Sufficient Grace by Amy Espeseth Read Free Book Online Page B

hunting?’ He stands there dripping in his work clothes, quilted flannel and worn pants.
    â€˜Good morning, Eric.’ Grandma slowly lowers her sewing and raises her gaze to meet her son’s. ‘Can I give you something warm to drink?’
    â€˜Momma, Reuben has his heart set on shooting a coyote. And trapping — the boy wanted to try for a bobcat this year, maybe a wolverine. He’ll take care of the beavers so you’ll get your river back.’ His wheaty hair is all stuck up crossways on his head, and he is wiping grease or dirt from his thick hands.
    â€˜I’ve made up my mind, son. I don’t aim to harm you or Reuben. And I’m letting the boy trap this winter; Lord willing, he just might get his bobcat. But hunting on my land is over for this year. And next year, no hunting or trapping neither.’
    I’ve never seen my daddy so angry. Looking at Grandma with almost a sneer, he is trying to find words to say.
    Grandma talks before he can. ‘Not even tracking anymore. Not in my woods, no sir, not in my woods. And they are mine, until the Lord calls me home.’ They are hers, the woods: the trees and the river and the animals that abide in them.
    â€˜That’s downright cruel,’ Daddy says. ‘To let a wounded deer struggle through the woods and not let folks come and finish it off?’ His voice is rising.
    â€˜But I know now — I didn’t always know, but I know now — that those bleeding deer are mine and my woods are mine, and it is my decision. So, no.’ Grandma is set in her mind; she won’t let them track no deer, wounded or otherwise, in her woods. ‘If the Lord decides to take a life, animal or otherwise, the Lord decides. And the wolves and coyotes and the other will take care of the struggling.’
    Daddy laughs a mean laugh, looking in her eyes. ‘They’ll take care of it alright. There ain’t no blood on my hands.’ And he turns on his heel to go, throwing up his arms in exasperation. ‘You know, this don’t hurt the others — Ingwald and Samuel, especially not Peter — like it’s going to pain me. Hell, it’s going to almost kill Reuben.’
    Her son has cursed to her face. Grandma lowers her eyes back to her quilt. She will say no more. Daddy stomps out of the house. The wind takes the door and slams it twice.
    And so they’ll talk, the neighbours and my daddy and my uncles. I say as much to Grandma without trying to stoke her anger. She isn’t angry. She’s too old for that.
    â€˜They can talk all they like.’
    But she came to the conclusion that she had to provide a sanctuary for the hurt and the wounded when she found that pile as Ingwald drove her home from church last Sunday. Right next to the old swimming hole where the bridge crosses the river, right where Grampa and Grandma used to swim when their boys were little, she found the pile. Heads and hooves, and some ribs with meat still sticking to them were spilling out of torn plastic bags. One head had a horn — a young spike buck, must have been — still attached with the other side torn straight off. The rest of them were does, fawns, or were missing horns: bloody holes sat burrowed in the meat and soft fur between their eyes and ears. Curled-up hooves spilt out on the riverbank and some picked-over bones lay right where she was fixing to relax and remember and look at the water. This bag of bones and skin and fur had been thrown from a passing pick-up; I can see it in my mind’s eye. And now they were dumped and spilt out and picked through by scavengers, rat and vulture and coyote.
    â€˜I made up my mind — swaying there amongst the blood and the fur and the dirt — I made up my mind.’ Grandma knows what she knows.
    The sins are on both sides. They are on both sides. For every buck deer that breaks a trail through the corn and eats half an ear off of each stalk, there is