The horse answered by pushing Odd with her long face and neighing again.
In the barn Odd found the wood bucket he used to water the horse and walked the fifty yards to the well pump in the middle of the paddock. It took fifteen minutes to get water, and Odd was as primed as the pump by the time he did, but the water was frigid and delicious and he soaked his head and slaked his thirst before filling the bucket for the horse. He set the bucket next to the fence, and the mare dropped her neck and drank and when she finished she took a long and heavy piss. He tied the horse to the fence and gave her a nosebag of oats and finally turned to survey the farm, the barn, the house now fifteen years abandoned, his at the age of eight. An awfully young age to be a private landowner.
When Rune Evensen died intestate — drowned in and washed down the Burnt Wood River— Hosea hired the best attorney in Duluth, who'd convinced Mayfair that Odd, as next of kin, deserved the property and chattel and that Hosea, as Odd's guardian, should hold the trust. It was one of the many piebald gestures Grimm had made on Odd's behalf after his mother died. No doubt the property established Odd. He'd mortgaged his fish house and length of shoreline against it fifteen years after Rune's death, upon Grimm's suggestion. But how much money had Grimm skimmed off Odd's holdings? And had Hosea known Odd would be beholden to the odd jobs he was employed in on Grimm's behalf ? The whiskey running, the mail fraud, the chopping of half-a-dozen cords of firewood each summer, the carpentry work on the apothecary. Odd often felt he'd never be out from under Grimm. " Which is why I'm out here hunting wood now," he said to himself.
He walked into the old farmhouse. It was hard to imagine that anyone had ever lived here. Two small rooms. Two windows. Six-foot ceilings. Odd didn't know much of the history, only that Rune was his mother's uncle. He knew of the misfortune that had come to pass here, knew of the ghosts said to haunt the place. He knew it was a goddamned eerie place, no doubt about it. Knew that a farm in these climes was doomed at the outset. But he loved the place, and not only because it belonged to him alone. No, his attachment to the farm stemmed from a single sudden day eight years ago.
It was late November and he and Rebekah had been hunting rabbits up at the old Burnt Wood Camp. Rebekah was as sharp a shot as he, maybe even sharper. Rabbit stew, that was the idea. His favorite dish. Rebekah was like a mother to him. She'd done more to raise him than just about anyone. She and the Riverfish family. She'd bagged three snowshoe hares, he a pair, the pelts turning from brown to white. They were easy to pick in the already dormant tall grasses around the abandoned camp. Odd had gutted them and strung them and they were halfway home when the wind came up their backs, a fierce and out-of-nowhere blow that was trailed five minutes later by the unlikeliest blizzard. In the half hour it took them to get from where the wind hit them to Evensen's farm, there was already three inches of snow on the ground, and coming down harder. They hurried into the abandoned farmhouse, Rebekah laughing, thinking it a frolic; Odd dazed, knowing just how dire the situation could have been.
They lit a fire in the woodstove, trusting the tin chimney for no good reason. They stoked the fire and in spite of the broken windows and the wind coming up through the floor, the place warmed.
And there was Rebekah, her hyaline eyes, her beautiful hair coming free of her hat when she took it off, still girl-like in every way despite being almost twice his age. Odd had always been the whole town's child, the gamin who could find supper at any doorstep on Wisconsin Avenue, but on that late afternoon he felt a hundred years old. Their shotguns leant one on either side of the door, the snow outside coming down heavy enough to snuff out the last twilight. Inside there was the light from the open stove door but none other. It shone dully on the puncheon floor.
He unbuttoned his coat, doing as she did. He shook the snow off it and slung it over his shoulder. The rabbits he'd laid on a bench. There wasn't much else in the cabin: a rocking chair, a small kitchen table and one stool, a woodbox, a chest of drawers without the drawers. They'd taken their silent inventories, stood facing each other in front of the fire. She took a very deep breath. Her eyes narrowed, she looked sleepy. The floor was freckled with mouse droppings and he swept them away with the hem of his mackinaw coat. He laid his coat across the floor in front of the fire. He gestured at the floor, at his coat, a place to sit. She looked at him again with those eyes of hers, a look of uncertainty, perhaps curiosity, in any case full of questions. He started to say something, he couldn't remember what, but she stepped to him.
And then she kissed him, a kiss as unexpected and sudden as the snow. And as full. She stopped and her breath caught when she stepped back so she stepped forward and kissed him again. In a flurry they undressed and sooner than either of them knew what they were doing they made love. It was the first time for him and the first time in many years for her.
He was staring at the place on the floor now, heard the horse's happy neigh outside. He counted back to make sure he had the years right. Eight years ago, right, and only once. Until two months ago, when it got regular.
He counted back the time to that day in May. He'd walked into the apothecary after breakfast, expecting to find Hosea. He found Rebekah instead, standing behind the apothecary counter, her fingers deep in a rabbit pelt. There were a dozen pelts spread across the counter. She didn't even look up as he walked toward her.
"Hey there," he'd said three steps from the counter.
She'd looked up slowly, smiled, shook her head to clear her daze. "Odd? What are you doing here? I thought you were out for your nets."
"I'm about to head out now. What's with the pelts?"
"Inventory," she said, then looked back at the fur. "Why don't you come over for dinner tonight? Hosea's down in Port Arthur. We can act like kids again."
His breath caught. Since that day here at the farm years before, there'd been a constant uneasiness between them. They couldn't look at each other when they were alone, could hardly say hello.
But that day in May, she lifted her eyes from the rabbit pelts and said, "What do you say?"
"All right. Yeah. That sounds swell."
"Come over as soon as you're finished out there."
"I will," he said.
And he had. She'd baked popovers and set them on the table with a bowl of herring roe and gherkins. Sliced cheese. It all looked delicious, but they never got to eating.
She poured them each a whiskey and water. They sat on the davenport with the windows open, the lake breeze coming across the pink sky at dusk.
After their first cocktail she mixed a second and sat back down. "Do you ever think of that day up at Rune Evensen's farm?"
"We shouldn't talk about that," he said.
"Do you?"
"Of course I do, Bekah."
"I've been thinking about it. I can't stop thinking about it."
He looked out the window. "What have you been thinking?"
"That we've wasted enough time," she said quickly.
"Wasted time?"
And that was when she came across the davenport and kissed him. She kissed him and unbuttoned her blouse while he unbuttoned his shirt. It was as simple as that.
If he stopped to think about it he started feeling dizzy. So he cleared his head of her and stepped back outside. He took the stone path to the barn and heaved the skidding tongs and chain and an ax back to the horse.
"Yup," he said to the horse. "Yup, yup. Let's find a bit o' wood." He shouldered the ax and untied the reins and together they made for the stand of birch under the shadow of white pine up behind the barn.