These Silent Woods: A Novel(16)

Candles. We are down to the last one, the wax nearly gone. Matches. Batteries.

Flour, salt, baking soda, vinegar, sugar, coffee, powdered milk, cooking oil.

Toothbrushes, toothpaste, fluoride rinse, toilet paper.

New pants, shirts, socks, and underwear for Finch. A winter jacket, snow pants, gloves, boots. She has outgrown these things and I won’t have her hunt and help outside without proper attire.

Luxury items. Paper and pens. Hot chocolate mix. Milk, butter, and five big slabs of sharp cheese. Now that winter’s here, we can keep things cold in the icebox out back.

Birdseed. Cat food, litter.

I organize it into categories, based on how I remember things being set up in the store, and I figure with time for travel, plus my shopping, plus the stop at the gas station, if everything goes perfect, we can be back in four hours. Two hundred forty minutes of risk for a whole year of security and sustenance, and I figure it’s worth it.

Well, not like we have a choice.

Here are the risks, and there are so many that I hate to even think of them, but if there’s one thing the military taught me it’s that a person must be prepared for what he might encounter.

First, traffic or any other unforeseen holdup along the route. Second, nosy or suspicious people at the store. Little old ladies who have nothing better to do than poke around in someone’s business and ask questions. What are you gearing up for, the apocalypse? Going somewhere? Why so much stuff?

Third, the truck breaks down and we have to ask for help. Fourth, we’re in an accident. Fifth, on the way home the gas spills all over the supplies, leaks down into the wrong place and we blow ourselves up.

Well.

I suppose all of this sounds ridiculous. Paranoid. Which of course I am, I admit that: paranoid through and through. Deep down I know that the only real risk is the sixth one, which is that someone will catch my eye, see something familiar about me. Someone with an uncanny ability to recognize a person. That someone makes a phone call, the police show up, I get arrested, and the last time Finch sees me is with handcuffs, getting hauled off, and I never get a chance to tell her what really happened, the truth about us.

I’ll wear a baseball cap. Plus I have a beard now, and it has come in long and thick, and though there is a hand mirror in this house, I’ve hardly seen myself over the past eight years. Still, I suspect I look different. Age and stress: they have taken their toll. But clearly, this is the greatest risk of all, being recognized. It’s no easy thing to disappear, and we’ve done it. I’m putting all of that at risk now, I realize that. But we are almost out of food and once the snow comes, we could be stuck at the cabin for weeks and there is no other way.



* * *



Early the next morning, Finch is buzzing with excitement, all riled up, and who can blame her, this being the first time she’s left the woods since she was an infant. I tell her to fill the canteens and get her pillow. I pull the blankets from both of our beds and carry them to the truck.

“Bundle up, sugar. Don’t want you to get cold.”

She grabs her jacket, hat, and gloves, and bunny-hops around the room. Then she stoops to pick up the kitten and tucks him under her arm. “Come on. Let’s go.”

“Walt Whitman’s staying here,” I say, shaking my head. That’s what Finch decided to name him.

“But he’ll be lonely. Scared. He might get into something.”

I shrug. “Then leave him outside.”

“He’s too little. These woods are crawling with predators, you know that. He could get killed.” She narrows her eyes and looks at me sternly. “Think about what happened to Susanna, Cooper.”

“Well then, leave him here and tell him to stay out of trouble.”

She mopes about this, dragging her feet across the floor, moaning. At last she settles the kitten into an old sweatshirt, tucked in a wooden crate from the root cellar. She leaves a small dish of water beside his bed.

Finally, I tell her we need to go. “You can sit up for the first part of the drive, but when I say so, you’ve got to duck down on the floor of the back seat and cover up.” She’s small enough that she can slide down between the front and back seats and tuck under a little nest of blankets and pillows.

Her face falls. “You mean I can’t go into the store?”

As hard as it is for me to deny her this, I know it’s for the best. No getting around it—she’ll slow me down. So many things to see and touch and ask about. It will nearly double our time. Plus who knows what she might ask or say, and someone standing close by might overhear. “Sorry, sugar.”

“But I thought we were both going. Together.”

“No.”

“I thought maybe since Jake didn’t come, it changed things. Like maybe we were operating under different rules now.”

“Well, we are, sort of. But not in the sense that you can come with me. I wish things were different, Finch.”

“Me, too.”

“But they’re not.”

“Okay.” Disappointment lingers on her face.

I promise myself to grab something special for her at the store, try to make up for this. “So can I trust you to follow directions?”

“I’ll follow directions. I want to go.” She starts bunny-hopping again.

“You’ll need to be real still in there. Someone walks by, we can’t have them see you squirming around. It’d be suspicious.” She’s still hopping. “Finch, are you listening?”