what you did to him. She’s been hunting you a long time, across mountains she’s gone, looking for you.”
That shut him up. Color drained right out of him and he tried on the friendly with me but we was far past friendly. Sound a’ horses carried on the breeze.
I weren’t in no mood to see Lyon again, and she’d spot me quick in these trees. Felt sore for losing my knife. I’d honed it and shaped it and kept it sharp till the time was right and it caught me a killer.
Maybe it was me moving, not caring no more if he saw me, but Kreagar started shouting.
“Elka, Elka there you is,” he said, fierce. “How’s them cuts on your back? Healed up right nice?”
“No thanks to you,” I said.
He hissed ’gainst the cold. “You figured it yet? You figured why I didn’t kill you all them chances I had? When you was a babe, with that crazy Rev, by that lake, in Halveston, in your Tin River claim?”
I didn’t answer, I couldn’t because I had figured it. I remembered all them words he spoke in that basement. I knew exactly why he hadn’t killed me all them times he could. He wanted me to choose his life, his path. He wanted me to come back to him by choice because, in his head, we was just the same. In his head, I was a murderer, a killer, and I had the same tastes as him. I was his successor.
He laughed, all wheezing and full a’ spit and blood, like he’d heard my thoughts.
“You got yourself a pretty girlfriend,” he said. “Bet she’d be sticky-sweet roasted up right nice.”
Then I got angry and all them words I been saving up came out a’ me.
“You’re sick, Kreagar. Sick in the damn head, and I ain’t a stitch like you. I fucking loved you. You were my daddy and you…you a killer. You’re Kreagar fuckin’ Hallet. You ain’t my Trapper. The man what…did that…to the Thompson boy and all them others deserves to swing and you will. Lyon ain’t going to show you no mercy for what you done.”
Them horses got closer. Heard voices now. Weren’t no mistaking Lyon. Cries went up. They must a’ found the boy.
Kreagar heard it too. All the fight left him and he hissed out pain as smoke on the air.
“Does that bitch know?” he said. “She know who pulled the trigger what shot her boy?”
Them locks on that last door burst open. All’s I had to do was turn the handle.
“You did,” I said, but my voice was all tremble.
He laughed, spouting smoke into the air like a bull charging. “You been walking my wolf road all your life, Elka girl, clawing and biting right on my heels, begging for scraps and teaching and I gave ’em both. I gave you everything you’d ever need to walk right alongside me. You and me Elka, we’s twin flames, remember. Even if I ain’t living no more, you ain’t never gonna be rid of me.”
“Lyon’ll get rid a’ you. Lyon’ll break your damn neck. I ain’t no twin a’ yours. We’s mud and sky, rive
r and rock. We ain’t the same.”
He bared his teeth and showed off the beast in him. “Just you wait and see, girlie, just you wait.”
Saw movement in the trees.
He smiled and the door creaked open.
“You better run, Elka girl,” he said, keeping that smile on him. My heart thundered in me like a whole herd a’ horses.
He weren’t even trying to pull that knife out no more.
He said it again. Run. Go on. Get going.
He didn’t say goodbye, didn’t say see you soon, didn’t say sorry. Kreagar weren’t one for sorry.
A shout came through the trees, “There!” then the horses started running fresh. They found the trail and it was time for me to go.
Kreagar, grinning, waved.
I went back to Tin River. Penelope weren’t there, a’ course. I couldn’t face going back to Tucket, seeing all them people crying and screaming, blaming me. Tin River was quiet, covered in fresh snow. Soon as I got there, got in the cabin, I broke. I collapsed on the floor, shaking all over, and let out all the rage and sad and fear in me. I shouted at the world for not letting me save him, cursed heaven and hell for making me promise to, making me break my word. I beat the floorboards with my fists until my blood stained the wood.
Then I heard the thunder in the north.
Out the window I saw the thunderhead roll in. Bigger and blacker and faster than any I’d ever seen. I didn’t have time for weeping and screaming, the world didn’t care. It swept down the mountains like it was swallowing up the world. It’s what I imagined it was like when them Damn Stupid bombs fell. Like the world was ending for real. That storm was so big I couldn’t imagine there would ever be an end to it. Figured that was my punishment. It weren’t Lyon going to hang me, it was the wild what was going to try to take payment.