You might say that the Coles didn’t live all that much differently from the original settlers. They ate whatever vegetables they could grow in the thin soil, sold firewood or made moonshine, and relied on hunting for meat. Rumor had it that the rest of the world moved faster and faster, but here in the mountains, life was very much the same as it had been for a hundred years or more.
With the farm not making any money, Pa had been desperate to pay back the bank. He had managed to get a job down at the sawmill, but that was dangerous work.
It had fallen to the county sheriff to drive out to the farm with the news that they all feared might come someday.
They knew that something was wrong as soon as the dusty county car pulled into the barnyard. The sheriff was a big man, but his shoulders seemed to droop as he took off his hat and approached the door.
“Mrs. Cole, I’m afraid that there’s been an accident at the sawmill,” he had said, his brown eyes sad in his broad face. “Your husband has been killed.”
“He’s gone?”
“I’m afraid so, ma’am.” The sheriff seemed relieved that Mrs. Cole didn’t ask for the details. He looked around, apparently taking in the ramshackle house, the barn with a sheet of canvas covering a hole in the roof, the forlorn chickens scratching in the yard.
Their mother had nodded once and gone back into the house, leaving the sheriff on the front porch, hat in hand.
“Sadie, Deke,” he’d said, nodding at them. “I’m real sorry about your daddy.”
The sheriff’s eyes had wandered down to the boy’s bare feet. Deke could have explained that his pa had needed the one pair of boots they could afford to work at the mill.
The sheriff looked up and opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again. There were times in his job where words failed him. His whole county was dotted with farms just like this, where families were barely hanging on. A man could do only so much. He got back in his car and drove off, raising a cloud of dust as he went.
With Pa gone, it seemed like everything had rolled downhill faster and faster, like a boulder bound for rock bottom. There was some insurance money to pay the mortgage for a while, but when that ran out, payments to the bank had been sporadic. Ma had taken to bed, the payments to the bank got further behind, and there wasn’t anything to eat unless Deke or Sadie found it in the woods.
In a sense, Deke had fled to the woods this morning. Just last week, the bank had foreclosed on the farm and scheduled for it to be auctioned on the steps of the county courthouse. Once again, it had fallen to the county sheriff to drive out and give them the news that they had one week to vacate the property. This time, he wasn’t alone, accompanied by a man wearing a suit and shiny shoes.
The sheriff introduced the man. “This here is Mr. Wilcox from the bank. He’s the one who called in the note on your farm. Well, I ought to say, the bank’s farm now.”
Mr. Wilcox didn’t say a word, but he looked around with a lordly, proprietary air. He frowned, clearly not pleased by what he saw. He approached the porch, stepping carefully around some chicken droppings so as not to get any on his fancy shoes. He gave Deke and Sadie a look similar to the one he’d given the chicken shit, like they were just another annoyance.
Their mother hadn’t risen from bed, so it fell to Deke and Sadie to meet the sheriff once again. “I’m sorry about this, son,” he said, handing Deke a document. “That’s an order of eviction. It says you need to vacate the premises within seven days.”
“I’m being generous,” the banker spoke up, not bothering to take off his hat in Sadie’s presence. What did a banker care about a mountain girl without any shoes?
“Where will we go?” Sadie had asked.
“Not my problem, darlin’,” he replied. “You just be off this property by Tuesday noon next week, or I’ll have the sheriff here throw you off.”
“We can get the money, mister,” Deke had said.
“How? You gonna sell those chickens, maybe? No, the bank waited for its money long enough. This is a done deal.” The banker narrowed his eyes as he noticed Deke’s scars for the first time. “What the hell happened to you, boy? Looks like you tried to shave with a rusty razor — or maybe with a garden rake.”
The banker looked away, taking in more of his new acquisition. Deke had been splitting firewood and held an ax, the edge sharp and bright. He glared at the banker. Deke’s eyes were a startling shade of gray, like rainwater. Those eyes held a cunning animal glint, the feral eyes of a fox.
Deke shifted his grip on the ax and took a step toward the banker.
The sheriff looked up in alarm, realizing he was too far away to prevent what was coming next. “Son—”
But Sadie put a hand on Deke’s arm, a gentle gesture that stopped him before he could take another step.
“That’ll do, Deke,” she said quietly.
“You can keep the chickens if you want,” said the banker, barking a short laugh. He hadn’t noticed the ax in Deke’s hands or the look in the boy’s eyes, apparently oblivious that he’d come within a heartbeat of having his head split open like a ripe watermelon.
The sheriff knew, though. He’d seen it all. The thing was, he couldn’t bring himself to blame the boy.
“Come on, Mr. Wilcox,” he said sternly to the banker. “We’ve delivered your letter. Let’s go.”
That had been nearly a week ago. Tomorrow, they would need to be off the land. This morning, Deke planned to hunt here one last time. It was his way of saying goodbye.
“Now, where’d you get to?” he muttered, pushing thoughts of the future from his mind and turning his attention back to the hunt. “I know this is where you like to be.”
He had brought the rifle this morning because he wasn’t after squirrels or quail. He was hunting the big buck that he had seen a couple of times over the summer. That much meat would have gone a long way toward feeding them right into the winter — maybe with some left to share with the neighbors.
Deke focused his sharp, searching eyes on the woods. The gray-brown coat of the buck with its splashes of white would blend perfectly with the trees, so he would need to keep a sharp eye out. If he wanted this hunt to be a success, he would need to see the buck long before it saw him. It occurred to him that his family had been hunting these deer for generations on this same ground.
He moved through the woods quietly, carefully, his footsteps silent beneath the whisper of the breeze in the barren trees. Winter was coming on fast. There had already been several hard frosts. It had been a lean harvest, and their milk cow was nearly dried out. In the morning, there was ice to crack in the water trough. A trip to the outhouse was invigorating, to say the least. Soon there would be snow, and real winter would arrive in the mountains.
For the deer, he needed the rifle. He doubted that he could have gotten close enough to the buck to take him with buckshot. The rifle was an old Winchester that had been owned by his father. Lately, Deke had realized that he was starting to forget his father’s face. It was no more than a vague memory, like a half-remembered dream. But when he held the rifle, he could remember clearly. The rifle was the best connection to his father that he had, because his father had handled this same wood, and his eyes had used these same sights. It was strange, but when Deke carried the rifle, he felt as if his father walked with him. It was his father, too, who had taught him to shoot. Here in the mountains, it was one of the first and most important lessons that a father taught a son — or a daughter. Pa had also taught Sadie to shoot.
The rifle gave Deke power. It made him the equal of any man. As long as he held a rifle, and was willing to use it, to stand up for himself, there was nothing that Deke needed to fear. His father had passed along that lesson too. What did a man have if you took away his ability to defend himself?