Mercy Snow by Tiffany Baker Read Free Book Online Page A

labeled him a ne’er-do-well, a chip off the dead block of Pruitt, and they closed their doors on him hard.
    To make it up to Mercy and Hannah, Zeke was being extra solicitous, almost courtly. He brought Hannah a collection of rabbit pelts he’d skinned and dried, and he promised that when there were enough, he would sew her a cloak with a hood. He wouldn’t let Mercy lift anything heavier than a flour sack, and when he chopped wood, he sang all the bluegrass ballads Arlene used to love, one by one, until his voice gave out and grew as rough as the wood chips by his feet. But there were still moments when Mercy saw an unfamiliar rage bubble up in him, and those instants scared her, for just as her time in the woods with those two men was a memory she wished to keep to herself, as stagnant and singular as a puddle drying up on asphalt, she knew that Zeke also had pockets of similar disquiet that wouldn’t evaporate in him either, and she prayed every morning that he would make it through one more day without those waters breaking.
    “Where’s he going?” Hannah climbed down from the loft of the RV and began gobbling the bowl of cereal that Mercy had set out for her. Outside, the engine of their old truck shook to life like a reluctant dog being roused to herd. In the months since Arlene’s death, Hannah had become particularly attunedto Zeke’s comings and goings. She reminded Mercy of a miniature weather vane, always spinning in the wind.
    Mercy cleared Hannah’s bowl and rinsed it, regretting that she couldn’t offer her another helping. “Berlin.” She turned to see Hannah making a beeline for the door. Before she could reach it, Mercy caught her by the collar and sat her down hard. “Where do you think you’re headed off to?” Though she knew full well. Hannah had an insatiable curiosity about the smokehouse, a place that Mercy still found unsettling in the extreme. “That thing’s bound to be chock-full of snakes, spiders, or both. You stay in here.”
    “All the snakes are sleeping for the season.” Hannah crossed her arms and pouted, though she had a point. The ground was chilly as a widow’s heart. But Mercy had other reasons for holding her little sister back. She knew too well what could happen to a girl alone in the dark of the trees, and it was something she was determined that Hannah would never experience.
    And maybe Hannah wouldn’t have to either, Mercy half hoped. She herself had recently found work with a woman named Hazel Bell, who kept sheep. Maybe Zeke would nab something soon, too. And maybe then they would settle in better. Zeke would find a way to change his reputation in town. Mercy would no longer feel the need to fall asleep with a knife stuck under her pillow.
    And maybe hogs would sparkle and fly.
    Hannah, sensing her older sister’s apprehension, moved in for the kill, pestering Mercy with a subject she wouldn’t drop. “Am I really going to get to go to school?” She leaned her scrawny body forward, all big ears and skinned knees, her teeth crowding together in the front of her mouth.
    Mercy eyed her sourly. She’d known only a couple of schoolsoff and on throughout her own childhood, and she hadn’t thought much of them. “We’ll see. You say that like it’s a good thing.”
    “Oh, it is.” Hannah clutched her fists to her bony chest. “It
is
.”
    “Hush.” Mercy turned around and put a hand on her half sister’s shoulder. Hannah was literally a gift from heaven, but honestly, everything about the child was a mystery. Unlike Zeke, words were Hannah’s biggest problem. She never shut her mouth when she should, and when she wasn’t talking, she was reading or picking up some fancy words off the radio. The first thing she did whenever they pulled into a new campsite or town was find the nearest library, and the second thing she went and found was the closest school. “You’re
supposed
to be sending me,” she would harangue Arlene. “It’s the