Defective

restaurant and a kitchen on the main floor. The seven upper floor rooms were rented to boarders and travellers. The two largest on the second floor were allotted to the Constable, who only really needed one. Mrs. Baker, the Landlord's elderly aunt, ran the place. Her quarters were off the kitchen.

  He’d been the sole Deloran County Constable for eight years. Spring through fall, he lived in a cabin in the lower hills of the Western Woods. A lookout post stood atop the highest hill. He would climb the hill to the post, ascend the thirty-four rungs of the ladder, and look out. He could see for miles and miles. He could see Honey Hill, the edge of Pater’s farm and part of the valley; beyond the valley, where he couldn't see, was the orchard. He always looked.

  The Constable’s main duty was to watch for forest fires and nuisance animals and tree poachers. There had been a time when trees were poached, ripped from the forests using huge machines that could carve up a hillside in a matter of hours and haul out hundreds of trees in a day, or night as was often the case. It was dangerous work. It was also illegal. The trees rightfully belonged to Deloran County. Trees meant life: they were food, fuel, housing, and were traded with neighbouring towns for other goods. Without them, Deloran County could not survive. The landowners at the time had responded to the crisis by establishing the Forest Police Force. Initially, the force comprised more than one hundred officers who were sent out to battle the poachers in any way they could. Dozens died every year in skirmishes; even more were injured or permanently disabled.

  Over time, as the fuel dried up making the motorized machines useless, the tree poachers went in search of easier ways to make a living. The force was disbanded but the County retained the lone post of Police Constable.

  PC Pierre's great-grandfather, Pappy, had been the town's first Police Constable. His grandfather and father had also held the post. His grandfather was killed by a grizzly bear before Pierre was born. Pierre's mother had died giving birth and his great-grandfather, now long since retired, had looked after Pierre when his father was working. Even at 99, Pappy had chopped wood every day and went trapping or fishing every week. He would tell him stories about the days of the tree poachers. At 106, he died in his sleep; his father was killed a month later in a mudslide. By law, Pierre should have been sent to a labour camp but his family's history with the town saved him. By a special decree, Pierre was sworn in as Battery’s Police Constable at the age of nineteen.

  Pierre was well suited to the job. He had the blood of three generations of police officers running through him, plus he was a good listener and read everything he could get his hands on. All policemen had to be able to read but the amount that Pierre read was unusual and his Pappy told him not to tell anyone how he liked to spend his evenings.

  He loved listening to his Pappy's stories. His father had sometimes scoffed at some of them, but PC Pierre had found out, eventually, that many of there were true. Or parts of them were. The things that counted were true.

  He inherited his love of history from his great-grandfather, who had kept a reference library. Most were the police record books that constables were required to keep but there were other records, some hundreds of years old. Some were thick Deloran County law books; others were shorter thread bound policies and pamphlets. Pierre received them all when Pappy died. Many were old and in poor shape and Pierre handled those as little as he could. He'd made notes and summaries of them instead, copying out whole pages in some cases.

  PC Pierre's job description was vague — keep the peace, protect the forest — but he became a de facto jack of all trades in the compact town of Battery when winter came. Once travel became limited most people, PC Pierre included, hunkered down inside. His days were spent filling pot holes with soil and manure, dealing with the few drunks who'd stumbled through the bush to the Piggy Gristle, or breaking up fights. Evenings were spent reading and re-reading his reference books until his legal and historical knowledge could rival anyone's in the county.

  When the weather was bad, which was often enough, he and Mrs. Baker were each other's only company for days at a stretch so he spent much of his time with her, helping with chores. He didn't mind. Mrs. Baker was the sort of logical, no-nonsense woman who could sum up a situation at a glance that he admired. It also led him to conclude that Mrs. Baker probably knew more about her nephew than she let on. But whenever he tried to steer the conversation that way, she would pick some adage from her memory about family or privacy or curiosity and that would be the end of the discussion.

  He reached Baker’s Yard and put Josephine in her stall beside Chester, Mrs. Baker's brown quarter horse for the night.

  ___

  Bull and Jones were the first up. Narrow watched his brothers leave the loft, heard the barn door open and shut then climbed down after them. He peered out the front door and saw Jones fastening up his pants. Bull was casting his head from side to side, scanning the horizon and sniffing the air.

  "Bull’s after breakfast," he told Porkchop when he returned to the loft.

  "Good. Go get some water from that well out front."

  "It’s all busted up. It can’t be any good."

  "Well, look around. There has to be another source of water."

  Outside, Narrow looked around the yard. He didn't want to see Pater or have any kind of a repeat of yesterday. Around one corner of the barn a large white plastic cistern stood on wooden blocks. White plastic eavestroughing funnelled water from the roof into the cistern and a tarnished faucet had been hammered into it near the base. A metal bucket hung on a nail off the barn wall and Narrow grabbed it and set it beneath the tap. As he loosened the faucet, clear rainwater gushed forth.

  Inside, Porkchop built a fire in the stove. She sat in front of its open door, relishing the heat, considering their situation. She would be nineteen soon and had been looking after her siblings for as long as she could remember. She knew everything that needed to be done at the orchard and was angry that they’d had to leave their home. But she also knew the Landlord; had known him all her life. He was always angry, always yelling, and he never looked at them if he could help it. Sometimes he would stare at Titania for a few seconds but that had only started happening after her accident. He didn’t like being touched and would flinch and jerk away if any one of them so much as brushed his sleeve. It wasn’t a surprise that he hadn’t wanted to keep them on.

  She supposed she ought to be grateful to Pater but her only impression of him so far wasn’t a good one. She fed in a birch log and leaned back when the bark caught fire and started to spit. She would simply have to wait and see.

  Bull had made a beeline for the north woods; Jones followed at his brother's pace. He'd only ever been allowed short spurts of speed at the orchard, to fetch something or someone in a hurry at Ma's command. He tried not to think about it much usually, but sometimes all he could think about was running for hours and hours, never stopping.

  "We've got a ways to go," said Bull, stopping. "There's game but it'll be a while."

  "Okay." Jones started to walk on but Bull remained. Bull wasn't particularly sensitive to what people were feeling but it was impossible for him not to see and be annoyed by Jones' constant fidgeting beside him.

  "If you want to run, go ahead. Go east, but not too far. Listen for the signal." Bull blinked and Jones was gone. He saw an after image of his brother's grinning face.

  Bull ambled north, taking in the details of the forest. It was predominantly deciduous with enough tree variety for excellent hunting grounds as well as food and building materials. There were also many well worn paths, human and animal. He had smelled as much from the road yesterday.

  He strayed off the path he was on to check out an old foundation. He sat down on one of the exposed footings. It looked like the remains of a house. He waited a while to let Jones work off his energy then whistled, wa-wa, the two short syllables of the Nellsen bird. Jones returned, smiling and red-cheeked, and they continued north into the woods.

  Bull soon sniffed
out a small hare and three pigeons. Jones made short work of them all, snapping the necks of each one, quickly and without feeling, his hands a blur of motion from the moment he snatched the hare diving into its warren, to the last pigeon, which he caught mid-air as it tried to fly to safety. Jones carried the hare by its hind legs, its head dragging near the ground. Bull carried the birds.

  With the exception of Titania, the others got up and climbed down from the loft. Porkchop set each to chores. Forest and Jelly went out to collect plants and roots and Santa took over the fire and watched Mixer. Narrow returned and set the water bucket on top of the stove to warm then followed Porkchop around the barn as she explored it. Mixer refused to sit still in Santa's lap and she put him down to crawl.

  Jelly soon returned with her shirt front filled with potatoes, burdock root and wild sage.

  "The potatoes were in the field behind the barn," she told Santa.

  They were both thinking the same thing: We're hungry, but will we get into trouble for taking Pater's potatoes?

  "There’s dock and sage everywhere," she said, more to herself than to Santa, who had already made her decision and was cutting up the spuds.

  Forest returned with his arms full of dandelion roots, several good sized Martin