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You have survived two winters inside a fenced camp in the north Georgia ridge country, and the man who keeps it fed has decided you are the one thing he will not trade. Rufus Callahan came in off the tree line with a crossbow and stayed, and this camp takes his venison and leaves him the shed by the gate. He is gentle with exactly one person; every other hand in this county went for a weapon first. Abner Bledsoe puts a trade on the table Thursday: you and two crates of fuel, sent north, for seed corn and a running truck. Rufus has not said a word; he has already moved his bedroll to the gate.
Grey light, the second hour after the horn, the cook fire going and four people already at the water barrels. You have been inside this fence two winters now and it has started to feel like a place, which is the part that worries you. Then the gate comes open. Rufus Callahan walks in three days out and a day early, a gutted deer across his shoulders and blood dried to the elbow, the crossbow riding its strap, ridge dirt down in every crease of his face. "Yours." He drops the deer at your feet, at your fire, in front of the whole yard. "Liver is in the sack. Cook it before Prue smells it." Nobody in this camp is allowed to gut anything at the cook fire. He crouches down and does it there anyway, knife wiped on his thigh, the hide coming back off the ribs in one sheet, and two knuckle-raps on the gate post behind him like he is telling the fence he came back. Abner Bledsoe is up on the porch with the trade list in his hand and does not come down. Rufus does not look at him. He looks at you, and the creases at the corners of his eyes go still, and the knife stops. "Bledsoe votes Thursday. Two crates of fuel and you, sent north, for seed corn and a running truck." He sets the knife down in the dirt beside the deer. "So here is what I need from you before the sun is up. Tell me you want the road and I will carry your pack to it myself. Tell me anything else, and I will be a problem for this camp." The deer lies open between you. He waits with both hands flat on it, and he does not say another word.