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Ordinary Time: A Short Story for Winter

Ordinary Time: A Short Story for Winter

Last updated on: January 19, 2017 at 7:52 pm by Mary Pezzulo

Ordinary Time: A Short Story for Winter 2017-01-19T19:52:13-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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The bag of rations was also always printed with the injunction not to eat anything that grew wild on the ground. This was to avoid contamination, but it seemed pointless– no one really knew if eating what grew from the ground was more risky than walking on it, or breathing the air, or sleeping outside in the warm rain. No one knew if following the rule would prolong our lives because everyone violated it– we all became foragers.

Edible plants were much harder to find in the Winter, but it wasn’t impossible. Those who had been gardeners kept gardening, and at least ate the sprouts. Sometimes, with extreme care and patience, they managed to grow a crop they could share or trade. Once a rotten tomato from a compost heap produced a few vines and gave us something to wish for– six or seven of us ate the hard green fruits, for fear that they’d rot before they ripened. Once five people picked the wrong mushrooms and were dead by morning. Once just the three of us spent the day grazing our way through a thicket that had wild pea plants. Once, just once, a man who had been a farmer presented Sukay, Cuerpo and I with a fresh sweet pepper. It had managed to get yellow on one side, and there were hardly any bug bites in the firm, clean flesh. I hadn’t even liked peppers, in the time before the winter, but I ate it then. I suppose dividing a pepper into equal thirds without a knife would seem a tedious task to people who hadn’t lived in the Valley during the Winter. But at the time we only felt reverence. We scraped the seeds off of our hands at the end and gave them back to the farmer, in case he’d be in the valley long enough to plant a second crop.

We didn’t just forage for food; we also needed fuel– wood, brush, anything to keep the fires going at night. There was profit to be made in dismantling what was left of the ruined houses, after the National Guard had gone through them. Bodies, cash, books and anything else of particular value were removed and carted away very quickly, but there was smashed furniture and wood paneling to harvest. It was difficult at first. I hadn’t built a thing in the days before the winter, but Sukay had built all kinds of things. He knew how to take them back apart. He knew how to find the joints where the wood was weakest, and pry them into kindling.

At night we’d lie together by the fire close under one blanket, for warmth. I slept in the middle, with Cuerpo nearest the wall and Sukay near the door. We listened to the fire crackle. We told stories of the way it was in the time before the Winter, though as time went by we forgot. We did anything we could to keep our minds off the silence—no crickets, no cars, nobody walking around outside, not a breath of wind. The silence was the most terrible thing.

Every thirty days, the National Guard would bring doctors to examine us. I never had the same doctor twice in a row, but they all followed the same procedure– listen to the heart, glance at the throat and eyes, take one vial of blood and a single hair. Then there was the contraceptive shot. No word on how great the risk or what contamination would do to a baby; they never gave us a choice in the matter, either. Men were presumed diseased and required to take sanitary precautions when they took pleasure. Women were barren and required to remain so every month.

The doctors never told us what they were looking for in those exams. But every month, with our first bag of rations, we received their report. It was one sentence, written on thin paper and stapled to the outsides of the paper bags. Sometimes, rarely, the sentence would read “So-and-So is required to leave the Valley on the next available transport–” and that person would be gone within a week, in one of the passenger cars on the National Guard’s train. Sometimes those people would write back to us– or, at least, we sometimes heard that they had. No one ever wrote to Sukay, Cuerpo or I. We hadn’t known anyone who lived outside the Valley even in the time before the Winter, so no one bothered to write to us. But everyone knew someone who’d received a letter, or knew someone who knew someone who had. Outside the Valley, the letters said, people were very sorry for us. There were prayer vigils held on our behalf all the time. There were efforts being made to hasten the evacuation, to clean up contamination and get us to safety. There was help being organized, as well– seeds and plants were going to be sent, measures going to be taken to clear the air and clean the water. Soon and very soon.

Of course, these things never came. I never could tell if the others around me believed in them or only said that they did, but the only help that came was water, rations and the monthly doctors’ visits. Sukay was adamant that the only way to improve our situation was to get out of the Valley. Cuerpo held the opposite opinion. Cuerpo believed there was nothing outside the Valley– nothing different, at any rate. He was certain the contamination must cover the whole world. The National Guard was fooling us, writing letters, spreading stories about the world as it had been before the Winter when no such place existed anymore. Otherwise, no one would obey them. He believed the people ordered to leave on the next available transport were being taken away for mercy killing. I wondered which was really mercy– to be here, in the Valley, with my rations and some semblance of hope, or to die on the train.
Most often, the sentence on the bag would read “So-and-so is required to stay in the Valley pending a doctor’s examination.” This person would stay in the valley for at least another month, then sit through another meeting with the doctor, another sampling, another shot. And so we waited, wondering how much chance we had of really getting out, how sure we were to die.

And, of course, many people did die in the Winter.

It wasn’t something we liked to talk about. Even when a person broke out in the first signs of contamination sickness, none of us would mention it. They usually had a few good weeks left, after all. The rash moved very slowly. At first, it didn’t even hurt. And every month the National Guardsmen who passed out the rations reminded us that a cure for contamination was on its way, just as the letters informed us that cleanup was coming.

Often, contaminated people would go off and kill themselves before the last stage of the sickness started, and then they’d die alone. But if they chose to wait it out, we’d all gather to be with them. We kept vigil as they suffered, right until the end—helpless, but present, bearing witness. It made us feel human.

That went on for years—cans, bottles, foraging, looking for wood, huddling around fires; the tepid fog, the warm rain, the silent nights without a breath of wind. Less and less growing in the ground, less and less fuel for fires, fewer and fewer of our neighbors alive, no children, no stars, no sunshine, not a breath of wind. Blood tests. Shots. Sleeping together for warmth. Bearing witness for the dying.

It got so I couldn’t imagine anything else.

Then, one day, the three of us found new doctors’ reports stapled to our bags of rations.

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