Winter's Bone

3

THE SNOW fell first in hard little bits, frosty white bits blown sideways to pelt Ree’s face as she raised the ax, swung down, raised it again, splitting wood while being stung by cold flung from the sky. Bits worked inside her neckline and melted against her chest. Ree’s hair was shoulder-length and full, with ungovernable loose curls from temples to neck and snow bits gathered in the tangle. Her overcoat was an implacable black and had been Mamaw’s, grim old wool battered by decades of howling winter and summer moths. The buttonless coat fell past her knees, below her dress, but draped open and did not hamper her chopping strokes. Her swings were practiced and powerful, short potent whacks. Splinters flew, wood split, the pile grew. Ree’s nose ran and the blood came up in her face and made pink on her cheeks. She pinched two fingers high on her nose, snorted a splat to the ground, dragged a sleeve across her face, swung the ax again.

Once the pile of splits became big enough to sit on, she did. She sat with her long legs close beneath her, booted feet spread wide, pulled headphones from a pocket and clamped them over her ears, then turned on The Sounds of Tranquil Shores. While frosty bits gathered in her hair and on her shoulders she raised the volume of those ocean sounds. Ree needed often to inject herself with pleasant sounds, stab those sounds past the constant screeching, squalling hubbub regular life raised inside her spirit, poke the soothing sounds past that racket and down deep where her jittering soul paced on a stone slab in a gray room, agitated and endlessly provoked but yearning to hear something that might bring a moment’s rest. The tapes had been given to Mom who already heard too many puzzling sounds and did not care to confront these, but Ree tried them and felt something unknot. She also favored The Sounds of Tranquil Streams, The Sounds of Tropical Dawn, and Alpine Dusk.

As the frosty bits dwindled the wind slowed and big snowflakes began falling as serenely as anything could fall the distance from the sky. Ree listened to lapping waves of far shores while snowflakes gathered on her. She sat unmoving and let snow etch her outline in deepening clean whiteness. The valley seemed in twilight though it was not yet noon. The three houses across the creek put on white shawls and burning lights squinted golden from the windows. Meat still hung from limbs in the side yards, and snow began clinging to the limbs and meat. Ocean waves kept sighing to shore while snow built everywhere she could see.

Headlights came into the valley on the rut road. Ree felt a sudden bounce of hope and stood. The car had to be coming here, the road ended here. She pulled the headphones to her neck and slid down the slope toward the road. Her boots left skid tracks in the snow and she fell on her ass near the bottom, then raised to her knees and saw that it was the law, a sheriff’s car. Two little heads looked out from the backseat.

Ree knelt beneath stripped walnut trees, watching as the car cut long scars in the fresh snow, pulled near and stopped. She pushed to her feet and rushed around the hood to the driver’s side, taking firm aggressive strides. When the door cracked open, she leaned and said, “They didn’t do nothin’! They didn’t do a goddamned thing! What the hell’re you tryin’ to pull?”

A rear door opened and the boys slid out laughing until they heard Ree’s tone and saw her expression. The glee drained from their faces and they became still. The deputy stood, raised his hands, showed her his palms, shook his head.

“Hold your beans, girl—I just brung ’em down from where the bus stopped. This snow has shut the school. Just give ’em a ride is all.”

She felt heat rise in her neck and cheeks, but turned to the boys, hands on her hips.

“You boys don’t need to do no ridin’ around with the law. Hear me? The walk ain’t that far.” She glanced across the creek, saw curtains parted, shapes moving. She pointed up the slope to the woodpile. “Now get up there and bring them splits into the kitchen. Go.”

The deputy said, “I was on my way here, anyhow.”

“Now why in hell would that be?”

Ree knew the deputy’s name was Baskin. He was short but wide, said to be a John Law nobody should tangle with unless the stakes were high, quick to draw, quicker to club. These country deputies answered calls alone, with backup help an hour or more away, so dainty rules and regulations were not first on their list of things to worry about. Or second, either. Baskin’s wife was a Tankersly from Haslam Springs, and Mom had gone to school with her from first grade on up and had still been friendly with her until they both married. Baskin had arrested Jessup on the porch late in the summer past.

“Ask me inside,” he said. He dusted snow from his shoulders. “I got to talk some with your momma.”

“She ain’t in the mood.”

“Ask me in, or watch me go in, anyhow. Whichever way you like it best.”

“Goin’ to be like that, huh?”

“Listen, I didn’t drive close on two hours of bad road only just to see your smilin’ face, girl. I got reasons. Ask me in or follow, it’s goddam cold out here.”

He began moving toward the porch and Ree loped ahead of him and stopped him at the door.

“Stomp your shoes. Don’t track melt all over my floor.”

Baskin stalled and hung his head for a moment, like a bull pondering, then nodded and dramatically stomped the snow from his feet. He made porch planks wiggle, snow fall from the railings, sent booms into the valley. “Good enough?”

She shrugged but held the door for him, slammed it shut as his heels cleared the threshold. Clothes were strung in three ranks across the kitchen, shirts drooping to eye level, dresses and pants falling deeper from the lines. Drips formed puddles beneath the thicker garments and trickles followed the slant of the floor to the wall. It was easiest to move about through sections where underthings and socks allowed more headroom. Mom sat in her chair beside the potbelly, humming thoughtlessly until she saw Baskin ducking below her damp panties.

“Not in my daddy’s house!” She smiled broadly, as if tickled by the surprise antics of a likable idiot. She began to rock her chair and laughed and held her eyes nearly closed. “Huh-uh, huh-uh. No, sir.” She pouted her lips, shook her head, suddenly dulled again. “You can’t bust a girl in her own daddy’s house.” She did not look at Baskin, but bowed her head and raised her knees to her chest and folded herself into a posture of tormented penance meekly offered. “I seen it written. Over there, somewhere. Daddy’s house ain’t the one you can do nothin’ in.”

Ree watched Baskin’s face spin through reactions: brief alarm, then confusion, sadness, resignation, pity. She waited until he turned from Mom, stumped and flubbing his lips. She said, “Just tell me.”

The boys came in from the back, cheeks looking scuffed red by cold, hair damp, and dropped armloads of splits that clattered beside the potbelly. Some splits carried snow and thawed more wet onto the floor. The boys went for another load and Baskin nodded after them, saying, “Could be we should talk on the porch.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Not yet. Not for sure. But you never do know.”

The porch was surrounded by a shifting veil of falling snow. Ree and Baskin stood awkwardly and silent for a time, the breath from both rising white toward the passing flakes. Dollys across the creek gathered near the meat trees in their side yards, big knives in hand, slashing at ropes so the hanging meat would drop to ground. Several times Blond Milton and Sonya and the others paused in their slashing and looked toward the porch.

“You know Jessup’s out on bond, don’t you?”

“So what?”

“You know he cooks crank, don’t you?”

“I know that’s the charges you laid against him. But you ain’t proved it on him.”

“Shit, Jessup’s just about the best crank chef these Dollys and them ever have had, girl. Practically half famous for it. That’s why he pulled them years away up in the pen, there, you know. It was sure ’nough proved on him that time.”

“That was last time. You got to prove it on him every time.”

“That won’t be no hard thing to do. But this noise, this noise ain’t even why I’m here. Why I’m here is, his court date is next week and I can’t seem to turn him up.”

“Maybe he sees you comin’ and ducks.”

“Maybe he does. That could be. But where you-all come into this is, he put this house, here, and those timber acres up for his bond.”

“He what, now?”

“Signed it all over. You didn’t know? Jessup signed over everything. If he don’t show for trial, see, the way the deal works is, you-all lose this place. It’ll get sold from under you. You’ll have to get out. Got somewhere to go?”

Ree nearly fell but would not let it happen in front of the law. She heard thunder clapping between her ears and Beelzebub scratchin’ a fiddle. The boys and her and Mom would be dogs in the fields without this house. They would be dogs in the fields with Beelzebub scratchin’ out tunes and the boys’d have a hard hard shove toward unrelenting meanness and the roasting shed and she’d be stuck alongside them ’til steel doors clanged shut and the flames rose. She’d never get away from her family as planned, off to the U.S. Army, where you got to travel with a gun and they made everybody help keep things clean. She’d never have only her own concerns to tote. She’d never have her own concerns.

Ree stretched over the rail, pulled her hair aside and let snow land on her neck. She closed her eyes, tried to call to mind the sounds of a far tranquil ocean, the lapping of waves. She said, “I’ll find him.”

“Girl, I been lookin’, and…”

“I’ll find him.”

Baskin waited a moment for another word to be spoken, then shook his head and walked to the top step, turned to look at her again, shrugged and started down. Dollys lugging meat paused to watch him, openly staring. Blond Milton, Sonya, Catfish Milton, Betsy and the rest. He waved to them and none moved a twitch in response. He said, “That’d be the best thing, girl. Make sure your daddy gets the gravity of this deal.”