I woke to a smell: something delicious wafting out of the kitchen. I retrieved the cup of water from the floor and drank it all. I lay back down, thinking about calling out and asking for food. Before I could act on the thought, I fell asleep again.
The next time I woke, it wasn’t a sound or smell calling me from sleep. It was the imminent explosion of my bladder. My back hurt, too; I’d obviously been on that couch a long time.
I heard someone moving in the kitchen, so I called out, “Hello?”
Mrs. Edmunds came through the doorway. “My, I thought you were going to sleep through another day and night. You must be hungry.”
“Yeah. But, um, where’s the bathroom?” I sat up, holding the blanket to my chest. “I think my eyeballs are yellow.” I must have wobbled a bit, because she rushed over and grabbed my left arm.
“Sure you’re up for a walk?” She peered at my face.
I nodded.
“Okay, I guess there is something sloshing around in there.” Holding my left arm, she helped me stand. My head felt as if it might blow off my shoulders at the slightest breeze, but no way did I want to undergo the humiliating bedpan procedure again. I wrapped my left arm over her shoulder and held the blanket around myself with my right hand. Together we hobbled to the kitchen and from there into a bathroom.
There was no toilet. A sink stood just inside the door, and a shower/tub combo was tucked against the far wall. Between them, where the toilet should have been, someone had run a plastic pipe out of the floor. A big red funnel, the type normally used for gasoline, was affixed vertically to the end of the pipe at about knee level.
“Darla rigged it up. She calls it a squat tube. Although I guess you won’t have to squat.”
“It goes outside?”
“It connects to the septic system, like the toilet did. Now, it’s only for number ones. Number twos we’re burying over where the garden was, at the edge of the yard.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll leave this door cracked in case you need any help,” she said as she left.
I leaned against the wall, supporting my weight with one hand and aiming with the other, and peed into the funnel. When I finished, I twisted the knob on the sink, but nothing came out. What an idiot, I thought. Of course the water didn’t work. And of course what water they had would be too precious for hand washing.
I was wrong. Mrs. Edmunds had laid a hand towel and a bowl of water on the kitchen table. I washed my hands as best I could one at a time, using the other to clutch the blanket around my body.
The kitchen was dim. There was light filtering in through the windows, so it must have been daytime, but it was an ugly yellow-gray half-light. Even in the poor light, I could see the water in the bowl darken as I washed.
Mrs. Edmunds walked into the kitchen carrying a pile of clothing. “Your clothes need some mending. These might be a little big on you; they were my husband’s.”
“Oh, is he-”
“Dead.”
“Sorry…”
She shrugged. “Three years, five months ago. He was cleaning out a cattle grate.”
I didn’t see how that could have led to his death, but it didn’t seem polite to ask. I took the pile of clothes in one hand, hugged it to my chest, and hobbled to the living room to get dressed.
When I returned to the kitchen the stove was on. The blue flame of the burner was shockingly bright in the dimness. Mrs. Edmunds was spooning some kind of thin yellow batter into a frying pan. It smelled heavenly.
“The gas works here?” I said.
“We’re on propane,” Mrs. Edmunds replied. “As long as the tank holds out, we’ll be able to use the stove. Then I guess we’ll have to switch to the fireplace for cooking.”
“Where’s Darla?”
“Out working. Digging corn, taking care of her rabbits, maybe cutting firewood… I don’t know. I’d be helping, but she thought one of us should stay with you.”
“Huh. I thought she didn’t want me around.”
“She said you’d ruin all her hard work stitching you up if you woke up and nobody was here.”
“I know it’s a pain, having me here. I really appreciate-”
“Don’t mind Darla. I know she has a tongue so rough it could strip rust off a harrow disk at twenty yards, but she likes you fine. She’s just scared. We both are. But the good Lord brought you to my barn door for a reason, and my job is not to ask why. Now eat up.” Mrs. Edmunds flipped four small yellow pancakes out of the griddle onto a plate.
The pancakes were delicious. Yellow and crumbly, they tasted of cornbread and bacon. But then again, I was so hungry that anything probably would have tasted amazing. After three or four bites, I noticed a bit of a gritty texture and a hint of sulfur: ash, getting into everything. Between mouthfuls I said, “These are delicious, thank you.”
“Oh, you’ll get sick of it soon enough. It’s only corn pone. That’s mostly all we eat now. Corn pone for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
“I could eat these all day.”
“Well then, I’ll fry another batch.”
“Thanks.”
Mrs. Edmunds’ teeth gleamed in the half-light. She reached into a cupboard and pulled down a mason jar. “Don’t tell Darla,” she said as she poured a trickle of honey over the remaining two pancakes on my plate. “She wants us to save the honey-for what, I don’t know.”
I took another bite. Heavenly.
Two plates of corn pone and two glasses of water later, I was tired again. I limped to the couch and collapsed.
When I next opened my eyes, it was fully dark outside. Someone had fed the fire-there was enough flickering light to see by, and my side was uncomfortably warm. Darla was bending over me unbuttoning the shirt I was wearing, her dad’s shirt.
I said something like, “Wha? Uh.” Never mind full sentences, even polysyllabic words were beyond me when I was half asleep.
“Lie still. I’m going to check your bandage,” she said.
She pulled the shirt open, slid the Ace bandage away from the wound, and lifted the white cloth. The wound was an angry horseshoe of crusty red scabs. I didn’t see any pus or much swelling, which was a relief.
Darla began washing it using a bowl of water and hand towel. As she scrubbed the scabs, it hurt. When she finished that and washed the area around the wound, it felt good. Too good. By the time she finished, I had a hard-on so intense it hurt. It was pretty obvious, too, even in her dad’s loose jeans. The heat in my face at that moment had nothing to do with the fire.
It didn’t make sense. Darla hadn’t said three kind words to me since I’d arrived. But my body obviously didn’t care.
Darla put a fresh cloth over the stitches and pulled the Ace bandage back into place. She stood and glanced down. As she stalked out, I heard her mutter, “Boys.” I curled up on my left side and tried to think about anything but the way her hands had felt against my side.
Sleep was a long time coming.