Mother signaled that she was on her last trip, and Lynn waved back that she understood. Lynn flexed her fingers against the chill. Mother would be starting the smoke fire soon, which could attract attention. She was reaching for the rifle when she saw the tall grass swaying in a pattern that could not be caused by the wind. Three straight lines took shape, moving fast and headed toward Mother.
“MOTHER!” Lynn screamed. She was on her feet in an instant, the rifle aimed at the largest of the coyotes as he broke through the grass. She fired as she screamed, and Mother spun toward the sound.
The bullet caught Mother in the thigh, and the spurting blood drove the coyotes into a frenzy. They leapt at Mother, knocking her on her back and sending venison to the ground all around them. The salted meat was ignored—they were onto something fresh.
Lynn sprinted across the roof and flew down the antennae, skipping the last four rungs. She fell to the ground, her left foot folding underneath her. The cracking sound from her ankle drowned out her cry and she propped herself upright with the rifle. The triumphant high-pitched hunting song of the coyotes rang in her ears as she pulled herself to her feet and lurched around the corner of the house.
Big Bastard had Mother by the throat, while the other two tore at the wound that Lynn’s bullet had opened. She fired again, from the hip, catching one of the smaller ones in the shoulder. The force of the shot threw the smaller coyote off Mother, and its partner backed away, head close to the ground and eyes glued on Lynn. Blood was no longer spraying from Mother’s wound in an arc, but gushing as her heart slowed.
Lynn fell forward, her injured ankle refusing to support her. She landed on her stomach, knocking the wind out of her lungs and losing her grip on the rifle. Big Bastard still had a firm grip on Mother’s neck. His ears flattened as his eyes met Lynn’s, and he growled deep in his throat, claiming his prey.
“Bastard,” she screamed, her throat clenched tight with tears.
The injured coyote struggled to her left, its leg dangling uselessly from the ruined shoulder. Its partner circled Lynn, sensing her weakness. She lunged for the rifle and it bolted away, dragging a piece of venison behind it. She swung the barrel and fired, but the Big Bastard was gone, leaving deep footprints in the ground that were steadily filling with Mother’s blood.
Lynn dragged herself on her elbows to Mother’s side. “Mother? I’m sorry,” Lynn sputtered. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t see them, I wasn’t fast enough—”
“Shhhh,” Mother muttered weakly, causing blood to bubble from the tooth marks in her neck. “Shh . . .”
Lynn leaned over her, plugging the holes with her fingers. When Mother spoke she could feel the air pulsing underneath them.
“When they . . . do that. Best thing in a . . . dog fight—” Mother inhaled sharply. “Try to . . . shove your arm . . . down its throat. Can’t bite then.”
Lynn nodded, tears dropping down onto Mother’s upturned face. “Okay, Mother. I’ll remember that.”
“Didn’t know if I . . . had told you that . . . should work . . . but my hands . . . were full.” Her last words faded away, and Lynn hunched closer, desperate for more.
But all she heard was the death rattle.
Twilight had fallen by the time Lynn had made a binding for her ankle out of Mother’s shirt. She felt like a vulture as she stripped Mother’s body of anything useful—knife, matches, even the hair tie she’d been using. Nothing should be wasted. Scavenging from bodies was nothing new to Lynn, but taking Mother’s shirt from her as a cold sleet began brought her to her knees. She cried in long, gasping breaths that ripped through her body. Her knees slipped in the blood-soaked mud, and she fell face forward into the muck, where she saw her rifle.
She crawled toward it, wiping it as clean as she could on her shirt. The wind was gusting now, spitting freezing rain into her face and forming her hair into dark icicles around her face. She braced herself against the barrel of the gun and rose to her feet. Agony shot up her leg the second she tried to put any weight on her ankle. Bulging, swollen flesh puffed out from between the strips that she’d used to bind it.
Lynn heard muffled sounds in the grass between the gusts of the wind, and she looked at the pieces of venison still strewn around them. They were drawing predators. She grabbed Mother by the armpits and dragged her away from the circle of blood and meat. Her legs were useless; she settled for crawling, dragging Mother’s corpse behind her. It took an hour for her to get to the driveway. The gravel bit into her flesh as she struggled to pull her own weight and Mother’s.
She pulled Mother’s body under the shelter of a pine tree and rested. The pine offered a little cover from the sleet, and she hoped that the smell might help mask their human scent. She was covered in blood and to an animal nose, Mother would already smell like death. They came and went through the night, fighting over the pieces of salted venison. At one point she heard two raccoons screaming at each other and then the shattering of glass. The smokehouse door had been open. She cracked her head against the trunk of the tree in frustration. All their meat was gone.
Shock had its way with her once the adrenaline was gone and Lynn dozed. When something tried to drag Mother away by her foot Lynn snapped awake and fired blindly. She stared futilely into the black night, launching pinecones and curses at any noises she heard once she’d run out of bullets. When pink stained the sky, she saw that Mother’s eyes were frozen open.
It was two days before she admitted that she would not be able to dig the grave. Her hobbled efforts had yielded a hole a barely a foot deep in the frozen ground. She’d never be able to get Mother deep enough to keep the coyotes from digging her up. The skin around her ankle was green with bruising, the hollow pounding of it echoed in her ears as she dragged herself around on her elbows hour after hour, checking on Mother’s body and attempting to claw away at the ground.
Leaving Mother to the coyotes was unthinkable, burying her impossible. After a long debate, Lynn pulled Mother into what was left of the smokehouse. The left window was broken, the door hung open. Clumps of dried mud formed a path where animals had tromped through the soaked yard to get their share. The few hooks left hanging from the beams had errant strips of meat clinging to them, peppered with teeth marks. Some were large and clearly canine. Tiny mice teeth had nibbled the pieces near the rafters.
Lynn laid Mother on the floor, looking upward through the hole she’d been cutting in the ceiling the day before. Thanks to Mother, Lynn knew what poetic justice was, and a sad smile tugged at her mouth as she used a match taken from the body of a man Mother had shot. The old wood of the outbuilding caught without hesitation, and the plume of smoke that reached into the sky would be visible to the south, Lynn knew. She sat in the tall grass with her injured ankle folded beneath her, and the rifle across her knees, almost hoping that someone would come.
The fire burned hot and fast, bringing down the building in a shower of sparks and leaving behind a pile of coals with no hint of bone among them. Once the last red ember had winked out, Lynn lurched down the stairs and to her cot in misery. She curled into the fetal position and faced the wall, her throbbing ankle resting on top of her healthy foot. The puffy flesh that rose from the top of her makeshift bandage pulsed against the fabric, fighting for the freedom to swell further. She would find no peace in sleep while it throbbed, but she pulled her pillow over her face to muffle her sobs.
She did not gather water for ten days.
Fear drove her from the tomb of the basement. A nightmare, rampant with images of men filing out of the fields and dipping their buckets into her pond had brought her up from her well of grief and pain. Her ankle was not broken; she could put more weight on it. She fashioned a splint for herself by snapping a wooden yardstick in half and binding the two strips to either side of her foot. It wasn’t a cure, but she could hobble well enough to take care of herself.
She needed to get wood downstairs, the tiny pile next to the stove that had kept her alive while she mourned was gone, the level of water in the purified basement tank lower than what she cared for. The mental
