by Jaye Wells
She shrugged. “My friend died.”
This was the strangest conversation he’d had in recent memory. “You knew Jack. I’m really sorry.”
“It’s okay.” She picked at some bark and avoided his eyes. “You came instead.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
She shook her head. “It’s nothing.”
He hesitated, wondering if maybe Bunk hadn’t been wrong. Strangely, he felt like he was the awkward one. “I saw that tree from the road.” He pointed to the red trunk. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I don’t remember what it’s called, but my mama told me when I was little that it’s only supposed to be red during the winter. For some reason that one stays red year round. No one knows why.”
“Any idea why it doesn’t have any leaves?”
“They show up in June, usually. They’re black.”
His brow dipped into a frown. “Maybe it’s a hybrid or something.”
She sighed and stood. “Or maybe there’s things all around us that don’t make a lick of sense because they’re not supposed to.”
He paused and let that sink in. “How old are you, Ruby?”
“Eighteen. How old are you?”
He laughed. “Forty-three.”
Her eyes widened. “I would have thought you were older.”
He didn’t laugh at that. “Do your parents know where you are?”
Something shifted in her expression. “Daddy don’t care, and my mama’s not alive anymore.”
His stomach dipped as he remembered, too late, that Bunk had already told him about her mother’s passing. “I’m sorry.”
She waved it off. "Hey, you want to see somethin’?"
Her eyes sparked with mischief he found hard to resist even though he knew he should. He wasn’t attracted to her sexually—not that any judge in the land would believe him—but she was irresistible nonetheless. Maybe it was the refreshing lack of guile, or maybe he just wasn’t ready to go back to the solitude of his cabin yet. Either way, he nodded in response to her question.
She grabbed his hand in her smaller one and pulled him after her. She led him out of the woods and to the road that led up into the hills where many of Moon Hollow’s residents had built their homes. It wasn’t a neighborhood but a scattering of ramshackle dwellings with plenty of space between one home and its nearest neighbor. He started to worry she was taking him to her home. Images of her presenting him to her hillbilly father rose in his mind like sharp whiskey fumes. He pulled his hand out of her grasp and stopped walking.
She looked back with mock ferocity. "Well? Come on."
"Where are you taking me, Ruby?"
"It’s a surprise."
"You're not taking me to your home, are you?"
She frowned as if he’d said something crazy. "Now why the hell would you think that? My daddy would kill me and then hang you up by your toenails if I brought you onto our land."
For the moment he forgot that he didn’t want to go to her house as his pride rose up. "Don’t be silly. Wouldn't your daddy be happy to meet—" He caught himself before he could say something like "an award winning author" or something else equally boorish. Instead he just let the end hang there.
She just shook her head and turned away to keep walking. He felt ashamed, as if he'd somehow let her down. He watched her go for a moment, wondering what to do. Then, her voice carried over her shoulder, “You coming or what?"
Five minutes later, they reached a gravel drive. To the right, a yellow mailbox with weeds choking its base stood before a house that looked haunted. Broken toys and car parts littered the yard. Ruby marched right past the property without giving it a look. Peter began to dismiss it as well until he saw the wooden sign hanging from two slender chains from the mailbox that said "Barrett." He glanced up at Ruby but she sniffed and picked up her speed. She didn't want him to know this was her home, or at least didn’t want to acknowledge it out loud.
They walked in silence for about half a mile before they reached another house. This one was set farther back from the road, so far he could barely see it through the trees on either side of the dirt track that served as the driveway. Ruby stopped at the gate.
"Here we are." Her eyes were wide and her voice was a bit breathless.
He remained quiet, waiting for her to continue. It felt like a game, coming here. A test maybe.
"That there is the Jessup place."
As if on cue, furious barking carried through the trees separating them from the house.
“Jessup’s prize hunting dogs."
"What does he hunt?"
"Bears."
He'd been expecting her to say deer or maybe turkeys, but what did he know? He'd never hunted a day in his life. While other men in his family enjoyed sporting he'd preferred the library and wooing women.
"Isn't that dangerous?"
She shot him a withering look that would have looked more natural on a society maven in Manhattan. "Of course it’s dangerous. Mostly for the bears though." Her tone indicated she wasn't a fan of the sport.
When he didn’t respond, she continued. "Bear season starts in the fall, though, so he also uses them for hunting coons and jackrabbits. But mostly that’s to keep the dogs trained for bears."
He was about to tell her that was all very interesting but what did it have to do with him when she ducked through the gate.
"Ruby," he hissed.
She waved a beckoning hand behind her but didn’t stop her progress over the property line. Peter was no expert about small town politics, but he was pretty sure a man who hunted bears for fun wouldn't take too kindly to having a stranger trespass on his land.
"I don't think—"
"Hush.”
The barking continued as they made their way through the trees toward the house. He considered—hoped—it was a good sign that no one came out the front door to shout at the dogs to be quiet. He prayed that meant no one was home. The promise he’d made to Ed Sharps rose in his memory. By trespassing he basically ruined his argument that he hadn’t broken any laws. But the perverse part of him that didn’t like taking orders from anyone pushed all that aside. What Ed Sharps and Deacon Fry didn’t know wouldn’t hurt Peter.
About halfway to the house, another sound mixed in with the barking—a high-pitched mewling sound, like a fussy baby or a pissed off cat. "What’s that?" he called softly.
"You'll see." She burst through the trees onto the circular dirt drive in front of the house. The only car out front was a rusted-out Chevy Pinto that looked like it hadn't run since the Carter administration.
Ruby skirted the house. He crept after her, his eyes always on the road, waiting for a truck to come roaring up that drive.
The barking was louder in the back. He cast one last nervous look toward the drive before turning to take in the yard. Five large dog cages lined one section of fence. Each was filled with a long-eared hound dog and each of those dogs were howling and barking like the devil himself had just stepped on their property.
Ruby ignored the dogs even though several of them lunged at her as she passed their runs. Peter had a harder time maintaining his dignity. He’d never been a huge fan of dogs to begin with, much less ones that spat ribbons of drool as they tried to bite through metal.
Across the yard from the dog runs, another cage sat alone under a tall tree. This one was smaller, and the brown clump of fur inside didn’t lunge for the grid of metal. Its body was smaller, too, and covered in matted fur that seemed thicker than the other dog’s coats. The animal was huddled in the corner at the back of the cage, and it let out terrible cries that seemed to crawl inside his ears so it could yell directly at his conscience.
“All right, we’re here,” he said. “Are you going to tell me why?”
Ruby stopped beside him with her hands on her hips. He’d half expected her to make fun of his obvious discomfort. But with each pitiful cry, her earlier bravado slipped a little more and her complexi
on grew a few shades paler.
She pointed toward the dark ball in the corner. “That’s why we’re here.”
This close, the overwhelming scent of urine and wet fur nearly overwhelmed him. “What? The dog?’
“Bear.”
“The dog’s name is Bear?”
“That’s no dog.” She shook her head. “It’s a bear.”
As if it somehow knew they were talking about it, the bear raised its head. Now that Peter could see the face, he couldn’t believe he’d ever mistaken it for a dog. The face was large as a dinner plate and dominated by watery eyes and a chalk-dry nose. “Is it a pet?”
“Bait.”
He turned to look at her, but she didn’t return the favor. “Bait? For what.”
“When he’s old enough, they’ll tie him to a stake and let the dogs at him to train them to hunt.”
His stomach rebelled at the thought. “How does letting them maul a bound bear train them to hunt?”
“It’s something about training them to force a bear into a standing position so they’re easier to shoot.” She finally looked his way with haunted eyes. “Sometimes they pull out the fangs and claws—or just cut off toes.”
He swallowed the hot spit that rose in his throat. The bear’s head cocked to the side and he looked into its eyes, as if trying to somehow telepathically communicate his empathy. The impotence of the gesture shamed him. Peter couldn’t fathom living the sort of life that involved murdering animals for sport. He was no saint, he knew—he certainly enjoyed steak. But, like most people who lived in cities, he lived in happy denial that the meat he bought at the supermarket had once had a mother. “Why do they hunt them?”
“People used to hunt them for meat, but now?” She shrugged. “Trophies.”
“How is that legal?”
She laughed at him. “Mountain folks have their own laws.”
He let that sink in for a moment. Hadn’t he seen that himself since he arrived? In the city, someone was always around and cops were fairly easy to summon when trouble cropped up. But up here? Hell, Bunk had told them they only had a sheriff and one deputy for the entire county, and their office was forty minutes away. And with a town as tight at Moon Hollow? Made sense no one would be real eager to report infractions like this one and risk being found out as the town snitch. He hadn’t met this Jessup, but judging from the man’s hobbies Peter was pretty sure he wasn’t the kind of man who’d take kindly to having the law called out to his homestead.
“Why did you bring me here?” The questions popped into his head and he spoke it without knowing if he was ready to know the answer.
The dogs had quieted down a bit once they got used to their presence but out of the blue they tuned up again. This time the pitch of their howls was sharper. Ruby turned and stared toward the house with wide eyes. “Shit. He’s back.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him into a crouch, as if making themselves smaller would also make them invisible.
“Wh—“
“Shh. We need to be quick.”
She lunged toward the bear’s cage.
“What are you doing? We have to get out of here.” He hoped like hell that those dogs had identified the impending arrival of their master from a great distance. Otherwise, they were well and truly busted. He grabbed her arm.
With more strength than he expected from her, she ripped his fingers from her flesh and went back to her fight with the cage. “We have to save it.”
The noises roused the lethargic bear into raising its head again. Now, it was hard to see the moisture in its eyes as a sign of illness because it looked so much like tears. He shook off the dangerous pity.
“It’s sick, Ruby. It won’t survive in the wild.” A dog bowl in the cage was filled with kibble. Flies swarmed the milky liquid in the other bowl. None of it looked fresh, which meant the bear wasn’t eating. It was only a matter of time now.
“It’ll have a fighting chance out there. If we leave it here, it’ll be tortured before it dies all alone.”
He knelt down next to her. Tears streamed down her cheeks, making her look impossibly young. Something in his chest tightened and pushed away his annoyance and fear of being caught. He placed a hand on her shoulder. “Ruby, look at me.”
She kept scratching and pulling at the lock. Blood and scrapes covered her knuckles.
Over the sound of the baying hounds, the dull snap of a truck door closing reached them. “We have to go.” He said it as calmly as he was able, but part of him was tempted to just turn tail and leave the girl to face the consequences. Surely Jessup would go easier on an eighteen-year-old girl than he would after finding a strange man on his property. Even if Ruby exonerated him in her scheme, he wasn’t naïve enough to believe he’d be free to go.
But even he wasn’t heartless enough to leave her to take the blame. He ripped her hands off the lock and dragged her away from the cage. She yelped and tried to scream, but he used a free hand to muffle the cries. Every muscle in her body yearned toward the cage and the bear, who was crying again.
He ran as fast as he could for the rear fence. It only came up to his hips but was constructed of wooden stakes connected together with several strands of barbed wire. “God damn it.”
He ripped off his jacket and wrapped it around his right hand. He pushed the wires down as far as he could and all but threw Ruby over the fence. She landed on the other side with a sharp cry, but she didn’t try to scramble back over. That gave him just enough time to lumber over the wires. On the way, his jeans snagged on several barbs, one of which punctured his thigh. Pain made him roll to the ground, where he allowed himself only a few rapid breaths before he leapt up again. As he grabbed Ruby off the ground and ran with her toward the tree line, the dogs bayed like demons and the bear cried, and, too soon, the sound of a man’s voice hollered for all of them to “shut the fuck up!”
Once they were several yards into the woods, he collapsed against a tree trunk and slid down to the ground. Beside him, Ruby curled up into herself and sobbed like she’d betrayed her best friend.
He wiped the sweat from his forehead and blew out a long breath. When he closed his eyes, an image of that pitiful bear haunted him. On one hand he couldn’t blame Ruby for wanting to save it, but on the other, it was such a childish act that he found himself pitying her almost as much as the bear itself.
“What were you thinking? We could have been arrested—or worse.” The latter option was clearly the more likely scenario.
With her head bowed, she shrugged.
“Even if you’d gotten it out of the cage, it was too sick to survive in the wild.”
“I would have taken care of it.”
He shook his head. “Why do you care so much about it?”
She sniffed and swiped at her eyes before answering. “I dunno. I guess, I—“
“Go on.” He tried to sound encouraging but the words sounded annoyed even to his own ears.
She huffed out a sigh. “I guess I just felt like we had some stuff in common.”
Was he ever that young? Did he ever possess the sort of credulity that allowed children to empathize with beasts? “Like what?”
She snorted. “You’ll just make fun of me.”
“So? Tell me anyway.” The rules of politeness would have dictated he promise her he’d never do such a thing, but he didn’t have the patience at that moment.
She took a shaky breath and looked up at the canopy creaking overhead. The scent of dry pine needles and deep green forest mysteries surrounded them. “Every morning, I wake up hearing him cry,” she began. “Well, not every morning of my life—just for the last few weeks.”
He nodded to encourage her to continue. She stared at him as if she expected him to find meaning hidden in her words.
“I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I don’t follow.”
In an overly patient tone, she said, “It started right after Mama died.”
“I see.” But he didn’t. To him it was the sort of magical
thinking preferred by children and women who planned their daily schedule based on their horoscopes.
“I told you you’d think it was silly.”
“Look, it doesn’t matter what I think. Keep telling your story.”
She pressed her lips together for a stubborn second before continuing. “So, the thing is that ever since I was a little girl I could hear things. Songs, I guess you’d call them.”
He didn’t say anything because there was nothing he could say that wouldn’t make him sound like a total asshole.
“Anyway, I’ve heard them since I was real young. Mama taught me how to hear them. But ever since she died, the songs stopped and all I can hear is the bear crying all the time. Every morning I lay there thinking it’s missing its mama, too.”
His annoyance evaporated in the face of such innocent grief. His own father had passed away when he was in college. It had been a sort of relief to know he’d never have to have that dreaded reconciliation with the father figure Joseph Campbell seemed so fond of. He’d spent most of his adult life completely comfortable with the unresolved issues his father had left behind, and unencumbered by the necessity to prove himself.
Liar.
“I guess I figured if I saved the bear that maybe the songs would come back.” She wouldn’t look directly at him, but he couldn’t tell if it was shame or dishonesty causing her lack of eye contact.
In the silence that followed her admission, Peter was keenly aware of the press of the forest around them—that sensation of being observed. But Ruby, who’d grown up in those woods, supposedly hearing mysterious songs, seemed oblivious.
“We should be getting back.” He took her arm and helped her rise. He kept his gaze on the ground, but could feel her earnest attention. She was raw, he knew it. She’d just admitted something that she’d probably never tell another human being. But he didn’t feel equipped to play mentor to a girl who clearly didn’t have the tools to survive in the real world.
“Can I tell you something else?” she whispered.
He wanted to warn her to keep it to herself. In fact, maybe he should tell her never to trust any man with her secrets because they would only make her easy prey. Before he could warn her, her secrets leapt like lemmings from her tongue.