Chapter 12 #2
Sixty one households. Thirty one thousand four hundred and eleven pounds of wheat weighed, recorded, signed for, and hauled away in everything from a grain wagon to a child's sled.
Fifteen and a half tons out of nine hundred.
"That's nothing," said Crowe, looking at the book. "That's under two percent."
"That's sixty one families that eat until March," said Alta.
"And they'll be back in March."
"And it'll still be there in March," Alta said, "because you didn't burn it and neither did he."
They loaded the bench's six tons in ninety minutes.
Twelve thousand pounds of clean screened wheat in one hundred and twenty sacks, weighed in batches on the Fairbanks, written into the book in Sylvie Kessick's careful handwriting, and signed at the bottom of the page by Harlan Batey with his hand shaking so badly that Alta had to steady his wrist.
Joe read the entry before it went in the safe.
TWELVE THOUSAND (12,000) LBS HARD RED WINTER, SCREENED, RELEASED TO HENFRY BENCH HOUSEHOLD (31 PERSONS) AT 1 LB/PERSON/DAY FOR 190 DAYS PLUS MARGIN. APPROVED 3-0. TO BE RECONCILED AT ANNUAL MEETING MARCH 1927.
"You wrote 1927," Joe said.
Sylvie leaned over.
"Oh no."
"Leave it," said Alta.
"Ma'am, it's wrong."
"Leave it. It'll give somebody a laugh in a hundred years."
The storm did not come at three.
It came at six fifteen, and by then the flatbed had made two trips and the Ford had made two, and the fifth run was Joe and Pruitt in the dark with the last twenty four hundred pounds and the wipers frozen solid.
It took an hour and forty minutes to do nine miles.
Joe came up his own drive at eight fifty with the snow going sideways through the headlights and drifting across the second switchback in ridges that were already eleven inches deep.
He stopped at the top and got out and stood there for a second with the door open.
Then he went in the house.
Thirty one people. Six tons of wheat. Six weeks of food had become six months.
Delores Tandy had made bread.
She had made it that afternoon, out of the first hundred pounds that came up the hill, ground on Joe's two hundred and eleven dollar hand mill by four people taking shifts on the crank, and there were eleven loaves on the kitchen table when he walked in.
The house smelled like bread.
Joe stood in his own mudroom with snow melting off his coat and could not make himself move for a moment.
"Dad." Hazel came around the corner. "Dad, come in, you're standing in the door."
"Yeah."
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine."
"You're crying."
"I'm not crying, it's snow."
"Dad, it's on the inside of your face."
He sat down at the table and ate bread with sixty two pounds of lard and three hundred people's worth of relief in his chest and did not say much of anything for twenty minutes.
Across the room, Merrit Crowe was teaching Zachary how to do a finger stick on himself, which Imogen had authorized for reasons that were not entirely clear to Joe.
"You have to do the side," Merrit said. "Not the pad. The pad has all the nerves."
"Does it hurt?"
"Yes."
"Then why do you do it?"
"Because if I don't I die," said Merrit Crowe, and Zachary nodded very seriously and pricked his own finger and yelped.
"Two hundred and eleven people in this house," Imogen said, sitting down next to Joe.
"Thirty one."
"It feels like two hundred and eleven."
"It does."
She leaned her head against his shoulder.
"The storm's going to shut the road," she said.
"Yes."
"How long?"
"March. April at the pass."
"So this is it. This is the household until spring."
"This is the household until spring."
Imogen was quiet for a moment.
"Then I need to say something to everybody," she said, "and I need you to back me up on it, and you're going to hate the first ninety seconds."
She stood on a chair.
That was how she did it, and it was the correct instinct, because thirty one people in four rooms cannot hear anybody who is standing on the floor.
"Everybody," she said. "Kitchen, now. Bring the kids."
It took four minutes to assemble them.
Joe stood at the back with his arms folded and watched his wife look at nineteen people she had not known a week ago.
"My name is Imogen Henfry," she said. "Most of you know that. Some of you have been in this house four days and have not spoken to me once, and that's fine, because you've been frightened and there are eleven children to keep track of."
Nobody moved.
"We are going to be in this house together until April," she said. "Possibly May. Thirty one people in four hundred square feet of heated floor space with one stove and one spring and one cellar."
A woman near the door said, "We know."
"I don't think you do," Imogen said. "So I'm going to tell you what is actually going to kill people in this house, and it is not Teague and it is not hunger."
She held up one finger.
"Diarrhea," she said.
Somebody laughed.
"I want whoever laughed to understand that I am completely serious," Imogen said, "and that in every disaster in recorded history, more people die of sanitation failure than of violence. Thirty one people in one building sharing one water source is a cholera outbreak that has not happened yet."
The room stopped laughing.
"So here is the rule and it is not negotiable. Nobody, ever, for any reason, uses the ground uphill of that spring house. The latrine is downhill and downstream and two hundred feet from any water, and it is where it is because I paced it out myself this morning."
"What about at night?" somebody asked. "In a storm?"
"Buckets in the mudroom. Emptied in the morning, in the latrine, by whoever used them."
"That's disgusting."
"Cholera is disgusting," Imogen said. "This is inconvenient."
She held up two fingers.
"Handwashing. Every person, before every meal, after every latrine trip, no exceptions, no matter how cold the water is. There is a basin by the door and there will be soap in it because Delores is going to make soap out of eleven pounds of lard and the ash from that stove,
and she has agreed to teach four people how."
Delores raised a hand from the corner.
"It takes six weeks to cure," she said. "So we ration what's in the cupboard until January."
"Three," said Imogen.
She held up three fingers.
"Lice and scabies."
The room went very still.
"Thirty one people sleeping in shifts on shared bedding is how it spreads and it will happen," Imogen said. "It is not a comment on anybody's cleanliness. It is a comment on arithmetic."
She stopped.
"It's a comment on numbers," she said. "Sorry. It's a comment on numbers. Every bed sheet and every blanket in this house gets boiled on a rotation and every head gets checked once a week by somebody else, because you cannot check your own head."
"Who does the checking?" said Colby.
"Hazel and Merrit, because they're the only two people in this house with good eyes and the patience for it, and because I asked them this afternoon and they said yes."
Joe looked at his daughter.
Hazel shrugged.
"Four," said Imogen.
Four fingers.
"Teeth."
Somebody made a noise.
"I'm serious about this one too," she said. "There is no dentist. There has not been a dentist since the fourth of October and there will not be one for years. An abscessed molar will kill an adult in this house in about eleven days and it will be the worst eleven days any of us have ever seen."
The room was absolutely silent now.
"So everybody brushes. Twice. With a brush or a frayed green stick or a rag and salt, and if you have not got a brush, come see me and I will make you one. And if anybody in this house feels a tooth start to go, you tell me on the first day, not the fourth."