Free The Snow Child: A Novel by Eowyn Ivey

chickens and a few sides of beef, but this wasn’t the same. This was a colossal, fully intact wild animal sprawled in its own blood in the middle of the woods. His shot had been good, through the front shoulders and lungs. He needed to open the gut to let the viscera and heat escape before the meatspoiled, but it would be no easy task. The moose’s legs, each weighing more than a hundred pounds, were cumbersome and in the way. He tried to lodge his shoulder beneath a hind leg to expose the belly, but it was too unwieldy. He took a section of rope from his pack and wrapped it around the moose’s hind ankle. Using all his strength, he pulled it up and away, and then tied the rope to a tree behind the moose. This exposed the abdomen, though Jack feared that if the rope gave way, the leg could deliver quite a blow to the back of his head.
    He sharpened his knife again, only because he wasn’t sure how to begin. Daylight was wasting, so he plunged his knife into the belly, remembered he didn’t want to puncture the gut sack and contaminate the meat, and pulled his knife back out slightly before cutting from stem to stern.
    He was up to his elbows in blood and bowels when he heard something approaching through the forest. He thought it might be the child, but then he recalled how silently she traveled. A horse nickered. Jack stood, stretched his back, and wiped his knife on his pants.
    It was Garrett Benson, walking a horse through the trees.
    “Hello there,” Jack called to him.
    “I heard shots. You got one down?”
    “Yep.”
    “A bull?”
    Jack nodded.
    The boy tied the horse to a nearby tree. As he neared, his eyes widened.
    “Holy Moses! That’s one big moose.” Garrett went to the antlers, tried to stretch his arms from one side to the other and failed. “Ho-ly Moses,” he said again, more softly.
    “Is he big?”
    “Hell yeah.” A boy trying out a man’s language. “Hell yeah!”
    “I didn’t know. This is the first bull I’ve seen up close.”
    Garrett took off his glove and held out his hand. “Congratulations! He’s a dandy!”
    Jack wiped some of the blood onto his pant legs and took the boy’s hand.
    “Thanks, Garrett. I appreciate that. I have to say, I wasn’t expecting this.”
    “No kidding. I mean, he’s a jim-dandy!”
    This was an aspect of Garrett he hadn’t seen. The sulky smirk was gone, and his boyish face beamed.
    “I was riding the river, looking for places to put out traps, when I heard your rifle,” Garrett said. “Bam. Bam. Two shots. That’s always a good sign. I figured you had something down. But boy howdy, I sure didn’t think it would be something like this.”
    “He seemed good-sized to me,” Jack said.
    The boy was quiet, reverent as he ran a hand down the antler bone.
    “It’s bigger than any I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Sure bigger than anything I’ve ever shot.”
    His opinion of Garrett improved. Not many thirteen-year-old boys could win a wrestling match with envy.
    “Guess I’ve got my work cut out for me,” Jack said.
    “It’s a lot. But with two of us, it’ll go all right.”
    “Don’t feel you’re under any obligation to lend a hand.”
    The boy took a knife from a sheath at his belt. “I’d like to.”
    “Well, it’d be much appreciated. Maybe you can just give me a few pointers, walk me through some of it. The truth is, I’m in over my head.”
    “Looks like you’re starting fine, pulling those guts out.” And the boy drew back the hide and peered inside the rib cage. “Yeah, see there? You can just cut that away and it’ll all come out slick.”
    When they sliced away the heart and liver, each broader than a dinner plate, Jack slid them still wet into a gunnysack.

     
    For the next several hours, Jack and the boy worked at the moose. It was wearying. Jack’s hands were cold and numb, and several times he nicked himself with the knife. His back and knees pained him. The sun slithered through the trees, the air cooled,