The Kept by James Scott Read Free Book Online Page B

tossing a shovel out before him, where it would penetrate the unblemished white like an explorer’s flag laying claim to a new land.
    He shifted some logs in the woodpile so that he stood high enough to push open a window. His fingers held on long enough to pitch himself up and onto the sill but, his boots and jacket slippery with snow, he lost his grip and crashed onto the hard-packed earth below. Above him the rafters lurked dim but brighter than the coal black of the ceiling. The odd stillness of the space made him uneasy—usually his presence would be met with swallows dropping from the darkness and swooping in wide circles and the animals rousing themselves, even though Caleb, as close to one of their own as existed, seldom made noise. The animals were worse off than he’d feared.
    The pump had frozen, and he kicked at it with the heel of his boot—Jesse’s boot—to break the ice that encased it. Caleb filled pails and took them around, dumping them into the bone-dry troughs behind the enclosures that separated the animals from one another. It was as if their bodies had been hollowed out, their stomachs bloated with hunger, their legs stripped bare. He, too, felt as if his necessary parts had wasted away, his empty shell held down by nothing but his brother’s boots. He couldn’t bear to light the lamps. The stench was stunning. He took fistfuls of oats and hopped the fence and tried hand-feeding the horses, who were alive, but barely, their ribs pronounced beneath skin dotted with sores. He poured trickles of water directly into their mouths from the pail. Their parched tongues worked at the water, and even this slight movement cheered him. Two of the pigs had died, and the others had taken nibbles from the carcasses. The sheep were mostly gone—but only the infirm or pregnant were housed in the main barn, the rest were high up on the hill in a small outbuilding. The cows appeared to be the hardiest, but even they were sick, their skin thick and hard, their breathing slow, their reactions muted. Caleb moved between them, absorbing their warmth. The milky edges of the cows’ eyes were exposed as they searched for him, questioned him. He responded by patting their flanks and humming softly. For two years, this place had been his sanctuary. He stood in the middle of the barn, his eyes welled with tears, his chest tightened with anger, and he dropped the bucket with an apocalyptic clatter.
     
    T HE COLD AIR seeping in under the canvas reestablished order to Elspeth’s thoughts. They’d become jumbled in the fire, losing their thread and pitching her into hellish dreams of rotting corpses with their long fingernails pointing, and their skinless jaws opening and snapping shut.
    The sun reminded her unconscious body not of the teasing fires of hell, but of a happy warmth. She was rocking back and forth, the boards making a pleasing creak with each roll of the runners, baby Amos in her arms, the floors slick with the sawdust Jorah carried in on his clothes and in his hair that would turn their feet pure white by the end of the day. The child slept, warm on her skin, his tiny forehead lined with purple veins like a subtle map of some fantastic land. She would trace those lines, the longitudes and latitudes of their new son—Mary nearly forgotten—as through the window she watched Jorah frame the barn. Soon she would have to rise and put Amos back in his crib, make sure Mary was occupied, and help Jorah and the horses heft the timbers. He would say nothing but she could sense the questions building. Outside, he exchanged his saw for a hammer and she watched him pull a red cloth from his pocket and draw it across his face, and when his eyes emerged, they fixed upon her, dark and hooded.
    Amos grew, and as he did, so did the clouds across her thoughts. She would rock the boy furiously, trying in vain to recapture that feeling, the heat of the baby against her chest, the peace of watching out the window. He hated to be