Chapter 5
FIVE
ALEX
As the sun rises on the second day in Kawartha, I steal down to the water’s edge again, savoring a moment’s peace and solitude, although my heart is still heavy, like a leaden weight inside of me. So much has happened in such a short space of time that it’s all still hitting me in waves of shock—the attack, the deaths, the loss of my childhood home and the life we’d built there for ourselves in the wake of the holocaust.
I think of the greenhouse that was Ruby’s pride and joy, the smokehouse Justine helped us build, the strawberries Mattie and I picked, the ersatz coffee Kerry and I made from cleavers, the beaver I forced myself to gut and skin for meat…so many ways in which we rose to the challenges, and, like Mattie had wryly said, thrived . But it’s all gone now.
The cottage is nothing but ruins and ash; I burned it down myself, rather than let those redneck thugs take it for themselves. I spent every summer of my childhood at that cottage—running barefoot to the beach, diving deep beneath the water, lying flat on my back on the deck as I gazed up at a sky full of stars. People say no one can take your memories from you, but, in a way, they can .
Already I feel them blurring at the edges, fading the way old photographs do, to a washed-out sepia so the images are barely there. When I think of the wilderness girl I was back then, with bramble scratches on my arms and strawberry stains on my chin, she seems like a ghost, or a character from a story. I reclaimed her a little, over the last few months, because I had to, but she’s gone now, just like the cottage, and this person in her place is hard-faced and flinty-eyed. I don’t like her much, but maybe it’s who I need to be, because, rather than waste time thinking about the past and what was , I need to concern myself with the future and what is—or could be.
I sit back on my heels as I gaze at the stream tumbling and splashing over rocks, a stand of slender birches on the other side of the water, and think about the journey we are going to have to make. Two hundred and fifty miles, give or take a few, to the military base fifty miles south of Buffalo, only just out of a potential blast zone, a fact that makes me both cautious and anxious. We’ll have to cross Lake Ontario, thirty miles of open water, and we don’t even have a boat. I can’t imagine it’s all that easy to stroll up to a marina and jump in a motorboat just waiting for us.
Plus, we’ll have to leave this truck behind, which is something else I don’t like. Without a vehicle, we are as vulnerable as if we were naked. How will we travel the last ninety or so miles to this semi-mythical base? By foot ?
More than any of that, though, is the fear I have at facing the outside world. Every time I’ve done it before, to investigate or get supplies, it’s ended in disaster. What might await us as we travel south to Buffalo? And barring any attacks, will we even have enough food? What if someone gets hurts or sick? Kyle’s bullet wound might get infected; Phoebe could catch pneumonia. Anything could happen. Disaster feels like it is a mere second away.
I hear a sound behind me, and this time I don’t whirl around, rifle drawn. I make myself turn around slowly, and smile at the sight of my tangle-haired daughter picking her way through the weeds.
“Hey, Rubes.”
She smiles faintly but doesn’t speak as she joins me at the stream’s edge. I watch her, noticing how much she’s grown; her long legs are slender and coltish and the clothes we brought back in November don’t fit her anymore. I cut off an old pair of jeans for shorts, and she’s been living in those and a couple of t-shirts that I can see pull across her shoulders and barely brush her navel. Never mind food, where will we get clothes for her? Mattie can give her some of hers, but after seven months everything we own is already worn and shabby.
There were a few of my parents’ clothes in the cottage that we took with us, packed in the car in case of an attack, like what actually happened, but it’s not enough. And what about Phoebe? She’ll grow and grow, and we only have a handful of toddler clothes Justine had brought that she’s already growing out of.
Ruby crouches at the stream’s edge and then glances over her shoulder at me, motioning with a hand.
“Did you find something?” I ask as I stir myself to join her. Clothes, I think again, are only one small part of the complicated problem. There are so many other things we’ll run out of, and that’s if we even have them in the first place—gas, medicine, food . You can only pretend-play pioneers for so long, especially when your meals are mainly leaves and roots with a few potatoes, and you’re on the run.
Ruby is holding a cattail, its brown, fuzzy head pinched under her thumb. “Is it edible?” I ask, and she nods, smiling. In the last few months, since the start of spring, she’s been studying a book on useful plants that she found in the bookcase at the cottage, collecting a few specimens, trying out recipes for food and medicine, along with household basics. She’s made dish soap from soapwort, antiseptic from chamomile, and tea from spicebush. Admittedly, I’d much rather buy it all from Costco, but I’m grateful for her interest and willingness, mashing and boiling and steeping various weed-like plants to make something we’re all willing to try, even if none of it is very filling.
“So what do you do with cattail?” I ask. “Bake it, grind it into flour, or eat it raw with ranch dressing?” I’m only half-teasing; all three of those suggestions were in the book, for various plants.
“Boil it, I think,” Ruby replies, her voice little more than a whisper that the breeze tugs away. I try to think of the last time she spoke, and I can’t remember. It’s been a few days and so I’m heartened that she answered me at all. “We can make porridge with it.”
“Cattail porridge!” I rub my stomach theatrically. “Yum. Shall we pick some? How much do we need?”
“Four or five stalks each,” she decides, and we spend a companionable twenty minutes gathering cattails, pulling them up from the muddy bank of the stream with a soft sucking sound as the roots come free. The edges of the leaves are sharp, though, and I give myself several papercuts. Some part of me perversely welcomes the pain.
When we both have arms full of the plants, we head up the bank, back through the woods, to the campsite. Mattie is sitting by the fire, carefully combing Phoebe’s dark hair; the little girl is perched in her lap, utterly still. Kyle is still asleep in the truck, his clothes stiff with dried sweat, but he’s broken his fever, at least. Daniel and Sam are organizing our supplies in the back of the truck; yesterday we just threw everything in there, but today we need order. We need a plan.
“So show me how to do it,” I instruct Ruby, and she glances at me shyly, clearly pleased to be in charge. Wordlessly she sets about her work—stripping the cattails of their outer bark to reveal creamy white stalks that do look fairly edible, if not quite delicious or filling.
She sets a pot of water over the campfire and stirs up the coals, every inch the competent pioneer woman who knows what she’s doing. More than I do, anyway.
“Are we eating those?” Mattie asks, making a face, as Ruby starts chopping the stalks.
“We have to use our natural food sources when we can,” I tell her, trying to ignore the worry that needles through me as I consider what will happen when there is no food. If we don’t make it to the base in Buffalo, or it doesn’t exist, or something, anything , happens. I keep my voice light as I continue, “I hear they taste just like chicken.”
Mattie rolls her eyes. “Mom, they’re plants.”
“Okay, like potatoes, then. Or actually,” I amend, remembering what Ruby said, “like porridge.”
She raises her eyebrows. “You have no idea, do you?”
I give her a grin. “Nope.”
A smile flickers about Mattie’s mouth, and my grin widens; despite all the anxieties that continue to dog me, I feel heartened. Yesterday my children seemed alienated from me, stubbornly spinning in their own orbits, but today I feel as if we’re gaining back old ground. I glance toward Sam, but he’s focused on the task at hand, stacking plastic crates of supplies by the truck.
I breathe out and turn back to Ruby. “So boiled cattails for breakfast? Maybe I can find some berries to go with them.” I glance at Mattie. “Mattie? Why don’t you come pick with me?”
Mattie frowns, her arm wrapped around Phoebe’s waist as she strokes the little girl’s silky hair. “I can’t leave Phoebe.”
Can’t ? I glance at the little girl with her straight, dark hair and deep brown eyes; the look on her face is completely expressionless, unfocused, as if she’s not entirely here. It worries me.
“Let’s bring Phoebe with us, then,” I tell Mattie. I crouch in front of the little girl, feeling ashamed that I don’t know her better. And even worse, that part of me is viewing her as a potential burden rather than a human being worthy of love, care, and attention.
“Hey, Phoebe, sweetheart,” I say gently. “Do you want to pick strawberries with Mattie and me?”
Phoebe gazes at me with her big, dark eyes and beyond that unnerving blankness I see a flicker of wariness, even suspicion. She doesn’t trust me, and I’m not sure I blame her. You can’t fool a child.
“Well?” I ask, raising my eyebrows, doing my best to sound playful. “What about it? Shall we go find some yummy berries for breakfast?”
Slowly, with firm decisiveness, she shakes her head. A breath escapes me, my exasperation revealed. Mattie gives me a sharp look.
“I don’t mind staying here,” she says.
“Phoebe can help me,” Ruby interjects softly. That’s the second time she’s spoken in the space of an hour. Today is a good day.
Mattie glances between Ruby and me as Phoebe slips off her lap and joins Ruby by the campfire. Mattie shrugs. “Fine,” she says, and rises from the ground.
We leave Phoebe helping Ruby, Sam and Daniel still working by the truck, Kyle asleep, as we head to a meadow further downstream. I don’t know if there are tiny strawberries nestled among the long grass, but I hope so.
“How are you doing, Mattie?” I ask quietly as we wade through the grass under a bright blue sky, my tone meaningful enough for her to realize, I hope, that I want an honest answer, considering everything we’ve endured. Everything we’ve lost.
“How am I doing?” Mattie repeats thoughtfully. “Well, let’s see. Yesterday I was attacked by a gang, my grandmother and two friends all died, my home burned down, and I had to run for my life.” She smacks her forehead like she’s forgotten something. “Oh, and the other thing is, there’s this nuclear holocaust thing going on. But you know, besides all that…” She trails off, giving me a look that is half humor, half teenaged well-duh , and I let out a little laugh of acknowledgement.
“Yeah, so besides that,” I amend, and my daughter laughs, the sound as clear as a bell ringing through the bright morning air. My heart lightens, like a balloon floating up inside me.
Mattie’s laughter subsides as she shakes her head, and her expression turns pinched and serious. “I keep thinking about Kerry,” she admits in a low voice. “How she saw that guy aiming at me and just dove in front of me. I would have died if it hadn’t been for her. I would have been shot.” Her voice catches, and then irons out. “I feel like I didn’t deserve that. She was only in her thirties. She had her whole life to live.”
“She made a choice,” I tell Mattie quietly. “She’d do it again in a heartbeat, I know she would.”
“I know she would too,” Mattie agrees on a soft, sad sigh. “But that says a lot more about her than about me.”
“Well, the best thing you can do for her now is live your life to the full,” I tell her firmly. “Make it count.”
Mattie shoots me a dryly disbelieving look. “Did you steal that line from Saving Private Ryan ?”
I give a guilty chuckle. “Maybe.”
She shakes her head, rolling her eyes, and I smile again. The sun is warm on my head, and I am happier—if I can even use that word—than I have been since the attack, or even before that, despite all the sorrows and worries that still dog us like a dark shadow.
At the far edge of the meadow, we find berries—tiny, perfect little jewels nestled deep in the long grass. It’s time-consuming and laborious, kneeling on the hard ground and liberating each berry from its nestled home of leaves, but we manage to pick a half a cupful, working in companionable silence as the sun beats down. There’s enough for everyone to have a spoonful or two on top of their cattail porridge, which we’ll all hopefully be able to choke down.
As we head back to the campsite, I ask Mattie, keeping my tone as casual as I can make it, “How is Sam doing with that processing?”
Once again I’m the recipient of an eye-roll. “Nice one, Mom,” she says, shaking her head. “Smooth, really smooth.” She lets out a short sigh. “He’s okay.”
“Does he talk to you?”
She shrugs. “Not really.”
“Then how do you know?”
“I just know.”
“What…what exactly is he processing?” I hold up a hand to forestall the usual sarcastic reply. “I know the stuff that happened at the cottage, the attack, all that. Obviously those are huge things that have happened. But…” I take a breath and force myself on. “I feel like he’s…mad at me, for…for what happened out on that road.” It hurts to say it.
“You mean you and Dad killing a guy, maybe two?” Mattie replies with deliberate bluntness, and I can’t help but flinch.
“They were a potential threat to us, Mattie?—”
“But what if they weren’t,” my daughter interjects, her tone turning almost gentle. “I mean, I get that you couldn’t have known, I thought they were dangerous too, and I said as much, but…I think that’s what Sam is upset about. He showed me something he found in the truck, tucked into the visor, on the driver’s side. Some Bible verse or something.” She is silent for a moment while I absorb what she has just told me, what it might mean. “They could have been good guys,” she finishes quietly. “Which kind of sucks.”
Of course, I tell myself, a Bible verse on someone’s sun visor doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I wouldn’t be surprised if a good portion of the gun-toting gangs we’ve run into have had Bible verses on their walls handstitched by their wives, or verse-a-day calendars by their kitchen sinks. When I went to the little church with my parents up here, at least half the congregation members were carrying.
Still, it shakes me. I’m quiet as we keep walking back, the long grass whispering against our bare legs, the sky so blue it hurts to look at it. The air is full of sound—the chirp and chatter of birds, the rustle of the grass and the wind in the trees, the insistent buzz of crickets a constant chorus.
“Sam’ll get over it, Mom,” Mattie says after we’ve walked in silence for a few minutes. “Just give him time.”
I nod jerkily, not trusting myself to speak. I feel guilty, yes, but I’m also angry, or maybe just resentful. I might have made a mistake, an enormous one, but I had a reason . A good reason, so why should my own child be judge and jury over me, even as I recognize that I’m judging myself? That sense of self-righteousness flares high and hot for a single instant and then burns right out, so all I feel is that wretched, acidic churn of guilt in my stomach. I might have killed an innocent man—and my children saw me do it.
Back at the campsite, Ruby has made a mushy sort of porridge out of the cattails, which taste kind of like a bitter cucumber. The berries help, at least. We all eat it without complaining, even Phoebe, scraping our bowls out. Even though I didn’t feel hungry, I realize I was.
Afterwards, Mattie, Ruby, and I gather the dishes to go back down to the stream to wash them while Daniel and Sam continue organizing our supplies. Before we head down, I check on Kyle, and give him some water and porridge. He manages a few spoonfuls before he blinks up at me blearily.
“Sorry to be such a mess…”
“It’s not your fault, Kyle.” I wipe his forehead, trying not to wrinkle my nose at the smell of him. He needs to wash in the cold, clear water of the stream, but that can wait until he’s stronger.
“What’s happening?” he asks. “Have those guys…the cottage…”
“The cottage burned down,” I remind him gently. I’m not sure how much he took in yesterday, when it was all going down, a blur of chaos and fear. Kyle had been the lookout at the barn, so he wasn’t there when they started shooting. “I don’t know about those guys,” I tell him, “but we’re a hundred miles away from them now, and I think they’re more of a homegrown gang. I doubt they stray far from their little patch.”
He nods as his eyes flutter closed. “Kerry…”
Kerry was the only relative he had left. His parents almost certainly died back in the Miami blast, where they’d had a condo.
“I’m sorry, Kyle,” I say quietly. “She was a good friend. A good woman.”
He nods, gulping, his brown eyes glassy with tears before he closes them again, and it takes me a few seconds to realize he’s fallen back asleep. I glance down at him, filled with a sudden, surprising tenderness for this boy-man. He’s only nineteen years old, the same age as Sam, although the two are totally different in personality and experience. Kyle lived by himself in a shabby, dirty apartment in Corville, aimless, jobless, hopeless.
When we found him he was slumped in a chair, having no idea what to do without electricity or running water, just waiting for something to happen. Not every kid who grew up in rural Ontario knows how to shoot game or survive in the wilderness or any of that kind of stuff; Kyle certainly didn’t. But he came into his own over the last few months, his weedy frame filling out as he grew both in stature and confidence, learning the skills we all had to, so we could survive in this brave new world. Gently I dab his forehead again and then I leave him to sleep .
Mattie, Ruby, and I lug the dishes down to the stream, with Phoebe following along behind us. The day is turning hot, and dragonflies hover over the stream, the sunlight catching their transparent wings before they flit away, dodging and weaving over the water, an elegant insect ballet.
We kneel on the bank of the stream and start washing the dishes; Mattie rinses, Ruby scrubs with the soapwort she made weeks ago, and I dry. Soapwort is a plant that looks like a weed to me, but, according to her book, when you simmer the leaves and strain the liquid, then whisk it till frothy, it more or less acts like soap. It’s what we’ve been using for the last two months, since the dish soap ran out. I’m glad for it now.
Kneeling there with my daughters, working in harmony, I feel the tight knot of anxiety, guilt, and fear inside me start to loosen, just a little. If I don’t think about the past or worry about the future, I can breathe. I can feel, if not quite content, then close enough.
But of course it doesn’t last. When we head back up to the campsite, Daniel and Sam have finished organizing the crates, and Mattie and Ruby start playing a game of hide and seek with Phoebe. I check on Kyle again, and see that he’s sleeping; and then, steeling myself, I flip down the visor on the driver’s side of the truck. A photograph flutters out and I pick it up, blink the image into focus.
It’s of a young woman with blond hair and three little kids—two girls and a boy, just like my family. The oldest girl has blond braids, the boy a pie-eating grin and a gap between his front teeth. The littlest girl is little more than a toddler, chubby and rosy-cheeked, sitting on her sister’s lap. The mother stands behind them all, beaming but looking a little tired. They’re all in front of one of those cheesy photographic studio backdrops, a mottled blue screen.
I stare at that photo, and I taste bile, as the guilt rushes through me all over again, worse than ever. I was so concerned about how my kids would see me, how they might judge me. Now I feel the far greater weight of the family I deprived of a father, the wife of her husband. All because I was scared and angry and just a little too trigger-happy…that is, if he really was a good guy. Is there any way for me to ever know?
Still, no matter how I try to spin it to myself as well as my children, right now I know there’s no other way to look at it. No other way to feel.
I’m a murderer.