Page 38 of The Last Stars in the Sky
“How about cleaning supplies?” she suggests, and I’m too embarrassed to admit I didn’t know what white spirit is used for, but I think Kerry guessed that already.
“Good idea,” I reply, and her look indeed assures me that she knew I didn’t know, just as I suspect she knows I don’t know a lot of things. But I’m learning.
We keep moving through the house, room by room, just as we did before, but this time with more purpose, more focus. Even Ruby is concentrating, her forehead puckered as she frowns down at her paper.We need this, I realize. We needed to have a plan, and now we do.
Occasionally, Kerry peels off to check on Darlene, who insists she’s fine, but I’m not sure she is. Her breath is wheezy, and when she hefts herself from the sofa, it’s with a groan, but at least she can move.
Outside we go through the pump house—two garden rakes, a hoe, a pitchfork, a pair of old oars, a canoe paddle, some life jackets that have been devastated by mice, bits of foam scattered all over the floor. We’ve moved the chickens from here to the screened-in gazebo, which has the hot tub, long since drained.
There’s an actual chicken coop, a hundred years old but still standing, by the old barn down the road, but the gazebo is closer. It works for now; Kerry pinned up some tarps to cover the screens and give the hens some shelter. I guess she hasn’t been just doing nothing, not exactly. She just doesn’t make a big deal about it, which makes me feel guilty.
“What about in there?” she asks now, jerking her thumb toward the root cellar door. It was a big project when I was twelve or so, and my parents were still in their hardy-pioneer phase, but the truth is they never really used it except to put the trash in, in the summer, to keep it from stinking.
“I can’t open the door,” I tell her, and again she gives me one of those looks of hers, like I’m dumb as rocks but she’s too polite to say.
“What have you tried?” she asks.
I shrug, which is my way of saying not much, because how do you open a door that’s completely stuck? I can’t look it up on WikiHow, watch a quick YouTube video, the way I normally would.
Kerry presses her lips together as she examines the door like an expert. “It’s swollen shut,” she announces, and my lips twitch.No kidding.
“There are ways to open it,” she tells me, as stern as a schoolteacher, while Mattie, Ruby and I simply look on. “Let me get some sandpaper, for a start.”
Sandpaper? I watch, bemused, as she goes to fetch some; thanks to our exhaustive inventory, she knows exactly where it is and how much we have. A minute or so later, Kerry returns, and runs the sandpaper all along the door’s edges, the sides, underneath, and then stands on her tiptoes to reach the top. The rest of us just watch. She tosses the sandpaper aside and pulls at the door; to her credit, it shifts maybe a millimeter. Her breath comes out in a frustrated rush. I fold my arms. Ruby glances at me, and Mattie shrugs.
“What we need,” Kerry announces, “is a source of heat. Do you have a hairdryer?”
“Yes, but no electricity,” I remind her, and she rolls her eyes and points to the generator.
“I don’t want to waste the propane.”
“It’s ahairdryer. For maybe five minutes. And then we’ll open this door.”
I’m not at all sure a hairdryer is going to open the door to the root cellar. I also don’t think Kerry is really the expert that she’s acting like right now, but I appreciate her desire and maybe even her need to feel useful. I’m also curious. I doubt there’s anything in the root cellar, but it’s worth a look, at least.
“All right,” I relent.
A few minutes later, we’ve located a hairdryer and an extension cord—doing an inventory of the whole house has really helped with this sort of thing—and I’ve switched on the generator. The sound of it rumbling to life makes us all jump, even though I was expecting it. It feels, I think, like the sound of life.
Kerry turns on the hairdryer, which startles us again, simply by the normality of the sound. I picture Mattie in her oldbathroom, lights all around the mirror, pouting at her reflection as she dries her hair.
Kerry starts drying the door around its edges, and I can’t help but think she looks a bit ridiculous. Mattie must think so, too, because she gives me a small, secretive smile, and I find myself improbably suppressing a giggle. Ruby cocks her head, her expression quizzical. Kerry keeps on with the hairdryer, and after a few endless minutes—every second costing us precious propane—I open my mouth to tell her to stop, that this is a tremendous waste of time and energy.
Then she tries the door, and it budges a little, and she turns off the hairdryer.
“I need a crowbar,” she says.
“I know where one is.” Mattie runs to get a crowbar from the pump house while I watch, apprehensive, impressed.
“You’d better turn off the generator,” Kerry tells me, and I hurry to do it, a little annoyed I hadn’t thought of it first.
Mattie returns with a crowbar, and as we all hold our breath, Kerry fits it through the handle, and then, with immense effort, the tendons on her ropey arms standing out, her face screwed up in concentration, she pries open the door. It comes with a protesting creak and a gust of musty air, and she flings the crowbar aside, triumphant.
“Wow.” Mattie sounds deeply impressed, like Kerry is her new idol.
“You’re amazing, Kerry.” I mean the sentiment, but for some reason my tone doesn’t sound sincere. Kerry throws me a look and then makes an elaborate “after you” gesture. I walk into the root cellar, blinking in the dim light, making out the shapes of various barrels and boxes. There is more in here than I thought. A lot more.
Mattie and Ruby follow me, Kerry bringing up the rear.
