Winter's Bone

broad shadows punching against the cave wall. Flick them left jabs to open ’em up, girl, then bang the right to put ’em down.

The cave was long and had two more rooms, at least, deeper down and chill, but the space behind the wall warmed quickly. Ree shook her clothes, batted the ice away, and spread them near the fire. She lit the half doobie. Hunters and lovers had used the cave in recent years and had left their withered litter and bent empties, but there was some ancestral trash made visible by the lifting flames. Parts of several fragile white plates and cup handles, a tarnished long fork with two tines, cracked blue potion bottles and tin cans thinned by time to where a finger could poke through.

They likely buried him somewhere near.

If they buried him.

Or dropped him into a bottomless black hole.

The sleet stopped after night fell. The sky spread low and milky over all that ice. Time and again Ree slipped into Mamaw’s coat and hunted wood on the slope. The milk sky and ice let her see dead wood and she dragged the wood to the fire, made the flames healthy, and hung the coat to dry. The corner by the wall became very warm and Ree sat there bare-butted and oddly comforted, knowing that so many relatives with names she never knew had hunched here in this very spot to renew themselves after a sad spinning time had dropped over their lives and whirled them raw.

Coyotes sang to her and she slept, fed the fire, heard snowplows way in the distance.

Her belly rumbled and pinged and hunger drew her into an aching curl.

Water woke her. The blessing of daylight showed a warmer world and thin rivulets trickled down the slope. The air at dawn was warmer than any day had been for a week. The landscape was softening some but not to mush. A freight passed on the tracks beyond the field and whisked the path clear.

He’d fight if he knew they were comin’ and maybe somebody else’s hurt, too.

She stood in sunlight and stretched, a great long body pale and twisting at the brink of a cave. She walked to water dripping from the rock above the cave mouth, cupped her hands to the trickle and drank and drank deeply of the falling new water.

13

HILLSIDES KNIT with ice came apart. Ice slipped from everything, limb, twig, stump, rock, and cascaded chinking to ground. Mist lifted from the bottoms to lie over the tracks but did not lift much above her head. Mist smeared like tears squashed on her cheeks. She could see the sky but her feet were cloudy. The stout ties, moistened, released their tar smell, and she kicked from one wet tie to the next, sniffing tar in the mist and listening to ice chime in the trees or slip loose to shatter. She wiped the mist that felt like tears on her cheeks and pulled her hood tight. Larger ice shapes fell thudding. Runnels of high melt cut wee downhill gutters in the snow. Ice sounds and trickle sounds and her boots thumping. At a bridge across a frozen creek she paused to stare down. She tried to see past the pocked skin of ice to the depths of flowing water. She was strangely still and staring, still and staring on the bridge until she understood that her eyes searched for a body beneath that ice, and she crouched to her knees and cried, cried until tears ran down her chest.

14

IN THE house she slept, and when she woke the sun was red falling west and everybody wanted food. She splashed her face at the kitchen sink, dried on a crusted towel. A pot full of odd-looking food she could not name sat on the stove, a creation of the boys from the supper before. It smelled like soup but looked like bloodied mashed potatoes. Mom was in her rocker clutching a wooden spoon and the boys sat wrapped in quilts watching television, a public TV gardening show offering tips on how best to grow row upon row of spiffy plants you never got to eat.

“Hey,” she said, “what is it in this pot on the stove?”

Harold came to her, quilt over his head, face peeking out. He looked into the pot, sniffed, puckered and frowned.

“That was supper,” he said. “Me’n Sonny made it when you never came home. Mom reckoned we cooked it too much.”

“What is it?”

“Basketti.”

“That’s what that is? How’d you make it?”

“Tomato soup and noodles.”

“Looks awful gluey. You boil them noodles separate, or in the soup?”

“In the soup. Why mess two pots?”

“That ain’t how you make basketti. You boil the noodles separate.”

“But that way you got two pots to wash.”

Ree pinched his cheek, opened the cupboard, shoved the few cans around, then said, “I don’t think I can save that glop with nothin’ we got. Toss it behind the shed.”

Ree set the big black skillet on the stove and sparked a flame. She pulled the bacon grease can from the bottom shelf of the fridge and scooped a cup or two into the skillet. She cleaned potatoes and onions, chopped them, and dropped them hissing into the fat. She salted and peppered and the smell ranged to the front room, called Sonny to the kitchen.

Sonny said, “I could eat that much myself.”

“Take this and flip ’em when —”

Quick steps on the porch and the door flew open and Blond Milton stood there pointing at her. He said, “You know, there’s people goin’ ’round sayin’ you best shut up.” Blond Milton was a grandfather in age but not in manner, square-shouldered and flat-bellied, fair-haired with ruddy skin, and generally wore fancy cowboy shirts over starched jeans ironed into a stiff crease. He was most always shaved clean, barbered, talced, smelling of bay rum and armed with two pistols. “People you oughta listen to, too.” He held the door open and waved for her to follow him outside. She grabbed her coat and met him on the porch and he flung her down the steps onto the scree of ice that had fallen from the eaves during the day. “Get up’n get your ass in the truck. Get your ass in there.”

Harold and Sonny stood in the doorway watching as she pulled herself to her feet. Harold had his mouth open and Sonny had his eyes narrowed. He stepped forward and said, “You don’t get to hit my sister.”

“Druther I hit you, Sonny? ’Cause I will if you want.”

“Boys! Go back in, boys. Cook those taters ’til they brown. Cook ’em brown, Harold, then be sure to turn the fire off. Go on.”

Sonny came down two steps, said, “Nobody gets to hit my sister who ain’t her brother.”

Blond Milton fairly beamed looking at his seed Sonny standing there defiant with fists balled and jaw set. He smiled a twisty proud smile, then stepped over and swatted Sonny flush in the face with an open hand. The swat knocked Sonny to his rump. Blond Milton said, “Balls is good, Sonny, but don’t let ’em make you into a idiot.”

Bubbles of blood puffed from Sonny’s nostrils and burst to speck his lips.

Ree said, “Dad’d kill you for that.”

“Shit, I whipped your daddy about twice a year since he was a kid.”

“You never whipped him as a man inyour life! Not when he wasn’t too fucked up to punch.”

Blond Milton grabbed her by the coat sleeve, pulled her toward his truck.

“Get your dumb ass in there. I got someplace to show you.”

He drove fast on the rut road, turned west on the blacktop. His bay rum smell filled the cab and Ree cracked