Mason

People mark hunting areas, I said, because I wanted an explanation that didn't make my skin tighten or someone's trying to be funny.

He didn't answer.

He just kept walking,

But his head turned more than it had the day before, like he was checking behind us without admitting he was doing it.

That afternoon we crossed a creek that was higher than it should have been.

Not dangerous, but enough that we had to slow down and pick our way across slick rocks.

On the far bank, tucked under a tangle of roots, I saw something white.

At first I thought it was plastic trash, like an old grocery bag.

Then I realized it was bone.

It wasn't a whole skeleton, just a cluster of parts.

A rib cage.

Something that could have been a deer pelvis.

And a skull turned sideways in the mud.

It wasn't clean.

It wasn't arranged in a neat hunter-left-a-carcass way.

It looked like something had dragged it there and left it.

The skull had no antlers.

The eye sockets were full of dark water.

There was moss starting to grow on the edges.

Mason came up beside me and said quietly, Don't touch anything.