“I just wanted to know.”
They stood there longer.
“When I said we could stand out here longer than you, I was dropping a hint.”
“Oh! I’m sorry. You’re cold, aren’t you?”
“I’m freezing.”
He turned. “Let’s go back to the cabin.”
On their way he said, “You’re not leaving today. I want you to learn how to use that handgun before you leave. You’re taking it with you. You’ll need it so you can look out for Whoops.”
“I told you, I don’t like guns.”
“I’ll show you how to shoot it,” he said dismissing her objection. “You’re going to be glad you have it.”
“Okay,” she said, but she wasn’t so sure.
They got inside and he casually took off his coat and boots.
“I still have to go to the bathroom,” she said.
“Okay.”
She left with her sister and went to the outhouse.
When she returned several minutes later he was getting ready to do something in the kitchen.
She approached him but just stood and stared at him.
He stopped what he was doing and asked, “What?”
She suddenly clutched Whoops tighter and said, “I can’t believe I’m going to do this, but would you hold her for a second?”
He nodded and she passed him the baby. Without even taking a breath, she took off her own coat and boots as quickly as she could then grabbed her sister back out of his arms. “Okay, that’s as long as I can let her out of my reach,” she said and smiled. She went back to “her” chair.
He knew that when she let him hold her sister, she was trying to say a lot of things—to both him and herself—and without really understanding why, he felt like a million dollars.
“Do you mind if I ignore you now and do some busy work here?”
“No. Go ahead. I’m curious as to what you do here. Do you mind me watching?”
“Of course not.”
He went through one of the doors that led into one of the other rooms. When he came back, he had the large pots she’d used earlier along with a cast iron skillet. He put the skillet atop the stove. Then he stepped outside, and true to form, he took the rifle with him. When he returned, both pots had water in them.
“Where’d you get water?” she asked incredulously. “I had to melt snow.”
“I have a well.”
“Is this one of the comforts of home you’ve been hiding from me?”
He smiled and shook his head. “That was something else Sandra didn’t have: A sense of humor. Not having one makes a hard life harder.” He paused. “I don’t know why I’m telling you that.”
He took the pots to the stove and placed them on the hot surface. Then he opened the stove door and fed the flames more firewood.
With his back still to her, he said, “Tomorrow morning.”
“’Tomorrow morning,’ what?” she asked.
“I’ll show you how to shoot the gun.”
“Okay.”
“Then you can leave.”
“Okay. It’s still in my coat,” she added.
“I know. I want you to take it with you whenever you step out that door, even if it’s just to go out to the outhouse.”
“What do I do with it if I need it?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
She smiled at his answer, remembering that she’d already cocked it and put it to his head. She continued to watch him.
Then she cleared her throat. “Do you always have to pull that thingy back to shoot it?”
He turned and looked at her for a second trying to imagine what she was referring to. Then he said, “It’s called the hammer.” He turned back to the stove but spoke louder so she could hear him. “You don’t have to do that with that kind of gun. You can just pull the trigger. But, if you want, you can pull the hammer back until it stops—they call it ‘cocking’ it. You do that if you’re trying to get an accurate shot. Once the hammer’s back, that particular gun’s got a hair-trigger. Just a few ounces of pressure from your finger will fire it. Sometimes they call shooting it that way ‘single-action mode.’ Even though it’s a small gun, it’s pretty accurate when shot that way.”
He kept working.
“It’s a little harder to just pull the trigger without cocking it first,” he went on with his back to her. “But if you do it that way—just pull the trigger—the hammer will go back and keep going back as long as you keep pulling the trigger back. When you’ve pulled it back far enough, the hammer is released, it falls, hits the firing pin, and the gun goes off. It’s quicker to shoot that way, but not as accurate. They call shooting it that way ‘double-action mode.’ I’ll show you, tomorrow.”
“My father had a gun that you always had to pull the hammer back to shoot it.”
He nodded without looking back. “That’s a single-action revolver. It doesn’t have a double-action mode.”
He went to the door again. But this time he just leaned out, grabbed the bag he’d hung under the eaves earlier, and brought it back to the stove.
Stupid perked up when he saw the bag. Danielle realized he knew what was in it.
Zach eyed him warily as he walked past him.
“You get none of this until it’s cooked,” he said to him.
She stayed in her chair with her sister in her arms and watched.
He alternately stood either at the stove or a small counter next to it with his back to her. He emptied part of the bag onto the counter. It was some kind of meat. He started cutting the meat from the largest bones and threw the small pieces into the skillet. Then he took a hammer from the drawer under the counter and began to break up the bones. He put the bones into one of the pots.
The meat smelled good. Too good. She carried Whoops to the stove and stood back but watched it cooking in the skillet.
He glanced back at her. “Try some,” he said.
She stepped up, picked up a fork, and reached out to take a piece.
He stayed her hand. “Don’t take any pieces except the ones that are well-done.”
She hesitated.
“You can take what you want,” he explained. “But I don’t want you, Whoops, or the dog to have any unless it’s well-done. We’ve got to be careful of trichinosis and toxoplasmosis”
She looked at him askance.
“They’re parasites,” he said.
She still didn’t say anything.
“Trichinosis is caused by the trichina worm; toxoplasmosis is caused by a protozoan.”
She still just stared at him and he stared back until she said, “There are no more schools, you know. That’s not stuff I ever learned.”
“It’s not something you’d have learned in school, anyway.”
“I’m here to learn it now,” she said.
Her attitude surprised him. “Are you sure you won’t be bored?”
She didn’t answer. She waited patiently.
He took a deep breath. “There are something like eight kinds of trichina worms, maybe three of them can cause trichinosis. If you eat meat infected with those, their larvae—their babies—get into your intestines and start multiplying. The newborn larvae can then move through your intestinal walls and get into your bloodstream and lymphatic system. Most people who get infected can fight it off, but the worms can get into your muscles, including your heart and diaphragm—that’s the muscle you breathe with, and they can also affect your brain. They can cause fever, soreness and pain, swelling…”
“And they can kill you,” she said simply.
He paused, nodded slowly, and said, “Yes, it’s possible.”
“What about the other one?”
“Toxoplasmosis is caused by a protozoan. It’s usually not fatal, but it can cause encephalitis, a brain inflammation, and it can also affect various organs like your eyes, liver, and heart. It can even affect unborn babies.”
“But it doesn’t us
ually kill you,” she concluded.
“No.”
“But you still don’t want to get it,” she said. “You don’t want to get either,” she corrected herself before he could speak.
“Rare meat is not an option anymore,” he said. “I either cook it fully or I can it. And, when I’m canning it, the heat from the canning process will kill the parasites and protozoa,” he added.
“You’re telling me I can’t have rare meat? Listen, I haven’t even had a piece of meat in three years—except what you cooked in the woods,” she said.
“Were they okay?”
“Okay?” she asked incredulously. “After three years of peanut butter, rice, lousy bread, rice, peanut butter, some kind of flour mush, some kind of cornmeal mush, rice, peanut butter…and did I mention rice and peanut butter?…I discovered I’m really a carnivore.”
And for the first time she saw him smile directly at her. No one other than Whoops had smiled at her in a good while and she still didn’t know whether she wanted to be friendly with him or not. But it made her feel good because she knew he’d smiled because of her.
He used the spatula to scoot selected pieces to the side of the skillet where she stood. “Try those. They’re done.”
She tasted a piece. “Bear meat?” she asked rhetorically.
He nodded
“I think I like it.”
“It’s not bad,” he said. “Take more.”
“I’m having trouble chewing. My mouth hurts.”
He put the spatula down. “Jesus, I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“I’m not trying to make you feel bad,” she said offhandedly. “I deserved what you did for what I said to you.”
“No,” he said turning to her. “No women deserves what I did to you.”
“You haven’t met Abby Brady, have you?” she laughed.
He looked at her quizzically. “I’ve heard of her. Is she really that bad?”
“If you have to ask, you haven’t heard enough. But maybe you’d actually have to meet her to know what I’m talking about,” she said. “In the meantime, keep cooking. Is there a way to cook some so Whoops can have it? She never tasted meat until we met you. And she likes it.”
“A carnivore, just like her sister.”
He deftly cut a piece that was well-done into very thin slices. He then cut across the slices. He then began to chop what was left.
“I want you to know I’m sorry for what I did to you,” he said.
“If you apologize again, I’m going to come after you with the fireplace poker again. Deal?”
He laughed and shook his head. “Deal, I guess. But it’ll never happen again, ever.”
“Where’d you put the poker?”
He laughed again.
“This is a pretty elaborate rig for canning,” she said changing the subject. “My Mom just used a pot with boiling water, and she canned all kinds of things: tomatoes, jam, preserves…”
He interrupted her as he minced the meat. “Tomatoes and fruits can be canned like that. Low-acid things, which includes meats, fish, green beans, asparagus, and a host of other vegetables, stews, and soups, need higher heat. Otherwise, you’re risking botulism, and botulism is nasty…I’m not boring you, am I?”
“No. Actually, it’s interesting.”
“Well, to prevent botulism, you’ve got to use a pressure canner. The pressure canner lets you get the inside of the canner to a temperature higher than boiling water at regular pressure, and it kills the spores that release a bacteria called clostridium botulinum. Those are the bacteria that produce a toxin that can kill you.”
“Kill me?”
“Deader than dead, and it doesn’t take much.”
“Do you drop dead right away?”
“It’s a nerve toxin. It takes a while; usually a few days or weeks. But the symptoms usually show up in the first six hours. What happens is it attacks your nerves, your muscles stop working, and eventually you can’t breathe. You die of suffocation.”
She was quiet while she thought about that.
“What’s the food smell like when it’s gone bad…when it’s got the botulism stuff in it?” she asked.
He turned to her and with emphasis said, “That’s the problem with botulism and its toxin: you can’t see it, you won’t smell it, and it has no taste. But it’s one of the most poisonous substances known to man. Just a small taste of contaminated food can kill you.”
“Then how do you know if the food’s poisoned?”
“You don’t. But if you follow the correct procedures for pressure canning, and heat the food to a high enough temperature, and for a long enough time—and to do that you need a pressure canner, not just ordinary boiling water—not only will the bacteria and toxin be destroyed, but the spores that create more bacteria are also zapped so the little bastards can’t multiply in the jars.”
“What do you do if someone else canned it and you think the food’s no good?”
“If you open up a can of stuff, and you’re thinking, ‘Ah, this stuff may be contaminated,’ heat it to one hundred fifty-eight degrees—that’s Fahrenheit—for two minutes and you destroy the toxins; heat it to one hundred and seventy-six degrees for ten minutes, and you kill the bacteria, too.”
“Isn’t two hundred and twelve boiling?” she asked.
He smiled at her. “The schools might be closed, but you know something. If you boil it for a few minutes, you’ll kill all the bacteria and it’s safe to eat. More importantly, you’ll destroy all the toxin, too. But it won’t kill the spores, which are sort of a hibernating state the bacteria go into when conditions for them become unfavorable. So you can’t just boil something, expecting to kill the spores, and call it canned. But the spores alone aren’t going to hurt you. It’s when they produce the bacteria again, and the bacteria produce the toxin, that you have a problem.”
He abruptly turned to her. “Let me qualify that: They won’t hurt you or me. Babies, under a year old, are at risk.” He looked at Whoops. “That’s why you don’t give newborns honey. Honey may harbor some of the botulism spores. You and I can handle them. Little terrorists, a year or more old, can as well. But small babies, like your sister, may not be able to.”
She thought about it a second. “Where do the germs come from?”
He stopped and turned to her, again. “You’re really interested in this stuff, aren’t you?”
“It’s interesting,” she said.
He turned back to the stove. “They’re all around us. But they can’t live in oxygen—or an acidic environment like you find in fruit jams and preserves. They’re mostly in the soil. But they’re not dangerous unless they’re in an oxygen and acid-free environment. Then they can start reproducing and creating and concentrating their toxin, again, like in a jar of poorly-canned meat.”
She looked at the cutting board he was using. “Are there any here?”
“There may be. But like I say, we usually just coexist with them and they don’t bother us.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Books. I’ve got plenty of them. I read them and I remember a lot of what I read. Some of my books are on canning.”
“I can tell,” she said.
“But,” he continued, “when I can tomatoes, I’ll just use a hot water bath, like your mother did. The acids in tomatoes and fruits kill them, just like oxygen does, and there’s no problem. What you’re doing with the hot water bath isn’t preventing botulism, the acidity does that for you. What you’re doing is killing other bacteria and molds so the food won’t spoil.”
She laughed. “You’re never going to can another tomato for the rest of your life,” she said. “There are no tomatoes left to can. They don’t grow anymore.”
“I grow them,” he said.
“You’re joking. Nothing grows here anymore,” she said.
“Did you notice the frame that’s still attached to the side of the house?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s wha
t’s left of my greenhouse. I’ve got to take the rest of it down because the weight of the snow will ruin it. But I’m going to put a sturdier one up in the spring—if we have another spring, which I think we will. It’ll just come later, and we won’t have much of one nor much of a summer. So to compensate for the lack of a growing season, I start my tomatoes, and a few other things, here in the house, then I transfer them to the greenhouse and start more plants in the house. Then, if and when the ground warms up enough, I transfer the stuff in the greenhouse to the outside and transfer the new stuff I started in the house out to the greenhouse.”
“You’re kidding,” she said.
He pointed with the knife to the two windows on the far side of the room. “When the greenhouse is, up I leave the two windows open during the day because the greenhouse helps warm the cabin and, at night, the fire from the fireplace or stove warms the greenhouse and keeps the plants from freezing.”
She carried her sister to the window and looked at it. She could see where the greenhouse had been attached to the framing.
She looked down at some buckets with plants growing in them then turned to him and asked, “What are these?”
He looked at her funny, as if she should know. “They’re tomato plants. They’re bare, now, because I’ve picked them all off.”
She read his expression. “I’ve never seen vegetables growing,” she said.
“I forgot,” he said.
“That’s okay.
“What are these?” she asked observing some smaller plants also in buckets.
“Hot peppers.”
She wrinkled her nose and said, “Oh.”
“You don’t like hot peppers?”
“I don’t think so. But I don’t know.”
“Never had ’em?”
“Nope.”
“What’s this?” she asked of the next.
“A myrtlewood tree.”
“Why are you growing a tree in your house?”
“I want the leaves. Myrtlewood is in the bay laurel family. I use them in cooking.”
She looked at the next ones. They were pretty good sized. “More trees you’ve got started?”
“Marijuana.”
“No, please tell me what they are. I’m trying to learn something.”
“They’re really marijuana.”
Danielle Kidnapped: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Ice Age Page 20