Deadlands: A Novel by Victoria Miluch

Author:Victoria Miluch [Miluch, Victoria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2023-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

13

The sun is just beginning to rise when we come upon the cabin. The shadows are long and quiet, the air a deep blue that’s slowly disappearing. Herm’s cabin is hand built out of adobe bricks and logs hacked into halves and fourths and nailed haphazardly together. The roof is covered by a tattered, bright-blue tarp that’s pegged to the ground on three sides. There’s a smaller structure next to the cabin that’s storage for the Hermit’s riches: shelves and shelves of food in dented tin cans, crates of useful and useless metal, a jumble of plastic objects from the outside world that he rescued to repurpose. A bulky mechanical device that Herm uses to take core samples sits stationed in front of the cabin. Parked to the side is Herm’s truck, and I watch as Vanessa’s and Nick’s eyes are drawn to it.

“Herm, it’s Isaac,” Dad calls, his voice dwarfed by the trees.

There’s no answer. No sound comes from the Hermit’s hut.

“Herm,” Dad calls again, louder. “It’s Isaac here.”

Suddenly, we hear the sound of twigs and dead pine needles crunching coming from behind the house. A moment later, a four-legged black-and-white blur comes bounding around the corner, and I recognize Moonpie just as she jumps on Wulf, paws pedaling his thighs. Wulf kneels down to pet her, and Moonpie can’t contain her excitement. She does a series of small jumps, pressing her thin front legs on Wulf’s shoulder and licking his face, his neck, his ears. Wulf lets himself laugh brusquely and rubs his hands up and down her back as she licks his cheek. When he stands up, she bounds over to Dad, who gives her head a couple of pats, and then she gallops over to me, drumming her paws on my legs, turning her small snout up to me and whining desperately. I bend down to take her into my arms and scratch behind her ears.

“Is that—your dog?” asks Vanessa.

“Moonpie,” I say.

Vanessa frowns down at Moonpie, as though she can’t fathom that she’s really seeing the dog she’d been searching for with Dad. Moonpie barks happily and nuzzles my hand.

“Animals always sense danger before people do,” Dad says vaguely.

A series of noises comes from the hut, a knocking-about inside. Moonpie barks and runs to the door, then back to us, then repeats the circuit as the noise continues. Finally, the door crashes open, and there’s a man standing in the doorframe, corpulent and barefoot, holding a hunting rifle pointed in our direction. When his eyes fall on us, he leans forward and blinks rapidly. His grip loosens on the rifle, and the barrel droops and rises, pointing precariously at our feet, then at our chests. “Is that you, Isaac?” Herm says, squinting.

“Indeed it is,” says Dad.

“Couldn’t find my glasses,” mutters Herm. “You caught me when I was still sleeping. Do I have—no, I don’t have my dates off. It’s not even summer yet. What’re you doing here?” He looks around at the rest of us. “Who’s all this?” His mouth twists into an open-mouthed grimace, revealing his incisors, as he stares.

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