I squatted low to the ground to rest and watched my breath trail. The cold was inside me now, like a heaviness in my blood, and I started to worry that I was passing it to Jenna the same way bodies share heat. I’d done a paper on hypothermia once and knew the cold was unpredictable. There was a little girl in Iceland who survived a night in the wilderness at 35 below, while another man had died after just a few hours in temperatures above freezing. I couldn’t remember what the point of the paper was though, or if there was something the girl had done to protect herself that the man hadn’t.
I might have known better what to do if I’d have been a Girl Scout. I’d always envied those little snots in grade school, with their smart uniforms and badges and altruistic fund-raisers for starving African babies. I’d also envied them their mothers, who all looked like Sandra Bullock and wore Pleiades pants when they came to homeroom to recruit new members. I had badly wanted to join, but I knew they didn’t mean me when they asked if anybody was interested in becoming a scout.
Yes, there was surely a world of information I would have had at my disposal had my childhood not been spent caring for Carletta and worrying over Cutler Family Services, wondering when they might finally arrive to take me and my sister, Starr, away for good.
I suppose the Girl Scouts would have known exactly what to do in my very situation, though none of them would ever have occasion to be there in the first place—Sandra Bullock moms not being the type to vanish after trading their daughters’ cell service for a few rocks of methamphetamine. Ironies abounded out there in the fields, but I resisted the urge to indulge in their bitterness as I stood up and returned to my march.
What I should have done was walk straight for the river, then turn downstream. That’s what the Girl Scouts would have taught me. Go to the river and that will keep you on course. Can’t miss a big-ass river. But no, I’d just run out into the dark and hoped I knew where I was going. I’d just taken one step after another and felt vaguely that I was heading in the right direction. I suppose I panicked.
When I saw some light in the far away I worried for a moment that I had simply traced a giant circle back to the farmhouse. I approached with some caution, but then I saw the line of the river behind the cabin. I saw the telltale slant of Portis’s roof and heard Wolfdog barking at the wind.
Chapter Three
Portis greeted me like he does all his houseguests—with the barrel end of his rifle. He aimed through a slit cut in the cabin door and demanded I identify myself.
“It’s Percy!” I said. “Open up!”
I kept Jenna close and stepped away from Wolfdog. She’d turned her bark on me, but I was more hurt than frightened. I’d known Wolfdog since she was a pup and spent whole days fishing the Three Fingers with her and Portis. I loved Wolfdog and I always thought she loved me back, but she was leaned forward on her front paws and flashing her canines like switchblade knives. She was supposed to be part husky, but she looked all wolf at the moment.
“Hurry,” I said. “It’s freezing.”
“Step back,” Portis said, and pushed open the door.
He came out in a T-shirt, gym shorts, and boots. He still had his rifle raised.
“Portis,” I said. “It’s me.”
“Well, shit the bed,” he said, and lowered the barrel.
Inside, Portis looked me over with his narrow, searching eyes. He set the rifle down and checked the door latch. He looked at Jenna and tugged at his scraggly, gray-streaked beard. Wolfdog was still barking outside and she leapt at the window and dragged her nails across the glass. Portis reached for a bottle of whiskey on the table and had a pull.
“Is that a fucking baby?” he said.
He had the generator humming. There were Christmas lights strung across the ceiling beams and one of his 1970s bands was on the FM radio, singing about lonely nights.
“That’s a fucking baby, isn’t it?”
Jenna was fairly calm and now I was the one crying. I could feel the tears stinging the cold tops of my cheeks. It was a baby.
“It’s a baby girl,” I said, and sniffed.
“Is that your baby girl?”
“What? No!”
“Whose fucking baby is that?”
“I don’t know!”
My voice cracked as I raised it in irritation, in outrage at the entire situation. Portis went back to the door and opened the slit. He peered out while Wolfdog barked and batted at the windows.
“What’s wrong with Wolfdog?”
“She don’t like surprises,” he said.
“She’s usually so sweet.”
“She’s got a bad omen.”
“What’s that mean?”
“She’s on edge, goddamnit! She’s got a bad feeling in her wolf bones, set her to barking about twenty minutes ago.”
“Maybe it’s the storm,” I said.
“It’s supposed to storm in the winter,” he said. “I’d probably go with you and that baby as the event of note here. Now, please tell me whose baby that is.”
“I just told you, I don’t know. Some girl’s.”
“Some girl?”
“I found her.”
“At the farmhouse?”
I shifted Jenna in my arms and stripped off my hoodie. I stood by the woodstove in my T-shirt and blue jeans while Jenna let out a little squawk. I tried to hush her, which seemed preferable to dealing with Portis and his agitations.
“You smoking shit now, Percy?”
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I swear,” I said.