18360101 14:35:38

18360101 14:35:38

Jesse quickly walked out from the cabin room and made his way over to the side of the house to find the wooden buckets. He was about to turn the corner of the cabin when he realized that he didn't hear any footsteps behind him. He turned around and saw the children standing still in front of the closed door. They both stared at Jesse with an innocently brazen gaze, which was the extent of protest that they were able to make in consideration of their situation and limited vocabulary. With an impatient huff of a sigh through his nostrils, Jesse walked back and stood before the two younger children.
"OK, so, your name is Saul, right?" He asked this with a hand extended towards Saul as a means of pointing. The question wasn't answered with as much of a physical nod. "Right?" His second attempt in asking came quickly and was more forceful in voice.
"Yes."
"Yes, good, thank you Saul. Good to meet you. And you're Marian, yes?"
She instinctively turned her eyes to the ground and gently swayed her body from side to side.
"Yeah, she is Marian." Saul answered the question on her behalf.
"Nice to meet you, Marian." Jesse reached his hand out to touch her on the shoulder after giving the greeting, and upon the contact, her body snapped into a rigid stillness. She still refused to look up from the ground. With a small grimace, Jesse pulled his hand away.
"So right now, what we're gonna do is go out and find some berries to pick up, all right? So both of you can help me do this. Come with me to the side here and we can get some buckets and go to the bushes."
After saying this, Jesse resumed walking over to the side of the cabin, and Saul followed directly behind. Marian remained standing in place. When the boys reached the buckets, Jesse realized that she hasn't accompanied them, so he picked two buckets up after watching Saul pick up his own, then returned to the front of the house. He gently placed one of the buckets on the spot of the ground upon where it appeared that she continued to stare.
"Go ahead, it's not that heavy. We got to be quick before the sun goes down."
"No." Her voice of refusal was initially louder than Saul's speaking.
"Marian. We gotta do this so that we can eat. Please help us."
"No!" She yelled this loud enough to cause her voice to cast a small temporary echo in the surrounding trees.
Jesse looked over to Saul in irritation and with hope that he would intervene and give persuasion to his sister to help out. Instead, he stared mutely back at him, still unsure of how much to trust Jesse and without a full understanding as to why they were being asked to help him scrounge for berries at this point. He knew that his father was supposed to be waiting for him here, and he wasn't. He didn't understand why. The three stood prone for several seconds before Jesse picked the bucket he had placed on the group up again and held both in his hands.
"All right, fine. At supper tonight, I'm tellin your mama that you didn't help out none, and see what she thinks. Otherwise, the more you stand out here doin nothin, you just gonna get colder and colder. Trust me. C'mon, Saul, let's leave her be." Jesse turned and began to walk over to the bushes, kicking clumps of half melted snow out of his way as he walked.  Saul looked over to Jesse walking away, then to his sister, and finally decided to meet up with Jesse and began to walk behind him, taking special care to match his footsteps laid in the snow when possible.
Marian stood silently at the door, and heard as much silence around her as the cold air began to settle more heavily into her body. She continued to wait for her mother to come to the door to call her back inside, and felt her body shiver more frequently as time passed without that intervention. It only took a few more minutes of standing in the cold to convince Marian to run after her brother.