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For a month they stayed near the old man. His name was Jim, he was sick, and Coral got to expiate some of her guilt for abandoning Boise by nursing him. He had ice-fishing gear, and he talked her through how to use it. It helped improve her catch. She had enough fish to feed the three of them.
As the month wore on, he became sicker. Bad lungs, he explained, asbestos. The ash was only making it worse.
On the next to the last day, he had a terrible coughing fit while she was there. She hurried to his side and did her best to make him more comfortable. He had taught her a technique for clearing his lungs, slapping on his back with cupped hands, then on his chest. She tried it now, but it gave him no relief.
“Been trying,” he gasped. “The breathing.”
She nodded. He had a couple breathing techniques he could use too. But they’d given him no relief.
“What can I do for you?”
He shook his head.
She sat with her hand on his arm while he fought his own body and tried to get enough breath to survive every minute. It was a battle, and she wished she could help, but the best she could do was sit and witness.
Finally, about an hour later, something seemed to clear, and he got some relief. He ran through a couple of his breathing tricks, and he seemed to rest more comfortably. But he was exhausted by the effort.
She tucked him in, and said, “Do you want soup?”
“Some stone tea.” It was what he called hot water.
She went outside and built up the fire from this morning’s embers. Most of Benjamin’s day was spent finding and hauling fuel. He swore that he’d be able to find enough fuel to last them a year. She thought he was being optimistic, but if he didn’t want her to worry, she would try not to. They could eat fish raw, easily enough.
Using a saucepan from the man’s kitchen, she heated up water until it was steaming, then carried the pan inside. She poured him a mug and herself one, then helped him sit up in bed so he could drink it.
It triggered some coughing, but he spat into a handkerchief, so it was useful coughing.
“I don’t know if I’ll make it much longer.”
She nodded. Pleasant lies weren’t necessary—or kind.
“I guess I better tell you this while I still can, then.”
She thought he was about to give a speech. “You don’t need to thank me.”
“I wasn’t intending to,” he snapped. Then he looked a little sheepish. “Or maybe I am, in a way. So I’ll tell you a story.”
“I like your stories,” she said, which wasn’t a lie. He had a wry humor she liked. She thought Benjamin might have ended up something like Jim, had the world not changed and he had kept to his hermit ways.
“When the heat passed, a few months back,” Jim began. Then he cocked his head at her. “What’s the date today?”
“March...twentieth, I think,” she said. Benjamin had kept track after Boise, and she let him be the official time keeper, so she might be a day or two off either way.
“Nine months, then?”
It surprised her to realize he was right. She nodded.
“When the heat passed, nine months ago, I went to check on my neighbors. There were a dozen cabins around the lake. One was stone, like mine. The rest were log or wood frame. No one had survived. But some of their gear had. Once I knew they were all gone, I figured I may as well have it as someone else finding it. So over the first month, before the snow started sticking, I hauled back things every day.”
“Sure. Makes sense.”
“Hush, now. I’m talking.” But he wasn’t saying it meanly.
Coral hushed.
“I have a root cellar. So did some of them. I cleared them all out, and I filled up my pantry, then put the rest in my cellar. The snows got deeper, I got sicker, and I quit digging down there to get more and worked my way through what I had brought up here. But there’s food down there. Plenty of it.”
“Oh.” If true, it’d give them more time. And nutrients. And much-missed variety.
“And if...well, when I pass, you and your man can have it. Won’t be doing me any good where I’m going. Probably to the hot place, all things considered.”
“I doubt it. But maybe your telling us about the food will change that.”
He shook his head. “I could have been a better man.”
“Who of us can’t say that? I could have done better too. Been kinder. More generous. Listened to people. Befriended a lonely person. Found some way to help people along the way.”
“Staying alive’s the first thing. Can’t do no good works without being alive.”
“True,” she said. “So where is your root cellar?”
He hesitated. She could see him not wanting to give up this last piece of information.
No matter. She knew it was there. Benjamin could start shoveling snow and he’d find it, eventually. “It’s okay,” she said. “Rest, now. I’m going to get dinner started.”
The next afternoon, she came back from fishing, and the old man was dead. He must have had another bad spell. She should have been here. Probably nothing she could have done to help him, but she wished she had been here to keep him company while he passed from this life.
She checked his pulse again, checked his eyes, making sure he was gone. She wrapped him in a blanket and eased his body to the floor, then pulled it outside. He was thin and the effort wasn’t hard.
Benjamin had been digging for the root cellar for two days, starting outside the back door to the kitchen, which seemed the most logical place for it to be. There was plenty of snow piled up from that. Afternoons, he still went to gather fuel, and he was out doing that now.
The shovel was leaning against the cabin, and she picked a place twenty yards out from the cabin and began digging a hole in the snow. No way could she dig into the ground, which was frozen solid, but she’d get him down a ways in the snow, try to make it as respectful a burial as possible.
She had Jim buried and was packing snow around him when Benjamin came back.
He must have checked the cabin first. He came to her and put his arms around her. “He’s dead?”
“Yeah.”
He pulled back and studied her face. “You okay?”
“Sad, but not devastated. We didn’t know him long. But I did grow to like him.”
“You did good by him.”
She said, “I did little enough.”
“At least he had a friend before he died.”
That brought a lump to her throat. She turned and finished smoothing the grave, and handed the shovel to Benjamin. “I’ll get supper on.”
“I think I’ll work on finding the root cellar while you do, if that’s okay.”
“Good idea.”
It took him another three days. Benjamin came out to where she was fishing and said, “I found it.”
She jumped up, her heart thumping in excitement. “Really? What’s in it?”
“I thought I’d wait for you. It’s like a Christmas present. Seemed like we should open it together.”
She pulled Jim’s fishing gear out of the lake and followed him back to the cabin. There was an exposed hole in the ground, at the center of the back of the cabin. Benjamin went inside the cabin to get a crank flashlight the old man had kept by his bed. There were a couple steps missing at the top of the cellar entrance, so he lowered her down to where the first step was, held on while she made sure it was sturdy, then handed down the flashlight. He turned and slid himself down.
Together, they turned to look at the supplies. Shelves held cans, some still with the labels, and glass jars were filled with home-canned food. It was like a magical horde. There were even bags of root vegetables. Coral went to check one. Filled with potatoes, shriveled, with eyes, but not rotten.
“Jeez,” she said. “It’s months of food.”
“You keep catching fish like you have been, it’ll last a lot longer than that.”
“I had no idea it would be this much.”
“He told you he’d cleaned out a dozen places, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I guess out here, probably fifty miles from the nearest store, they kept more around.” He was shaking his head. “I guess I should have liked old Jim more.”
“You can tell him that, if you like. At his grave.”
“He’s not there.”
“No, but if it makes you feel better, it’s a place to say it.”
“I’ll say it to you. I’m in debt to the old man.”
“Let’s celebrate.”
“How?”
“Are you kidding? With food!”
