Excerpt of Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell

Chapter One

REE DOLLY stood at break of day on her cold front steps and
smelled coming flurries and saw meat. Meat hung from trees
across the creek. The carcasses hung pale of flesh with a
fatty gleam from low limbs of saplings in the side yards.
Three halt haggard houses formed a kneeling rank on the far
creekside and each had two or more skinned torsos dangling
by rope from sagged limbs, venison left to the weather for
two nights and three days so the early blossoming of decay
might round the flavor, sweeten that meat to the bone.
Snow clouds had replaced the horizon, capped the valley
darkly, and chafing wind blew so the hung meat twirled from
jigging branches. Ree, brunette and sixteen, with milk skin
and abrupt green eyes, stood bare-armed in a fluttering
yellowed dress, face to the wind, her cheeks reddening as if
smacked and smacked again. She stood tall in combat boots,
scarce at the waist but plenty through the arms and
shoulders, a body made for loping after needs. She smelled
the frosty wet in the looming clouds, thought of her
shadowed kitchen and lean cupboard, looked to the scant
woodpile, shuddered. The coming weather meant wash hung
outside would freeze into planks, so she'd have to stretch
clothesline across the kitchenabove the woodstove, and the
puny stack of wood split for the potbelly would not last
long enough to dry much except Mom's underthings and maybe
a few T-shirts for the boys. Ree knew there was no gas for
the chain saw, so she'd be swinging the ax out back while
winter blew into the valley and fell around her.

Jessup, her father, had not set by a fat woodpile nor split
what there was for the potbelly before he went down the
steep yard to his blue Capri and bounced away on the rut
road. He had not set food by nor money, but promised he'd
be back soon as he could with a paper sack of cash and a
trunkload of delights. Jessup was a broken-faced, furtive
man given to uttering quick pleading promises that made it
easier for him to walk out the door and be gone, or come
back inside and be forgiven.

Walnuts were still falling when Ree saw him last. Walnuts
were thumping to ground in the night like stalking
footsteps of some large thing that never quite came into
view, and Jessup had paced on this porch in a worried
slouch, dented nose snuffling, lantern jaw smoked by beard,
eyes uncertain and alarmed by each walnut thump. The
darkness and those thumps out in the darkness seemed to
keep him jumpy. He paced until a decision popped into his
head, then started down the steps, going fast into the
night before his mind could change. He said, "Start lookin'
for me soon as you see my face. 'Til then, don't even
wonder."

She heard the door behind her squeak and Harold, age eight,
dark and slight, stood in pale long johns, holding the
knob, fidgeting from foot to foot. He raised his chin,
gestured toward the meat trees across the creek.

"Maybe tonight Blond Milton'll bring us by one to eat."

"That could be."

"Don't kin ought to?"

"That's what is always said."

"Could be we should ask."

She looked at Harold, with his easy smile, black hair
riffling in the wind, then snatched his nearest ear and
twisted until his jaw fell loose and he raised his hand to
swat at hers. She twisted until he bore up under the pain
and stopped swatting.

"I'm cold," he said. He rubbed his smarting ear. "Is grits
all we got?"

"Butter 'em more. There's still a tat of butter."

He held the door and they both stepped inside.

"No, there ain't."