The Raven's Gift - Don Rearden [36]
She lifted the bundle and held it to her nose and inhaled. “Thanks, John. Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t think it would storm like this.”
He said nothing and reached into his backpack and put a gallon can of tomato paste on the inside edge of the tarp to hold it down. He waited for a moment to see if the can could keep the edge from flying up with the next blast of wind. It held, but to be sure he set the entire pack on the windward edge and pulled the tarp over the backpack at their heads. With the sled at their feet, he made a small blue human burrito.
John turned over on his back and stared up at the blue plastic, inches from his face. The tarp shook and crinkled with each wind burst.
After a while she asked, “Are you mad at me?”
“No.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For saving it. For saving me.”
“Well, if I didn’t save your little handiwork you’d just keep asking me more questions now, wouldn’t you?”
She giggled. “Probably,” she said, taking the bundle out again and resting her cheek against it. She fell silent and he thought she’d fallen
back to sleep when she asked, “We’re not travelling today, are we?”
“No.”
“What day do you think it is?” the girl asked.
He wanted to tell her how many days it was from the day he made his promise to Anna, but that would mean nothing to her, so instead he simply said, “I don’t know.”
And he didn’t.
The tarp popped and snapped with another gust that seemed to last for several minutes.
“Do you think we can have some breakfast to celebrate?”
“Celebrate what? Another storm?”
“Maybe it’s my birthday today. I’m twenty. If not today, one of these days. My birthday is December seventeenth. Sometimes in December we get warm winds like this. Big blizzards that never want to end. Then after my birthday, January comes. You know what the Yup’ik word for January means?”
“No.”
“The bad month. It’s not the bad month yet. Still a while away. That’s how I know. But it’s coming. I can feel it. Cold. Dark. Not long after my birthday. Can we have something to eat?”
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll open a can of peaches for your birthday.”
“You don’t need to. We should save what we have. We’ll celebrate some other day.” She reached toward him and touched his shoulder and softly patted her hand up to his cheek. Her warm fingers moved across the thin beard on his jawline and over his nose, lips, and chin. “How old are you, John?” she said, taking her hand away and holding it against her own lips and under her nose.
He rolled on his side and stared at her. His muscles ached. His back felt rigid and tired from pulling and walking. His feet were tired, still wet, but warm. “Thirty-one going on eighty,” he said, adding, “I’m old.”
“Well, except for that fur on your face, you don’t feel that old,” she said.
The wind ruffled the tarp, as if to punctuate the girl’s statement. The gales were picking up momentum. The snow crystals tinkling against the plastic were strangely soothing, but he worried the storm would blanket them entirely, and as she said, “never want to end,” he wondered if that wouldn’t be so bad.
13
When the panic wore off he puked one more time and then took a paper towel from a roll on the kitchen shelf, ripped it, and stuffed a wad in each nostril. It didn’t help hide the stench.
With one glance in the storeroom, the smell no longer mattered. The shelves were stocked, untouched. Gallon cans of USDA peanut butter, pears, corn, peas, green beans, fruit cocktail, and orange juice.
He opened a few cupboards and found cans of whole chickens and ham. There were boxes of Sailor Boy Pilot crackers, dry cereal, and chocolate chips. He tore into a restaurant-sized bag of chocolate chips and stuffed a handful into his watering mouth. He didn’t chew them. He knew his stomach wouldn’t handle the sudden flush of sugar. Instead he just stood there for a moment and rolled the chips around his mouth.
“John?”
The echo startled him—for a second the voice sounded like Anna’s. He aimed the