Page 64 of The Last Stars in the Sky
Still, it’s been hard, losing those little treats, that taste of what life used to be like, what we took for granted or even disdained. Now food is nothing but sustenance—a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, along with an egg each, now that the chickens have started laying again. Lunch is a slice of bread—Ruby’s book told us how to make yeast, with varying results and plenty of dense, flat loaves—spread with whatever we’ve decided to use that week: a precious tablespoon of peanut butter, or a sprinkling of tuna. We are slowly going through all our jars and cans of extras. For dinner, we unvaryingly have pasta with a few spoonfuls of my mother’s vegetable-packed tomato sauce—some of it admittedly tastes a bit tired.
It's not really enough for any of us—we’ve all become thin and stringy, and when I looked in the mirror once—I don’t very often—I saw I was scrawny and wizened, my hair turned gray, the skin around my face loose and wrinkled, old before my time.
Still, if we continue on this way, we can last for another two months,maybe, although after that it will become difficult—we will be out of oatmeal, pasta, and sauce, along with all the other accompaniments—peanut butter, honey, ketchup, tuna. But there is still flour for bread, and eggs from the chickens, and now there is a beaver, the first wild animal we’ve managed to trap. Maybe we can make it.
“So, how are you going to start?” Kerry asks, and I wonder, not for the first time, how I ended up with this job. Except, of course, I already know how; nobody else wanted it. I’d been hoping Kyle might have a hunter hiding inside him, but when we found the beaver in the trap a few days ago, he grimaced with distaste.
“No way, man. I used to eat stuff from the freezer, you know?”
Yes, I knew. Out of all of us, Kyle missed his junk food the most. I miss my coffee—in spring, I will try to make coffee from the ground and roasted roots of the wild chicory plant, if I can manage to find it. I know it won’t be the same, but having run out of coffee over a month ago, I’m already looking forward to the attempt.
“I think I’m meant to cut it longwise through the belly,” I say doubtfully. I’m holding a sharpened butcher’s knife, but I’m not sure it’s up to the job. I’m not sureI’mup to the job. I don’t even like the sight of blood; Daniel had to deal with all the little first aid emergencies the kids had when they were little. A bloody nose or a chipped tooth were beyond me. And yet now I think I can slice open a beaver, and cut it up into steak-sized parcels we’ll want to eat?
Yet I’ve done a lot of things I hadn’t expected to. I’ve chopped wood and fired a gun and hauled water. I’ve faced down an attacker and missed my husband and buried my mother’s friend.
I can do this.
“Start at the bottom,” Kerry advises. She’s standing well back, her arms folded, her gaze slightly averted from the beaver’s carcass. My stomach is already roiling, and I haven’t done anything yet.
“The bottom?”
“The base of the tail. Well, technically, the anus. Kevin told me that, I remember.”
“Wow, that’s some serious sweet talk,” I reply, and she smiles faintly. I take a deep breath and start to cut. I don’t put on nearly enough pressure because I’m nervous about cutting too deep and spilling out the beaver’s guts, which apparently is another part of the process. I’m also squeamish, and I don’t like the concept of putting a knife to flesh, never mind the actuality of it, pressing down, making an incision.
“Put some elbow grease into it, Alex,” Kerry says, and I give her a not-so-mock glare.
“You’re the expert, huh?”
“Kevin taught me a few tricks.”
“Then why don’t you do it?” I return, exasperated, and Kerry just smiles. I press harder, and the knife sinks through the animal’s rough fur. I move it upward, my fingers clammy around the handle. It’s not smooth, the way I’d hoped it would be, one seamless cut from bottom to top, like going through butter. Instead, maybe because the blade isn’t sharp enough, or due to my own lack of confidence, it’s a series of jagged jerks and pulls, the line along the beaver’s belly looking more like a scar than a seam. I canfeelthat cut in a way that makes me suppress a shudder. But I do it, and after a few endless minutes, the animal is open. My mouth tastes metallic, and my stomach is definitely heaving. I haven’t got to the hard part yet—cutting the pelt away from the beaver, and then opening it up to take out all the organs, before slicing up all the meat. I’m not sure I can.
“Are you sure Trapper Kevin can’t do this?” I joke, and I’m surprised by Kerry’s answering thoughtful silence.
“He could, for sure,” she replies. “If we asked him.”
I look up from the carcass, the bloody knife in my hand. “What? Are you serious?”
She shrugs. “If he’s in his cabin, we could, I mean.Icould. I guess.”
I’m still staring at her because this is news. The way she talked about Kevin, I assumed he was long gone, far away, deep into the north woods, maybe. “Where does he live?”
“About four miles from here, through the woods, down one of the old logging roads.” She nods toward the little wooden bridge that crosses the stream that feeds the lake, heading off into the woods. “That way.”
I shake my head slowly. “Fourmiles? Why have you not told me this before?”
“Because I didn’t think we were entertaining guests,” she replies. “And, you know, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see him. Or that he wanted to see me.”
“But you think you might want to, now?” I’m still trying to process all this new information.
“Well…” Kerry smiles faintly. “We’re all getting a bit stir crazy here, aren’t we? Some new blood might be welcome.” She waggles her eyebrows suggestively.
“Kerry.” I shake my head, as prudish as a nun, and she laughs.
“What? It’s true. Although I don’t even know if he’d be interested—in any of it. Kev always did like his own company.” She sighs. “And he’s probably got a pretty sweet set-up, you know?” She points to Ruby’s book, on the bench next to me. “He could have written that thing.”
“Then we definitely need him here,” I say firmly. “I can’t believe we haven’t talked about this before.” Kerry and I havetalked about a lot of things over the last few months, and, while I feel closer to her than I ever have before, I’m still not at all sure I know or understand her. There’s a remoteness at her center, maybe from her dad leaving, having to care for her mother. She keeps part of herself hidden away, although I suppose I do too. Maybe everyone does, to one degree or another, a kind of self-preservation. “Is there something about him I should know?” I ask. “Is he a secret serial killer?” It’s not actually outside the realm of possibility. “Can you trust him?”
