Stan Morris - Surviving the Fog

The camp got a heavy snowfall a few days later. It was October now, and it was time to make the last preparations for winter. The water lines were drained in the dining hall and in Chief’s Headquarters. Hector attended to the fluids in the machinery. Jacob killed three more deer. They kept two and delivered one to Mary Brown’s freezer.

The solar heating system was working. Hector had scraped together every piece of pipe he could find, even scavenging some from the buildings at the logging camp and from the dining hall.

Eric placed the barrels at the entrance to the smaller alcove cave to reduce the size of the entrance to the small grotto. If it became dangerously cold in the Lodge, the plan was to gather everyone in the small cave. There would be too many of them in there for the amount of air that could circulate, but it would let them survive for a day, before the carbon dioxide level rose too high.

Mike had one last idea. He asked Hector to talk to Mrs. Brown, and she agreed to his proposal. He thought about the various members of their tribe, and then he went to speak to Ralph. He and Ralph would never be good friends, but after Jackie’s death they had reached a modus operendi, so Ralph listened respectfully to Mike’s idea.

“You want me to live at Mary Brown’s house this winter?” he asked.

“Yes, and I want you to take four kids with you. I want them to be the youngest kids. It’ll be less crowded in that house, if you take the smallest kids. For starters, take the twins,” Mike said.

“And which girls?” Ralph asked.

“That’s up to you,” Mike replied. “Try to pick two that will get along well with the twins.”

“Kylie and Paige then, I guess. I’ll talk to them. You tell the twins,” Ralph responded.

Ralph spoke to the girls. “Mike wants some of us to spend the winter at Mary Brown’s house. I’m going, and the twins are going. I would like you to come, too.”

“Why us?” Paige asked. She was a small twelve year old girl, as was Kylie. They were good friends. Both were from Tonopah, Nevada.

“Because you get along with the twins so well,” Ralph explained.

Kylie wrinkled her nose. “Not that well,” she said. “They’re both dorks.”

“You get along with them better than the other girls,” Ralph said. “And Mrs. Brown will probably let you bake cookies.” Paige looked at Kylie. That was a good reason. Both girls liked to bake pastries, and they liked to eat them.

“Okay,” they chorused.

Mike talked to the twins, and they were agreeable to the move. The day they left, he gathered the five and spoke to them.

“You are going to be guests of Mrs. Brown, so do what she says. And do what Ralph says. I’ll see you guys in the spring.”

Suddenly Mike realized that he didn’t want them to go. They were his people! They belonged with him! He swallowed the lump in his throat, and he hugged the girls. He fist bumped with the twins. Then he turned to Ralph.

“Take care of them,” he said. “Take care of yourself. Good luck, Ralph.”

Ralph shook his hand. “I will. Good luck to you too, Chief.”

The two former foes laughed, both recognizing the irony of the moment. The twins climbed into the bed of the pickup, and the girls squeezed into the cab with Hector. With a last wave to Mike, they were off.

The food, except for the items in the freezer, was moved to the Lodge. All of their supplies and personal items were moved. The Chief’s Headquarters was stripped of everything that they could use. The bed and the desk were brought into the Lodge and put in one of the downstairs rooms. Mike felt awkward using an entire room, but the consensus of the tribe was that he needed a private room to hold meetings.

Mike was willing to give John and Desi their own room, but he was privately relieved when they told him that they had agreed to share the room with Howard and Jean. That left five available rooms. Mike gave the girls all four rooms on the upper level, and he gave the two couples the bottom room farthest from the door. He took the next room, and left the one next to the cleaning room to six of the remaining nineteen boys. The other thirteen boys were housed in the small cave.

Mike felt bad about not giving Hector a private room, but Hector assured him that it was not necessary. He would be the cave room boss, Hector added. The only one who was really unhappy about the living arrangements was Kathy, who definitely thought that Hector needed his own room.

“Can’t you screen off part of the cave, at least?” she asked.

“Why would Hector want to do that?” Mike asked, puzzled at her request.

Kathy glanced sideways at Hector who was frowning at her.

“Well…,” she began.

“Chica, I agreed that we could make out,” Hector interrupted. “Don’t push it.”

“Okay,” she replied, pouting.

Everyone had moved into the Lodge, and they hoped they were ready for winter.

The kids were allowed to come and go as they pleased. Mike sent out a few more hunting parties, although they were receiving more snow than rain now. Mike cautioned the leaders, Jacob and Luis, not to go too far. Now that everything was in place, he was anxious that there should be no injuries. So far, they had been lucky. Except for Howard’s adventure, the only medical problems had been scrapes and bruises. Everyone who had been invited to the camp had been instructed to bring a tube of Neosporin, so they had plenty of that medicine.

Mike asked Erin to dream up some ways to entertain the tribe during the long months ahead. Erin formed a social committee made up exclusively of girls. The committee began by asking each of the campers what kinds of talents they had. By the time it became too cold to play outside, the committee was prepared with a variety of activities.

When it got cold enough outside, they would move their large chest freezers to a level place just outside the door, and pack snow on top of the food. The freezers held the dismembered carcasses of three deer along with other items. Bags of potatoes, rice, dry cereal, powdered milk, and flour were stashed under the floors of the bottom rooms along with the canned goods from the logging camp. Mike hoped they had enough. He wondered if Jacob might be able to get one more deer. He wondered how long the road would be open to Mary Brown’s house, so they could restock their butter. At the first meeting in Mike’s new quarters, the Council discussed their food supply.

“Are we going to make it to spring, Yuie?” Mike asked.

“Well, our original supplies are just about gone except for some rice, cereal, flour, and powdered milk. Switching to water in July helped a lot. We used up the food that we found in the bikers’ shack and in the RV. We used up the first deer that Jacob killed, but we have three more in the freezers. We have twenty bags of potatoes and ten bags of beets that Mrs. Brown sent, plus those jars of pickles. And we have lots and lots of her winter squash.

“And we have the stuff from the logging camp. They had supplies for twenty people for six months. Most of it is canned stuff, like beef stew, vegetables, and beans. There are some apples and pears left, but we ate all the oranges. We have a lot of lemons, but they are all wrinkled. We plan to use them to make lemonade. That should provide some vitamin C. We have to watch out for scurvy.

“We’re rationing food, and we eat less than big men, so I think the stuff from the logging camp will last about four months. With that, the deer and the veggies from Mrs. Brown, I think we can make our food last for about five months. We could go a little longer if we rationed a little more.”

“It’s almost November,” Mike said. “So, we can make it until the end of March. We might be getting hungry after that.”