Chapter 3 #2
I’m still thinking about everything Emmy said later that day as I get ready for Mike the Prepper to come over for dinner.
I’ve pushed the boat out when it comes to showing off the bounty from our larder and garden—homemade bread and butter, pastry crust for the chicken pie made with lard I actually rendered, a winter project William and I got up to one afternoon in January—and containing, of course, one of our meat chickens, plus potatoes and carrots from our garden harvest, kept fresh in burlap sacks in the basement.
A root cellar is next on Josh’s bucket list of building projects.
Dessert is a huckleberry crumble with berries I picked last summer and froze and whipped cream and ice cream, both made from our dairy cow Mabel’s milk.
All in all, I’m feeling pretty proud. Probably too proud because I’m not actually sure what I’m trying to prove.
Mike the Prepper, or really just Mike, seems like a perfectly nice guy, and there’s no reason to feel like I have to show him we are just as capable as he is.
He hasn’t said we aren’t. At least not in so many words, and the truth is, I know we aren’t, so the sense of competition really is ridiculous.
“Wow, you’re really going to town,” Josh remarks as he breaks off a piece of bread crust before I can slap his hand away. “Looks amazing.” He raises his eyebrows, amused. “You’re not trying to impress our neighbor, are you?”
“No,” I reply quickly, clearly fibbing. “But since he’s Mr. Off-Gridder, I just wanted to show him that we are, too.”
“Mr. Off-Gridder,” Josh repeats with a chuckle.
“This guy has a lot of nicknames for someone we barely know.” He cocks his head.
“But we’re not really off-gridders, Abs, are we?
” he asks quizzically. “I mean, we’re doing great.
And I’m proud of how far we’ve come. But if you’ve read any of my issues of Off-Grid Survival—a magazine Josh subscribes to that I don’t read because it both overwhelms and depresses me—we’re pretty far from that kind of life. ”
“I know.” I sound sulky, and I don’t mean to. “I don’t even want that kind of life. I’m not ready for the apocalypse.”
Josh purses his lips thoughtfully. “I don’t think apocalypses wait for people to be ready.”
“You know what I mean. I just don’t want Mike the Prepper or Off-Gridder or whatever to make us feel bad.”
Now he frowns. “He didn’t seem like that kind of guy.”
“He doesn’t have to.” I think of Allie Hoffenberger, our old neighbor, who had a knack for making me feel incompetent and useless, all with a smile on her face and a kindly tone.
She meant well, I know she did, and we became friends, but…
I didn’t like how she made me feel, and that was on me. “This is a me thing. Mostly.”
“Ah.” He nods slowly. “Kind of like Obadiah was a me thing.”
I smile teasingly. “I forgot you didn’t like him at first.” I didn’t, actually, but it feels as if I should pretend I did. Josh, however, is not fooled.
“Yeah, right, you forgot,” he says with good humor. “I know it was petty of me…” He pauses tellingly, and I roll my eyes.
“And this is petty of me. Okay, I get it.”
Josh didn’t like Obadiah at first because he reminded him of all the people we knew back in Princeton who were handed everything they had because of their wealth and connections.
And Mike the Prepper? I guess he reminds me of how little we knew when we started down this road, and it makes me afraid of realizing how little we still know.
I mean, I know we’re still at the beginning of our journey, if I want to put it like that, but…
I don’t want someone else to make me feel that way.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I tell Josh as I put the chicken pie in the oven. “Chalk it up to pregnancy hormones.”
“You can use that excuse for four more months,” he says in mock warning.
“I can use that excuse for three more years, minimum,” I tell him tartly. I think about breastfeeding, nighttime nursing, and feeling constantly sleep-deprived. I’ve got a lot of good excuses coming my way, and I intend to trade in on them all.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Come in, come in!”
Josh is all genial bonhomie as he ushers Mike into our kitchen.
He’s carrying a wooden bowl of salad that looks like it’s made of weeds—Rose and Jack eye it with definite suspicion—and a fistful of early wildflowers that are tied with twine.
There’s a bottle of some home brew stuck in the deep pocket of his battered wax jacket.
“Welcome to our home,” Josh says.
“Thank you kindly.” Mike smiles at all of us, his gaze roving over our kitchen in critical assessment. “Nice place you’ve got here,” he remarks. “Do you have your own well?”
“Yep,” Josh assures him cheerfully.
“Solar panels?” Mike barks out.
I stifle a groan. This is what I was afraid of.
“Not yet, but that’s on our wish list.”
Mike nods thoughtfully. “You can’t be completely self-sufficient without them, you know.”
“No, indeed.” Josh’s eyebrows lift. “Do you want a tour of the place?”
Mike’s smile is wide and friendly, and I tell myself not to be so prickly.
“Sure!”
While Josh gives Mike the full tour, I get dinner on the table. The kids drift around, Bethany helping me with the food, Jack trailing after Josh and Mike, and William getting some wood in since the nights are still pretty cold. As I take the pie out of the oven, Rose tugs on my sleeve.
“I don’t have to eat that stuff, do I?” she asks anxiously, nodding toward the salad Mike brought.
“Yes, you do,” I reply firmly. “It’s only polite, Rose.”
She lets out a little whimper of distress that I ignore. This is all part of building resilience.
As they come back in, I can tell that Josh’s good humor is faltering a little. Mike has clearly been keeping up a monologue about what we need to do on the homestead, as well as what we’re already doing wrong.
“You really should have cold frames,” he says as Josh ushers him into the kitchen.
“So you can prime your summer garden. Frankly, I’m amazed you haven’t even plowed yet.
It’s March, after all, and without the cold frames…
” He shakes his head despairingly, which makes me feel like hiding under our bed.
Clearly, it’s hopeless. It’s March, and our spring planting and summer harvest are already toast.
“Well, there’s this pesky broken leg of mine,” Josh replies, his smile a little fixed. “I only got the cast off a couple of weeks ago, so…”
“And you really should be stocking that pond,” he adds, a note of warning in his voice.
“If you’d done it last August or September, you could have some decent-sized fish in there already.
Trout and pike… as it is, I’d do it in April, if I were you.
Better late than never, but you won’t be catching anything worth eating for another six months at least.”
“I don’t like fish,” Rose volunteers, and Mike turns to her with a kindly smile.
“Well, I think you’ll like them all right if they’re all that’s separating you from starvation,” he says cheerfully.
Rose’s eyes widen, and I hurry to smooth over the moment.
“Dinner’s just about ready, Mike. Can I get you something to drink?”
The well-meaning and relentless advice continues all through our meal, along with asides about what I’ve served.
“Did you process the chicken yourself?” he asks as we all dig into my very homemade chicken pie.
“The meat seems a little stringy to me. You know you shouldn’t go past seven weeks with a meat chicken?
And let them drain for at least three days, making sure you constantly add ice; otherwise, they’ll be tough. ”
“Yeah, I watched that YouTube video, too,” Josh mutters under his breath.
Bethany chokes while William smothers a laugh. Mike, thankfully, is oblivious, but I feel as if the evening is getting away from us.
“Mike, are you hoping to have meat chickens?” I ask, and he gives me a benevolently indulgent smile.
“I’m planning to be entirely self-sufficient,” he reminds me, his tone almost gentle, and I’m amazed I could have forgotten for so much as a second.
And so the evening goes.
“All right, I get it,” Josh burst out almost the very instant I close the door on Mike.
It’s nearing eleven, and I think everybody is exhausted. I still have to tuck Rose in, and my belly feels all achy, and I don’t think it’s the chicken pie I ate.
“Get what?” I ask as I start clearing plates. The kitchen is a mess; we went from dinner to dessert to coffee to aperitifs—Hooch’s huckleberry gin liqueur—without any cleanup, and the result is two dishwasher loads scattered across every work surface.
“Get why you don’t like Mike the Prepper,” Josh says succinctly.
I hurriedly hush him. “I never said I didn’t like him.”
Josh cocks an eyebrow. “Abby.”
“I didn’t,” I insist, stubborn now. “And I think you’re being a little unfair.
I know he can be a little… keen, but so were we when we started.
Do you remember all the videos we watched?
We thought eleven seasons of Alone made us survivalist experts.
” I let out a huff as I recall Josh expostulating on how best to skin a deer, when the only dead deer he’d ever seen in real life was one being picked over by crows on the side of the road, hit by someone else. “We need to give him a break.”
Josh looks both surprised and a little annoyed. “I didn’t expect you to take his side.”
“There don’t need to be sides,” I reply as I start loading the dishwasher. Even if Mike criticized my chicken pie, or at least the chicken in it, which was bad enough. “And the truth is…” I pause, letting my thoughts coalesce into something approaching certainty. “I think he’s lonely.”
Josh gapes me for a second. “Lonely…”
“Yes, lonely.” I warm to my theme. “He moved around as a kid with his dad in the army, he’s not married, no children as far as I know, and then he comes here all by himself?” My voice rises in a squeak of indignation. “Of course, he’s lonely.”