Not a Drop to Drink (18 page)

“Like what?”

“The cholera, for one,” Stebbs said. “Pack all those people together, you’re bound to have sicknesses of some kind passing around. They forced a bunch of sick people out of the cities, I heard, but nothing can stop a burn like that once it gets going. Wasn’t just the cholera either. Every now and then, people would pass through here that your mother didn’t shoot and I’d learn a thing or two. Made it sound like the Black Death had come back again, nearly. But out here, with less people, the illnesses weren’t the worst. Out here we mostly just managed be threats to each other.

“Not long after they drove the sick from the cities, your daddy and I, we had a falling-out. I tried to stop him from taking the men up to the lake to take that water plant by force. He said it’d be a proper war, fought by the militia like the first one in our country was. Enough of the men were on his side that I backed down. He had everybody eating out of his hand by then, and I wasn’t half certain that he didn’t have it in for me, seeing as he was always looking over his shoulder and wondering who was causing problems in his little kingdom. So I cut my losses, decided to set up on a little piece of land I owned that had a decent vein of water running under it.”

“Across the field,” Lynn said.

“That’s the place.”

“You just happened to be able to keep an eye on Mother from there?”

Stebbs shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Well, here’s the part I’m not so proud of, kiddo. Your dad, he said good-bye to your mom, even though her belly was as big as the world with you inside, and he took a bunch of the men up north to the lake, armed to the teeth. Not a one of ’em came back. Not long after I got set up, your mom came walking across that field, gun in one hand, your tiny body in the crook of the other elbow. She said she didn’t much see the point in me living in a shack when she had a whole house to offer, and two guns was better than one anyway.

“I could tell she had thought a lot about what she was going to say ahead of time, and made it all come out right so that it sounded like it would be the best thing for both of us, and not like she was asking for my help. I took one look at you, with your eyes so big they filled up most of your face, and your little bare feet so small it looked like they’d fall right through a crack in the ground and I told her I didn’t need no more work than I already had, and that responsibility for one was all I had left in me. Your mom, she walked away without asking twice, and I didn’t talk to her again until I stuck my foot in a trap.”

Stebbs swirled the now-cold coffee in his cup and threw the dregs in the fire, where they sputtered into steam. “I turned my back on her same as her family had done, and the same as your daddy did once there was work involved along with the play. Your mother raised you right, but she raised you hard, and I can’t help but think if I’d been around maybe you’d have some softer edges. Maybe you could’ve actually had a life, and not just
survived
if I’d been here. But here you are, and it seems you don’t need any help.”

Lynn snapped the stock back onto her rife. “Nope, I don’t.”

“So that’s why I give it elsewhere, I guess. Making amends.”

“I remember you being here, after your foot,” Lynn said. “I think I might’ve liked it, if you’d stayed.”

“I think I might’ve liked that too,” Stebbs said quietly. “I tried, Lynn. I promise you I tried after I got hurt. I wanted that woman to see sense so bad . . .” He trailed off, lost in memories made in the very room he was sitting in.

“So why not?” Lynn asked, her voice small. “Why couldn’t it happen?”

“She wouldn’t have me. It’d taken more out of her than I could’ve known to ask the first time, and when I shot her down I think it killed everything that was left in her but pride in herself and love for you. She wasn’t always a hard woman, you know. It’s what she became. You told me once not to speak of her unless you asked—”

“And I’m asking,” Lynn said.

“So I guess I’ll go ahead and tell you—don’t be making the same mistakes she did. Or hell, the ones I did either. Don’t be afraid to care for that little one, and don’t be too proud to let that boy know what you feel. Otherwise you might end up with neither of ’em.”

Lynn propped her rifle in the corner and tossed her own coffee onto the coals. “Seeing how it’s pretty late now, you might as well stay here, I guess.”

“That’s all you got to say after that?”

Lynn gave her rifle a last rubdown with a cloth, hands moving slowly while she thought out her sentence. “I don’t know that there’s anything to say. I can’t change it if some of Father’s wrongness found its way into me, and I can’t change the way Mother raised me.”

“I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to be more than they were. Be strong, and be good. Be loved, and be thankful for it. No regrets.”

Lynn sat quietly for a moment, watching the firelight flicker on her oiled rifle barrel.

“‘It’s not for sins committed

My heart is full of rue,

but gentle acts omitted,

Kind deeds I did not do.’”

Stebbs watched her carefully. “That’s not you talking, I take it?”

“No, that’s Robert Service. Mother always said the winters are long, but poetry anthologies are longer.”

Stebbs shot a glance at the bookshelf, where some of the spines were thicker than his hand. “Ain’t that the truth. Your mother had something else she said—‘It is what it is.’”

A smile spread across Lynn’s face at the words, dissipating the sadness. “That’s familiar, all right.”

“You know well enough what it means, then?”

“Mother always said it when something happened that couldn’t be undone, like when I lost that bucket in the pond, or broke a canning jar. Means you can’t change it.”

“Like the past. You can’t change the things you’ve done. It’s now and the here on out you’ve got control of.”

Lynn stood up, cracking her back. “All this talking is wearing me out, old man. You gonna stay or not?”

Stebbs got up and stretched as well. “I’ll stay, and thank you.”

Lynn nodded at him and crawled into bed beside Lucy, curling her body protectively around the little girl. “All right then, good night.” She left him to find his way to her cot by the stairs.

She felt tense with an extra body in the room. Stebbs drifted to sleep easily, and she found herself watching him by the waning light of the stove, tracing the fine lines of his face and the spiky grays of his hair, something she would never let him catch her doing while awake. Her affection and gratitude were too subtle and burned away under the harsh light of day. But in the familiar darkness of the basement she let her unspoken feelings pour out of her like water, and hoped that somehow the flow would reach him while he slept, and he would know without her having to say. Not long after, the slow, steady breathing of the three filled the basement, in stark contrast to the wild whipping of the wind outside.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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Fifteen

W
inter came viciously. The snow fell in slanted sheets, sticking to the trees and rocks. Lynn would run outside to deliver more wood down through the basement window into Lucy’s expectant little hands and come back inside with a coating of ice on her hair. Weeks passed where they saw no one else, and Lynn would anxiously peer toward the stream to be reassured by the puffs of gray smoke that rose over the trees. Stebbs she could see through her binoculars, when the cold was bearable enough for her to look.

Lynn taught Lucy to play simple card games and they spent many hours making up their own. Lucy demanded a bath, and so Lynn brought in buckets of snow from outside to warm on the stove so that the little girl could have a sponge bath at least. She caved into the temptation herself and even washed her hair, something that Mother had always warned against during the winter, fearing that Lynn would catch cold. But they kept the fire burning brightly and Lucy would hum quietly while putting tiny braids in Lynn’s hair and fixing them up with little bows that she’d found among some dolls in the attic.

The little fingers eased through Lynn’s hair, coaxing her into a doze that she fought against. Even with the chance of attack at a minimum, she kept her handgun within reach at all times. Lucy hummed a little song while she played with Lynn’s long hair.

“Have you ever cut it?”

“Every now and then Mother would, usually just to sprinkle in the yard to scare off the coyotes. Not often.”

“I like it long.”

“Me too.”

Their conversation dwindled off and each fell into their own thoughts as the short daylight hours drifted past outside. Lynn watched Lucy making shadow puppets in the firelight and wondered how Neva was holding up. If not for the little girl, it would’ve been Lynn’s first winter alone, and she wasn’t sure how she would have handled it. The long hours of the night could not all be filled with sleep, and the companionship of another was the only thing to alleviate boredom. But Neva had Eli, and Lynn quickly chased the question away of how they might be filling their hours together.

Her heart rejected her mind’s attempts to control her emotions, and she tossed without sleep for a long time in the dark. Lucy’s rhythmic breathing rose and fell, but the little girl’s peace didn’t extend across the room. Lynn tossed a few times before slipping her coat on and heading up the steps. At least on the roof she would be forced to be alert, and her mind couldn’t wander places she didn’t want it going.

The next day dawned cold, but clear. For the first time in a while there was a cloudless sky and the sun warmed the air enough for it to be bearable.

“Would you like to go outside?” Lynn asked Lucy.

Lucy bounced off her cot and dressed in layers in a second, eager to be out of the basement. Her thoughts were contagious; they had not been outside long when Lucy shouted up to the roof for Lynn and she saw Eli making his way through the snowdrifts toward them. The snow was sticking, bunching to his clothes in every place that came in contact with a flake, but he kept coming. Lynn climbed down from the roof and walked out with Lucy to greet their visitor.

“Hey, little lady,” Eli cried out when Lucy jumped into his arms. “You’ve gotten big!”

“Lynn says I’m growing,” Lucy said proudly. “She’s been checking my height on the wall, and I’ve grown an inch and a half. Do you know what an inch is?”

“I do,” Eli said seriously. “That’s good work.”

“Hey, I want to show you something, c’mon!” Lucy bounded away from them over the drifts toward the corner of the house where she’d begun a collection of bird nests that had been blown from the trees during the fall. Lynn and Eli followed slowly, pushing their way through the heavy snow that went past their knees at times.

“How are you?” Eli asked.

“We’re okay, we’ve got plenty of wood and food stored up. Water too.”

“I meant like, how are you? How’s your day?”

Lynn’s brow furrowed. “Well enough, I guess. I’m happy that we’ve got food to eat and wood to burn.”

Eli shook his head and smothered a smile. “It’s okay that I came, right?”

“Of course it is. You haven’t seen Lucy since you handed her off to me, and she’s family.”

“I came to see you too, you know.”

“Well, I’m here,” Lynn said, not able to find any other words.

Eli sighed and stopped walking, but Lynn kept struggling through the snow.

“Hey,” he called after her.

“What?” Lynn turned and was hit directly in the face by a snowball.

“That’s what.”

Lynn sputtered as the snow on her face melted and ran in icy rivulets down her neck, finding no words for her surprise.

“Snowball fight! Awesome!!” Lucy came flying at Lynn and knocked her flat on her face in a drift, shaking what was left of her composure completely. She grabbed the little girl by the ankles and pulled her up into the air, tossing her headlong into a fresh drift. Lucy emerged, soaked and laughing, with a freshly rolled snowball in each hand and revenge on her mind.

Lynn ducked the first one, but the second hit her square in the chest. She ignored it and began rolling her own arsenal until Eli knocked her on her side and hijacked her stash, pelting her with her own weapons at close range. She yelped and took out his ankles. Lucy landed on both of them with enough force to knock the breath out of them all. They laid in a breathless heap for a solid minute, soaked and laughing.

“Never thought I’d see one of them in your yard,” Stebbs said when he arrived later, motioning toward the snowman standing guard by the wood cord.

Lynn pushed her hair out of her face and shrugged. “Lucy wanted to, and I thought maybe if I put a coat on it, somebody looking might think there was a person standing out there, keeping watch.”

“I suppose the carrot sticking out of his face was a tactical decision too?”

“I got a well-stocked root cellar, and that one was not looking great. So don’t start thinking I’m as sentimental as you.” Lynn delivered a punch to his arm hard enough to penetrate the layers and make Stebbs wince.

“Easy, tiger, don’t go beating on the old man.”

“The old man needs to hold his tongue.”

“He’s been without anybody to talk to a long while. I see your pond’s found a new use.” Stebbs glanced toward the pond where Eli was gliding across the ice on his boots, Lucy perched precariously on his shoulders, hooting like a loon.

“Mother would roll in her grave if I’d been able to dig her one,” Lynn said, but there was a smile on her face.

“Nice braids,” Stebbs said.

“Shut up.”

Their visitors stayed through the evening, and Lynn brought some of the larger wood chunks inside to set upended to use as chairs. The four sat in a comfortable circle near the stove while they ate their supper, topped off with some peaches that Stebbs had brought along mixed with snow.