by RB Schalin
Chapter 30
"Do you smell it?" asks Becky once they are inside the cabin.
"No, what are you talking about?" asks Kerry putting down their bags on the floor in the hallway.
Instead of answering Becky heads into the kitchen and checks the fridge and freezer. Then she walks around the living room and in and out of the bedrooms.
"I swear it smells a bit like rotten meat. I thought you had forgotten something in the fridge, or maybe a mouse had died in here.
"I can’t smell anything," says Kerry and he isn’t lying. The cabin smells like it always does to him, but it could be that Becky, not being used to being there so often, has caught on to something.
He opens the windows and asks her, "where is Danny?"
"I guess he is out back, he wanted to use his pellet gun," she says while carrying in the shopping bags to the kitchen.
Kerry walks outside and finds Danny around the corner. His pellet gun is leaning against the cabin wall and he is placing some pine cones on a big stone some ten yards away.
"Watch this dad," he says, kneeling on the ground and aiming at the cones.
He shoots and one of the cones fall over, he looks up at his father and says, "see, I’m a good."
"That you are, keep on practicing, I’ll help your mother."
After putting the food away Becky changes into a pair of old jeans and a shirt. She heads for the shed where she picks up a few tools and then walks over to her garden. Kerry is watching her from the porch with a cup of coffee in his hand. The day is not too hot, and there are no clouds as far as he can see. The birds are singing and he can hear the buzz of insects. He sighs and wonders if this can be forever, of course not. It has to end somehow, and probably bad.
He walks into his bedroom and takes off his clothes, when he opens the wardrobe which has two mirrors, one on each door, to take out some working clothes his eyes catches the sight of his back. He stops and looks at himself in the reflection from the mirrors. He angles the door, he is holding a bit and he can see the line from his neck down to his buttocks. Under the lines is a scar, it runs along his spine, but his family can’t see it. Before he left Brazil he had a tattoo artist cover it under the line he also had the stitches tattooed into his wrists and ankles. When people ask him about them, he tells them it was a way to show gratitude to the tribe that found him. He closes his eyes and his mind drift back in time.