Jo Treggiari: Ashes, Ashes

Lucy ran her finger over the hide, wondering if it was tough enough to patch the many holes in her boots. Nothing wasted , she thought, putting it aside to deal with later. She’d cured a rabbit pelt and a couple of squirrel skins before and ended up with serviceable but stinky leather, too stiff to work with easily but good enough to mend holes. She looked down at the oozing carcass, casting her mind back to tenth-grade biology, trying to remember anything useful. That had been frogs, in any case. Rubbery, fake-looking, and smelling overwhelmingly of formaldehyde. If she had a frog in front of her now, she’d have been able to skin and fillet it in two minutes flat, like one of those Japanese chefs.

She had a wild impulse to just dump the turtle and eat acorn porridge and dried berries for the fourth day in a row, but her acorn flour store was getting low, fresh meat was rare, and she needed the protein. She suspected, too, that there was more squirming weevil than powdered acorn at the bottom of the old coffee can. Perhaps if she just shoved the meat back into the saucepan, put the lid on, and left it to sit for a while over the bedded embers, the flesh would fall from the bones and she’d have turtle soup or turtle tea. There were a couple of shriveled wild onions left, some woody mushrooms she could toss in. She’d eaten far worse.

Lucy stuck the turtle in the pot and covered it, piling the smoking wood around it. She rinsed her right hand in the bucket of water, getting most of the blood off, though not the dark matter stuck deep under her nails, and wiped it dry on her jeans. Her left hand throbbed, and she wondered if the bandage was on too tight. Her skin felt greasy with sweat. She stripped off her thick sweatshirt. Underneath she wore a tank top. Lucy sniffed at her armpits, wrinkling her nose, and then quickly sluiced her upper body. Now that the waters were rising, she’d be able to bathe again. It had been far too long. Weird how she hadn’t noticed the odor of stale sweat and grime that permeated the shelter. Time to change the bedding grasses and air out the rush mats she had pieced together during the long nights. Lucy had ended up with cuts striping her palms and fingers and looking as if she’d lost a fight with a bramble bush. She would light some sage bundles later to clear out the musty stink and the smell of dead turtle.

She pulled her sweatshirt back on. Her neck felt tight, her hands shaky, and the wound beat in time with her heart. She wrapped a shawl and then her sleeping bag around her shoulders and sat as close as she could to her small fire. The smoke burned her eyes. She was procrastinating. There were things to do before nightfall, but she had checked the calendar notches she had cut into the bark of one of the four support trees and knew the moon would be full, which would give her more light than usual. She could get a later start, and a few minutes’ rest would do her good.

Beyond the cracks in the interlaced willow screens she had made to disguise the small clearing where she lived, she could see the huge, red sun setting above waters that looked as thick and black as molasses.

Lucy dreaded this time of day, when there was a pause and her thoughts rose up and threatened to submerge her. As long as she was busy doing, she could keep the loneliness at bay. She drew the edge of the sleeping bag up around her ears, the shawl over her head, and nuzzled into them, smelling the nose-tickling mustiness of leaf mold, ground-in dirt, and the dried grasses she slept on. Her mind buzzed at her like an annoying mosquito.

She needed to walk the circumference of her camp, check the snares she’d set, the trip wires, the bundles of grass she had laid down on the ground that would show her if anyone heavy-footed had come near. Lucy groaned. She was so tired. Her days were always long, but sometimes it seemed as if it didn’t matter how early a start she got.

She thrust the sleeping bag aside, bundled up the shawl, and got to her feet, popping her neck and shrugging her shoulders up and down a few times to work out the tightness. She checked a few more things off her mental list: She needed drinking water, so she’d have to make a wide arc and pass by the lake, and she needed as much wood as she could carry, now that the rains were gathering force. There’d been two torrential downpours lasting ten or twelve hours already, and it was only the beginning of June by her rough monthly calendar. She’d been less than careful about keeping track of the days and nights. The Long Wet brought monsoons, riptides, flash floods, and sudden lightning fires—the worst of them falling roughly in the middle of the cycle, but if anything was true these days, it was that the weather was erratic.

She’d check her snares, of course, hoping for a ground squirrel or rat, and her fishing lines, although during the Long Dry the lake waters had receded, leaving about twenty feet of dry, cracking mud before the first dribbles accumulated in shallow pools. A mudskipper maybe, a newt, or a salamander, though she didn’t like the gluey taste much. It was too dark to go digging for shellfish by the sea. She’d plan on doing that tomorrow.

First she listened. But there were no noises except for the rhythmic hum of insects. Next she peered through a hole in the mesh of supple willow limbs that screened the front entrance to her camp. Lucy knew every tree, every bush, every grassy hump silhouetted in the gathering dusk. It was a landscape she had peered at and studied night after night. She had counted the weird hummocks carved out of the earth after the last quake—there were twenty-three of them standing guard like silent sentinels.

Nothing seemed different, but lately she’d had the unsettling feeling of eyes on her. She checked for movement. The air was so still, the grasses didn’t stir. She pulled up the black sweatshirt hood. Then she picked up a couple of plastic gallon jugs for the water, looping a length of rope through the handles, slung a woven grass bag over her shoulder, checked that her knife was snug against her hip, and lifted the front door screen out of the way.

A long puddle of water lapped against the piled sticks and brush she’d stacked against the outer walls to keep the rainwater from seeping in. She splashed through, feeling the cold wetness through the thick leather of her boots and a double layer of socks, ducked her head slightly, and replaced the screen. She backed up about five feet, making sure her small fire pit was invisible from the outside. It was. Good . She’d spent a lot of time stuffing most of the larger chinks with moss and dried grass recently. Plus, now that the rains were coming, the willow sticks she’d shoved into the ground to make thicker walls would begin to grow and leaf-out. Willow was amazing! A cut stick would take root easily. The four slender, flexible trees she had bent down and bound together at the top to make the sloping roof were already bushy with new growth.

If you didn’t know the camp was there, it was almost invisible against the surrounding foliage and shrubs, like the snug, domed nests the field mice made themselves out of grass stalks. She glanced at the sky. The moon was beginning its rise, full as she had hoped. Purple clouds boiled; the wind had suddenly picked up and the scent of rain was heavy. It would mask the smells of smoke and cooking turtle, she thought. Taking one last look around, she set off toward the lake, her nerves stretched tight and jumping.

The terrain was already changing. There were splashes of green leaves within the dusty gold. And the ground was spongy underfoot, treacherous with puddles and sinkholes. There were pretty much only two seasons now—drought and flood.

Her boots squelched a bit, but so far they were not leaking too badly. It was so quiet—save for the scritch of small claws scrabbling up tree trunks and the angry, explosive noises of disturbed squirrels. She always thought they sounded as if they were cussing her out. On the way, she inspected various snares she’d concealed under bushes and by likely holes, crossing back and forth along the narrow spit of land, her senses in hyperdrive. They were all empty. One showed signs that a predator had gotten there first. Tufts of silver fur snagged in the branches, a few driblets of blood. She kneeled down, touched the soft, downy clumps. Rabbit, she thought, rather than squirrel. Too bad. Rabbit was a delicacy these days, but she couldn’t help but be glad that there were still foxes and coyotes around. So many animal species had been wiped out in the plague.