Mine: The Arrival

Mine: The Arrival

Brett Battles

This is a companion piece to the novel
Mine
.

While these events precede those

in the novel,
Mine: The Arrival
is intended to be

read second. The choice, of course, is yours.

BIG SKY FALLING

O
NE

Central Montana

November 5, 1938

T
OBY GAINES STOKED
the embers of last night’s campfire until the new kindling he’d added began to burn. Once he had a right and proper flame, he set about making his morning coffee and warming another piece of the chicken Mary had packed for him.

While his hunting blind blocked most of the predawn breeze, it did little to keep the chill away. But he was Montana born and bred so a little cold was part of daily living.

The coffee was godawful, but that was nothing new. He could never get the damn stuff right. Mary, though? Boy, could she make a pot. He took a bite of the chicken. It wasn’t as moist as it had been fresh off the stove, but was still tasty.

With his meal heated and the sun not yet a hint on the horizon, he doused the flames so the fire wouldn’t scare off his prey. On his first hunting trip after deer season opened, he’d bagged himself a nice-sized buck. This outing, however, had so far been a bust. He really needed to get one more—two, depending on the size—to ensure he and his wife have enough meat for the winter.

After his eyes adjusted to the dark, he scanned the meadow. It was as quiet as it had been when he fell asleep, the only movement the trees swaying in the gentle breeze.

He was lifting the chicken to his mouth when a flash brighter than the sun itself scorched the sky just beyond the other end of the meadow. He squeezed his eyes shut, the afterimage glowing on his lids for several seconds before fading.

He blinked and looked to where the flash had occurred, but the only thing there was the black, star-dotted sky.

Had he imagined it? Was there something wrong with his head?

He remembered when Mr. Martin—a teacher at the high school Toby had attended—had had some kind of seizure that made him lose function in the right half of his body. Rumor was, afterward he would see things like lights and weird images. Was that what was going on? Did Toby have a seizure while he’d been sleeping? He was a whole lot younger than Mr. Martin had been when the man had suffered his attack, but Toby guessed it was possible.

He flexed his hands and feet to make sure he still had full control. Everything seemed fine, so the light was real. Right?

Well, there was one way to find out.

He put away what was left of the chicken and grabbed his rifle. If he wasn’t mistaken, the flash had happened right above Craven Pond, about half a mile away. He jogged to where he’d hidden his pickup truck among the trees, and then drove the Plymouth carefully along the edge of the meadow, on the lookout for any axle-breaking changes in the terrain.

Technically, Craven Pond was on Edgar Beasley’s property. There was a time when the old man would have been more than happy to take a potshot at any trespassers, but he’d died in his sleep two summers past. And though the newspaper had reported he had family in Bozeman, the disrepair of the fence surrounding his property indicated none of them had moved into his place.

Unfortunately for Toby, none of the gaps in said fence were wide enough for the Plymouth to pull through, so he circled the truck around, pointed it back toward his camp, and killed the engine.

Hopping out, he found the breeze had increased. He zipped his jacket up all the way and adjusted his stocking cap. There had already been a bit of snow back on Halloween, and he had a feeling the area was a day or two away from being hit by a real storm that would do more than spit a few flakes through the air.

Winter always came early to Montana.

He knew he was probably on some kind of fool’s errand, but he couldn’t get the image of the flash out of his head and needed to satisfy his curiosity. If he found nothing, so be it.

Craven Pond lay in a depression surrounded by several mounds of earth that people in the flat states probably would have called hills. A scattering of trees dotted the ones on the northeast end, while grass and brush covered the rest. Toby cautiously ascended the nearest mound, lowering into a crouch as he crested the summit, just in case. When he reached the top, he stopped.

The pond, not much larger than a football field, was a mix of open water in the middle, rippling in the wind, and an icy crust around its edge. Toby scanned the shoreline and almost immediately picked up movement along the left side. Heart racing, he watched whatever it was head up the far mound.

When it reached the top, all thoughts of the flash were pushed to the back of his mind. The shadow was a buck, a huge one, with a beautiful set of antlers, twelve points at least. Not only would it guarantee him and Mary venison into the spring, there would probably be enough for them to sell for a little extra cash.

The deer strode across the top of the mound, paused, and dipped his head into a bush.

Smiling, Toby raised his rifle. As he’d learned years ago from his father, he picked his spot, let out his breath, brought a little air back in, and then—

The deer jerked up and ran just as Toby pulled the trigger.

“Dammit,” he whispered under his breath as the sound of his shot reverberated over the water. Something had spooked the animal but he knew it hadn’t been him.

He watched the buck race along the top and disappear down the far side. The moment it was out of sight, he raced down to the pond, around the edge, and then up the slope toward the point where he’d last seen the animal. It took him only a moment to find its prints. After following them for several feet, he noticed some splotches on the grass beside them. He lit a match and played the light across the ground.

Fresh blood, and not only a little bit.

Hot damn!
he thought.

He’d assumed his shot sailed wide, but apparently not. With renewed excitement, he followed the crushed grass and blood trail down the slope and into the woods. It took him ten minutes before he found the animal lying at the base of a cottonwood tree, dead.

The buck was indeed a big one, the biggest Toby had ever bagged. He fought hard to keep his tears of relief from streaking down his cheeks. He’d known hungry winters. Not this year.

He gave himself another moment and then shook off his elation. There was still work to be done. The deer had been running in the opposite direction of the Plymouth, so it was going to be a long haul back. Gutting it would help but the beast would still be heavy.

What he didn’t want to do was damage the hide too much, as it was also valuable. He hurried back to his truck and grabbed the tarp and rope he kept in the back.

On the return trip, he decided to avoid the ups and downs of the mounds surrounding the pond and instead went around them. He was about halfway back to the buck when a faint glow ahead and to his right caught his eye. It was maybe a hundred and fifty yards away, just this side of where the woods began again.

His first thought was that it was the campfire of another hunter. But it took only a few seconds before he realized something was strange about the light. A campfire would flicker yellow or orange or even red, depending on how close it was to burning out, but this glow was white. And it wasn’t flickering at all.

He glanced in the direction of the deer, then back toward the glow. As much as he wanted to check out the light, the deer was more important.

He legged it to his kill and was happy to see no scavengers had come across it yet. Working quickly, he gutted the deer and then maneuvered the carcass onto the tarp. He attached the rope in two spots, draped the looped end across his chest as a harness, and began the journey back.

He checked the light as he passed. Though a bit dimmer than before, it still glowed.

Getting the buck into the bed of the Plymouth was almost as hard as dragging it there, but finally he manhandled the deer into place and covered it with the tarp.

Sore and tired, Toby looked toward old man Beasley’s land. Did he really want to go all the way back and check out the light? If he started driving right now, he could be home in a few hours, sitting beside the fire and having a bowl of Mary’s stew.

The thought that kept him from hopping into the cab was, what if the light was something the Beasley family should know about? With the property unwatched, someone could have built a little shack and been living there illegally.

“Dammit,” he muttered.

The light was probably nothing, but a good deed was a good deed. If it did turn out to be important, he could tell the sheriff and let him pass on the word to whoever needed to know.

With aching legs, Toby lumbered across the field. The sunrise had finally started to yellow the eastern horizon and made it harder to spot the now even dimmer glow. But it was still there.

As he drew closer, he became aware of an intermittent crackling sound. For a moment he thought it might be fire, but again, he saw no flickering, and the sound wasn’t right for burning wood. The land dipped slightly, taking the glow out of sight.

When he was about ten yards away, every hair on his body suddenly felt like it was standing on end. He pulled his jacket sleeve back a few inches, but the hair was lying on his arm like it always did.

As wary now as he was curious, he moved up the small berm that separated him from the source of the glow. When he reached the top, he stopped and stared.

“What the hell?”

T
WO

I
T HAD JUST
turned noon when Mary Gaines looked out the kitchen window, but the heavy dark clouds that had been moving in all morning made it seem like twilight.

From her place at the sink, she had a clear view of the country road that ran past the entrance to their long driveway. In the last hour she’d seen only three cars, none of them Toby’s pickup truck.

When he’d headed out to do some hunting two days before, she’d made him promise that if the weather turned bad, he’d head straight back. His definition of bad wasn’t the same as hers, however, and she was sure he was still tromping around the woods or whatever it was he did out there.

Every year or so, she’d read a story in the paper about a local man who’d gotten caught in a storm and died while hunting. It was never a woman, and for good reason, Mary knew. A woman would never let herself get into that kind of trouble, though Mary would share that tidbit in mixed company.

She finished with the dishes and headed out to the small barn where they kept two goats and a dozen chickens. They’d had a cow once, but had to sell her two years before when the Plymouth had needed some parts. Theirs was a small farm, a few acres. Not enough to support them by itself, but between it, the part-time work Toby did at the auto repair shop in town, and the odd jobs Mary took, they got by.

In a way, it was a blessing they hadn’t yet been able to have a child. She still hoped it would happen someday—and God knows they tried enough—but she also knew it would be better if their financial situation became more stable first. The repair shop had promised Toby that when a permanent place opened up, he’d get it. Mary thought unless someone died, that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, so she’d been pushing him to look elsewhere. A fulltime job would change everything for them.

She tossed some chicken feed into the coup and herded Tramp and Biscuit back inside the small barn. Depending on how much snow they got, this might be the last time until spring the two goats would be outdoors. She checked that the back door and all the ventilation hatches were secured from the wind that was already starting to pick up, and shut the door tight when she left.

Clutching her coat to her chest, she hurried back to the house. There was sewing that needed to get done for the Harrison family, and when she finished that, she had to get going on the new curtains Ruth Wisner had asked her to make. She was almost to the back door when she heard the familiar rumble of Toby’s truck.

Changing directions, she circled around the house and saw the Plymouth rumbling down the drive.

“Thank God,” she whispered.

She stopped near the front porch to wait, the worry that had been crushing down on her finally gone.

Toby waved excitedly as he pulled up out front. And for good reason, she saw. Sticking out of the bed of the truck was the top of a set of antlers.

Again she whispered, “Thank God.”

He shut off the engine and jumped out, his smile as bright as the day was dark. He ran over and lifted Mary off her feet and swung her around.

“Put me down!” she said.

“Never!” He was laughing now, his eyes sparkling in a way she hadn’t seen in years.