I cuts up your meat." She fussed as Missy knelt upon the bench besides her, her face haloed with curls. "Landsakes, you’re going to drive her foolish, the both of you," said Sare over Missy’s rising protests, the lamplight colouring their faces like apricots as she sat at the table with them. "Pass me the meat, Sare, I haves a bite of winter," said Job, long and gangly, his oversized features sombre as he pulled into the table besides them. "Yup squashberries, partridgeberries, raspberries-all chomped together-like eating summer," said Clair. "No it don’t-do it, Mommy?" protested Missy. That evening, at supper, Clair turned to her sister, Missy, a good six years younger than she, and said, "Mmm, tastes like berries." "Wait, Clair wait right there," her mother called out and, snatching a frying pan off the stove, met her at the door. "Don’t drop it," he cautioned as she lifted the flesh, still trembling in her hands, and ran to the cabin door, trailing a bloodied path behind her. Laying the knife to one side, he slid his hands inside the warmth of the carcass and pulled out the liver, pulsating purple in the afternoon sun, and threw it quivering upon a rock. Crouching beside him Clair watched as her father, Job, pricked the tip of his knife through the hide of a young caribou, then drew it slow and easy across its belly, the hide singing back, and the blood spilling warm over his hands, staining scarlet onto the snow.
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