Chapter 146

Malachi

The cans went off a little after dark.

I was at the table with Teague’s hand in front of me, unwrapping the linen to look at it, the way I did every night. He had come back up the mountain more than a week ago on three legs, gray to the bone with cold, and walked in through the door and shifted on the floor in front of the stove and lain there for an hour without speaking. Then he had got up and put the kettle on. He hadn’t said anything about the line, or the letter, or what he had seen there. He had looked at me once and nodded. That was all.

The hand hadn’t changed. It wasn’t going to. Gray-black from the wrist down, cold as a stone, the fingers half curled. He could hold a cup with it, now, if he thought about it. He couldn’t close it into a fist.

I had the linen half off when the wire rang.

All of it at once. Every can along the north edge of the clearing, banging and clattering on the wind, so loud over the roar of the storm that Te