My alarm jolts me out of deep sleep as the day is beginning outside my window. It's rare to find frost along the pane this time of year, and this morning greets me with a cover of low clouds that are thick with a promise of rain. They could just as easily meander through and leave us with a rare dry day, but the lingering late spring chill and the threat of weather sets in a craving in my bones for something to bolster me into the evening.
I've been picking through the last of some small potatoes I roast in lard and mixed with garlic and dried herbs, topped with a couple eggs and scooped down with bread. It's a solid meal, but despite the fat and carbs setting me straight through the day, my body is screaming for a more substantial protein. I've set my intention on a rabbit in my fridge that I'd called in a trade for after helping the butcher with a birthday cake for his wife.
The rabbit was a stroke of luck. It had sat unclaimed for a few days in the cold storage at the butcher's, an acquisition from someone who had shot the thing in their back garden and wanted something a little better for supper that night. I wasn't as picky, knowing that the tough meat could be softened and the gamey flavor tamed somewhat in a long braise, so the butcher had let me know I could have it after no one else had wanted it.
I carried everything downstairs to cook on the woodstove in the bakery, a smell that would mix nicely with the fresh bread that was churned out during the day. I laid the onions onto a thin layer of melted butter and followed up with some salt. The butcher had cut the rabbit down into joints for me and I dredged them in salted flour before nesting them in the sizzling onions to brown also. I popped the seal on a canned jar of chicken stock, one of my most recent canning projects from the fall, and was pleased when an inspection of the solidified fat cap showed no signs of spoilage.
One quart jar of broth was enough to nearly cover the meat, some sprigs of dried thyme and one of fresh rosemary went in just before I secured the lid on the dutch oven and scooted it to the edge of the woodstove where it would simmer most of the day. The crisp morning had seeped into every corner of the downstairs workspace, but the smell of the food and the heat from the stove and baking ovens would soon drive it away.
The winter had been hard this year, several bad storms had laid up most everyone in their homes for several days at a time. With patrols suspended due to the weather, small crews were needed along the wall to keep a close watch. Adjustments were made to try and keep everyone safe, but the weather didn't turn out to be the biggest challenge. That had come when a flu took hold and swept through town, leaving some dead in its wake. It was hard even now, a few months later, to shake the anxiety that had crept up my spine and settled into the base of my brain when Maria had made the rounds asking everyone to stay in their homes and to isolate from each other for a little while so we could hopefully come out from under the illness.
Through the weather and the sickness, I baked. The town had to be fed, and I did my best to let the work carry me through the worry and fear in the darkest days. The days when snow was piled up on my front steps and settling in drifts at the back door. To be able to keep working I'd dragged a worn sleeping pad and my blankets downstairs so the snow wouldn't trap me in the apartment upstairs. Even then, Tommy and a select other few would make their way to me to pick up the bread and deliver it out. The voucher system was suspended for the time being, just making sure that everyone was taken care of was the priority at the time. I worked quietly through it all.
After Joel and Ellie left, I tried to push them into the recesses of my brain where they'd just be a blip on the radar. In truth, most folks who just passed through were never seen again. The odd band of traders that made regular rounds to town from their far flung wanderings was the anomaly. Even then you never really saw the same faces more than a few times. That's just the way of the world now. So it was overall better for me to leave the pair in the past and try to not wonder what they were up to. Or whether they'd made it to wherever it was that they were going. At the time, I hadn't needed to know any details. And now that so many months had passed there wasn't a good way to bring it up with Tommy, or to even process it out with anyone else in town. So I did what we'd all learned to do in the after times, I pushed the memories of the encounter firmly into the past and hoped that they stayed there.
Mostly it was Joel that I couldn't stop thinking about at first. When he'd stood next to me in the kitchen and dried dishes, there'd been an overwhelming sense of hesitation in his body. A thick layer of emotional distance that surrounded him was almost palpable, and I'm sure it had been a necessary defense over the years. But there'd been cracks in that veneer, showing themselves in the way his voice would go gentle at certain moments, how the corners of his eyes would almost relax when he was speaking with his brother. But the set of his shoulders remained the same, ready to spring into action at a moment's notice.
I couldn't look at Tommy the same way again. It hung between us all now that there were new details to incorporate about who he was and who he had been before he'd come to Jackson. It was a stark reminder that outside the gates we'd all been different people. Even though he predated my time in town, it was the intrusion of new details of what life had been like before he'd come that was distressing. He seemed to sense this shift in our interactions because on one of his weekly visits to collect his and Maria's bread, he confronted me head on.
"We've all got histories," he'd said gently, running his thumb along the countertop. "Some things are just better left at the gate." He was right. It'd been a long time since I'd allowed my own journey to Jackson from Oregon to creep into the forefront of my thoughts. Those memories were better left where I had put them when I'd been accepted into the community. Better left at the gate.
So we'd moved through the cruel winter and now into spring when the snow receded from the mountains around town to make way for patches of wildflowers that will cover the meadows and sides of the mountains by midsummer. Purple lupines were already beginning to sprout around town, bringing some sense of closure to the painful seasons we'd just been through.
My day was slow and proceeded in the rhythm of firing the ovens, forming loaves, stoking the woodstove fire, feeding the starter and beginning new dough for the coming day. I work alongside a kid from town who reminded me of myself, quiet and methodical. Someone that Maria had asked if he could take a rotation with me to learn about baking since he was skittish on the patrols.
The kid goes home for lunch and I make mine of toast spread with a thin layer of preserves and a cup of lemon balm tea. I poke at the rabbit and the aroma is already overwhelming. I sit on the back steps with my tea and watch chickadees flit along the fence between properties. Soon they'll abandon their winter calls and fill the air with their 'fee bee' whistles of summer. I feel restless thinking about the coming season, needing to hear the little birds announcing its arrival with the change in their calls. It's something I haven't felt in a long time, a stirring in my chest for what's to come.
Pickups happen in the afternoon and the kid handles the exchanges for the most part. I busy myself in the kitchen of the bakery, which consists now of two long islands with butchers block counters where we shape and let the loaves rise in the morning, then for measuring out the big batches of dough into the fermentation bins to sit overnight. I kept an ear tuned to the activity in the front, but left it to the kid. He was competent at the process of checking vouchers and the more I let him do, the better it would be for me in the long run. Having someone else to help out and run the bakery meant more security for the town, something that wasn't entirely lost on me. It was important to be able to pass skills on to others. It meant we could share in the load of surviving and turn our attentions to trying to thrive again.
I only half notice when the kid comes in and says that he needs my help up front, something about something with the pickups. I brush strands of hair away from my face with the back of my hand, wipe the extra flour and bits of dough on a towel, and follow him out into the front again. He's going on about the Millers, and it doesn't really make sense because Tommy never misses a chance to come get his family's bread and trade the gossip.
But it's not Tommy. It's not even Maria or her father or anyone else I could reasonably connect to their household at the moment. It's someone who still stands with his back towards the wall where he can see more of the room and keep an eye on the door. Who I had decided was never coming back. But there he is.
"Joel," I say and even though he turns and relief drops his shoulders a bit, I still hesitate to move closer. It's like seeing a ghost.
"Hi," he tries with a small smile and he holds up the bread voucher in an attempt at an explanation. "Tommy sent me to get his bread. Thought it'd be good for me to get out of the house."
"You're back," I say and he just nods. The kid hangs back and watches Joel and I wade through this awkward reunion.
"Yeah, been a couple days," Joel offers. "Tommy's been puttin' us up. Maria's gettin' real anxious to get her space back, though. Can't blame her."
I take the voucher from him and tick off the boxes before sliding the bread towards him. I try to ignore the way he doesn't stop watching me.
"It smells good in here," he says, and it's the low and gentle tone from before that catches me. It was the tone of his voice from when we sat across from each other last time and ate dinner. From his offers to help with the small chores. From when he and Ellie had gathered their things and he'd asked her if she was ready to go. I looked back up into his eyes then, the sad turn at the corners betraying the hopeful words he'd said.
"Do you want to stay?" I say quietly, the implied part about 'for dinner' laying on the counter between us but I can see in his eyes the small humor in the cliche of the moment.
"Yeah," he replies, and that little coal of hope inside me from last fall rekindles itself just a bit.