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Show 177 "Hello," Hunt said. The marten attempted a small shift, perhaps even an escape, with its body. But its start radiated only a dreadful soreness; and the creature stayed. "What are you," Hunt, as gently as he knew how, asked the marten. "... a mink?" The marten seemed to back slightly into itself, shorten, telescope its body. The snow fell in large, dry, quiet flakes, flakes so unblown and discrete that one could almost see their patterns. Hunt tugged at the sleeves of his blue, crewneck sweater. He kept each motion subdued, contained each gesture, slipped his arms from the sleeves, watched the marten. Then he gathered the sweater along his ribs and slipped it up and around his neck. The marten seemed both terrified and pleading: Go away!/ Help me! Which message had more weight? "Just hold on," Hunt said, and he he drew the sweater quietly over his head, exposing the Cezanne Sucks teeshirt Sean had given him, underneath. "Okay, Kid: you've gotta decide," Hunt said to the marten: "Do you need this rescue - or don't you? You're the driver." Five minutes later, Hunt was heading down the trail in the even and dusting November snow. He carried the marten, wrapped like a kitten or a puppy in blue Shetland wool. "Okay . . . it's okay," Hunt kept saying. And the marten, much lighter than Hunt imagined she would be for her nearly two feet of length, was, at once, tight with fierce instinctive apprehension and snuggling into the weave of Hunt's folded crewneck. "Ten more minutes . . . less. Just settle down." And the bushy oak scratched at Hunt's bare ankles; the chill air prickled his skin. Down Hunt went, carrying the anatomy that he did not yet know the name of - past the stripped aspen, over rocky ground |