Free Ordinary Beauty by Laura Wiess

still learning the trade, blinded and burned over the top half of his body.
    And rearrested, and sent back to prison.
    Within a month Candy’s brothers had stepped into the breach and rebuilt the lab.
    My mother was their first customer.
    There isn’t an animal in these woods the Fees haven’t poached, a bar in the county they haven’t fought in, and a law they haven’t broken. The men breed early and often, and Candy is the lone sister in a family of thirteen mean, hardscrabble, ridge-running brothers who walk through the world with fists clenched, chips on their shoulders, and nothing to lose.
    “Hey . . .”
    I blink and squint down at the truck.
    Evan gives a slow wave, and I notice he’s wearing a watch.
    “What time is it?” I call, holding up my own wrist.
    He lowers his head. Shakes his wrist. “I don’t know. It stopped at twenty of three.”
    Damn. Now I have to find his cell phone. “I’m coming,” I call and go back down over the edge of the icy bank. I’m moving too fast and slip near the bottom, sliding the last ten feet and almost going right under the truck. Instead, my shoulders hit the front tire and I grab on, haul myself up, panting, and step closer to the shattered driver’s window. “Well, that’s one way of getting back down here,” I mutter, brushing the snow off my jeans. “Okay, now I need to come in and look for your phone. Can you slide over to the passenger seat?”
    “Uh, let me see,” he says slowly, and shaking, tries to shift by bracing the hand with the broken fingers against the wheel. “Oh, shit,” he groans, going white and slumping back in his seat. “No. God, this sucks.”
    “Can you do it without using your hand?” I say.
    “It was my knee,” he mumbles, eyes closed and grimacing. “I can’t move it.”
    “All right, let me think,” I say, walking around the front of the truck just to make sure what I suspect is true. Although one of the trunks looks cracked, the pine trees on the passenger side are the only things holding the truck in place. They’re white pines, notorious for being soft and dropping limbs but without them he’d have careened all the way down the steep bank to the bottom of the valley. They’d saved him, but now they also make it impossible to gain access to the passenger door.
    But I really need to get into that truck, first to make sure he isn’t bleeding to death or anything, second to find the cell phone and pray it works, and third because I’m so cold my knees are shaking and—
    “Evan,” I say, walking around the driver’s side to the back-cab window. “This is a slider, right? I can get in through here.” Excited now, I grab the side of the truck, step up on the tire, and haul myself over into the snowy bed. Examine the sliding window. “It’s locked,” I say, tapping on the glass. “Can you get it?”
    “Let me try.” He twists slightly, reaches his good hand back and fumbles with the lock. “Okay,” he gasps, slumping in his seat.
    “Okay.” I pull off my gloves, wedge my numb fingers in the tiny crack, and slide open the window. “Wow,” I say, looking at the size of the hole. “This is gonna be a close one.” I drop my gloves onto the passenger seat, then strip off my coat and stuff that through, too. Stick one leg through the gap, then the other. Next my hips, which are the tightest fit. I scrape my backbone sliding in but I’m so cold I hardly even feel it. I slide the window closed, tug my coat out from under me, and, shivering, yank it on. “Whew.” Turn to look at him and find him looking at me.
    “You made it,” he says.
    “I did,” I say and feel really bad because one side of his face is normal looking, dark eyed and with a nice mouth that seems made to smile, but the other side is ravaged, bloody and swollen. The broken fingers on his hand are horrible, and there’s blood soaking through the knee of his jeans. “I’m really sorry about this.”
    “Yeah, well . . .” He