• • •
She could not feel her feet by the time she entered Balsam.
She felt, just inside the door, for the flashlight that sat on a ledge there all summer, and was glad when her fingers touched it.
On her way past the commissary, she’d taken from the woodpile on its porch as many split logs as she could carry, as much kindling. Now she moved to the disused fireplace along one of Balsam’s walls—one of the few remainders of its history as a hunting cabin.
She shone the flashlight up into the flue, which looked clean enough; and so she built a roaring fire, using the lighter she had stolen from John Paul, praying that the kindling would catch.
She dragged one of the cots as close to the fire as she could get without singeing herself. She took off her boots, her sodden socks, and placed them in front of it, and then put her feet there too, allowing them to roast. She lifted another thin and floppy mattress off another cot and put it on top of herself.
She fell asleep there.
• • •
For the second time that night, she was roused from sleep.
“Get up,” said a voice.
Louise was disoriented. In the warmth of the fire, her eyes had swollen closed almost completely, and she could make out only a figure holding one object in each hand. One of them looked pistol-shaped; an outstretched arm was raising it in her direction.
“Get up,” said the voice, a second time.
The pain in her back and ribs made Louise move slowly, but at last she stood.
The figure lowered its arm.
“Louise Donnadieu?” it said, after a pause.
Then, with the object in its other hand—a fire extinguisher, it turned out—it leveled a spray of foam at the flames for what felt like a very long time, until cold and dark had seeped back into the cabin, and Louise began shivering again.
At some point during that minute spent in silence, Louise understood that this was T.J. Hewitt.
“Thought you’d be smarter than to put a fire up a chimney this old,” said T.J. “Could have burned the cabin down.”
“I didn’t know you lived here all year,” said Louise.
“Where else would I live?” said T.J.
“I guess I thought you lived in town,” she said.
“What town would that be?”
Louise was silent. Shame was beginning to creep in, and regret. Already, this was her favorite of all the jobs she’d ever had, and now she’d surely lose it.
“Who did that to your face,” said T.J.
Louise said nothing. She stood up, turned to face her boss, barely visible now in the absence of the fire.
“Do you have any gasoline?” she said.
• • •
In the Director’s Cabin—T.J.’s actual house, Louise now understood—T.J. lit a proper fire. Its light and shadows flickered against the walls around it. T.J. had applied a cold steak to half her face, saying it would help the swelling. With her other eye, the open one, Louise now saw the cabin’s history: the books on the bookshelves, novels and how-to guides; the pictures on the wood-paneled walls, fading prints of bears and birds and tranquil mornings on still lakes. On one wall, a map of the entire Adirondack Park. On another, a poster of animal tracks.
T.J. went to the small kitchen off the main room and stood before the stove, stirring a pot. Louise watched the back of her. She had a long braid that year that hung straight down her back. The rest of her was barely wider than the braid, but she was strong: no doubt about that. The muscles of her legs and arms were sharply on view all summer, above her socks, below her T-shirt sleeves. Louise had seen her casually carrying a long wooden canoe above her head: a feat of strength that would have been difficult even for a man.
She did have gasoline, T.J. had said; but it was way up past the main house, and frankly she was tired. She’d give Louise a place to sleep that night. They’d fix the car in the morning.
Now she returned holding a bowl of soup in one hand and a glass of water in the other. She placed both on a low table in front of Louise. Reached for the steak on Louise’s face. She held it absent-mindedly in two hands, the juice of it dripping, and regarded Louise as she began to eat and drink.
“What,” said Louise, who didn’t ever like to be looked at closely, and certainly not with her face in this state.
“Just thinking about whether you need to see a doctor.”
“I don’t,” said Louise.
“Are your insides busted up? Did he kick you?”
Louise paused, recognizing the trap. She could dodge it. Did who kick me? But, certain that she was out of a job anyway, that she’d never see T.J. again after this, she nodded.
“He did,” she said. “But I don’t think anything’s busted inside me. My face hurts worse.”
T.J. nodded. Returned to the kitchen to put the steak away. She approved of honesty, Louise knew. It was one of the subjects on which she expounded each summer, at the start of session: Honesty. Integrity. Vigilance.
“Was it your boyfriend?” T.J. called over her shoulder.
“It was,” said Louise.
“Want me to kill him?” said T.J., and Louise grinned, and then flinched in pain.
Abruptly, T.J. walked down the hallway, and Louise wondered whether she was going to bed. But a moment later she returned, holding something out to her. A large photograph, unframed.
Louise had to hold her eye open with two fingers to inspect it. It was a photo of a group of people, standing on the lake side of Self-Reliance, organized in three rows. In the front row, sitting, were children of various ages; behind them were adults. Their expressions were joyful. The photographer had captured them in various stages of talking and laughing and turning. Only some of them were grinning at the camera.
Louise turned the photograph over. On the back, written in black ink: Blackfly Good-by. 1961.
She looked up at T.J., uncertain.
T.J. sat down next to her on the couch. Regarded the photo alongside her. She pointed to a tall slim girl, twelve or thirteen, standing at the edge of the second row.
“That’s me,” said T.J. “I was about the age your campers are now.”
She pointed to the tall man next to her, who had a hand on her shoulder. “That’s my dad,” she said.
“He looks nice,” said Louise.
“Nice isn’t the right word,” said T.J. “But he’s good.”
