“I don’t want to be ordinary. Neither did Lemur. Do you really think Jack killed him?”
“Jack would never have come back if he had. He knows I’d know.”
“You think it was just some psycho?”
“I have my theories, but let me worry about that. Later on, if it’s the correct move tactically, you may be called into play. How are your boots holding up? Are your feet okay?”
“They’re really warm.”
“Hands?”
She was wearing thin gloves under large mittens. Her hands had never been warmer. “They’re almost hot.”
“All right. Which way is Algonquin Bay?”
She took off her mitten and held a compass in her right hand. The needle found north and she pointed in the opposite direction.
“Good. And Toronto?”
She pointed again.
“Good. How about the airfield? You remember from the map?”
She pointed west.
“And the railhead?”
A couple of degrees east of due south.
“Bus station?”
Same.
“Good.”
“How come you know this area so well?” Nikki said. “Is that just from the map?”
“I used to work in the fur industry. Business brought me up here more than once. Now get out your knife and cut me down a lot of pine boughs. Shake the snow off them and spread them here.” He indicated a hollow just below a fallen log.
For the next twenty minutes, Nikki hacked off pine boughs, shook them out and laid them on top of the snow. Papa collected boughs as well, spreading them fussily in the hollow. When there was a thick bed of them, he told her to stop.
He knelt on the boughs and sighted along his rifle over the top of the fallen log. Nikki got down beside him. Papa spoke to her in a low voice, as if they might be overheard. “The boughs are important,” he said. “You’re warm in your layers, right? Well, doesn’t matter how warm you might be, if you lie against a surface with a temperature of thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit, it’s going to leach the warmth right out of your bones. You’ll be shivering in no time. The boughs keep you insulated.”
“They’re kind of soft, too. How did you learn all this stuff-was it from the army?”
“Some. But you know, it’s really through families that knowledge and traditions get passed down. My father taught me a lot before he died, and now I’m teaching you. Okay, get into position.”
Nikki copied Papa’s pose, sighting with her smaller rifle over the log. Both of them wore white woollen caps pulled low. The silence was so thorough that Nikki felt it press in upon her, an urgency around her rib cage.
“It’s so quiet,” she said.
“Way I like it.”
“I can hear my own breathing.” And that was all she could hear, unless you counted the rustle of her jacket, the barely audible click of her trigger as she adjusted her grip. Her right hand, wearing only the glove now, was beginning to get cold.
They stayed that way for maybe fifteen minutes.
“How do you know we’ll see anything?”
Papa pointed off to the right.
“What?”
“Tracks.”
Nikki squinted in the direction he had pointed. Faint V-shaped marks, not even fresh. “Wow. I didn’t even notice them.”
“Rabbit. You can tell by the V shape and the close grouping. Front paws go down, back paws come forward and hit the ground either side. The short drag mark is the tail.”
“Papa, I don’t think I can kill a rabbit. They’re too cute.”
“I’m teaching you survival, Nikki, not aesthetics. You want to go back to working the streets, that door is always open.”
“I don’t. But I don’t want to kill any rabbit, either.”
“You eat chicken, don’t you? Turkey? Pork? Beef? You wear leather belts and shoes. You drink milk. All of those things involve pain and suffering for animals. You don’t mind it because you don’t see it. You may think you love animals and that’s why you don’t want to kill one, but the fact is, you are responsible for the deaths of a hundred or so animals a year, and that’s just from eating, that’s not counting shoes and gloves. You’re just squeamish because you’re not used to taking responsibility for what you eat.”
It wasn’t a subject Nikki had given a lot of thought to. All she knew was, it didn’t feel right to be waiting for a rabbit in order to kill it. Anxiety stirred in her belly. She needed to pee, and she didn’t fancy doing it in the snow, but she didn’t want to irritate Papa by mentioning it.
Papa shushed her, although she hadn’t said anything. He nodded slightly, the smallest incline of his chin toward the trail. A grey rabbit rose on his back legs, sniffing the air, pink nose twitching with the thoroughness of a connoisseur’s. He was maybe twenty yards away, slightly below them.
“We’re downwind,” Papa said, barely audible. “He won’t smell us. You have him in your sights?”
“Uh-huh.” He was cute, this bunny, but Nikki felt that consideration leaving her as tangibly as someone slipping out of a room. The mechanics of getting his torso between the V of her sights, setting the bead on him, pressed other thoughts from her mind.
“You’re too loose,” Papa said. “Pull the stock into your shoulder. Hard. You want the recoil to pass through you, not kick you.”
She did as he said. The rabbit made three hops and stopped once more to sniff the air. Nikki was on him. Her heart was beating hard, insistent.
“Any time,” Papa whispered. “No point waiting.”
“I can’t.”
“If you can eat chicken, you can kill a rabbit.”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t doesn’t cut it. Can’t doesn’t contribute to the common good. Can’t doesn’t feed your brother. Can’t is for weaklings and hypocrites. Take responsibility for your life. You’re flesh and blood, and you live on flesh and blood.”
“I’m gonna feel like shit if I shoot him.”
“Do it.”
“I can’t.”
“Do it.”
She squeezed the trigger, and then everything happened at once: the recoil shoving her shoulder back, the slam of sound in her eardrums, and the rabbit, lifted off his feet and flung sideways, red spray hitting snow.
“And that’s dinner,” Papa said.
He turned and looked at her, but Nikki stayed motionless, still sighting down the barrel as feeling returned to her shoulder.
“He’s still moving.” She could hear the panic in her voice, the higher pitch and the approach of tears.
“Go and finish him off.”
Nikki was on her feet, kicking at snow, looking for a rock, a large stick, anything. Everything was hidden under snow. The rabbit was struggling to get up, but he was hit in the shoulder and his forepaws wouldn’t work.
“Oh, Jesus,” Nikki said. “I can’t find anything. There’s nothing here.”
“Shoot him again. Get close and give him one in the head. And don’t shoot your foot.”
Nikki climbed over the log. It was difficult in snowshoes, and she nearly twisted her ankle. She went down the slope and the rabbit struggled harder. His whole left forepaw was slick with blood and there was a red bloom on
