The night the boy was born, the man was out of earshot, snoring beside his contraption. The woman cried out and tumbled down the steps, holding her belly. She writhed for hours in the dirt, straining, panting, rolling from side to side, calling out, but no one came. The boy slid from between her legs near dawn. He came feet first, covered in blood, and screaming at the top of his tiny lungs. The woman gasped, then lay completely still, her eyes open wide. The boy kicked the air, balled his bloody fists, and wailed.
At sunrise, the savage came. His face was swollen with sleep. He took in the scene as though dreaming. He knelt beside what was left of his family and wept in a raw baritone to the boy’s piercing cries. He cradled the inconsolable noise in the crook of his elbow, sliced the cord connecting him to his mother, and shut her staring eyes.
9
The minute the old woman claiming to be my grandmother had gone, I slipped my books into my backpack and headed over the bridge into the north woods.
I didn’t know what to think about her claim. The social worker had told Henry and me what she could about my daddy’s life. He’d been given up at birth by his unwed mother (Maud Booker, if you believed her), taken in by the Baptist Home, and put up for adoption. His adoption had seemed sure until doctors discovered a defect in his heart. Nobody had wanted a sick baby. So Daddy had grown up with the Baptists till he ran off at fifteen. After that he stole things and was in and out of trouble, till he was killed one night walking on a nearby road, a hit-and-run.
That was all I knew, except that he’d hooked up with Mama long enough to make me, and that he’d lain dead next to Mama longer than he ever had in life.
If Maud Booker had told the truth, she hadn’t mothered him long. I wondered if she regretted giving him up, if that was why she’d stopped by. But even if running hunters off her land and giving me medicine for the cat spoke in her favor, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to know her better or not. I’d keep her visit to myself until I made up my mind.
As October gave over to November, the woods and cabin became my favorite place to think. I’d given in to Henry about school, but that settled, he pretty much left me to myself. Aloneness was as much his way as mine. I doubted that Henry would have known what to do with me if I’d been a clingy child in need of entertaining—maybe bought a big TV and a DVD player and set me in front of it while he worked. Solitary work was plainly as vital to him as breathing, like reading and writing were to me.
We mostly ate dinner together. Usually it was just Henry and me, a you-read-your-book-and-I’ll-read-mine kind of thing, Henry’s mind still in his studio and mine with the cat or at the cabin. Now and then Fred and Bessie joined us. One night Fred argued with Henry and Bessie about me running wild. He said I was too young to be roaming the woods alone. Bessie called Fred an old woman, said she’d give anything to be able to run free herself, and threatened to do it one day when Fred wasn’t looking. Bessie and Henry said they’d wandered the woods when they were younger than I was. Fred lost, outnumbered. All Henry asked was that I stay on his posted land, wear bright colors against straying hunters, and be home by dark. I promised I would.
So after school on weekdays and after a quick breakfast on weekends, I headed into the woods, the cat not far behind. He started trailing me once Ms. Booker’s medicine shrunk the swelling in his ear. He kept his distance—left himself plenty of room to bolt—but stuck close enough to keep me in sight. He hadn’t let me touch him yet, but he seemed to be considering it. Every morning I found him waiting for me and his breakfast in the front yard. At night he headed under the house for warmth, but not before sitting for a long time alone in the yard, watching my window. I made him a soft bed by the furnace from an old feather pillow and a blanket and put my stuffed bunny down there so he’d get used to my scent.
Halfway to the cabin, though, was as far as he’d go. His fear of the north woods was powerful, and he flat refused to follow me past the old-growth trees. He’d shadow me over the bridge and partway up the path, then stop cold, turn around, and go back. He turned back in practically the same spot every day, like there was an invisible wall he couldn’t go past. I tried to coax him on with a trail of leftovers, but he was stubborn. Something up there scared him, maybe a memory of whoever had lived in the cabin before. I went on without him, but I stayed alert.
I kept a lookout for the white deer, too, but saw no sign of her, though birds and squirrels and other creatures flitted or rustled in the trees. I hoped she and her friend were nearby, watching, and might show themselves soon.
For
