Nathan Jones - First Winter

Lewis felt a stab of pain for his dad as Lucas hung his head. “I’m sorry.”

“No apologies,” their friend said sternly. “Get well.”

The two men left soon after that, leaving the family to deal with the terrible news. Lewis felt worse and worse for failing his dad, and then stacked on extra guilt about the fact that he was focusing on how awful he felt instead of sympathizing with his dad’s suffering like he should be. He would’ve traded places with him in a heartbeat if he could.

It looked as if his dad had his own guilt weighing on him. “I must’ve caught this when I was with Grimes sorting out the mess with Rogers,” he said heavily. “As if we didn’t have enough trouble from the man.”

Lewis sucked in a breath and pushed aside everything else to focus on what they needed to do. “You’ll get through this, Dad.” He motioned to Jane. “Come on, let’s move our stuff so he can get settled in and get back to resting.”

They’d have to leave the reloading equipment in there, since it took up too much space to go anywhere else, but at the moment he didn’t care since reloading was the last thing on his mind.

The 100 day cough. More than three months of this, and it was just getting started and was already this bad. And it had struck just as winter started with a vicious snowstorm. And it might spread to more of his family or their friends.

He refused to think of that possibility, or of the worst case scenarios of his dad’s sickness. They’d get through this. They had to.

The storm lasted for two days straight, with sporadic flurries continuing the morning of the third. But in spite of that less than ideal weather the town still came alive as people tromped outdoors.

There was just too much to do, things they hadn’t been able to take care of during the storm that needed to be done as soon as possible. And there were also activities they’d been waiting for consistent below freezing temperatures to do.

Trev was bundled up and headed to the barn for one such activity, because unpleasant as it might be there was an important first task to be done after the first real snow.

Now that they could be fairly confident that temperatures would remain below freezing for the foreseeable future, and if temperatures did bump then they had a handy supply of snow they could pack into the storage space to keep it cold until temperatures dropped again, it was time for butchering.

In lieu of smoking, drying, or salting meat, freezing was the time honored means of keeping it edible for long periods of time. It was also one of the easiest. As for doing all the slaughtering at once, not only did it make the job simpler to do it all at the same time, but the sooner they did it once the cold weather allowed, the better. Each day they delayed meant fodder the animals to be slaughtered would need to eat, and with such a long winter ahead and the trouble they’d had harvesting fodder, it was definitely going to be a problem.

They needed to conserve what they had as much as possible.

The town had already carefully assessed all the livestock to decide which ones to convert to meat. Along with available fodder, they needed to balance everyone’s food needs through the winter against keeping as many useful animals as possible to grow the herd for the future. The wethers were obvious first picks, as were the older ewes and does. But since that wasn’t enough to meet the town’s needs or accommodate their store of meadow hay, they then had to assess the remaining animals to see which were the least healthy and well bred.

Hailey would be there to help with that, going off her experience with livestock to determine the best ones to keep. And for the work itself Matt, Rick, Scott, and Robert would also be helping out, although none of them were jumping for joy at the prospect.

Butchering was one of those unpleasant jobs none of them had been looking forward to. Trev had plenty of experience after hunting so much game, but that didn’t make it an enjoyable experience no matter how often he did it. It was a necessary task, one to be done well and gotten over with quickly.

Not only did they have to gut, drain, and skin the carcasses quickly, they then had to quarter them and further separate the sections into cuts ready for use. All before the meat froze, since trying to finish butchering on frozen meat was a nightmare Trev had endured once last winter, on an elk they’d brought down in December. He and his cousin had also learned that thawing a bigger chunk of meat to slice out the cuts they needed for a meal not only took forever and was massively inconvenient, but also quickly spoiled the meat they didn’t end up using.

So the plan was to do the entire process from start to finish as quickly as they could, from humanely killing each animal to wrapping the completed cuts, to be stored in the secure ice shed adjacent to the town storehouse. It was useful to have so many people because they were racing the clock against freezing, not just the meat but their own bodies in the cold, so each person would perform one aspect of the task in assembly line fashion. With any luck they could get it done in a couple hours.

Trev’s task would be the gutting, since aside from the draining and the actual slaughtering, which Matt and Robert would be doing, the others were at least a better at the tasks which required more precision: Rick would be doing the skinning, Scott the quartering, and Hailey dressing and wrapping the final cuts.

He didn’t mind his role, since the grisly task would take his mind off his uncle and the specter of whooping cough hanging over the town.

Matt had come by to alert them that Terry had diagnosed Lucas with Pertussis, and they all needed to watch each other for any signs they’d caught the contagious disease. He also had Trev get together the defenders who most likely hadn’t come in contact with anyone who’d come in contact with Lucas. They braved the storm going house to house, alerting people to the danger and advising them to do their best to avoid contact with neighbors until the quarantine period had passed.

Trev had spent an unpleasant few hours handling that, well aware that he himself might be carrying the bacteria and being out in the cold might give it a chance to take root. The one good thing he could say about the job was that it had kept his mind off worrying about his uncle. It seemed impossible that Lucas was in any real danger, since he took care of himself and Trev had never seen him sick, but it was still a nasty illness and he worried for him.

He was also worried about his aunt, Mary, Lewis, and Jane. After sending out his defenders he’d gone to visit the Halsson cabin to express his concern and support. Aunt Eva looked nearly as exhausted as her husband, as did Lewis, and his aunt’s and Mary’s eyes had been red from recent tears. Lewis and Jane had moved into the main room to let Lucas have their bed, and Trev had spoken to his uncle through the doorway.

Lucas had been stoic and optimistic, but obviously in no shape to receive visitors. Trev had expressed his family’s best wishes, promised to bring around more of his mom’s soup for them, and trudged back home through the storm, where Deb was still gone and the rest of the family was watching each other for signs of coughing or other symptoms.

All in all Trev was happy to have something to do this morning, even this.

Oddly enough Linda had chosen to come with him, to an activity that would have very few spectators. When he and Lewis had discussed the butchering yesterday, mostly to inform his cousin that Robert had agreed to take over for him so he could worry about caring for his dad, Mary had put on a brave face about the necessity of slaughtering the animals. The young woman was clearly distressed at the thought, and this morning Sam had been similarly saddened by the necessity.