Mercy Snow by Tiffany Baker
June sank into a chair in the opposite corner. Cal was right. The upstart talk about the state of the mill was getting out of bounds. Something had to be done. She fixed the ladies with her haughtiest gaze, one she’d learned to fake at Smith. “Hazel fired Mercy, you know.”
“Oh, that’s terrible! Who’s going to help her out with her flock?”
June lowered her eyes. “Nate is.”
Silence greeted this news. Finally Dot spoke, her words blunt as a pair of fists. “Was that your idea or his?”
“Does it matter? He needs something to occupy him ever since…” She trailed off, not wanting to say the word “accident” in front of Dena. “Well, he’s not been himself lately. Cal and I think a bit of working with Hazel’s sheep will be just the thing for him. It’ll give him a little time and distance from everything. Cal’s agreed to let him go.”
The ladies slid sidelong glances to one another, but no one dared remark on the irony of the mill owner’s son needing to get away from matters of the mill. Alice Lincoln helped herself to one of the shortbread squares on the sideboard. “I can’t imagine,” she said through a mouthful of crumbs, “what it must be like for those Snows out in that ravine.”
“Then they should leave.” June gritted her teeth.
“I hear the little one’s started school finally,” Dot said. “I’ve seen her in the morning. She has to walk along Devil’s Slide Road to town to get to where the bus can pick her up. Poor thing.”
At the mention of Hannah, hot pinpricks attacked the back of June’s throat, and she couldn’t decide if the sensation was guilt—a kind of mild choking—or simple distaste. This bothered her. Ever since her encounter with the child, June had found herself thinking of Hannah more and more often. She hadn’t realized how much she missed the press of little fingers inside her palm or the satisfactory moment of wrapping a clean child in a bath towel fresh from the dryer—the hundred simple tasks a day she used to perform and would never again be allowed to do. She, too, had heard about the girl starting school, and this brought to mind packs of fresh yellow pencils, oxford shoes buffed to a shine, and tin lunch boxes. Hannah no doubt had none of these things in her life, but they were things June could provide.
“The Snow men are a bad bunch, I’ll give you that.” Margie Wall chewed a piece of shortbread. “But maybe those girls deserve some sort of sympathy. There but for the grace of God and all.”
The ladies murmured and nodded. June felt a bead of sweat form on her hairline. This was getting completely out of control. She clapped her palms together and then picked up the tray with the needles on it. “Ladies, let’s not forget that we have a task to do. Dot, I believe you were working on autumn?” June passed the appropriate muslin panel to her. “Dena, why don’t you join Dot?”
A silence fell over the room as the women took their needles, bent their heads, and began to stitch, their needles pricking, prying, and then just as quickly closing the little holes they were making in the fabric of one another’s lives.
The woods were always mean in winter, hoarding their bounty under uniform drifts of snow, but this year they seemed to Mercy more sparing than usual. In the weeks since Hazel had asked Mercy to leave her employ, Mercy’s frame had gone from sinew down to mere bone, just like the spines of the trees surrounding her. She and Hannah were lower than low on all their stores except cold and hunger. They needed heating oil, money, and food. There were only so many slowpoke rabbits to be snared down the hill and only so many times you could split a can of beans into a week. She worried constantly about Hannah’s health and always gave her the lion’s share of what was available, even when it wasn’t much. Somehow, though, Mercy didn’t think any of it would go very far to convince an authority figure that she was a fit guardian for her little sister.
She simply had to keep trudging forward, hoping for the best. She foraged what she could. Sometimes she found a clutch of fossilized berries. Once, in lieu of anything else, she steamed a spray of spruce needles just for their aroma. Sheets of ice sealed the river shut tighter than a rich man’s hand. Occasionally Mercy glimpsed dark shapes flitting under the glaze—fish, stupid with the cold—but she had no way of getting at them. Even if she did manage to break through the ice with an ax or the butt of a rifle, she still wouldn’t have dared for fear of slipping all the way under. Water was water, even when it was ice. Mercy still didn’t trust it.
When she got up the nerve, she haunted the few hoop gardens in town under thick protection of night, pilfering forgotten squashes that were half to rotten on their vines and hothouse tomatoes, little balloons of life in an otherwise monotone world. Each time she savored the suck of humid air underneath the domes of plastic sheeting, wishing she could stay just a moment longer in such a wet and abundant world. She broke into root cellars to spirit away sacks of dusty potatoes and braids of onions, and when she did have the odd dollar to spend in the Millers’ general store, she made certain she left with more than she came in for stashed in her enormous parka’s pockets. She suspected that Mr. Miller saw, but he didn’t say anything, whether out of pity or a broader charity, Mercy didn’t know.
If the winter wood was stingy, hoarding its bounty, it wasn’t half as sparing as the general population of Titan Falls. After a heavy snowfall, Mercy spent a day lurking with a shovel outside the houses in town, hoping to pile snow for a few coins, but all she got for her trouble were insults tossed at her by a group of little boys and curtains twitching closed. Mercy stared at them with spite. She guessed it didn’t matter how many men she appeared to wake from the dead or how many she cured of drink. No one in town wanted to be the first to stick his or her neck out in kindness and risk getting it cut by the McAllisters, who’d made their feelings about Mercy’s family plain. Plenty of men in town were sitting around idle now after the mill layoffs had finally gone into effect, but they floated in hopeful bubbles, willing themselves to believe they’d land back where they started sooner rather than later, frantic to keep that illusion from popping.
Mercy looked up from her pacing to find herself in front of the McAllister house. She planted her feet square and regarded the gingerbread trim frosting the front porch, the holiday wreath still tacked to the door, its giant bow ridiculously crisp and festive, even the requisite picket fence. It was the kind of home Hannah should be living in—a place where the rooms smelled like beeswax and lavender, with lots of books and a round kitchen table with a pot of flowers set in the middle. Mercy sniffed in the cold. If only Zeke had been anywhere but on Devil’s Slide Road that night. They would have had the real Christmas that Mercy had been planning. She wouldn’t have had to give Hannah a sweater of hers that her little sister had always coveted for her only gift. And Zeke surely would have seen to it that Hannah had woken up to something magical and unexpected: a live rabbit popping out of a wooden hat, maybe, or a fairy marionette with delicate movable wings.
Mercy stared at the house’s upper windows, wondering which one was Nate’s, and mused that if Zeke had been raised as the heir of a paper mill, he might have been better with words. Maybe he would have come to see them the way Hannah did—as portals to whole other worlds—instead of as individual condemnations, black-and-white smudges of proof that he wasn’t as good as everyone else.
Mercy blinked, breaking her reverie. In front of her, as if she’d summoned him, she saw that Nate McAllister was approaching her. He must be coming home from school, she realized. It was later than she thought. When he reached her, he lingered, hands in his pockets, toes stubbing at the snow, as if he wanted to speak to her, but his mother hustled out onto the porch, flapping her arms like a bird in distress, cawing about homework and also about some errand his father wanted him to do down at the mill. June waited for Nate to pass indoors before she marched out to confront Mercy.
“It’s illegal to solicit people in this town.”
It took every little ounce of Mercy’s willpower to keep from bending over, gathering a shovelful of dirty snow off
“You should have thought of that before you began meddling in things that have nothing to do with you.”
“Like you did when you told Hazel to fire me?”
June’s voice came out as measured as a row of pins. “I’d be careful if I were you. You’ve lost your father. You’ve lost your brother. You wouldn’t want to see any more family members taken away, would you?”
Mercy felt a flush of panic. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Although she knew perfectly well what June was insinuating. June McAllister was exactly the kind of woman who would rather see a child scrubbed to the raw side of clean and dressed in frills but lonely instead of dirty and loved. It was Mercy’s biggest fear—that social services would come and snatch Hannah from her.
“Where’s your sister?”
Mercy took a step back. “She’s at the library.” Where it was warm, and where the chairs were tufted with clean leather and the wooden floor smelled like beeswax, and where the lights worked. All the creature comforts Mercy wanted to provide but couldn’t.
A tight smile danced around the corners of June’s mouth, as if she had a secret. Well, probably she had lots of them, Mercy thought, what with all those ladies flocking to her parlor every week to gossip and sew, their fingers crawling like fat bugs over corn, so full of themselves. She could see a bunch of them inside now.
But then June’s features softened. “She’s quite the reader, isn’t she?” The hairs on Mercy’s forearms stood up. This unexpected gentling frightened the bejesus out of her, far more than any threat. She wouldn’t begin to know how to repay the burden of a kindness from the likes of June—not that she believed that the woman was capable of producing one. Why was she so interested in Hannah? And how did she know that she liked to read so much?
Mercy folded her arms. “She’s signed up for school now, if that’s what you’re asking. Just like she ought to be.” Hannah was thrilled by that development. Every morning she headed up the path toward Devil’s Slide Road, holding Mercy’s hand. But clearly she hadn’t been as careful as usual about getting friendly with the townspeople. Mercy made a note to have a talk with Hannah, reminding her that book learning and the dangers of the real world were two very different things.
She looked at the façade of June’s house again, with its sparkling windows, and reconsidered all her wistful daydreaming. In reality, if she had to live in such a structure, she’d go stark raving mad. Then an idea occurred to her. In hunting, Zeke had taught her, if you couldn’t find any game, you had to flush it out. “Something’s always hiding,” he said. “Trust me.” That’s just what Mercy was counting on now.
She licked her lips. “Do you know where your husband was the night of the crash?”
A worried look flickered across June’s face, but she quickly recovered. So she knows, Mercy thought. Then, just as her brother had taught her, she moved in for the kill. “Because Zeke saw him talking to Suzie in Berlin that night.”
Mercy didn’t see June’s hand until it was too late. The slap bit into her cheek, but the pain felt good.
“You little bitch,” June hissed.
Mercy was tempted to point out that Cal’s tire prints at the mill looked to her a lot like a set left on Devil’s Slide Road the night of the accident, but those marks had long since vanished, and besides, the final lesson of stalking your prey was the art of knowing when to back off and quit. She rubbed the red spot blooming on her cheek and turned to go. “Stay away from us, and I promise I’ll do the same.”
From the corner of an upstairs window, she caught the pale face of Nate McAllister gazing down on her like a baleful moon. He seemed so alone, and really, he was terribly good-looking. A boy like that deserved some company. She glanced up at him and raised a solitary hand in greeting, a wicked plan beginning to sprout in the wilds of her mind.
When Mercy arrived back at the ravine’s clearing, she found Abel Goode waiting for her, hat in hand. He’d come, he announced, to take possession of Gert’s ashes. Mercy felt her knees grow weak with relief. As long as he’s not coming for Hannah, she thought. But it wouldn’t do to let Abel know that. She marched up to the RV but didn’t open the door. “The ashes? What do you want those for?”
Abel fiddled with his wristwatch. “Turns out there was a mistake made in this matter. They’re actually the property of the town.” Christ, but he hated this part of the job. Look at these people, camped out here in squalor for no good reason that he could see. Maybe June was right. Maybe it was better for them to move on to someplace that wanted them. On the other hand, that would mean abandoning the search for Zeke, and Abel hated the thought of letting a man get away with murder.
Mercy folded her arms and settled in for a fight. “Nope, sorry. She’s our kin. She stays with us.”
Abel adjusted his badge. “Not according to town code.” He paced over to the smokehouse and peered in through the open door, but there was zero sign of Zeke. Abel scowled and crossed back to Mercy, who was blowing a plume of cold air straight up, like she was testing out the route to heaven.
“Hiding a fugitive will get you time yourself, you know,” Abel said.
“Well, then I guess it’s lucky I’m not.”
Abel cleared his throat, knowing when he was licked. “I’ll just take those ashes, then, if you don’t mind.” It was Friday, his shift was almost over, and there was a barstool with his name on it waiting for him at Lucky’s Tavern. At least he could get this matter of Gert off his chest. The damn woman had been trouble when she was alive, and she was twice as much dead. What was it with the Snow family anyway?
Mercy smiled. “Be my guest.” She swept her arm out to the steep embankment behind the trailer. “She’s scattered right out there.”
Abel paled. “You tossed the ashes?”
“Yup.” Mercy jigged from one foot to the other, trying to keep warm. “You’re going to have a mighty hard time finding any bit of her, but you’re sure welcome to try.”
Abel hitched his pants up and ground a boot toe in the snow. “I’m better at finding live men,” he spit. “You all better watch your back. When I catch Zeke, he’s going to pay, and so will you. Guilt by association is the worst kind.” He stumped back up the weedy pathway to his squad car, his official hardware rattling around his midsection, a man with the weight of the world hanging on him.
The next morning Mercy woke to find a brace of wild pheasants hanging from a high branch outside the RV, their carcasses neatly bound by the legs, their frozen necks swanned into crooks. Mercy scanned the ground all along the tree line and even into it, but there were no footsteps, no prints of any kind to show that anyone had passed this way. She turned her gaze back to the birds, marveling at the delicate beauty of their plumage. Such loveliness in the cold months was rare. To have it bundled and presented all at once was startling.
Mercy cut the birds down, cursing a little under her breath. If Zeke really wanted to help them, she thought, he’d show his face and come up with some proof of his innocence. She was barely hanging on alone out here. But she wasn’t going to turn down the gift of food. She could dry some of the meat into jerky—the smokehouse ought to be put to some use, after all—and roast the rest over an open fire. Her stomach growled as she imagined the birds’ juices running down the crisped-up skin and the dark flesh waiting underneath. Or maybe she’d make a stew, pulling out the large dented pot, waiting for the fire to burn down low, and simmering the pheasants, bones and all, in a broth flavored with wild juniper and bay leaves.
One thing was certain: It was too cold to stand outdoors for very long. She’d take the birds into the smokehouse, Mercy decided, and do her plucking there. As she wandered toward it,
She banged into the dusty little space, ducking low under the cobwebs dangling from the door lintel. Everything inside seemed untouched. The dented iron cot still sagged in its corner, its mattress stained and lumpy. The trio of rusty hooks still hung from the ceiling like question marks. It wasn’t the kind of place you could conceal anything in. If Zeke had rested up here, Mercy certainly couldn’t tell. No, most likely he’d done a drop and run, scuttling back into a hidey-hole so dark and distant that only he knew about it.
Mercy lit the kerosene lantern she found near the cot, then squatted and began plucking the first bird, her fingers pulling off the glorious speckled feathers and scattering them around her. Maybe she’d use the larger quills to make a pair of fairy wings for Hannah—she could try to be whimsical like her brother—and stuff the underfeathers in her quilt as extra batting. It was thin now, after all these years. It could use some shoring up. Mercy frowned. She’d been looking forward to begging for a flawed fleece or two from Hazel come shearing season, but that was a plan gone off the rails now, thanks to that nosy June McAllister.
A shaft of light illuminated the gloom of the smokehouse’s interior, and a knife-bladed gust of wind seared Mercy’s back, threatening the lantern. She turned around to see Hannah standing in the little doorway, shivering in her nightclothes, parka, and boots, her book of Greek myths clutched under her arm. Mercy patted the spot next to her. “Hello, turtle. Come inside.”