Welcome to Paradise

by Rosalind James

  “Want to give me a hand, Kevin?” he asked. “We have to start unloading the wagon anyway, find the tools, at least.”

  “I’ll do that,” Gabe offered. “Find the tools, I mean. I want to get the axe, start chopping some wood so the women can get that stove going. Maybe you could help me with that, Martin. Because I think you’re going to be needing plenty of hot water.” He looked at Zara questioningly, and she nodded.

  “If we’re going to be sleeping in there tonight,” she said, “we need to get to work on it. Can you pull out some cleaning stuff for us too?”

  “Sure. Come show me.”

  “You come too, Mira,” Zara ordered. “Help me figure out what we need.”

  They left Maria-Elena and Melody standing disconsolately near the cabin and walked around to the back of the wagon with Gabe. He grabbed the side, swung a leg up, and vaulted inside in one smooth movement.

  “Be still my heart,” Zara drawled. “That was pretty good. And let me just say, purely as a connoisseur, that’s one mighty nice body you’ve got there, Dr. Gabe. If I were twenty years younger, Hank might have to worry about me being over here with you.”

  Gabe grinned down at her. “Maybe he still should. You’re a good-looking woman yourself. And I’m a sucker for a beautiful voice.”

  Too bad she didn’t have one, then, Mira thought wistfully. Zara was right. That had been an athletic move, and he’d looked so good doing it. The dark brown canvas pants and long-sleeved blue work shirt suited him. He really did look like he’d stepped out of 1885.

  “Right,” he said more seriously, beginning to sort through tools and hand them down to Kevin and Martin, who’d come up to join them. “What do you ladies need?”

  “A shovel, first,” Mira offered. “And then a broom and dustpan.”

  “Buckets, lye soap, rags,” Zara added. “Lots of each. Give me those masks and the bleach too. I’m getting the point of those now.”

  He found them everything they needed after a bit of a search. “Westward ho,” Zara said, picking up the buckets with soap, bleach, and rags stuffed inside, while Mira grabbed the tools.

  “Yep. That is one hell of an attractive man,” Zara mused as the two of them walked toward the cabin with their booty. She gave one last glance back at the wagon, where Gabe was still sorting through tools.

  “Yeah,” Mira agreed cautiously. “His brother’s more handsome, but . . .”

  “Maybe,” Zara acknowledged. “But I’ve always gone more for that rugged look, myself. And the quiet, intense type, too. Mmm, all that focus. Not to mention all those anatomy classes. He knows how to do a thing or two, bet you anything. He could show a woman a real good time. But what, you like Alec better? Too much of a pretty boy for me.”

  “I have a boyfriend,” Mira reminded her.

  “Honey,” Zara said firmly, “if God hadn’t meant you to look at good-looking men, He wouldn’t have made them that fine.”

  “All right,” she added resignedly, bracing herself outside the cabin. “Let’s get to this. You ready?” she asked Danny, who had been following the two of them with his camera since their first entry into the cabin. “Got your mask on?”

  “You’re supposed to ignore me,” he reminded her. “Pretend I’m not here.”

  “OK,” Zara said. “If you pass out from the stink, we’ll step over your body.” She climbed the wooden steps to the cabin, untied her sunbonnet and, after looking around, laid it over the rail of the small porch. Then pulled one of the masks over her head and handed one to Mira along with a rag. “Tie this over your hair too. No point getting any dirtier than we have to. Hey, Maria-Elena! Melody!” she called. “Come on over here.”

  “You two go find some kindling, some branches we can burn till Gabe gets firewood chopped,” she instructed. “We’re going to want a fire first thing.”

  “Where?” Melody asked. “And what are we supposed to get?”

  Zara sighed. “In the woods. Dry wood on the ground. Little pieces to start the fire, and bigger pieces. Come on. You’ve been doing this for a week.”

  “How do we bring them back without that carry-thingie?” Melody objected.

  “We could put them in our apron,” Maria-Elena decided, lifting one large white end.

  “That’s thinking,” Zara said approvingly. “Go do that, while Mira and I get started in here.”

  “Ready?” she asked Mira as the others set off. “Once more into the breach, then.”

  They propped the door open with a branch to begin to air the cabin out and add a bit more light to the dim interior, took a deep breath of outdoor air, pulled the masks over noses and mouths, and stepped inside.

  Mira disengaged her mind and began to attack the piles of animal droppings, gnawed bones, and debris with bleach and shovel, dropping the trash into her bucket, then carrying each load outside and dumping it among the stand of trees at one side of the cabin. Meanwhile, Zara was sweeping cobwebs and dirt from the rough log walls. By the time the others came back with the wood and dropped it into the big box nailed into the floor by the stove, the worst of the mess was gone, the little cabin wasn’t smelling quite so foul, and Mira and Zara had decided it was safe to remove the masks.

  “Eww,” Melody said, looking around. “Gross.”

  “You should have seen it before.” Zara turned the handle on the large cast-iron stove and opened the door to look inside. “Full of ashes,” she said resignedly. “Go see if Gabe’s pulled out the stove tools, would you, Mira?”

  “I’ll go,” Melody said brightly.

  Zara laughed. “I know you would. But I want you to go up there into those lofts and sweep down the ceiling. And Mira needs some fresh air.”

  All four of the men were standing around a pile of large felled logs that stood in one end of the clearing, Daisy sitting to one side with her big head cocked as if she were supervising. Mira watched together with the cameraman as Stanley and Gabe took their places on either end of one of the logs, then bent deeply from the knees and hefted it into place on twin stumps.

  “Considerate of them to give us all this seasoned wood, and a way to set it up to start sawing it,” Gabe said as Mira approached. “We would’ve had a job, otherwise.”

  “We’ll still have a job,” Stanley corrected. “Give me a hand with this saw, Kevin. Start taking some chunks from this thing for those shakes, and for firewood, too.”

  “What can I do for you?” Gabe asked Mira, taking his work gloves off and tossing them onto a log.

  “Maybe she just came over to admire good-looking men doing manly things,” Kevin said, picking up the other end of the big two-man saw. “No, wait. That would be Melody.”

  Mira couldn’t help laughing, he was so dead-on. “I need a few more things from the wagon. I’m not sure what you’ve unloaded yet.”

  “I’ll give you a hand,” Gabe said. He smiled down at her, reached out with a thumb and wiped a smudge from her cheek. “You look like you’ve been playing in the dirt.”

  Her hands flew to her face. “I must be a mess.” She picked up the edge of her apron, used the clean underside and scrubbed it over her nose and cheeks. “Better?”

  “Better,” he agreed. He set out for the wagon. “What do you need?”

  “Umm . . .” She was still a little rattled, her heart beating faster from his touch. She was going to have to get over this stupid crush. It was one thing for Maria-Elena to follow him with her eyes like a lovesick puppy. Mira wasn’t eighteen, and she should be past this. And if he caught on, she’d be mortified. Or if the cameraman—Steve, she thought his name was—did. That might be even worse.

  She pulled the rag from her head, saw with horror that it was dark with dirt and smeared with cobwebs. Shook it out and retied it hastily. “Um, stove tools. And kettles,” she realized, “to heat the water. That’ll do for now, but we’ll need kitchen stuff as soon as we get the cabin clean.”

  “We’ll unpack everything and bring it in for you,” he promised. “Whatever yo
u need.”

  “Oh, good,” Zara said when Mira returned with the stove tools, Gabe following in her wake carrying the two heavy kettles. “Put them on the floor, please, Gabe. I’m going to have to scrub this stove down before I set anything on it. Thanks for bringing them in.”

  “No problem,” he said, setting the kettles to one side of the stove. “Anything else you need, just send Mira out to me, and I’ll get it.”

  “Mira, huh?” she said dryly.

  A scream from overhead had them all looking up. They heard the clunk of Melody’s broom falling to the floor, her agonized yells.

  “Ack! Ick! Spider!” she squealed. “Oh, my God! It’s on me!”

  Zara sighed. “Go up and take over from her, Maria-Elena. Unless you’re scared of spiders too. We need to get them out of those logs, or they’re going to be falling on all of us, all night long. And don’t worry, I’ll find something equally nasty for Melody to do,” she added with a smirk.

  Mira was already on her knees with the small shovel and brush, cleaning the ashes out of the stove and dumping them into her refuse bucket. “OK,” she said. “We can start a fire now.”

  “Need any help?” Gabe asked.

  “Nope. What we need is more firewood,” Zara said pointedly.

  He laughed and turned to leave. “I’ll get to it, then.”

  “Here, Melody.” Zara handed the bucket of ashes to the girl, coming down the ladder now, her face tear-streaked and as grubby as the rest of her. “Go dump this down the privy.”

  “Why?”

  Zara sighed. “Because it keeps the smell down, remember? Just go do it.”

  “Why do we all have to do what you say?” Melody asked mutinously. “I don’t remember electing you the boss.”

  Mira hadn’t thought of Zara as a celebrity since that first day, but now she saw the diva coming out as the older woman stared Melody haughtily down. “Do you want to take over?” Zara challenged. “You think you know what needs to get done?”

  “Well, no, but I still don’t see why . . .” Melody began to argue.

  “You choose, then,” Zara ordered. “Want to dump those ashes, or go back up and sweep spiders?”

  Mira picked up the clean bucket. “I’ll go get some water,” she said, fleeing the scene.

  By the time they saw Melody again, Zara had the stove scrubbed and a fire laid, and Mira had filled both kettles and set the water to heat. Even Maria-Elena had finished with her sweeping, and Zara had set her to work on scrubbing the grimy windows. Meanwhile, the ripping sound of the saw outside had given way to the thunk of the axe.

  “That’s so disgusting,” Melody said, coming back with the empty bucket and a shudder.

  “You must have taken the scenic route. That was the longest privy visit ever. And it’d get a lot more disgusting without the ashes,” Zara said. “Or going in the woods. Now that would start to get disgusting. Just be thankful they gave us a privy.”

  “What about toilet paper, though?” Melody asked. “Shouldn’t we get that out of the wagon? I used some Kleenex I had in my pocket, but . . .”

  Zara laughed. “I didn’t think you were listening much back there. You weren’t supposed to bring anything with you. And there’s no toilet paper.”

  “What?” Melody looked even more horrified.

  “That’s what that Montgomery Ward catalog is hanging there for,” Mira pointed out.

  “I thought that was, like, reading material!” Melody shuddered. “I’m supposed to use that to wipe . . . to wipe with? Pages from a catalog?”

  “Better than leaves,” Zara pointed out.

  “Leaves,” Melody moaned. “Catalog pages. Oh, yuck. Oh, gross.”

  “Let me just ask you,” Zara began, opening the stove door cautiously to create a draft, then wider to add more of the deadfall wood. “It’s going to take forever to heat this water,” she muttered. Then looked at Melody again. “Let me ask you,” she repeated, “what exactly did you think it was going to be like out here? Had you ever seen one of these shows?”

  “They don’t show them going to the bathroom,” Melody complained. “Not being able to wear any makeup is bad enough. Anyway, I didn’t think it was going to be this . . . this . . .”

  “Authentic?” Mira asked with a smile. “Yeah. That’s kind of the worst, isn’t it? Look at it this way, they gave us tampons. Now, you want to talk about gross . . . What would they have used, back in those days?”

  “Rags,” Maria-Elena said with a shudder, turning from her task. “My mom told me, when I . . .” She blushed. “When I needed them.”

  “That’s one I don’t have to worry about, anyway,” Zara said with satisfaction. “Age has its privileges.”

  “Whew.” Mira joined Zara on the front porch, plopping herself down with a weary thump. They’d swept the twin sleeping lofts and the floor of the cabin thoroughly, then had sloshed bucketful after bucketful of water, pulled laboriously out of the well, over all the floors before sweeping the water and the dirt it washed up out the door in their turn. Had scrubbed the kitchen table, work table, washstand, and benches, the rough shelves, until the wood shone white, to the accompaniment of a rhythmic pounding behind them. Stanley and Kevin, nailing the shakes they’d produced to the lean-to that was to become the chicken coop and storage shed.

  “I guess I’ll go ask the guys to start bringing stuff in,” Mira said with a sigh, beginning to get up. “It’s probably close to two already,” she decided, looking at the sun. “Still so much to do.” Maria-Elena and Melody hadn’t even made it out of the cabin. Mira had left them sprawled on the bench, backs against the wall, eyes closed.

  “No,” Zara decided. “Let’s go look at the garden first. Give ourselves a little break. Go get those girls. I don’t want them to fall asleep in there.”

  Fences and Fatigue

  Gabe put down his axe at the approach of the women. He made a mental note to unpack the mirror last. Melody was going to be completely useless as soon as she saw how she looked. They were all dirty and disheveled, once-white aprons now blackened, faces and postures showing the fatigue of the seemingly endless day.

  “How’re you all doing?” he asked, as Martin set down his own axe and came over to join them.

  “Well, the cabin’s clean,” Zara said wearily. “We thought we’d go check out the garden before we start setting things up in the house. See what we’re going to be eating tonight, besides beans and cornbread. Good thing Alma had us soak some beans last night, or we wouldn’t even be having that. Want to come?”

  “Sure.” He drove the axe into the chopping block, put the leather cover onto the hatchet, and stripped off his work gloves. “Come on, Martin. Time for a break. We’ve got enough wood here for some days, anyway,” he mused. “Cut some grass earlier too, spread it out to dry so you can stuff those mattresses in another few days. After this, we should get that springbox out of the wagon, find a good spot in the creek for it before we milk tonight. Too hot out here to do without refrigeration.”

  Martin nodded glumly. His enthusiasm for “period” living seemed to have taken a bit of a beating today, Gabe saw with amusement. “You’ll want to put the cover on the hatchet,” he reminded the older man. Martin shot him a look, but obeyed.

  “How’re you holding up?” Gabe asked Mira quietly. She’d caught the brunt of it, he suspected. Zara had surprised him—hell, she’d astonished him—but she had to be sixty-five. And the two younger women . . . well, Maria-Elena wasn’t too bad.

  “I’m OK,” she sighed. “But . . . there’s a lot.” He saw her blink back a tear or two.

  “Tomorrow will be easier,” he said gently. He was pretty tired too, truth be told. They all were. “The hike in, all this work . . . it’d wear anyone out. You’ve done great.”

  She nodded briefly, took a deep, uneven breath. “Thanks.”

  The little band stopped in front of the neatly laid-out garden. “Close to the creek,” Gabe remarked. “That’ll make watering easier, anywa
y.”

  “Spinach, lettuce, chard, coming up already,” Zara said, pacing the length of the plot. “Peas and radishes ready now too. Beans and cherry tomatoes pretty soon. Baby carrots now, I’ll bet, and beets. And other stuff to come later. All right. Lots here. This must be, what? Seventy-five by fifty feet?”

  “About that,” Gabe agreed.

  “Lots of weeding and watering,” Mira said a little bleakly.

  “Oh, great,” Melody said. “I suppose that’s our job?”

  “You said you hated being in the house all the time,” Zara pointed out. “Here you go. All kinds of fresh air. You can work on your tan.”

  Gabe didn’t realize that Stanley and Kevin had come to join them until Stanley spoke from behind him. “A lot to fence, too,” the older man said, “if we don’t want the deer to get it all.”

  “But the deer haven’t eaten it so far,” Melody objected. “Why would they come now?”

  “Look here.” Stanley pointed to regular indentations in the ground, running along the garden’s perimeter. “They’ve had a deer fence here that they’ve pulled down, just to make sure we’ve got something to do. If we want to eat anything besides beans over the next few weeks, we’re going to have to get this fence built, and right quick too.”

  “And until we do that, and get a corral up,” he continued, “it’s like John said. The men are going to have to be sleeping out here in pairs with the shotgun. Between the garden and the livestock, we’re going to be looking like one big supermarket to the animal population. We’ll have ’em lining up to take a whack at us if we’re not careful. And Daisy can’t patrol all this by herself, can you, girl?” he asked the big dog, who was, as usual, by his side.

  “Do you think there are really bears?” Maria-Elana asked nervously. “And wolves?”

  “More likely to be coyotes,” Gabe said with a reassuring smile for her. “Nothing for you to worry about. But the animals can’t defend themselves well enough when they’re tied up. Oh, well. It won’t be much less comfortable out here than in the cabin anyway, since we don’t have those mattresses yet.”