Dawn came. Brittle.
A patter on the tin roof like that of dancing mice. Sleet.
The girl squatted like a bush child on the corner of the couch, eyes locked on Jonah’s.
Those eyes. Sally’s eyes. He felt as if his heart would give out from looking at them, and from the pain he’d be unable to endure if he had to give up a sight he’d lived to see again for the past twenty-five years.
Drive her to town. Now. To the authorities and her family, the voice said. Bring her back. Right now.
No. He had to wash her first. Feed and clothe her. She was not an animal, some stray dog he’d found in the woods.
Her hunger and hygiene and nakedness be damned. Take her back now; wrap her in the blanket and take her back before it’s too late.
He looked at the girl gnawing the ends of her stringy hair as if trying to eat it. Her grimed, abused body. Hair caked with mud. No. He needed to tend to her first.
Liar.
And it was a lie. He did not need to, he wanted to care for her, consequences be damned. He did not want to give her up.
He wanted to keep her.
“You need to eat,” he said and seared salt pork in the cast-iron pan atop the woodstove.
Her eyes tracked him.
He brought the pork to her on waxed paper.
She sniffed, curled her lip.
He picked up a piece.
Took a bite.
“Mmmm,” he said. “Mmmm.”
A phantom smile haunted her face. But the girl would not eat. Her dark eyes slayed him with emotion he’d not known in ages. He wanted to hug her, pull her tight to him and comfort her. Protect her.
The voice said, Careful. She’s not yours. Get her home.
Her eyes seemed to examine each crevice of his weathered face, a look in them and a tilt to her head as though she were trying to conjure a memory.
He slid the pork toward her.
“Eat.”
She picked up a piece, nibbled it.
“There. See. Good.” He felt the long-dormant rush of parental pride.
She spat out the pork.
Sally didn’t like salt pork, either; she picked the smallest speck of it out of her baked beans.
“Not the best meal,” Jonah said. “Let’s get washed.”
The girl eyed him, mud-streaked face quizzical. Her hands crusted with dirt.
Outside, he filled a tin bucket of water at the spring, then brought it inside and warmed it on the woodstove, soaped up a ratty towel.
Sally loved to be bathed, even as an infant in that cheap little plastic tub Rebecca had received as a shower gift. When Rebecca squeezed water from a sponge onto Sally’s tummy, Sally had drummed her heels and pumped her fists, wriggled and gabbled, dark eyes gleeful, her face breaking into that wondrous toothless smile. “She’s babying out!” Rebecca would exclaim. “Our water baby!”
The girl scratched at her scalp. Jonah parted her hair with his fingers. Lice teemed, and red, raw sores polluted her pale scalp.
Jonah wiped at her face with the corner of the towel. A faint smile again passed on her face.
“Warm. Nice,” Jonah said. He placed the warm towel on the back of her hand. “We need to get you all nice and cleaned before we take you home.”
She shook her head with violence, as if to break her neck.
“Nice. Warm. Clean,” Jonah said. “Mommy and Daddy will say what a good girl you are.”
She shook her head again.
He handed her the towel. “You’re right, you can do it. You’re a big girl.”
She rubbed the towel all over her face, water running into her lap.
“Behind the ears. We don’t want potatoes growing back there,” Jonah said.
Her ephemeral smile glimmered. Paled.
“The neck,” he said. “Good. An old pro. I’ll leave you be.” He went out to the porch.
The cold mountain air was bracing, yet the sunshine filtering through a break in the clouds caressed his cheek with its warmth.
He closed his eyes and turned his face to the sun. Its heat drummed lightly on his eyelids. How unfathomable that the sun’s heat reached across ninety-three million miles to warm his face. Ninety-three million miles. How mystifying its life-giving heat. How impossible its very existence. How mad. How miraculous.
He listened to a raven’s clotted call. Listened to the melting snow drip on the wood steps. Breathed in the biting scent of spruce and hemlock. How was it people believed in heaven? What place could be more wondrous than here? For the first time in decades, he sensed wonder, felt a compulsion to translate what he felt into words. To write a poem.
A voice said: If the sun’s light and heat can reach across ninety-three million miles in eight minutes to warm your face, why can’t your daughter return to you from across twenty-five years? To be made flesh again.
He jolted as if he’d touched a live wire.
The voice was madness.
Yet the impossible and miraculous sunlight continued to reach across the universe to warm his face and light the earth, grant the world life.
He coughed, hacked up phlegm.
Red blood stained the white snow.
From far below in the beeches, the calamitous din of a revving engine rose.
An ATV.
Jonah froze.
Listened. The ATV was down in the beeches. Where he’d found the girl.
Were they coming to search up here already?
I told you to take her to town straightaway, the voice said. They’ll never believe you were going to bring her back if they find you up here with her.
Panicked, he hurried inside.
The bucket was knocked over and the girl stood in a puddle of soapy water, sucking on the corner of the soaked towel.
The sound of the engine rose outside.
Jonah grabbed his rifle from the corner. Cocked the hammer.
The sound of the ATV died.
Whoever was driving the ATV would have to hoof it from there. It was no more than a half-hour hike, if one knew of the skein of a trail leading to the cabin.
“Stay here,” Jonah said to the girl.
She frowned.
“Stay,” Jonah said. “I’ll be right back.”
Her eyes shimmered, wet.
“Please,” he said.
Outside, Jonah sat in his old chair, rifle on his lap, and waited.
The sun was gone behind the clouds now.
Snow was falling.
The skin on his arms prickled.
The engine did not start again.
Whoever had driven up was still out there, somewhere.
He clutched the rifle tighter in his cold hands.