Immortal North: A Novel by Tom Stewart

Author:Tom Stewart [Stewart, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lucky Dollar Media
Published: 2022-03-05T07:00:00+00:00

20

They were eating breakfast and the boy was talking about his dream while feeling at his dad’s ribs. They were still blue all over but the man said they looked worse than they felt. The trapper said, “You just hang in there, he’ll leave you alone. He’s just a dream-bear and you’re a real boy and dream-bears can’t hurt real boys. That’s fact, it’s in one of the books on the shelf. Look it up.”

He asked the boy if he was okay going out alone again.

“I guess so.”

“Why don’t you come back and have lunch with me.”

“Yeah, I’ll come back at lunch.”

“Alright, good. I waxed your string last night.”

After breakfast he watched the boy walk out to the forest again and this time he only turned back once to wave. He cleaned up then finished skinning out the bear cape. He’d later salt the hide and in days to come would massage a tanning oil into it and he had a bottle of that in the shed. The last step would be working it over a wooden sawhorse to make it supple. He wasn’t telling the boy his plans for it.

Come midday the boy came back to the cabin empty-handed but he seemed alright about it, seemed something had clicked with him hearing that his great-granddaddy just showed up and did the work and his granddad and his own dad too and so he would too and he’d get better every day a little bit at a time by doing the work. He’d been smiling since about the edge of the forest where he’d smelled the fresh baked bread wafting out to him. He hung his bow up outside and took off his boots on the porch and of those boots there wasn’t much visible leather or laces to them, covered up to their tops in mud both dried and wet and with protruding sticks that weren’t all that small. They looked about twice their normal size and sounded three times as heavy when he stomped them on the porch before taking them off. He came inside saying I’m hungry then sat fireside where he outstretched his legs towards the stove to warm up his feet in socks that dripped to the floor, his pants wet to his knees. In seeing all this the trapper didn’t even ask ’cause the kid didn’t mention it and he seemed fine about it anyways. So he just handed him his tea. They talked about hunting and the kid asked questions and they spread wild strawberry jam on the bread and drank black tea kept warm on the stove.

“Listen, we’re doing a day’s class in this one lesson so pay attention ’cause it’s straight from my own daddy, your granddad. He said it worked in life like it worked in cards.”

The kid drank from his mug patiently and he looked thoughtful because he was thinking about the forest and strategizing his hunt.

“Okay, in Granddad’s words. Suppose you got a feeling,” said the trapper, “that

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