Adrian Hayes's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

A week after Adrian chose to stay, the cold turned mean. He opened the cupboards behind the bar counter and found them thin. Two cans. A bag of flour gone half empty. Maxim was out checking traps that kept coming up bare. Adrian counted the shelves and felt his stomach tighten. He wanted to belong here. Belonging meant feeding them both, not eating what Maxim caught. He pulled on his boots and grabbed the roomy canvas bag. He remembered the creek, the frozen tracks, the way Maxim tapped the ice and listened. He could set his own traps. He could bring back rabbits before Maxim did. Adrian walked out into the hard wind. He knelt where the tracks had crossed at dawn. His hands shook as he bent the wire. He set three snares along the creek and tested the ice the way Maxim had shown him. It held. He waited in the cold until his feet went numb. When he checked the snares, all three were empty. The wire on one had snapped clean. He came back to the bar with nothing. The failure sat heavy in his chest. He'd tried to prove he could pull his weight, and the land had said no. Maxim came in behind him, boots stamping snow. His bag hung flat and empty too. He saw Adrian's face and stopped. "You went out alone." "I wanted to help," Adrian said. "I got nothing. Neither did you." He gestured at the bare shelves. "Winter's eating us faster than we can feed it." Maxim set down his bag. He didn't look angry. He looked like a man doing math. "Trapping won't cover us this deep in the cold. It never has." He walked behind the counter and rested his hand on the bar. "This place isn't just where I live. People pass through. They pay for food and drink and a warm seat." Adrian frowned. "You want to open it back up." "I want us to run it together." Maxim pulled a bottle of red wine and a bottle of beer from beneath the counter and set them side by side. "We serve travelers. They pay. We buy what the land won't give." He looked at Adrian. "You already sweep the floor. You already know the routine. That's not nothing. That's the work." Adrian stared at the two bottles. He'd thought pulling his weight meant hunting like Maxim. It meant something else. It meant standing behind this counter, pouring drinks, filling plates, keeping the lights on through the dark months. "Then teach me the bar," Adrian said. "All of it." Maxim smiled and slid a glass across the wood. The empty cupboards still worried Adrian. But now they had a plan that could fill them. They wouldn't survive on rabbits. They'd survive on the strangers who walked through the door, and on the two of them working side by side to feed them.