Winter Study

“No.”

HOT DRINKS AND INSTANT OATMEAL – cold as dirt by the last spoonful – duly consumed, they broke camp. It fell naturally to A

He has to reassert his masculinity, she thought without a shred of sympathy. She didn’t challenge him; A

Despite being condemned to watching Menechi

In an embarrassment of riches, the overcast cleared, and, though they paid for it with a drop in temperature, seeing the sun’s pale, cheerful face and the blue sky lightened everyone’s mood.

Everyone but Bob. Menechi

The biotech was a woman of steel; A

Robin might have been able to withstand Menechi

EMASCULATION RECOVERY wasn’t swift, but by lunch Bob seemed over the worst of it. He quit sniping at his graduate assistant and tied her sleeping bag to the top of his already-overloaded pack. A

Katherine rallied somewhat with the lighter load, both on her back and her psyche, but it didn’t last. A

AT THREE THAT AFTERNOON, they reached the rise above Malone Bay. The sun was already close to the horizon and so far to the south that the bay was in shadow. Snow, deeper here by several inches than on the other side of the ridge, was dyed the same battleship gray as the water of Lake Superior, lying cold and still beyond the bay’s straitjacket of ice. The sky’s winter coat of pale blue had faded till it seemed but a thin sheet of tinted glass between the Earth and whatever lay beyond.

In this colorless stillness were two cacophonous spots of color. On the ice of the bay, a few hundred yards from the dock, was Jonah’s red-and-white airplane, her raucous orange down comforter wrapped around engine and cowling, and, on the tiny porch of the cabin, the bright red blade of a snow shovel leaning against the railing.

Blessed as it was by a thick curl of lavender smoke issuing from the stovepipe, the cabin, scarcely bigger and slightly less ornate than a closet in a 1950s tract house, struck A

Jonah met up with them and gallantly offered to take Katherine’s pack for the last mile. A

Adam, who’d cadged a ride on this mission of mercy, had hot Ovaltine waiting when they reached the cabin.

A

“Jesus!” he exclaimed as the weight hit him. “Are you crazy or what? I don’t carry a pack this heavy. Holy smoke! Iron Woman.” He pinched her upper arm, and A

“Fifty-three pounds,” she wanted to say, but boasting had a way of canceling out achievement, and, besides, she was too tired to talk.

“Help Katherine,” she managed. The cabin was so tiny, six people, four of them in backpacks, were like great Herefords in a pen made for lambs. She had to mill her way past Adam and Katherine to find a place to sit, then she was squeezed into a small straight-backed chair between a doll-sized table and a gas hot-water heater. Bob brushed his butt – a butt A

Too tired to focus, she let her body sag and her mind slide inward. After Jonah and Adam departed, she would try to get her boots off. With them gone, there might be room enough to bend over.

Above her, the life of the herd went on. Bob was behind Robin, holding on to her shoulder straps as she fumbled with the buckles. “Here, let me help with those,” he said warmly and started to reach around her and the pack in a Kodiak-sized bear hug.

“Let me,” A

“I got it,” he said.

Bob snorted.

“Bob, could you help me?” Katherine’s voice was plaintive, with a thread of something sharper ru

A

Calflike in the corral, she watched dumbly as Adam undid the frozen buckles on Robin’s harness. There was definite byplay between the two of them, secret looks and small, quickly extinguished smiles, and A

Life in general was hell on relationships, A