“I hear you’re from out West,” she said. “City girl.”
“But I’ve been outside a lot,” I said. “I mean, I’ve worked outside.”
“Sure,” she said. “I was in Seattle once. Hitchhiked there after I picked apples in Wenatchee when I was young and stupid.”
“What did you think?” I asked.
“There wasn’t much to see besides too many goddamn mountains,” she said. “But Lily told me you’re going back soon.”
“Probably,” I said.
“If it suits you,” she said. “Me, I was glad to come home.”
“I’ve seen you at the grocery store cracking people’s backs,” I said.
“It’s true that I do that,” Karen said. “But I’d rather you think of me as a whittler.”
“What do you whittle?” I asked.
“Useful things,” Karen said.
“And not so useful,” Lily said. “You should see it. She can’t just carve a spoon without she has to put a captive ball in the handle.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Whittling’s just subtraction,” Karen said. “Start with the spoon handle, then carve out a case for the ball to fit in, carve the ball at the same time, last thing you do, you wick off the tiny piece holding the ball to the case, watch it rattle around inside. Seems impossible when you see it, like elves made it or some shit.” She set down the traffic cones and took a knife from her pocket, pulled the short blade from the cork it was plunged in. “That’s what you call a sheepsfoot blade,” she said, holding it out to show me.
“Karen’s a perfectionist,” Lily said. “She spent hours carving a tiny thimble-size skull out of cherrywood, and then she gave it to me for my birthday.”
“She lost it,” Karen said.
“I put it in a safe place,” Lily said.
“How can you lose a skull in a sixteen-by-sixteen cabin?” I asked.
“Oh, you can,” Lily said. “You can lose anything anywhere.”
* * *
Back up the hill, I knew enough to get the propane burner going full-bore, and to fill my largest pot with spring water. Lily and Karen went to the duck shed and picked out the drakes. It’s only the female ducks who quack, Karen told me. Drakes make a choking whistling sound. They held each bird and listened to it, then Sharpied each duck with an X on her beak. It turns out I had seven drakes and only four ducks. Soon the water roiled and steamed. Karen took a utility knife from her belt and sawed off the top of each traffic cone, letting the stubs fall like candy corn near the firepit.
I took a chance. “You’re the first people up here since my boyfriend left,” I said.
“Do you miss him?” asked Lily.
“He was a pretty good boyfriend,” I said. “But I talked too much. I didn’t know when to shut up and leave him alone. And now I’m on my own.”
“You think he left because of something you said?” Karen said. “That’s horseshit.”
“And he said I wasn’t ambitious,” I said.
“That might be true,” Karen said. “But that’s not why he left.”
“I didn’t really know how to get started out here,” I said.
“If we’re going to do this, we’ll need buckets,” Karen said.
“At night, sometimes, I bet it’s hard,” Lily said. “I wouldn’t want to sleep out here all alone.”
“Buckets,” Karen prompted.
I found some, and Karen rigged a long line and suspended the traffic cones like funnels over them. She held the drakes until they were calm, and then two by two we lowered them upside down into the cones, so their necks stuck out the narrow end. They did not struggle but opened their beaks and gazed at the woods, the firepit, the razor knife. We slit their throats at the jugular.
The sun grew hot and the yellow jackets came. We sat by the firepit and ripped feathers out by the fistful. It was true that to get all the pinfeathers out was nearly impossible. The hot smell of boiled feathers and blood choked the air. We cleaned the drakes. We set up the pressure canner. We rinsed everything down. I hoped that Lily and Karen wouldn’t leave.
“Do you want to go swimming?” I asked. “It might be the last warm day. And we’re covered in gore.”
“Where?” Karen asked.
“We could get in the creek,” I said.
We pushed down through the woods until we found a place where the elderberry bushes dipped into the high water. There was a honeybee hive on the far bank, the bees gone sleepy and slow this time of year. Lily and Karen peeled off