Chapter 6 #4
"So between now and the day the road closes, which is probably three weeks, we have to solve four things."
He wrote them on the back of an envelope.
MEAT. FAT. GREENS. GRAIN.
"Meat first," he said. "There's elk on this mountain and they're moving down. Every day that goes by they come lower, and there's going to be a window in about ten days when they're between the aspen and the creek and they'll be in range of a man on foot."
"How many do we need?" Sylvie asked.
"Two. Three would change everything."
"Three elk is what, a thousand pounds?"
"A big cow dresses out about three hundred pounds of usable meat," Joe said. "Three of them is nine hundred pounds, which at two pounds a day for nine people is about a hundred and fifty days."
"That's the whole winter."
"That's the whole winter."
Pruitt said, "And how do you keep nine hundred pounds of meat?"
Joe pointed out the window at the falling snow.
"That," he said.
"Freeze it?"
"Freeze it and smoke it and can it and bury it in a snow cache with rock on it. All four. You don't pick one method, you split it four ways, because any single method can fail and if it fails you lose everything."
Imogen wrote that down.
"Fat," Joe said.
"Why is fat separate from meat?" said Sylvie.
Imogen answered before Joe could.
"Because elk is almost pure protein," she said. "Two or three percent fat. And if you eat nothing but lean meat for six weeks, your body can't process the protein load and you get sick. Diarrhea, headaches, weakness, and then you die with a full belly."
"That's real?"
"It's extremely real. Trappers died of it constantly." Imogen tapped the table. "You need fat or carbohydrate with it. There's no way around it."
"So where does fat come from?"
"Bear," said Bill Tandy, "if we're lucky, and we won't be, they'll be denned. Beaver, if anybody can trap. Bacon, if Bill Tandy has a hog, which Bill Tandy does."
Everybody looked at him.
"I have two hogs," Bill said. "They're in a pen on my place eating my corn and getting fat as senators, and it's about time we went and got them."
"Two hogs," Joe said.
"About two hundred and eleven pounds apiece live. You'll get thirty pounds of leaf lard off each one and about the same in back fat, plus the bacon and the hams."
Joe put his hands on the table and let out a breath.
"Bill."
"I was going to mention it Tuesday."
"Bill, why in God's name didn't you say that a week ago?"
"Because a week ago we were busy," Bill said, "and because they're my hogs and I know where they are and they weren't going anywhere, and because an old man likes to have one thing in his pocket."
Delores, from the stove, said, "He's been saving it. He does this."
"I do this."
"He did it for our whole marriage."
"Greens," Joe said, moving on.
"That's mine," said Imogen. "Rose hips, which are on every hillside right now and will hold through the snow, and there's more vitamin C in a handful of those than in an orange. Pine needle tea, which sounds like a joke and is not. Dandelion root, still diggable for about two more weeks."
"Scurvy," said Hazel, who had come in and sat down without anyone noticing.
"Scurvy," Imogen agreed. "Which is a joke to everybody until March, and then it stops being a joke."
"And grain," Joe said.
That one sat there.
"That one we can't fix," he said. "Four hundred and fifty pounds is four hundred and fifty pounds and nothing is growing between now and May."
"There's grain in this valley," Pruitt said.
Everyone looked at him.
"There's a co-op elevator at the mouth of the canyon with I don't know how many tons of feed wheat in it," Pruitt said. "It's not food grade. It's got dust and chaff and probably mouse. But it's wheat, and it's sitting there, and the bins are gravity fed so you don't need power to get it out."
Joe stared at him.
"How do you know that?"
"Because I hauled out of it," Pruitt said. "Three seasons. I know where the gates are and I know which bins are full because they were full in September and nobody's moved grain since."
"Who owns it?"
"The co-op. Which is about eleven hundred members, which is everybody, which is nobody."
The room was very quiet.
"That's a hundred tons of calories forty minutes from this table," Bill said slowly.
"And every single person in that valley is going to work that out by Christmas," said Pruitt.
Joe looked at him for a long moment.
Looked at a man whose name was on a piece of paper in a hole in a hillside, who had just handed the house the most valuable piece of information anybody had produced in two weeks.
"Then we go before Christmas," Joe said.
They went on Tuesday.
Not to the elevator. That was going to take planning and wagons and more men than they had.
They went to get the hogs.
Joe took the truck and Bill and Pruitt and Colby, and they left at seven, and Imogen stayed because Imogen had a different appointment at ten.
He almost did not go.
He stood in the yard with the keys in his hand for four minutes arguing with her about it, and she said the thing that ended it.