The man looks tired, Ruby said.
Ida made him a shop on the carpet. She wanted to help him unbutton his shoelaces, but he didn’t sleep without straightening his clothes.
Adaruby left after the fire was raging, and let two men sleep here. When Innsbrod was asleep, the snow kept coming for an hour. Two women talked about clearing firewood in another wooden house in the cold, cutting fir trunks to repair the bark house. The floor of this wooden house was full of dead beetles, which were shriveled and crunched at the soles of their feet. They were the ancient owners who lived in the wooden house. Ada swept them away with a snow pine branch.
Among the floor debris, she found an old wooden mug, which was more like a bowl with a somewhat irregular shape. It cracked a gap and the gap was repaired by beeswax. The repaired place was hard and brittle. She looked at its grain and thought it was dogwood. She imagined in her mind the process of repairing it and then thought that it might commemorate the loss of everything by mourning.
A small niche on the wooden house wall. It is a partition embedded in the wooden wall. She puts a wooden bowl on it just like people put icons or animal totem woodcarvings.
When the house was cleaned and the roof was repaired, they leaned against the door where they came from. In the furnace, they found branches in the snow and made a fire to keep warm. When the fire burned, they set up a big bed on the hemlock trunk and spread a sheet on the surface. Then they went to clean the turkey, remove the chicken feathers and peel off a big roll of bark from the fallen chestnut trunk. Ida threw the bark behind a big tree by the stream and they formed an ugly pile in the snow.
Later, the stove fire turned into a pile of charcoal. They added dried walnut branches, sharpened the turkey, and roasted it on slow fire until the chicken skin gradually turned reddish brown. The cabin was warm and dark, full of walnut smoke and the smell of roasted turkey. The wind blew up and snowflakes leaked from the roof and fell on them for a long time. They sat on fire together, and neither of them spoke. Ruby occasionally went to the men’s fire to add firewood and explore Stebrod’s forehead.
When night came, Ruby sat upright by the fire. She put her hands on her knees and covered her knees with a blanket. She flattened her thighs like a sheet. She slashed a walnut branch with a knife and sharpened it. She impatiently poked the turkey with this stick until the juice dripped from the bumpy skin and sizzled on the charcoal.
What’s the matter? Ida asked
I saw you with him this morning, and I’ve been thinking about it, Ruby said.
Yuta
it’s you
What’s wrong with me?
I’ve always wanted to know what you’re thinking, but I can’t think of it, so I’ll just tell you what I think we can do without him. You may think we can’t, but we just have. I have already imagined what our home should be like. I know what we should do to build it. Crops, livestock, land and buildings will take a long time to operate, but I know that it will take a long time to do a good job. We can’t achieve war or peace. You don’t need him.
Ida looked at the flame. She patted the back of Ruby’s hand, then pulled Ruby’s hand and rubbed her palm with her thumb until she could feel the veins on her skin. She took her ring and put it on Ruby’s hand and tilted it to the fire. She watched a large emerald inlaid around the platinum base and decorated it with a smaller ruby. Ida motioned to leave the ring there, but Ruby took it off and put it back on Ida’s finger rudely.
You don’t need him, Ruby said.
I know I don’t need him, Ida said, but I think I want him.
Oh, that’s another story
Ida paused. I don’t know what to say further. She was thinking hard about imagining things in her former life. It suddenly became possible and seemed inevitable. She thought that Inman had been lonely for too long. A deserter had no human caress, and her loving hands were gently and warmly placed on his shoulders, back and legs, and so did she.
I’m sure I don’t want to regret that she didn’t have enough courage if she finally said that she found herself an old woman looking back on the past one day in the new century.
When Inman woke up, it was already dark, and the flames were beating to shine a faint light on the hut, so it was impossible to determine how deep the night was. For a while, he couldn’t remember where he was. He had to lie there quietly and try his best to remember where he had slept for several days. He sat up, broke some branches and threw them into the fire and blew on them until the flames jumped up and projected on the wall. Only then could he determine his position on the ground.
Inman heard a breath with a wet throat. He turned around and saw Stebrod lying in his bunk, his eyes wide open and shining black in the fire. Inman tried to remember who this man was. He had been told, but he couldn’t remember.
Stebrod squirmed his mouth and snapped. He looked at Inman and asked if there was water.
Inman looked around and didn’t see a bucket or kettle. He got up and wiped his face and smoothed his hair.
I’ll get you something to drink, he said
He went to his backpack and waved the pitcher. He found it inside. He put the pistol in the canvas bag and slung the strap over his shoulder.
I’ll be right back, he said
He moved the door outside, and the dark snow was blown in. Inman turned around and asked where they had gone.
Stebrod lay with his eyes closed. He didn’t answer. One hand and the middle finger twitched slightly outside the blanket.
He stepped to the door and returned to the place where he came from, where he waited for his eyes to get used to the cold snowflakes floating in the darkness outside. The smell was like metal cut into chips, and it was also mixed with firewood and smoke. When he could see the road clearly, he went to the water. The snow had not passed the calf hut, and it was dark and bottomless. He probably went all the way to the center of the earth. He squatted down and put the jar into the stream and filled it with water. The water overflowed his hands and wrists and felt warmer than gas.
When he walked back, he saw the fire coming through the gap in the wooden house where he slept, and also from the log house where the stream swam a long distance. He smelled the smell of barbecue and a strong hunger came to him.
Inman went back to the cabin to help Stebrod feed the water into his mouth bit by bit. Stebrod raised his elbow and slurped in Inman’s jar until he choked and coughed. After coughing, he continued to drink with his head up, his mouth open and his throat stretched out. He swallowed this posture with disheveled hair and stubble in his eyes. Inman thought of some terrible longings like just a shell bird.
He had seen this expression before. It was a longing for death. People were injured in various ways. In recent years, Inman has seen many people being shot, which has become a natural phenomenon in the world. He has seen people being shot in various parts of the human body. He has seen all kinds of reactions from immediate death to pain. A man with a broken right hand was laughing there with blood dripping from his hands. He knew that he would never die but could never pull the trigger again.
Inman doesn’t know what the fate of Stebrod will be, either from his face or from the condition of his wound. According to his observation, the wound has been dried and wrapped up with bee herbs. Stebrod feels very hot, but Inman has long since stopped trying to guess whether the shot person will live. According to his experience, he will heal when he is seriously injured, but will fester when he is slightly injured. All wounds may heal on the skin level, but they are actually buried in people’s hearts until he devours this person, just like most cases in life. It is illogical.
Inman made the burning hut bright and warm. He slept there by Stebrod and left. He followed his footprints and came to the stream again, holding water in his hand and throwing it in his face. He broke a twig nail from the trunk of a beech, smashed the end of it and brushed his teeth. Then he went to another light wooden house. He listened outside but didn’t hear the smell of roast turkey.
Inman asked people?
He waited and didn’t respond. He said it again, and then he knocked on the door. Ruby opened the door with a finger and looked out.
Oh, she said it was like she was waiting for someone else.
I woke up, he said, I don’t know how long I’ve been sleeping. The man in the cabin wanted to drink water, so I got him some.
You have slept for twelve hours or more, Ruby said. She moved the door to let him in.
Ida sat cross-legged by the fire. When Inman came in, she looked up at him. The yellow light shone on her face and her black hair hung over her shoulders. Inman always thought that she was the most beautiful woman that men could see. He was immediately shocked by her beauty. She was too beautiful for him to feel a fever on his cheeks. He put a knuckle on his eyes and was at a loss. Besides, he took off his hat. There was almost no etiquette suitable for the Indian hut in the snowstorm. He knew that he wanted him to go over and sit next to her.
But before he could make up his mind and put his backpack in the corner, she got up, walked up to him and made a gesture that he knew he would never forget. She reached behind him with one hand, put her palm on his waist and pressed the other hand on his belly.