Her hand touches mine, and I still as all my muscles fire at once. Images of cracking her head open with the frying pan fill my brain. She’s a guest, so I should be doing the work. She’s a guest, so I should let her help if that’s what she wants. She’s a guest, and I have no idea what to do.
I drop the pan in the sink, splashing cold water onto my arms. The droplets feel like they’re burning my skin. I push away from the sink, wanting to get away from her, but there is nowhere to go inside the small, one-room cabin.
She’s obviously shocked by my reaction but says nothing. As Netti starts to wash the dishes, I grab my winter gear and start suiting up to go outside. I just need to get away.
I still have that caribou to clean. Maybe I’ll chop wood in the blinding snow just to get some of the tension out of my shoulders. Fuck the weather.
“Where are you going?” she asks quietly. “The snow is really coming down.”
I don’t answer her. I just put on my boots and gloves before opening the door and quickly shutting it behind me.
Outside, I can breathe again.
The wind burns my exposed cheeks, but the snow isn’t deep enough yet to need the snowshoes, so I leave them on the porch and head to the barn. Putting some distance between myself and the woman inside my abode is more important than anything else right now anyway.
Despite the brisk cold demanding that I focus and move quickly, my mind wanders to the past.
“Do you really think I don’t know that you’re hiding something, Bishop? Do you think you can live with me all these months, tell me nothing about your past, and not have me notice?” Margot had her hands on her hips and her girlish, heart-shaped face was full of fire and brimstone. Her jet-black hair hung over her forehead and into her eyes. She pushed it away as she continued to yell at me. “You don’t trust me enough to tell me, and every relationship needs trust!”
“You think this is a relationship?” I asked as I shoved the last of my items into my backpack and stood up, prepared to just walk to the damn cabin myself. “At what point did I hand you a fucking ring?”
“Stop being shitty.” She scowled at me. “You’re doing it just to piss me off, and it’s not going to work.”
“You are pissed off,” I said. “It did work.”
She took in a long breath to get herself back under control.
“At some point you are going to get tired of being alone,” she said. “You are going to want to have people in your life again, and if you keep it up, no one is going to take you back, not even me.”
“I seriously doubt it.”
Once I’m inside the barn and away from the wind, I take a few long, deep breaths. I welcome the cold air into my lungs. It makes me feel alive even as it sends a shiver down my body. Working on the caribou in the cold will be rough, but I welcome it. Hard work keeps me from thinking too much.
As I work on gutting and skinning the caribou, I work up enough sweat to remove my outer coat and gloves. Having my hands free for a short time makes the detailed work much easier though it’s too cold to leave the extra layer off for long.
I store the meat in the stone structure at the back of the barn along with my other kills. There’s definitely enough meat to get me through the winter even if Netti is here for a while.
I think about that for a moment. If the storm lasts a while and the snows pile deep, there will be no leavin
g the cabin. I don’t have a snowmobile to get around, and there’s no way this woman is going to walk all the way to Whatì. She doesn’t have the gear for it, and I don’t have enough extra to give her.
I really don’t want to think about how long I could be stuck with Netti sharing my cabin. For the first time, I wish I had a telephone or two-way radio to contact someone in Whatì with a snowmobile or a dogsled. At least then she would be away from me.
For a brief moment, I’m concerned about where she would go and what she would do without money or friends. If she had either, she wouldn’t have tried to hitch a ride with those two hunters.
“Not my responsibility,” I mutter to myself. “She figured out how to get here on her own, and she can figure out how to get herself somewhere else.”
But she got here during the warmer seasons, and now winter is in full force.
I finish cleaning up. I’m breathing hard, and my arms and shoulders ache, but it’s a good feeling. Having the pain to focus my attention on is a wonderful way to avoid thinking. I gather up my outer coat and head back outside.
I don’t have any real sense of how much time has passed, but the snow is much deeper now. At least six inches has fallen since I entered the barn, and the wind is blowing impossibly stronger. I tuck my chin down to my chest and plow my way to the front door of the cabin.
I stomp my feet against the porch floor to knock some of the snow off. The vibrations from my feet are amplified by the cold and echo up my legs, pulling me out of my daydreams.
When I open the door and go inside, Netti is sitting on the edge of the bed with Solo in her lap. She’s added wood to the fire, and it’s blazing nicely. Usually when I have been out working during the winter, the fire has died down and the cabin has gone cold, but this time it’s still nice and warm inside.
“I was starting to wonder if you were coming back,” Netti says. There’s a smile on her face, but it’s hesitant.