West of Here by Jonathan Evison Read Free Book Online Page B

the crows gathered in the maples. It was her father who taught the boy to build fish traps in Ennis Creek, and string nets, her father who told him the stories of Kwatee and the Great Spirit, and Thunderbird, her father who filled the boy’s head with words. But that was before her father began looking for answers in bottles. When the boy returned one afternoon with bruises and scrapes, Hoko forbid him to visit his grandfather. Yet the boy continued his visits, almost daily, in spite of her will, until the day he returned with a fat lip and a knot on his forehead. After that, the boy stopped his visits completely.
    Already, by the time Hoko arrived at her father’s house, several inches of fresh snow had gathered on the roof of the crude little structure, which listed slightly to one side beneath a great bare maple, several hundred feet off the left bank. The door rattled on its hinges when Hoko knocked. When her knocking failed to elicit a response, she pushed the door open, and it issued a squeaky protest.
    The fire burned low, and a feral stink pervaded the little shack. Her father was asleep in a chair in the far corner of the single room, in the glow of the dying fire. His blanket had slipped off his lap, but still clung to his ankles. Hoko knew it was whiskey sleep, because it was always whiskey sleep now. As she drew nearer, she could smell the stink of him, like rotting plums, and she guessed that he had fouled his pants, as had become his custom. How long before drinking made him so small that he became invisible to himself?
    “Father.” She could hear the rasp of his breathing. She gave him a shake. “Father.”
    Slowly his eyes opened, and he looked up at her.
    “Father. It’s Thomas. I think he’s lost.”
    His expression was fixed, as though the words meant nothing to him.
    “Listen to what I’m saying. He’s been gone two days. Nobody has seen him.” She shook him again, which caused him to smile stupidly.
    “Have you seen him? Has he been here?”
    The old man’s smile withered. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. Without warning, he all but leapt out of his wooden chair, as though startled from it. The chair reared backward and rattled to the floor, and the old man’s feet became entangled in the blanket, and he fell forward to the floor with a crash.
    Hoko rushed to his aid. Kneeling beside him, she began to roll him over on his back, but he swung around on his own strength and began to thrash about, swinging his arms, and kicking his legs, and letting loose a terrible shout. With an errant fist, he caught Hoko under the jaw, and she reeled backward before scrambling to her feet.
    He struggled hopelessly to regain his own footing as Hoko fled the cabin into the night.

the invisible storm
     
    DECEMBER 1889
     
    Ethan huddled beneath his wool blankets, hopelessly alert, still clutching his rifle with his good hand. What howling beast of the night was this that spoke in guttural tongues and circled the inside of his head? What frame of mind was this that he could not distinguish the real from the imagined? And what exhilarating new fear was this that defied expression?
    The snow finally let up altogether shortly before dawn. Ethan emerged shivering from beneath his blankets. His thumb was crooked and swollen but mercifully numb. He did not dwell on this state of affairs but immediately applied himself to reviving the coals.
    Thawing his bones over the fire, Ethan scanned the little valley laid out before him in a veil of white, no mark of man upon her. The country seemed less rugged beneath the snow, and the valley seemed wider. By the light of day, the wilderness appeared to harbor no mystery from him, nor present any threat to him. In fact, it seemed to beckon him. Ethan turned from the fire to reach for his bundle and spotted at fifty yards a doe grazing on the fringe of the woodline. Ethan could scarcely believe his good fortune. Breathlessly, he went for his rifle. The doe paid him no mind