Dominion

Sa

Sometimes Merian argued the toughness of the child. More often he gave in to her demands and placed Purchase back on the mattress or else withdrew his hand and stopped trying to make the baby laugh. He found himself pleased that the building was still unfinished, as it gave him a project and excuse to be indoors and near them.

After Sa

It was during this season that proper warmth began to flow between husband and wife as well, when Sa

That was also the winter Sa

“We’ll have to feed the cow from our own food,” she said, “and unless you give another field to hay this year we might be in the same position next winter as well.”

“We might have to slaughter it,” Merian replied stoically, going to count the preserves in the half-empty room. “Now, how long will the cow last if you divide it by two people and the rest of the winter?”

Sa

“Do you want to wait until your own milk has given out too?” he asked, arguing his course of action with her. “The little one can’t eat turf.”

Sa

Their misfortune, he told her, was not his doing. “I am as beholden to the climate and the mercy of God as anything out there,” Merian said, as if reading her thoughts. “I do not make it rain or hail or snow or drought, or else descend on a poor fellow like the locusts, or bring fire, or make crops die from disease that can’t nobody see till the corn is withered all to ruin.”

He got up from the table, leaving half his di

“If you kill the animals we’ll never have anything more for ourselves than season to season,” she said, as he stormed across the room and made a pallet for himself on the floor.

“If I don’t we won’t make this one, Sa

He woke up early the next morning and left the house before she knew he was gone. By the time she did find him missing she was already at the stove, making the thi

Out in the wet melting snow she could still fathom the marks of hooves and the man’s feet next to them, leading off into the dark woods. “He has gone into the forest so I would not hear when he slaughtered her,” she said to the baby Purchase. “Next he will kill Ruth Potter for meat.” She looked back out across the fields, following the tracks in the snow until they faded at the entrance to the forest, and wondered which direction out there they had gone off into, so that she might listen for the animals’ scream.

She sat and listened all day, cursing both the man and herself for marrying him. I left my home for this she reminded herself again, daydreaming about her former house, which was always well stocked with both food and good company, as the rooms and halls of memory inevitably are.

Near dusk he reappeared, and just as she feared he had meat with him and was covered in blood.

“I’ll not cook the proceeds of your murdering,” she said, when he put the flesh on the table. “Take it out of here.”

“You have to eat too, Sa

When she heard him say this, the core inside her gave way and her eyes turned into hate-filled saucers. “Get it out of here,” she said again, taking up a knife from near the stove.

“What are you pla

“Get it off my table,” was all she said.

“Calm yourself,” Merian told her. “It’s not your cow.”

“Where is she then?”

“I left her in the woods to feed. I took her out there this morning, down the valley, where the snow is melted enough that we found forage.”

“What is that then?” Sa

“Yes, I spared Ruth Potter,” Merian said, but she still held the knife. “You’d rather die or kill your husband than eat those two beasts? You are a stranger one than I thought.”

“You ca

“It is bear, Sa

She took him at his word, though, and cooked the meat as he prescribed, cutting it into thick steaks, which she grilled in a skillet with its own fat and onions from the otherwise empty cellar.

He sat down to the table and bade her eat as well. She sat and sliced a portion of the tender flesh and took it into her mouth, where its savoriness and nourishment nearly made her tear. She realized how thin she had become, and that the child was put in jeopardy because of it. She felt absurd in her relief, as disaster had been avoided, for the way she defended the cow and the mule and even the hog for a time, guarding what was dear almost to the expense of losing what was most precious. She sliced the steak again and let out a low sensuous moan of pleasure, as she began to enjoy the taste of the meat itself, which was denser and unlike anything else she could remember eating.

At his side of the table Merian took the hot meat with his bare hands and lifted it to his mouth, then tore off a great chunk from it and began to chew. He did not savor the flavor, but ingested the mass of flesh into his own dwindled stomach. The juices from the meat and fat rolled down one side of his face unchecked, as he finished the steak in three or four great bites. When he was done, he attacked the onions and only then remembered the first time he had eaten a wild bear and the awfulness of that winter.