Near the Bone(6)

Besides, Mattie thought hopelessly, you can’t run away in just your nightgown and a blanket. You’ll freeze to death.

The cry of the bear-creature came out of the woods again, distant but still close enough that she shrank from the window.

And if you don’t freeze to death you’ll get eaten by that thing.

It wasn’t a bear. It didn’t sound right, the way a bear sounded. But it almost didn’t matter what it was. Mattie didn’t need to see it to know it was a killer.

She knew she should go back to bed, that sometimes William woke up in the night and reached for her. If she wasn’t present there would be hell to pay.

Her feet wouldn’t move, though. She stayed there at the window until the first pink light of dawn showed above the treetops.





CHAPTER TWO



After breakfast William said, “I’m going out today to see if I can track that bear.”

Mattie’s surprise must have shown on her face, for William did an uncharacteristic thing and explained himself.

“I’m worried about it coming close to the cabin. We’ve got meat in the storehouse and if the bear depletes all the hunting around here it might just decide it’s easier to take our stores than go down the mountain in search of more. You know that bears have gotten into the storehouse before.”

Mattie nodded. Two black bears—or maybe the same bear twice—had managed to break the door handle and push inside, gorging themselves on the stores.

The first time this happened Mattie was alone in the cabin. William was out on one of his trips to town. She’d stood helplessly at the window, unable to do anything about the bear because William had refused to teach her how to fire a rifle. Mattie listened to it blundering around inside the storehouse for hours, until the bear finally trundled out the door again and wandered away.

The only consolation on that occasion was that it was late spring and there hadn’t been much meat left in the storehouse. They’d used up much of it over the winter and the summer hunting hadn’t yet begun in earnest.

The second consolation, at least for Mattie, was that William blamed himself and not her. That was a rare enough occasion that she never forgot the moment.

“I ought to have put a different kind of handle on the door. I knew they could open doors. And I should cover the window, too.”

Mattie didn’t ask how he’d come by the knowledge that bears could open doors but she believed it. She’d seen the animal that had gotten into the storehouse do that exact thing—press down on the handle with its paw until the mechanism unclicked and the door swung open.

A bear returned a couple of days later, before William had an opportunity to fix up the storehouse. This time William was at home, and in short order that bear had been dispatched and was hanging up in the storehouse himself.

After that William had boarded up the window and resealed any holes in the storehouse. “I’m sure it just looked in the window and saw the meat hanging there. Those bears are smart as anything.”

He also changed the door handle to a knob that would be harder for the bear to turn and added another lock.

There hadn’t been any other incidents since then, but now William was worried. A groove formed between his eyes, one that only appeared when he was particularly troubled.

Mattie was hesitant to speak—when she criticized William (or even appeared to criticize him) he always got so upset. But since he seemed in an uncharacteristic mood today she dared.

“I thought you said that rifle wouldn’t kill a bear that size,” she said.

“It won’t,” he agreed.

That’s when she knew he was really worried, because it wasn’t like William to let any comment of hers pass without censure.

“I don’t necessarily want to kill it, at least not today. But I’d like to see it, maybe track it to its den. It’s getting colder, so it will have picked out a place for the winter even if it isn’t spending all its time there yet. We know it is big, so there are only a few places it can go. I’d like to get a better idea of just how big it really is. It’s eating up all the game around here, that’s for sure.”

“Yes,” Mattie said, then added, “please be very careful,” because this was what wives were supposed to say when their husbands went out to do something that might be dangerous. She was still confused about how she ought to feel if something bad happened to William.

Part of her longed for it (a wicked part, you know that’s a wicked thought, to wish your husband harm), but the other part was afraid of what would happen to her if he was gone. He’d kept so much knowledge from her that she wasn’t certain she could survive without him.

“You’re going with me,” he said.

“Me? Why?” She’d assumed she would stay home and perform her regular duties. That’s what she always did while William was out hunting.

William gave her a long look, as if trying to decide if he should tell her the answer. Finally he said, “I could use an extra pair of eyes, and yours are the only ones available. If I had a son, now . . .”

He trailed off meaningfully. Mattie flushed with shame, as she was meant to, and she felt the familiar pierce of grief under her ribs, grief that would sneak up on her and make her lungs seize.

She’d tried and tried to do her duty as his wife, but none of her pregnancies would keep. Twice she’d bled out the baby. William had beaten her terribly after the second time, incandescent with rage and accusing her of using witch’s arts to rid herself of her children. Her left arm had never really healed properly. It ached most cold days, and when she held her hands in front of her she could see the knot in her left forearm, the not-quite-straightness of it.