Simple ...

Chapter Six

When I got back to the cabins, Gran was in her rocker with Jimmy by her side. They were holding court with three strangers I hadn't seen in camp before. There were new traps hanging on the cabin wall behind Gran and Jimmy was giving one of the men some money.

Jack and Tommy were mucking about by their cabin, keeping an eye on the strangers no doubt. Lizzie was prancing around the clearing, showing herself off like a prize heifer. Jack was too busy watching the strangers to notice. That, or he didn't care. How could she behave like that? Apart from anything else, she looked ridiculous. Thinking back to wondering if all of them was really kin, they sure acted the same most of the time.

I turned my attention back to the fur-clad strangers. They didn't seem like bad folk, but they were so filthy, I couldn't see their faces. Dirt seemed to have grown on them like moss on a tree.

Tommy told me they were trappers, old friends of Jimmy's. Seemed real friendly, the way they were all yakking, until the smallest of the three looked at me. Jimmy kicked him on the shin, knocking the look clear off his face.

There was no sign of Simple, so I asked Tommy if he had seen him. Quite casually, he said that Gran had him chained up around back. I took off, fearing the worst.

There were no fresh marks on him apart from his hands, which he had done himself, trying to pull the chain from the cabin wall. Jimmy had clamped one end around Simple's leg. I shot back around to Gran, not minding the three wild-looking strangers that were supposed to be men folk, and demanded she let him loose.

Gran stood up and took a step closer to me. 'Mind your tongue girl, lest you lose it. He aint been touched, like you said. Now git, before I change my mind.'

I took a step towards her, not really knowing why or what I could do. Jimmy stopped me from getting any nearer by stepping in front of me. He took his knife from his belt, the one I was sure meant more to him than his right hand. I reckoned it was his right hand. Calmly, without speaking, he towered over me like a mountain, flicking dirt from under his finger nails with his knife. There would be no moving Gran while he was there.

I went back around the cabin to be with Simple. In a way, it had been better for me seeing Simple mashed to something unrecognisable. For him to be tied this way was worse than a beating. He needed to be free, like the creatures he cared so much for. He needed to roam, to sit his back against a tree, free in the woods. Let his mind run with the squirrels and fly with the eagles. He could see them from where he was chained, but it wasn't near enough. He wasn't in the middle of them. I sat with him for a while, trying to think how long Gran would leave him there.

The chain was held fast to the cabin wall. I knew there would be no budging it without the key. I guess Gran had it hidden some place. I wanted to kick myself for being outsmarted by her yet again. Wishing we had stayed at the Spiers with Belle. Reckoned the next time we took off, we would stay gone. I had enough of this place and the way they treated folk.

I dug holes in the ground with my heels, wishing Gran's face was under my feet. Then I saw Lizzie coming out of the woods, followed closely by a walking dirt bag. It didn't take no reckoning that he belonged with the other three. Seeing as how they weren't picking flowers, I figured Lizzie had tried him out for a baby.I stopped myself from rushing at her. I would bide my time and get her the next time she went wandering off by herself.

That night I slept on the ground beside Simple, listening to the voices inside Gran's cabin. They were all in there, four strangers with more dirt on them than Gran sweeps out each day. I couldn't figure her letting them step foot in there, the state of them. I pressed my ear close against the wood, which didn't help much. Some words just didn't make it through the logs grandpa used to build this place.