Callie finished packing the deer meat away in the old chest freezer in the fieldstone cellar, wishing the appliance was fuller. She climbed the rickety steps back to the cluttered but cozy main living area, pulling back the spare wool blanket that served as the door between the cabin and the cellar.
Amanda, sixteen, smart, and plain apart from her infectious smile, stood tending a skillet filled with venison backstrap fillets. “How much did you get?” she asked, turning from the stove.
“Sixty-one pounds,” Callie said, dropping into one of two mismatched armchairs that sat on either end of a two-person love seat that had seen better days.
“Not bad,” Amanda said, turning the fillets over on a cutting board and sprinkling a pinch of salt on each, followed by four turns of the pepper mill. Satisfied, she placed the whole cutting board in the old refrigerator, listening for the compressor to come on once she shut the door. You could never be too certain with appliances older than her mother.
She washed her hands at the sink, glancing out the small window toward the shed and forest beyond.
“Gonna be dark in an hour,” Amanda said as she washed, rinsed, and dried two mismatched dishes before stowing them in the cupboard.
“I’m going to have twenty-two bags of hamburger,” their mom said as she sat at the table, grinding the last of the venison scraps.
“Sure felt like a lot over eighty-three pounds dragging it,” Callie said.
“Yeah,” Amanda said. “If only we could eat the head, hide, and bones. Or better yet, if only we could bring just the meat easily. Less dragging.”
“Believe me, once I’m done with the hunt, I’m not done with the hunt,” Callie said. “If I could teleport the meat back, I totally would.”
“Speaking of,” Amanda said. “Are you going to make that deerskin throw this time?”
“Yeah,” Callie replied. “But it will not be ready for Christmas.”
“It’s okay,” Amanda said. “It’ll be ready for my birthday.”
Wordlessly, they made a chain down to the freezer, Amanda at the bottom, Callie at the hanging blanket, and their mom by the table, handing the hamburger packets down the line until twenty-one of them were put away. The last one went in the refrigerator.
“Venison chili tomorrow,” Amanda said.
They ate medium-rare venison steaks, mashed potatoes, and green beans together. As usual, their dad’s position at the end of the table was left empty. Amanda and their mom sat across from each other on the longer sides of the table, and Callie sat at her end, her back to the sink, opposite where her father used to sit. As usual, Callie had store flyers spread out on the table while she ate.
“Five hundred ninety-two dollars doesn’t go a long way anymore,” she said, frowning as she looked through a flyer from the Food-Mart, circling what she called loss leaders. The grocery store wanted to entice you into the store for a few items at low prices and then hammer you with high prices on everything else you need while you are there. But Amanda had gotten very good at being strict with her buying plan.
She had a head for numbers that surpassed Callie by a long way. Callie could tell you where to hunt a deer, where to find its likely paths between bedding, water, and food sources, how to aim, where to shoot the deer, how to field dress it and butcher it. Amanda could tell you what length rope you needed for the block and tackle, the numerical measurement of the gear ratios, and the mechanical advantage in foot pounds when lifting the deer, all off the top of her head.
“Okay. If we go tomorrow,” Amanda said, “We’ll save fourteen dollars and nine cents, but we also gotta go Friday to get the chicken when it goes on sale, but that’s all we’re gettin’ on Friday. No surprises, okay?”
This meant that Callie could not get Twizzlers this week, which kind of bummed her out. “How do you do that?”
“What?” Amanda asked, looking up from her meticulous circling.
“You just know what it’s going to cost without writing anything down.”
“I told you,” Amanda said. “It’s my stupid pet trick.”
“It’s more than that,” Callie said, a touch of admiration in her voice. “You’re smart, ‘Mandy.”
“I ain’t nuthin’ special,” her sister replied, but a small smile tugged at her lips, betraying her pride.
Whatever it was, Callie was grateful to have her sister filling in where their mother was no longer capable. Callie looked over at the older woman who had already left the table and was curled up under an afghan on the ratty old love seat, watching reruns of some fantasy show from ten years ago. Mom was in her spot. The spot she had hardly vacated in five years. Callie was sure there was a permanent indentation in the couch.
At one time, not that long ago, her mother had been athletic, engaging, outgoing, and a wonderful caretaker of their modest home. Now she just sat there, complaining that she was tired or that her legs hurt or that she just wanted to chill out. There wasn’t enough food for her to get fat, but she certainly wasn’t fit like she had been. It was like she just didn’t care about life anymore. Just her TV shows and the seemingly ever-full wine glass topped off far too often from the boxed red blend wine her mother kept in the fridge.
Cleaning, grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, bill-paying, you name it. It had all fallen on the two girls when they’d been thirteen and eleven. Now they seemed to be experts.
Callie stood up and put on her coat.
“Where are you going?” Mom asked, her voice a blend of curiosity and detachment.
“I’m gonna fix the chicken coop.”
“There’s no point,” Mom said, her tone flat, almost as if the words were automatic.
“If I can get it fixed, then I can get seven free hens from Barb Smith. She offered them. We could use the eggs.”
“Then we gotta buy feed,” Mom said, the same monotonous tone, eyes never leaving the TV screen.
“I can budget it once in a while,” Amanda offered, her voice tinged with the same weary resignation.
“Frank Penley says we can get his leftover corn,” Callie said. “I can get it in the pickup. He says some of it’s mildewed, but the hens won’t care that much. They’ll eat what’s still good. Plus we got table scraps, and they can forage some.”
“Suit yourself,” Mom said. “But if you let them forage, they’re just going to be fox dinner.”
“If the foxes come to take my girls, I’ll have a new fur coat before winter’s over,” Callie said, a touch of defiance in her voice.
“It’s all stove to hell. Good luck fixin’ it,” Mom said.
Callie ignored her, closing the door behind her. It was colder today, and the snow was crusty underfoot from refreezing after yesterday’s slight thaw and rain.
“Glad I’m not trying to go through the woods today,” Callie said out loud to herself, her breath visible in the frosty air.
The coop was in shambles. It hadn’t been taken care of in over three years since they last had chickens and one side of it had been damaged, but Callie made short work of it, mostly by shortening the coop itself. She found some pieces of plywood under the old shed and her father’s toolbox inside. An old rusty Maxwell House can held odds and ends of various nails and screws, and she sat down on the shed steps pounding nails straight so she could reuse them for her project.
Callie stopped in the middle of her work and looked at the hammer, running her fingers along the shaft where her dad’s hand had worn the finish away from the wooden handle. She grasped it again, feeling like she could almost still feel the warmth of his hand.
“Miss you,” she whispered, her voice catching in her throat.
Callie turned her head when the outside light over the house steps turned on. That had to have been Amanda, remembering she was out here as darkness approached.
Suddenly, Callie stood up straight, startled. There was a smell, very faint, like the smell of old meat. Instantly, her mind went to the word predator, and she crouched into a defensive position, melding back into the looming shadows, her eyes alert.
Stephen B. Anthony is the author of Transmigrant, an epic science fiction thriller, available on both Amazon and Audible. The first seven chapters are available on this website for free.