Hot on the Trail Mix

by P. D. Workman

  “Of course I remember you,” Jenny growled. “I don’t get a lot of women coming in from town to harass me.”

  Erin got closer. She didn’t like towering over Jenny, so she set down her bulky box and sat down on the ground close by, watching Jenny and the baby. “We’re not trying to harass you. We just want you to… be a part of our community.”

  “Well, I’m not, am I?” Jenny challenged.

  “You are. A bunch of the ladies have sent you some supplies. Because of your—Rip dying, and you having a new baby. One of those things that they do to help out members of the community going through life’s challenges. I’m sure you know how these ladies are always making casseroles and desserts when there is a funeral or a new baby born. They know how hard it can be to have to cook on top of everything else.”

  Erin looked at Vic, hoping for some help, but Vic just nodded that she was doing fine and didn’t contribute anything.

  Jenny looked at Erin suspiciously. “The church ladies sent casseroles,” she said. “Because of Rip dying? They hated Rip.”

  “I don’t think they knew Rip well enough to hate him. Besides, that wouldn’t be very Christian.” Erin delved into the box and pulled out a can of soup. “I told them that I didn’t think you had any way to refrigerate or freeze casseroles, so they should send foods that were easy to prepare and eat that didn’t have to be refrigerated.”

  Jenny’s eyes went wide, and the children stopped playing, instantly aware of the food.

  “There are a few things in here that will have to be eaten pretty quickly,” Erin admitted. “Not everything is shelf-stable. But you can eat those things first…”

  “Sometimes we put things in a cold stream to help keep them chilled,” Jenny offered. “I mean… not casseroles, but fruit and vegetables… drinks…”

  “What a great idea. I would never have thought of that.” There were probably a lot of things that Erin wouldn’t have thought about. Not until she was actually out in the wilds and had to think up things that would help her to survive.

  Jenny nodded slowly. She propped herself up on one elbow. The baby stirred and made little mewling sounds, then settled again and was quiet. Erin gazed at him.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Little Ike. After his granddaddy.”

  Ike seemed like a strange name for a baby. But they would probably call him by some nickname until he got older. Peanut. Boo. Junior. He’d grow into his own name eventually. The baby was tiny. Erin could hardly believe that he was big enough to be out of the hospital, but she knew that he had to be a couple of weeks old.

  “What day was he born?”

  Jenny’s brows drew down, and a V wrinkle appeared between them.

  “How much did he weigh?” Erin went on, trying to demonstrate that she was just asking all of the normal questions that someone would ask about a new baby, not being nosy.

  Jenny stroked the top of his downy head with one finger. “The third,” she said finally. “And… we didn’t weigh him right away. I don’t have a scale out here. But we took him to the doctor last week, and they said he was five pounds.”

  “So he’s really small. Was he early?”

  The other woman was still frowning at Erin, not liking all of the questions. “Maybe a little. I usually have small ones. Thank goodness,” she rolled her eyes, “I don’t know how I’d manage to squeeze a bigger one out!”

  Erin laughed. “I’ve heard people say that bigger ones are easier, but I don’t know how that could be true.”

  Jenny put her hand over her lower pelvis. “Ouch. No, I think that’s just a story.”

  “You didn’t have him at the hospital, then?” Vic asked. “Just by yourself? Did you have a midwife?”

  Erin looked again over the little camp. Had Jenny had the baby out there? In a dusty tent, with no doctor around? What if something had gone wrong? What if she had been in trouble or the baby had not been breathing when he was born?

  “I had a friend,” Jenny said cautiously. “Women have been taking care of other women having babies for centuries. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “That must have been scary,” Erin suggested.

  “He’s not my first baby. Maybe for my first one, I’d want a midwife or to be close to a doctor, but I’ve had a few before.” Jenny looked around at her other children, who had resumed playing.

  “I suppose.”

  Jenny shifted the baby, snuggling him up against her body. “He had a bit of jaundice. They get yellow, you know. The ones that are little are more likely to get it. In the hospital, they put them under special lamps. But the sun is just as good. The doctor said that was just fine, as long as he’s not in direct sun for too long. Just getting lots of sunlight on his skin helps break down the yellow stuff.”

  So it wasn’t bad for him to be lying there with the sunlight filtering through the trees onto his bare skin. It was actually good for him. Erin felt a little guilty for assuming that it was bad and that Jenny didn’t know how to take care of him properly. She had lots of kids. Lots more experience than Erin did. Of course she knew what she was doing.

  Erin studied Jenny’s face. She looked tired. What did Erin expect? Jenny had too many responsibilities, all of those children, a newborn, and her husband had just been murdered. Anybody would have been gutted by such an experience.

  She tried to identify what else she saw there. Jenny’s expression was guarded, not liking these women who came to her home expecting her to answer questions and receive their gifts graciously. They should leave soon, let her rest as much as she could.

  But there was more than that. She also looked… haunted. Erin didn’t know how else to classify the emotion that lay underneath everything else. Like she had seen too much and wanted to be finished. Maybe it was depression? Postpartum? That could be devastating to someone with as many responsibilities as Jenny.

  “Do you have someone to help you out?” she asked. “Maybe someone who could take the kids for a little while to give you a break.”

  “Who would take all of these?” Jenny scoffed, nodding toward them. “Besides, they help me out. The older ones.”

  “But maybe someone could take a couple of the little ones for a few days. Or a few families could help…”

  “Farming them all out to different homes? They belong here, not anywhere else.”

  “I didn’t mean permanently. Just for a little while, until you have things sorted out.”

  Jenny lay her head down on the blanket again. “I want my kids close to me. You don’t know what it’s like…”

  She had just lost her husband. Of course she wanted her children to be with her, not taken away. They were a comfort to her. They were the only ones who understood what it was like for her to lose Rip.

  One of the small children approached them. She stood on her tiptoes to look down into the box without getting too close to Erin. “Can I put the food away, Mama?”

  “Yes. Go ahead. If you don’t know where something goes, just leave it in the box.”

  “Is there food goes in the stream?”

  “I don’t know what’s in there. Stay away from the stream right now.”

  She nodded and got closer. Grasping the edge of the box, she pulled it, sliding it away from Erin toward the tents. It took a lot of hard work for her to pull it over the bumpy ground to the kitchen tent, but she persisted and got it there. When a couple of the other children approached to see what was in the box, she chased them away.

  “Selena is a good little mama,” Jenny said distantly. “She’s always so good with the others.”

  “She must be a real help to you.”

  Erin watched Selena pull items out of the box and stack them onto various shelves or corners in the kitchen. She placed the perishables on the table.

  “We should be getting on our way and letting you rest. Will you please let me know if you need anything? The church ladies have added you and the children to their prayers lists. I don’t know if you a
re religious or that means anything to you. But I’ll give you my number, in case you need something.”

  “Really?” Jenny raised her brows. “That’s nice of them. I never thought those ladies would care anything about us. Not the way they turn up their noses at my kids. We don’t need anything,” she shook her head, “so you don’t need to come out here again.”

  Erin pushed herself to her feet. “Okay.” She had done all she could. “You take care, then.”

  Chapter 35

  “You’ve done everything you can,” Vic commiserated when they were on the highway again.

  Erin let out a long sigh. “I know. I can’t think of anything else I could do. I want to help them all out… but what else am I supposed to do?”

  “Nothing. You’ve done everything. You’ve gone above and beyond.”

  “Those kids. They deserve better. And Jenny…” Erin shook her head. “She looks so sad. This should be a happy time in her life, just bringing a new baby into the world. But look at what she is facing. Husband murdered. No home. Living out in the middle of nowhere. Six other kids.”

  “She looked so tired and sad,” Vic agreed.

  “I just want to hug her. To take all of the kids out for ice cream. To make it all right again. But it’s not. Who knows how long it will take for things to turn around for them. If ever.”

  “I know.”

  They drove on for a while.

  “You know, if you really think that those kids are in danger, or not getting enough to eat, you should call social services,” Vic said.

  Erin’s heart pounded painfully. She couldn’t do that to Jenny and her children. Erin knew what it was to be stuck in the system. She wouldn’t do that to all of those kids. Unless…

  “I don’t want to do that. I don’t think it’s to that level yet… I don’t think…”

  “Then… you’ll just have to let it go. You’ve done everything else that you could. If you think that Jenny can’t take care of the kids, then you need to make a report. But if you think she’s doing okay, you’ll just have to let her do it her own way.”

  “There should be lots of berry bushes around there. And other wild foods. There’s fresh water. Fish. Birds. Rabbits. Even if Jenny doesn’t hunt, they keep saying that the families care for each other, that the community will step up. So they’ll all help her when our food runs out.”

  “There won’t be berries for a couple more months,” Vic said. “But the rest of that… yeah. Maybe Willie and I will take a couple of hunting weekends and drop some game off for them.”

  “If they would take it.”

  “They will if they’re hungry enough.”

  They covered a few more miles before Erin spoke again, so frustrated, her heart feeling like it was being wrung like a wet sponge. “What if one of those kids gets hurt or sick? What are they going to do?”

  “Drive them into the city. Go to the hospital there. The same as if a child in Bald Eagle Falls got really sick.”

  “But they don’t even have phones. Or computers to look up symptoms to decide if it is something serious or not. They can’t do anything. And what if Jenny is hurt? She injures herself chopping wood or picking up the baby, or scalds herself making breakfast. Who is going to help if she’s too badly injured to drive herself?”

  “We can’t make those decisions for her, Erin. She has to think about it herself, figure out what risks are reasonable. I don’t know what else to say. It’s true of anyone in town, too. We can’t control what people are doing in their own houses. Whether they are cutting something the wrong way, or pouring lighter fluid on a fire, or stepping out into Main Street without making sure there isn’t any traffic first.”

  “Step in front of Beaver, and that could be the end of it,” Erin muttered. She laughed bleakly, but there was no joy in it. She didn’t snap herself out of her funk with the joke.

  “Yes. There’s danger everywhere, and we can’t do anything about the people who decide to take risks that we wouldn’t take. Jenny might think that you’re taking stupid risks by living in town, where there are people living practically on top of you. Working in the heat every day. Getting up before the sun just to bake bread for people. Even just making gluten-free products when only a tiny percentage of your customers have celiac disease. She’d think you were stupid, risking your business for such a small segment.”

  “She’d be wrong.”

  “Yes. She would. You’re running a profitable business and providing an important service. That was the right choice for you.”

  Erin nodded. “I guess everybody makes different life decisions. But mine don’t affect any children. I don’t have to worry about whether my kids can eat based on my choice of gluten-free or regular bread. When it’s your kids, you have a bigger responsibility. You’re not just choosing what you prefer.”

  “I agree. I’m just saying you can’t take it to heart. There’s nothing you can do, and she’s allowed to make her own choices. If it’s not endangering the children, maybe it’s time to just let it go.”

  “Okay. I will.”

  Erin was not prepared to have Lottie Sturm show up on her front steps. She found the woman difficult enough to deal with when she came to buy bread at the bakery. She was constantly complaining and correcting other people. If Erin was not around or paying attention, she would start preaching at Vic or railing about the evil choices of modern-day youth. She had been warned more than once to mind herself while she was there, but if she thought she could get away with something, she would.

  Erin opened the door and didn’t know what to say to Lottie. She forced a smile and nodded at her, waiting for her to state her business.

  “We’ve been praying over those poor Ryder children,” Lottie explained, fluttering the paper that Erin had given her at the ladies’ tea that morning. Had she been praying ever since then? And who was ‘we’? Erin knew that Lottie was good friends with Cindy Prost, who was Bella’s mother and another difficult-to-manage customer. Were she and Lottie praying together? Or was it a whole covey of the Baptist ladies? It had been a long day, and Erin was sure their knees must be tired and their mouths dry if they had been praying all that time.

  “That’s so kind of you,” Erin said. “I saw Jenny this afternoon, and I told her that you were. She seemed… it seemed like it meant something to her.”

  “It should,” Lottie agreed in a firm voice. “I came by to find out if you had any information on the baby? I understood that you were going to get its name and birthday as well.”

  Erin nodded. “Yes. Of course. It’s a boy. Ike. And he was born on the third.”

  Lottie fished in her purse for a pen. Erin knew she should invite Lottie in to make it easier for her to juggle things, but she didn’t want to have to entertain the woman any longer than was absolutely necessary. She waited while Lottie got the pen out and then lay the paper flat against the door to write the information. She frowned and shook her head.

  “No, I’ve already got an Ike, age five.”

  “Well… that’s what she said. Maybe the school got something wrong.”

  “You wouldn’t have two Ikes in the same family.”

  Erin had been in foster families where there were two children with the same name. But that was foster care, not a family naming two of their children the same thing.

  “Well… it does happen sometimes. People give their children the same name, but they go by a second name or a nickname. Like… George Foreman and Michael Jackson.”

  Lottie rolled her eyes and shook her head. Erin didn’t want to hear her rantings about the people Erin had picked as examples. “Maybe they’re both named after a grandfather, or it’s a family name. Vice Principal Fitzroy wouldn’t necessarily know if the boy who went to school went by… I don’t know, Charles instead of Ike. He just gave me the first names of the kids that showed up on his records. That’s different than actually knowing the kids and what their preferences were.”

  “I suppose that’s it,” Lo
ttie said. She wrote the information down with a scowl. “I don’t know how we’re supposed to pray for two separate children with the same name. We have to have some way of differentiating them.”

  “You could say ‘Ike who is six and Ike who is a baby,’” Erin suggested. “But isn’t your God all-knowing? So he would know even if you called them both by the same name. He wouldn’t even need names.”

  “You need their names,” Lottie argued. “That’s how you do a prayer list. You have to have names.”

  Erin shrugged and shook her head. “Well, now you have the names.”

  Lottie muttered something under her breath and turned away. Erin waited until Lottie was at the bottom of the steps and quietly closed the door behind her. She let out a whistle and didn’t know how else to react. Laugh at Lottie? Call Vic and tell her about the conversation? She felt silly and giddy and knew that she had probably been up for too long and needed to go to bed.

  “Holy cow,” she said aloud to herself. “I do declare!” She giggled at herself.

  Erin was restless knowing that Terry was on night shift. He had been doing mostly afternoons since he had gotten back from his leave, which was good for all of them. She didn’t worry much about that. Because of his brain injury and insomnia, the sheriff had promised not to put him on nights. But Terry had since recovered from his constant headaches and insomnia. The sheriff had decided it was time to put him back into the rotation. The others had had to cover all of the night shifts, and Terry said it was time for him to start pulling his weight again.

  He’d been doing really well, but she couldn’t help worrying that it could set him back again. The doctors had said that he needed to get a good night’s sleep if he were going to recover fully. They called for good sleep hygiene habits, which Erin knew meant going to bed and getting up at the same time every day. Not working various different shifts that meant that he had to sleep during the day sometimes and the night others.