Henry said nothing, and neither did Ainsley or Devon. Afterthe wake, they went into the house and the children sat down at the table whileJane made dinner. Henry ate the meal she served, but when he’d cleared hisplate, he stood and said, “I’d better get myself something before I driveback.”
“There’s nothing,” Devon said sourly. His unfinished bookreport, pointless now that he wouldn’t be in school tomorrow, still lay acrosshis place at the table.
“In that woods? There’s a whole host of things. But I don’tknow why you didn’t just—”
“That was a pet,” Jane said before he could finish.Rosemarie might already have guessed that the cat would have worked for Ainsleyand Devon the same way that sheep and goats and rabbits did, but Jane thoughtthere was a chance that she didn’t know, and she didn’t want Rosemarie to seeRussula’s one-eyed scowl every time she had to nourish. Kindergarten was only ahandful of months away.
“Who does the hunting, if you don’t use the farm animals?”
“We don’t hunt,” Ainsley said with pride. “That’s savage.”
Henry looked at Jane, and she nodded. “Sometimes the farmanimals die of natural causes, and then we use them. Other times, we findanimals in the woods.”
“We have a bread snare, and a trap snare, and a whole bunchof others,” Ainsley said.
“Snares? How many animals do you go through?” Henry frowned.
“Ten a week, that’s all,” Jane said. The number soundedworse like that, too countable: ten times four, forty animals a month. And howmany per year? She could see Henry adding.
“Ten a week? What are they doing, going off theproperty so much?”
“School,” Jane said, turning her back, scrubbing dishes thatdidn’t need any scrubbing. “They need school if they’re going to make somethingof themselves when they get older.”
“Paleys have always been schooled at home.”
“What they need for real life, I can’t teach them here.”
“You think third grade is worth this? You think a catfuneral is worth this? You know what it’s like, digging human features outof an animal?”
“That’s enough,” Jane said. She didn’t worry that Ainsleyand Devon would believe anything that Henry said, but Rosemarie didn’t know forherself yet. Rosemarie was fragile, grieving for an animal that should havenourished someone tonight. “This is what Walter would have wanted for hischildren.”
“What Walter would have wanted?” Henry said, incredulous,then stopped himself and turned to the children. “Ainsley, Devon, why don’t youshow me those snares?”
Jane was reluctant to let them go, but she sensed thatanything she said now would only give Henry sway over the children. She couldtoo easily see Ainsley and Devon living in that word savage, stylingthemselves as apex predators, butchering calves and wringing the necks ofrabbits. “Don’t let them hunt,” she said instead. “No killing.”
Henry couldn’t understand because he had grown up a Paley,but having the snares wasn’t the same as hunting—not in the way that mattered.Ainsley and Devon didn’t see the animals suffer or die, they didn’t choosetheir marks, they didn’t deal out death. Really, they weren’t killing; theywere only using dead materials to make the mammalian faces that the school daydemanded.
◊
They said goodbye to Henry on the porch, sometime aftermidnight. Afterwards they stood watching his truck roar dustily away until hecrossed the property line. “Bedtime,” Jane said, but the children didn’t moveexcept to shift closer, nudging into her side, and Jane would not push themaway.
“It’s not a school night,” Ainsley said, her voice muffledin Jane’s shoulder.
“We don’t even have to go to school, ever,” Devon reflectedwith something between wonder and horror. “How come we go?”
“Henry doesn’t know what he missed,” Jane said. “Yourfather’s family goes years without leaving their farm. Avoiding the world. Butyou can’t grow up that way.”
Jane felt sorry for Henry: never-married, childless, farminghis patch of land alone, emerging from his hideaway for what he’d thought wasthe special occasion of a niece’s funeral and getting instead a barn cat’swake. A Paley who flinched from nourishing—and nearly all of them did, and shecouldn’t comprehend why—could never be anything but Paley, the hermit with theproperty encircled in birches, the eccentric who conducted all his business athome, the ancestral landowner whose yields shrank every year until they weretoo meager even to sustain him. Jane could see where the Paleys were headed,and her children weren’t going there.
She could see nothing Paley in Rosemarie at that moment, sobright and sharp and awake standing barefoot on the porch, asking earnestly,“When do I get to go to kindergarten?”
“You’re still a baby,” Ainsley said.
“Don’t say that,” Jane said. “Soon, Rosie. Next year. Afteryou start nourishing.”
“I could nourish now. Next year is too long.”
“It’ll go quick.” Jane could see the cat’s makeshifttombstone from here. Summer would end as soon as it began. Another generationof barn kittens in Rosemarie’s lap, another generation of barn cats on theolder children’s plates. And then on Rosemarie’s, too.
She sent Devon and Rosemarie to bed after a while, but heldAinsley back. That hungry look was on her daughter’s face again, snarling andruthless and twisted. Ainsley hadn’t nourished since morning, and the schoolday mask had receded, ending at her hairline and the hollow of her throat. Shewas fully Paley now, and Jane was frightened by the loathing that she felt whenshe looked at her daughter.
“How could you let her send that letter?” she said.
“I told you,” Ainsley said. “I said that shewas sending letters. She made us find the addresses. She invited everyone. Thewhole family. It’s just that only Henry came.”
“She’s six years old,” Jane said. “Only six. Think aboutthat.”
“She’s old,” Ainsley said bitterly, looking at her feet.“Older than I was when I started nourishing.”
◊
The morning after the wake, Jane overslept: past sunrise,past breakfast time, well into midmorning. She opened her eyes and rolled overto look at the clock on the wall, a rare Paley concession to batteries. She wassurprised no one had woken her. Even on days
