Run - Blake Crouch [40]
Naomi and Cole were still sleeping when Jack returned to find Dee in the kitchen, having already done what he suggested—pull down all the food from the cabinets and the pantry to see what they had to work with.
“Doesn’t look like much,” he said by way of greeting.
Dee looked up from where she sat on the kitchen floor, surrounded by cans and glass jars and packages. “How’d the car do?”
“Rough as hell, but I got it to the shed. Maybe I’ll play mechanic in a few days, see if I can fix what’s wrong.”
They spent the morning dividing out the food and trying to see what they might make from the staples like flour and sugar, assuming Jack could fire up the solar power system and get the stove working. In the end, rationing as frugally as they could stomach, they calculated enough meals to feed their family for thirteen days.
“That’s not good enough,” Dee said. “And we’re going to be hungry all the time before we actually begin to starve to death.”
“It’s more food than we had yesterday. I saw some fly-fishing gear in the shed, and there’s a stream out back.”
“You took one class, Jack. Two years ago. None of your flies at home ever touched water, and you think you’re going to go out there and catch enough fish for us—”
“How about sending some positive energy into this situation, dear-heart?”
She flashed a fake smile, batted her eyes. “I’m sure you’ll catch more than we can eat, Jack. I know you can do it.”
“You’re such a bitch.” He said it with love.
He assembled a six-weight fly rod in the shed, stocked his vest with an assortment of flies, and carried a small cooler into the woods toward the sound of moving water. Found it fifty yards in—a wide, slow stream that flowed through the aspen. He sat down on the grassy bank. The sun as high as it would be all day. Light coming down through the trees in clear, bright splashes. The sky cloudless. Almost purple.
He filled the cooler in the stream. Got the tippet tied on and chose a fly at random. Took him five attempts to cinch the knot, and then he walked downslope until he came to a shaded pool several feet deep and out of the ruckus of the main current.
His first cast overshot the stream and the fly snagged on a spruce sapling. He waded across, the water knee-deep and freezing, and clambered out onto the warm grass on the opposite bank.
An hour later, he felt his first tap.
Midafternoon, he hooked a fingerling, Jack tugging the green line and backing away from the stream. It flopped in the grass, and he carefully lifted the fish which torqued violently and then went still, gills pulsing in his hand. Silver. Spotted with brown dots. He unhooked the fly and walked back to the cooler and dipped the trout into the water, thinking, God, was it small. Two or three bites at most if he didn’t completely destroy the thing when he tried to clean it.
They dined at the kitchen table as the light ran out—two cans of cold navy beans split between the four of them, three pretzels apiece, water from one of the plastic jugs Dee had brought in from the Rover.
“How many fish did you catch?” Cole asked.
“One,” Jack said.
“How big?”
Jack held his pointer fingers five inches apart.
“Oh.”
“It’s still in the cooler by the stream. But I saw some big ones.”
“Can I come fishing with you tomorrow?”
“Absolutely.”
Middle of the night, Jack sat up in bed.
“What’s wrong?” Dee asked, still half-asleep.
“I should’ve cut down the mailbox.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The mailbox by the road. The one Naomi saw that led us here.”
“Do it first thing in the morning.”
“No, I’m going now. I won’t be able to sleep.”
He hiked down with the chainsaw in the dark, reached the road at four in the morning. Cold. Below freezing he would’ve guessed. That distant, square-topped mountain shining silver under the moon. He walked out into the road and stood listening for a while.
The chainsaw motor seemed inappropriate at this hour. Like screams in a church. He decapitated the mailbox and carried it across the road and threw it down the mountainside.
Walking back up to the cabin,