Echo Mountain: Chapters 1–10

The flicker, the flame, the voice all tugged me toward the bucket, where I plunged the baby dog deep into the cold, cold water and held him there until I felt him suddenly lurch and struggle.

I thought about Tipper (for that white tip) as I bundled kindling.

None of them would have dulled their knives with such whimsy.

Every coyote that howled us awake reminded them of the day my father had closed his shop, his face like a wet stone, everyone too poor now for his beautiful clothes, for the ivy he embroidered through every hem and cuff.

But this bond with my father and the wilderness itself made a rift between me and my mother—and my sister especially—who both seemed to think I had somehow betrayed them by being happy when they were not.

This time, I let my eyes look past the carving and into the trees. And there, just in that thicket there: a face.

When I snared a rabbit, I knew what it meant to be trapped.

While he slept, we paid for our venison with cream and butter and things the other families didn’t grow: potatoes mostly, but carrots, too, and beets.

“How come Esther never fetches the meat?” Samuel groused, though he loved venison and visits to the Petersons, too.

“How come you never darn your own socks?”

My mother cast him a baleful eye.

And then I went forward slowly, murmuring soft words, careful to reach out the back of my hand until she calmed and licked my knuckles, crooning a little.

The carving of me looked calmly back into my eyes, and for a moment I wanted to be that little girl with her solemn face and her steady gaze.

Samuel nodded grudgingly.

Funny episodes filled with dog-play and mountain business: a moose stranding Mrs. Anderson in the privy; Mr. Peterson, with only a weak lantern for light, mistaking a skunk for Dinky, his mouser.

I stood frozen in place, riveted by the sight of my father’s right hand.

I bumped into Esther as she bustled out of his bedroom, her arms full of wet bedclothes.

“I’m sorry,” I amended, “that the water was so cold. But I wanted you to feel it.”

I ate gruel.

Then I left the shed and walked up the path and, after a bit, into the woods, through a hemlock grove so full of shadows that almost nothing grew between the trunks of the old trees, the deep layer of dead needles underfoot like the soft coat of a great, sprawling animal that didn’t mind the weight of me.

All of them wistful for what had been.

Barberry, in winter, so we never had scurvy.

The twin nurses—onion and garlic—for what’s coiled in a gut, and vinegar, as well, for the gut and cuts, too, when they festered.

I didn’t relish the thought of upsetting my mother.

One was the river, which sometimes raged after a heavy rain and was, at all times, apt to drown things.

And here, on this mountainside, among the families, in broad daylight, with two of us together—Samuel making enough noise for ten boys—there was little chance of a bear or coyote meddling with us.

At dusk, we herded them into their tiny stable, just big enough for the two of them, a net of hay, a trough of water, and nothing else.

He had a big head, a lean body, and was well brindled—some of him brown, some red, some gray—with an ample tail and a coat still winter-thick.

He had a big head, a lean body, and was well brindled—some of him brown, some red, some gray—with an ample tail and a coat still winter-thick.

“You must be careful around a horse, even a friendly one,” Mr. Peterson was explaining to Samuel as I reached the edge of the yard and found the pair of them examining the hoof of a big tawny workhorse named Scotch.

But Samuel came to stand with me as I took Scotch’s bridle in both hands, at the corners of his mouth, and put my face close up to his.

But then Mr. Peterson pulled the thorn and Scotch lurched away, dragging me with him, and we all ended up in something like a dance for a moment or two, Mr. Peterson scrambling free, Samuel reaching for the reins, me hanging on to the bridle, and Scotch prancing in place until he calmed...calmed...came back to still, and we all took a breath.

The hole was his cache, deep enough to be cold still, lined with rocks and narrow enough so no bear or coyote or mountain cat could get in, even if they managed to wrestle off its lid.

“I’ll get the tallow.” She stepped just through the door to fetch a lump of deer tallow tied up in an old kerchief.

That was a trail we did not dare leave along the path, so I blotted the belly of the sling against the ground, Samuel getting my gist and lowering his end, too, while Mrs. Peterson tucked the tallow into a fold at the top.