With hurt pride and anger, Curt had splintered off and took a big chunk of the people with him. Actually, close to half, once word got around to those who weren’t at the vote. Tucker’s group had forty-three people, and Curt’s group had forty. Many of the neighbors hadn’t been home when the grid went down and hadn’t made their way back yet.
IdaBelle carried a very large colorful cloth bag, tied closed at the top. At her aunt’s direction, she struggled to sit it down on the ground. She untied it, revealing a black cast-iron pot inside. She lifted the lid of the pot and even from the distance were Tucker was standing, he could smell the delicious aroma of a rich, meaty beef stew.
He dropped his axe and walked over.
“What’s this?” he asked Neva.
Neva cut her eyes at him, and then nodded to IdaBelle.
“It’s food. We want to contribute to your group,” IdaBelle explained.
Katie stepped forward, wiping her hands on her T-shirt, and gave them a warm smile. “Thank you so much. It’ll go great over this rice I’m cooking now.”
IdaBelle turned red at Katie’s graciousness. “Aunt Neva made it. She wanted me to ask you… she’s smelled rice cooking for a few days now. What are you doing with the used rice water when you’re finished boiling the rice?”
Tucker and Katie looked at each other, and then back to Neva and IdaBelle. Katie answered, “We dump it. Why?”
“Aunt Neva says to save it for the children. Make them drink a glass a day if you have it. It’s very healthy. Full of nutrients. It will provide energy, too. You can even give it to babies if they’re sick and you don’t have medicine. Sometimes it helps. It’s good for everyone.”
Katie’s eyes lit up in surprise. “Really? Thank you. We had no idea.”
Using the silicone hot pads, IdaBelle handed the hot pot to Katie, then gathered the top of the bag closed and picked it up. “Just return our pot and pads when you’re finished, and if it doesn’t all get eaten right away and it cools, bring it back to boiling before serving it again—that’ll kill any bacteria.”
“Please stay and eat with us,” Katie said, looking from IdaBelle to Neva.
“No. We have plenty,” she said with a smile, and they turned to go. “But if someone gets sick or hurt, Aunt Neva can sometimes help.”
Tucker caught the look that passed from Neva to IdaBelle. IdaBelle was offering Neva’s help—not Neva. And they just might need it. But what kind of help? She was no doctor, and not even a nurse.
After the brawl at Tucker’s they’d found out the neighborhood doctor wasn’t home. Everyday they’d hoped to see him come driving—or walking—up. But as of yet, he and his family hadn’t arrived.
Apparently Neva and IdaBelle knew that too. Her offer gave new meaning to her nickname of witch. Tucker doubted anyone would trust any sort of voodoo she could do… but that bag…
Tucker eyeballed the bag as they walked away. “Wait. What is that?”
Neva waved IdaBelle away, as though to tell her she’d go on without her, and she walked off on her own.
IdaBelle returned and showed Tucker the oversized, bulky bag. “It’s a Wonder Bag. You boil your food, put the pot in the bag, close it up tight, and hours later, it’s done. No need to cook over a fire all day.”
“Wait. What?” Katie asked, full of interest. She’d do just about anything to not have to spend her days tending food over a fire.
Tucker squinted his eyes and tilted his head. “That some kind of magic thing?”
IdaBelle laughed. “No. It’s a science thing. We bought it online from Amazon. The pot itself is just a regular pot. Most people have one like this or even a Dutch oven pot. We filled it with food and water, and brought it to a boil for a few minutes. We put the lid on it, and then put the whole pot into the bag. We closed up the bag, and then went about our day. It traps the heat inside. Basically, it’s thermal cooking.”
Tucker’s eyebrow went up. “How long does it stay hot?”
“Twelve hours or so. Or it can stay cold. It doubles as a cooler bag to keep food and drinks cold. We used it for camping. Some people use them for tailgating. It’s portable and compact, and stows away easily. Aunt Neva’s grandmother—my great-grandma—used to cook in a haybox. She didn’t have air conditioning in the house and didn’t want to heat up her kitchen. It was a wooden crate stuffed with hay or straw. You bring your food to a boil, then cover it with a lid and a cushion of some sort, and stick it in the box. Then you put the box lid on to seal it up tight. They were also used in World War II as a way of conserving rationed cooking fuel.”
Tucker nodded his head, impressed. “Hmm. Saving firewood would be a huge benefit, not to mention saving time and energy. We’d still have to use the fires for boiling water, but we could cut that down to two fires, instead of four. Thank you! We’re going to get right on it and build some hay boxes.”
IdaBelle smiled. “Sure. It’s the least we can do.”
He walked away, somewhat distracted, back to his job of chopping what wood they did have for now. None of the houses had real fireplaces. They all had gas logs. No one kept much firewood, other than a small amount for burning in outdoor fire pits. They didn’t have many trees in Tullymore, and the ones they did have were small and well trimmed. They needed dead wood. After wasting most of what they did have the first few days cooking, they had already been forced to send a team out to drag in dead trees. They’d have to do more of that, and they’d soon have to go further and further out, which wasn’t safe at all.
Right now, they still had working chainsaws to cut down live trees to be seasoned for winter, which was a long time away, but soon, fuel for those would run out, too. Tucker was trying to think ahead—just in case.
The hayboxes were a great plan to help them not burn so much wood, fuel, and energy now—no pun intended.
Tucker felt sure he had some lumber stacked up in his shop that he intended to use for projects one day. If he did, probably lots of the other guys did, too. He’d call a meeting to appropriate it and get help building the boxes first thing in the morning.
Meanwhile, he’d still have the kids drag what deadwood they could find in the area. What they didn’t use for boiling water, they’d stack up for winter, when they’d have no heat… if the power wasn’t back on by then.
Unfortunately, winter would bring a need for much more than heat, and it wasn’t anything Tucker could be prepared for.
9
Puck’s face lit up and he held his hands out.
“Here’s your crayons, kid.”
“Thanks, GrayMan.”
Eagerly, he dumped them out in a pile beside him in the bed, and opened his sketch book to a blank white sheet. “How’s Jenny? Is she still mad?”
Grayson sat down heavily in the chair beside him. “Puck, why didn’t you tell me Jenny was a donkey?”
Puck looked at him in confusion. “You didn’t ask if she was a donkey.”
“But, you talked like she was a woman—er… a girl. If I’d known she was an animal, I’d not have told you to have her sleep in the house. She made a mess in there. Don’t you understand you can’t have animals in the house like that?”
Puck’s gaze slid to Ozzie, who had once again made himself at home at the end of the bed.