by Freya Barker
Ben came up with the shepherd’s pie, reminding me that although risotto and veal sounded pretty good, the simple potatoes and beef with a side of applesauce, might be something Mak would enjoy.
“Everything’s fine,” I assure him, pulling myself up on the counter so I was face-to-face. Of course, Ben would see it as an invitation to worm himself between my legs and with his hands on my ass, pull me closer to the edge, and his hips, or thereabouts.
Stacie and Mak were in their rooms. Something Stacie had initially protested against, claiming she could just as easily share with Mak, but my uncle assured her that he much preferred sleeping in his bed in the trailer. Ben showed them their rooms, and I had to smile at the girly squeals from Mak, who probably found the few things I left on her bed for her.
I keep looking around for Atsa, who is usually underfoot when I’m doing anything with food in the kitchen, but he’s nowhere to be found. Although I’m pretty sure he’s making himself comfortable in Mak’s room, on Mak’s bed.
Traitor.
Ben
“Are you ready to get a tree?”
Mak is smiling big as she nods at Al, who is helping her in her snowsuit.
“You need to hold on tight to Isla, okay?”
“Why aren’t you coming?” my niece asks the old man.
“Who’s going to make sure there is hot chocolate and a nice fire ready for when you come back frozen like icicles? Besides, Uncle Al is too old for shenanigans in the snow, I’ll leave that up to you young ‘uns.” Al ruffles her hair before tugging her hood up.
“Uncle Ben is old, too.” Mak shrugs innocently, and my sister, who is struggling to get her feet shoved into boots, snorts. I’m close enough to cuff the back of her head.
“Hey!” Stacie cries out, lifting her hand to her head. “I didn’t say anything.”
“But you were thinking about it.”
“You guys, ready?” Isla comes in from outside, where she just picked up an armload of firewood.
“Yeah, daylight’s wasting here, and there’s a show starting in ten minutes I’d really like to see, so scram, you lot,” Al says, taking Isla’s load and carrying it inside.
The plan was for Mak to ride with me and Stacie to climb on the back of Isla’s ATV, leveling it out weight-wise. A solid plan, or so I thought, until the girls got hold of it and my input was completely ignored as they rearranged it.
There isn’t a whole lot of snow yet, so we should still be able to get around on the four-wheelers, for the most part. If it gets too deep at some point, we can always walk a ways.
With Stacie hanging on for dear life, I lead us up a narrow trail I flattened, the best I could, earlier in the week. The whine of Isla’s engine sounds right behind us and the dog is trotting along beside her.
“This is so fun!” Stacie yells in my ear. “Can you teach me to ride one of these?”
“Nothing to it,” I tell her, turning my head sideways so she can hear me. “Just need to learn to work a throttle.”
“Cool.” I can feel her shift as she looks behind us, where both my niece and Isla are smiling wide. The next moment, she’s back at my ear. “Can you teach me to shoot a gun?”
“Fuck no,” is my knee-jerk response. It’s already a challenge to try to teach Isla to hit a target. My sister, who is not particularly coordinated, on her best days—in anything but her outfit that is—would be a nightmare.
“I’ll just ask Isla,” she says, and I don’t even need to look to know she’s got a big shit-eating grin on her face. She’s a fucking lawyer; she knows exactly how to manipulate. She went to law school for three goddamn years after her bachelor’s, that’s all they learn there. She knows damn well I wouldn’t even consider letting Isla be the one to teach her. It would be like the blind leading the blind.
So I just shut my mouth and resign myself to the fact that I’ll probably be taking Stacie for target practice before the end of the year. Fuck me.
-
“That one is nice,” I point out a nice little tree, when we stop in a section with quite a few nicely-shaped pine trees.
“Too small,” Isla shuts me down.
“Yeah, good shape, but you need much bigger for that ginormously high ceiling.” My sister, of course, readily agrees.
“I think it’s cute,” Mak says, standing beside me, the sweet little girl face, currently reddened by the cold. Cute. Damn kid is as almost as good as her mother, pushing my buttons.
“You’re right,” I agree, knowing I’ve been overpowered, yet again. “Let’s keep looking. Cute won’t cut it.”
If I had any doubts about Mak’s premature, but already finely honed feminine wiles, the sneaky grin she throws the other two swiftly eliminates them.
The next tree, this one selected by the half pint, is massive, and I carefully explain we’ll likely be wrecking the home of quite a few of the local wildlife, if we were to cut that one down. That doesn’t sit well with Mak, so we’re looking again. At this point, it’s more me hanging back by the ATVs, keeping an eye on the rest of the group.
All of a sudden I notice the dog frozen and alert, his nose sniffing the air. I quickly track Isla’s dark head with earmuffs, and off to her right is my sister, her blonde hair poking out of the blue knit hat she’s wearing. But I can’t find Mak’s red hood.
The moment I start moving in the direction, where I thought I last saw her, Atsa takes off running, his head low and stretched out in front of him. My feet immediately pick up speed, and by the time I hear my name called, I’m full out running in the direction where Atsa disappeared in the brush.
“Ben! What’s going on?” I vaguely register Isla’s call, but I’m too focused on where I’m going, while instinctively reaching for my gun.
I’m noisy as I crash through the underbrush, but I can still hear loud growls and snarls to my left. I immediately shift toward the sound of animals fighting, firing a shot in the air in hopes of breaking it up.
I clear the trees, just as I see the mountain lion pin Atsa on his back, and without thinking about it, I aim and shoot again. This time to hit. The majestic animal slumps down on top of the dog, a good-sized hole in its side. I aim again when I see its body move, but it’s just the dog crawling out from under the weight of the big cat.
“Atsa!” Isla exclaims as she bursts out of the trees, my sister right behind her.
“Mommy?”
The blood freezes in my veins when I see Mak’s red hood poke up from the brush on the other side of the small clearing, right in my fucking line of fire.
-
“Hit me up with another,” I tell Al, who is generously spiking the hot chocolate with dark rum.
He was coming through the woods when we were on our way back down, having heard the shots. I had him drive the ATV home and I walked the rest of the way. I needed the time to get my jitters under control. Clearly, I was only partially successful.
Luckily, other than a few spots where the cat pierced the skin with teeth or claws, the only injury Atsa bore was a small tear on his ear. Isla wanted to take him down to Dolores to find a vet, so he could get stitched up. The dog didn’t look to be in pain, and there was barely any bleeding, once we had the mountain lion’s blood washed off him and were able to get a good look at any injuries. It didn’t look that bad and would heal on its own, with a bit of care.
Mak had wandered off a little when she spotted the big cat in the distance. She’d panicked and started moving to where she thought we were but ended up in the wrong direction. The animal had wasted no time closing in on the much smaller Mak. If not for Atsa, Mak may not be cuddled on the couch next to her still shaky mother. Christ, I can’t even think about that.
Isla got mad when I suggested perhaps Atsa deserved a battle scar or two, but my little niece intervened by saying, “That way I can’t ever forget he saved me.”
That resulted in a sobbing Isla in my arms. Arms that were still shaking.
Al insisted on coming back up with me, to d
rag the cat’s carcass a little further away from the house. We also ended up cutting a tree, the only way to lift everyone’s spirits.
That, and the rum in hot chocolate.
CHAPTER 22
Isla
Well, I got my Christmas.
The tree Ben and Uncle Al ended up dragging down the mountain, not quite as big as I would’ve liked it, but it also wasn’t as small as Ben initially suggested. We kept the decorations simple and Mak’s enthusiasm made trimming the tree fun.
Compromise.
I’m pretty sure we’ll see a lot of that.
My elaborate dinner suggestions had been voted down, in favor of deep fried turkey the guys planned to cook. Ben had taken Mak into Cortez to pick up groceries and came back three hours later with the back of his SUV loaded to the top. For a man who vows to hate shopping, he was awfully proficient at it.
“Wait until you see your present,” Mak twitters, clapping her hands excitedly. She was describing every item being pulled from the Toyota by the two men.
“Pixie,” Ben called, drawing my attention. “Got no place to hide this thing until tomorrow, so you’re getting your gift early.”
“We’re not supposed to be doing gifts!” I protested, but Ben turned his glare on me.
“Yeah? So how come you’re hiding shit in the back of the closet in our bedroom, and in the rafters of the shed out back?”
“I didn’t put anything in the shed out back.” My eye flicked to my uncle, who suddenly seemed very busy studying the big outdoor fryer Ben picked up as well.
“It’s Christmas,” Uncle Al finally muttered with a shrug when I stared him down.
In the end, it appeared we’d all caved. No lavish amounts of gifts under the tree, but thoughtful ones, every one of them.
The gift Ben got me is easily my favorite: a beautiful wooden bench. It apparently is an old church pew he found at a thrift store. The arms and backrest were ornately carved, albeit crude. The snout of a bear, a forest of pines, elk antlers, and what looked like a salmon, were all hewn out of the rustic wood, with just enough detail to recognize the image. It’s weathered, and has a long crack running along the backrest that someone haphazardly braced by hammering a two-by-four to the back, but it fits perfectly out front, on the deck.
I’m sitting there now, bundled up against the chilly temperatures but unable to resist the first warm beams of the sun. They predicted a few days of warmer weather this coming week and I’m ready for it.
I take another sip of my coffee, listening to the relative silence around me. It’s funny, in the early morning during the spring and summer, you can’t miss the sounds of everything waking up around you, but in the winter you have to listen for it. The distant screech of an eagle looking for an early morning snack, the clucking of a chipmunk detecting the threat overhead, and the creaking of frozen limbs as the tops of trees sway in the breeze.
I grab my camera from the bench beside me and quickly zoom in on the bird of prey, diving down and catching something on the campground below. I adjust my lens, sharpening the image of the eagle; its feathers gleaming in the morning sun, as it tears the head off a mouse or maybe it’s the chipmunk I heard earlier. It’s a swift death, the eagle’s beak curved dangerously with edges sharp as a knife.
All I hear now is the whirr of the camera, a soft click of the shutter counting the images I take.
Brutal—but also beautifully raw. There is honesty in the wild—balance. A certain justifiable order in the way of things, in only taking what you need.
We, as humans, tend to take what we want and are rarely satisfied just having our needs met. There are times when I wish I could live off the grid, sustain myself only by taking what I need, but I’ll be the first to admit; I like some of my comforts too much to give up.
I think the inherent difference, between man and animal, is that man has the capacity—or maybe the curse—to dream. We dream of better, bigger, more, and when we reach it, we simply create new dreams. The constant drive forward with an objective in mind.
Nothing quite as simple as a next meal or another day survived.
I lower the camera and lift my head at the soft thud of the front door and the crunch of boots on the snow. I’m expecting Ben, so it surprises me when Stacie steps onto the deck, carrying a steaming mug of her own.
“Am I interrupting?” she whispers, mindful of the peaceful morning.
“Not at all,” I assure her with a smile. “Did you sleep okay?”
“It’s unbelievable how well I sleep up here. The first couple of days I was a little headachy, but now I feel fantastic.”
“Probably a touch of altitude sickness,” I guess. “Isn’t Albuquerque at about five thousand feet, on average? McPhee is at seven thousand. It may just be enough of a difference to make you feel it a bit.”
“Possibly,” she concedes. “I could live here, you know? If I could bring my job with me, I’d be here in a heartbeat. Mak loves it, too. I actually like the idea of her not growing up in the big city.”
“I wouldn’t complain.” I give her hand a squeeze and smile. “And I can pretty much guarantee that Ben would be over the moon. It’s food for thought,” I add, carefully gauging the other woman.
This is one of those decisions you don’t make in a day. Not if you have a complete life built somewhere else. It was different for me; I had more here in my uncle, and the familiar surroundings, than was left for me anywhere else.
“That it is. But for now I’m enjoying the sunshine on my face, and I’ve had enough of lazing about. I feel like doing something.”
“Come fishing.”
Both Stacie and I swivel our heads around to find Ben heading toward us.
“Not going fishing,” Stacie says, making it sound like it’s the most disgusting proposition she’s ever heard. I bark out a laugh. She may be thinking about moving closer, but I’m afraid she’ll never be an outdoorsy girl.
“Mak is,” Ben returns, shrugging his shoulders.
“Of course she is,” Stacie fires back. “She’d shovel poop if you told her it was the cool thing to do. You ask and my daughter jumps, but I ask her to pick up her dirty clothes; I don’t even have to wait for the answer to know it’ll be no.” She turns to me with an exasperated look on her face, and I have to bite my lip not to laugh. “I swear I thought I had years before puberty hit.”
There’s nothing for me to say. I don’t even think she expects me to, so I just pat her knee, while Ben chuckles behind us.
“Morning,” his voice is suddenly right by my ear and I tilt my head back.
“Hey,” I whisper, as his hand slips around my neck and forces my chin even higher. His kiss is soft and sweet, and I could stay like that forever, if Mak didn’t come barreling around the corner.
“Can we go now?” she chirps, bouncing up and down impatiently.
“Lord have mercy,” Stacie groans.
“Right behind you, kid,” Ben says, and with a wink at me, follows the skipping girl around the corner, only to turn back at the last minute.
“Sis,” he calls to Stacie. “If you’re looking for something to do, ask Isla to show you where the stain is for the Deville trailer.”
Ben
Of course Mak hasn’t eaten yet, or brushed her teeth, and it takes a little convincing to get her to sit down at the kitchen island and eat the oatmeal I made her.
“Why is oatmeal good for you?” she asks, right after I tell her that.
“I remember my mom making oatmeal every morning before school,” I tell her. “I didn’t like it much, but she called it brain food, explained that if I wanted to be smart and strong, I’d eat oatmeal every day of the week.”
“Did you like it then?” I chuckle as she tentatively puts another spoonful in her mouth.
“Not right away, but I learned to love it.”
“Well, I love Isla’s pancakes best for breakfast. They’re much better than oatmeal,” she declares, her stubborn streak showing.
&
nbsp; “That’s easy,” Isla says, as she walks into the kitchen, looking for a refill. “And you’re so lucky.” She taps Mak on the nose. “Because it just so happens you haven’t even tried my best pancakes yet.”
I chuckle at my niece’s face, full of expectation as Isla takes her time filling her mug and doctoring it up the way she likes, before she turns back around.
“You’ll never guess the secret ingredient for my best pancakes.” Mak is not stupid. She knows exactly what’s coming next as her face falls.
“Oatmeal,” she says, a little defeated.
“You bet. I ground it real fine, mush in a banana, and add just a little milk and an egg. They’re easy to make, I can teach you.”
“Cool,” the now widely smiling Mak breathes.
“I’ll go grab some bananas and eggs later. We’re running low on supplies anyway. Maybe we can make them tomorrow?” Isla winks at me, as I grab the vibrating phone from my pocket and slip into the hallway.
“Neil,” I answer, when I see his name displayed.
“Hey, hope you had a good Christmas?”
“What’s up?” I ask right away, dismissing with the pleasantries. The guy is probably nice enough, but he’s too damn pretty and smooth, and his soft chuckle on the other end irritates the fuck out of me. I found out from Isla he’s married to an older woman. Her age, Isla felt the need to inform me with a smile, which really pissed me off.
“Do you know if Isla’s checked her emails recently?”
“No. I don’t think she’s touched her laptop since our family arrived. Why?”
“Good. If she does, I don’t want her to worry. I’ve temporarily rerouted her emails.”
“Why?” I ask again.
“There was a video this time. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t you. At least I hope the fuck it wasn’t, or I’ll have to wash my eyes with goddamn bleach. Way too many hairy parts.” He audibly shudders, and I feel rage bubbling up, as I realize that this fucking crazy bitch upped the game in trying to scare Isla off.
“Not me,” I bite off.
“God, please don’t tell me how you can know for sure. Knowing each other’s grooming habits is way too fucking intimate.”
