“I’m heading back,” I said.
“Too much?”
“You’re pissing me off. I’ve got better things to do.”
“I’m not going to drop this,” Justin said. “We need to retaliate.”
“I’ll see you later.” I turned and started walking back towards McCartney Lake.
Justin didn’t follow. “Whatever, Baptiste,” he said. “Just run away.”
I didn’t bother answering. He’d be pissed at me either way.
And I certainly wasn’t going to go along with his revenge fantasies.
It didn’t make sense for Ryan Stems to be coming after us. For one thing, he’s not a marauder, despite what everyone seems to think around here. He works to keep his people safe, just like Justin and I try to do. It’s not like we’re running around killing people for a few extra supplies.
Killing Ant didn’t make any sense. And then they made Matt piss his pants, and then they let him go. What was the point?
Hell if I know.
I made my way home to the cottage, relieved to be alone but still rolling into the anxiety. I looked up at the grey-and-purple sky, trying to find some birds to distract my thoughts and settling for another chatty squirrel scrambling along the tops of the full-figured white pines.
I got back just as a cold rain started to fall. I found Fiona making breakfast in the kitchen and I gave her a quick hug, barely brushing against her. I didn’t want her to notice that my hands were still shaking.
“Want help?” I asked.
“Always,” she said with a smile. “We’ll put you in charge of setting the table.”
“That about matches my skill set.”
She laughed. “I think you’re ready for it, Baptiste.”
That made me smile. I was starting to feel a little better.
Not really calm… but better.
I grabbed the plates and the cutlery and got to work, Fiona telling me a story about her latest attempt to get Sara to admit she’s been sneaking off and reading some of the smutty romance novels from the bookcase in the upstairs hallway. One of these days she’ll nail that confession.
Cassy was the one who used to calm me down, more so than any SSRIs or beta blockers ever could. When I had to go off my anxiety meds so I could take the Laneradine for my heart, it was Cassy who kept me grounded, kept me smiling, kept me going.
That’s Fiona’s job now. She does it really well.
I hope it’s enough.
We spent the rest of today getting the yard ready for winter, Fiona, Sara and I in the garden, Lisa and Kayla by the chicken coop, and Graham and Matt with the goats. I don’t mind days like this, but that might be because I don’t have to do this kind of work all the time. I’m not chained to the homestead like they are.
Graham grew up on a hobby farm in Illinois; as he likes to say, in the part of Illinois that has nothing to do with Chicago. He seems pretty happy being back to it, tending the goats and planning the big planting for the spring. It makes me wonder why he chose a career where he was always on the move, upgrading equipment for railroads that ran through places he’d never wanted to visit.
But I guess that’s what we do when we’re young… we do the opposite of what we want, just to find out what that is.
After dinner was cooked and eaten and the dishes were cleaned, we all gathered in the living room. Graham and Lisa were curled up together on a recliner, snarled together in a way that makes you sick even when you’re not the least bit jealous, while Sara sat in the rocking chair, Ant’s journal in her hands, sitting but not really rocking. Kayla and Fiona took the striped brown and white couch and Matt sat between them, either to keep them from fighting or to live out his fantasy of a sexy Matt sandwich. I sat on the floor, my head against Fiona’s couch cushion, my bald brown scalp occasionally brushing against her thigh.
For a while we all just sat quietly. I looked out the window, staring into the night.
Through that window and out past the side veranda there are mostly trees, but if you look a little left of centre you can see through those trees to the lake, the water cold and calm, glistening in the moonlight. On the far side of the lake it’s still mostly forest, with a few patches of grass and some wood-frame cottages painted in unnatural colours.
It’s been five months since the dust cleared. The view outside that window is December grey and full of the oncoming winter, but it’s still more beautiful than the best days from our first summer at McCartney Lake, when we wore sweaters in May and worried that there wouldn’t be a single blade of grass left alive by the time we saw the sun again.
Looking out there now you’d think we’re surrounded by never-ending forest, trees and more trees from here to Quebec. From here you’d have no concept of just how much of that forest is gone now, the black spruce and tamaracks burnt away, young stands of birch poking up through the leafy new undergrowth. I think we’ve lost more forest than we’ve kept.
Places like McCartney Lake are little islands of the old world; a new and emptier place surrounds it, not just countless new clearings of saplings and low brush, but rubble-strewn villages and farmhouses and the ruined town of Cochrane itself, where there are still charred bodies that have never been buried.
No matter how peaceful it seems out that window, I never manage to forget the dead emptiness gathered just a little further out.
Everyone else seemed to be in a pissy mood like mine, so Sara decided to read us a passage from Ant’s diary, dated last February, about tapping two of the maple trees up north along the creek.
It was time to prove myself, Ant wrote. Graham le bigshot knows everything about tractors and battery connectors and goat semen, but he’s never made maple syrup. The last time my grandfather and I had sapped a tree was when I was still in elementary, but I knew enough to show off.
It was warm enough today that I figured I’d get as much as two hours before my nuts froze off.
I packed up the cordless drill, an 11mm leader bit and six large buckets and then I took one of the ATVs and the utility trailer up to the creek. I’d scavenged four spiles, so I figured on drilling two holes each into the two biggest trunks I could find.
Kayla and Fiona went with me, which was terrific. They would surely be turned on by my manly work with the mighty maple trees. They both ran along beside me as I drove, and I felt like an American President flanked by my secret service bitches. That’s the taste of power, my friends. Everyone should suckle that teet at least once in their lives.
I drilled the holes into the trees and attached the spiles, and the sap drained into the buckets. We had all six buckets filled long before I could convince either of the girls to conserve body heat with me through upright and pants-free spooning.
Kayla and I loaded the buckets onto the trailer.
“How much will this make?” Fiona asked as she watched us do all of the work.
It takes serious guts to be that unhelpful.
“Tons,” I said. “We must have over a hundred litres of sap here.”
We took it back to the cottage and we boiled the sap on the stove. I lost interest after twenty minutes or so.
I came back after a couple of hours and found that the syrup was ready to sample. The girls had poured it into a rinsed-out milk jug. It didn’t fill up the full four litres but it was more syrup than Graham would have been able to get. He probably would have tapped a squirrel in the nutsack and wondered why the sap was thick and white and tasted so goddamn gamey.
The girls know how to make more of it now, so my work was done. I rewarded myself with a joint, a fap, and a nice, long nap.