Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell Read Free Book Online Page B

Arthur crushed his cigarette in the pie pan on the table and stood.

    “Then I guess I got nothin’ for you, babe. There’s the door. Don’t y’all bust your sweet asses goin’ down that slickery hill.”

    Ree and Megan left together, picked their way down the steep slickery hill without sharing words. The dogs had waited on them and crashed about their legs as they stepped through snow and slid on ice, hands slapping against tree trunks for balance. At the bottom Megan grabbed Ree’s shoulder, stopped her, pulled her close.

    “That’s sure a bad boat you been left in, ain’t it?”

    Ree pulled away stumbling and slipped flush to the snow. She landed with her knees splayed, skirt blown above her reddened legs, head bowed. She used both hands to raise a vast heaping of snow she mashed into her face. She blubbered her lips against the cold and rubbed her face roughly. When she lowered her hands melt and snow clung to her eyelashes, eyebrows, nostrils, lips. She said, “I’m startin’ to think maybe I
do
know what the whole goddam deal is now—somebody killed Dad, and everybody knows it but me.”

    “Get up from there.”

    “He promised he’d be back with plenty for us all, but he’s a promiser.”

    “Baby girl, I feel for you, I do, but don’t do your figurin’ sittin’ in snow.” Megan sighed, glanced at the near windows, then bent and hooked her arms under Ree’s, pulled her to her feet, brushed snow from her skirt and legs. “Come on now—stand up.”

    “He’s a goddam promiser. He’ll promise anything that sets him loose.”

    They walked together along the unplowed road.

    “Don’t tell nobody it was me told you this, okay? But, the way I’m gettin’ it is, you’re goin’ to have to go up the hill’n ask for a talk with Thump Milton.”

    “Thump Milton?”

    “You’re goin’ to have to go up the hill’n hope he’ll talk with you—he generally won’t.”

    “Oh, no, no. No. That man, he scares me way more’n the rest.”

    “Well, scared’s not a bad way to be about him, neither, hon. He’s my own granpaw, been around him all my life, but I still try’n make damn sure I don’t ever piss him off none. I’ve seen what happens. Be real careful you don’t say I sent you, but he’s the one who could know an answer for you. Thump’s the one who could.”

    Megan’s eyes were suddenly stuffed with water, a bulging of tears, or maybe she needed to sneeze mighty hard, sniffle. They walked on along the Hawkfall road, steps sinking into white, and Megan would not look up again until they reached her house and halted. She put an arm across Ree’s shoulder, raised her other hand to point beyond the meadow of old fallen walls, up the hill to a clenched house of dun stones circled by bare trees. She said, “It’s been this way with our people forever, goddam it.
For-
fuckin’
-ever
. You go see Thump. Go up there’n knock gentle on his door, and wait.”

     
11

    C LOUDS LOOKED to be splitting on distant peaks, dark rolling bolts torn around the mountaintops to patch the blue sky with grim. Frosty wet began to fall, not as flakes nor rain but as tiny white wads that burst as drops landing and froze a sudden glaze atop the snow. The bringing wind rattled the forest, shook limb against limb, and a wild tapping noise carried all about. Now and then a shaking limb gave up and split from the trunk to land below with a sound like a final grunt.

    Ree crossed the meadow of old fallen walls, climbed uphill to Thump Milton’s, but did not need to knock. A woman waited for her as she came into the yard. The woman stood on her doorstep wearing an apron over a print dress with short sleeves, rubbing her hands together, watching Ree draw near. The woman was past the middle of her years but looked pink in her cheeks, robust, with white hair brushed high into an airy poof and sprayed to stay there. She was burly, stout-boned, and flesh rolled when she moved. She said, “You’ve got