by Cadle, Lou
He did that, left her to it and went back for more wood. In another two trips, she told him that was enough.
“How long will this last you?” he asked, pointing at the wood inside.
“Until noon if I keep it banked at night,” she said. “I have enough wood for two days, I think. If I’m careful with it. I’ll keep the damper almost shut in the daytime tomorrow too, though it’ll get pretty cold in here.”
“I hope the power is on before tomorrow anyway.”
“I’m not sure it will be. The snow is supposed to get worse and last until tomorrow night. The wind is picking up and will stay strong until then. That’ll have to stop first. Then they’ll have to clear the streets. And only then the power crews can go to work. They can’t work in the wind. They’ll probably do the richer neighborhoods first.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“It’s not fair, but it’s the way the world goes. Rich people give money to politicians, and so they get better and quicker services. And when they yell, they know who to yell at to make something happen.”
“What did you mean by banking the fire?” He understood from context she had meant making it burn less hot to save wood, but he had no idea how she’d do that. “And what’s a damper?”
“Here, I’ll show you.” She knelt in front of the woodstove, her knees popping. She opened the door, fed another log into the fire, and pointed out a grate over the inside of the door, covering a perforated strip of metal. “That helps regulate how much air—and so oxygen—gets to the fire.” She closed the door and slid a handle. “I’ve closed it partway. Now the fire will get less oxygen and so burn slower. At night, you put in the biggest logs you have, and arrange whatever coals you have just so, and pile up some ashes—that’s banking—and that way it’ll burn to morning. I don’t have much choice of size of wood though. These are all the same size.”
“It’d burn more with the door wide open? I mean, the big door. If you left that open, would it get warmer?”
“That’s right. It would pump out the heat for a time, and it would get toasty in here, but it would burn wood faster. So I’m closing it down before I go to sleep.” She latched the door. “I’ll keep it like this for another two hours, and then load ’er up for the night with the dry wood, and then close the damper off to just an inch or so open.”
“Why don’t you use the fireplace? Is it broken?”
“No. But most fireplaces are designed for looks, not for heating. You lose almost as much heat as you create. So if you want a pretty fire for company, fireplaces are great. For heat, though, you want a wood-burning stove. Or even a gas-burning insert.”
“But then why do people build fireplaces at all?”
“I don’t know. Everyone seems to wants things for their looks. We all have enough stuff that we don’t need things for real, so we spend money on frivolous stuff we don’t need, like fireplaces that don’t work right. It’s a luxury mindset, I suppose. First-world thinking. We have all the food and warmth and soft furniture we need, and then some.”
“Except today. I don’t know that anyone has heat today. I only saw one other chimney with smoke coming out of it on the whole block.”
“True. Just those of us with woodstoves and wood to burn or people with generators and lots of extra gasoline will be warm tonight. Let me get you something hot to drink. Do you drink coffee?”
“I never have. But if it’s warm, I’ll try it. Let me mop up the mess I made on your kitchen floor first.” He had tracked in ice and snow, along with some little chips of wood. His mom hated that, and he could get down on the floor to clean easier than this creaky old lady could.
“I’ll get you sugar and milk for the coffee. Probably you won’t be able to stand it without sugar and milk. And I’ll get you a rag to wipe up with. That’s nice of you to offer to do that.”
It might make up for the fact that he’d nearly forgotten his promise to her.
In the kitchen, she gave him an old towel, worn almost translucent in spots, and he wiped the melting snow and ice off his shoes and then off the floor. It hadn’t melted much. It felt really warm in here, compared to standing in the wind and snow outside, and compared to his house. But it wasn’t so warm in the kitchen that the ice melted quickly. Her house wasn’t all opened up like theirs was, though. The door from the kitchen into the living room was small, and so heat wouldn’t flow back here easily.
He sat on the sofa in her living room with his coffee. The room was lit with an old-fashioned lantern sitting on a high table behind the sofa. He looked around while she went back into the kitchen for something, holding onto the warm mug of coffee, enjoying the heat seeping into his cold fingers. His feet were so cold, he wished he could hold the mug with his toes instead.
Her walls were decorated oddly, with stuff he’d never seen on any walls of his friends’ houses. There were carved and painted masks, and strange dyed fabrics just nailed to the wall without frames, plus carved chunks of wood that in some cases weren’t recognizable as any particular thing. But there was an oar too, a double oar. Did you call that a paddle or an oar? He didn’t know. It was painted with bright blue and red geometric designs. There was no TV, he realized, looking around again. Did she sit there and stare at her stuff on the walls? Or at the woodstove? Why have a living room if you didn’t have a TV?
She came back in with a plate of cookies. “An indulgence,” she said. “And a thank-you for your help.”
“What are they?” He picked one up. It was rectangular and thick and plain-looking.
“Shortbread. You’ve never had any?”
“Mom makes our own cookies. She says store-bought ones have chemicals in them. And too much sugar.”
“Give this a try. It doesn’t have chemicals in it either. It does have sugar. And lots and lots of butter. It’s not a health food.”
Tentatively he took a bite. It was sweet, but not super-sweet, and he definitely could taste the butter. And while it was dry at first, it was soon melting in his mouth. He finished it quickly. “That’s good.”
“I think so too.” She dipped a cookie into her coffee and nibbled at it. “Have as many as you want.”
He could have eaten the whole plate in less than five minutes, but he only took one more and let the plate sit between them, pushed to the side of the coffee table nearest her. He’d wait until she ate a second to take a third. “Where’d you get all this stuff? Like on the walls, I mean.” She didn’t get it at Walmart, that was for sure.
“Here and there.” She pointed at various things. “Malaysia. Saipan. New Zealand. Zaire—or rather, The Democratic Republic of the Congo.”
“Wow, you’ve been all those places?”
“Yes. And a few more.” She smiled, but a little sadly.
“I never even heard of Saipan, and I thought I was good at geography.”
“It’s in the Northern Mariana Islands.”
He shook his head. He hadn’t heard of them either. “I know about the Mariana Trench. I guess it’s near there?”
“Relatively near. It’s part of the United States.”
“It is?” Then why had he never heard of it?
“It’s a territory, like Guam. North of there.”
“Is it big?”
“No. Small, maybe fifty thousand people.”
“Saipan. It sounds like a Japanese name.”
“It was. We acquired it in World War II.”
“Why were you there?”
“Working,” she said, gesturing to the walls. “But I picked all this up on days off, at markets, and a few are gifts from people I met.”
“That’s interesting. What kind of work did you do?” He’d never thought about a job that let him travel the world. Suddenly, he had a thousand questions, and a few spilled out. “Was it ever dangerous or scary? What was the most beautiful place you’ve been? What kind of strange animals have you seen?”
She smiled, a happier smile this time, and sipped her tea. “I was in MSF.
That’s Doctors Without Borders in English. I helped people after disasters, or tried to. Sometimes, when I got there, it wasn’t very pretty. Saipan, for instance—that was a typhoon and it left quite a mess. But everywhere is beautiful in its own way. Deserts, rainforests, savannahs, islands, mountains. Even cities have their own sharp beauty.”
“Were you ever scared?”
“I was often too busy to think about being scared. And animals? Yes, I’ve seen some strange animals. And some cute ones, like sea otters and little marsupials.”
“But what did you do? I mean, you’ve been to college?”
“Yes. I’m an occupational therapist. Or I was. I’m retired now, for fifteen years.”
“What’s that? An occupational therapist?” He’d never heard of that either. He was almost dizzy with the idea that there were places and jobs and things he’d never even heard of. And she’d seen them and knew about them.
“It’s like physical therapy, usually focused on the upper body and doing practical things. When people get hurt, they need to regain the use of their hands and arms so they can work, or make food, or pick food from their gardens, or sew, or fix their fishing nets and haul them in. I tried to make sure they could do all that again as soon as possible after they were hurt.”
It didn’t sound very interesting, but so few jobs did. Not everyone could be an astronaut or work on robots or be a star National League shortstop. He understood that now. But he had no idea what he’d do with his life. He imagined he might have to settle for something boring.
“I’d like to hear more about the places you’ve been.”
“You wouldn’t rather look it up on the internet?”
“That’s good too. I like the internet.” He frowned. “But it’s not like someone going there and telling you about it. The internet doesn’t do smells very well, for instance. Or heat or cold.”
“You might be able to read what the people who live there think about it. If they can write in English, that is.”
“But if you live in a place, it doesn’t seem special, does it? I guess a lot of people would like to live on the coast, but I hardly ever see the ocean. If someone asked me about Norfolk, I’d probably mention the ocean, but it’s not really part of my life. In the summer, sure, I go sometimes, but I haven’t gotten more than a glance of water in the winter months. And if someone from another country came here, they might think it was weird how I lived, wouldn’t they? They’d think gaming was weird, or going to school past the age of twelve, or that what we ate was bizarre, or that we lived in houses rather than tree houses or huts or igloos.”
“Most people live in houses you’d recognize. But food is definitely different in various places.” She finally picked up a second cookie and raised it, as if in a toast. “Scotland gives us shortbread.” She bit into it. “Luckily for us,” she said past a mouthful of cookie.
He took another cookie. “What’s the grossest or weirdest thing you ever ate?”
“Lots of things might sound odd to you. Insects.”
“Eww, really?”
“They taste like seafood a little. And eels. Lots of bones in eels. Fermented vegetables of all sorts. Horse, in France.”
“They eat horses there?”
“They do, though less now than a generation ago. Let’s see, I’ve eaten a few kinds of snakes.”
“What kinds?”
“You know, I tended not to ask. But I’ve had snake soup, snake curry, fried snake. I’ve eaten soup made of songbirds, sort of like robins or doves here. Probably I’ve eaten more rice dishes than anything, though. Rice and cowpeas. Rice and lentils. Rice and cooked greens.”
“Like collard greens? I don’t like them.”
“Different sorts of greens, like basella, or water spinach, or mizuma. A lot of places cook their greens with a lot of spices, hot pepper or curries. You can barely taste the greens for everything else that’s cooked with them.”
It was strange that this woman, who’d seemed a little weird, and sort of a recluse a few days ago, had lived so much life. More than his mom, really. He said, “I’ve only been here, as far north as New York, as far south as Florida, to Arizona, and to South Africa.”
“Why South Africa?”
“My dad’s there. He’s from there. I’ve visited him four times. And he came here once.”
“That’s not often to see your father.”
“We Skype sometimes. And talk on the phone. When I was ten, he took me on a photo safari, and that was great. I saw all kinds of animals. But I don’t know that they were acting like they should have acted. I mean, it was this preserve, for people taking pictures, and they were pretty tame. I think maybe lions would eat you normally, rather than pose for pictures.”
She smiled crookedly. “They posed?”
“Sort of, yeah. Or they ignored us, and didn’t run from us, at least. Wouldn’t animals like that either be running from you or running toward you if it weren’t all fake?”
“I haven’t ever seen a lion in the wild, so I’m not sure of the answer.”
So he’d seen one thing she hadn’t, with all the places she’d been. “How many countries have you been in?”
“Not counting brief layovers because some rickety airplane or train broke down, about forty.”
Imagine having been to so many countries that you couldn’t keep track exactly. He took another drink of coffee. He didn’t like it, though the warmth was nice, moving down into his belly. “I’ve bothered you long enough.” His feet had started to warm up, and his toes were aching with the pain of coming back to life.
She said, “You helped me, not bothered me.” Then she hesitated. “Would you like to sleep here tonight? I’m sure it’s warmer than your house. I’ve been thinking all day that you should.”
“I need to go home and wait for my mom. But thank you for asking.” He held his breath and downed his coffee, trying not to taste it. He stood. “Thank you for the cookies. I’ll be going. If you need anything from me, ask me too. If you have your cellphone, I’ll be happy to type in my number.”
“I don’t have a cellphone. Just a landline. You can write your number on a pad of paper before you leave.”
She didn’t have a cellphone? Crazy not to have one. He glanced around again. Or maybe not. Maybe there wasn’t very good cell service in Saipan or wherever, and it made sense she wouldn’t. But in America, why would you not have a phone? He went back to thinking she was weird. Okay, interesting too. But weird.
Outside, the wind had picked up. Snow was blowing everywhere, and the sun had gone down, so he could barely see. He knew where he was going, and he made it home with no problem. He unlocked the front door by feel and walked into to a cold, dark house. He stripped shoes and wet socks again, took off his jacket, and used the bathroom before holing up again in his bedroom.
His feet were freezing. He could barely feel them, and his toes were white. Maybe he shouldn’t wear wet socks again. It’d be better to wear dirty, dry ones than wet ones. He reached down and massaged his feet, which didn’t really warm them. It just made his hands cold too.
He lay in bed waiting for his feet to defrost and tried to imagine traveling all over the world. He’d seen open-air markets in movies—usually there was a chase scene through them—with people calling out in other languages. He only knew English and a few words of Spanish. His father spoke four languages, but only English around Ray, so he’d never learned any of those. Maybe he should have asked to. He wondered if Eve knew a whole lot of languages, and what that would be like, to point to food in a market and order up snake meat for your soup in some language other than English. She’d probably cooked over a woodstove, or an open fire, not very different than the cavemen a million years ago.
His feet started to warm up. They felt cold, and tingled, and ached. There was always a painful five minutes when a body part started feeling warm again. That distracted him from thinking about anything else until the blood was flowing more normally. He warmed his f
eet the last bit by burying one in the crook behind the opposite knee for a few minutes, and then the other. They quit hurting, and slowly they grew warm, and then he realized he was tired, tired enough to sleep.
He drifted off imagining other countries, other places, most of them warm. Outside the wind picked up until it was howling. The noise pulled him up from sleep, but never fully to consciousness. He drifted back off.
He woke to an explosion.
Chapter 9
Ray was scared to get out of bed. And he was scared to stay where he was. Did he and his mom have anything that could explode? The stove and furnace were both electric—he knew that much. The thought calmed him a little bit, though his heart still pounded. Electric stuff did not blow up.
Maybe it hadn’t been here but outside. Didn’t gas mains explode sometimes? Could cold weather make them do it? Was there one outside in the street? He didn’t know those answers.
He climbed out, shakily, from his cocoon under the covers and pulled on a hoodie against the cold in the house. He dragged out an old pair of sneakers that was ratty, too small, and had a sole coming off, but at least they were dry and could keep his feet warm on the cold floors. He fumbled around for the flashlight, found it, knocked it down while groping, and barely grabbed it before it rolled onto the floor. He flipped it on, which calmed his panic another notch, but he was still afraid of the noise he had heard. He wanted to see… but he didn’t want to see.
This fear wasn’t an irrational one. He didn’t think for a second that Slenderman had broken down the door. Something bad had definitely happened, a real thing, and close by. He crept down the cold hallway, shining the flashlight beam into every room. There was no glow of a house fire. There was nothing wrong, he told himself, nothing at all. He had started to calm down when he shone his light into the far end of the kitchen.
His stomach dropped.
One of the backyard trees had come down and punched right through the corner of the house. He stood, gaping at it, thinking how like a horror movie it was, but how different. The trees becoming sentient and breaking into your house. Ents marching from Fanghorn. But it was no fantasy, no horror movie. It was reality, but eerie as the thing looked so out of place. Trees were supposed to be outside, not in your kitchen. His brain was having a hard time grasping a sight so far from normal.
