Above her on the small porch stood Jeb. Her hair was tied back in a tight bun, and in her right hand she held a rifle with a brown wooden stock.
She was pointing the rifle at Hannah, squinting into the whirling snow.
“Get down! Get down! Get down!” screamed Jeb. Hannah flipped over onto her stomach and pressed her face into the snow, breathing in the smell of snow and woodchips and trying not to suffocate on the terror that clogged her throat.
All the dogs were barking by now, and as Hannah turned her head ever so slightly, she could see Sencha lunging against her collar and gangline, trying to get to her.
“Jeb!” she heard a voice yell. “It’s Hannah, Jeb. It’s Hannah … George’s daughter! It’s okay.” It was Peter.
“This isn’t backup, this isn’t scheduled,” Jeb said to Peter. Out of the corner of her eye, Hannah saw Peter carefully place an armful of wood on the ground.
“You’re at home, Jeb, home in Canada. It’s Hannah. She’s here. That’s her.” He pointed at Hannah.
Jeb’s voice was hard and angry. “I don’t know this individual. I don’t know you, either. You’d better take cover from this sandstorm, son.”
“Jeb, you’re home,” Peter said. Through her terror Hannah heard the calmness in Peter’s voice; he sounded like a principal announcing a fire drill or a gym teacher instructing students to climb the ropes for the yearly fitness test.
Hannah knew that during Jeb’s time in the Army she had spent a long time away from Canada, deployed in Afghanistan. Whenever Hannah had asked where, her father had merely said, “She’s in the desert, and it’s not pretty.” That was all he would say. Jeb had been home now for almost two years, but from what Hannah could make out, she rarely left her house.
Hannah lay there, hardly breathing. The cuffs of her coat were soaking up the snow, and it was melting into her gloves. She felt it trickling down the backs of her hands, but she was too scared to move. Except in the movies, she had never before seen someone point a gun at another human — let alone at her — and this was not like the movies. She had seen her father and Scott fire guns when they hunted in the fall, had seen them kill partridges — the flurry of the bird’s takeoff cut off by the sharp crack of the rifle, then the bird suddenly falling like it had forgotten everything it knew about flying. Lying face down in the snow, unable to breathe, the dogs barking and lunging in the background, and Peter’s weirdly calm voice — this wasn’t like the movies at all.
“Jeb, you don’t need a gun,” she heard him say.
“Who are you?”
“You know who I am, Jeb. It’s your nephew, Peter.”
“I … I don’t think I do. No, I do know you — Peter. Peter. What are you doing?”
“I was getting some wood.”
“Where is this sandstorm coming from? I’m getting close to black on water, here.”
“It’s snow, Aunt Jenny. You’re home now. It’s snow.”
Jeb said nothing back, but Hannah could hear her shifting on the small porch, her boots knocking against the beat-up wood and scraping against the snow that dotted it.
“I can get you water, Jeb,” said Peter in the same it’s all okay voice. “I’ll get us water from the well, okay?”
There were a few moments of silence. Hannah couldn’t see anything and didn’t dare turn her head. The hairs on the back of her neck felt like barbed wire, stiff and unyielding.
Then came the soun
d of Peter moving toward the cabin. The dogs were still barking.
“Hannah, the stupid dogs,” said Peter in the same voice, all flat and equal stresses on each sound he was making, “Ha-nah-the-stu-pid-dogs,” as casual as if he were talking about the weather.
Hannah slowly raised her head. “Sencha,” she said, “enough.” She tried to say it like her mother, in that tone that brooked no argument. The Dal gave two or three more barks, then fell silent.
“I don’t see your kit, soldier,” Jeb said to Peter. Her voice had gone back to one that Hannah didn’t recognize, hard and adult with no comprehension of the person in front of her. It was as though she were pushing what was inside her head outward into the world, to make the world inside her head the real one.
“I don’t see your kit,” she repeated. “Where’s your sidearm?”
“It’s in the cabin, Jeb,” said Peter. “Maybe … maybe you could go get it for me?”
“I’m going to call this in, soldier, that’s what I’m doing. I don’t know the regs on this, and my CO isn’t around. I’ll call this in, you watch the squirter,” she said, and Hannah saw Peter look over like Jeb had pointed at her.
“Okay,” he said.