The Hunters Come to the Store

Briar doesn't sleep that night. You know because you don't either.

You lie awake listening to her through the wall. She doesn't toss or sigh the way she did the first night. She moves. Soft, quick footsteps, couch to window, window to door, door to couch. Every so often there's a long silence, and you picture her at the window with her forehead against the glass, watching Depot Street for headlights.

At three you get up and find her exactly there.

"Go back to bed, Ethan," she says without turning.

"Who are they?"

Her reflection in the black glass looks at you. Her eyes catch the streetlight and glow copper for an instant, the way the fox's eyes did in your flashlight beam.

"Ask me tomorrow," she says. "Please."

It's the please that sends you back to bed.

Tomorrow comes in gray and cold, frost on the truck windshield, a skin of ice on the puddles along Depot Street. You open the store at eight because you always open the store at eight. Briar comes down in her moss coat and moccasins and sits on the stool behind the register with her knees pulled up, sorting a box of mixed screws by size. She doesn't touch the iron ones. She uses a pair of wooden chopsticks.

"I like this," she says. "It's like shelling beans."

At ten-fifteen a truck pulls up out front.

It's a big older Ford, dark green, Maine plates, with a homemade wooden dog box bolted to the bed. You hear the hounds before the engine cuts off. Deep, belling voices, the sound of a hunt in an old movie. Then the engine dies and the voices change.

They go crazy.

All three dogs start baying at once, loud enough to rattle the front window, throwing themselves against the slats of the box. You see the truck rock on its springs.

Behind you there's a clatter. Briar's box of screws hits the floor. When you turn she's already gone, the door to the back stairs swinging, the quick thud of her feet going up.

The bell over the front door rings.

Two men come in out of the cold. The first is around sixty, lean and weathered, in a canvas coat and a wool cap, with a gray-stubbled jaw that must have been handsome once and still nearly is. He's coughing into his fist as he comes through the door, a deep wet cough that goes on longer than it should. The second is younger, maybe your age, tall, with the same jaw and dark hair falling in his eyes and the expression of someone who would rather be anywhere else.

"Morning," the older man says when the cough lets him go. His voice is soft, almost gentle. A Down East accent, all the r's sanded off. "Sorry about the racket. Dogs smell something they like."

"Probably the feed." You point toward the back, where the bags of chicken scratch are stacked. You don't know why you say it. Your heart's going like you just ran up Esker Road.

"Probably." He smiles. It doesn't reach anywhere near his eyes. "Name's Judd Crowther. This is my son Colby. We'll need chain. Thirty feet of it, quarter-inch, if you've got it. And rope."

You cut the chain from the big spool by the door. Your hands are steady. You're proud of that. Colby carries the coil of rope to the counter without looking at you. He keeps glancing at the ceiling.

"Nice old place," Judd says, looking around at the bins, the beams, the woodstove. "Lot of iron in here."

"It's a hardware store."

"So it is." He coughs again, turning away, and when he turns back there's a red fleck at the corner of his mouth that he wipes off with his thumb without seeming to notice. "You'd be Elden Haverhill's grandson."

Your hands stop on the register keys.

"Heard about him all the way over in Maine," Judd says. "A man who knew a lot about foxes. Studied them, folks said. Kept notebooks." He leans one forearm on the counter. "I'm a trapper, son. Forty years. I'd give a good deal to read what a man like that wrote down."

"I don't know anything about notebooks."

"No?" His eyes, a pale washed blue, rest on you. They're patient. "Funny thing. We've been tracking a vixen. Big one, beautiful coat, unusual color. We put an arrow in her up on that ridge Friday night in the storm." He nods toward the window, where Esker Ridge shoulders up into low cloud. "She went into the river. Dogs lost her. But you know what, the dogs found her trail again this morning, plain as day. And it led right up your front walk."

Above your head, very faintly, a floorboard creaks.

Colby's eyes go to the ceiling. So do Judd's. For a long second nobody says anything at all.

"Lot of foxes in these hills," you say. "Lot of cats, too. My neighbor's tom sleeps on that bench out front. Your dogs probably want him."

Judd Crowther looks at you for a while longer. Then he smiles again, slow, and counts out bills onto your counter, and lays down an extra twenty.

"For your trouble," he says. "We'll be at the Notch Motel a while, if you remember anything about those notebooks. Or about foxes."

He picks up the chain. At the door, Colby stops and looks back at you, and for a second you think he's going to say something. Instead he just shakes his head, barely, a movement you might have imagined, and follows his father out.

The truck pulls away. The hounds keep baying until the sound is swallowed by the road.

You put the twenty in the jar for the fire department and go upstairs.

She's sitting on the floor of your bathroom with her back against the clawfoot tub and her knees pulled to her chest. The light is off. She's glowing. Not faintly now. Her skin is lit from inside, pale green, bright enough to see by, bright enough that the porcelain behind her shines with it. She's shaking.

"Hey," you say. "Hey. They're gone."

"I heard."

You sit down on the bathroom floor across from her, your back against the sink cabinet, your knees nearly touching hers. You don't touch her. You just stay.

"Iron arrows," you say. "Hounds. A man who's coughing blood and wants my grandfather's notebooks."

"Yes."

"Briar." You wait until she looks at you. "I'm going to ask you, and you're going to answer, because you can't not. Why are you really here? In Hollis Notch. Why were you in that ditch?"

She closes her eyes. The glow pulses under her skin like a heartbeat.

"Don't ask me that," she whispers.

"I'm asking."

For a long moment she doesn't speak, and you think she's going to do what she did before: go silent, turn away, run. Then she opens her eyes, and they're wet, and they're looking straight at you, and she takes a breath like someone stepping off a ledge.

"I didn't come to Hollis Notch by accident, Ethan," she says. "I was on that ridge because I was coming here. For you."

"For me."

"I was sent," she says. "By my Den. To bring your soul back with me. Your grandfather promised it to us a long time ago, and it's time." Her voice doesn't shake. Her hands do. "That's why I was there in the storm. That's what I came for."

The bathroom is very quiet. The faucet drips once.

"And then you pulled me out of the water," Briar says. "And held me against your chest in the rain and told me not to go under. And that was the night," she says softly, "I decided not to."