by Clara Hume
The way he sat in that little rocker chair was a memory to stay with me always, with his blue-gray eyes settled on some horizon only he could see, always looking past or forward, never toward the now, with his bony legs and arms shifting around, his salt and pepper hair extending past his shoulders, and a thick moustache needing a trim.
Jimmy liked to whittle. He just did it to have something to do with his hands, but never really made anything. Cigarettes were harder to come by these days. Last fall, when the general store finally closed down permanently in Sandpoint, Jimmy went and got all the cigarettes they had left, and then started trying to grow his own tobacco on his side of the mountain too. He grew some here and there but not enough to keep up with his habit, so he had to conserve. Since he couldn't chain smoke like he used to, he would whittle to keep his hands busy.
"Yeah, I wonder if this old screwed-up Earth is going to shrivel up and die," he said. "I ain't seen days this hot since I courted Mary Lou Bridger in high school. Since I got caught stealin' steaks from the Shop n' Go. Since I don't know when."
I tossed him a wet washcloth I was trying to keep cool with, and he let out another howl.
Then he said, "When you see a bear, you know life be good again. I 'taint see no bears since a few years ago."
His eyes got that faraway look, and I knew what he was thinking.
I washed Jimmy's clothes, and he bathed himself in rainwater between gulps of booze. Afterward, he seemed forlorn. "Girl, I ain't sure what' I am gonna do. I guess I'll die up at my old place all alone."
"Jimmy, you know you can come down and stay with me. No sense in talking like that." Even as I said it, I thought if he did ever stay with me there would be some strict ground rules about him bathing a bit more.
"I didn't mean I am going to die today," he mumbled, rolling his eyes. "But, shit, sometimes I feel like what's the use. I am gettin' old. Old as the hills. Old as the most aged whiskey they ever made. You best be doin' your own future plannin', get yourself a stud so you can bring some new life into this old dead world." Jimmy wasn't the type to lament. He sounded more like a philosopher that night. I was sorry I hadn't taken Leo up to meet the old man when he was here, but I hadn't known Leo that well yet.
"I met someone over the summer. He's ... I don't know if he'll come back."
At that, Jimmy lightened up and slapped his knee. "Do tell, young lady. Did you, you know, do it?"
"Jimmy!" I couldn't believe he would ask. "We spent all of a few weeks just barely talking before he had to go to where his mama used to live in Montana. He says he'll be back. And no, we never did it."
But Jimmy wouldn't be satisfied with this answer. He said, "Girl, you gotta get that man into your pants. He be thinkin' one thing: you are a beauty, that's fer sure, and he be wantin' to have a piece of you. Holy Jesus, don't deny him. I can tell from that shit-eating glint in your eye, you want him to come back."
I rolled my eyes at him.
Poor 'ol Jimmy got snookered that night and ended up passing out on the porch like usual. He could've come in and slept on the sofa, but was too drunk to stand up. So I let him snooze on the porch, and by the time his clothes were dry the next day, he headed up the mountain with a whistle and a tune.
That was my only visitor, outside Daniel and Elena, until Leo came back to the mountain.
***
Leo came back about six weeks after Jimmy's visit. In that short time, the heat had vanished and the cold arrived. Leo wore a thick winter parka. His face wasn't as tan as it had been, but was still dark. His light blue-green eyes peeked out the parka hood brightly, but his face seemed thin. We had a nice chat that night but fell asleep early due to being tired—him from his travel and me from everyday survival up here in snowy Idaho.
The day after his return to us from Montana, I went out to the stables to feed the horses. Leo brought in more firewood and then went looking for winter berries and meat. I went over to visit Elena, who was still in bed. She was sore from the miscarriage and hung over. Daniel watched the kids in the other room.
I sat next to my best friend, and she said, "Have you guys done it yet?" Her eyes seemed bruised by weariness, her hair long and gloomy.
I laughed. "You're as bad as Jimmy Coombs. Not hardly."
"Soon you'll learn that in winters like this, it's better to snuggle up with your mate. Especially in these northern winters."
"He's not my mate."
"It's time you get one," she said.
I almost said why. So we could reproduce and bring a child into a dangerous world? But I couldn't say that, not with her losing one and with two other kids in the next room.
"You're as bad as Jimmy," I repeated.
I moved my hand to wipe some hair out of Elena's face. She seemed too pale. She forced a smile and said, "No, I mean it. He came back. He didn't come back for us, but for you."
"We're just getting to know each other. Don't be funny," I said.
We talked and had tea, and I left her to return to a home that was now being occupied by a man I felt I barely knew. His physical height inside my small cottage might be hard to get used to. He was stoking the fire when I came in the door with the wind. The fire he had started and stirred was bright and full. He turned to look at me as he sat on the stone below the hearth. I shut the door quickly, shivering.
I nodded to him and went on my business of grabbing a kettle, filling it with snow, and hanging it above the fire. We would have coffee, and later more pork broth and bread.
Leo knew about the hog and said, "Meat sure is a luxury these days."
I nodded. "Almost hated to kill the thing, but unlike bears and fish, pigs seem to be more abundant."
"Lotsa feral things on the road too, Fran. Dogs, for instance. I hope you think about your trip long and hard."
I didn't have much to say to that. When I started making my mind up about things, I could be stubborn.
Not long afterward, the sun began to disappear, taking with it the long shadows of the frigid day and ushering in a cloud cover, under which specks of ghostly diamonds filled the sky, brushing across the window above the couch. It was time for his rum and my wine.
No matter how many goods and food we were low on these days, we had plenty of booze. It was the one thing my mom and Elena's dad had hoarded throughout their lives, and of course it stayed good for a long time. We also made our own.
Leo lifted his glass to me, and we toasted to nothing. His eyes seemed cat-like, and for a small moment in time he looked familiar, but I couldn't place him.
"What was your old life like?" I asked.
I knew he didn't want to tell me. But what else was there to talk about other than boars, horses, and grains?
"I'd rather hear yours," he said huskily. He arose, his tall frame casting a shadow across the wooden floor. He moved to the couch, and I followed. We had to stay warm.
I was sipping wine with gloved hands and wrapped up in Mom's old quilts, watching Leo's expression. "I asked you first," I said.
Leo didn't have time to answer, for a hefty pounding rattled my door. I, thinking it was Daniel or Elena, jumped off the couch to look through a small window next to the door, but what good that did with heavy snow blurring a dark night. Elena or Daniel wouldn't come down at this hour unless something was wrong. If something was wrong, they would call on the walkie. I grabbed the rifle by my door anyway, and saw Leo flank the side of the door to back me up. I pointed the rifle dead toward the entrance, when Leo opened the door.
A man fell inside, his arm profusely bleeding. His face was distorted in pain, and I could see his dark, brown eyes struggle to focus. I did not drop the rifle, but said, "Leo, in the kitchen—towels."
Leo sprung away and returned quickly, dish towels in hand. Mostly rags, but they were clean. He laid the stranger out on the floor flat, pulled him over to the fire for light and warmth, and began maneuvering a heavy olive-colored wool coat off the man. The sleeve on the coat had several tears, and when Leo got the jack
et off, found that the matching gashes on the man's skin were not critical, but deep enough to cause all the bleeding. Leo put pressure on the wounds and tightly made a tourniquet with one of the rags.
I set the rifle on the floor next to Leo, and went to retrieve warm water from the fire and antiseptic from the bathroom. I brought a sewing kit too. In no time, we had cleaned the wounds, stitched up the gashes, and wrapped the arm in bandages. But there were other issues. The man's right foot was white, and the left foot completely frozen and the color of grayish yellow.
The stranger was in too much pain to speak, but he moaned when we asked him to hobble over to a chair near the fire. I put a basin of warm water at his feet, and then retrieved extra blankets from the basement. Meanwhile, Leo checked the man's hands and body for other signs of frostnip or bite. Leo found thick socks and another set of man's clothes in his pack.
I finally asked, "What happened? Where did you come from?"
Though some of the man's extreme limbs were cold, on his face were drops of perspiration. He looked to be in his thirties. His hair was to his shoulders, brown, and stringy. His eyes looked like almonds. His skin golden and dirty.
"Name's Caine Robinson." He had an accent. Australian, I thought. "I was traveling with friends, but they got sick, died down in Sandpoint. I tried getting up the mountains looking for shelter." Caine was a little breathless as he spoke, some out of fatigue, some out of the physical and emotional drama he'd been dealing with.
"You came up the mountains in the winter?" Leo's voice sounded disbelieving.
"No," said Caine.
He started to say something else, but I said, "Let him be."
I pulled Caine's feet out of the water; they had thawed, but the left foot appeared to be worse. I found gauze in the cellar, and wrapped his feet before covering them with socks. Then Leo helped me to remove Caine's frozen damp clothes and dress him. We wrapped the man in several blankets and moved him closer to the fire to continue to warm up.
Leo poured a shot of rum, and Caine looked at it longingly. Leo poured him a glass too, but I said, "You shouldn't drink right now. Your frostbite needs circulation to heal."
Caine shrugged and threw the shot down his throat anyway.
I sat down on the rug in front of the fire and sipped a mug of red. Leo seemed to be on edge, like he didn't trust the guy. My impression, after I put the rifle down, was that he was not dangerous.
"So maybe now's a good time to tell us where you're from, Caine." Leo said, almost accusingly. His cold eyes kept a watchful gaze on the stranger. You never knew who you could trust these days. Each stranger was a potential killer or a gentle hobo.
"Sure, no problem, mate," said Caine, willingly, but he looked to be in pain. " I'm from Miami. Originally Adelaide, but I've been in the states since I was a teenager. Came over with my father after our ranch land dried up back home."
As he spoke, he took another glass of rum offered by Leo. I gently moved the bottle away after that and whispered, "You need your toes."
"My pops died back a couple years ago. I headed north with some friends. We were destined to go to Canada. It's taken me a year to get this far. I just got to Sandpoint this past summer."
"And what made you stop here?"
Caine said, "My older brother had just come back from Alberta. We dreamed of building a homestead somewhere. We're both in construction, ya see. But he said the land up there wasn't at all as he thought. Where they had mined the oil sands, it was mile after mile of black land, dead animals. The Athabasca was plum choked to death. The glacier feeding it was long gone. The Boreal greatly distraught. There were some natives up there trying to nurse it all back to health. They'd come over from British Columbia. They say the bears and wolves might be gone. Can't prove it though."
I cringed. Up here on our mountains, we too had lost some species. Not the wolves, though. At least we had a pack nearby I could hear. I knew they bred more under stress. But I hadn't seen a bear for years. "We've got wolves here, plenty of them," I pointed out.
"Great Bear Rainforest I'm talking about," said Caine. "The wolves up there by the coast ate salmon. They would swim to nearby islands if they could, and had a diet based on the sea. It was the weirdest thing, my brother said. Though he didn't go there himself, he was told this by the natives."
I drank a big gulp of wine. I hadn't thought the world had really gotten that bad. I remember before the tipping point when we heard the last wild tiger died. And then shortly after that, the last tiger being detained in a preserve died. Right after that, I was babysitting one of my mom's friend's girls, and the little girl said, "What's a tiger?"
I said, "It used to be an orange and black striped animal. One of the prettiest big cats you ever saw." She didn't believe me, and when it occurred to me that no more children would see any real tigers, I knew we had entered a world not like the old one.
Leo sat on the hearth, and firelight shadowed his face. He said, "So, you aren't going up there after all?"
Caine said, "I wanted to go. I'm not so sure now. It's not the Promised Land everyone says. Thing is, I'm all the way up here already. My brother, he got the Dengue this summer and then was gone. I took up a little place down by the lake that way a couple months ago."
He pointed with his good arm toward Lake Stardust. "But winter came, and the place had no heat at all. I went hunting just yesterday and saw smoke coming out of your chimney up here. That's how I figured someone else was around. I trekked up here today for help."
"Where's your stuff? How were you hunting?" Leo was starting to believe Caine now, but had questions.
"I got attacked by something out there just an hour ago. You saw my arm. I think it was a bear, but it was so dark. It attacked, and I stabbed it with a knife and it ran off. My stuff is scattered just a few hundred yards away. Got a knife, another pack, and a bedroll out there."
"If there's a bear, he's hungry," Leo said, staring out the dark window.
My instinct was that we should feed it. Get it full and fat for the rest of the winter, so it could do its natural thing. I wasn't sure whether these men would think the same thing.
Leo arose from his place by the fire and walked over to the door, where he began pulling on boots and dressing himself.
There would be no stopping him, so I didn't say a word. He pulled a 9mm out of his own pack. A gun I never knew existed, though it didn't surprise me. Leo was full of surprises, and maybe I would've found out more about him tonight if Caine hadn't shown up. Maybe I would also have gotten around to finding out why Barley, from the beach last summer, couldn't call him Leo.
Leo handed me the gun and said, "Watch yourself."
I nodded and held onto it. He asked Caine. "Where's your knife?"
"It's either sticking in that bear or lying bloody out there in the snow."
Leo was out the door, and I told Caine I'd make some tea and to quit drinking rum.
Daniel—Chapter 6
After tending to the sheep one morning, I decided to take the twins up the mountain. Seems like several blurry years ago as I write this even though it was just the other day and I'm only now writing about it. It was still snowing that day, but was not as cold as the day prior. The flakes teased the children's eyelashes, which were dark and long like their mother's. Beautiful eyes. Kristy stuck her tongue out and waved her hands. I put her in the baby carrier on my back and headed out. Cameron walked and held my hand. Elena was at home, tired. She didn't look well, so I wanted to give her some peace today after her miscarriage.
Kristy asked, "Papa, where we goin'?"
I said, "We're going to find some nuts. Some whitebark pine nuts. We'll take them to Mama and sprinkle them with cinnamon."
Cameron squealed and let go of my hand to run ahead. He was by far the more independent of the two. Kristy clasped her hands and let out a screech. I was consistently amazed by the fact that something as tiny as nuts and cinnamon could trigger such joy from a child. I knew that these little live
s would be forever enchanted by a memory of today. I did what I could do to help them along.
We set out in the morning, when a pale sun narrowly broke through a barrier of stratus clouds. The snow begged on and off, making the day seen fickle. I listened to Kristy and Cameron's soft noises, their attempts at speech and self-occupying imagination. The weight of my daughter was a reminder of life and newness. The way my son ran forward as best as he could made me wonder about the adventure he felt. Everyone takes small steps outside their home when they are young, and then larger steps. I figured that to him, to Kristy, this milestone of discovery and link to the mountain would stay with them until the next time we trekked out, and the time after that, allowing them to encounter more and more and get to know their nature.
We had not been too sure how many children were being born, or surviving, these days—and it was hard to find any news anymore. We wondered if down in the rumored government bunkers there might still be an intricate network of information, but nobody seemed to really know, or be able to share information, except for the occasional blips on satellite radio coming through transistor. Up here on the mountain, we'd ceased to be that curious, for in our minds, survival without old creature comforts seemed to be truly rich. If we wanted to communicate with surviving neighbors, we'd hike a mile or more to do it.
But who knew what was going on underground or in the rest of the world.
I walked silently, only responding to the occasional question from Kristy—the more talkative of the two—how soon will we get there?
"We don't have a destination."
"Our destination is nuts," said Cameron, flubbing up the word destination so that it sounded like deshinay.
I hiked up a path trekked by ranchers back when they raised cattle. Fran's cabin was down the hill a little, on the same wide stretch of meadow and plateau as our place. The ranchers had blazed a path from the stables and up a steep incline to a mountain stream, where we still got fresh water. The pine groves were up even further, and the path narrowed and became more overgrown with weeds in the summer. But this time of year it was covered with snow. The further up we went, parallel to the now icy creek, the deeper and thicker the pine groves were.