Mrs. White nodded. She had grown frighteningly thin.
“It’s nice to be by the fire,” Caroline said. “I wish we had fires more often at home. Ben usually makes them only on special occasions, but they’re so comforting.”
“Best way to beat the cold,” Mrs. White said. “Now, I’ve made you a new blend, dear. Something that will chase those December blues away.” She took the whistling kettle off the stovetop but, in doing so, knocked over a plate. It shattered against the floor like an eggshell.
“No, no, let me,” Caroline said. She practically dove for the shards to keep Mrs. White from bending over.
“So sorry, dear. Must be a little light-headed.”
“You’re so busy taking care of everyone else that you forget to take of yourself,” Caroline said. She brushed the broken fragments from her hand into the garbage. It was a relief, really, to be able to dispose of a mess so easily.
“It’s a hard season,” Mrs. White said again. She handed Caroline a steaming mug. The old lady had also repeated herself many times on Caroline’s last visit as well as confided that she’d been getting confused at night. Caroline hoped this wasn’t the beginnings of dementia. “Up here, the winter months are filled with trials. But our days in the sun wouldn’t count for anything if we didn’t know what life was like in the shadows. And always remember that for every problem, God provides a solution.” This was Mrs. White’s mantra, and one that Caroline had tried desperately to believe. It was good to think that she only had to find the right way to repair herself and her family. It was good to think that it wasn’t impossible for them to have it all again. She sipped at the tea and winced at its bitterness.
“The hard times make the happy times better, I think,” Mrs. White said.
Caroline sighed. If contemporary misery was a down payment on future contentment, then she could look forward to some very good times indeed.
23
Ben leaned in to the chain saw even as the blood glazed his eye guard.
“That’s good,” Jake yelled behind him. “You can cut bigger, if you like.”
Old man Robards had called in the carcasses at noon, and Ben and Jake had been the first to arrive. Five Holsteins in a rough circle, frozen solid to the ground, their puddles of icy guts and blood glowing like red glass in the sun.
Ben had been helping with the cattle cleanup for the last month. Some days, cows at four or five farms need to be chopped up and hauled away. If they’d lain there through the night, the coyote packs left their marks. They tore chunks from the hulking bodies, emptying their contents onto the frosted grass. Tangles of intestines often trailed for many yards toward the trees, as if they’d tried to haul their mighty bounties back to their lairs.
The carcasses couldn’t be left for the forest animals and were too heavy to lift, so they had to be cut into more manageable sizes. The cold didn’t make any of this easier. Even after Ben sawed through the leg, it stuck up from the glaze of frozen blood as if it had been sunk in concrete. Jake had brought a sledge for such work.
Five dead cows was a high toll for one farm during a single night, but last week eleven had been struck down on the Wyatt parcel. Like these five, they hadn’t been found until morning, their bodies frozen to the ground, their blood and viscera mingled in a crimson lake that filled the spaces between them. The coyotes must have thought they’d died and gone to scavenger heaven. Gas was treasured in the remote valley, but gallons had been spent in burning the bodies where they lay.
Ben pressed the blade down again and watched as blood misted the nearby tufts of grass red. The spines were always tough.
As Ben went for another pass, a white pickup pulled alongside his car, with a battered black truck following close behind. Roger Armfield raised a hand in greeting as he got out of the white vehicle. These cleanups had an ever-shifting cast, but as the town veterinarian, Armfield was a constant presence. Two younger men, the Connelly brothers, hopped out of the black truck.
Greetings were exchanged in the local parlance—head nods and evaluative squints.
Reaching the first carcass, Armfield clucked to himself. “Rheumy eyes, swollen tongue, bloodied saliva.” He ran through a checklist of symptoms. Not being a cattle owner himself, Ben hadn’t made a study of the sickness, but it did seem strange to him how it killed in clusters. The townspeople were exceedingly diligent in their quarantine procedures, and yet this appeared to have little effect.
Armfield moved on to examining the predatory element of the grisly scene. He spoke in staccato observations, as if summarizing the autopsy into a recorder. “Seven to eight individuals. Large hunting pack. Unusually large for coyotes. Lupine hybrid? Highly socialized. Scat suggests—” Armfield had misjudged the slickness of the icy blood, and his feet flew out from under him. He landed hard on the gory field.
Ben bit down on a smile, but the others didn’t bother to hold back. Ben offered his hand as the gangly man unfolded himself back to his full height. As he did, Armfield clutched his head, leaving a crimson swath across his bald pate. Ben almost felt sorry for him.
As the vet staggered away from what was left of the Holsteins, Ben revved the chain saw and resumed his cutting. With the Connelly brothers here, he could cut larger pieces, and their pace quickened.