Birds were all over the deer when Ben got there. The nasty black things moved only when he menaced them with the shovel. When they hopped away, they scattered blood from the ends of their glossy wings. Either ravens or crows—he’d have to look up the difference. Whatever they were, an entire ugly flock of them.
Ben dug a shallow hole a few feet from the tree line, then heaped the guts into it. He was again struck by the damage the animal had taken. Other than the hooves and the odd intestine, he couldn’t identify many of the body parts. He guessed that the bear had taken the rest of it, but he didn’t see how it could have eaten the head or so much of the hide. It occurred to him that he didn’t even know if bear ate deer or would be able to catch one in the first place. Perhaps there were wolves after all, he thought. Ben had believed that the howls they heard at night were coyotes, but he could only guess at what lived in the dark of the old forest.
Once he’d scraped up as much of the animal as he could, he did his best to cover the hole. By the time he was finished, he knew that it wouldn’t fool any of the scavengers in the forest. Wouldn’t even fool the crows. A dozen of them were perched on what remained of the fallen building’s roof, utterly motionless as they watched with their obsidian eyes.
Ben trudged back up to the shed to rinse the shovel. He’d have to walk Hudson on the upper fields by the lake until nature disposed of the animal’s remains. The trees by the lake were older than the rest. Standing in their shadow made Ben feel like a child. The first time Hudson had seen the lake’s mirror surface, he couldn’t resist throwing himself into it, and it had taken Ben ten minutes to coax him out. Ben smiled at the memory, then the sound of wings shook him from his thoughts.
He turned around to see the group of startled crows aloft, cawing as they filled the air with their dancing shadow bodies. A murder, he remembered. That’s what a flock of crows is called.
3
Ben didn’t like the cellar.
A single stained bulb lit its front room, casting the space in a murky orange; the light wavered as if it might desert its station at any moment. The air was musty with the rot of ancient upholstery and the moldering that takes grip when moisture meets neglect. Chairs, tables, old mattresses, piles of ragged clothes, broken clocks, boxes of photos, and bundles of newspapers were arranged around the room. Ben grimaced—a claustrophobe’s nightmare.
The cellar had many rooms; even Ben wasn’t sure how many. Only one set of stairs reached this floor, and the space was too packed to traverse. At first he’d thought that if he spent an extended amount of time working down here, he’d get used to the noises from the pipes and the heavy presence of the rooms just beyond his sight. Instead, he shuttled back and forth, carrying things outside, and every time he came back down the stairs, he had to reassure himself that nothing had occupied the space while he’d been gone.
Considering what Charlie had gone through back at his old school, Ben wouldn’t have blamed him for giving the cellar a wide berth. But the boy often surprised him, and Ben was happy for his company. When they’d finally cleared a path through the junk he’d put in the cellar a few weeks ago, they began on the junk that had been there before. More of the same: clumps of ancient periodicals fossilized into solid blocks, fragments of broken furniture, and pieces of rusted sewing machines. He was glad when they reached an empty light socket. He held his breath as he screwed in a new bulb. Ben vanquished more of the dark but paid for the privilege with the sight of another century’s worth of mess in the rooms within the light’s range.
“Not that, Charlie,” Ben told him, and Charlie put down the rocking chair he was trying to lift. “How about the newspapers?”
Charlie looked suspiciously at the towers of newspapers. “They smell.”
“Everything down here smells, buddy.”
“Do you think Hickory Heck’s burrow is like this?” Charlie asked.
Ben smiled; he remembered when he’d been young and could get so caught up in the world of a book.
“It’s probably dark like this, but I bet it smells a lot better,” Ben said. “It probably smells like earth and rain where Heck lives. That’s a nicer smell, isn’t it?”
“A lot nicer,” Charlie said.
“Everyone working hard down here?” Caroline asked as she came down the stairs. Her hair was pulled back, and a smear of blue paint stretched from her nose to her cheekbone. She was flushed and grimy from painting one of the second-floor rooms. Ben thought she looked beautiful like this. “God, there’s a lot.”
“We’re making a dent. Aren’t we, Charlie?” Ben said. He put down the box he’d been unburying from a pile of ancient couch cushions and reached around to the small of Caroline’s back, pulling her toward him.
“I’m filthy,” she said, pushing him away.
“So am I.” He kissed her neck.
“Those old ladies must have been crazy to keep all this junk.”
“I’m going up,” Charlie said, as he headed to the stairs. His skinny arms strained under the weight of a packet of bundled newspapers.
“Is he going to hurt his back?” Caroline asked Ben.
“Kids can’t hurt their backs,” he said, stooping down to the storage box to test its weight. “Thirty-four-year-old men with old track injuries, however…”
“Poor baby.” She laid both hands on his shoulders. “A morning around this house is better than a session at Equinox,” she said, prodding his muscles with the tips of her fingers. She hardly ever touched him like this anymore.
“Are you hitting on me? Tell me again how filthy you are.”
“What’s in this thing?” she asked. She bent down to get a better look at the box he’d uncovered.
“Just clothes, but they’re packed in there pretty tight. I might need your help carrying it up.”