OCTOBER ROLLS ALONG LIKE SUMMER, warm and hazy and dry. Miles skims the front page. The unnaturally warm weather is a result of the earth’s heat trapped under the worldwide dome of dust, including sulfurous compounds from the volcanoes, their gas miles up in the air, that react with oxygen and water to form aerosols that continue to linger worldwide.
“In other words, a yellow freaking mist with a hang time of two to three years,” Miles mutters, and tosses aside the newspaper. “Who writes that stuff?”
“Did you say something?” Artie asks, popping out one earbud.
“No,” Miles says, and heads outside the cabin. He gets his nature facts not from scientists or the news but from keeping his eyes open. That, and from Mr. Kurz’s notes on the local birds and critters. Robins, finches, wrens—should have gone south a month ago, but they’re still here chirping and fluttering as they feed on bugs and seeds. Nature is one tough mother, but she takes care of the survivors. In the woods around the cabin male ruffed grouse, or partridge, are calling. Boom … boom … boom … boom-boom … boom-boom-boom—boomaboomabooma! go their wings as they stand on logs and beat their wings in the air. The sound is like someone trying over and over to start an old tractor. But really it’s the sound of life moving forward despite the volcanoes.
Artie comes out of the cabin wearing his work gloves. “Let’s do our thing,” he calls to Miles.
Gathering firewood is what Miles and his father do best: saw up dead trees—most of them blowdown—then cut off the limbs with a short axe (Artie is the axe man) and later dice the logs into blocks with a vintage but very sharp two-man crosscut saw. Artie on one end, Miles on the other. Back-and-forth strokes, not fast, not slow, but with a steady rhythm. A beat, almost. Power chainsaws are cheap—there are plenty of used ones at Old But Gold—but they are also stinky, dangerous, and loud. A chainsaw engine can be heard for miles.
They knock out one long pine tree, then take a break to catch their breaths.
“Watch this,” Artie says to Miles.
Miles straightens up to see.
With the short trimming axe in one hand, his father steps off five paces from a big standing dead tree. Like a tennis player bobbing backward for a serve, he swings the axe over his head—and launches it in a one-armed throw. The shiny axehead whips its handle end over end in the air—until the whole thing clanks against the tree trunk and falls to the ground.
“Dang,” his father says. “I stuck two in a row yesterday.”
After the firewood is cut, Miles heads over to work on the little winter stall for Emily. Sarah has been helping him with that on weekends and after school; when it comes to Emily or that stray dog, she’s always right there. He has hardly pounded two nails when she shows up and stands there, watching. Micromanaging.
“How’s Emily going to stay warm outside in winter?” Sarah asks.
“Her own body heat,” Miles says. “That’s why her shed has to be small.”
“She’ll freeze to death!”
“We’ll put down a thick layer of sawdust, then fill it up with leaves. She’ll be totally cozy.”
“She’d better be,” Sarah grumbles.
“Well she ain’t sleeping in the cabin,” Miles replies, banging home another nail.
“She’s not sleeping in the cabin,” Sarah says.
“That’s what I said,” Miles answers.
A flock of about a dozen ducks flies over low. They are mallards—green-headed males and dusky brown females. The lead duck cups the white undersides of its wings for a touchdown upriver. They’ve been coming and going, morning and night, in the same landing pattern for the last few days. Miles cocks his head. “I’m going hunting,” he says suddenly, and hands his hammer to Sarah.
“We have to finish this!”
“Keep nailing boards,” Miles says. “I won’t be gone long.” He takes his shotgun and heads along the riverbank.
The mallards are just upstream, out of sight in thin yellow reeds; they chuckle and quack and bob. Staying low, Miles creeps closer until he is within shotgun range. A big greenhead male floats into the open; Miles raises his gun. Never shoot more than once during a day. One shot, and nobody knows for sure where it came from. It’s the second shot that tells them where you are. His finger tightens on the trigger, but a brownish female mallard paddles into view, blocking his shot. A mother duck. Three smaller ducks paddle behind her—a little family—and Miles can’t bring himself to pull the trigger. She flutters through the reeds, and immediately the little ducklings swim behind her, pecking at the water. Miles squints. Leans forward to look closer. The duck family is eating wild rice. He should have remembered this—the wild rice—from Mr. Kurz’s stories.
He stands up suddenly—the mallards quack loudly and flare straight up from the water—but he doesn’t shoot. Instead, he heads quickly back to the cabin.
Sarah spots him as he emerges from the brush. “Did you get anything? I didn’t hear you shoot.”
“Didn’t want to shoot. Got something better. Put down the hammer; we’re going wild ricing!”
In the battered, camouflage-painted canoe (another score from Old But Gold), he and Sarah paddle upstream. His shotgun lies in the bottom of the boat, along with two skinny sticks. Use wooden sticks: one to bend the rice plants over your canoe, the other to knock the heads off. That’s what your flail stick is for. Bend and flail, bend and flail. If the rice beds are good, you can make a hundred dollars a day. Me, I only riced for what I needed to eat. One sack of raw, green rice was plenty. Then you have to clean it and dry it—parch it slow over a wood fire in a big iron kettle, one that’s heavy enough so the rice won’t burn. Most people are not good at parching. They want to cure it fast, but it takes time....
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Sarah says.
“Just paddle,” Miles says to her.
“I knew there was a reason you put me in the back.” She groans.
“The stern,” Miles says. “I’m in the bow.”
“Where do I paddle?”
“Right through there,” Miles says, pointing to the rice bed. The stalks tower head-high alongside the canoe—and grains of rice fall at first touch.
“Slower!” Miles calls back to Sarah. Clumsily he works the two sticks. Lots of rice falls into the water, but more and more of the little heads fall into the canoe. Gradually Miles finds the right rhythm and touch.
“Ick—the grains have little green worms!” Sarah says.
“More protein,” Miles says.
“They’re sharp, too,” she says of the little rice spears; she tries to brush them off, but they stick to her jeans.
“We’re lucky there’s any rice left,” Miles says. “Keep going.”
They work back and forth through the river bend for an hour, until the bottom of the canoe is furry and thick: a shaggy carpet of raw, green rice.
“Can we go home now?” Sarah whines.
“Okay, okay,” Miles says. As they leave, a flock of mallards wheels high overhead, then banks to make a tight circle above the rice bed. “Thanks,” Miles murmurs.
“You’re welcome,” Sarah says, clanking her paddle.
He doesn’t explain.
As they paddle downstream, there is brown motion in the undergrowth. “There’s that dog!” Miles says suddenly. On the shore, he lurks from tree to tree, following them home.
“Brush!” Sarah calls. “Hey, Brush!”
“Don’t encourage him! And never feed him,” Miles says. “That’s why he hangs around—he knows we have food.”
“Maybe he used to live here,” Sarah said. “Maybe he was Mr. Kurz’s dog.”
Miles spits sideways into the water and keeps paddling. “He would have to be, like, a hundred dog years old. He’s just a stray dog who’s not going to make it through the winter.”
“He could live with us and be our watchdog,” Sarah says.
“He only has three good legs. Great watchdog.”
“What will happen to him?”
“Don’t ask me,” Miles says as they head on a straight course downriver.