by Lou Cadle
Nari and Ted had just hurried off when Claire and Rex returned with an arm full of evergreen boughs for roofing material.
“If it keeps raining like this,” Rex said. “We aren’t going to be able to mud the walls.”
True. That was the plan, to weave flexible branches between the support posts, and then to plaster grass to them with mud. If they kept working at it, in a couple days, they should have all the holes filled in with mud. For the roof, they were going to lash evergreen boughs to the structural members, starting at the bottom and working their way up, overlapping them like shingles. In the spaces in the roof, they planned to bring over packs full of fallen leaves from the debris huts and fill in. They had thought it would be waterproof enough.
But with the way the rain was falling now, she wondered if it would be. Maybe this was just an isolated storm. If they were entering a rainy reason, they’d have to think harder about waterproofing the roof somehow, or they’d spend many a miserable night.
Claire brushed herself off. Then she put up a finger and beckoned Hannah with it. When Hannah came to her side, she said, “Need to talk.” And she pointed away from the clearing.
Maybe some issue about menstruation. Hannah and the girls had worked out ways to cope with that, but what she’d give for an airdrop of tampons from the future. “Be right back, guys,” Hannah said, and followed Claire out into the woods.
Claire walked some distance, and finally Hannah stopped her. “If you’re worried about them hearing, I think we’re far enough away.”
Claire gave a nod. “Dixie is talking.”
“Okay.” Hannah raised her eyebrows asking for more.
“About you hitting her.”
“I’m sorry I did that. As I told her.”
Claire gave a frustrated shake of her head. “Not then. Here.”
Hannah was confused, and then she understood. “She told you I hit her again? Recently?”
Claire nodded. “And she had bruises.” She put her hand around her own upper arm to show where.
“That….” Hannah didn’t finish the sentence aloud. But in her head, she had several choice words to describe Dixie. Again, she couldn’t stop the thought that if Garreth had just climbed down the damned cliff, and left Dixie to fend for herself, the result would have been better. Dixie dead and Garreth still alive? That was a result she could embrace. But here was Dixie, no longer tormenting Garreth.
No, I’m her new victim, apparently.
She focused on Claire. “You understand I didn’t, don’t you?”
She nodded. “I do.”
The implication was not lost on Hannah. “Who believes her?”
Claire just shrugged.
“It hasn’t gotten back to Bob, obviously, or he’d have talked to me.”
She shook her head.
“Hurts you to talk, still?”
“Sorry, yeah,” Claire said.
“No, don’t worry about it. Save your voice. And I appreciate your telling me, but it’s not your problem to worry about. Let me work it out on my own, okay?”
Claire looked doubtful.
To tell the truth, Hannah was doubtful, too. She wasn’t sure how to approach this. Have a group meeting? They were overdue for a memorial service for Garreth anyway. Talk to Dixie? She couldn’t imagine that would accomplish anything. If humbling herself after the snake incident hadn’t eased the girl’s anger or vindictive urge, she doubted a second talk—and this one far less apologetic—would do the trick.
I could just murder her.
Pleasant as that thought was right now, of course she wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Okay, maybe could, but she wouldn’t. She was the grownup here, and she had to find some way to deal with what was just adolescent crap.
When they got back to the clearing, Bob was alone, eating fish from one of the small bowls. “Soup’s on. I got a waiter, but you two will have to go get your own.”
Hannah went to the fire and looked around at all the faces. Dixie was talking to Ted, who had glanced up at Hannah and smiled. Rex gave her a smile, too. She tried to work out if anyone had seemed angry with her, or afraid to be with her, or had been refusing to meet her gaze. Nothing came to mind. Zach and Jodi and Ted had been willing to come rescue her yesterday. Nari and Dixie still seemed not to have healed their friendship.
So whatever damage the girl had hoped to do to group relations hadn’t happened…. Yet.
“Forgot something,” Hannah said. “Save a fish for me.” She trotted back to the clearing, over a path beaten down now by so many trips back and forth.
She stepped inside the door and sat next to Bob.
“Finished already?” he said.
“Something more important has come up.” Quickly, she repeated what Claire had told her.
Bob took a minute to think. He said, “Well, I hate to say it and risk angering you, but you shouldn’t have hit her in the first place.”
“Don’t you think I know that? I regret it. Not as much as I regret Garreth dying. And I dislike the girl, to be sure. But I apologized to her.”
“You did? When?”
She wished he didn’t sound so surprised. He must think she was as childish as the kids. “Yes, I did. The night Claire was attacked by the snake, and the three of us were alone. Claire may even have overheard. That, I don’t know. You can ask her that yourself.”
“I don’t need a witness corroborating it,” he said. “I believe you.”
“Oh good, so you think I’m out of control and violent, but you don’t think I’m a liar. That’s something.”
“But you were out of control and violent,” he said, his tone reasonable.
“Shit.” She hated to remember it. “I know. What should I do now?”
“What should we do? This is something we need to address together, I think.”
“I don’t believe anyone is afraid of me. They are all acting normally enough. Or the same as they have since we arrived here.”
“I need to think about it,” he said. “There’s someone coming.”
Ted appeared a moment later, carrying the Mylar blankets. “They’re still wet.”
The rain had let up a little, but it was still dripping through the trees. And it would be for an hour or so after the actual rain stopped.
“I’ll stick them back in my pack anyway,” Hannah said. “There’s nothing that dampness can hurt in there, not any more. Don’t let me forget to dry them off later, though, okay Ted?”
“Sure thing,” he said. “They’re banking the fire. What am I supposed to do next?”
“I need to eat,” she said, taking the empty bowl from Bob. “I’ll be back in five minutes. Why don’t you get the afternoon’s work organized, Ted?”
For the rest of the day, she fretted over Dixie and her lies. It could tear apart the group. Garreth’s death might have, but they seemed to have recovered well enough to function. She didn’t doubt everyone still thought of him, that everyone still grieved him. But they have moved forward, of necessity, and pulled together to get the work done.
One person, trying to undermine authority, trying to spread malicious gossip: that could do damage. And once the cabin was built, and roofed, there would be more free time. What was that old saying about idle hands? Something about the devil, so it must be biblical, but she couldn’t bring it to mind.
She could keep them busy learning new skills, making basket backpacks for everyone, making hand axes and scraping tools, hunting grazing animals, maybe even building an addition on to the cabin. But she couldn’t muzzle Dixie.
She could keep Dixie by her side at all times, so she wouldn’t have the chance to gossip.
Hannah recoiled inwardly at the thought. Why should I be punished?
She sighed and wished that she could go back to the beginning and manage to dislike the girl a little less. Or maybe that wouldn’t matter. Maybe Dixie would have caused some sort of trouble, no matter what Hannah thought about her. So while wishing for things that couldn’t c
ome true, Hannah may as well wish her way back to the museum, to when M.J. allowed the girl to go on the hike dressed inappropriately. She could have spoken up and said no. It’s too dangerous. She stays here.
M.J. may have had GS status over her—and in the hierarchy-crazy world of the National Park Service, that mattered—but rangers had some law enforcement status. She might have been able to force her will onto him.
But she hadn’t done that. And now she was stuck with the consequences of her actions. Of all her actions.
So don’t blame Dixie, blame yourself. You’re responsible for your part in all of this.
Chapter 20
The rain picked up again, and the rest of the afternoon was miserable. The wind picked up, too, and though it didn’t blow on them directly, it rustled the leaves overhead. Occasionally, a strong gust would shake the trees enough to dump more water on their heads.
Ted, Rex, and Claire took turns standing on the wall and tying pine boughs onto the roof. It was obvious by mid-afternoon that they weren’t going to finish today, and when Rex slipped and fell off the rain-slicked wall, she called a halt to the work.
Rex swore he was okay, and he seemed to be no worse for the fall. But it could have resulted in a broken bone, and she did not want to try treating one of those with no equipment. Or with equipment, for that matter. She was no medic and among the many lessons she’d learned here was that she had no desire to become one, should she ever return home.
“We’ll be wet tonight without a roof,” Ted said.
“We’ll be wet tonight no matter what,” Hannah said. “Let’s build a pair of fires just outside the openings. And get the wall built up in front of the main door, so it’ll reflect heat back into the cabin. That’s our best chance of keeping warm. And of drying off once the rain stops.”
She sent a team off to gather the driest wood they could find. If it was going to rain often, they also needed to build a shelter for firewood, to keep it dry. She took Ted with her to gather some coals from the cook fire. Nari and Zach brought over another load of bricks to bake, including some curved ones built to Rex’s direction for the chimney.
Ted had formed tongs again from wood here, and he was the deftest with using them. She had him move some coals into the big soup bowl and she carried it back to the cabin. Or partway. The bowl got too hot, and she had to put it down about half of the way there. Ted took off his shirt and used it as a hot pad, carrying the bowl the rest of the way.
They built one fire, in the chimney opening, and then they built up the reflecting wall, using Rex’s water-bottle leveling method.
Claire said, “Fish should be biting well, with the rain.” Her voice sounded a little better.
Hannah said, “Sure, go on. Just not alone.”
Ted said, “I think all the predators are hiding from the rain.”
Dixie said, “They’re smarter than us, then.”
Bob said, “There’s nowhere for us to hide, I’m afraid. And now I need someone to smash more stems for me for fiber.” Among their many experiments with materials for cordage, they had found a plant with woody stalks that, when you smashed them, had interior fibers that worked well for cordage. They weren’t very long, but everyone in the group had grown adept at splicing shorter pieces into longer ropes, staggering the splices so that the cords were less likely to break. She wasn’t allowing Bob to pound the stems. Even that much activity would be dangerous, if he had indeed had a heart attack.
She had avoided thinking about it often, not because she wasn’t worried, but because there was nothing she could do to help Bob. If she could find a stand of willow trees, she suspected that willow bark tea every day might work as a blood thinner. But either willows hadn’t evolved yet, or there just weren’t any in this woods. They’d explored half of it, and though they could see across the lake to the other side, she didn’t see any over there, either.
With so many hands at it, they made short work of building the reflecting wall up to hip-high. Soon they had two lively fires going.
When Hannah took the big soup pot to wash it, Claire had caught eight fish. She filled it with lake water and tossed in some of the non-porous stones they used to heat the water. Soup would be good and warming if the night grew any colder.
When she got back, they were all huddled in the cabin. Water still dripped on them from overhead. The rain was still falling, though less heavily than it had been.
After a miserable hour and a half had passed, Claire came to get them to eat.
Bob insisted on going along, and while Hannah would have preferred him to continue resting, he was adamant, and she gave in. She wasn’t his mother, and she had no way of controlling his behavior. She walked with him, keeping the pace slow.
The soup was ready, and a few more gutted fish cooked through on hot rocks.
Hannah felt the soup warming her from the inside. “We should keep the pot by the fire at the cabin all night, so we can have something warm to drink.”
“Just water? Or fish broth?” Claire said.
Ted said, “Will the smell of fish draw predators, do you think?”
“It hasn’t yet,” Hannah said. “Let’s go ahead and toss our fish bones into fresh water, and we’ll leave that by the fire.”
Nari said, “The soup can have my fish head, too.” She was still squeamish about eating meat, and possibly would be forever. Organs and eyeballs and brains and tongues were not her favorite foods.
“Mine, too,” said Claire. “I’d rather have broth than plain hot water.” She was losing her voice again.
“I was thinking,” said Hannah a few minutes later, “that it’s time we had a memorial service for Garreth.”
That stopped everyone.
She glanced at Bob, who was frowning in thought. He might have a plan for how to deal with Dixie, but Hannah had one of her own. She’d apologize again, in public, so everyone witnessed it. And what better time to do that than when they were all vividly remembering that horrible day?
“I know we’re all still raw about it,” she said. “Even if we don’t discuss it. It’s only been a week, but I think it’s time we honored him.”
Rex said, “Feels like longer than a week.”
She nodded. For the first few days, it had felt like five seconds ago. But when they had gotten busy with work, the memory had begun to fade, lost the horrible edge of vividness. The grief was still there for her, just under the surface, as was the guilt. And she was sure she’d cry all the way through the service. But they needed to do it. They needed to honor him. They needed to acknowledge that they were moving on.
And she needed to counter Dixie’s back-channel nastiness…if she could.
Chapter 21
The night was made less miserable by the two fires. The extra wall, though only half-finished, did a great job of reflecting heat back into the cabin through the main door. The rain lasted until midnight, and until then, there was a lot of tossing and turning. When the trees stopped dripping, Hannah fed both fires again, and soon thereafter, people started settling down into sleep. Her own clothes got a head start on drying from the moments standing directly over the fire.
She was awake at dawn, the changing animals sounds in the woods waking her as efficiently as an alarm clock. She had taken the centermost position in the cabin, on the side where the boys were lined up, so she was closest to the door. As quietly as she could, she snuck out, grabbing her boots and socks on the way out. Both were still damp, so she remained barefoot. Edging around the fire, feeling the warmth of it, she went outside and relieved herself. She circled back to the other fire, and began to move it. They had built it close to the chimney opening, making it impossible to get in—or out. There were still coals, and she spent a moment with a stout stick shifting them away from the door. She didn’t want some sleepy teen stumbling into the fire.
Hannah wanted to get going on work, but she also wanted to let everyone get a solid six hours of sleep. Seven would be better. It was going to be
a hard day, first physically, with finishing the cabin, and then with the memorial service.
The forest was still damp from the rain, and it smelled different. Before, there was a dry and dusty odor. Now it smelled more fecund, more alive. It was easy to imagine fruit trees bearing ripe fruit, juicy and sweet. They might even be here long enough to see that happen, to have their choice of fruits and berries.
She wouldn’t mind some red meat, too, for a change from the fish. The herring, everyone had tasted their fill of. The taste of the oil stayed with a person, and she often woke up the morning after a herring dinner with the taste still in her mouth. Claire’s whitefish catches were great, but Hannah longed to tear at some red meat and chew for a while. The fish was so tender, you could swallow without engaging your teeth in the process.
Cashews were also on her list. The hell pigs had stolen their collection of the nuts, but there had to be a way to process the next batch they collected. There had to be a simple way, too. Maybe in the year 2000, factories had used steam or chemicals or something high-tech, but in the year 1500, people would have been processing them with some low-tech manner. The only two possibilities that came to mind were soaking them for a long while in water, hoping whatever was in there that humans shouldn’t eat would leach out, and roasting them over a high heat. The nuts they had collected were dark gray. The cashews you bought in the store were a sable color. So they could collect more, and try both methods on a small batch. Soak some in a bowl overnight and see if the dark coating peeled off, and roast some over coals and see if it scraped off. Maybe you could put the roasted nuts into a pile of leaves and rub the coating off. Maybe you’d have to roast them black first. She’d have to experiment.
She walked around the clearing to find a dry seat for herself. She found a fallen log, lifted it onto one end, and saw the underside was damp, too. So no sitting and resting. What could she do before the others awoke? Go get the baked bricks? Haul water to the clay site? Chop some fresh evergreen boughs? Lots of choices.
Probably best to avoid the water, though, until the animals had drunk their fill that morning. So she put on her damp socks and boots and circled around to the front of the cabin and hunted for one of the hand axes. They hadn’t brought them into the cabin like the steel tools, as they’d not be harmed by rain. She caught sight of one and grabbed, and she wove through the trees to the nearest patch of pines.