Vance was nonplussed. “What’s an au-pair?”
“A nanny,” I said.
“Ah,” he said, sounding a bit disappointed. “Well, at least she’s not married.”
“She sounds sweet,” I said. Somehow, the innocence of the ad made me feel homesick for the old times-the days when I did not have to setup barbed wire around my house before bed.
“Girls with accents can be hot,” said Vance speculatively.
Getting annoyed with his attitude, I turned on him, but then Monika made a mewling sound. We both leaned forward.
“We should have set her wrist.” I said, grimacing at the sudden thought. “Before she wakes up with that.”
“We didn’t have time,” Vance hissed back. “Anyway, we don’t know how. Doc Wilton will have to do it. What I can’t believe is that
I took her injured hand and tried to lay it out as straight as I could. She squirmed. I could tell I was hurting her. Vance hurried to get more lanterns. It was dark outside now and we only had the one Coleman hanging from the ceiling.
Monika moaned at my crude ministrations. Her eyes fluttered open. Great way to meet a girl, I thought, the first thing she knows about me is that I’m causing her pain.
She looked up. Bafflement turned to fear, then to terror as she recalled what had happened. She said something incomprehensible that I imagined must be in Czech.
“I’m sorry, Monika,” I said gently, “Try English.”
Her mouth opened and closed a few times. “What happened?” she asked. She did have a soft European accent, which I liked immediately.
Vance came over, twisted his mouth and quickly said, “I’ll get you some cokes and stuff.”
He vanished into the kitchen. I knew he was leaving me behind to tell the girl about her dead companion.
“There was a car crash, and you were hurt.”
She looked at her wrist and winced as she touched her head with her good hand. “Where is Ron, and Billy?”
“Um,” I said, “What do you remember?”
“We left the city,” her eyes were searching the ceiling for answers. The fingers of her good hand probed her injuries delicately. “I was with Billy and his father, there were so many terrible things on the road. We turned into the wood. Something…. Something bad appeared in front seat. It hurt Ron, we crashed.”
I nodded. “Ron was driving?” I asked.
“Yes, Billy is only eight.”
“Well, I’m afraid Ron died in the crash. But we didn’t see any sign of Billy.” Even as I said it, I had a sudden, dark thought. “The boy, was he sitting up front with his father?”
“Yes, what?” she looked at me quizzically. Her eyes were dark with pain, grief, fear and shock. She looked too wrung out to cry anymore. I knew the look well.
“Nothing,” I said gently.
We rigged up some tape and sticks and a crude sling for Monika. When she was able to function, we all ate dinner from our stash of emergency rations. There was a moldy half-loaf of white bread we had rummaged out of Billson’s market downtown, venison jerky from last winter’s hunting and peaches in jars our mother had laid down years back.
The cabin had been our folks’ place before the meter-reader from Indiana-Michigan Power had grown claws and a head like a pumpkin one day. The meter man had begun methodically killing everyone on his route, including Dad, until a concerned citizen had put a dozen rounds in that mushy skull and stopped him. I’d never really been sure what had happened to my mother. She had died in the woods the same day as my dad, but I never knew who-or
It was cooling down fast outside, so I lit a fire in the ash-choked stone hearth. Feeling expansive, I fired up the generator long enough for everyone to have a hot shower. Nothing feels quite as good as a hot shower after days of running around in the woods. After dinner and bathing and some fresh clothes, Vance and I cracked open beers and Monika had some coffee and lit a cigarette. I didn’t smoke myself, but it didn’t bug me.
She noticed me watching her. “I quit when I was teen,” she said apologetically. “But today I make special day.”
I nodded. Today was indeed a special day. We had had a lot of them lately. I wondered if she really had any idea yet how special things were.
After a while, she carefully extinguished the cigarette and tucked it back into her crumpled little pack. I could tell this was a woman who knew how to make things last.
Vance was haunting the front window, peeking through the cheap, dusty, mini-blinds. “Anything out there, Vance?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“Just the same,” I said, “I think we should turn off the gen and use the Coleman.”
“Good idea, no point in wasting fuel.”
Monika watched us closely, frowning slightly. I wasn’t sure if she was picking up on our worries or if she was just concentrating on English.
“Tell us your story,” I said to her.
She looked very pretty now with washed hair and she even managed to flicker a smile at me. I liked her smile. Foreign girls never seemed to smile as much as American girls did. To me, her first smile was an important event.
“You read my profile,” she shrugged. “I came to U.S. in April, to Louisville. The family was nice. There were three kids, Billy and twin girls. Bad things started in the news, strange things. You know. But we didn’t really think it would get to us. So suddenly, things went bad. One day, the mother left with the twin girls…”
A shadow passed over her face, and suddenly I regretted asking her.
“They didn’t come back. Ron looked for them, I took care of Billy, but days went by. One day he came back bleeding-Ron did. Then, after few more days, he decide to try to make it up to Canada to his Uncle’s house. He showed me pictures. I didn’t know what to do; they had already closed the airports. Anyway, we didn’t make it. You can see.”
By the end she was struggling not to break down. Her story was vague, but it was her story. I made a mental note not to pry. I saw some tears and I nodded sympathetically. I resisted the urge to reach out and touch her, to comfort her, fearing she might take it the wrong way.
Vance didn’t miss the cue, however. He slid up next to her and put an arm around her shoulder. She responded immediately by touching her head to his chest and closing her eyes briefly. He opened his mouth and privately showed me a bit of tongue, gloating. My jaw muscles bulged as I clenched my teeth and gave him a tight smile. I hated him sometimes.
Monika lifted her head back up and edged away a bit so that she was no longer in contact with him. I watched approvingly as she sipped her coffee. Vance looked disappointed.
Then we all froze. There was a
