Mike Mullin - Ashfall

“Where’s Darla?”

“Out working. Digging corn, taking care of her rabbits, maybe cutting firewood… I don’t know. I’d be helping, but she thought one of us should stay with you.”

“Huh. I thought she didn’t want me around.”

“She said you’d ruin all her hard work stitching you up if you woke up and nobody was here.”

“I know it’s a pain, having me here. I really appreciate-”

“Don’t mind Darla. I know she has a tongue so rough it could strip rust off a harrow disk at twenty yards, but she likes you fine. She’s just scared. We both are. But the good Lord brought you to my barn door for a reason, and my job is not to ask why. Now eat up.” Mrs. Edmunds flipped four small yellow pancakes out of the griddle onto a plate.

The pancakes were delicious. Yellow and crumbly, they tasted of cornbread and bacon. But then again, I was so hungry that anything probably would have tasted amazing. After three or four bites, I noticed a bit of a gritty texture and a hint of sulfur: ash, getting into everything. Between mouthfuls I said, “These are delicious, thank you.”

“Oh, you’ll get sick of it soon enough. It’s only corn pone. That’s mostly all we eat now. Corn pone for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”

“I could eat these all day.”

“Well then, I’ll fry another batch.”

“Thanks.”

Mrs. Edmunds’ teeth gleamed in the half-light. She reached into a cupboard and pulled down a mason jar. “Don’t tell Darla,” she said as she poured a trickle of honey over the remaining two pancakes on my plate. “She wants us to save the honey-for what, I don’t know.”

I took another bite. Heavenly.

Two plates of corn pone and two glasses of water later, I was tired again. I limped to the couch and collapsed.

When I next opened my eyes, it was fully dark outside. Someone had fed the fire-there was enough flickering light to see by, and my side was uncomfortably warm. Darla was bending over me unbuttoning the shirt I was wearing, her dad’s shirt.

I said something like, “Wha? Uh.” Never mind full sentences, even polysyllabic words were beyond me when I was half asleep.

“Lie still. I’m going to check your bandage,” she said.

She pulled the shirt open, slid the Ace bandage away from the wound, and lifted the white cloth. The wound was an angry horseshoe of crusty red scabs. I didn’t see any pus or much swelling, which was a relief.

Darla began washing it using a bowl of water and hand towel. As she scrubbed the scabs, it hurt. When she finished that and washed the area around the wound, it felt good. Too good. By the time she finished, I had a hard-on so intense it hurt. It was pretty obvious, too, even in her dad’s loose jeans. The heat in my face at that moment had nothing to do with the fire.

It didn’t make sense. Darla hadn’t said three kind words to me since I’d arrived. But my body obviously didn’t care.

Darla put a fresh cloth over the stitches and pulled the Ace bandage back into place. She stood and glanced down. As she stalked out, I heard her mutter, “Boys.” I curled up on my left side and tried to think about anything but the way her hands had felt against my side.

Sleep was a long time coming.

I woke up in time for breakfast the next morning. Darla, Mrs. Edmunds, and I sat down together to eat corn pone. Darla ate mechanically, forcing down her food with a grimace. It tasted wonderful to me.

As we finished breakfast, Darla announced, “I’m going to spend the day digging corn. You going to care for the invalid, Mom?”

“You could take a day off,” Mrs. Edmunds said. “How many sacks of cornmeal do we have now? Four or five-”

“Six,” Darla said.

“It’s enough. Rest for a day.”

“How do you know it’s enough? How long will it be before we can grow anything? Before any help comes from outside? A year? Three? How long will the corn keep, buried in that ash?”

“I’ll help.” It seemed like a perfect opportunity to try to pay back some of their generosity. I’d be dead now if they had rolled me back out into the ash instead of taking me in and stitching up my side. “I don’t know exactly what you mean by digging corn, but I’m feeling better-”

“Yeah, so we’re going to drag the invalid out to the field where he’ll rip my stitches open and have to be dragged-”

“Darla! He’s a guest, not ‘the invalid.’ And normally I don’t hold with putting guests to work, but things are a little different now. Some exercise probably won’t hurt him, so long as he doesn’t overdo it.” Mrs. Edmunds stared at me expectantly.

“No, ma’am, I won’t overdo it.”

“That settles it, then, we’ll all go dig.”

Soon I found myself carrying three empty feed sacks up a nearby hill. Darla and her mom each carried a shovel. The day was brighter than any I’d seen-nothing approaching normal, though. The sky looked sort of like a faded yellow twilight; not a hint of blue or cloud was visible, only a stifling blanket of yellow haze. No ash fell, but every time the wind gusted, it kicked up great plumes of the stuff. All three of us wore wet dishtowels around our faces.

It was so cold outside that I could see my breath in the air. I’d lost track of the date, but it must still have been September. Definitely way too cold for September in Iowa, whatever the date was. How cold would it get? And if winter was starting in September, how long would it last?

At the top of the ridge a huge rectangle was marked out with four bamboo poles. “That’s the spot we’ve already dug,” Darla said. “We’ll work from this edge, throwing the ash into the marked area.”

“We’re digging for corn?” I asked.

Darla gave me that look I used to get from teachers when I asked a stupid question. “Yeah, you’ll see.” She started digging beside one of the bamboo poles, scooping up the ash and tossing it aside. Her mom moved about ten feet off and began digging as well.

Plumes of ash trailed in the wind as they worked. Darla shoveled maniacally, ramming in her spade and hurling each scoop away. Her mom kept up a measured pace, without any wasted effort. Soon they were both sweating and coated with clumps of white-gray ash. I stood watching them for a few minutes, at a loss for what to do. They’d only brought two shovels.

Darla motioned me over. She’d cleared most of the ash from a thin strip of ground. Stalks of corn, squashed under the ashfall, were visible here and there. They were a kind of sickly looking yellow, like grass that’s been covered with something for a while. The ash layer was only five or six inches deep.

“Why’s the ash so thin here?” I asked Darla. “It was almost two feet deep in Cedar Falls.”

“Top of the ridge. Wind’s been blowing it away like snow. It’s about twelve inches on the lee sides of the hills, deeper in the valleys.”

“Huh.”

“Okay, so here’s what you do. Come behind me and Mom and pull up each stalk of corn, like this.” She grabbed a stalk and pulled it free of the remaining ash. She stripped the ears of corn off the stalk and tossed them into a feed sack. “Easy, right?”

“Yeah, no problem.”

“Make sure you don’t miss any ears. Too much damn work unburying them.”

So I spent the day stooped over, picking corn. I tried shoveling for a while, spelling Mrs. Edmunds-Darla flatly refused to give up her shovel-but it put too much strain on my side. I couldn’t shovel nearly as fast as Mrs. Edmunds, let alone match Darla’s frenetic pace. It was frustrating being so weak, unable to contribute my fair share of work. I’ve never been the biggest guy or the strongest, but I’ve always made up for it with effort. Yeah, I might have blown off stuff Mom forced me to do, but if I’m into something, like taekwondo or WoW, I work like crazy at it.