Dead of Winter ~ Second Place
Gail A. Webber

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I looked down at my boots, trying not to shuffle while a cold wind blew between us.

My grandfather seemed like a giant standing over me, a giant who was shaking his finger at me. In his other hand, he held the rabbit that two minutes ago I was so proud to have shot. “We only hunt rabbits in winter, Narina.” He leaned closer, and though I couldn’t see him, I felt him get closer and imagined him drawing his grizzled eyebrows together. I’d seen it enough times before. “They carry a sickness in the warm months. It makes people real sick.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, registering the new rule: Wait until winter to kill rabbits. Rules had always made me feel safe, even if breaking them meant I’d get punished. But since punishments hadn’t lasted too long or hurt too much in the past, they just reminded me to be more careful. To think before I decided to do something. What scared me lately about rules was that the older I got, the worse punishments seemed to be getting for the same violations.

…like standing in the corner facing the wall for twenty-four whole hours with one of them always watching to make sure I didn’t move.

Rules. I’d learned some early: Don’t talk back. Never lie. Do your chores. Take your punishment. Others came later: Tell me if you see a strange person. Never go outside without your knife. Gut your kill in the field. Stay out the meat shed. I was eleven years old and had quite a long list to remember.

The first time Granddad gave me the rule about seeing a strange person, I was confused. From when I was really little, Gramma had read me stories about the long-ago-people in the Bible, but I’d never seen another human besides us. I thought we were the only people left, but the rule about strange people meant we weren’t. That was when I first started to wonder about other things I’d been told, whether they were true or not, but I trusted my grandparents then, and knew better than to ask for more information than they offered.

Even with my head down, I could tell Granddad was still looking at me funny. “Did you hear me, Narina?”

“Yes, sir.” I tried to be obedient—I liked how they treated me when I obeyed. But how could he expect me to obey the rule about killing rabbits when I didn’t know about it? It wasn’t fair. The whole concept of fair and not fair consequences was something I’d only recently thought up, but I knew it was right.

As for that day, I didn’t think I had done one thing wrong.

I had awakened before Gramma called me. That was unusual because I’d been having more trouble getting awake lately and Gramma said it was because I was growing up. That made no sense because Gramma and Granddad were already grown and they always got up really early.

Anyway, I’d been having a dream about running, racing a deer faster and farther than I’d ever been. When the deer jumped into a river, I followed it in, still chasing. The dizzy excited feeling the dream gave me didn’t fade like most dreams did when I sat up, and my excitement mounted as I thought about the river. I had been warned about the river.

I could go as far as I chose in three directions from our cabin. Only one direction was forbidden to me, and I was never to go that way. Not hunting, not hiking, and not for any other reason. Granddad said the river was in that direction, beyond our fields and beyond our forest, and that it was dangerous for me to even look at. He told me if I ever got lost and found myself near it, I was to close my eyes until I’d put my back to it and then hurry home as fast as I could.

I couldn’t help wondering if “beyond the river” might be where Granddad’s strange people lived, if they existed at all. I fantasized about what they might look like, made up reasons why we never tried to see them, and why I should be afraid.

But nobody said I couldn’t dream about them—a person can’t control her dreams—and maybe the dream would come back.

My insides felt all jumpy that morning. I couldn’t sit still, couldn’t go slow. I needed to do something, so I got my knife from the table beside my bed, crept downstairs real quiet, and grabbed the .22 rifle by the back door. Then I ran to the place where our fields meet the woods.

After I shot a fat rabbit, I gutted it right away, just like I was supposed to, and ran back home fast. The proof was that blood was still dripping from the carcass Granddad had taken from me. I wanted to look at his face, but was afraid what I would see.

It’s not fair. I didn’t know.

I swallowed down a sigh and waited to find out what my punishment would be this time.

“So, this is the right thing done the right way.” I looked up to see him standing straight with a little smile curving his mouth. “Last week, we had our first hard frost, and this morning the ground is hard and there’s snow. Truth be told, it’s not much snow, but enough to call this winter. Well done, Narina.” Granddad always used my whole name instead of calling me Narry like Gramma did.

While I was still adjusting to the idea that everything was okay, he patted me once on my shoulder, the only way he had ever touched me. Gramma was another story. “And it’s a good shot too,” he said. “Right behind the front leg. I’ll hang it while you go help your grandmother.”

“Always hang your game for a few days” was another of his rules. He said it made the meat taste better and get tender, and we had a special outbuilding for that—the meat shed. Granddad did the butchering in there too. It seemed like it would have enough space inside to hang four gutted deer carcasses, but I didn’t know for sure. I wasn’t allowed to even look in there. “Don’t ask me why,” was another of Granddad’s rules.

He flicked his hand, the one holding the dead rabbit, and blood spattered in the snow. “Now git. You’re standing there like you been bewitched. Don’t let your grandmother do all the breakfast chores by herself.”

I ran to the cabin.

In the kitchen, I found Gramma bent over the woodstove, as tiny and neat a person as my Granddad was a huge one. She was lifting fresh cornbread from a covered pan onto a plate and didn’t look at me. “Where was you?” she asked.

“Hunting!” I leaned against the log wall and pulled off my boots. “I got a rabbit. With one shot!”

She looked at me with an odd expression and I wondered if she hadn’t quite heard me. As I was about to repeat myself, she said, “I am grateful for the food, Narry, and know your confidence comes from being well-taught and from practice. But avoid pride. No good comes of it.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Gramma had rules too.

I never knew my mother. Granddad said she died, “going someplace she had no business going,” whatever that meant. It never sounded quite right to me, but the one time I’d pressed him for details, I got locked in the feed room for two days with a jar of water but no food. All I knew was my mom died and her parents—Granddad and Gramma—had raised me on their farm where they mostly followed the old ways. I learned to live that way too.

We cooked and heated with a woodstove, kept food cool in the summer in our spring house, and did without whatever we couldn’t grow, make for ourselves, or kill. Planting started in early spring with cool weather crops like kale, broccoli, and beets. The rest went in as the weather warmed, mainly from saved seed. Once some colorful little envelopes of new seed appeared along with old clothes Gramma would remake into things for the three of us. I never knew where either the seed or the clothes came from, and all Gramma would say was, “God provides.”

For seven months, there was always something growing or needing harvest, and weeds that needed pulling grew everywhere our food crops did. Whatever we didn’t eat fresh had to be “put up” for winter eating, a big job after harvest.

We kept chickens for eggs, goats for milk, and a few hogs for cleaning up scraps. Sometimes Granddad would kill a hog or a chicken if hunting was bad or if he wanted something different to eat. But most of the meat for our table was whatever he—and more recently he and I—could shoot. We ate rabbit and squirrel, venison, groundhog, and some other meat I couldn’t identify. Some creatures are hard to tell by just skinned pieces. It wasn’t an easy life. But whatever else we lacked, we always had plenty to eat.

Gramma looked me up and down. “Go change and wash up before you lay the table, Narry.” She shook her head at me and I took one step back. “You need to learn not to hug fresh kills, but that can’t be helped this time. Put your bloody clothes in the vinegar pail. We’ll launder them later.” She meant the pail on the back porch where Granddad always put his clothes after butchering.

I changed and did as I was told with the soiled clothes. When I came back to get out plates and utensils, I remembered my great shot that morning and couldn’t help smiling. Then my mind went to what Granddad was doing with my rabbit right then and a question came out all by itself.

“Why won’t Granddad let me in the meat shed?” I had never dared to ask that before. “He should know I’m not scared of dead things, and if he let me watch him butchering, I could learn. And help.”

Most of my questions didn’t make Gramma angry like they did Granddad. This time, she shrugged her shoulders while she put slices of fatback into the iron skillet and slid them around so they wouldn’t stick. “It’s his special place,” she said. “One of them, anyways. People got to have their own places.”

That made me wonder where my special place was… if I even had one. It felt like something in me moved sideways and I held my breath for a second. Finally, I asked the rest. “But why can’t he share his place with me?”

I wasn’t paying enough attention and had to skitter away at the last second before Gramma got to me. Usually, she only pinched me when I did something bad, but sometimes it felt like she did it for no reason. Either way, she pinched so hard it really hurt, and the black and purple bruises lasted for weeks. She hardly ever did it when I was little, but as I got older, I had two or three of those bruises all the time, no matter how hard I tried to follow the rules. As old as she was, she could move like a snake and she was brutal.

I kept the table between us until she went back to the bacon as if nothing had happened.

After a few minutes, she said, “Narry, sing us a song.”

We didn’t have electricity or a telephone then—I didn’t even know about those things—and we never went anywhere except hunting. The only music I had ever heard were the songs Granddad played on his mandolin, and one of my favorites was “On Springfield Mountain.” I liked the story, about a boy who got bit by a poisonous snake. A girl who tried to save him died because she had a rotten tooth and when she sucked out the poison, it got in her too.

So, I started singing that, but Gramma stopped me. “Heavens, girl! That’s a frightful song. Sing something more suited to the child you are.”

I wanted to tell her I was no child anymore, but decided that was a bad idea. So, I held my tongue and tried think of another song. “The Green Grass Grows All Around” was a silly piece Granddad taught me when I was about five, but it seemed exactly what she wanted to hear because once I got going, she bobbed her head in time.

The salty-fatty smell of bacon filled the kitchen, and the sizzling sound made it smell even better. As I was thinking about cornbread, bacon, and the eggs I knew Gramma would scramble to go with them, I heard footsteps on the front porch.

My grandmother’s head snapped up. “That ain’t your Granddad’s walk. I need to… No, you’re faster. Run out the back door and fetch him from the meat shed!”

If Gramma was right and it wasn’t Granddad, then who? While I was still wondering, a knock sounded on the door.

“Stop staring, girl! Be quick!”

“But I can’t go in…”

“Git!”

I ran out, sliding in the snow as I rounded the side of the cabin. Over my shoulder, I shot a look toward the front porch. A strange man stood there holding a little case. He wore clothes like I’d never seen, a kind of jacket that didn’t look at all warm. It matched his trousers, both blue, but not like blue jeans. Shocked to see an actual stranger, I tripped and stumbled the rest of the way to the meat shed, arriving in a rush. I hesitated only a second before I banged on the door.

“What in holy hell…” Granddad bellowed from inside and the door flew open. I got only a glance at the long stainless-steel tables inside before he gave me a hard look and slammed the door behind him.

“A man is here,” I choked out. “Gramma said come get you.”

I swear he growled and took off at a limping lope, getting up onto the porch faster than I thought he could. The strange man turned as if to say something, but Granddad didn’t give him a chance. He grabbed the man up by the shirtfront, punched him once in the face, and dragged him backwards down the porch steps toward me.

I had a million questions I knew I wouldn’t be allowed to ask.

Granddad seemed surprised to see me still standing in front of the shed and yelled for my grandmother. “Pearl! Get Narina back in the cabin and keep her there. I need to deal with this.”

I didn’t wait for Gramma to come get me, but ran inside on my own. What I found there puzzled me. Never in my life had I ever seen my grandmother shaken—not when a bear was tearing the chicken house apart, not when she shot a copperhead that had me cornered in the barn, and not when she thought a fever would take both me and Granddad. But this man… it seemed like seeing this man had made all her bones like jelly.

A couple of times while we waited, I tried to sneak a look out a window, but each time Gramma grabbed me away. I heard noise a little later—like a shout or a wail—but I figured it was one of the animals. Even back then, my mind sometimes turned one thing into another and I had learned to let strange thoughts be. Usually, they went away.

It was a long time before I heard a door slam outside. I peeked out before Gramma could tell me not to and saw Granddad padlocking the shed. There was no sign of the strange man.

Boot steps on the porch. Front door creaking open. My grandfather framed in the doorway. “I sent him on his way,” was all he said.

Gramma went to him. “A car?” I think her voice was louder than she thought it was, because I hear her clear as day. He shook his head.

“What’s a car?” I’d never heard that word before.

Both of them looked at me, but neither responded. “Then how?” Gramma asked him in a whisper, but I still heard her. “Walking the road?”

He shrugged and said, “Still so overgrown you can’t hardly find it.” Then he sat down at the table and waited for Gramma to fill his plate.

I knew what overgrown meant, like fallow fields and gardens gone to weeds, but “car” and “road” were two new words. Apparently, they had to do with the man. “What’s a car?” I asked again. “And what does ‘road’ mean?”

Nobody answered me that time either, and it was all I could do to keep from getting loud. But I knew that wouldn’t get me anything but punished and I still wouldn’t have an answer. There had to be a way to find out all the things I wanted to know. There had to be.

I buttered my cornbread and stole looks at them between bites. They both kept their eyes down, fastened on their plates until their food was gone.

I was still looking at Granddad when he cleared his throat and locked eyes with me. I jumped.

“We will speak no more of this incident. You are to forget it, Narina.”

My mind spun as all the things I thought I knew fought to rearrange themselves. I had every intention of keeping silent despite the questions tumbling over each other in my mind. But I couldn’t. “Forget it? How can I? This changes everything!”

Granddad scowled and his mouth twisted into an ugly frown. “Not one thing has changed for you.”

“But that man!” I felt like something had hold of my insides, and I didn’t care what they did to me. “They’re beyond the river, right? Those people. A lot or just a few?”

Gramma’s eyes were as big as two full moons and Granddad gripped the edge of the table. He pushed himself slowly back, his knuckles white.

I knew I had crossed some kind of line and was afraid again, not afraid enough to keep silent, but my voice came out squeaky. “What else haven’t you told me? What else have you lied about?”

Granddad lowered his chin and glared at me from under heavy eyebrows. When he finally spoke, it sounded like thunder. “Narina, stop. I mean it. Stop. We’ve kept you safe from them. From yourself. Like we tried to do for your mother. She wouldn’t listen, and look what happened to her.”

I felt my head tilt sideways like a dog hearing a strange noise. “What do you mean? You said…” Realization dawned. “You lied about that, too.”

“Bite your tongue, Narry!” Gramma snapped. “What do we have to do to make you behave? Maybe you’d listen if we put you in with the pigs. You don’t need all your toes, and you’d remember that lesson for the rest of your life!” She reached across the table for my arm, but I dodged her and jumped up, knocking my chair over backwards.

Granddad stood up too, his face red and his hands bunched into fists at his sides. I held my breath. Not once in my life had he ever struck me, but right then I thought he would. I wondered if his fists would kill me. Instead of striking out, he took a few steps back, seeming to shrink. He cracked his neck sideways and said in a low tone, “All you need to know is that the creature is gone.”

“Creature,” my grandmother repeated.

Granddad’s eyes bored into mine, now more with sadness than anger. “It’s gone. You won’t see it again.”

I opened my mouth to ask them why they called it a creature instead of what it was, a man. Then I closed my lips tight together, locking my words inside. I felt years older than when I’d shot that rabbit only hours earlier, and wondered if my questioning was a serious mistake. I was confronting the ones who had always had more power than I did, and wasn’t considering what might happen to me. I wasn’t careful…

Wait. Be silent now. Just wait.

A few days later, I woke to the smell of breakfast cooking—bacon, but not quite bacon—and Gramma calling my name. My bedroom window was foggy and wet with tiny drops on the inside. Granddad called it condensation and said it was from my warmth on the cold glass. Odd.

After dressing, I went downstairs and began to set the table without being asked. I could see that Gramma must have been up for a while because a pile of sewing lay on the side table beside her favorite chair. I didn’t understand how she could see well enough to sew by just the morning light coming in the windows, and wondered if she somehow did it by feel.

“Making something for Granddad?” I asked her.

She nodded without taking her attention from the skillet. “I was. A hunting vest, I thought. But that fabric isn’t sturdy enough for that and I may make something pretty for you instead. The fabric’s got a nice feel to it. Might be nice against your skin. God provides. Go over there and see if you like it.”

I couldn’t help smiling. It had been a while since she’d made anything for me, and I liked the idea of getting something new. But as I got close to her chair, I stopped, first puzzled and then suddenly understanding.

The fabric was blue, but not like denim, and there was enough for matching jacket and trousers, both now completely disassembled.

I went to the window and saw it had started to snow again, large flakes drifting down in the still air. My grandfather was just coming out of the meat shed, limping against the weight of the slop bucket he carried, presumably for the pigs. A couple of long bones stuck out the top. We hadn’t gotten a deer in a long while, and the bones were too long for anything else I could think of. Granddad closed the shed door, but didn’t lock it.

Even from a distance, I could see his hands and clothes were bloody, the way he always got from butchering. Head down, he headed for the hand pump where I knew he would wash himself. He did, and when he finished, he hoisted up the bucket again and disappeared behind the barn.

We had a rule about lying, but I knew they’d lied to me, and I had unanswered questions. Like how old clothes appeared again and again out of nowhere, what “creatures” Granddad hunted that had meat I couldn’t identify, and why my grandparents kept us so isolated.

I needed to know what had happened to the man whose blue clothes had become a pile of Gramma’s sewing, what bones Granddad was feeding to the hogs, and what the bacon/not bacon was that Gramma was cooking that morning. I thought all those answers, but wasn’t willing to admit to myself what I feared might be true. Not yet.

The answers were in the shed, and if I went out now, I’d have at least a few minutes before Granddad came back or Gramma came looking for me.

A few days ago, I’d felt like I didn’t care what they did to me, what the consequences for violating rules might be. Now it was time for me to act.

Without giving myself time to reconsider, I ran to the back door and pulled on my boots. Then I grabbed my coat and the .22 rifle—I might need both. I heard Gramma calling me back, but ignored her and ran all the way to the shed, my breath coming in white puffs that sent snowflakes whirling. It wouldn’t be long before Gramma came after me. Called Granddad. And I was sure that whatever happened after that wouldn’t be good, given the pile of rules I was in the process of breaking.

I yanked the open the meat shed door and looked inside.

The carcass was headless and gutted, hanging over a hole in the wood floor. It was minus one leg and a strip of belly muscle, the same place where pork bacon comes from. I recognized what—or rather who—this had been. Not a deer. On the stainless-steel table beside the carcass lay a boneless chunk of meat, rolled and tied as a roast. My throat clenched when it struck me that I might have eaten a fair amount of this kind of meat in my life.

In a rush, answers to all my questions tumbled over one another. It all made sense now. I heard Gramma’s shout to me and another to Granddad and turned to see her trying to hurry herself toward me. She wasn’t fast. Neither was Granddad. They would never catch me.

I didn’t have a chance to think about what was I going to do now that I knew the truth about life on this farm. The decision came fast and easy, and almost before I knew I had decided, I was running as fast as I could in the one direction I was never supposed to go.

I didn’t know exactly where the river was, but it had to be there or else why would Granddad make a rule about not going past it. I believed it was there. It had to be. And just like in my dream, I would jump in and cross it.

Running faster than I’d ever run, I scared up a young doe from the underbrush and we raced together, just like in my dream. When we got to the river, I knew she would jump in and I knew I would follow her. I felt dizzy with the wonder of it, and my insides vibrated with something more exciting than fear. Maybe the unknown. Maybe freedom.

On the other side of the river, I would find those other people wherever they were. After that, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that I wasn’t going to let my grandparents take me back to the farm.

I felt doubt crowding past the excited feeling. That water would be cold, winter cold, and if I made it to the other side, I’d be soaked. Maybe get sick. Maybe die from it.

“I’ll find another way over,” I told myself out loud.

Then I heard Gramma’s voice in my head. “God provides.”

Gail A. Webber is a retired science teacher who lives and writes on a small farm in Maryland. Her stories have appeared in Fiftiness, The Tower Journal, Toasted Cheese Literary Journal, Persimmon Tree, and others), and in anthologies including 2016 Write Well Award, The Way You Walk Through Madness, and Writings to Stem Your Existential Dread. She has published three novels and a volume of short stories. Facebook. Email: gail_webber[at]hotmail.com