by Cadle, Lou
He decided to put just one log on to make sure the fire didn’t go out. He opened the door to the woodstove. It squeaked, but Eve didn’t wake. He pushed a dry log in and closed the door, latching it tightly. He hoped the log would catch on fire without him doing anything more. While he’d watched her feed the stove before, he hadn’t paid strict attention, but he didn’t recall her having to fiddle with anything.
Back in the kitchen, he inventoried their supplies. She had a few cans of food—vegetables and tuna and a can of cream of mushroom soup. And she had cheese of her own, sliced, from the deli counter. The label said “White American.” There were no eggs, and no cereal, and nothing that looked like breakfast food. Maybe she usually ate toast. Or nothing.
She’d made broth out of bullion cubes last night, so he put together a pan of that. It and cheese sandwiches would be an okay breakfast. The cheese sandwiches would fill them up, and the broth would warm them from the inside. He’d seen her bring a bag of groceries in the first day of the storm, but she must have had bare cupboards before that. Maybe she was too poor to shop for many days at a time. Or maybe she got out of the habit of shopping for a lot while living in places without refrigeration, where you’d only buy food for a day or two at a time.
He left the cold kitchen, carrying the saucepan with the bullion and water. The kettle wasn’t boiling yet. Ray returned to his nest on the sofa. He put the throw around his neck and the blanket over his lap then turned on his cellphone. The battery was down to just over a quarter. And there was still no cell signal.
He’d check her landline again in a bit. He wouldn’t want to phone his mom and wake her anyway, so he’d wait for the sun to rise higher before he bothered to check. Like seven-thirty. That would be late enough.
The wind moaned outside as it picked up again. There were very few cracks or pops from branches falling. He imagined that, as Eve had said, nearly every weak branch had crashed to the ground already, that every dead tree was on its side. A thousand roofs in town must be in the same condition as his, and probably five thousand cars had been crushed. He wouldn’t be surprised if every street in every neighborhood was blocked by trees the way theirs was.
He couldn’t imagine school starting up again soon. It might be a week from Monday before it did instead of Monday. He’d hoped to run into the girl again, Julia, but with the mess outside, that wouldn’t happen for a few days. Still, he thought of her. Thought too of people in classes he’d noticed, kids that he thought were interesting from something they’d said in class. He’d resolved that he’d talk to them more when he went back to school, to make an effort to have more friends. Eve was interesting, and he’d never bothered to get to know her. He was glad he had, and probably if he made new friends at school, he’d be glad of that.
In a way, that was like being prepared for a blizzard, like Eve was. She had wood, she had a woodstove, and she had a lantern. She had the weather radio. Having friends was a kind of preparation too, preparing for lonely times. And for good times. Like what if you won four tickets to a concert, or four tickets to a new movie? Right now, he wouldn’t have three other people to invite.
He could invite Eve. She was a friend, despite the age difference. He tried to imagine how that would go over, inviting an old lady and two kids to a movie. Probably not great. He could try to make new friends who wouldn’t think that was weird, but Eve might be more uncomfortable than his other friends. Though if he had a birthday party, or a graduation party, or an acceptance into his #1 university party, he’d invite her for sure. It wouldn’t be any different than inviting a grandmother.
The minutes ticked by and still Eve didn’t stir. He had to remove the kettle from the stove, as the kettle was wheezing, ready to whistle. He set it and the saucepan by the drying wood. When Eve was awake, there was at least someone to talk to. They’d have breakfast. They’d play a game. He brought the lantern over to the coffee table and set up a game of Go, playing both sides, messing around, and trying to figure out the game better. It wasn’t nearly as good as playing against someone better than you. On the other hand, playing yourself, you were guaranteed a win.
It was nearly nine when Eve finally woke. She mumbled a greeting and went down the hall. He put the kettle and saucepan back on. He checked the landline—still not working—and put together two cheese sandwiches and put them on two plates. When she came back, she had changed clothes and her hair was wrapped in a scarf.
“The weather is still foul,” she said.
He tried to eat slowly, but he couldn’t help himself. He wolfed down the sandwich. “At least ice isn’t falling. And the snow seems done.”
“Could be. I looked outside. It’s being blown so much still that you can’t tell which is new and which is old being shifted around by the wind.”
“I put a log on. I’m sorry if that was wrong, but I didn’t want the stove to go out.”
“That’s fine. I told you to make yourself at home.” She busied herself at the stove again, loading in the three last logs. “I’m going to keep this low, same as it was last night. As it is, when we wake up tomorrow morning, it’ll be stone cold. I should think this wood will last us until afternoon. Probably not until nightfall.”
“How long will it stay warm in here, do you think? I mean, after the wood is gone.”
“Depends on if it’s blowing hard. If the wind died down, it wouldn’t cool off as fast. And it depends how cold it will be, how fast the temperature drops.”
“Maybe we should listen to the weather again.”
“Good idea. I see you have breakfast ready. After I’ve eaten we’ll crank the radio up.”
“I’m finished.”
She picked up her plate with the sandwich. “I don’t feel like eating quite yet. You have this one too. I’ll turn on the radio.”
“Okay.” Funny, how listening to a weather forecast could be the most interesting thing on the agenda. Though now that Eve was awake, they could talk and play games.
She made her coffee in the percolator and he trailed after her to see how she did it. “Now I can do it tomorrow before you get up. I mean, if I’m still here.”
“You’ll stay until your mom gets home.”
What Ray thought was, there’s no difference between my house and yours once the stove goes out. But there was a difference. He had company here. And he wouldn’t leave her alone in the cold. That seemed mean. What he said was, “You’re nice to take me in. I wish I could pay you back somehow.”
“Friends don’t pay friends,” she said.
“If the wind dies down, I want to go out and look for wood to burn today.”
“I don’t know that you should.”
“I wouldn’t go past this block. But maybe I can find a dead tree. There are so many down, one of them must be dead already. If you don’t want to give me the ax, I can maybe snap off some branches.”
“Thin branches would not last long. A stove full of them wouldn’t last for more than a couple of hours.”
“But if I got enough of them, it could get us through one more night. It’s worth the effort. I really don’t want to wake up to no heat at all. Do you?”
“No, of course not. Let’s talk about it later though. In another hour or two, once we see how the weather is going and what the forecast promises.”
He finished breakfast, Eve drank a second cup of coffee, and then she pulled out the weather radio. He cranked it up for her, and they listened. The front wasn’t stalled anymore. It was moving to the east. “Snow flurries tapering off by noon. Tomorrow partly cloudy. Chances of precipitation 5% at 9 a.m., and 0% at noon.” But it would be colder, with the high tomorrow only at 21 degrees. By midnight tomorrow, they said, it would be 15. It was about as warm right now as it was going to get for two days.
“That’s going to be cold,” he said. “I’ll go for wood soon, for sure.”
“Your mom would want you to stay safe.”
“She’d want me not to freeze my butt off—or you yours
.” He blushed when he realized he’d referenced her butt. “But you’re right. Let’s not worry about it right now.” He’d go out after lunch no matter what she said. He understood how adults’ minds worked. You gave in to them, and then you went ahead and did what you wanted to.
“At least the end of snowfall will mean they get out and start clearing roads and fixing lines. We might get the phone first. We might get electricity first and we won’t need more wood.”
“We might get cell service on my phone before your phone comes on.”
“Then you can talk to your mom, at least, and reassure yourself that she’s fine.”
He nodded. If she was fine. He hated thinking about her being hurt, though he couldn’t force himself to stop. He needed a distraction from the worry. “You want to play some more Go?”
“Maybe later. I wouldn’t mind reading this morning.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Pick any book you’d like from my shelves.”
“Recommend one. Something warm. Written about somewhere warm.”
She smiled at that. “Let’s see. I’m sure I have something set in the tropics.” She walked over to the bookshelf. “Moon and Sixpence. That’s about the painter Gaugin in Tahiti. But he starts someplace rainy and cold, and it takes a while to get to get to Tahiti, so maybe not that one. Okay, here.” She handed him a book. “Only truly excellent thing he ever wrote.”
Ray read out the title. “Tales of the South Pacific.”
“War in paradise,” she said. “But it’s not so much about the war as about the American soldiers and their downtime between the battles.”
“Okay,” he said. Maybe it’d give him another idea for an AP history paper to write. They had a big final paper due at the end of the year. School seemed far away right now, but it wasn’t really. They settled down on the sofa and both read.
He was horrified when he came to the part about the racist nurse. “What is wrong with this woman?” he said.
“Which one?” Eve asked, looking up from her book.
“The nurse! She hates these kids because they’re mixed race. They’re just little kids.”
“Right. I forgot about that part. She does come across as a little crazed on the topic.”
“Why did you pick this book?”
“It was the first—or the second—book I saw that was set somewhere warm. I had forgotten the nurse with her stupid ideas. Or I remembered them from the musical, I suppose, more than from the book.”
“Musical?”
“South Pacific. It’s made from a couple of the stories in there—the chapters. You’ve never seen it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’d recognize it by now if you had. In the movie, she figures out she’s been an idiot by the end.”
“Does she in the book?”
“I don’t recall.”
“It’s mean of her.”
“Yes. It is.”
“Do you think that’s weird, that she can want to be a nurse and help heal people, and be like that?”
“Good point. I hadn’t thought of it quite that way. It’s a strange contradiction, isn’t it?”
“It’s awful.”
“Now that I’m recalling the book, there’s a lot about race in it. White officers and island girls get together and he talks about how taboo it was back then to think of making that permanent. There’s a terrible white officer at the end of the book who hates the few blacks under his command, but that wasn’t in the musical. I think it’s part of what the author wanted to talk about. To come to grips with, maybe, in his own mind because he’d seen it in the war and didn’t understand it. It may have struck him that they were told they were fighting for freedom and democracy and equality, but they hadn’t achieved it themselves yet.”
“People are weird.”
“They are.”
He blushed again, realizing he’d thought of her as weird just a week ago. And she was different. Unusual. Unique, maybe, with a life full of experiences most people around here couldn’t imagine. What she was wasn’t weird, or if she was, it was a good weird. Interesting weird. But racists weren’t weird. They were just sick and wrong… and as common as dirt. “It’s a good book other than that. I feel like I’m there.”
“Did it make you feel warmer?” she asked with a smile.
“Colder, I think. In comparison.”
“Maybe you should read an arctic adventure book instead. Make you appreciate you’re not stuck on a glacier. I might have a Jack London on the shelf.”
“That’s okay.” He stood and stretched. “I’m tired of sitting. I need to move.”
“You can run up and down the halls if you want. You won’t hurt a thing.”
“I’m going to go out. It’ll get colder, the radio said, so I may as well go out now as later.”
“You’re still stuck on the idea of wanting more wood.”
He nodded. “I don’t want us both to freeze to death tonight.”
“Okay,” she said with a sigh. “I tell you what. I’ll let you use my hatchet. It isn’t as big or heavy as an ax, but you still need to be careful with it. Wear your gloves. Or my work gloves. They’re heavy leather, and too big for me, so they should fit you fine. Don’t chop your fingers off. I wouldn’t know how we’d get you to a hospital if you did.”
“I won’t,” he said. “And I won’t go far.”
“Dead wood, remember, and the fatter the branches, the better. Don’t bring back green wood. I won’t risk a fire. Uncomfortably cold is better than burned to death. A bigger girth means it’ll burn longer, but of course bring nothing bigger around than the stove’s door. And take the tarp from out back to drag whatever you find along behind you. With all the snow, that should be easy to pull along on the surface.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. He went to measure the stove door against his arm. It’d take a pretty fat log to not get through the door. But the stove wasn’t that deep. He’d need to chop the wood into short lengths.
“And have some food first. You’re young, and it’s cold, so you’ll burn through it fast.”
He wanted to get going, but he waited long enough for her to put together a tuna salad sandwich for him.
“We’re nearly out of bread,” she said, giving him the sandwich.
He’d go check his own kitchen again and bring back any food he’d left there. If his mom hadn’t packaged the meals in plastic, he could bring them. Maybe you could chip them out of the plastic and put them in foil? He’d figure it out later. For now, he needed to focus on getting some wood to burn.
Chapter 14
He started at his house. Not only did he want to look for food, he wanted to look at the fallen tree and branches in the backyard to see if any of the wood was dark, like she said dead wood would be. He carried the tarp and hatchet through the house—which was not warmer than the outdoors now. Ray made his way around back to the fallen tree. He brushed snow off a broken limb. It was definitely light-colored, not dead wood like she’d explained to look for. That made sense. The tree had had green leaves all summer. So had the other tree, the one which had not fallen. But that one was an old oak, and it had a few dead branches. They fell from time to time all year, and his mother piled them in a corner of the backyard. In the fall, the year’s pile of them had been taken away the same week that the leaves were picked up.
He kicked around the snow, hunting for oak branches, wishing that his mother had forgotten leaf pick-up day and that the year’s pile of dead branches were still here. He found a few. One was heavy, and he thought it might be green wood. A lightweight branch covered with that scaly stuff—lichen?—was obviously dead. So not just the color but the weight for the size could tell him if wood was dead or not. He collected two dead branches, but neither was as big around as his arm. They wouldn’t keep Eve’s house warm for a half-hour, he’d bet.
He left the tarp with the branches outside his front door and went back inside to the kitchen. His mom was
going to be pissed when she saw this. Not at him, and it wasn’t his fault, but he felt guilty anyway. She had enough to worry about, work and paying bills and stuff, and now she’d have to deal with getting the house fixed and cleaning up this mess. He resolved to help her as much as he could, and without complaining about the work.
But for now, he had a different job to do. Two jobs. Get food, and find wood. There was the half bag of corn and two frozen meals. The fridge compartment may have actually been warmer than the house. The freezer stuff was still frozen hard. He took out one of the pre-made meals, peeled off the cover, and banged it on the only counter to see if the food fell out. It didn’t. He put the cover back on and tossed it in a bag along with the corn. He’d see what he could do with it over at Eve’s. If he could get it hot, he’d come back for the remaining frozen meal. He could eat all of one himself. Eve wasn’t feeding him less than she ate herself, but she didn’t eat much. Maybe old people didn’t.
He carried the food bag and hatchet back outside and locked his front door. It might be stupid of him to bother. The house was breached, but it’d be hard for a thief to crawl past that tree into the kitchen. Also, he suspected that thieves were too lazy to go robbing people in this kind of weather. The wind caught the edge of the tarp and blew the branches off, and the plastic bag of food went tumbling too. He put them back on the tarp and weighed down the back part of it with the hatchet. That’d do to hold the tarp steady until he had more wood to pile on. He dragged it along.
Then he began a search through the cold world for burnable wood. Most of the wood lying in the street was obviously green, from living trees. He hunted down to the end of the block opposite Eve’s direction and didn’t see a thing useful in the street, so he retraced his steps and went the other way. There was one tree, half out of a yard, that seemed to be dead wood, from the color of the trunk where it had split. No branches had come off it. If he wanted one, he would have to chop it off.
The next ten minutes were pretty ones. It didn’t even matter if no one were watching him—he was embarrassed for himself. He had the hatchet, and it seemed sharp enough when he took his glove off and checked the blade’s edge, but he could not make any headway through the branch he’d selected. Mostly, the hatchet bounced off the wood. It was really hard wood or he was really inept, one or the other. Possibly both. He moved down the branch to where it was thinner. That meant less burning time in the stove, but a branch he couldn’t move to Eve’s living room meant zero minutes of heat.
