William Krueger - Thunder Bay

Maria looked up from her notebook. “I try to be.”

“That’s why you’re here? To be the good daughter? You’re only making him nervous, you know that?”

“Nervous?”

“He wants to get you back to civilization as soon as he can.” He drank from the tin cup into which he’d poured his liquor. “A girl doesn’t belong on something like this.”

“I’m not a girl,” she replied coolly and went back to her writing. Wellington made a sound that might have been a laugh but came out more like a grunt. “I’ve noticed.” His glare shifted to Henry. “What about you, Henry? Bet you’ve noticed, eh.”

Henry burned. Wellington’s tone spoke disrespect. Henry had lived with that tone much of his life and had learned to ignore it, but when Maria was included, that was too much. He’d been sitting near the fire, stirring the embers with a long, thick spruce stick to keep the flames alive for Maria’s writing. Now he stood with the stick in his hand, the tip glowing, an angry red eye at the end of his arm.

Wellington didn’t see. He stared at the fire and drank his liquor. Maria saw, however. She shook her head at Henry, her eyes afraid of what he might be about to do.

Wellington took a final long swallow. “Fuck it,” he said and stumbled to his tent.

Soon afterward, they heard his snores join those of Lima. Henry let the fire die. Maria went to her tent. Henry gathered dried leaves and sticks from the woods and spread them around Maria’s tent. Then he picked up his rifle and joined her.

That night clouds blocked the moon, but Henry knew Maria’s beauty without light. The down of her cheeks, the wet oval of her lips, the curve of her breasts, all of it soft as dreaming. He fit himself to her until he couldn’t feel a separation, couldn’t feel the place where his own body ended and hers began. They were one skin, one breath, one heart.

Her lips brushed his neck. “I wish…”

“What?”

“I wish you’d been my first.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Later he said, “What were they like?”

“Rich. Sophisticated. Spoiled. Weak in ways you’re not.” She laughed quietly. “I guess I’m like that, too. Everything I have I’ve been given. I’ve never had to make my own way. All my friends are like that.” She nestled deep into his arms. “You’re different from anyone I’ve ever known, Henry. I felt safe with you from the beginning. Here we are a thousand miles from everything and I’ve never felt so safe.”

He felt the same. She was like nothing he’d ever known. That they shared their bodies so quickly, so easily, so completely didn’t surprise him. He had the deep sense that being together this way had always been meant for them.

Maria fell asleep with her head against his chest. He was tired, too, but he lay awake, listening. With the dry leaves and the sticks surrounding the tent, even a careful man could not approach without Henry hearing.

Henry rose with the sound of the first birds. The clouds that obscured the moon had passed, leaving the sky clear and full of stars. A faint glow along the eastern horizon suggested dawn.

He built a fire, filled the pot with lake water, and began coffee brewing. He made oatmeal and flapjacks. A few minutes after the sun came up, Wellington emerged from his tent. He went immediately toward the woods to do his morning business. When he returned, he poured himself coffee and stood staring at the lake. Henry had seen men hungover, and Wellington looked hungover.

“What do you do all day?” Wellington said.

“Cut wood for the fire,” Henry replied. “Fish. Hunt. Gather things to eat from the woods.”

Wellington was silent and sipped his coffee. He blinked against the morning sun. “What about Maria?”

Henry stirred the oatmeal. “She reads her books.”

“All day?”

“I can’t leave her. She comes with me when I go after food.”

“She doesn’t scare away the game?”

“She takes well to the forest.”

“She swims,” Wellington said. “I’ve seen her hair wet. But I haven’t seen wet clothes.”

“She dries her things over the fire.”

The flap of Lima’s tent swung open and the man stepped out. He coughed and spit. He went into the woods, and the noise of his business was loud and unpleasant. He came back and took the coffee Henry held out to him.

“Let’s go over the maps,” he said to Wellington.

They sat together looking at their charts, drinking their coffee, eventually eating the food Henry had prepared. After passing an hour in this way, they climbed into their Folbot and headed southeast across the lake.

When they were out of sight, Henry slipped into Maria’s tent. He kissed her forehead. “Wake up.”

Her eyes, brown like acorns, fluttered open. “What is it?”

“Time to go hunting.”

She dressed. They ate and started off. The morning was crisp, and at first their breath popped out in gray-white puffs. The sunlight sharpened the edge of everything, gave fine definition to color and shape. Henry had shown her how to walk in the forest on the outside of her feet to reduce the noise of her passage. He’d instructed her to keep silent, explaining how sounds in the woods carried far. They made their way to the place where Henry had found the moccasin tracks.

He eyed the western ridge that curved around the end of the lake. He pointed, indicating to Maria that that was the way.

The trail was a day old now, but Henry had little trouble following it. Whoever had left it wasn’t concerned about being tracked. Henry wasn’t sure how to interpret that, but hoped it meant the watcher didn’t think he’d been seen and was careless. The trail led them along the bank of a creek that edged the base of the ridge and curled into the folds of the land to the south. After an hour, the tracks joined a deer trail that angled up another ridge. When they reached the far side of that ridge, Henry paused and pointed toward a white patch of haze in a hollow below.

Maria whispered, “Smoke?”

Henry put his finger to her mouth to silence her. He nodded.

The next mile they moved at a crawl. With Maria behind him, he took no chances. He paused frequently to listen. Eventually he heard the chunk of an ax biting into wood. They came to a path through the undergrowth along a small, fast-running brook. The path led in the direction of the chopping. Henry debated following it. A path that well used was a danger. On the other hand, it would reveal to them quickly who held the ax, and with Maria, who still did not move with Henry’s stealth, it would mean a quieter approach. He chambered a cartridge and moved ahead.

He glimpsed the cabin fifty yards through the trees. He signaled Maria to drop into a crouch. They crept forward this way, low to the ground. The chopping stopped. Henry stopped. He listened. Suddenly the sound of whistling came from ahead. Henry spotted movement, then saw a figure carrying a load of split wood in his arms. The figure was dressed in buckskin britches. Long gray hair flowed over a buckskin tunic. Henry also saw moccasins on the feet. The figure stepped through the cabin door and disappeared. Henry signaled Maria, and they moved forward again and slipped into brush that edged the small clearing where the cabin stood. Henry lay on his belly. Maria did the same beside him.

The brook flowed behind the structure, which was a log construction similar to the cabin Henry and Woodrow had built on Crow Point, but looked much older than theirs. A winter supply of wood lay cut and stacked against the west wall. The cut wood occupied almost as much space in the little clearing as the cabin did. Fifteen yards away was another, smaller structure that Henry recognized as a smokehouse. A cleaned deer hide was stretched across the smokehouse wall. A chopping block stood a dozen yards from the cabin door, an ax blade sunk into the scarred, flat top. Split wood and wood chips lay strewn about the base like bone fragments. Whistling came from the cabin, but it was too dark inside for Henry to see anything.