There must be a path, Lila thought. There was always some way forward.
Billy knelt just in front of her, working on the fire, work which frankly struck her as unnecessary. He emptied all the logs from the box adjacent and lined them up by size, all the while holding a lit cigarette as if it were a flightless bird.
“Isn’t it nice to have a fire?” she said to Wilkie, perhaps a touch too loud.
50
Catta had passed through the first and simplest stage of hunger, which is clarity, and was now into something new and more dangerous: call it phantasm. Only large, operatic gestures entered his mind.
He could walk into the ravine and ask the men for something to eat. Trespassers were often on some part of the property, which was much too big to police or patrol.
If these men were trespassers, they were unusually bold and well-informed ones—they had used a path on Baffin unknown to him or his family and had transported this machinery to a very remote part of the archipelago. They had sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, one of Martha’s signatures. It was safer to assume that they belonged here, and that he too should act like he belonged. They might give him food. He also might have to run. He would stay low to the ground like a snake, and they would never catch him.
His one possible advantage was surprise. He would make a sudden entrance and appear at the top of the ravine. If he startled them, he would have more time to assess the situation. As he climbed down the boulder, though, his arm caught on a low branch and the branch snapped. Catta froze; his whole body listened for the whisper of a knife through air.
Disordered lights came up the path out of the ravine, and then three flashlights blinded Catta all at once. He hoped their silence meant confusion.
“Martha said I should get my dinner from you,” Catta said before they had a chance to speak.
There was a long pause. One light flickered around in a circle, as if looking for other intruders. The others were in his eyes. The trees were very close.
“How’d you get here?” a harsh voice asked.
“I swam.”
“Liar,” the voice said.
“Everyone knows Martha,” another voice said.
“We ain’t got food just lying around.”
“Peck didn’t say no one was coming,” another said.
“Peck also don’t know nothing,” the harsh-voiced one said.
“You one of Cyrus’s boys?” another asked.
Name, rank, and serial number, Catta thought.
“My name is Catta Hillsinger.”
“Family! Hell’s bells.”
“If we’d a known you was coming, we would of worn ties.”
Two of them laughed and they briefly lowered their flashlights, which enabled him to see them in the light of the third. The taller one had the angry voice.
“Kinda name is Catta?” said one, and he recognized his voice as the man in charge in the ravine.
“Girl’s name, I guess,” the shorter one said.
“Sounds like a cat’s name.”
“Fancy.”
“Kinda name a dog might give his stupid cat.”
Two of the men laughed, but not the third. The third man, the tall one, looked furious. Catta hoped they were drunk.
“I came for the Migration,” Catta said.
“See, Dale? See?” said the tall, harsh-voiced one. “They took the land from us, and now they want to take the Migration, too.”
“Shut up, Conrad,” the shorter man said.
“Family ain’t welcome at the Migration,” Dale, the leader, said to Catta.
That had been stupid—Catta knew North Island was off-limits to the families during the Migration. He was making mistakes. He had very few lies left before he had to tell the truth, and he couldn’t waste them.
“I ran away,” Catta said.
He was not sure where the lies were taking him or where they would end, but his only two choices were to keep talking or run.
“Who’s your daddy?” the short one asked sharply.
Catta was silent. He had never come up against the limitations of his name before, but who could say what grudge they held against his father.
“Strange choice, running away to Baffin,” the sarcastic one said.
“S’like running away to New Hampshire.”
“Canada.”
“Where’s your boat?” the sarcastic one said.
“I swam,” Catta said.
“Liar,” Conrad said.
“What time?” Dale said.
“Just after three.”
“Today?”
“Yesterday,” Catta lied.
“Coulda done, tide being what it is. Barely.”
“What you been eating?”
“Seaweed.”
“Smock, give him your sandwich,” Dale said.
“Now you gonna feed him?” Conrad said. “If you feed him, he stays here.”
“He ain’t on North, is he? Ain’t nothing special about Baffin.”
“Too close,” Conrad said.
“Smock—sandwich.”
“Never happen, Dale,” Smock said.
“Do it.”
Smock paused, and then he shuffled forward and handed over the wax paper package. Catta unwrapped it and ate half while standing there in front of them. It was just ham and cheese, but he recognized Martha’s sourdough bread and it had the good mustard. These men were definitely not trespassers, but they were still dangerous. The sudden rush of warmth, after so much hunger, reminded him that he was cold, and that he should try to maintain a certain level of dignity. With great effort, he stopped himself from finishing the rest, rewrapped it and handed the sandwich back to Smock, who pocketed it.
“I’ll pay you back,” Catta said to him. “I got a fishing line out.”
“Where at?” Dale said.
“Across from Seven.”
“How long is it?”
“What?”
“The line.”
“Three yards.”
“Ain’t no fish three yards in,” Dale said. “Current’s too strong, pulls ’em right across the center channel in either direction, except slack tide. You have that line out at noon?”
“No.”
“No fish, then,” Smock said.
“Turn around, boy,” Dale said.
Catta turned, reluctantly.
Smock whistled.
“Damn, Dale,” Smock said.
“Tried to bushwhack Baffin, hey?” Dale said.
“Serves him right,” Conrad said.
Catta turned to face them and clasped his hands behind his back, as if to cover it retroactively.
“Is it bad?” he said.
51
It was after midnight and Edward Peck would have to be up again soon, but even so he used infinite care as he opened the Cottage door to avoid waking the children who he imagined were asleep upstairs. Instead, he found a circle of boys very much awake, sitting quietly in the darkened living room. A candle was lit in the middle of the circle, and the smallest boy lay asleep on his back with his mouth open. Peck asked James Hillsinger, the oldest boy present, to come outside with him.