VI.
(March 1910)
In mid-March, along the river's frozen waters, two thirteen-year-old boys shattered the glaze on a knee-deep and moon-shaped snow. They wore snowshoes they'd made of bent ash and moose gut. Their hats were beaver fur, trapped and skinned and finally sewn while they sat around the fire in the wigwam.
Odd and Danny Riverfish. They wore bowie knives on their belts and carried shotguns over their shoulders and they dragged a toboggan behind them. They were on their way to Danny's traplines on Thistle Creek and in the beaver ponds above. Their play at being men was grave and full of purpose and hardly premature anymore.
" Maybe there'll be some otter or marten, too," Danny said.
"Otter's good to eat. Pelts will fetch a fair price at the trading post. Maybe at Hosea's," Odd said, trying the woodsman's banter he was just learning that winter.
" Loony Hosea."
Odd smiled. "Yeah."
Danny smiled back.
"How's marten roasted up?" Odd said.
"We don't eat marten."
Odd nodded, committing to memory this new knowledge.
They went into the woods east of the lower falls. The water had cut through the snowpack and fell thunderously, icy mist rising into the clear, hard morning.
"You think Miss Huff will miss us today?" Odd asked.
"Miss Huff could make a forest fire boring. Besides, I don't plan on ever going to that schoolhouse again. I've had enough of her goddamn Bible. Goddamn arithmetic. Arithmetic never got a beaver tail to fry up, did it?"
"Or a pelt to sell," Odd said, then fell silent for a moment before he added, "She tells Hosea I'm truant and I'll get the belt."
"Someday you'll be doing the belting."
"I'll never be able to whomp Hosea."
"Sure, you will. Someday we'll whomp him up together, steal his money."
The mere thought of this made Odd despair. His feelings about Hosea were as complicated as his own true history. The only thing in his life that held any semblance of order was his friendship with Danny. They'd been fast friends since they could crawl. Miss Huff had been their teacher since kindergarten.
"I don't mind her lessons," Odd said. " Those Old Testament stories are about as scary as hell."
"None of it makes the least damn sense. Fire and brimstone and a bunch of things to be scared of. Bunch of impossible rules. And she's ugly as a pile of bear shit."
"That's plain meanness. She can't help how she looks. And her Bible stories ain't that different than those stories your grandpap tells around the fire."
Daniel looked over his shoulder and smiled at his friend. It was his best feature, that smile. It conveyed a minute's speech in a second's time. "Grandpappy never whipped you if you doubted him, though, now, did he?"
Odd tried his turn at a smile.
"Did he?" Daniel persisted.
"No, he did not."
"And besides, you think Miss Huff could tell you a damn thing about these woods? You think there's secret directions in that black book of hers on where to set your traps? Where to tap the maple trees come spring? Where to go ricing?"
"The woods ain't everything, Danny."
Daniel stopped, held his hands palms up. "What else do you see?"
It was true: The wilderness was ubiquitous, in all its guises. From where they stood he could see the cedar swamp east of the lower falls, knew it went from bog to basalt in a few mere steps, the rock rising sharply into bald outcroppings too steep to climb. This late in winter the lichen would have been eaten away by the surefooted caribou, their tracks were all over the place.
The outcropping went on for a mile, and they walked its base in silence until they heard the river falling at the Devil's Maw.
"We'll take a break at the river, eat those biscuits and bacon," Danny said. They each had a pair of sandwiches in the pockets of their wool coats.
"I'm about hungry enough. That gruel Bekah cooks up in the morning is the worst."
"You know, you can come live with us anytime you want."
"I don't think Hosea would like that very much."
"Hosea. Pap says he's two men at once."
"I believe he might be."
They walked through the edge of the woods to the river's shore. Odd said, "It ain't that I wouldn't want to."
"Want to what?"
"Live in the wigwam village."
"It's better than town," Danny said.
"Sure is."
They stood on the shore and unwrapped their sandwiches and drank cold coffee Odd had carried in the deer-hide wineskin.
"You got the land and farm now," Danny said.