It wasn’t ideal…but none of this situation was. We were just trying to make the best of it.
Chapter Thirty
Past
“(Take These) Chains” – Judas Priest
AFTER THE END of my freshman year, I came home for the summer. I had a few friends graduating from Winchester High that spring, but that wasn’t why I attended the ceremony.
No. I wanted to see Kevin Savage graduate from high school.
I sat in the bleachers with a couple of friends who had also graduated the year before and we watched patiently, sitting through student speeches, choir performances, and the like, but most of the time, my eyes were focused on the guy I’d managed to find in the sea of black and red wearing the sunglasses. Those things made it impossible to see his expression—was he happy? Bored? Ambivalent? Relieved?
I was glad to see him there. I had begun to doubt if he even would graduate, knowing the crowd he’d been hanging with. I looked around for his mother, too, but there were more people there to watch than there were seniors walking. In fact, other than a few people I knew from town, there weren’t very many faces I recognized.
I felt like a stranger in my own hometown.
Graduation, though…it felt final to me, like this was the last time I would ever see Kevin Savage and so, in my heart, I said goodbye.
I too was wearing sunglasses, so my friends didn’t see the tear that clung to my bottom eyelashes before it dried in the hot sun.
Chapter Thirty-one
Present
“Hail the Apocalypse” – Avatar
I WAS AWAKE as soon as the sun started lighting up the living room. I wouldn’t soon forget Kevin’s kindnesses the night before. When we decided we were too tired to stay awake any longer, we’d moved to the couch, and he asked if I needed an extra blanket because of my cold feet. They’d since warmed up, and I’d told him so, but he made sure my socks and shoes were as close to the fireplace as possible so they’d be dry by morning.
Now that it was daytime and we had tasks, I wanted to set to work. Everyone else was awakening too, but I had some goals. The primary one was to assess the food first in the refrigerator and then in the chest freezer in the garage. If it was cold enough out there (which I suspected it was), the food in the freezer would be fine until spring—long after we’d left and, I hoped, the power would have been turned back on. The food in the refrigerator, though, might not be as safe. Most of the heat from the living room didn’t reach the kitchen, but between what little heat did, the fact that the house was well-insulated and held onto warmth, and—finally—the warming effects of the sun in through all those big windows kept it, I had no doubt, above freezing and possibly even above the point where food could spoil. I wanted to be safe, so I planned to pull everything out of the refrigerator and decide what to do.
My most immediate problem, though, was that my shoes were still damp on the inside. I saw that Kevin had stuffed them with wadded-up newspaper to absorb the moisture, but there was no way I was going to wear the damned things until they were dry. My socks were no longer wet, though, and I slipped them on. That changed my first task to finding shoes. Aunt Lou’s feet were slightly bigger than mine, but I figured another pair of socks might remedy the size situation and keep my feet a little warmer in the process.
I found another pair of socks in one of her top dresser drawers but no shoes in the closet I was completely happy with. She had a pair of sneakers she usually used for gardening, but I didn’t want to wear them. They wouldn’t protect against the cold. So, wearing two pairs of socks to protect my feet from the cold wooden floor, I walked back to the closet by the front door, the place I thought most likely to hold a pair of snow boots.
And there they were…things of beauty at a time like this.
I was sliding them on when Larry asked, “Care if we eat a bite before we take care of your aunt?”
“Of course not. That’s fine.” If they were half as hungry as I was, they probably felt like they could eat the refrigerator itself. “I was just getting ready to open the refrigerator and see what we need to eat right away.” In less than two minutes, I had eggs, bacon, and butter and I asked the guys if they could take two cast iron skillets and start the bacon frying on the fire. I hadn’t seen men that eager in eons. That was when I could tell they were missing meat. I didn’t know how badly fried eggs would turn out when cooked over a fire, and I considered poaching them, but water was such a precious commodity, I was at a loss. I decided at the last second to scramble them in bacon grease when the meat was done.
While the men fried the bacon, I finished cleaning out the fridge. My aunt didn’t have much in there—two tomatoes, half an onion in plastic wrap, a few slices of baloney I hadn’t found the first time I’d pulled out lunchmeat, half a package of American cheese slices, a quart of two-percent milk that was almost full. There were two cans of Pepsi and one A&W Root Beer, a full jar of kosher dill spears and a half jar of homemade sweet pickles. There was also a bottle of ketchup, Worcestershire and soy sauces, and three bottles of salad dressing, and two cubes of butter. It helped that I was looking inside in broad daylight—it was easier to see everything inside.
The guys told me the bacon was almost done before I could get to the little freezer, but I didn’t know that I was ready to tackle it yet. I took a big fork and the seven eggs in the carton into the living room and told the guys there was milk on the counter if they wanted to drink it. “I don’t know that it’ll last long if you don’t.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Larry said, walking toward the kitchen.
Kevin joined him and I sat in front of the fireplace on the hearth. They’d removed both skillets from the fire, so I scooped bacon from one into the other using the fork. The grease appeared to still be pretty hot, so I decided to scramble the eggs in the skillet before putting it back on the fire. I could imagine cooking in the fire might be a little dangerous, especially with splattering oil, so I wanted to be as careful as possible.
Once I broke all the eggs into the skillet, tossing the shells into the empty carton, I stirred up the raw whites and yolk until they were combined and then used the hot pad to lift the skillet onto the edge of the grate. The men had scooted the wood back so there was room to set the frying pan, and it was close enough to the actual fire (even though the fire wasn’t underneath) to cook well without being dangerous. The only problems I foresaw were uneven cooking and black bits of fire remnants getting into the food. There wasn’t much I could do about that, and we were hungry enough that I thought I wouldn’t care.
Two other problems I considered as I sat there stirring the eggs off and on were washing the dishes—we’d have to heat snow and then scrub them and hope my aunt had plenty of dish soap. We’d managed up until this point, but washing bacon and eggs out of these skillets might be more difficult to clean than other messes we’d washed up. Trash would also be a problem, but I remembered as a kid my aunt and uncle burning their paper trash in a metal barrel—we’d probably be able to do that if we couldn’t find a place to bury it.
And, of course, we wouldn’t have much trash once we were through cleaning out the fridge. The vegetables downstairs would yield compost, and we could toss those remnants outside away from the house. Any home canned foods would mean washing jars, so trash wasn’t going to be the problem I’d first imagined, once I thought about it more.
I glanced up at Vera, and she still slept. I was beginning to worry about her. A lot.
“Vera?” I asked, trying not to raise my voice too much. I could see her eyelids fluttering, so I thought she was either awake or working on it. “Vera, we’re going to eat some breakfast in a minute if you want some.” Surely, she had to smell the unmistakable scent of bacon lingering in the air.
She opened her brown eyes and stared at me, her eyes clouded almost as if she couldn’t understand the foreign language I spoke. But then she stretched her arms and yawned before standing up and walking over to the fireplac
e. She squatted next to me. “Bacon, huh?”
I forced a smile. “Yeah.” Suddenly, I was wishing for potatoes of some kind—hash browns or country fries or potatoes O’Brien—smothered in ketchup to go along with the eggs and bacon. It almost seemed as though having the promise of a little taste of something that seemed so normal made me only want more.
I swallowed, hoping Vera didn’t see that moment of weakness in my eyes as I stirred the eggs once more. The fire felt hot on the underside of my forearm, but I wanted the eggs to taste as good as possible, and that meant stirring consistently.
I chided myself, wishing I’d remembered to bring salt and pepper to the fire. All these little things made me more fully appreciate what I’d had. When you cook in the kitchen at the stove, everything you need is at your fingertips or not so far out of reach as to make it difficult. Being forced to cook at a fireplace, though, was something else entirely and something I hope I’d never have to get used to.
I removed the skillet from the fire then, because the eggs were done and probably just this side of rubbery. Vera watched as if fascinated, reminding me of how my kids used to love watching me cook when they were little. She didn’t say a word, though—she simply watched.
I could hear the men making quiet conversation in the kitchen, reminding me that they were drinking the leftover milk. I told Vera that she could also have some to drink and she looked at me with glassy eyes. I stood and said, “Why don’t we head to the kitchen and get you something to eat, honey?” I wasn’t the type to call other people—women, especially—terms of endearment, but something about the way she looked and acted that morning had made the mother in me emerge—funny, because Vera was at least five years older than I.
She didn’t seem to notice, but she did stand up and start shuffling toward the kitchen area. I stood then but bent over to pick up the pans and then realized I only had one hot pad. Probably for the better, I thought, because I didn’t know if I could handle carrying two heavy hot skillets across the room. I knew my arms (and wrists especially) had grown weak with the years of typing without engaging in vigorous physical activity. For multiple reasons, I didn’t want to spill the food all over the floor, so I felt quiet relief that I could carry one at a time.
After I set the first pan on the table, I looked at the men and said, “Would you guys mind putting plates and silverware on the table?” As I started walking back toward the fireplace, I added, “Oh, and make sure there’s salt and pepper, please?”
When I returned, the plates and forks were set on each side of the table. We sat and scarfed the food like we hadn’t eaten in days.
I wasn’t going to say a word, but I was still hungry after I’d emptied my plate.
The men asked me one last time if I wanted to be involved with moving my Aunt Lou. I thought about it—really thought about it. No…the person my Aunt Lou had been was gone. That was only her rotting body, and I didn’t want seeing her that way to be my last memory of her. I only hoped that the cold upstairs, removed from significant heat, had preserved her enough that the men wouldn’t have to deal with anything gruesome.
I knew somehow, though, that if they did, they would never say a thing about it to me, and for that I was grateful.
I managed to get Vera to help me. We heated some snow on the fire to boiling and, using a little dish soap, a stainless steel scratcher, and a lot of elbow grease, we managed to get the dishes clean. We used a tiny amount of rinse water and a cloth to wipe off the mess, and I decided that, if we had much more time to spend there, cooking would have to be minimal. We had the leftover oatmeal dishes to clean from the day before, and that was difficult enough.
I wondered then how the pioneers had done it—cooked and cleaned without running water for their whole lives. How the bloody hell had they done it? I was already hating it and clueless. Maybe if I’d never known convenience…
In my head, I chided myself. I was acting like a spoiled brat. I’d gone through worse things in my life—having to change a tire in the middle of nowhere with a crying baby in the backseat, unbearable heat making the job more difficult than it had to be; hell, childbirth itself had been immensely harder.
And that was when it hit me…it felt harder because I didn’t have those loved ones with me. Those children of mine had been the purpose of survival for all those years, and I did those things out of love for them, out of a maternal instinct. I didn’t necessarily have a survival instinct for myself, and that made these things seem oppressive and unbearable.
But, for some reason, that strength within me was reemerging, and I wasn’t going to question it.
Chapter Thirty-two
“Bridge Burning” – Foo Fighters
I SPENT THE next hour finding candles and a flashlight in various kitchen drawers and then inventorying the freezer (which was cold enough to keep everything freezing—for now, at any rate) and then the pantry. The flashlight worked fine in the pantry for the meantime, but I didn’t know how long the batteries in it would last, nor did I know if Aunt Lou had any spare ones to replace them. There was plenty of food in that damned pantry that also served as an old-fashioned root cellar, though—there was enough to last for months, even if we’d need to be careful and conservative. Between my aunt’s need to buy in bulk when things were on sale and the bounty of last summer’s garden, I knew I and my friends could eat well for quite a while.
Not that we’d need to, but the thought was comforting.
I tried to engage Vera, to get her to help me so that I could keep her mind on something positive and keep me distracted in the process, but she’d had about as much as she could stand. I didn’t want to push her, but I kept hoping she’d find some well of inner strength. It had to be there, didn’t it?
When I returned upstairs from making my lists of food, Kevin and Larry were in the kitchen polishing off the milk and Vera was once more curled up in the overstuffed chair in the living room. I knew we were going to have to start tackling other tasks on our list.
Before I could ask what they wanted to do next, though, both men looked at me. I swallowed, because their looks filled me with dread. “What?”
“Well…we were just thinking. Even though we didn’t bury your aunt, we thought you might want to say goodbye to her.” Oh. Kevin had never looked so sweet, so caring to me than he did in that moment.
I drew in a breath and it was slow, almost painful. I blinked twice. “Yeah, I think I should.”
Larry said, “I can show you where we put her.”
Kevin’s voice was soft when he added, “We can go with you if you want.”
“Uh, yeah. That might be nice.”
Larry let out a long breath. “Can you take her then? I’m gonna go check on the wife.”
Kevin nodded and held out his arm, indicating that I should walk ahead. I was still wearing my coat—as was he—and I moved across the house to the front door and stepped outside.
For some reason, I had expected to walk to the barn as we’d discussed last night, but he was leading me toward the shed, the one we’d just been in the day before. As we drew nearer, he said, “We decided the shed might be the best place for her body. Since we couldn’t bury her, we took all the tools out and moved them to the barn and the garage. We packed a bunch of snow in the shed to preserve her until…”
We stopped by the little building. He didn’t have to say anymore and he knew it, because I was nodding. I could tell from his voice that they’d been as respectful as possible, and that had been all I’d asked. I knew they couldn’t bury her, and I didn’t know that it would have been a good idea. After all, once this ordeal was over, I was hoping to get the coroner or someone up here so Aunt Lou could have a proper burial anyway. This was temporary. I couldn’t have asked for more.
But I did think of one question. “You did untie her, didn’t you?” I looked in his eyes, because I had to know the truth. I had to know if he was lying to me. We had to trust each other now, because the four of us were all
we had and I somehow knew that Vera was slipping away from us, so she was someone I couldn’t rely on. Larry, too, the guy who’d been a friendly neighbor, a nice guy to chew the fat with…I was beginning to feel uncomfortable around him, and I felt like he was hiding something. Kevin—he felt like the one person there I needed to be able to lean on, and he’d felt trustworthy up to this point. For some reason, I felt like this was the turning point, that this was the time when he had to prove to me if I could believe in him…or if I needed to regard him with caution as well and then consider myself alone.
He passed the test. He nodded his head, and his eyes were sincere, absent of deception…and sympathetic when I bowed my head and let the tears fall as I said goodbye to one of my most dear friends on earth.
* * *
We made lunch, using up the lunchmeat and cheese slices I’d found in the fridge that morning and the half loaf of bread in the breadbox on the kitchen counter that I hadn’t known was there until my big inventory sweep. I’d also brought four apples up from the pantry, and they could serve as dessert. Aunt Lou also had two half-eaten bags of chips—store brand potato chips and corn chips. Both were past their prime as far as freshness went, but none of us complained.
Even Vera joined us, but she was quiet, keeping to herself. She looked down at the table, ruminating on her food much like an animal awaiting the slaughterhouse. There was a feeling of hopeless acquiescing about her, and I didn’t know how or if any of us could pull her out of that funk.
I didn’t feel like I knew her well enough to.
We were silent for a bit, but my list sat next to the paper plate that held my food, demanding our attention. We couldn’t ignore it for long.
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