EVERY WEEKEND, IT’S HER TURN to lug buckets of water from the outside hand pump back to the cabin. She has slept in—it’s Saturday—but now has to work. “I think it’s Miles’s turn,” she says to her father.
“No, honey. Saturday means it’s your turn,” her father says.
Clanging the bucket loudly against the doorframe, Sarah heads outside to the well. Emily immediately starts to bounce around her pen and clack her front hooves high up on the boards.
“I can’t play,” Sarah mutters. “Not now.” During her third trip with a full bucket, she looks up. Miles and her mother putta-put through the woods. Miles, a maniac for saving gas, kills the engine so that he coasts down the hill, dust flying, Nat hanging on tightly behind him.
“Groceries. Mail call!” Miles shouts. He dismounts and slaps dust from his pants.
“How’d it go?” Artie asks.
Nat slips off her backpack and glances at Miles—who shrugs and grins. “Just your basic trip to the grocery store.”
Nat lets out a long breath.
Art narrows his eyes. “Did something happen?” he asks quickly.
“Yeah, the volcanoes,” Miles says.
“Here,” Nat adds, handing the heavy backpack to Sarah. “Put away the groceries. I really need to relax.”
“I have to do everything around here!” Sarah groans.
For Miles and her parents, Saturday and Sunday are no different from any other day. For Sarah, the weekend feels like a week. Time slows down. The cabin gets smaller and smaller, especially after sundown.
That evening her mother reads and her father lightly but continually tap-taps his fingers as he reads music charts and listens to his headphones. Miles pores over Mr. Kurz’s logbooks. “Look, Sarah—he even kept track of how much per month he spent on tobacco.” Miles is so engrossed in the narrow ledgers that he actually calls her by her real name.
“How interesting,” she says sarcastically. She glances briefly over Miles’s shoulder at the cramped handwriting, the tidy columns of numbers.
“He smoked more in the winter,” Miles observes, “like twice as much.”
“Who wouldn’t?” Sarah mumbles, glancing around the cabin.
“We’ll all be smoking by spring,” Nat says. It’s a joke, but no one laughs.
“‘December 1949; one Christmas card, ten cents,’” Miles reads.
“One Christmas card,” Artie says, looking over. “That’s sad.” He actually listens sometimes.
“Wonder who he sent it to,” Nat says.
“Probably to himself,” Sarah says.
Miles looks up, suddenly angry. “What do you know about him? You never even met him.”
After supper, as a gesture to Miles, she picks up one of Mr. Kurz’s account books and looks through it. “What’s ‘logwood dye’?” she asks.
“For trapping,” Miles says, his eyes lighting up. “He boiled his traps in water, paraffin, and this kind of black dye, which takes away the human scent and lubricates the iron—plus prevents it from rusting.” As he talks, his eyes go ever so slightly crossed—not crossed really, but sort of blank: He’s pulling stuff back from Mr. Kurz. She remembers that look from back home when, as kids, they played Memory, a matching game that Miles always won. His brain is the tiniest bit scary.
“Trapping, ick,” she says.
“By the way,” Miles announces to everyone, “we all need to learn how to shoot.”
There is a moment of dead air.
“Why?” Nat says.
Miles rolls his eyes. “To protect ourselves. If Dad and I are off somewhere, it would be nice to know that you and Sarah could handle a gun.”
“Me? Shoot a gun?” Nat says. “That will be the day.”
“I could try,” Sarah says suddenly. “I mean, at least learn how. Get my northern-girl thing on.”
That night Sarah arranges her sleeping bag in her corner of the new bedroom—which smells strongly of pine. Miles has drawn a line down the middle of the floor: her side, his side. She decorates her “room” with her favorite stuffed animal (a purple-and-black zebra), a picture of her and her friends from fifth grade crammed into a photo booth at the state fair, along with stuff she has collected near the cabin: a weathered pine knot that looks like a little galaxy; several smooth stones from the river; and an open, empty clamshell: her mother-of-pearl butterfly. By candlelight she starts to read her favorite vampire novel, but all she can think about is Ray. She stares at the little yellow flame of the candle, then checks her watch. Only about thirty-six hours until the weekend is over.
In the morning, she wakes up before Miles—before everybody. No surprise there; she fell asleep around nine P.M. As Miles breathes heavily in his bag, she slips on her clothes and heads to the outhouse. The air is chilly but clear; the eastern sky is purple and pink.
On the path to the outhouse, she stops. To the far side, by their “burner barrel”—a rusty old fifty-gallon drum in which Miles burns trash—is movement: It’s the gimpy dog, pawing through garbage. He has tipped over the whole barrel.
Her first instinct is to shout “Shoo!” or “Go away!” But for some reason she doesn’t. She watches. The dog is so intent on finding something to eat that he doesn’t see or hear her. He’s totally ugly: a torn ear, long ago healed, split into two flaps; a gray muzzle; and that crooked and dangly right rear leg.
Suddenly he turns and sees her; he hunches down as if to run. But he has also found a scrap of fish skin that hangs from the side of his mouth like a skinny tongue.
Sarah slowly squats down. His yellow eyes follow her. Still watching her, he gulps down the fish skin, then resumes his pawing.
“You’re making a mess,” Sarah says softly.
His nose continues to nudge through the scattered garbage.
“What’s your name?”
As she raises up slightly, he growls, but it’s not a scary growl. Sarah really has to pee, so she stands, keeping her posture low, and eases past. Her movements, slow and nonthreatening, seem to work. He doesn’t run.
When she returns, he’s gone. With an old rake, she comes back to clean up the mess and set the barrel upright. As she works, she raises her head and gradually stops moving; slowly she pivots her face to look behind her, into the brush. The old dog, almost perfectly camouflaged, watches her. Once her eyes stop on his, he melts backward into the brush.
“Brush,” Sarah says. “That’s your name.”