10. Justice
JUSTICE
The dark lasts three seconds. Muscle memory. My hand finds the shelf left of the door, fingers closing around the storm lantern right where I left it two winters ago. Wooden match from the tin beside it. Strike. The wick catches and throws orange light across the cabin's single room.
Eight by ten. Log walls chinked with ancient oakum.
Cast-iron stove in the corner, its pipe punching through the metal roof.
Two bunks, stacked, bolted to the far wall with lag screws I drove myself.
A plywood counter with a hand pump connected to a buried cistern that may or may not be frozen solid.
Home.
Not the A-frame. That place has insulation and a generator and running water. That place could be in a magazine. This is different. This is the bones of the mountain dressed up just enough to keep a man alive.
I put the lantern down and get to work.
The windows first. Two of them, each barely fourteen inches square, cut into the east and south walls.
I yank the pre-cut plywood panels from under the bottom bunkbed where I stored them.
Four lag bolts per panel. The cordless drill is dead.
Figured. I palm the hand brace instead, fitting the hex driver bit, and crank each bolt home by hand.
The plywood seats flush against the frames.
Each bolt bites into the log headers with a groan that vibrates up through my wrist.
The wind finds the gaps and whistles through them, high and thin, probing for weakness. Let it probe. These walls are twelve inches of old-growth pine stacked tight. They've stood through sixty mountain winters. They will stand through this one.
Emilia huddles by the door. Arms closed around herself. Her teeth chatter so hard I can hear the click of enamel across the room. The borrowed coat swallows her. Snow melts in her dark hair, tracking down her temples in thin rivulets.
I open the stove. Kindling is already laid inside.
I packed this stove two autumns ago, the last time I came up to check the cabin.
Dry cedar splits over a nest of birch bark shavings, stacked in a tight lattice that will catch fast. One match.
Touch it to the bark. The shavings curl and brown, then a thin tongue of flame licks up through the cedar and the draft pulls hard through the open damper.
I feed it. Slow. Deliberate. Two finger-thick splits first. Let them catch fully before adding wrist-thick rounds from the bin bolted to the wall beside the stove.
The fire grows, popping and ticking against the cast iron, and the stove begins to radiate.
Not warmth yet. Just the promise of warmth.
The metal needs time to absorb, to build, to push heat into the dead air of a cabin that hasn't been occupied in two years.
I open the damper full and add two more rounds. Fat ones. The stove is small but efficient. Airtight when sealed. Once the metal heats through, this room will hold seventy degrees against anything the mountain throws at it.
The wind hits the south wall and the whole cabin shudders. Good. The roof groans under accumulating snow. Good. I hear the hiss of powder driving against the corrugated metal in sheets, packing into every gap, every fold, burying us layer by layer.
Good.
I stand and look at the boarded windows. At the barred door. At the stove ticking and glowing in the corner. At the storm trying to tear the ridge apart outside.
Nobody is coming up this trail tonight. Nobody is coming up it tomorrow.
Or the day after. The grade alone would stop a vehicle a mile below us, and the snow is filling in every footprint we left, every bootmark, every broken branch.
By morning there will be two feet of fresh pack on whatever the mountain already carries.
The road to the A-frame will be impassable.
The logging roads below that will be buried.
The highway will close. The passes will lock.
Her father's private investigators are sitting in a diner in town right now, showing her picture to locals over plates of eggs and coffee, thinking they're close. Thinking they're hunting. They have no idea the mountain just slammed a door in their faces that no amount of money can open.
I would buy this storm a drink if I could.
The stove metal pops. A deep sound, the iron expanding as it heats through, and the first real wave of warmth pushes into the room. I feel it against my shins and forearms. The air temperature shifts. Two degrees. Five. The frost on the inside of the log walls starts to weep.
I bring the heavy wool blanket from the top bunk and cross the room.
She looks up at me. Eyes wet. Jaw still shaking. Snow still melting in her hair. So small in my coat that only her fingertips show past the cuffs.
I wrap the blanket around her shoulders and steer her toward the stove.
Press her down onto the wooden crate I use as a seat.
Her knees buckle willingly. She draws the blanket tight and holds her hands toward the growing heat, palms open, fingers spread, and a sound comes out of her that hits me somewhere behind the sternum.
A small, broken exhale of relief.
I turn back to work. Plenty still to do. But the storm outside pounds the walls and I let it.
Let it bury us. Let it bury everything.
The cabin gives us about eighty square feet of living space. I've worked in engine bays with more room.
I inventory what we have. The supply cache under the bunk holds what I stocked two falls ago.
I pull out the plastic tote and crack the lid.
Four cans of beef stew. Two cans of condensed milk.
A bag of rolled oats sealed in mylar. Jerky, vacuum-packed.
Salt. A tin of instant coffee that smells stale when I pry the lid but will do.
Six bottles of water. Fire starters. First aid kit.
A single emergency thermal blanket, silver and crinkly.
Not a feast. Maybe five days of calories for one person if I stretch it. For two, I cut that in half. Less if she needs the energy to stay warm, which she will. Her body mass is half mine. She'll burn through fuel faster trying to maintain core temperature.
I grab the cast-iron pot from the shelf above the stove.
Test the hand pump. Three hard cranks and the pipe shudders.
Fourth crank gives a thin stream of silty water that clears after a few seconds.
Not frozen. The cistern sits deep enough that the ground insulation held.
I fill the pot and set it on the stovetop.
"What are you making?"
She speaks from behind the blanket, small and muffled. She's pulled it up over her nose. Only her eyes show. Wide. Regarding everything I do.
"Food."
I open one can of stew and dump it into the warming water. Then a second. That's half our stew supply for one meal, but she hasn't eaten since the eggs and toast I made her at the A-frame this morning. That was twelve hours and a four-mile vertical hike ago. Her body is running on nothing.
I stir with the hunting knife. Not ideal. Works fine.
The stew heats fast on the cast iron. The smell fills the tiny cabin in under a minute. Beef and salt and gravy and something earthy from the rosemary they pack in. My stomach tightens but I ignore it. I have mass. I have reserves. She doesn't.
I pour the entire pot into the single metal bowl I keep here and bring it to her.
She pushes the blanket down from her face. Her lips have lost that blue tinge. Color returning. Pink creeping back into her cheeks. The stove is doing its work.
"Where's yours?"
"Ate in town."
A lie. She studies my face. I keep it flat. She takes the bowl and wraps both hands around it, pressing it against her sternum, absorbing the heat through the metal before she even tries to eat.
"There's only one spoon," I tell her. "On the counter."
She drinks straight from the bowl instead.
Tips it up and takes a long pull. Her throat works.
She closes her eyes. Opens them. Takes another.
Another. She finishes the entire thing in under two minutes, and when she lowers the bowl, a thin line of gravy runs down her chin and she wipes it with the back of her hand.
"Sorry. I was..."
"Don't apologize for being hungry."
I take the bowl and rinse it under the pump. Refill the pot. Set it back on the stove to heat for drinking water.
The cabin is warm now. Not comfortable by any civilized standard, but survivable. The stove has the air hovering around sixty and climbing. The boarded windows killed the drafts. The packed snow outside is doing what snow does best. Insulating.
I check the bunks. Bottom bunk has a foam pad, compressed flat from storage but intact.
One wool blanket already on her shoulders.
The thermal emergency blanket. A canvas tarp I keep folded under the mattress.
I layer them. Thermal blanket flat on the foam to reflect body heat upward.
Canvas tarp over that for wind resistance. The blanket on top.
It will be enough. For her.
I strip off my wet jacket and hang it on the nail behind the stove to dry.
My flannel is damp at the shoulders and along the back.
I pull it off too. The cold air touches my bare skin and the muscles across my shoulders tighten involuntarily, but the stove is close. I drape the flannel next to the jacket.
Her eyes track the movement. Then drop. Then come back up. The flush on her cheeks deepens and it has nothing to do with the fire.
I ignore it. Or try.
"Give me the coat."
She hesitates.
"Emilia. The coat is wet. It'll keep you cold."
She stands and shrugs it off. Underneath, my flannel shirt and sweatpants hang on her frame. The shirt collar slips off one shoulder, exposing the ridge of her collarbone. Skin like paper over fine bone.
I hang the coat. Add a round to the stove. Check the damper. Check the door bar. Check the seal on the window boards.
"Bed."