You shouldn’t ever take more than you need.
When she was alive, she had showed me a place where voles made little runways through the grass, with their droppings here and there and tracks all round, you know them by the two middle toes that point forward and the two smaller toes on either side. There was a time when we would walk into the woods, hand in hand, till she let me go and told me monkshead or fiddlehead or cloudberries, and I would run up the trail and find what she’d asked for, and then she would explain which one is good to eat and which one will make you sick or even die.
But she never had to tell me how, in the mornings, squirrels begin to move about and look for food, and this movement is like a signal, soon after they stir, other animals start moving through the woods, too. In the evening a squirrel will return to its tree and if you know which one it calls home you can fashion a funnel, like so, use a log or some debris that you lay on the path the squirrel will take, and at the end of that funnel there will be a snare which you have made and set about two or three inches off the ground. Then you hide yourself in the brush and make your breathing shallow. You watch till you see movement in the leaves on the ground nearby. The squirrel will stop and sit on its haunches, its black eyes searching, and this is when you must be most still. Then it darts into the funnel and when it comes out the other end, it is caught.
Its body is still warm. This is how you want it.
There’s two ways to really know another creature’s mind, and neither of them involves talking, which is just a distraction. One way to know a person is to live and work with them side by side. You are quiet as you each go about your chores and get to know how the other one moves, how his body shifts and changes, how a thought flickers over his face and tells you more than words could. That’s how it was with me and Dad, before. We would get out a sled and lay the rigging on the snow and choose a team of dogs to put on the gangline, all without ever exchanging a word.
The other way of knowing is a kind of watching and listening that happens deep in your head. It’s as close as you can be to another animal. You empty your own self out and there’s room for something else, you drink it in, and then you know.
I used my knife on the squirrel. There is a place in the neck you can cut and let the blood drain out so the body will go limp in your hands.
After, I come back to myself. What I found was the same burning anger I’d tried to shed by running into the woods in the first place. I thought of Dad, walking toward the kennel, his back thin under his coat, his shoulders slumped. The calm, disappointed way he’d spoke to me. A tiredness rose over me, strong as the anger. My mother had warned me time and again about staying in control of myself, but days like this one, it took too much effort. My muscles thrummed under my skin, my legs eager to take me back to the trail, deeper into the woods, where there was plenty other critters to hunt.
I turned, then staggered as something barreled into me, a shoulder hitting me in the face, stars exploding across my vision. I blinked them away. Pushed at the man the shoulder was attached to, a big bear of a guy, barrel-chested and grizzled with days-old stubble, tall as a tree and blotting out the rest of the woods. He lunged after me, his full weight bearing down on me. I caught him, tried to shove him away. Dug into my pocket for my knife. His fingers gripped, pulled my hair, his voice rasping, Wait— Then my knife in my hand.
I flew sideways, airborne for a brief second. Stars again, this time they was followed by a black wall that separated me from the woods and the man and the shout that echoed through the trees.
When I come to, my head ached something fierce, my temple tender where it had met the knob of a gnarled root sticking out of the ground. It was full dark, moonlight leaking onto the ground between tree limbs overhead. Still, I have always had better sight at night than in the harsh light of day, and I could make out where the stranger’s feet had trampled the grass leading from the trail to this clearing. I could also see the broken stalks of devil’s club where he must of pushed his way out of the clearing, on his way to who knows where after he knocked me out.
My heart yammered like a riled squirrel, all the hairs on my neck prickled, and I held my breath, listening for him, certain he was only yards away, wearing the inky evening like a cloak. I hadn’t set traps in this part of the woods, but I felt I had stumbled into one of my own snares, tied to one spot while I waited for the stranger to show himself. After a long spell where every birdcall and twig snap sent me jumping out of my skin, I finally stood up. The trees danced in a circle round me, I put my hand out to touch one and they all stopped, the dizzy spell passed. I spotted my knife on the ground, stained with dried blood. I must of dropped it when the stranger pushed me aside. Hadn’t I cleaned it before I put it in my pocket, after I drained the squirrel? It wasn’t like me to put my knife away dirty, doing so would dull the blade. Unless I’d used it a second time. I folded the blade and stuck it in my pocket. There wasn’t nothing to do now but go on home.
The light was on in the kennel when I got back, so I walked between the rows of doghouses and put my hand out for Peanut and Hazel to lick. Stopped to give Flash a good scratch on the belly. The rest of them, just fourteen racers left, pawed at me and wagged their tails as I passed.
Dad stood at his table saw in the workshop end of the kennel, he was making a shelf for a lady in the village who’d offered to pay him. He was likely mad. I was risking making him madder by rummaging round on the shelves where we kept our gear and paying him no mind. But the truth was, his anger and our fight was the least of my worries. I still felt jumpy, certain any second a figure would come barreling at me out of nowhere. I kept thinking I should of heard the stranger sneaking up on me, but the squirrel I’d caught had warmed me and filled my thoughts, and the part of myself that should of been alert was preoccupied with the fight I’d had with Dad.
The shelves was a tangle of lines and harnesses, sleeping bags and tents, canisters of heating fuel, extra tent stakes, an old bag of dry food for the barn cat we used to have. I found what I wanted, a whetstone. I put a bit of oil on it then sat on a stool near the door and took out my knife, rubbed the blade clean on my pantleg, drew it down the stone. It made a scraping sound I could feel more than hear.
When the saw died, Dad said, Did you go deaf earlier, or are you trying to piss me off?
My hands went still. My knuckles was scraped and raw from hitting the truck.
I had to check my traps, I said.
I had laid them here and there in our woods, most near enough our property I could get to them on foot. Some of what I caught was too small to bring home, but some made for good eating, and the rest had fur Dad could sell or trade in the village.
Any luck? he asked over his shoulder.
Not this time, I told him because tanning a squirrel hide is more trouble than it is worth, and anyhow, I had dropped the squirrel when the stranger come at me.
I flipped the knife to work its other side. The saw whirred again, Dad run another board through the blade. When he finished cutting, he switched the machine off. Wiped his hands on the front of his shirt, bits of sawdust fell to the floor. He sighed and paused in the doorway of the kennel. The automatic lamp Dad had rigged in the dog yard cast a circle of light that made the rest of the yard seem even darker. The dogs was all settled for the evening, most of them curled nose to tail, some of them paddling their feet in their sleep, dreaming of running.