AFTER BACKTRACKING FROM THE BUS stop, Miles pauses, then leaps from the asphalt to the road bank. He tries to leave no tracks in the ditch. Mr. Kurz would be proud. A slight breeze stirs the dust and softens the edges of his boot prints.
He angles through the woods, then to the hill above their cabin. Below there are no signs of life. His parents have gone back to bed—either they’re fooling around or they’re just lazy today. But white motion flashes behind the riverbank brush. It’s his mother in the swimming hole, splashing, bathing. He turns away—not that he saw anything—and heads upstream along the ridgeline.
Carrying his gun loosely over his shoulder, he walks slowly, first planting the heel and then the rest of the foot: heel-toe, heel-toe. Goat Girl walks like an elephant: clump, clump, clump. He has tried to teach her the hunter’s walk to spread out the impact, but she just doesn’t get it. Or she gets it briefly, but soon it’s back to clump, clump, clump.
The deer trail on the high bank follows the path of least brush, but with easy escape routes. Deer are not dumb. This would be a good spot for hunting deer, but the weather must be colder or else the meat would spoil. This morning he is on the hunt for a grouse.
Grouse are not dumb either. They do not like open spaces where an owl or a hawk can fly in and get them. Look for grouse in the thickest brush, the kind a man can’t walk through. A good hunter sometimes has to crawl. Mr. Kurz’s gravelly old voice comes into Miles’s head, like it does several times a day.
He eases through the brush, its bristles sweeping his bare arms like a coarse broom. He pauses. Sniffs the air. A fruity, sweet-and-sour odor drifts up from the river’s edge. He heads that way, eyes on the ground, until he realizes that the scent is above him: clusters of translucent red-orange berries. Bears won’t eat them; birds won’t touch them unless there’s nothing else to eat. So much acid in them that they barely even freeze when it’s twenty below zero. But they make the best jelly and pancake syrup a man could ever want. You’ve got to know your wild berries if you want to live off the land. But why am I telling you this? You don’t write anything down.
I don’t need to write things down.
You told me you had some report to write for your teacher.
I do, but I can remember every word you say.
So tell me what I said.
“‘Bears won’t eat them; birds won’t touch them unless there’s nothing else to eat. So much acid in them that they barely even freeze when it’s twenty below zero. But they make the best jelly and pancake syrup a man could ever want—’”
Hehe. That’s pretty good, kid.
I told you—I can remember every word.
You’re a strange kid, that’s for sure.
You’re a pretty weird old man.
Hehe. Want to play cards?
You don’t want to play cards with me.
Why not?
I can memorize cards, too. Every hand you play.
Hehe. We’ll see about that....
Miles reaches up and picks a single glowing-red high-bush cranberry—and pops it into his mouth. “Phaw!” He spits out the berry in an explosion of pulp and tiny seed. The berry is impossibly sour, but probably high in vitamin C. Miles marks this spot in his mind and moves on.
Not far from the cabin he sees tracks. He kneels to examine the round, good-sized paw prints in the dust. Dog. One of the paw prints is faint—almost invisible—and turns sideways when it lands. A bad leg. A limping dog. He follows its trail, which backtracks and meanders and then returns toward the cabin. Miles slips a shell into the chamber and stays on the tracks.