Under This Unbroken Sky (23 page)

The rabbit twists and lurches; the snare is caught around its hip, tightening with each frantic lunge. It throws itself at the end of the line, flops back spinning, wrapping the wire around its torso. It wails. Myron lunges for the rabbit’s head and presses it into the snow. The flailing animal kicks and writhes. Its back feet claw Myron’s arms, and it breaks free. It runs, until the wire tether slams it to the ground. Myron grabs it by the waist and wrestles it down. He tears off his mitten and fumbles for the club. He hits it once behind the ears.

The rabbit thrashes and leaps away, dragging the wire around Myron’s ankle. It circles around and slams against his leg. Again and again. Myron tries to free his foot from the tangle of wire, but the rabbit’s frenzy cinches the snare tighter. The cold metal strangles his leg, cuts off his circulation. With his other foot, he steps on the rabbit. Its head wrenches backward, its eyes roll back looking up at him.
Guilty
, they say,
guilty
. He takes aim and fires.

Ivan wishes he could have closed his eyes. White on white. Red on white. Red on red. The rabbit’s feet twitch, its body convulses, but Ivan knows it is dead. It has stopped crying.

Myron untangles the snare from his leg and kicks away the rabbit. He can still feel its feet thumping against his shin. He still sees its eyes accusing him. He keeps the rifle trained on the animal in case he needs to use another bullet. He hears the soft, whistling exhalation of its lungs. He hears the gurgle of blood. When he finally stops hearing the
swish, swish
of its paws against the snow, he turns his back to Ivan and staggers to the next snare twenty feet away. With each step he fights to control his breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Grateful that the cold is numbing his insides.

He approaches the snare warily. Empty. But he sees signs of a struggle. The log pole that anchors the snare is yanked sideways. Flecks of blood speckle the snow. It sprays across the stone wall. The snow has been trampled by something larger than a rabbit. Coyote. Its chaotic prints obliterate the path. A coyote got this one. He is relieved there won’t be another rabbit. He digs the wire out of the snow and follows the line.

He yanks the snare free of the ice and snow. A paw dangles from the noose. The wire has cut deep into the flesh, sawed into the bone. Above it, the limb has been chewed through. Torn flesh, encrusted with ice, haloes the crushed bone. Myron gently loosens the wire and gingerly holds the coyote’s foot. The tendons are taut, the hair coarse. The pads are rough and hard, crisscrossed with scars, the nails are long and splintered. Tufts of fur curl between the toes, caked with snow and ice. The end of the savaged limb has already frozen, congealing the blood.

Myron follows the bloody trail to the end of the wall. Three paw tracks groping forward. Drops of red. A front paw missing. He looks across the vast expanse of field toward the bush surrounding the lake. He half expects to see the coyote crumpled in the snow. But it’s not. It’s hiding somewhere, licking its wound, dull to the pain. Slowly dying. He considers leaving the paw there or burying it, but instead he pockets it, disregarding the fleeting unease of possessing something so fierce.

He feels the cold nails pressing against his leg as he walks back to Ivan. His baby brother squats beside the rabbit, stroking its back with a mittened hand. The other hand he has over its face, where there were once eyes. He speaks quietly into its long ears. He looks up at Myron.

“He’s okay now,” Ivan reassures him. “He was scared because he was all alone.”

Myron doesn’t try to understand. “You can carry it back,” he offers.

Ivan declines. “He wants you.”

Myron picks the carcass up by its hind legs and heads home.

“Aren’t you going to set the snares?”

Myron doesn’t look back. “Not today.” He’s had his fill of killing today.

Ivan remembers the reason he came, the reason he got up so early, why he lied to his mother, why he couldn’t sleep last night, why he kept it secret all these days, why he’s disobeying his father. He runs to the stone wall and finds the two white rocks. He pulls down the layers of pants and long johns, pulls off his mitten, and pees. He pees in a widening circle, not wanting to miss the spot. The white snow bleeds yellow and dissolves away.

He pulls up his pants, his exposed skin already tingling from the cold, and looks over his shoulder, but Myron has forgotten him. He unballs two wool socks from his pockets, the socks he won last spring. He leans over the stone wall and stuffs them in a crevice. The socks unfurl like flags, proclaiming their newly darned red heels. Ivan waves to the house at the bottom of the hill and imagines Petro waving back.

PETRO IS YANKED FROM AN UNEASY SLEEP BY THE CRACK of a rifle firing. He wipes the sleep from his eyes and blinks at the dim gray light. Beside him, Lesya breathes soft and even. He lies rigid on his back, straining to hear. It sounded far away. His heart beats rapidly, he licks his dry lips. It sounded like the shot he heard that night.

He pushes aside the blanket curtain separating his bed from the kitchen and searches the murky light, uncertain whether to be afraid. Across from him, he sees the lump of his parents buried
under the quilts. His father is snoring, loud and gurgling. His mother is on her side, her legs curled toward her belly. He can’t see her face. She is hiding behind her pillow. Her arm covers her mountainous belly. Perhaps he dreamed it again.

He reaches under his pillow and finds the heart stone. It is cool to his touch. He curls up with it warming in his hands. Soon Lesya will wake, stoke the fire, prepare breakfast, and head to the barn. She doesn’t sing him lullabies anymore. She barely talks, unless spoken to directly. Even then she almost coos her answer, and you find yourself leaning in to hear her. The louder Tato shouts, the quieter she gets. She bows her head, like she’s willing herself to disappear
. You can’t see me. I’m not here.

Since Mama went to bed two weeks ago, Lesya is the mama. She serves Tato his food. Washes his clothes. Warms his water for baths. He likes to watch her brush her hair with Mama’s silver brush. He makes her brush it a hundred times, until it gleams. When she reaches one hundred, she sits perfectly still as he touches her hair. He twirls a tress around his fingers, slowly slips down its length.

His breath is always deep and labored. After a moment, he pulls back like she has burned his fingertips. His face is flushed. His eyes shift around the room not wanting to see her. His confusion quickly fires into anger. He snaps at her to go to bed, like she’s done something wrong, and he stomps off into the bitter night. Petro tries to console his sister, but she yells at him: “Stop looking at me!” Then lifts her crooked foot into bed and cloaks herself with blankets.

Once Petro followed his father, with the excuse of needing to use the outhouse. He found him at the back of the house, scouring his bare arms and chest with snow like he was washing off lice. He knew not to ask what he was doing.

Lesya comes to bed fully dressed now in her leotards, under
shirt, skirt, and blouse. She sleeps like a corpse, with her arms over her chest and her ankles crossed. She makes Petro sleep on the edge of the bed, exposed to the room. She prefers to be sandwiched up against the freezing wall.

Petro presses the heart stone against his chest. It is already warm. He glides it across his skin. Undulating along his ribs, up his shoulder bone, down his forearm over the bump of muscle hardened from the weeks of chopping wood, down the skinny wrist to his palm, callused and cracked. He wraps his hand around the stone. Mama’s dreaming again. Her foot jerks, she whimpers.

Mama has filled up with water. Her legs and ankles have swollen like she drank the lake. Her cheeks are stretched smooth. Her breasts hang on her belly. She had to take her ring off. The flesh swallowed up the gold band. Her finger bruised blue. Lesya rubbed Mama’s finger with soap and oil, then pulled. It cut into her flesh, refused to budge. Finally, Tato twisted it off, leaving behind a permanent dent.

Mama hardly ever gets out of bed anymore. Lesya feeds, bathes, and brushes her hair. She rubs her belly. She places a cool rag on her forehead for her aching head. Mama complains of blurred vision and black spots behind her eyes. She doesn’t bother getting up to go to the outhouse anymore. Lesya keeps a pot by the bed and helps her squat over it, a dozen times through the day. Twice, when Lesya was outside doing chores, Mama didn’t make it to the pot. Lesya had to restraw the mattress, wash the sheets, and air the quilt. Tato calls Mama names and kicks at her to get out of bed, but she and the baby are too tired. Lesya says that soon they’ll have a baby brother or sister. Petro already hates the baby and doesn’t want it sleeping in their bed.

Anna moans and covers her belly, the pillow slips away from her face. She is talking in her sleep, but he can’t make out the words.
Once Petro tried to snuggle up to her, laid his head on her belly, so she would talk to him, but she pushed him away. She said he was too big to be crawling in bed with his mother. Petro dug his hands into the deep folds of fat and told her she was fatter than a sow, which made his father laugh. He made pig sounds, which made his father join in. They grunted and snorted. Petro got down on his hands and knees and waggled his behind. He stuck his nose close to the floor and rooted for crumbs. He lifted the hem of Lesya’s skirt with his snout and she dropped a jar beside his head. She said it was an accident.

Petro rolls the heart stone between his thumb and forefinger, following the smooth curves. A thin white quartz vein runs through the center of the rock. He licks the stone and it shines awake. The gray glistens brown and pink with undertones of blue. The white sparkles like glass. The wet spot evaporates, drying dull and flat. He tucks the stone beneath his chin and lets it draw upon his heat. He carries the stone everywhere, tucked in his front trouser pocket. When he is with his father, his fingers worry against its smoothness. He has trained himself not to jump when his father calls his name. He feels his muscles twitch, but it materializes only as a small tic in his left eye that nobody else notices.

Since the night of the hat, he has worked hard not to displease his tato. He spit-polishes his boots, splits at least two armloads of wood a day, remembers to fill the buckets on the stove with snow, stays out of the way, anticipates good days or bad days, talks only when he’s spoken to, sits straighter, doesn’t kick his boots against the chair. He always lets his father finish eating first, so that if he complains that he didn’t get enough food, Petro can offer his remaining portion.

Occasionally he is rewarded.

Like the time his father noticed the muscles in his arms and
made a fuss about how big his little man was getting. Or the time his father showed him the tin-type taken in the old country of him in full uniform. A sword at his hip, tall leather riding boots, medals on his chest, a blurred half-smile. On the small side table: a plumed helmet and a pair of gloves draped casually over the edge, a half-full decanter.

In the picture, the floor was dirt, but behind his father was the corner of a room, with wallpaper, wainscoting, pictures, even a window with curtains. A rich man’s house. But the walls and window looked wrinkled. And there was an odd line where the dirt met the wood floor of the house. Petro realized the house was a painting that rolled up from the bottom. But he let his father regale him with the story about the night he dined at the general’s mansion. Petro even asked what was inside the decanter. Cognac.

Sometimes they sit outside together when the women need privacy. He nods his head knowingly when his father says, “This life ain’t fit for an animal.” And he leans back and crosses his legs like his father.

Lately Stefan has taken to long walks to the town road and back. Petro covertly follows him, hiding behind the house, then darting through the bush, keeping low across the clearing, then spying from the last stand of spruce, just before the road sprawls into the prairies.

Stefan always does the same thing. He steps onto the road and stands there like he’s waiting for someone to come along. He stomps his feet and blows on his hands to keep warm. He looks toward town like he can see something in the distance. Most days, nothing comes. He walks a few steps, then stops. His shoulders stoop, he shakes his head and curses. He spits twice on the road and turns back home. He looks older and tired on the walk back.

Sometimes, though, the police drive through and Stefan waves
them down. They slow to a stop and roll down the window. His father acts like it’s a casual meeting of old friends, like he just happened to be walking by as they were driving through. He laughs and calls them by name, asks about their families and the news in town, gripes about the god-awful weather. Begs a cigarette. The officers don’t laugh or engage in Stefan’s small talk. They nod, playing the game, until one of the officers gets tired of playing and gruffly asks, “What’s new?”

Stefan leans into the window and lowers his voice. The talk is serious. Petro catches the names of neighbors, his uncle, people he doesn’t know. Talk about timber, squirrels, stolen property, and stills. It reminds Petro of a confession. The officers looking straight ahead, Stefan’s head bowed toward them. When he finishes, there is a moment of silence, then the officer slips Stefan a quarter. His father stands up straight, once again the gentleman. He demurely pockets the coin, glad that he could be of assistance. He slaps the car as it pulls away, like he’s sending it on its way. He waves, but they never wave back. Once they are far enough away, Stefan deflates. His shoulders drop, his head hangs. He spits twice, kicks the snow, and turns back home.

After these walks, it is always a bad day. Tato rails at Mama about her thieving brother and how much money that land is worth. He tosses the contents of Maria’s care packages around the room as evidence of them being treated like charity cases. Turnips from their garden, a rabbit-fur baby blanket poached from their land, salt beef bought from their seed.