Simone ate her food with a delicate clicking sound; finally it occurred to me that her teeth might be fake. Grubby pinkies extended fastidiously, she nibbled at a leg of something before tiring of it and tossing it into the flames. It shocked me that I was eating what I was told was a vole. The meat came off the bone in long, gristly shreds that I forced myself to swallow. Pia and Rachel sat on the blown-out car seats, turned toward each other as they peeled porcupine meat from a small rib cage. They ate quickly and with an odd shame. Sandra huddled on a stump stool by the fire, warming her hands. She said she wasn’t hungry, but no one believed her.
Dean spread out a freshly skinned deer hide in the dirt near us. Its head—four hooves laid neatly next to it—sat staring at us on a nearby stump, nose still glistening wet.
“Such a tragic story about your guide,” Simone said as she peeled some kind of root with a short-handled knife. “I imagine you marked his grave?”
“We made a cairn in the river,” I said.
“I see. So people will be coming to retrieve him.”
We were quiet, imagining this.
“Why do you live out here?” Pia asked.
Simone worked something out of her hair and threw it into the shadows. “We grew tired of people, Dean and me. We’re better off without them. We make our own paradise here, as you can see. No phones, no taxes, no noise, no pollution. None of the insanity civilization has to offer, thank you very much. Besides”—she skewered the root and rested it on glowing coals—“they were threatening to take my dear boy, and I couldn’t have that.”
“Is Dean . . . all right?” Rachel asked.
“Dean is not like everybody else. You can see that. He marches to the tune of a different drummer, I believe the saying goes.” She pulled a short twig from a pocket in her voluminous skirt, used it to remove something from between her front teeth. “This world can’t handle anybody different. It’s like some sort of sin. They want to put you in an institution and shoot you up with drugs and try to make you like everybody else. So we disappeared ourselves. Simple.”
An owl hooted, haunting a nearby tree. Sandra shivered and said, “What do you do in winter?”
“Cut a lot of wood. Don’t think we’ll ever run out of that.” Simone smirked, glaring out at the trees that hung over us with what I could have sworn was a touch of disgust.
“Does anyone know you live out here?” Pia asked.
Simone considered Pia, her size and strength. “You four do. I believe that’s it.”
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, struggling to keep my expression neutral.
“You see, the secret,” Simone said, puffing up with pride, “is in how you burn your wood. That is the key to everything. On flyover days in summer, when rangers patrol by air—bunch of overpaid fatheads if you want to know the truth—you don’t hunt, because you cannot smoke your game. They’ll see you. Make a note of you. Pay a visit. Tell you to leave. If you need a fire, burn clean, dry wood. It doesn’t smoke up. It burns clear, and you are safe. That’s my tip of the day. You’re welcome.” She snorted out a braying sort of laugh at her joke—clearly she was out of practice with mirth—and tossed her homemade toothpick into the flames.
With his hands, Dean scooped a whitish paste from a can and rubbed it into the deer’s skin.
“What’s he doing?” Sandra asked.
“He’s braining the hide. Using the brains of a moose we killed the other day. They’re full of lecithin, which as you may know is a fat. Wonderful for curing hides. You see, we use everything here: fur, sinew, flesh, and bone. We never waste.”
“Can you help us get back to town?” Sandra said, unable to mask a touch of hysteria in her voice. “Can you tell us where we are? We won’t tell anyone about you.”
“Of course.” Simone speared the cooked root from the hot ashes and took a cautious bite. “Dean will accompany you in the morning.” Dean looked up at his mother, a flash of alarm in his eyes. “It’s pretty simple where we are. By river, we’re thirty-five miles or so to Grindstone, with lots of rapids between here and there. Very difficult. Don’t recommend it. Over land, we’re about the same distance west of Portage. But the woods are very dense. You’ll be lost without a compass or Dean to show you the way.”
Dean’s tools—a palm-size rock and shard of bone—dropped from his hands. He signed, “No, I will not kill women. No, no, no bad Dean.”
With all my will I kept my face blank. My heart slammed so hard against my chest that for several moments I couldn’t hear—a muffled roar filled my ears. A cry escaped my lungs as a cough and I feigned the need for a sip of water. My friends looked at me, questioning, but I kept my eyes on the flames that still sizzled with the fat of the vermin we had just eaten. I clenched my fists, fingernails digging bloody half-moons into my palms.
Simone pushed herself from her knees to her full height and approached her son. Looming, she looked half again as big as he was. She signed down at him, her hands moving in big, clear gestures. “You started the fire.”
He stared at her, hands still.
With a hiss of disgust, she coyly flipped her hair back from her face. “You know that brings them,” she signed. “Now, we have no choice! I don’t know what’s going on with you. I can’t trust you anymore.”
Dean shook his head, picked up his tools, and bent down to his work.
Simone smacked her hands together, a shockingly loud sound. Dean looked up, his mouth a grim line, his eyes full of fright. She signed quickly, close to his sweating face, “You kill them or we lose everything. Do you understand?”
His hands shook as the rock and bone dropped once more to the blood-soaked ground. “Nice ladies,” he signed. “Nice ladies. Never seen nice ladies.” He rocked on his haunches, pulled at his hair. “I like them, the women. Pretty. Listen to them talk.”
Simone took a wide-hipped lunge toward him. She raised her hand over his head, but brought it down gently and patted his back. “Dean is a bit shy, I think,” she said over her shoulder. “But he’s happy to take you. He says he’s looking forward to it.”