by Lou Cadle
He looked sheepish at that. “We’re both busy, my wife and me.”
“Sure,” she said, trying to appease him. “It’s a high-stress situation here, too. I’d been pushing you hard, and the situation stresses us all. So it’s perfectly fine to take a week and rest up.” He obviously wasn’t ready to hear she had three weeks’ rest planned for him, so she’d reveal it to him only a week at a time.
He grumbled a bit, but she could tell the fight had gone out of him. “Just keep me apprised,” he said, “of the Jodi-Zach thing.”
“My bad for not keeping you up to date,” she said. “From now on, what I know, you’ll know.”
After a moment, he said, “Pitch.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The pine sap. I have an idea. Can you get me a little bit on a flat rock? Just smear it on there, in the center. Like one of the bigger rocks from the fire ring.”
“Sure. Just a second.”
As she stepped out he said, “And a stick that’s still smoldering, if you can find one.”
The fire at the chimney site still had some coals in it, and she took up a rock and flicked a coal onto it. Then she went to the pine sap sticks and got a little bit onto a twig. She smeared it next to the bit of glowing coal.
And it ignited.
She jerked her head back, not wanting her hair to catch fire. Shielding the flame with a cupped hand, she carried the rock into the cabin. The cabin brightened with the little light.
“Son of a gun,” he said. “I was right. A candle. I can’t work in here without one for much longer. Once those last few boughs are on the roof, it’ll be downright dark in here.”
“We’ll need more than one,” she said. “But we can bring four in here. Or forty. If the flame is contained in the middle of a rock, it isn’t even going to set anything afire.”
“Forty might be overkill, but four sounds about right.”
“Sweet idea!” she said. “What made you think of it?”
“I’m not sure. It popped into my head earlier. Maybe I’d heard of it before. Maybe it was just logic, knowing the sap burned well.”
“Interesting to see how long it will last,” she said.
“What time is it?”
She handed him her watch. “Hang on to it for the day.”
Jodi’s voice came through the trees. Then she laughed.
Hannah felt the easing of tension she hadn’t known she’d been feeling. “Here they are. No need to worry.”
Bob said, “She sounds happy. Just make sure they’re not too happy.”
Hannah grinned. “Will do.”
Jodi and Zach were glowing, and looking at each other with that look she knew so well. She cleared her throat.
Jodi took a last longing gaze before shifting her attention to Hannah. “We were good.”
“I had no doubt,” Hannah said. “Food is ready, so go get some.”
“We found two new plants. They’re on top of the bundles of grass.” They had taken cordage with them and wrapped the grass into sheaves. A pair of greener bits sat on top of them.
“Thanks,” she said. “Go on and eat. We’ll finish the cabin after.” She tested the mortar supply with a finger and then, using a curved piece of bark, scooped more up on top of her last row of bricks. She was halfway down setting the next course when Claire returned, carrying two bowls.
“It’s just herring,” she said apologetically. “There were a couple other kinds of fish, but everyone else snatched those up.”
“Just so I eat. I’m not picky about what.” Hannah accepted a bowl from the girl. “You see a water bottle anywhere?”
“Ummmm. Here,” Claire said, fetching a half-full one for her.
“Thanks.” Hannah washed her left hand with water and began to shovel the fish into her mouth with her fingers. She was finishing as the rest of the kids began trickling back from the lakeside.
Ted said, “It looks like it’ll rain again soon.”
“Yeah?” Hannah said. She upended the bowl over her mouth to get the last of the fish. When she had swallowed, she said, “We’d better finish, then.”
Everyone pitched in to finish the roof. Rex’s idea about hauling the boughs up from the other side was okay, but the ropes got stuck in the roof and had to be fished out with a stick.
Bob yelled, at one point, “Whoever is leaning on the roof, you’re making stuff come through onto me.”
“Sorry,” said Rex. “Just trying to tie this off.”
Zach said, “Maybe we should have done all this before we put the roof on.”
“Too heavy,” Rex called down. “I don’t think we’ll be able to raise it even a few inches to build more on the wall. We’re stuck with it at this height.”
Dixie said, “My head hits everywhere but the center.”
“Yeah, you and Ted and Rex are tall,” Laina said. “I like being shorter for once in my life.”
“Isn’t your dad really tall?” Claire said.
“He is. Six-three. And he said he was still growing at university, so I hope I get a few more inches before I’m done.”
“Got it!” Ted said. “I’m finished on my side.”
Rex still had to finish tying off one bough and put up another. But in fifteen more minutes, they had a completed roof. Rex said, “Let’s see if we can see any holes from the inside.”
All of the kids crowded in, except Nari, who was helping Hannah finish the secondary wall. Hannah listened to them pointing out spots they could see light.
Ted said, “Pretty good for a first try, though.”
Rex said, “Let’s toss some leaves and twigs up there before it starts to rain again.”
Zach and Jodi offered to go gather some and took one of the backpacks and a Mylar blanket to carry them. The blanket that had been used to form bricks was coated with many layers of cracking mud, but Hannah hoped she’d be able to clean it off with a long soak in the lake. If the Mylar peeled off, it’d just be a hunk of plastic, still useful to carry things, but not so much as an emergency blanket.
The two kids came back just as the first drops of rain were audible overhead. Zach upended the blanket, and Rex and Ted flung the material up onto the roof in handfuls. Some skittered down, but some stuck in the pine needles.
Rex said, “Might be better to wait until the leaves are really wet again. It might stay up better.”
“A good wind would blow it away, wouldn’t it?” Claire asked.
He frowned. “Maybe.”
“Let’s think on that,” Hannah said. “But when Nari and I are done with the wall, I’d like to have the memorial service.” She looked up at the gloomy canopy overhead. “Inside, if it’s raining.”
That sobered everyone, and the conversations for the next several minutes were quiet, and only about necessary matters. In pairs, they went to relieve themselves. Jodi and Zach left to refill all the water bottles at the lake. Hannah focused on the wall. It was straight and true. The outer side was studded with thirty stick pegs, most of them slightly curved upward. It was a lot, but she figured some would break over time. Nine people with boots required eighteen pegs just for that. Dixie didn’t have boots. Overnight, the boots could dry completely if it didn’t rain.
If it did rain, they’d get piled up in the center of the cabin. She wanted to lay bricks there, too. No mortar, just a short rectangular platform of bricks to keep everything off the ground in case the rainy season got even wetter.
She and Nari went to the lake to wash the mortar off their hands. Hannah became lost in thought about the service, about what to say, and when to say it.
The rain started, hitting the lake in drops that splashed back. She watched it for a moment, and noticed a thicker patch halfway across the lake. “It’s going to come down harder in a second,” she said.
“How do you know?”
Hannah pointed. “It’s coming closer. Let’s go back.”
They gathered in the cabin. There were candles burning, four of them now, in
the center section. They sat around the light, the flickering light illuminating sad and sober faces. She thought about how long humans had been doing this, gathering around a fire. Gathering to mourn a fallen tribe member.
She wondered how many more times this tribe might have to do it before they found their way home.
She hadn’t organized anything, and when no one spoke for a while, she said, “Bob, would you start?”
“I will,” he said. “I’ve known Garreth since he was a freshman. He was a good student, though I know science wasn’t really his main interest. He liked history, and because he did, we all had protection that first full night, when he thought of western forts, and stockade walls, and helped organize us to build ourselves protection.”
Bob continued to talk for five more minutes. Then they began to go around the circle. Everyone had memories—either from the modern world, or from recently. Nari talked about Traveller and how it had known Garreth wouldn’t hurt it, how he was just that kind of person you could trust.
Hannah listened, and she felt tears fill her eyes more than once. When it came to her turn she said, “I feel responsible for Garreth’s death. I feel like I should have moved more quickly. Or ordered him down the cliff face. Or even had I not been there to change things, I still would have felt responsible, because I took on a leadership role, and I’ve failed everyone twice. M.J. died, and Garreth died, and it’s my responsibility. I know it, and I accept it, and I wish I could promise to each of you that nothing bad will happen to you, that I’ll keep you safe.
“I wish I could say that, but it’s a promise I can’t make. We live in a dangerous world now. A terribly dangerous world. And any one of us might not be alive by sundown tomorrow. We need to help each other, and to watch out for each other, and to make sure the risks we take are minimized.”
She cleared her throat and looked right at Dixie, who hadn’t spoken yet. “And I want to take this chance to apologize again to Dixie. I told her in private, but I wanted to say it in front of all of you. I have never hit another person, ever, before that day. I went crazy for a second, and I hit you, Dixie. It was wrong, and I’m sorry. I haven’t done it since, and I won’t do it again. I might yank one of you back from a cliff edge to keep you safe. I may have to hurt you when I sew up a gash. But I’ll never punch any of you. I feel horrible about it, and that feeling of shame is enough to keep it from ever happening again.” She looked around and met all the eyes that were looking her way.
“And I told Dixie before, and I want everyone to know, I don’t blame her, not anymore. She was afraid of heights. Is afraid of them, still. I think she’d rather not be, and if she had a choice, she wouldn’t be. So Garreth made his choice, the choice to protect her, and he died for it. It was his choice. It was the terror crane being itself, living by the law of the jungle. And it was also my final responsibility. I’m sorry, Garreth.” The tears began to flow, and it was hard to get her last words out. “I miss you.” She wiped at the tears with the back of her hand and nodded to Zach, who was next in the circle.
She had done the best she could to counteract Dixie’s lies. And she had told the truth about being wrong to hit someone. She felt a little bad that she had been, in speaking, as aware of keeping the group together and functioning as on honoring Garreth. But keeping them together was important. And Garreth was gone. Wish to as she might, she couldn’t bring him back.
If you’re listening somehow, she thought at him, I really do miss you. You were the best of us.
When it got to Dixie, she didn’t say much. “He was always trying to give me his windbreaker and stuff,” she said. Then she covered her face with her hands. “I can’t. I’m sorry.” She bent her head and cried, though Hannah wasn’t entirely convinced they were real tears.
Or maybe they were real enough, but she wondered if they were being cried for Garreth.
Chapter 22
The rain continued off and on all afternoon. They stayed crowded into the cabin, saying little, everyone probably still lost in thoughts about Garreth. After a couple hours the roof started to leak, and that forced them out of their inaction. A couple of volunteers went out to gather up more fallen leaves, and Ted let Nari sit on his shoulders and she patched the holes from the inside. It worked pretty well. Give them another few days at patching leaks, and they might have a roof that worked to keep them dry.
The walls were solid, both the brickwork and the mud-patched area above that. Hannah felt pretty good about the effort. After the roof was patched, she got everyone talking again, about what needed to be done next and what was most important to do tomorrow.
Her vote was for building a wood shed. Even a simple lean-to would suffice, as long as they had a dry source for wood. “If this is the start of a rainy season, and not just a two-day storm, we’ll need it. And the sooner the better,” she told them.
“I want to hunt,” Ted said. “And to follow the hell pigs and see what they’re up to.”
Claire said, “I’d like meat, too. I’d be happy with little animals, like squirrels or rabbits, too. And that’s safer than hunting.”
“You need to fish,” Dixie said, “Don’t you?”
“I’m happy to, but I can build snares, too. If someone cast the net twice every day, we’d have meals. Then I wouldn’t need to fish. It’s a lot of time fishing with a pole to catch enough to feed ten people.”
Bob said, “It’s a lot of time to make and set snares, too. And I barely kept up with making cordage enough to build the cabin.”
“True,” Claire said, “Deadfalls are easier. But once they’re set, they take care of themselves. Just check them twice a day, and you might have enough for dinner.”
“I want a bigger animal than a rabbit,” Rex said, “if we can get one. Something that would last two days.”
Zach said, “And plants. We need to get more plants.”
“There’s the cashews,” Laina said. “We never did get a chance to try and figure that out. And the cashew fruit should be ripening soon. They’ll taste better once they start falling from the trees.”
“Other fruit, especially berries, might be ripe,” Hannah said. “We need to explore and see if there are any.”
Jodi said, “We can do that. Zach and I would volunteer, I mean. We’ll go around the whole lake tomorrow. I think it’ll only take a day.”
They continued discussing their plans. Hannah got a fire started at both entrances, though it took some time, as the light rain and the new fire were at odds. The net team went out in the rain to cast for more fish, and an hour later they returned with dinner, fish cooked over still-hot coals and piled into the big pot. Everybody rinsed their hands and ate.
They turned in early, still tired from too little sleep the night before. They were getting used to the sound of the dripping rain, and the roof muffled it, so everyone fell asleep quickly.
*
With the cabin built, they were able to slack off a little. Not much, for there was still a lot to do. But they took time with their meals, and they had even found a new herb. It was a little too pungent to enjoy on its own, but it passed the safety check. When Nari smelled it, she said it would be good in soup, and when she tried adding it, she was proved right. It changed the flavor of the herring, at least, which they all appreciated.
Traps were set. A hunting party went out every other morning for a half-day. Though they caught nothing, Ted said they were learning about the animals’ behavior, so he thought it was worth the trip. She let Jodi and Zach explore around the lake, but she sent Dixie with them, as chaperone. She trusted Jodi’s promise, yes. But it was a full day’s trip, and she thought it was better not to give them that much time alone to talk themselves into having sex. None of the three of them were happy with her decision, but she stuck to it.
Bob continued to chafe at being forced to sit all day long. She brought him some rocks of various types and asked him to try and learn to make spear points. For a few days, that distracted him from his unhappine
ss at being bedridden.
The rain let up for two days, and then it began again in earnest just before noon. She stopped everyone’s other work and made them scurry around to collect grass to make thicker bedding for themselves. If this were the beginning of a wet season, they might not get another chance to collect dry bedding, and it might get colder as it rained more. They’d learned in their first weeks, back in the cave, that it took about eight inches of dry fluffy grass to pack down into a mattress not even two inches thick. But Hannah wanted even more—grass and dry leaves enough to burrow into, to use as both mattress and blanket.
The chimney got built, torn down, and rebuilt into a better design. They kept a fire going all the time in it now. The smoke vented outside, and the hearth created warmth, light, and a place to cook if the rain was coming down so hard that a fire at lakeside couldn’t be used.
The days passed. They didn’t forget Garreth, but they had learned to live without him. If Dixie was continuing to spread rumors about her, the rumors never reached Hannah’s ears. Nari never warmed back up to Dixie, who spent most of her time around Ted or Rex. Hannah wasn’t worried about Ted being swayed by any of Dixie’s lies—she suspected gossip went in one ear for him and then out the other. Rex might be more susceptible to the girl’s manipulations.
But there was nothing Hannah could do about that. She made sure she was never alone with Dixie, but was always with at least one other person as witness.
They fell into a routine, and Hannah had to make sure she rotated them through various tasks, not just the ones they were inclined to do by their own nature. She too made sure she took a turn at the net, at fishing with Claire’s pole, at spear-making, at gathering the cashew fruit and the edible berries they’d found, and at hunting.
It was on one hunting trip with Claire and Ted, more than a week after the cabin had been completed, that they spotted the hell pigs again.
Chapter 23
It had been a while since she’d seen one, and Hannah had forgotten how big the hell pigs were. How ugly. How dangerous-looking. The predators were in a group, sunning themselves. The rain, when it came, waited until about noon. In the morning, the sun was usually out for a few hours before the clouds began to build, always in the west.
