Today's Reading
Elvis kept to the trail, whether in deference to her state or because Homer had taken this route with Argos, she didn't know. Most likely the latter, as the shepherd's concern for her condition had somewhat dissipated in the excitement of the hunt. Elvis loved the hunt.
Truth be told, so did she.
Mercy trekked along for several minutes, trying to avoid the deep, mucky grooves, her left hand under her belly, her right hand swinging freely at her side. The forest floor was increasingly trampled and uprooted, on and off the trail, as if wild pigs had partied here.
Wild pigs. She peered closer at the animal tracks that crisscrossed the trail. She found some similar to those she'd failed to identify earlier. They were like deer tracks, only wider and rounder at the tips of the toes. She supposed it was possible they could be pig tracks.
Pigs were known to escape their pens, and once they fled domesticity, they could revert to feral quickly. But these prints looked bigger than she would have expected. Not that she knew all that much about pigs. Her husband, Troy, would know. As a game warden, he'd dealt with wild pigs from time to time.
Mercy pulled out her phone to snap some photos of the tracks to show him, careful not to trip in the mangled earth; the last thing she needed was a broken ankle. Elvis trotted along in front of her, unconcerned about the ruts and the mud and the possibility of wild pigs.
From what she could tell, they were about halfway to the ridge. She slogged on for another ten minutes, pausing whenever the baby kicked hard enough to make her wince. If this kid was half as active outside the womb as he was inside, she was going to have a hard time keeping up with him. Her mother, Grace, had always complained that she was a "wild child," and it figured that she'd pass down the wild-child gene to her offspring.
She thought of the baby as a "he," even though she and Troy had chosen not to find out the gender before the actual birth. She liked to say they were waiting to spare themselves the gender reveal party Grace would insist on throwing for them. And that was partly true. The prospect of the baby shower—to be held here at Grackle Tree Farm—was bad enough. There was no getting out of that one.
But it was also true that she and Troy each had their own reasons for not wanting to know the gender ahead of time: Troy because he liked surprises, and Mercy because she was terrified of having a girl, and knowing she was having a girl would just add to the "Will I be a good mother?" anxiety that already riddled her. She believed boys were easier to raise and had better relationships with their mothers. Certainly her brother, Nick, got along much better with their mother than she did.
And God forbid she should give birth to a little Grace. What would she do with a girly girl who wanted her to play princess and wear mother-daughter dresses and style her hair into braided updos or ribbon curls or French twists?
The shepherd stopped short, perking his ears. He barked, several wild yelps. A terrible howling answered him.
Argos.
Elvis blazed ahead.
Mercy hustled after the dog, going as quickly as she dared. The howling stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Elvis must have located the hound.
The trail veered to the right, and as she navigated the turn, she nearly ran smack into an old, wrecked quad bike. The red Arctic Cat was on its side, having collided with a large branch that had fallen across the path, blocking the way forward.
But Homer was not on the ATV. She knew it was his vehicle; she recognized the Mud Sweat Beers decal that decorated the right bumper, courtesy of the previous owner. She looked around, seeing no sign of the hermit or either of the dogs. She whistled for Elvis, and was relieved when he soared out of a nearby thicket of winterberry and skidded to a quick stop at her knees before making a graceful U-turn and barreling right back into the bushes.
Mercy followed the trail of broken branches that marked Elvis's and Argos's and maybe Homer's passage through the thicket. When she cleared the dense hedges, she saw the old man sitting on the ground, his back against a large granite boulder, his legs sprawled in front of him. His eyes were closed behind his black-framed glasses. The right lens was cracked, and the left was smeared with what she feared might be blood.
For one terrible moment, she thought he was dead. But the bloodhound licked his head, and he groaned.
"Homer!" She stumbled over to him. The dog lapped at a gash on the old man's right temple. "No," she said firmly, and pushed Argos away.
The old man moaned again and passed out. Carefully Mercy examined the wound. Not good. Pulling off her gloves, she called for Elvis and removed the antibacterial wipes from the pack. She cleansed the man's crown and face with the wipes as best she could.
Placing a new, clean wipe over the wound, she twisted her cashmere scarf around his injured head like a turban. Argos had licked the wound clean, but she figured he'd lost a lot of blood. And he was very cold to the touch. Hypothermia. Shock. Head trauma. She needed to get him to the hospital as quickly as possible.
This excerpt ends on page 13 of the hardcover edition.
Monday we begin the book The Starlets by Lee Kelly, Jennifer Thorne.
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