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palette of oils and be able to mix any color. She looks at John, then at her lead-drawn bear. John turns away with a funny expression.
    “They’re black bears,” she says, picturing them painted on canvas.
    He stirs his coffee.
    “Well? What do you think?”
    He lifts his cup and nods.
    “No, tell me, what do you think?”
    “Your bears don’t have tails.”
    “What?”
    “No tails.”
    Berit takes the book from the chair. “Bears don’t have tails. I’ve never seen a bear’s tail.”
    “Maybe you’ve only seen them from the front.”
    “What kind of tail?”
    “Small. Furry.”
    She can feel heat rising on her neck. John sits gazing at the tabletop, as if there was something interesting there, a smile, she thinks, playing at the edge of his mouth. She certainly doesn’t see what’s amusing.
    “Well, it’s a drawing from memory. I’ll have to wait until spring and see for myself. Honestly I can’t recall seeing a bear with a tail.”
    “All the animals in these woods have tails. All the mammals, that is, except you and me.”
    Berit carries her book to the nightstand, not really sure what she’s feeling. Why should she care what he thinks? He probably has never even seen a real painting. She certainly didn’t like the reference to her tail, or his, or that she doesn’t have one.
    The soup is burning. Berit hurries to the stove and lifts the pot off the heat. She can only make the best of it. She ladles the steaming soup into a bowl. “So what brings you this way? You never did say.” There’s the false cheer again.
    “Rabbits.”
    “Rabbits?” She sets the bowl in front of him.
    “That’s why I came. I’m delivering them from Gunnar.”
    “Where? You’ve seen him?”
    “He’s at the lumber camp, down by Swing Dingle.”
    “Yes, I know, but . . . you were there?”
    John is looking at the tabletop again. “I did some hunting for the camp and then for him, too.” He holds the soup under his chin and starts in, not seeming to mind the heat.
    “Well, how is he? What did he say?”
    “I agreed to dress the rabbits,” he says between spoonfuls.
    “I meant for me. Any word for me.”
    He eats like he hasn’t had a meal in days, scraping every bit from the edges of the bowl. Then he rises abruptly and produces a piece of paper that’s folded in a tight square.
    Berit unfolds it to find a strange hand, neat and uniformly upright. My Dear, My Mrs., the message begins . . .
    I’m sending John with some rabbit, as I know they’re your favorite.
    “I don’t understand,” she looks up. “This isn’t Gunnar’s hand. He can barely write.”
    “It’s mine.”
    “Yours?” She looks at the neat rows of cursive, too late to cover her disbelief.
    “Boarding school,” he says in a stony voice. But she has gone back to reading . . . as I know they’re your favorite. Be certain that I am thinking of you, my dearest. It is so odd to hear his voice in this way. Things are moving in good time, so I hope to be home as planned. Don’t consider saving any rabbit for me. I don’t want to find even a morsel left over . . .
     
    John puts on his hat and draws the knife from his belt. He examines its edge and then slides it back in its sheath, watching Gunnar’s wife as she reads. Her pale skin, her thin frame, her hair the color of dried grass, bundled at the back of her head. He’ll dress the rabbits as he’d promised. “Don’t let her talk you out of it,” Gunnar had said. “She’ll go on about how she can do it herself.” Well, she’s not talking, she’s leaning against the cupboard, fully engrossed in the letter, and he needs to get back to his trapline if he’s going to make it back to camp and then home, if he’s lucky, before the week is out.
    John closes the door on the cabin’s warmth and the earthy smell of pea soup. He lifts the rabbits from the nail, wondering what, if anything, she knows of the story Gunnar told him at the logging camp.
    The telling has stayed strong