Last Dinner

The Dinner

Monday, November 25, 2019

11:20 AM

I watched him come down the last slope towards the house. Miranda watched as well. She'd met Joe once, two weeks ago, I think. 

Watching him, I wasn't sure of the time frame. Time, of late, had become harder to keep a hold of, harder to corral into organized herds. 

Joe lumbered closer. This huge man. Aging, yes, but still such an enormous person, like some remnant of a giant coming out of the woods. A beard flopping against his chest, feet the size of boats, hands the size of a baby's head.

Miranda was holding her breath.

I couldn't blame her. Joe was a lot to take, both physically and intellectually. A huge man burdened by absolute opinions.

She turned and looked at me.  

'He's bigger than I remember.' 

I nodded at her and then looked back out at him as he approached the door.

'Every time I see him I think the same thing.'

Miranda gave me a small laugh as Joe's hand swallowed the door.

The door swung open, cold November air seeping in around Joe's huge frame.

He nodded at me and then Miranda. 

'Joe. How are you?' I asked

'Still on the right side of the grass.'

Miranda smiled and Joe ducked his head at her.

 'Miranda.' He said, 'I hear you're settling in alright.'

She nodded and then looked at me. 

I smiled at her worried eyes. 'Why don't you go see when Hector will be ready for us. That'll help us decide on when to put the potatoes on.'

She nodded, turned and ran towards the front door, away from Joe and myself, away from the little giant and all his force.

Joe watched her disappear and then looked back at me, one eyebrow raised.

'You have such a way with the women, Joe.' I patted him on the arm and then nodded my head towards the open door behind him. 'Come on Casanova, shut the door and quit cooling down my kitchen.'

He guffawed at me and then shook his head.

'No time for that- just stopping to say I was on my way to collect Charlie and to see if Bill needed rousting.' He looked where Miranda had disappeared. 'Wasn't expecting to see her. Didn't mean to scare her.'

I served up a hard eyeball stare at him.

'If you didn't mean to scare her you might have refrained from lecturing her about the stupidity of her life choices.'

He shrugged, let his shoulders roll. He was used to my direct tongue, but, still, I know he felt the sting.

'You know I was right.' He said looking down at me, 'You know it needed to be said so she'd appreciate her fortune.'

I shook my head and turned my back on him- a thing Anna had likened to turning your back on an angry bear. 'I don't know that you were right and she didn't need to be told. BUT- enough of that.' I wiped my hands on my apron and grabbed the bowl of potatoes.

'Thank you for getting Charlie and maybe just check on Bill. Eva and Anna are due here about an hour from now.'

'So it's Eva AND Anna now, is it?' 

'Jesus Joe- just go get Methuselah and his sidekick and try not to get either of them so pissed off that they don’t want to come.'

I wasn't looking at him but I knew that his face was trying to decide which way to go. A pause, one of those long ones that fill rooms and eat the oxygen, hung between us.

And then he laughed. One of his big full sized laughs.

'Christ, I love you- you're the only person here besides Hector who has any courage.' 

I heard him turn and the door close behind him. I kept my eyes on the potatoes and wondered again how hard of an old man he'd become. 

I was still staring at the potatoes, actually a single potato, when Miranda came back. The potato in question was in my left hand and had been there since just after Joe closed the door. This is how the end comes.

With a single potato.

I heard Miranda close the door and stamp her boots. There was still snow on the ground from the storm that had come through a week before. I stared at my left hand and the potato gripped in it and tried to focus instead on the storm.

On what that early storm meant for the rest of the winter.

If I focused hard enough past my hand and the potato I'd be able to let go of it.

I'd be able to let go of it before Miranda walked back into the kitchen. As she left the front hall the potato dropped from my hand, hit the table and rolled off onto the floor. She walked in just as I was retrieving it.

She pushed all of her energy into the room like a blinding light. There was so much of her that I can't imagine she could see how shaken I was. 

'He says anytime we show up is fine.' She put her hands on the table and pushed up, rocking up onto her toes. 'Do you need help with the taters?' She asked.

Brushing at the potato that I'd just picked up off of the floor, I nodded. 'It's not help I need with the potatos.' I looked up at her.

She looked a little taken aback. Had I been too sharp? Was I losing control of my voice as well? 

'I just need you to deal with them. How's that sound my little potato admiral?' I did my best to modulate my voice, did my best to bring the octave in correctly.

She laughed and shook her head, pushing away from the table.

'Ok- I guess there's not much bad I can do to a potato.'

A month ago when she'd been left outside of the wall just beyond Hector's barn, there hadn't been much hope. Hector had taken her in, locked her into the safe room and come up to the house to tell me.

He'd stood out on the front porch looking up at the sky. He never knocked. He never called me out. He stood waiting and watching the sky until I noticed him. He'd done this now more times than I could remember. 

He'd had that standing out on the porch routine with Zoe before me and Roger before her. 

Out of the people here at the farm only he and Charlie where original immune carriers. Both were the only ones who'd never actually been sick. It was a thing that set them apart.

Charlie almost never seen and Hector the front door man to our tiny community. 

In the first week after Miranda arrived Hector would decide if her life were a pass or fail with us. I didn't know the exact manner of making that decision. Hector said it was technical but I suspected it was more a mix of instinct and prayer. If she failed he'd gently put her back out on the other side of the wall.

What happened after that was an even greater mystery to me.

A greater mystery that I knew would soon be solved for me.

Soon but not before the family dinner.

Miranda was almost done with peeling potatoes when Anna and Eva showed up. Like me, neither were young women anymore but neither were as old. They'd both showed up within a week of each other. Anna with her husband and two children under 5. Eva with a single 10 year old son.

Anna and Eva were the only ones who survived Hector. From what Eva told me Hector hadn't needed instinct or prayer to make the decision on any of the four that were put back outside of the wall. 

They'd all been dead before they got to the other side. Eva had already watched her parents, her husband, her daughter die. She'd already grown a callous of emotional distance before her son passed.

Anna had not.

For months Anna barely spoke. She'd be found asleep in the woods or up a tree or, during one particularly bad episode, in a shallow hole she'd clawed into the dirt. Eva had found her curled up there, her hands a mess of blood and missing fingernails.

The story went that Eva had hauled her up out of that dirt hole and slapped her across the face as hard she could.

From that day on they'd been together. Anna wasn't precisely bubbly but she also wasn't completely despondent.

They came into the kitchen and I smiled at Miranda. I watched them. I watched Miranda. I would need to remember this. This moment of warmth, of women in a kitchen messing with food. I would need to remember so I watched. I watched and watched. I watched and the light grew warm with my watching.

I watched and there was a pastel hue. There was the smell of pine. I watched and I felt the softness of a fleece blanket. I tasted coffee. I watched and I was falling.

I watched until Anna put her hand on my shoulder.

Her face looming into my view.

'Jenni?' Her voice slipping into my head, weaving its way through my ears. 'Jenni, are you ok?'

'Jenni- I need you to blink and then look at me.' Her voice a whisper slipping in beneath the watching, slipping in like ice down my back.

I blinked. I looked at her. She smiled at me, stared at me and then shook her head, brought her finger up to her lips. 

'Don't say anything Jenni.'

Her eyes were worried. Her face carried a smile that did nothing to cover her anxiety. Anna knew what was happening.

Anna had watched it happen to her husband. To her children.

I lost my husband in the first wave. The first go around where we found our loved ones frozen in moments. We'd shake them and they'd move on for a bit but then.

But then we wouldn't be able to shake them and then they wouldn't move on and then.

And then they'd lock in.

Then they'd stop breathing.

Then they'd die.

 A virus was what they called it but Hector told me it wasn't like any virus he'd seen. It wasn't like anything at all that he'd seen. 

'Sure, it's contagious but we're not really sure what 'it' is.' He'd said this using air quotes as he said the word 'it.' 'I mean- it's airborne so it's virulent as hell.' He'd pace when he talked about it. 'Virulent and untreatable.' And then he'd shrug. 'We came up with the protocol of isolation and then they came up with these places.' His hand doing a sweeping gesture of the farm. 'But, really? I mean, really, we didn't know, don't know, and now?' He looked at me. 'Now I don't know how many farms are left. How many immunes are there? And how can we call them immunes?' He'd sit. 'I mean you're not immune if it's just a matter of time.'

He was right. There were only a few true immunes like him and Charlie. The rest of us were temporary survivors. Temporary survivors because we'd been left at a farm and managed to shake out before we locked in.

You only got to shake out once. Eventually the temporary reprieve would let go.

I looked at Anna, the hairline wrinkles around her eyes. She'd learned to smile again after all the tragedy. She'd learned to love again. She'd found another family. 

I sighed and smiled back at her.

'It was going to happen sooner or later.' I put a hand on her arm and squeezed. 'At least I'm here for the dinner. At least I have that.' I studied hard on her face. 'Please.' I said 'Please let me have that.'

She nodded. 'Of course.' Shook her head. Put her hand on mine. 'Of course.'

Within an hour the kitchen was filled not only with the smell of wild turkey and potatoes but with people. Joe had arrived with Bill and Charlie in tow and the men in concert with the women filled the house with noise. I blinked and blinked to keep myself from getting caught again in the watching.

Anna was pulling an apple pie out of the oven. I walked up to her and leaned in a little. 

'I have to go down and talk to Hector.' She turned her head and looked up at me. She nodded. 'Can you herd the masses and bring the food down?'

She nodded again.

I stepped out of the warmth of the kitchen, away from the smell of a feast not yet shared and pointed myself in the direction of Hector's barn. It was about 200 feet down the hill from the main house. Anna and Eva lived just beyond the first field and Bill and Charlie lived beyond that. Joe had a place up at the top of the property. Miranda had a room in the big house and Hector rarely left the barn.

This was how we lived, this strange family thrown together out of tragedy. This would be how most of us would die. Hopefully quietly. Hopefully after a good meal. Hopefully without too many regrets.

I mused my way through that 200 feet wondering what Hector would say. If he'd put me in the room immediately. If he'd shove me out beyond the wall. If he'd be sad or frightened. 

The sun had dipped below the hills and the air was growing colder in the darkness. I watched my breathe steam out as I knocked on the big barn door before going in.

'Jenni.' I heard Hector call out my name before I saw him. I looked around and saw that, once again, Hector had out done himself.

'Hector- this is.' I paused and tried to find a good word 'Amazing? Better than amazing?'

There was a single round table with 12 settings. The 2 extra settings for those we'd lost, those who'd passed before, those that would pass in the future.  Hector had filled the barn with a warm light that was a mix of LED lanterns and candles. He'd fired up his propane heater and filled the space with enough warmth that we could take off our coats and sit and eat and laugh.

'Well- we've only managed to keep this one holiday so it seems worth the effort' He climbed down from the upper hay loft. His feet hit the barn floor and he looked at me. His head cocked. 'This one holiday of giving thanks.' 

I nodded and watched as he wiped his hands against his jeans.

He sighed and looked up at the ceiling of the barn. 'How long?' He asked.

'A few days.' I said.

He nodded and dropped his head. His eyes were full of tears. 

'I'm sorry Hector.' I said.

'So am I. BUT.' He said with a clap of his hands. 'BUT- we have tonight. And Dinner.' He walked towards me. 'And we get to listen to Bill tell us how he doesn't care if he's supposed to be thankful yet again. We get to listen to Joe lecture us on gratitude.' He stood in front of me and put his hands on my shoulders. 'AND we have Miranda.'

I smiled. 'Yes, we have Miranda.'

The dinner itself was neither spectacularly good or bad. We had what food we caught or grew and spices had become tragically hard to come by but the dinner was never really about the food.

It was always about this family of souls. This place where we'd found a moment's rest before walking the rest of the way to our end. This place that really did teach us gratitude even if it came at the cost of what we thought we could never lose.

I ate my turkey, my potatoes, the last of the season's tomatoes. I laughed as Miranda told us the story of her first days in high school. I scolded Joe after he scolded Eva. I squeezed Bills hand and kissed Charlie on the cheek and at the end of the evening I hugged everyone.

I hugged everyone and did not leave the barn with them.

As the door closed leaving me to Hector's devices, I saw Anna's face for one last time. She had one hand on Miranda's shoulder and the other twined into Eva's. I gave her one last smile, one last nod and then let the door close.

It was my last dinner with my last family. I closed my eyes and took in a breath. Hector took my hand. It was as good as any moment to let go, to lock in, to slip away and to give thanks.