The Kept by James Scott

doorway, the children she’d brought home against his wishes, that he had taken on as his own. She handed the cup back to the man, said she had to be on her way, and practically ran down the new street that arrived at nothing.
     
    W HILE ELSPETH SLEPT, the quiet began to exert a kind of force on Caleb, the trees seemed to bow closer, and he imagined himself stuffed inside the pantry again, his legs folded over one another, the smell of his blankets, the oil from the guns, the stench of his own body overwhelming the usual pine. “Did you ever know about the rabbits? How I learned to clean them?” Caleb said. He asked his question again; this time his mother heard him.
    She said she hadn’t, and he told her the story, uncomfortable at first, his voice wavering. His mouth went dry and he took a sip of cold water from one of the jars. It hurt his teeth. He continued. It helped him not to look at her. Instead he gazed up at the white canopy above them, the branches like veins, and it seemed that the pictures he described drew themselves on the snow like etchings in a book, with straight lines and dark shadows. He said that the girls had not said a word to him about it, though surely they noticed the missing rabbit, and had eaten the stew that evening; they must have known. As his story drew to a close, Caleb knew he was ignoring the center of it: that his father wasn’t the man he said he was.
    She knew that he awaited her response. He’d maintained a far-off look while he talked, but now that he was finished she suspected he hoped for an answer to some question he’d posed in the telling. “It sounds like your father,” she said, trying not to make the word sound strange. “Though I suppose he easily could have waited for you boys to trap another rabbit. I can’t say I understand his lesson, either.”
    Caleb smiled at this unexpected union; he’d guessed his mother would admonish him for disagreeing with his father, perhaps even tell a parable of her own. Instead, they were paired in their confusion. The branches above seemed to him to exhale, relaxing.
    “He did the best he knew. He didn’t have a father of his own.”
    “Did you have a father?” Caleb asked.
    “For a while,” Elspeth said after a time.
    “Did you have brothers and sisters?”
    “No,” she said. “Not like you. It was just us.”
    “You and your father and—your mother?”
    “Yes.”
    Caleb had never heard about the parents of his parents. It had never crossed his mind, and—as when they’d left the borders of the earth he’d seen from the top of his fence post—the world opened up at their acknowledgment, strange people suddenly born into his imagination. He felt closer to his mother than he ever had and helped her to stand. They left clean footprints in the thin veil of snow that penetrated the canopy, and when they cleared the line of elms, the sun made them squint, the wind caused them to shiver, and in step with his mother, Caleb didn’t notice that the snow was much deeper than when they’d entered the shelter of the trees.

C HAPTER 8
    C aleb daydreamed of cities, houses like theirs but as tall as the tallest trees, swaying back and forth in the wind. From the topmost room, they would scan the horizon, searching for the killers, their bodies growing used to the steady rocking.
    He waited for his mother to say something, to continue their conversation from earlier, to somehow acknowledge their closeness. Each step took all of her concentration, however, and silence reclaimed her.
    They slept in a hole created by a fallen tree, and rose the next morning with the sun high in the sky, hidden from them by the mass of roots and clods of dirt. The cold had sapped what little strength Elspeth possessed—had stolen into her joints and locked them in place. Every time she stood, it surprised her to be on her feet. As they resumed their task once again, they broke through a line worn clean in the snow; animal tracks paced a clear