He moved across the hardwood floor toward the kitchen.
A deep sink and granite countertops lined the back wall of windows which looked out over the deck into the brilliant aspen.
He walked over to the pantry, pulled open the door.
Jack led Dee and the kids up the front porch steps and into the cabin.
“There’s food here, Jack?”
“Just come on.”
The last trickle of daylight was just sufficient to illuminate the kitchen, where Jack had thrown open every cabinet so they could see the treasure he’d found.
Dee sat down and put her head between her knees and wept.
They spread out on the floor as the world went black out the kitchen windows, each with their own cold can and sharing a big bag of sourdough pretzels torn open and spilled across the floor beside a sixer of warm Sierra Mist.
“Oh my God, this is the best thing I’ve ever tasted,” Naomi said, halfway through her clam chowder. Grunts of agreement all around—Jack had gone for the chili, Dee the beef vegetable soup, Cole the Chef Boyardee cheese ravioli.
A half hour later, Naomi slept on a leather couch near the fireplace while Jack covered her with two quilts he’d found in a game closet. He went up the spiral staircase, holding one of the kerosene lamps they’d taken from the coffee table downstairs, Dee in tow, carrying Cole. Into the first bedroom. Jack pulled back the quilt, blanket, sheet, and Dee laid their son on the mattress and kissed his forehead and covered him back up.
“It’ll get cold in here tonight,” she said.
“Not as cold as last night.”
“If he wakes up and no one’s here, he’s going to be scared.”
“You think so? After these last few days? He’s done in, Dee. He won’t wake for hours.”
They lay in bed downstairs in the dark under a pile of blankets. Somewhere, the tick of a second hand. Naomi’s deep respirations in the living room. No other sound.
“Do you think we’re safe here?” Dee whispered.
“Safer than starving and freezing to death on the side of a mountain.”
“But long-term, I mean.”
“I don’t know yet. I can’t think about it right now. I have nothing left.”
Dee snuggled up to him and stretched a leg across his, her skin cool and like fine-grit sandpaper. She ran her fingers through the hair on his chest. First time in months she’d put her hands on him, and it felt, in the best kind of way, like a stranger touching him.
“Nothing, Jack?” And she slipped her hand inside the waistband of his boxer shorts. “’Cause this doesn’t feel like nothing.”
“Our daughter is twenty feet away,” he whispered.
Dee climbed out of bed and crept across the floor and closed them in behind the French doors and their panes of opaque glass. He heard the lock push in. She pushed the straps off her shoulders and her undershirt puddled around her feet. Slid her panties down her legs, and Jack watched her come back to him, naked and pale, wishing for some moonlight for her to move through as she crawled across the bed.
“I’m nasty,” he said. “Haven’t had a shower in—”
“I’m nasty, too.”
She stripped him and sat him up against the headboard and eased down onto his lap, and already the pain in his shoulder was subsiding. He could tell this was going to be one of the great fucks of his life.
* * * * *
IN the morning, Jack hiked down to the road with a gallon of the gasoline he’d found in the shed. There was plenty more where it came from—six five-gallon containers that he figured were meant for the backup generator in case the solar power system failed. The Rover managed to crank, and he put it into four-wheel high.
A hundred yards up the mountain, he stopped and grabbed the chainsaw out of the backseat and came out of his sling. Took him thirty minutes just to hack through the dense lower branches so he could get at the base, going slow so he didn’t rip the stitches in his shoulder. Another twenty to carve a wedge into the trunk, and when the spruce finally fell across the road, it perfumed the air with sap and splintered wood.
Naomi and Cole were still sleeping when Jack returned to find Dee in the kitchen, having already done what he suggested—pull down all the food from the cabinets and the pantry to see what they had to work with.
“Doesn’t look like much,” he said by way of greeting.
Dee looked up from where she sat on the kitchen floor, surrounded by cans and glass jars and packages. “How’d the car do?”
“Rough as hell, but I got it to the shed. Maybe I’ll play mechanic in a few days, see if I can fix what’s wrong.”
They spent the morning dividing out the food and trying to see what they might make from the staples like flour and sugar, assuming Jack could fire up the solar power system and get the stove working. In the end, rationing as frugally as they could stomach, they calculated enough meals to feed their family for thirteen days.
“That’s not good enough,” Dee said. “And we’re going to be hungry all the time before we actually begin to starve to death.”
“It’s more food than we had yesterday. I saw some fly-fishing gear in the shed, and there’s a stream out back.”
“You took one class, Jack. Two years ago. None of your flies at home ever touched water, and you think you’re going to go out there and catch enough fish for us—”
“How about sending some positive energy into this situation, dear-heart?”
She flashed a fake smile, batted her eyes. “I’m sure you’ll catch more than we can eat, Jack. I know you can do it.”
“You’re such a bitch.” He said it with love.
He assembled a six-weight fly rod in the shed, stocked his vest with an assortment of flies, and carried a small cooler into the woods toward the sound of moving water. Found it fifty yards in—a wide, slow stream that flowed through the aspen. He sat down on the grassy bank. The sun as high as it would be all day. Light coming down through the trees in clear, bright splashes. The sky cloudless. Almost purple.
He filled the cooler in the stream. Got the tippet tied on and chose a fly at random. Took him five attempts to cinch the knot, then walked downslope until he came to a shaded pool several feet deep and out of the ruckus of the main current.
His first cast overshot the stream and the fly snagged on a spruce sapling. He waded across, the water knee-deep and freezing, and clambered out onto the warm grass on the opposite bank.
An hour later, he felt his first tap.
Midafternoon, he hooked a fingerling, Jack tugging the green line and backing away from the stream. It flopped in the grass, and he carefully lifted the fish which torqued violently and then went still, gills pulsing in his hand. Silver. Spotted with brown dots. He unhooked the fly and walked back to the cooler and dipped the trout into the water, thinking, God, was it small. Two or three bites at most if he didn’t completely destroy the thing when he tried to clean it.
They dined at the kitchen table as the light ran out—two cans of cold navy beans split between the four of them, three pretzels apiece, water from one of the plastic jugs Dee had brought in from the Rover.
“How many fish did you catch?” Cole asked.
“One,” Jack said.
“How big?”
Jack held his pointer fingers five inches apart.
“Oh.”
“It’s still in the cooler by the stream. But I saw some big ones.”
“Can I come fishing with you tomorrow?”
“Absolutely.”
Middle of the night, Jack sat up in bed.
“What’s wrong?” Dee asked, still half-asleep.
“I should’ve cut down the mailbox.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The mailbox by the road. The one Naomi saw that led us here.”
“Do it first thing in the morning.”