Dani finished fleshing the hide the next day while Theo made dinner. Over the following two days she moved on to what Theo called “braining.” This procedure involved buffing the hide with a round bit of sandstone that fit in the palm of her hand and then rubbing into the hide a mash made from the rodent’s brain cooked up in a bit of water. She had to repeat this procedure a second time on the second day: buff and smear. Tanning hides was not a past time even her redneck uncles pursued; they hired that task out to a fellow hunter who accepted payment for the service in venison. Dani hated the very thought of putting her bare hands into the brain matter of a dead animal, but she hated more the thought of showing any weakness. So she complied.

She asked no more personal questions of Theo in the meantime, but his narrative had raised many questions, so periodically she asked for information to fill in the blanks of Mama’s limited notes and he seemed willing enough as long as she refrained from pressing him for more personal information. Considering the nature of his story she was willing to leave him be. Not surprisingly for a couple of nights after his confession, his sleep talking escalated but all Dani garnered from the one sided dialogue was that something terrible had happened between him and Anthony. Theo, who usually slept like a log, thrashed restlessly.

At random moments Dani caught her thoughts wandering to the amethyst box with an overwhelming desire to hold it in her hand. She shook off the impulse again and again. Why tempt fate by invading Theo’s packs without his permission?

A few days later, he pulled something out of his pack and called her over.

“Let us go get some dinner.”

They had been traveling downhill laterally in a southeasterly direction since leaving the long underground passage hugging the mountain slopes until they finally come upon a frothy rushing river. They heard the river a half day before they reached it. Theo called a halt early, well before sunset in order to set up shelter long square cave behind a massive waterfall. Theo led her out and down to the shore and took up position downstream near several large rocks surrounding a dark pool to one side of the fast moving water. The pool was sheltered beneath a copse of overhanging trees, a species she had not seen before.

“A Malnewt grove,” Theo explained. “They only grow on river banks. See those buds there? That is where the fruit grows, a sweet delicious treat and in late summer after the fruit dies off it leaves behind a most nutritious and tasty nut. Thus the name: ‘Malnewt.’”

“Twice fed.” Dani supplied. Their most curious feature was that they were only slightly taller than Theo, the intricately woven branches fanning out overhead like an umbrella.

Theo unwound his thread and affixed a tiny newt – found after turning over a few smaller rocks near the shore -- to the bone hook.

“Do you know how to fish?”

“Not without a pole.” She had done plenty of pole fishing but had never learned to fish with a line.

He proceeded to teach her how to throw out the line, where to throw it so that the current would carry it under the overhanging boulders where the fish stayed during the heat of the day and how to jiggle the line to draw the fish to the bait and when to know that a fish was nibbling. It was such a homely moment it reminded her of fishing trips with Uncle Bobby and Uncle Martin and Grandpa McHugh. How she had loved spending time with her uncles and her cousins, getting as far away from the stressful atmosphere at home. She had done some fishing with Henry and Patrice, her paternal grandparents, but it was never as much fun. Henry did not have the patience of her Uncles and Patrice always insisted on telling them how everything could be done so much better if they would just do it her way. She never let up and she had always insisted that Walter accompany them; he would pretend to be happy to be Dani’s daddy just to fool Patrice who bought his lies hook line and sinker and their conversation always came around to what a looser Mama was as a mother, a daughter in law, a wife and a woman.

It was the only thing the three ever agreed on.

“Danielle, pay attention, you have one on the line.”

She tried to hand the line back to Theo, but instead he positioned himself behind her and held her hands and helped her guide it in, winding the line around her hand, laughing and coaching her and praising her until the heavy beast – it was as long as his forearm and three times as thick, a yellow monster with swipes of blue across its back and black fins and a rash of pink speckles on the underside. It was a wonder it did not snap the line. It hung heavy and dripping a few inches from her fingers, beating the air with its massive tail fin shedding cold drops of water everywhere. It was a strain to hold its weight with her two hands and both arms folded up and pressed hard against her body. Theo quickly hooked his fingers into its gills

He removed the hook, turned and laid the fish – it resembled a pike -- flat on the rock and brought the hilt of his knife down in its head twice and proceeded to gut and clean it. Dani, still flush with the catch and his encouraging words and reeling from her unwanted memories watched. She had cleaned plenty of fish in her time, as always under the guiding tutelage of her uncles and found herself anticipating a meal of fire roasted fish which would be an excellent change from the jerky and the rodent stew they had subsisted on for so long. When Theo had done, throwing all the entrails, the head and the skin and bones into the river he handed the knife to her with instruction to cut away some large leafs from a nearby plant – six in all and never more than one from each plant -- and washed the fish in the river while she did as he commanded.

Back at the fire, Theo cut up one half of the fish into six pieces and wrapped each in one of the broad leafs that he then buried in the coals he had raked to the edge of the fire.

While the fish steaks cooked he handed her a long thin bone knife extracted from a pouch in his large pack and taught her how to fillet the remaining half of the fish into thin strips which they then draped over wooden rods – two long and spindly green branches with the leaves stripped off and braced over two iron rods embedded in the rock over the fire pit – the first sign of human habitation they had come across since leaving Theo’s wintering cave..

Dani ate with more appetite than she had enjoyed since her arrival. For the first time in a long time, she realized with a spurt of joy she felt real hunger and when the steaks were ready she ate two chunks – all her stomach would hold – while Theo devoured the rest.

After their meal, Theo arranged her stretched and dried pelt near the fire pit and piled on several wet pieces of blue cedar creating quite a bit of smoke.

“There. By morning your hide will be ready for use and the fish will be dry.”

They retreated out of the way and settled in for the evening.

In the morning Theo announced they would stay for a few days to fish and forage, he said, to rest and replenish their stores before moving deeper into the river valley. It was an excellent location to smoke fish and skins because the mist generated by the falls helped mask the smoke.

Dani had already been through mama’s letters: postcards, letters from friends she had made at summer camp, letters she had written to “Grammy” from summer camp – Dani presumed she had inherited them when Grammy died – two letters written from a boy named Collin who lived in Belfast, Ireland whom she had met when she visited Ireland with Grammy when she was fourteen. His letters were brief and unspectacular. They denoted a boy who did not know how to talk to a girl. The letters said little about Mama. One envelope was stuffed with several birthday cards celebrating Mama’s sixteenth birthday.

So far Dani had ignored Mama’s journal but night after night she felt drawn to it. It was, after all, a window that would allow her to take a peek into Mama’s life and perhaps in its pages she might discover enough to help explain Mama’s choices, or at least to prepare her for their inevitable reunion. She needed all the fuel she could get. So after three days of filleting fish and gathering berries and roots and as their stay at the falls wound down, with her belly full of fish Dani picked up the journal with reluctance. It was well worn and had little hearts drawn into the pale green calico cloth cover in blue pen with names inside like Belle & Freddie; or Sara “Hearts” Barry.

On the inside cover a note was written in a sprawling hand, the kind once taught in schools when penmanship was a requisite part of the curriculum.

“Sara,

Your thoughts are always important to me.

Happy Sixteenth, Lovebird,

Grammy”

Dani knew that Mama had been very close to her grandmother.

She was a legend in the family, a woman who had traveled in Europe during the depression and lived in England throughout the Second World War working as a correspondent for a national magazine. She met her husband there, an Air Force pilot named Bill. They married began their family and then returned to the states. She had retired from the newspaper business but had continued to write and was fairly well known for having produced several well received collections of essays, poems, and short stories. She had made regular contributions to the local editorial pages right up until the week she died. Locally she was beloved and remained to her last day an influential member of her parish.

Dani skimmed through the early pages of Mama’s journal. The first page was all about her sixteenth birthday, how Grammy had organized a huge party, invited all her friends, the family and the parish Priest, Father Dunnehy, what a great party it was except that most of the boys seemed to gravitate to Angie – “AS USSUAL” -- and promised her journal to fill it with her most personal and private thoughts.

In the early entries Mama devoted several pages to Barry. He joined her for lunch every day walked her home after school and carried her books for her and hung out at Friendly’s Restaurant with her and their gang of friends. He called her every night and they talked about their favorite sitcoms and TV movies and Robert Frost who was on the curriculum in English. They were in the same Science class and he stayed close to her when the class had hiked to the river behind the high school for a field survey. Most of the entries were short and expressed Mama’s anticipation that Barry seemed to be working up the courage to ask her a very important question, maybe about joining him at the homecoming game and dance or maybe even about going steady.

Then all at once there was a one page entry consisting of one sentence in large capital letters where each word spanned the height of three lines:

“I HATE BARRY EVANS!!!!!!”

After that there was no more mention of him.

For several weeks there was no more mention of anything. Dani wondered what Barry Evans had done that had hurt Mama so that she had stopped writing altogether.

Dani tried to fit this child into the same room in her mind where her timid and jumpy mother lived and then tried to imagine that she was now the Queen of all the land she surveyed. It was a stretch. She could not imagine her mother growing up to be queen someday.

There was an entry for Halloween, an entry for Thanksgiving. Then entries for the following days where Mama seemed to settle in and tried harder to write about serious subjects: current events, religion, a second set of ear piercings and an argument with her mother about it and some attempts at poetry. She recorded a dream about a midnight black Unicorn that she told Grammy she just knew belonged in their story and made a Christmas wish list of what she wanted and another list of the gifts she planned to give her family. She got a job working the counter at Burger King.

Another single sentence entry was dated 12-16-1984.

“Grammy died today.” The sentence occupied the top line of the page. The rest of the page remained empty.

The next entry was dated June 1985.

Dear Grammy,

I met the perfect guy today. Belle and Nancy and I were eating ice cream cones at Stewarts today, sitting at the picnic table and in pulled a fire engine red pickup. Out climbed the most beautiful guy I have ever seen. He has thick wavy jet black hair and dark blue eyes. He was wearing black jeans, a blue plaid shirt over a black t-shirt, cowboy boots and a black cowboy hat. He winked and tipped his hat to us on his way into the store and when he came out a few minutes later with a six-pack of cola under his arm he stopped and looked right at me. My heart stopped. But you must know what I was thinking.

I told him if he wanted to meet Angie he should look up the number and call her and he said, “Who’s Angie?”

Then he took hold of my wrist and licked away the strawberry ice cream that had melted over my fingers.

I was shocked.

“You want to go for a ride?”

I was so tempted to say “yes,” right there, or better yet to say nothing and just get into his truck and ride off into the sunset but I thought about what you would think of that and instead I wrote our number on the back of his hand.

He said he would be in touch.

Oh, Grammy, I hope, I hope he calls me. His name is Walter Knapp and he’s nineteen. His name is not so great, but I can forgive him that because he is so-o-o-o handsome and because he saw me.

Grammy, he saw only me.

Dani closed the journal with a thump and without even thinking she threw the thing into the fire sending up a shower of sparks.

“What are you doing?” Theo rescued Mama’s journal from the fire with his bare hands and dropped it. It was barely singed. He shook his hand and sucked on two of his fingers.

“Why did you do that?”

Dani was incapable of giving him an answer. The room began to whirl. Her chest rose and fell with a succession of quick hard breaths.

Theo dashed to her. He pressed his hand over her mouth and she grabbed it reflexively and tried to pull it away. He resisted. “You are hyperventilating. Breath in slowly through your nose. Take deep breaths. Calm down. Slow your breathing.”

She followed his instructions with difficulty, but eventually her head cleared and her breathing normalized. When it did she leaned her head into Theo’s shoulder and immediately burst into tears.

While she bawled like a baby, Theo counted her pulse.

“Your pulse is a little high, Danielle. What happened?”

She shook her head, sobbing. The very thought of her mother ever being attracted to that monster just made her sick all over, physically, mentally and spiritually. Worst of all she did not want to know that there had ever been a day when her parents had ever done anything so normal as to flirt. She shuddered.

“Put that thing away where I can’t find it. I don’t ever want to see it again."

Theo did not argue with her. She fell asleep leaning into him. Though she slept poorly, Dani recovered quickly from the attack. They moved on the next day.

Next Chapter: Chapter 12