It took him twenty minutes to get through the woods, but his brain spun enough that they passed quickly. Before Ben knew it, the Crofts was in front of him again.
In the gray light, it struck him as a desperate place. It was vast and opulent, but that didn’t mean anything to the mountains. It sat between them like a bauble. They had only to fold their hands to crush it.
Ben exhaled heavily into the freezing air. His breath clouded and dissipated like a ghost caught in the light. Now that he was out of the forest, Ben could see the full dome of sky. A thick crust of angry clouds stretched from horizon to horizon. For all the talk of the weather, Ben hadn’t watched a report. He hoped that last night’s snow had been the extent of the nor’easter, but from the look of the sky, he doubted it.
A hawk carved a gyre through the clouds above him. Ben wondered what the bird saw that he couldn’t. He followed the arc of its course. When it glided east, Ben saw a plume of black smoke skirting the treetops along the slope of the north mountain.
He watched it for a few moments to make sure it was real and not a trick of the wind and murky light. Then Ben began to run toward it.
There was someone in the woods.
—
Ben ran. His feet ached from his hiking boots, and his chest burned when he breathed. He was already to the slope of the mountain before he considered what he was going to do when he reached the fire. As he climbed, Ben looked for sticks. Soon, he found one that felt like a short baseball bat in his hand. The chief had said that JoJo was a big man, but Ben knew he was a careful one, too. He wouldn’t have revealed his presence unless he wanted to be found.
Ben could smell the smoke. The slope was steep and icy and thick with spindly conifers. He had to kick the toes of his boots into the frozen ground to grab enough traction to propel himself forward. The wind carried a sound that could have been crying.
The terrain finally leveled out. The fire was close now. His eyes began to sting. Ben pressed aside the branches of a pine tree to reveal a small clearing with a smoldering pit at its center. He moved past the tree and into the clearing.
He’d forgotten the stick in his hand, but now he held it in front of him like a sword. Like St. Michael confronting the beast. Ben walked around the smoking fire, challenging the trees and rocks. When he saw that he was alone, he kicked the fire pit. Orange sparks flared from his shoes. Someone had covered the fire with wet leaves, which had built the smoke up to a thick black.
Ben heard the high-pitched crying again and this time knew that it wasn’t a trick of the wind. A series of large rocks abutted the side of the mountain, and when Ben inspected them, he saw that he could fit between the boulders. He threaded his way in. His boot became wedged between the rocks, but he was able to force it loose. The air had an animal smell to it.
The rocky passage was no more than ten feet long, but it took Ben almost a minute to traverse it. When he was through, he stepped into a small den not much larger than the couch Caroline had bought for the living room.
Wood coals glowed from a depression that had been dug into the ground. The space was surprisingly warm. Animal furs roofed the den and covered the walls. Ben recognized the skins of deer and bear. The hooked prongs of dozens of antlers were piled at one end of the cleft. In the scant light, he saw that there was thick-blocked writing scratched onto the deerskin in front of him. Ben would have read it, if not for the dark and the mewling bundle of fur that wiggled at his feet.
He picked it up and turned it around and saw Bub’s red face looking up at him.
—
Alive! Scared but alive. Ben ran his hands over his son to make sure he was real.
Bub’s eyes were swollen, his nose and cheeks covered in mucus. Ben could hardly believe it: this gift, this miracle, sobbing in his arms. This year had been an endless slow-motion train wreck, but that didn’t matter now. All those setbacks were erased by a single luminous fact: Their baby was alive.
Bub stopped crying when he realized it was Ben who held him, then his face collapsed and he cried louder than before.
“I know, I know.” Ben choked out the words and soon he was crying, too. Finally holding Bub made Ben realize that he’d never really expected this reunion. Thank you was all he could think. Thank you. Bub began to cough, his little body racked by it. I will be better now, Ben swore. A better father. A better husband. I don’t deserve this, but I swear I will make myself into someone who does.
“You’re a little sick, baby. But you’re going to be fine. I’m going to take you home.” He pressed his face into his son’s, where their tears mingled.
Ben wedged Bub under his arm and started to work his way back down the rock passage. Bub was wrapped in some kind of homemade swaddling. It was constricting, but it looked warm. Ben wondered how he was going to get him down the mountain. He didn’t know how he was going to get through all the snow to find a doctor. But his son was alive and in his arms.
He still had a foot in the fur-lined space when he remembered the writing on the wall. His eyes had adjusted to the dim light, and he could read it easily now. It was scrawled with charcoal in letters five inches tall.
IT IS NOT SAFE.
YOU MUST GO.
IT IS NOT SAFE.
47
Elation and euphoria. Tears and long embraces.
But even in his own room, atop a pile of family, Bub wouldn’t stop crying. He wailed in a hoarse scream that made Ben shiver. Spasms of coughing shook his little body, and his every breath came as a tortured wheeze. Ben tried every trick he knew to get him to laugh, but Bub found nothing funny.
“He’s really sick,” Ben told Caroline. “Listen to his breathing. I think we have to take him to the doctor.”
“We just got him back.” She hadn’t let go of Bub since laying eyes on him. Between her torn hands, tearstained face, and unwashed hair, she was a mess, but still beautiful.
“I know,” Ben said. “But look at him.”