Nathan Jones - First Winter

Trev paused, slightly worried about her silence. “How about you? Do you have siblings?”

Deb stirred just a bit. “I did. I might still.” The glimmer from her eyes vanished as she looked away. “I don’t really want to talk about it. Can you keep going? I-I like hearing your voice.”

“Okay.” Trev wasn’t sure exactly what to say, so he talked about small little details he remembered from growing up. Thinks like learning Mary’s humming was really a telltale about what she was thinking or feeling at the moment, and teaching Jim to play basketball for his junior team on the hoop in front of Lewis’s house, with their cousin often coming out to join them. How Linda had managed to make her way into the popular girl’s clique and how their house was often practically off limits to the rest of the family when she entertained guests, and how Trev prompted a shower of giggles every time he passed by where they hung out in the living room.

He spoke fondly of family outings, and frequent sleepovers with the cousins at their house or the Halssons’ so one or the other’s parents could go on a trip, and playing night games with the neighborhood kids in the summer. Fishing with Lewis and Lucas, and July and August nights spent camping up in the mountains eating hotdogs and s’mores and exploring every inch of the land his uncle owned up there.

There were a lot of memories, even ones that were minor irritations at the time that he could look back on fondly now. In fact, he remembered things he hadn’t thought of in years, especially not since the Gulf burned and his mind was filled with far more pressing thoughts of survival. It was nice in a way.

Deb was quiet through it all, aside from the occasional sniffle. He didn’t know if he was boring her or not, but every time he fell silent to let her speak, or asked her for some detail about her own life, she just told him to keep going.

Finally, after what felt like over an hour, during one of his silences her shadowy shape abruptly stood, looking down at him. “Thanks. I’ll let you get back to sleep.”

Trev stood as well. “Do you want to sleep here tonight? We could make up a cot for you, or you could take mine and I’ll crash by the door. My family wouldn’t mind having one extra, and I could talk to them about you coming to stay with us in the morning. I don’t want you to feel like you’re alone.”

Her soft laughter drifted through the darkness. “Easy there, cowboy. We haven’t even gone on a date and you’re already asking me to move in with you?”

He felt his face flushing with embarrassment. “I didn’t mean—”

“Duh,” Deb cut in teasingly. “Besides, being crammed in with your immediate family doesn’t exactly scream romance. I appreciate the offer, but let’s put that idea on the back burner, huh?”

“Sure,” Trev said, wondering what exactly that meant. At least her cracking jokes seemed to imply her spirits had improved. He watched as her shape flitted through the darkness to her cabin, heard the soft creak of a door opening and closing.

Then, a sudden massive yawn reminding him how exhausted he was, he shuffled back inside and collapsed into bed.

The next day Trev spent a lot of time setting up the new lookout position and patrol route and getting the new volunteers trained on what to look out for, as well as how to instruct the defenders who came to relieve them at the end of their shifts. Once that was done he hurried to finish all his other work and catch up on what he’d missed yesterday.

He had an idea. It wasn’t a good one, maybe, and it could be argued there were far better things he could be doing with his time, but he was going to take a page out of Lewis’s book and build an extension for his family’s house.

Nobody had ever claimed having extra living space was a bad thing, especially not in this case with how crowded they all were in there. And while Trev would’ve liked to say it was for his parents so they could have some room to themselves, the honest truth was that if he wanted to get married at some point he needed to have his own place, same as Lewis and Jane did.

There was an obvious connection to be made here with what had happened with Deb last night, but his mind refused to make it. It just made sense to have his own room, and now was the time to do it while he still could. He’d talked to his parents about the idea that morning, and they were fully on board and supportive of his reasoning, encouraging him to go for it.

Lewis had planned his own extension by building three more walls up against the western wall of his family’s cabin, which he intended to finish and roof over so it would basically be a separate cabin with a connecting wall and a door leading outside. Then, when he could, he’d begin the laborious process of cutting through the logs in the connecting wall for a second doorway to the main room.

That seemed like a good way to do it to Trev, so he began the same way. First off by marking off dimensions and deciding which direction the door would face. He settled on the same way as the cabin’s, for convenience.

His work drew immediate attention. His parents already knew about it, and Jim simply told him it was cool before running off to his own work, but Linda nearly had kittens when she saw what he was doing.

“You’re building a bedroom off the main room?” she asked eagerly. “Who’s it for?”

Trev didn’t blame her for being excited, considering how crowded their one room cabin felt with five people. Blanket partitions barely helped.

He felt his face flush with embarrassment as he answered. “Me.”

She gave him a surprised and slightly angry look. “You’re building it for yourself? What about Mom and Dad? What about me? That seems kind of selfish.”

It seemed fairly ludicrous for her to call work he was willing to do on his own selfish, just because it was for his benefit. But he saw where she was coming from. “Maybe. I’m looking ahead.”

Linda picked up on that fast. “Ooh!” she exclaimed, excitement returning. “For when you and Deb get married ?” She said the word in a singsong voice. “Is that what you were doing with her all night, making out?”

His flush deepened, and he started to get annoyed. “No!” he snapped. “And keep it down! You know we, uh, that it’s complicated. I’m just planning ahead.”

His sister winked at him and tapped her nose conspiratorially. “Gotcha. Best of luck constructing your man cave.”

Trev shook his head as she nearly skipped away, getting back to work.

Before too long he was heading off in search of trees to cut down. The valley had plenty of those, and the mountain slopes all around them had even more, but with so many people constructing houses and gathering firewood it was getting to be a longer and longer walk to find suitable ones for building. Especially since there were far more unsuitable trees that weren’t the right type, or weren’t straight enough or long enough or thick enough. There was also the fact that even with Matt’s best efforts to preserve the trees good for building for that purpose, the woodcutters going for firewood tended to cut down everything.

He borrowed Lewis’s sturdy wagon for the job, since it was strong enough to take the weight of one or more logs as long as he could get the balance right and lash them down properly.

On the way out of town Matt intercepted him to let him know Deb was looking for him, as well as to ask how the defenders at the new posts were doing. Trev had him send along a message to Deb that he was out cutting logs, and paused to radio the new guys and get a report.

That inevitably led to his friend asking what he was doing with the wagon, and Trev somewhat sheepishly admitted he was building a room on the cabin for himself.