She switched off the radio and put it back in the bag, carefully wiping off the snow before she did so. She went back to the fire to stir the spaghetti and her stomach growled. The snow in the pot on the edge of the fire had melted, and she added more to fill it up again. It took a lot of snow to fill the pot with water.
So, the cold was coming and the power was still out. She knew they had been lucky so far, even with the heavy snow.
The other emergency radio was at the cabin, maybe being hand-cranked by her mom right now. Hannah tried not to let her gnawing worries get the better of her. She hoped that her mom was not too worried, that she would understand that Hannah was going for help, so she could stop rationing. She imagined her mom and Kelli going through the daily chores, getting the wood and making the food, doing the shovelling and tidying up. She tried hard to imagine her mom injecting her insulin before dinner, as she usually did. If it can work with ballet, maybe it can work with other things, too.
From her spot near the tent, Nook raised her head and looked off into the darkness. Hannah turned to see Peter coming out from the dark with his arms wrapped around a big bundle of wood. He laid the wood beside the fire, careful not to get snow on it, and put a few more sticks on the flames before taking his snowshoes off.
She wrinkled her nose. “Man, those snowshoes stink.”
“Yeah, I guess we didn’t clean the fuel off them very well.” He looked at the webbing of each one, pulling the sinew and gut, and checking the bindings. “The snow will clean the rest off.”
She turned off the stove and placed the pot in the snow, and they squatted as they had that morning, stirring the pot to cool its contents and leaning toward the fire for warmth.
Peter removed his gloves and held his hands to the fire for a bit. He studied his pile of branches and selected a smooth one, then broke it into smaller pieces on his knee. Moving between the fire and the rock, he propped his gloves up carefully by the fire, using the sticks to keep them upright. Just as when he’d been packing up, his movements were economical, but she sensed that he was working out the problem as he went: which stick to use, where to place the gloves so they would dry the best.
When the gloves were arranged to his satisfaction, he sat back on his heels and picked up two more short pieces of branch.
“Want me to do yours, too?”
Hannah took her gloves off and handed them over. He looked at the torn palm on the one before propping them up.
“Is there a sewing kit?” he asked.
“Yeah, in the supply pack.”
“You should fix that glove.”
She looked back at the pot and shrugged. “I have another pair.”
“Those ones are fine, they just need to be stitched up. They’re good gloves,” he said.
It sounds like he’d like to have them, Hannah thought, and she looked at his mitts drying by the fire. They were thick wool, the kind where the tops flipped back to reveal finger gloves. The leather palms were scarred in some places.
“I don’t know how.” She tasted a spoonful of food. “It’s ready, anyhow.”
“I can fix it,” he said, coming around to the pot. She handed him a spoon and they began to eat.
“You kinda remind me of my sister,” Hannah said, her mouth full. Th
e spaghetti was still too hot, but they ate it anyway, shovelling it in and then huffing through their open mouths, trying to cool it down. She burned her tongue and the back of her throat, but she didn’t care. It was warm, and it was food. In fact, it was all she could do not to snatch the pot away and eat it all. And judging by the way Peter was spooning up gobs, red sauce dripping off his chin, he felt the same way.
He sat up taller, holding his spoon upright. “Huh?”
“She would have known that stuff about hares and rabbits,” she said.
“Yeah, but she learned it from a book.”
“So?”
“So, it’s different.”
“Oh, your way is better?” she said bitterly. Same old Peter.
“No, just …” He stopped and made a circular motion with his spoon. Then he took another mouthful.
They ate in silence for a while. The snow began to taper off. The dogs, just within the light of the fire, moved now and then to reposition themselves, but no more than a few inches. Bogey was the closest, and Hannah saw his head slipping off his paws. He began to snore.
“What did the radio say?” asked Peter, spaghetti showing between his teeth as he talked with his mouth full. He wiped his chin with his parka sleeve.