Starfish_ A Novel - James Crowley [23]
He left Beatrice with the horse and pushed open the heavy, crooked door. The door creaked on its leather hinges, revealing, once he was inside, that over half of the building still seemed to be perfectly intact. The other side fell off in a maze of cracked timber and broken glass, but the rubble passed for a fourth wall.
Light from outside shone through the dingy windows, and Lionel already felt a little warmer stepping inside and out of the wind that came down off the mountains and across the small meadow. He made his way around various bits of debris and toward the center of the enormous fireplace. You could have put four of Grandpa’s fireplaces into this one, Lionel thought. A box of kindling stood next to the giant stones, and in no time Lionel had a small fire going that was dwarfed by its immense surroundings. Lionel decided that if he could do it, he should bring both Ulysses and Beatrice into the house. How else would he be able to carry his sleeping sister?
It took some coaxing, but he convinced Ulysses to lower his head, and led them both into the cavernous warmth that his little fire and the fallen lodge provided. Lionel did his best to wrap Beatrice in the buffalo robe and lower her gently in front of the fire, but despite his best effort she still tumbled off the horse’s back.
Beatrice sat up and looked around. “We made it,” she said, and drifted back to sleep. Though it was frigid out, Lionel thought that Beatrice’s face felt hot. But she was shivering, so he got her some water, wrapped the buffalo robe tight, and turned back to stoke the fire.
Lionel led Ulysses to the far side of the lodge, figuring that the horse could sleep there for the night. Ulysses snorted and poked at the cabin’s crumbled remains as Lionel did his best to unload their supplies. He located their tight bundles of food, then sat down by the fire next to Beatrice and ate some of the dried meat. He was tired and cold, but as Beatrice said, they had made it.
Part Two
A LARGE man on a big horse stopped suddenly, just as he had made his way through the high pines above the small meadow in the midst of the great mountains. Something was different. It had snowed off and on for the last two days, and now that he had enough pelts and meat, he was looking forward to returning to the small lodge to rest and repair some of the traps that had been damaged over the course of this long winter.
“Smoke, that is what it is, smoke,” the man said aloud, a slight Caribbean accent punctuating the word “smoke.”
The man dropped back down from the ridge, his horse plowing through the snow and into a small clearing hidden in a large stand of birch and aspen. The man then cupped his hands, raised them to his mouth, and made the call of a barred owl.
He seemed to sing the words “Who? Who? Who cooks for you?” But that was only how it sounded.
A small boy on horseback joined the man. He was trailing two horses that carried loads wrapped in heavy waxed canvas. The boy and the horses seemed to appear from out of the thin mountain air.
“I think it’d be best to keep moving,” the man said to the boy. “Looks like someone might be down in the lodge.”
The small boy did not reply, but simply stared back at the large man with big dark eyes.
“We’ll skip the stop this time and hope they’re gone when we get back in a month or so,” the man continued. “That fallen cabin sure is pleasant in the springtime.”
The boy again did not say a word, but this time replied with a nod.
“Well, it’s agreed, then,” the man said with a smile, “maybe next month.”
The large man and the small boy urged their horses forward and melted into the maze of snow-covered trees that stood before them.
The man’s name was Avery John Hawkins. The boy, he was silent.
Chapter Fourteen
WOLVERINE • A BROKEN CHAIR • ULYSSES’S WRATH • THE HOLE IN THE CHIMNEY
LIONEL WOKE to an explosion of commotion. The lodge was filled with low, guttural snarls and the sound of a great collision.