Chapter Nine

Donovan accepted Carina's warning not to snoop and set himself to work with a renewed vigor, as if making up for lost time. In the heat of late August he limped around the kitchen on his improvised cane, helping cut melon rinds for pickling and pulling the spines out of prickly pear cactus for salads. As the weather cooled he tried to master the art of feeding the cast iron stove, which seemed to burn either red-hot or barely at all unless it received exactly the right amount of fuel and its many doors and flues were set just so. Then it was time to cut pumpkins and apples for drying. Some of these were strung like corn and hung on the sunny front porch until they were ready for storage. Others were blanched and dried on big screens or else boiled and canned. Red chiles were brought in from the fields, bundled into ristras and hung to dry from hooks on the patio. Soon the porch and drying shed were full to bursting, and the jars of preserves multiplied in the pantry like colorful, oversized jewels.

All of this was new to Donovan, who had never given much thought to food, which always came from stores, homes, civil distribution points and the street vendors he stole from as a kid. In the Guard, food was the mess hall's problem. It struck him as amazing that in a society where most people couldn't be sure where their next meal was coming from, he could still be so ignorant of how it was grown and preserved.

"So you've got to make this last all winter?" he asked Carina one day as they set a screen of sliced pumpkin to dry in the sun.

"We'll supplement it with milk, eggs, maybe a bit of meat and a few things from our next run to town, but yes."

"You're going to town?"

"One of us has to. It's been a long time because it's hard for one of us run this place alone, even if only for a little while. But with winter coming, we need to make a few trades and see what we can get with our ration coupons."

"How do you get your ration books all the way out here?"

"We have a system," she said, heading back into the house and gathering the pumpkin seeds for cleaning and salting. "We have them sent to a friend's address in town, where they sometimes have postal delivery. We have an understanding. She can have one of the books as long as she holds the other for us. It's worked pretty well so far."

"She's never tried to steal the other book?"

"Why would she? She's a friend."

"This is all so different from what I'm used to. People don't trample all over each other here, like they do in the city."

"Maybe not," Carina said, "But that doesn't mean there aren't rules. Things can get ugly when you don't play right."

* * *

Although Donovan's ribs healed quickly, his shoulder retained a painful catch when he moved his arm a certain way. Carina said the problem might be permanent. "The shoulder is one of the body's most complicated joints, you know."

More worrisome than the shoulder was the injured leg. The women had cut away some gangrened muscle, and although he could get around okay, the leg wasn't as strong as the other. The result was a limp that wasn't so obvious when he was rested, but became more pronounced as the day went on.

"It might get better over time," Carina told him. "The body has an amazing capacity to rebuild."

"Think of it as your ticket out of ever being picked up on the street as a possible draft candidate," Amalia told him.

"Why would I be wandering a street?"

"We're thinking you could help us by doing supply runs in town," Carina said, meeting Amalia's eyes briefly, then looking away. She had been pouring apple sauce into canning jars while Donovan sorted dried pumpkin seeds, but now she came to where he was working at the kitchen table. "We could do a lot more trade if it didn't always mean one of us going alone while the other stayed home. So we thought—"

"You thought," Amalia interrupted.

"We agreed," Carina said, with another glance at her sister, "That you would go to town with Amalia next week and see how we do things there. Then maybe we could send you regularly. . ."

"What town is this you keep talking about? I don't know that I want to go anywhere I might be recognized or picked up. A limp won't stop them, you know. They need people for desk jobs, too. If they pick me up and find out I'm a deserter—"

"Yes, we know," Carina said. "But it really would help if we had a man to do our trading. There can be gangs on the roads. We have to wait until some of the other people in the valley need to make a town run, so we can go in caravan, and sometimes that's not convenient. A man, even if he's traveling alone, is much safer than a woman." She stole a glance at her sister. "Although of course Amalia isn't helpless and no one with any sense would tangle with her."

"It’s not a good idea to leave just one person back here on the farm," Amalia added. "What if there was an emergency, or if raiders came?"

"Macrina isn't such a big town, really," Carina hurried on. "You won't need to be particularly vigilant about your safety. It's off the main road and has never been a target for much government interference. It was always a poor town, and the Feds don't bother with poor people."

"Then why trade there, if the town is poor?"

"Because the government is run by idiots," Amalia said scornfully. "Once everyone in these valleys figured out there wasn't any federal presence in Macrina to rob them blind, they all started going there. It's become a good market town."

"And don't worry. We can disguise you a little; make you look like no one they would want for their army, just in case anyone is scouting for recruits or deserters."

"Well," said Donovan uncertainly. "If trading is the way I can help you the most, I guess I can give it a try."

Next>>
<<Previous