Stake & Eggs Read Free

make it home tonight? Or would they have to camp out in the Knitting Nest?
    Then Suzanne cast her eyes toward the back of her property. Even though she couldn’t
     make out all that much through the curtain of falling snow, the high-pitched snowmobile
     whine had grown louder. Definitely an engine revving wildly. Grasping the handrail,
     Suzanne clambered down two snowy steps, then stumped across the parking lot where
     her Ford Taurus was pretty much just a hump under more humps of drifted snow.
    No other cars. Has to be a snowmobile. Has to be Ben’s.
    She narrowed her eyes against the biting snow and was able to make out a yellow beacon
     of light some twenty yards back.
    Yup, a stalled snowmobile
, was Suzanne’s initial thought. Then she quickly changed her mind, deciding it had
     to be a crashed snowmobile. Of course, that’s exactly what she’d heard. A snowmobile
     plowing headfirst into her rickety little back shed, where she kept a serpentine coil
     of rubber hose, an old-fashioned push lawn mower, and a bag of defunct, half-sprouted
     grass seed. Although now that winter was here, it was probably in suspended animation.
    She toddled toward the back woods, feeling like the Michelin Man in her poufy down
     coat, her footsteps immediately puddling with snow as she made her way.
    If the snowmobile crashed, then where is its owner?
she wondered.
Hurt?
Dazed? And what about the second snowmobile we thought we heard? What happened to
     that machine, or that driver?
    Suzanne quickened her pace. She hated the thought that Ben, or anybody for that matter,
     might be lying on the ground hurt or badly injured. Especially in this raging storm.
    The buzzing grew louder and even more annoying. Like an angry hornet batting against
     a screen door. Perhaps Petra was right. Maybe snowmobiles were infernal contraptions.
    Suzanne grabbed a snow-laden spruce bow and pushed it aside, setting off a mini avalanche.
     And yes, indeed, there was a snowmobile, canted on its side, the red nose of the thing
     practically run up the side of her shed. A headlight shone brightly, like a single
     yellow eye, while the engine continued to roar full throttle.
    But where’s the rider? Where’s Ben?
    She decided Ben must have pitched off in the crash. Which meant he was either hurt
     or deeply embarrassed.
    Or drunk? That possibility raced through Suzanne’s brain for an instant. But, no;
     if she recalled correctly, Ben wasn’t much of a drinker. He wasn’t part of the good-old-boy
     scene that congregated Friday and Saturday nights in Schmitt’s Bar in downtown Kindred
     to hoist a brewski or help themselves to a snort or two of Jameson. Or three or four.
    “Got to find him,” Suzanne said out loud. She walked another few steps into the woods.
     “Ben!” she called, trying to make herself heard. “Are you out here?”
    But even if Ben was lying in a snowdrift with his arm broken, she wasn’t going to
     hear him call out. Not with that machine wailing away like a crazed banshee.
    Suzanne doubled back to the snowmobile.
How do you turn this stupid thing off?
she wondered, hovering over it.
Where’s the throttle or button or starter gewgaw or whatever it’s got?
    She fiddled around, hit a black rubber switch, and, just like that, the noise died.
     From more than 175 nasty decibels to a silence so still she swore she could suddenly
     hear the wind whispering through the pines.
    Straightening up, Suzanne was suddenly aware of how fast the storm had rolled in,
     how violent the blizzard had become.
    I need to find Ben, then batten down the hatches. Andpray the roads aren’t drifted over. And that the plows are out.
    Suzanne walked out ten feet to where a cornfield lay buried under ten inches of snow
     and stretched like an undulating white canvas for almost eighty acres. Her cornfield,
     really. Leased to a rail-thin farmer named Reed Ducovny, who grew tall stalks of Jubilee
     and Golden Cross Bantam that commanded premium prices. In