Light to the Hills: A Novel (37)
Finn and Gripp got on this way for a good while, all through the winter, useful to each other in a mutual arrangement of terms. Finn was softer than Gripp might’ve liked, but he knew his place and kept his head down. Like any self-interested shiner, Gripp carried a stout, foot-long leather billy club and knucks in case trouble wandered his way. Once when they’d gone to meet a pair of bootleggers, the boys had been sampling a bit of the merchandise. They’d acted ill to have been kept waiting and got a little too mouthy for Gripp’s taste. He’d torn into them without warning, his hair wild and spittle flying from his lips as he delivered blows. After they’d set sail off into the woods, Gripp had come back to himself, smoothed his hair with his three fingers, and slipped the knucks back into his pocket. Still breathing hard, but the dark glint had faded from his eyes, and he’d turned to Finn.
“Ain’t no man alive gonna serve me disrespect,” he’d said. “Or woman neither. This line of work has a pecking order, and I aim to be at the pointy end of it.”
Finn shoved his hands in his pockets. “Aw, they were full o’ drink is all.”
“They were full o’ something all right, and about half of it was piss and vinegar.” Gripp had spat in the dirt and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “I wager they’re emptied of it now.” He massaged his battered left hand.
“Reckon losing those fingers in the mine didn’t hold you back much, Spider,” Finn observed.
Gripp had spread the remaining digits of his left hand and stared at them for a long moment before answering.
“This wasn’t from no mine,” he admitted. “A Smith & Wesson .22 took those off.” He shook his head. “Guy jumped me from behind and I tried to grab it outta his hands. Like to bled to death ’fore I could staunch it. Feller was mad at me over a woman, but he got over it after he drown’d his sorrows in a high-water creek.” Gripp had laughed, half at the memory and half at Finn’s startled expression.
Gripp had suggested Finn get him some tools of the trade and carry some ready iron, but it was one thing to run batches of liquor and tend fowl and another to beat a man or flash a gun at a cockfight. Finn still ate at his family’s table every night, looking his daddy in the eye and bearing the worry and adoration of his sisters and brother he went on and on about. Families were nothing but a liability in Gripp’s way of thinking. He warned Finn about other distractions, too, when not long into their arrangement, he started carrying on about some book librarian who’d begun to pay regular visits to their home, bringing things to study on. Finn claimed she was pleasant to look at for certain but smart, too, and persistent as a mosquito. Bit by bit, the words she carried up the mountain sank into his head, he said, and he was learning to read.
“That’s all well and good as long as you show up where you’re supposed to,” Gripp told him. “In my experience, women are generally good for feeding your appetite one of two ways. Other’n that, they lay too much burden on your head.”
“Maybe you just ain’t known the right one,” Finn ventured. “This one’s different. She’s like a ministering angel.”
Gripp had laughed. “Remember you telling me about that feller Jacob in the Bible? Wrastled an angel, and then that angel done hexed his hip and made him limp forever. I reckon maybe since you already got the limp, maybe you just want to get straight to the wrastling part.” Gripp winked and cackled again.
“It ain’t like that,” Finn had protested, his face a scowl.
“It’s always like that,” Gripp had said darkly, and then he let it lie.
Chapter 12
Long, cold winter months slipped by. The buffed-gray sky hung low week after week, holding in the cold and blanketing the mountains in thick blue fog each morning. Amanda longed for color other than the tenacious pine and cedar sprinkled among the barren hardwoods. A slight broken patch of blue in the sky or the flit of a redbird hunting seeds in the snow did her heart good. Now, she trotted out briskly when she made her routes, racing daylight and weather. She often had to dismount and hunt for the least frozen spots where it would be safest to cross the creeks she’d easily splashed across just a few months earlier. She was grateful for Junebug, who could navigate the creek beds and logging trails from memory. Snowdrifts blown against the banks on either side of a gulley erased the path entirely.
Many mornings Amanda set out wrapped snug in her coat and scarf, with only her nose poking out. Mooney pulled roasted potatoes from the hot ashes and handed them to Amanda to tuck in each pocket to warm her hands. She would eat them for dinner on the way once they cooled. Flurries swirled in the wind and stuck to her eyelashes as she trekked along her trails. Lots of times she spotted tracks in the snow or frozen mud by the slushy creek beds: deer, foxes, rabbits. If she’d known how, Amanda might have trapped something to make a stew, but she and Mooney had to rely on bartering with some of the families in town for such things. Occasionally she’d spy a deer’s brown hide, moving against the frozen backdrop. It might raise its head and stand alert as she passed or startle with a flash of white tail and bound away, crashing through the underbrush.
Hard as the routes were with snowfall and cold, the families on the book routes looked forward more than ever to her visits. Cabin fever had set in weeks ago, and mamas were desperate for distractions for the little’uns and something to pore over by the fire as the nights stretched on. What had started as a chance to earn a wage had grown into something of a mission in Amanda’s mind, almost a sacred duty as she witnessed week by week the small joys and discoveries the worn books, magazines, and scrapbooks brought to the cabins she reached.