But he hadn’t buried it. He’d kept it hidden away, his own little good-luck charm.
He stood now, ring carefully tucked into his pocket, and walked over to the window. In the half-light of dawn, he saw it had snowed all night. That meant shoveling and hitching the roller up to the horses to make the driveway passable. If he got that done early enough, he’d get his rifle and go out into the woods to do some hunting—the fresh snow would make tracking easier, and with snow this deep, the deer would head where the woods were thickest. If he couldn’t get a deer, maybe there would be a turkey or grouse. A snowshoe hare, even. He pictured Sara’s face, lit up at the sight of him carrying in fresh meat. She’d give him a kiss, say, “Well done, my love,” then sharpen her best knife and get to work, dancing around the kitchen, humming a tune Martin never could name—something that sounded sad and happy all at once; a song, she’d tell him, that she learned when she was a child.
He shuffled down the narrow stairs to the living room, cleaned out the fireplace, and lit a fire. Then he started one in the kitchen stove, careful not to bang the iron door closed. If Sara heard him, she’d come down. Let her rest, warm and laughing under the covers with little Gertie.
Martin’s stomach clenched with hunger. Dinner last night had been a meager potato stew with a few chunks of rabbit in it. He’d ruined most of the meat with buckshot.
“Couldn’t you have aimed for the head?” Sara had asked.
“Next time, I’ll give you the gun,” he’d told her with a wink. The truth was, she’d always been a better shot. And she had a talent for butchering any animal. With just a few deft strokes of the knife, she peeled the skin away as if slipping off a winter coat. He was clumsy and made a mess of a pelt.
Martin pulled on his wool overcoat and called for the dog, who was curled up on an old quilt in the corner of the kitchen. “Come on, Shep,” he called. “Here, boy.” Shep lifted his great blocky head, gave Martin a puzzled look, then laid it back down. He was getting older and was no longer eager to bound through fresh snow. These days, it seemed the dog only listened to Sara. Shep was just the latest in a line of Sheps, all descended from the original Shep, who had been chief farm dog here when Sara was a girl. The current Shep, like those before him, was a large, rangy dog. Sara said the original Shep’s father had been a wolf, and, to look at him, Martin didn’t doubt it.
Dogless, Martin opened the front door to head for the barn. He’d feed the few animals they had left—two old draft horses, a scrawny dairy cow, the chickens—and collect some eggs for breakfast if there were any to be had. The hens weren’t laying much this time of year.
The sun was just coming up over the hill, and snow fell in great fluffy clumps. He sank into the fresh powder, which came up to his mid-shin, and knew he’d need snowshoes to go into the woods later. He plowed his way through, doing a clumsy shuffle-walk across the yard to the barn, then looped around back to the henhouse. Feeding the chickens was one of his favorite chores of the day—he enjoyed the way they greeted him with clucks and coos, the warmth of the eggs taken from the nest boxes. The chickens gave them so much and asked for so little in return. Gertie had given each bird a name: there was Wilhelmina, Florence the Great, Queen Reddington, and eight others, although Martin had a hard time keeping track of the odd little histories Gertie created for them. They’d had a full dozen before a fox got a hen last month. Back in November, Gertie made little paper hats for all the chickens and brought them their own cake of cornbread. “We’re having a party,” she’d told him and Sara, and they’d watched with delight, laughing as Gertie chased the chickens around trying to keep their hats on.
He came around the corner of the barn and felt the air leave his chest when he saw a splash of crimson on white. Scattered feathers.
The fox was back.
Martin hurried over, loping along, dragging his bad foot through the snow. It wasn’t hard to see what had happened: tracks led up to the henhouse, and just outside was a mess of blood and feathers and a trail of red leading away.
Martin reached down, took off his heavy mitten—the blood was fresh, not yet frozen. He inspected the coop, saw the small gnawed hole the fox had gotten through. He hissed through clenched teeth, unlatched the door, and looked inside. Two more dead. No eggs left. The remaining hens were huddled in a nervous cluster against the back corner.
He hurried back to the house to collect his gun.
Gertie
January 12, 1908
“If snow melts down to water, does it still remember being snow?”