The Provider

by John Hunt

  “Oh for Christ’s sake! Of course I know. There’s been a power cut. So what? Life goes on, and I’ve got business to do.”

  “It’s more than that, isn’t it? There’s no power, anywhere.”

  He laughed. “You think the world’s come to an end because the sun’s blown some fuses? That it’s something we can’t fix? There’ll be people working on it, right now. Thousands of them. But you wouldn’t hear about that in this wilderness, would you? I need to get out of here and join them. Gimme a break, kid. Get real.”

  “I don’t know as much as you,” I replied, carefully, “but maybe we need to get used to the idea of living without power.”

  “Are you with those green lunatics? You just want to roll over and give up? Look, this whole place is just horseshit. Its mosquitos and bogs. Don’t know why we haven’t nuked it. The only worthwhile thing here’s the oil, and that’s underground anyway. You can still live on top if you want to.”

  I felt my anger rising: why should we put up with this guy? He didn’t run things any more. “I don’t know what a green lunatic is, mister,” I replied, “and you’ve got a big mouth.”

  “You want me to eat humble pie, is that it? Look, take it all, there’s more than that here…” He offered his wallet. “And you can keep the lady, if you like, look after her, she’s holding me back.”

  “Shaddup. I don’t give a bag of dicks for your bread. Take a hike,” Bob said stonily. “All day, along this valley. You’ll come to the Portage River, and a road. Turn right and it’ll take you a day to get to Whittier.”

  “Fuck you too.” The guy scowled. “C’mon, woman, they’re chucking us out.”

  She looked at us, tear marks in the dirt on her cheeks.

  “You can stay, if you want to,” Bob said.

  She shook her head, “I want to get out of here as well.” We watched them walk down the canyon.

  “I think I understand now why I like being out here,” Bob said, as we saw them receding into the distance. “It’s never been so clear to me before.”

  “What do you think they were doing?”

  “Just away for a dirty weekend, and got caught out. What a shmuck. Thinks the sun shines out of his ass.”

  “They’re not going to survive, are they, Bob?”

  “They should get to Whittier OK, beyond that, I don’t know. Depends which kind of world we all end up in – theirs, or ours. He’s all wind and piss. Used to run things, and doesn’t like it when he can’t.”

  “What’s the Valdez thing about?”

  “It’s the end of the Alaska pipeline. Millions of barrels of oil there. C’mon Jim, you should know this stuff. Didn’t they teach you anything at school?”

  “Bob, are most people like that? Can you change who you are along the way?”

  “Change? Dunno, Jim. Some will, most won’t.”

  “Do you think I could?”

  “You? You’re OK, Jim. Just need more confidence.”

  “How do I get that?”

  “It’s already in you, Jim. Just decide which you want to be like, a bear or a deer. Predator or prey.”

  “But what if that guy is right, and the power comes back? It’s got to, hasn’t it? We’ve broken into someone’s house, I’ve killed a guy. I’ll need a lawyer.”

  Bob started to laugh hoarsely. He carried on till he was bent double with it.

  “A lawyer, my God, a lawyer. Shit-a-brick, a lawyer. Do you think there are going to be any of those left standing?”

  He straightened up, and looked serious. “Maybe it does come back, Jim, it’s only been a couple of weeks. But the time for reckoning what’s happened is past. I promise you that. What we’ve done ain’t gonna figure compared to what’s been going on.”

  A thought occurred to me. “Bob, you’re not going back, are you?”

  “Me? No. I’ll stay out here. Always figured I might, one day.”

  “Could I stay with you?”

  “You’ve got family, Jim,” he looked at me seriously. “Don’t knock that. You don’t know what you miss till you haven’t got it.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Louise and Mom were pretty much confined to the Lodge. Louise had a bad hip and couldn’t get far over the rough ground. Mom was nervous if there wasn’t tarmac or carpet under her feet.

  “There are wild animals out there, Bob. I know you can shoot them, but what if you miss? I’m happy to come and look at a view now and again, but that’s as far as I want to go, thanks. Now, don’t you dare come in off the deck with those boots of yours. With nine of us here, we need to take that bit of extra care to keep it clean. So you can stop making our work more difficult, thank you.”

  “Yessum, sorry.”

  Dad was more comfortable working on projects in the Lodge.

  “However long we’re here for,” he said to Bob one day, “I’m not a hunter, and too old to start. I’m about as comfortable with it as you are with computers. I’d just get in your way. But thank you for teaching Jim.”

  “Teaching? Hadn’t thought of it that way,” Bob replied. “He’s just a fast learner. He’s going to be a heck of a lot better hunter than me.”

  “That’s the best kind of teaching, Bob. And you’ve got the knack of it.”

  “Can Jess and me come with you?” Bess asked. “I’d like to hunt.”

  Mom was reluctant. “What about bears?”

  “Not as bad as they are in the interior,” Bob replied. “There’s more food around here.” He scratched his chin. “They’re unpredictable, though, depends on what mood they’re in. It’s in the spring you need to be more careful, when they’re just out of hibernation, hungry, maybe with cubs, and less to eat. Well, and in the fall, I guess, before the snow comes, when they’re trying to fatten up for the winter. And of course, if they didn’t fatten up much, they might come out looking for food in the winter as well.”

  “You should’ve had a career as an inspirational radio host, Bob,” Mom said laughing. “All sweetness and light. Is there any time that is safe?”

  “Well, no, but we should be OK in the summer, so long as we make enough noise. We’ve seen a few in the distance, and plenty of scats, but they’ll avoid us. Anyway, moose kill more people around here than bears do, especially when they’re rutting.”

  Mom groaned. “You’re going from bad to worse, Bob. What should we do?”

  “Only thing to do is to learn to live out here, Mary. Learn how to shoot, practice, get good at it. No point in just shutting yourself up in the cabin, then you’ve got no chance. Anyway, bears are the last thing we need to worry about out here, it’s the cold and the water that usually kills you – frostbite, freezing, accidents, a slip of the foot or the chainsaw, starvation, infection, gangrene, fire, gunshot accidents. Hell, a hundred other ways to go. Drowning’s how people usually buy it, falling through the ice.” He grinned. “Still, on the positive side, if you want some sweetness and light, we’re safe from snakebite.”

  “How come?” Bess asked.

  “No snakes in Alaska, too cold. C’mon Bess, let’s have a go with the Ruger.”

  “Here,” Bob explained, as we gathered on the beach. “Stand like Jim here. That’s it, square up. Check there’s no one up front, this bullet can travel a mile. Jim, throw this bottle into the lake, as far as you can. Bess, look through the sight there. Squeeze the front of the trigger, gently does it.”

  The shot went wide somewhere.

  “Have another go,” Bob said. “Now, don’t flinch this time, just relax, breathe gently, just leave the last bit of your finger on the trigger. Lightly, start to squeeze, focusing on the target. Well done!” As the bullet rippled the water a yard away from the bottle.

  “Gosh. Cool! This is great,” she exclaimed. “Am I allowed to do this? Don’t I have to be eighteen or something?”

  “Any age is fine, so long as you know what you’re doing.”

  “How come you haven’t shown me how to do this before?”

  A few days later a
nd she hit a hare. “Oh, I’ve hurt it,” she squealed.

  “Jim, you go and break its neck, could you? Now, Bess, remember, this is the way things are now. We can’t get food in the shops, we have to kill it ourselves. It’s natural. The Indians say thank you to the animal for letting them kill it. They believe it shows itself to them so that they can do it. Try doing that,” Bob said kindly. “Thank the hare for sharing its life with us. Ask its spirit for forgiveness, or ask God. Whatever God you like. It’ll help.”

  Bess and Jessie both got pretty good with a rifle. Dad had never handled a gun before, but he agreed with Bob that he should learn, just in case. At least so we could show a force of strength. We didn’t have much ammunition spare though, so once he got the basics right, he didn’t keep it up.

  Later that day Bob and I were overlooking the Seward Highway again.

  “Doesn’t look like that jam’s moving,” Bob said. “I’m glad we’re this far away, with any luck no one’s going to reach us. We’ve got some decent canyons in between.”

  “Shouldn’t we tell the others?”

  “Why? Your Mom’s gonna want to go and help. But we’ve barely got enough food for ourselves. You can go for a couple of weeks on nothing, if you have to. For a month on very little. But it’s around now that people will be thinking of cooking their grandmothers if they’ve got nothing else.”

  “Don’t be daft, Bob. People don’t eat people.”

  “Why not? It’s just meat, a different flavor. I feel closer to the animals I kill than to people.”

  “But it’s not the same.”

  “Out here, I don’t see the difference. And people are surplus, just too many of the buggers, need a cull anyway.”

  “I’m so grateful you came – I guess we’d just have starved if you hadn’t,” Matthew said that evening. He had started growing a beard, which made him look much less like an office worker. “I’m hopeless at providing, but I can cook. Bob, any chance of a bread oven?”

  “Dad’s a brilliant cook,” said Sue, “he can make anything you want.”

  “I’d love some good bread,” Bess said. “I’m just going to die if I have to keep on eating fish. I’ll be growing fins.”

  Bob took apart the electric oven and re-welded it into a bread one, which sat in the fire pit. The next day, Matthew was enthusiastic. “It won’t last for long,” he said, “this modern stuff is too flimsy. But we can get started with it. I’ll do sourdough. It uses a natural yeast, a starter, a mix of flour and water, which you get fermenting.” He glanced around. “Sue, you can have that job, you can smell the fermentation when it’s ready – and keep the fire going.”

  “It used to be the staple around here,” chipped in Louise. “It’s why the prospectors were called “sourdoughs.”

  “You’re right,” said Matthew. “I learned about that on my cookery course. We were using one which some old sourdough had started over a century ago…kept it next to his skin to keep warm, and it was still active today.”

  After a week, once the starter was established, he was cooking a couple of loaves a day, or turning them into hotcakes, sizzling the batter in a skillet.

  “I didn’t think of you as a cook, but this is real nice,” Mom told him as she bit into a warm sourdough venison sandwich, all of us around the table.

  “Well, I’m a figures man, really, I like the discipline of numbers, but I took it up after Alice died, for something to do, to take my mind off things, that’s why I went on the course.”

  “We’ve something in common there, Matthew,” Dad replied, “about the discipline of numbers. I guess we use them in different ways, I use them to make things, you use them as the measure of a business’ success.”

  “Ain’t much use around here,” Bob grumbled. “Food for the pot, that’s all that counts.”

  Dad nodded toward the corner. “But you can only shoot that rifle because engineers designed and produced it. Centuries of effort went into that. Otherwise you’d still be using a bow and arrow.” “There’s something I like about cooking out here,” Matthew added. “Everything seems so erratic, so random. In the wild, there’s no packaging, the food doesn’t come in convenient portions. Cooking seems to bring some discipline into it all, order out of chaos. It’s satisfying.”

  “No way we could live out here without it,” said Louise, “not much in the way of fruits and nuts.”

  “Dunno about convenient portions,” Bob muttered, “but decent-sized ones would be nice. I’ll have more please.”

  “A pleasure, Bob,” Matthew said as he filled out another sandwich. “We should think about getting out of your hair though, and moving on, get back to Seattle, even if the power isn’t back yet.”

  The corners of Sue’s mouth drooped, and Bess looked like she was about to protest.

  “No need to on our account,” Mom replied, “it’s a real pleasure having you here.”

  I was expecting Bob to say something about the jam on the highway, about how it wasn’t safe to travel, but it was Jessie who spoke.

  “Dad, you spent months saying we should come on this trip so we could spend some time together. Now we’re here, and Sue and I like it, it’s different, it’s not likely to happen again. And you can afford the time off, so why don’t we make the most of it?” She was speaking to Matthew, but she looked at my Dad.

  “It’s fine by me,” he replied.

  I couldn’t quite figure out why she was saying that. She must be getting on real well with Bess.

  NINETEEN

  One evening, Bess and Jessie were talking as they washed up the dishes after supper. The rain hissed on the wooden roof tiles, and we could hear it on the water of the lake; thunder rumbled around the mountains, tumbling down the sides, muttering as it moved reluctantly along to the next range.

  “I don’t mind the hotcakes,” Bess was saying. “But it’s the munchies I miss. And peanut butter.”

  “Chicken fried steak, frito pie,” said Jessie.

  “I’d love a milkshake,” Sue chipped in, wistfully.

  “Game of Thrones…”

  “Teen Wolf…”

  “Oh no, how about The Vampire Diaries?”

  “Lizzie McGuire. Let’s watch Lizzie McGuire,” Sue shouted.

  “Yukky, not for us.”

  “I miss my bike,” I volunteered.

  “Your bike! That crummy thing. That’s just wheels, Jim,” Bess said dismissively. “I miss cars, things that can actually get you to places without you getting wet or cold or sweaty.”

  “I could do with some make-up,” Jessie said. “I must look such a fright.”

  “Oh my God, yes, Jess,” Bess answered. “Me too. But what’s the point here? There aren’t any decent guys in a hundred miles. That makes it even worse.”

  Matthew looked up from a book he was reading.

  “I’d love a coffee, myself, a good triple espresso with a bit of brown sugar to hit the spot. And a nice piece of rich dark organic chocolate to go with it. But look, Mary, I found this, it’s yours I think – Wild Plants of Alaska.”

  “I’d forgotten about that one,” Mom replied. “It was a Christmas present, years ago, from my sister. I don’t think I’ve ever looked at it.”

  “We could do things with this, you know,” Matthew was getting pretty enthused.

  “Yes please!” Bess interrupted.

  “There’s wild potato around here,” he continued. “Maybe I could even make some chips. You can use the roots. Might be too late in the season for that. But there should be plenty of hazelnuts soon, we could try those instead of peanuts. Spice them up a bit. And we need more greens – it’s too late for dandelions and nettles, as far as greens go, but there should be fat hen, gooseweed, lovage, wild rhubarb, loads of others. I’m sure we could get a more varied diet going.”

  Dad looked up from the chainsaw he was working on. “Matthew, I think it’s time to appoint you head cook and supply manager. OK with you, Bob? Mary?”

  “Fine by me,” Bob
replied. “Tell me what you need in the way of fish and meat and me and Jim will get it. But I’m not grubbing around in the dirt for roots and plants, no way, that’s a woman’s job.”

  “Bob, you do talk trash sometimes,” said Mom, affectionately. “You’re an unreconstructed, antediluvian dinosaur.”

  Bob cracked a smile. “You can say that again. One of those big scaly things with claws that ruled the earth for millions of years? Wouldn’t have any trouble with bears then, could just say “boo”. Sounds good to me. But while we’re onto supplies, we need to do something about a wood stack. I don’t know how long we’re going to be here for, but we’ll need a lot to keep the fire going. I can’t use an ax, can’t raise my arm above the shoulder.”

  “Can I help with it?” Mom asked.

  “No, it’s a bullet I took in ‘Nam. Smashed the bone. It kind of healed, but it’s never worked properly since.”

  “You should have the hospital look at it when we get back.”

  “Can’t afford that, Mary.” Bob laughed. “That’s for the rich, not for old soldiers like me. Maybe if Obama had still been there, not that I approve of colored folk in the White House. Stoopid. He’s not even American. But no chance now.”

  “In the old homesteading tradition,” said Louise, you could make free use of empty cabins so long as you left them in better shape than you found them, with a stack of wood. So we could leave a good wood stack as payment for being here.”

  Dad thought for a moment. “We’ve got this chainsaw here, but not that much petrol. I think we should keep that mostly for the truck, and for emergencies. Jim, I think this is down to you.”

  Next day, Bob used a bit of the petrol with the chainsaw to bring an old spruce down.

  “Here’s how to do it, Jim, never use the tip, it’ll kick back, take your eye out.”

  We planned where it would fall, and after a few moments it came crashing down. I started to chop a big branch off and the ax soon got stuck in a knot.

  “Not that way, chucklehead.” Bob took the ax from me. “Lightly, at an angle, forty-five degrees, take chunks out, work your way round. And then use a maul to split them. The ax gets stuck when you strike straight down. Never get frustrated,” he cautioned. “Work with the grain of the wood. Take your own time.”