Read an excerpt from Téa Obreht’s new novel, “Inland”
Photo: Tom Clark/Getty Images Toby came running back from the creek, empty-handed, to tell her he’d found more tracks — down by the creek this time.She reined up and followed her youngest into the gulch. The trail narrowed between high bluffs and let out among the black imbrications of an ancient riverbed before winding for a quarter mile through cotton-woods and down to the shore.
He had come to fear the dark and the shapes that roared out at him from the electric chasm of injured sleep. To make matters worse, he mistook Nora’s tenderness for pity, which she found unfair — she could not help wanting, on those frequent occasions when he bumped a wall or missed a cup-handle, to seize his little head and hold it in both hands. Had he been too young to question her, or old enough to understand, Toby might have gritted his teeth through such attentions.
She stood in a drowse among the new ironwoods, still pretending. The sun had got into her. Damn near all morning, she had gone without thinking of her thirst. Something miraculous had happened while she slept to make it seem as matter-of-fact as breathing. She was slow and warm, and glad now that Toby had delayed her going into town. She could take less frenzied stock of matters. That Emmett was three days late returning with water was not so unusual.
Over the last year this unbearable idea had grown in Nora, and its growth had crept between them somehow, like ice between planks. Perhaps, if she had mentioned it to Emmett that night, this would not have happened. But Emmett had seemed at such blissful remove, so pleased and absorbed by his scribbling, that Nora couldn’t bring herself to pierce him with such questions. Instead she had drawn the covers around her chin. “That’s a fine glut of nonsense, Mister Lark.
Toby backed the old woman carefully into the kitchen, where Josie was prodding a skillet of pulverized corncakes in the midst of the usual bedlam: charred eggs and smoke; the wide-flung oven belching still more heat into the kitchen. Two breads, left to rise overnight, had burst out of their pans like dancehall girls leaning over the rail. The sight of them sent a bolt of panic through Nora.
Passing Toby in the corridor, the girl grazed a hand over his bristly head. He seized at her and said in what he thought was a whisper: “Mama don’t think the tracks are cloven. They don’t strike her as tracks at all.” Nora resumed her calculations. They had maybe two, two and a half cups of water left in here. Filling at least one bladder in town and boiling a little more from the rainbarrel would restore the bucket to almost half-depth. They had gotten by on less all day. For now, she had only to go on resisting thirst herself — a feat more easily managed when she was not watching others drink.He made a face. “It’s two days old!”“Yes ma’am.”Of this, she had no doubt.
This, however, was different. Rob was not here. He was in town. He would not be putting in a sudden, timely appearance to rout this bastard. It was just herself now, and the gun — which she prayed had not been discharged since she’d last checked it — and the owner of whatever footwear her springhouse door was thumping against.
There was nothing left to do but go forward. A few more steps brought the object to view: not a boot after all, but a leather cinch of some kind, worn as hell though ordinary enough, and wedged sideways so that its buckle caught the light. She nudged the door with her foot, and a triangle of sun yawned across the springhouse floor.
Perhaps it was inevitable that some part of Josie’s already tenuous judgment should lapse in all that confusion. But no, Josie insisted. She had locked the door, ma’am. Last year’s run-in with that bear had righted her for good, cured her of assuming any doors were fastened or windows latched. She was real careful about locking up now. She could remember the feel of the bolt against her fingers. Yes, yes she could.
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