great torrents of icy rain. Thunder boomed and echoed in the hills. Lightning streaked the sky where it was visible through the treetops.
Malcolm thrashed about on the ground in delirium. While his mind whirled, strange things happened to his body. Once he brought his hands to his face and in a blaze of lightning he saw the pads and claws of an animal. Or did he dream that? Reality blurred as the pain took possession of him.
The storm thundered and crashed through the night, then faded. The dawn was bleak and damp. A steady rain continued to fall. Malcolm awoke slowly in a fever, and for an instant he did not know where he was not how he had come there. He should be in a warm bed, not out freezing in the forest. Then the pain hit him again, clearing his mind, and the memory of the terrible night came back. He shifted his position and the steel jaws ripped his flesh. The trap. He remembered the trap. But he forgot everything else when he looked up and saw the giant.
Well, maybe not a giant, but a big, big man. From Malcolm's point of view, lying there on the trail, the man loomed like a mountain. The wild beard and the hair that hung to his shoulders were a dark, fierce shade of red. One of his hands could have covered both of the boy's. His chest and shoulders were massive as granite. He wore tough, ragged jeans and a buckskin jacket. Even through his pain Malcolm felt fear, sensing the immense power in the big man's body. Then he saw the giant's eyes. They were brown and bright and immeasurably kind.
The giant knelt beside him. Malcolm saw the brown eyes narrow with reflected pain when he looked at the ruined ankle. When Malcolm tried to sit up the giant pressed a strong, gentle hand on his forehead and eased him back down.
'You sure got yourself into a fix, son.' The basso voice rumbled up from the deep caverns of the giant's chest. 'You'd best lie still while I have a look.'
He moved with uncommon grace for a man of his great size. He was careful to shield the ankle from Malcolm's eyes with his body as he examined it.
'Sonofabitch,' the big man rumbled. 'Steel teeth, double-spring. These mothers are illegal.'
Malcolm winced as the big man's hand touched his foot.
'Easy, pardner. I know it hurts, but the first thing we've got to do is get this thing off you. It's going to hurt even more in a minute when I pry it loose, but there's no easy way to do it.' He turned his head and the kind brown eyes looked down into Malcolm's. 'How about it, can you stand a little more hurt right now?'
Malcolm nodded.
'Good boy. Close your eyes for a minute. Close 'em real tight. Think about the happiest time you ever had.'
Malcolm closed his eyes. He tried very hard to think of a happy time, as the big man had told him. But no thoughts would come. Only a blackness with fire and screams of the dying.
There was a loud metallic crack, and another fiery shot of pain in his ankle. Malcolm's eyes snapped open. The big man knelt beside him now holding the cruel steel trap in both hands.
'This is what grabbed you, son,' he said. 'Damned foul contraption.' Then, as the muscles in his arms and shoulders bulged, he twisted the trap like the jaws of a shark until the end of a spring popped loose with a loud twang. He tossed the broken trap into the brush and returned his attention to the boy.
'You okay?'
Malcolm nodded, blinking back the tears. He was afraid to trust his voice, not wanting to show weakness before the big man.
'Ready to take a walk?'
Malcolm looked down helplessly at the mangled ankle. It was free now of the steel jaws, but the torn flesh had turned a puffy blue-black shade. The foot pointed down and back at an impossible angle.
The big man again shifted his body to cut off Malcolm's view of the ruined ankle. 'Oh, I'll do the walking,' he said. 'It's going to jostle you a little bit, but we've got to get you out of here.' He slipped his powerful arms beneath the boy and scooped him up as easily as though he'd been stuffed with feathers. The big man rose effortlessly to his feet and started along the trail.
'Feel like talking?' he said.
Malcolm tried, but the best he could do was a small whimpering sound.
'Don't blame you,' said the man. 'I'll do the talking then. I'm accustomed to that. And you can listen. That'll be a rare treat for me. Have to talk to myself most of the time.'
The big man strode easily through the brush carrying Malcolm in such a way as to minimize movement of his ruined ankle. The rhythm of the man's pace lulled the boy into a semi-doze. When he spoke, the big man's rumbling voice was comforting.
'My name is Jones,' he said. 'There used to be more to it, but I figure that doesn't matter, seeing as I'm the only one living out here, and not likely to be confused with anybody else. The folks in town know who Jones is. The crazy hermit, some say. The last of the hippies. Nature Boy. I couldn't care less what they call me, just so long as they leave me alone.
'And they do. I been living out here almost twenty years. Never have trouble with people. If you never see them, you can't have trouble with them.'
They continued for several minutes in silence before Jones spoke again. 'Well, I do see a few people now and again. Hikers. Birdwatchers. Lost kids sometimes. Hunters I have nothing to do with. When the animals start shooting back, then maybe I'll talk to hunters. Mostly I meet youngsters out backpacking. They remind me a little of myself back in the sixties. They're not as serious about things as my generation, maybe. More interested in getting a good job than banning the bomb, but I guess you can't blame them. It was a lot easier to get angry about a war if they were liable to draft you to go fight it.
'But there's nothing wrong with today's kids. Different values, that's all. Hell, most of the kids I went on protest marches with are working for IBM now, or somebody like that. Not Jones. I'm forty years old, ought to know better, but I still believe that if the world's going to be made better, it won't be the big corporations that do it. That's why they call me the crazy hermit.'
Jones shouldered his way through a dense growth of scrub pine, and suddenly they were in a clearing. There was a neatly tended patch of grass, dotted with wild flowers. A smooth dirt path led to a solid little cabin of rough logs. A wisp of blue smoke trailed from the chimney, and a homely touch was added by soft curtains at the window.
'Be it ever so humble,' Jones said, 'this is it. There was a girl with me a few years back. Woman, I should say. She's responsible for the curtains. And the flowers. Used to be more of them, but I'm not so great at flower gardening. Veggies yes, flowers no. Her name was Beverly. Blond hair, and the longest legs you ever saw. Dedicated too. Peace Corps. Save the whales. All that. Beverly thought she wanted to try the natural life. I was glad to oblige.'
'What happened to her?' Malcolm's voice was weak and quavery. He had not used it in a long time.
'She moved out.' Jones answered casually, as though they had been enjoying a two-way conversation all along. 'Turned out the natural life wasn't quite what she thought it would be. The rain got to her for one thing. She was a San Diego girl. Never in her life saw it rain more than two days running. Up here sometimes it'll rain for a month, more or less. Doesn't bother me, but Beverly about went crazy. Then there was the baby.'
'You had a baby?'
'We did. Little boy. Beverly wanted to name him Star Child, but I wouldn't go for that. I'm not that spacey. Held out for John. Honest name. Solid. Biblical, if you're into that. He'd be a couple of years younger than you now. You got a name?'
'I…' Malcolm's mind was suddenly empty, as though sucked clean by a giant vacuum. He was frightened. 'I don't know.'
'Doesn't matter. With only the two of us, there won't be any confusion about who I'm talking to. Back in town they'll want to know, but maybe you'll remember by then.'
Jones carried the boy across the clearing to the door of the cabin. He pushed it open with his foot. Inside there were rough-hewn, comfortable-looking chairs, a table rescued from some thrift shop, sanded down and painted apple green, and a pair of army-style cots with stretched canvas on wooden frames. There was a cast-iron sink with a hand-pump for water. Along one wall was a stone fireplace with a great iron kettle simmering over the coals of a log fire. Whatever was in the kettle smelled wonderful.
'Beverly hadn't considered that living natural was going to mean no disposable diapers for John. No television to keep him occupied. No babysitter. She had to go all the way into Pinyon for the obstetrician. One day she just
