Page 75 of Upstate

But it’s February first, the day I’m meant to return from my fictional visit to Vermont. The forecast is warning of a monster nor’easter. Travel advisories have been issued. Highways are closing. It would expose my lie to pretend I drove home in this storm. I’ve still got a box of pasta and a canister of oats, one more jar of sauce and a couple cans of corn, a handful of tea bags and enough coffee for a few cups. I might as well hunker down a little longer. Tomorrow will be soon enough, or the day after, depending on how long it takes to shovel out the van once this storm dies down, to reenter the world.

I pull on winter boots and go down to the barn. The silly goats are smart enough to stay inside, puckishly testing the ram’s patience. I’d feel better if the ewes were all snug in their pens, but most are out in their fenced enclosure, snow rounding their woolly backs. I check the heated water trough and leave fresh heaps of hay, trusting the animals to take care of themselves.

That evening, instead of opening a book, I eat my supper at the dining room table while watching Promising Young Woman on my laptop—not the best choice, it turns out, for a widow alone in an old house in the middle of a storm. While the credits roll, I mute the movie and double-check that all the doors and windows are locked. After making myself a mug of chamomile tea, I go up the back stairs to bed and fall asleep under a pile of blankets with the Weather Channel playing on my phone screen, the unplugged device clutched in my hand.

My chattering teeth wake me before dawn. The dark windows are sheets of ice. The room is freezing cold. My first thought is that I’ve run out of fuel oil, but the pain of paying that bill is so fresh the tank can’t be empty yet. Then I remember the oil-fueled furnace requires electricity to trigger the thermostat that sparks the pilot light. I switch on my bedside lamp. Nothing. The power’s out.

I pick up my phone to check the time, but the screen is blank, the device’s battery drained during the night. Groaning, I get out of bed, grab a flashlight from my nightstand, and shuffle, shivering, to the bathroom. The toilet flushes but doesn’t refill. I try the sink. Again, nothing.

I grew up in Wisconsin; I know what happens to water pipes when the heat goes out in winter. Layering on as many clothes as I can while still being able to move my limbs, I clamber to the basement and turn the taps on the utility sink. There ought to be a rush of residual water, but the faucet yields only a few desultory drops. The pipes above must already be clotted with ice. Shining the flashlight on the electric panel, I switch off the circuit to the well pump so it won’t kick on when the power comes back. Until the water in the pipes melts, pumping more will only cause a flood.

Upstairs, I rummage through the secretary desk to find the phone number for National Grid on my electric bill, then lift the receiver on the never-used landline that came with my expensive internet setup. It’s dead. Broken tree branches must have knocked Spectrum’s cable down, which means there’s no wi-fi, either. At least I have cell service, I think, going to charge my dead phone from the laptop’s battery. When I touch the keyboard, though, it doesn’t chime to life. Smacking a hand to my forehead, I realize I left the streaming channel open, the computer unplugged. My hard-won equanimity is shattered as I realize I’m trapped without water or heat or power or any way to call for help.

The glass panes in the kitchen sparkle pink with the coming dawn. I open the door onto the side porch to see this storm for myself. Except there is no porch. It’s engulfed in snowdrifts that reach up to the windowsills. Across the lawn, snow blocks the workshop doors; getting the van out is impossible now. I look up, flakes landing on my lips and lashes. The entire sky is a vast gray cloud ceaselessly spitting snow.

There’s one thing that still works when the power’s out. I light the propane stove with a match, then set a stockpot packed with snow on the burner. It melts down to enough boiling water for a cup of hot tea. I cradle it in mittened hands, drinking the warmth into my body before venturing outside.

There’s a hearth in the kitchen, yes, but I never got around to having the flue inspected. Lighting it for the first time will be a literal trial by fire. First, though, I’ll need to get out to the woodshed. I zip up the parka I purchased for winter commuting in a cold city and shove my double-socked feet into stiff boots. Stepping off the snow-covered porch, I sink up to my thighs. I think of that famous Billy Collins poem where a dog bounces through snowdrifts like a porpoise. Well, I’m not porpoising anywhere. I move like Frankenstein’s monster as I shove one leg ahead of the other. When I finally reach the woodshed, I load my arms with mossy logs that were here when I bought the house. Having a cord of dry hardwood delivered is yet another thing I never got around to.

I have no idea how long an upstate power outage can last. If the kitchen fireplace is to be my only source of heat, I’ll need plenty of fuel. I keep at it, each trip a little less arduous as my boots beat a path through the snow. When the stack of wood beside the hearth is up to my waist, I collapse to the floor, heart pounding and sweat soaking my inner layers. All I have to do now is figure out how to get a fire going—a skill I’ve somehow never acquired.

The unsold homesteading books I brought to the festival are on a shelf in the dining room. Leafing through one of them, I find instructions on how to build a fire that I follow precisely: logs stacked like a little house with crumpled newspaper inside and thin twigs for a roof. I turn the flue handle and set the newspaper alight, a pot of snow at the ready to douse the flames if the room fills with smoke. Miraculously, the paper catches, the fire draws, the smoke rises. I sit back on my haunches, amazed, as burning wood releases the sun’s stored heat.

I gather pillows and blankets for my power-outage campout in the kitchen, then melt more snow to make oatmeal. This isn’t so bad, I think, drizzling syrup over the steaming cereal. The snow is beautiful, really. Brushing frost from one window, I see the red barn blanketed in white. Through another, I watch falling flakes erase my tracks to the woodshed. Come morning, I’ll be forging a new path.

For as long as there’s daylight, I huddle near the fire, drinking tea and reading about homesteading. The chapter on fresh eggs makes me want to fill the dilapidated coop with a dozen spring pullets. I’m reassured to learn that sheep like eating snow, since their trough is probably as frozen as my pipes. I imagine the ram a wise professor, teaching the young goats how to munch white drifts in their fenced-in yard.

I keep my phone plugged into a dead outlet, ready to charge the moment power is restored, but dusk darkens the sky and there’s still no electricity. I don’t appreciate how unprepared I am for the outage until night falls. The few candles I rustle up sputter out before I finish my spaghetti supper. A search for backup batteries yields a single unopened pack of double-A’s. Outside, snow and sky are both so white the windows shimmer ghostly gray. The fire’s heat depends on being constantly fed. The stack of logs that looked excessive at noon becomes worryingly low by midnight. The seclusion that seemed therapeutic yesterday now feels cruel as solitary confinement. Intrusive thoughts, pacified for the past month, come barreling back into my panicked mind.

It was stupid of me to pretend I was visiting friends in Vermont. No one has an inkling I’m here. If I hadn’t lied to Wren, he’d have insisted I stay with him in the village before the coming storm was even a cloud in the sky. My syrup-making neighbors might be inspired to stop by, but the silence along Ridgetop Road suggests it hasn’t been plowed yet, and anyway, it won’t make much difference when it is. My driveway is impassable. My house isn’t visible from the road. The curl of smoke from my fireplace is the only signal someone here is alive.

All the children’s books I loved about stranded kids living off the land—Hatchet and Julie of the Wolves and My Side of the Mountain—are exposed as lies. Scenes from every horror movie I’ve ever seen play across my mind’s eye. What if some crazed snowmobiler comes banging on my kitchen door seeking his next victim? A kick to its locked latch would send it flying open, snow and cold and danger rushing in.

Obsessing over my vulnerability makes me physically ill. I huddle by the fire, adding logs faster than warmth demands. Eerie shadows dance on the walls as I load fresh batteries into the flashlight. Determined to stay vigilant through the night, I only know I’ve fallen asleep when I jolt awake from a nightmare.

The morning finds me dizzy with exhaustion and sick from the cold. Shuffling to the kitchen door to fill a pot with snow, I open it to a world blindingly bright. Atop the drifts, snowflakes shiny as sequins refract the rays of the rising sun. The clear sky is achingly blue. Far off, I hear the whine of an engine and imagine chainsaws freeing downed lines from fallen branches. Hopefully, the power company crews out working in the aftermath of the storm will reconnect me soon.

It’s not a metaphor when I jot in my notebook that I’ve survived the darkest night of my life. I warm my belly with pour-over coffee before putting on my coat and boots. Creeping on bent knees like a Cossack dancer, I manage to reach the woodshed. By my fifth trip, there’s something like a path. With my body heated up from the inside, I decide to make one more run before peeling off my sweaty fleece and cooking up some breakfast. I’ve just gathered a last armload of logs when I hear it: a bleat, plaintive and desperate.

The sheep are in trouble.

I drop the wood and turn toward the barn. A hundred feet of unbroken snow deeper than a yardstick stand between me and the pens. It’s impossible, I tell myself. Then the sheep bleats again, the sound tearing at my heart. I half crawl, half swim, toward the barn. Snow fills my boots and infiltrates the collar of my coat. One last push and I tumble into the barn as if birthed from a snowdrift. In the cold air, steam rises from the animals’ backs. Their trough is indeed frozen, but there’s plenty of snow in the fenced areas outside and piles of hay within. Okay, then: the barn is dry, the animals are safe, they have access to both food and water. There’s just one problem.

I’m a sheep short.

Thinking I got mixed up among the milling creatures, I remove a mitten and count off on fingers red with cold. There’s no mistake. One of the ewes is definitely missing. The electric fence outside the barn is four feet tall. Most of it is visible, but a portion has disappeared, smashed down under the weight of snow. Assuming the battery’s run out of power, I clamber over the collapsed fencing and struggle toward the sound of a far-off bleat.

There, not far from where the snow has melted into the spring-fed pond, I see the sheep’s face lifted above the drift that traps her in place. Spotting me, she rolls her wild eyes and bleats again. Reaching the ewe, I dig around her spindly legs until the freed creature lunges forward. I lead her back to the barn, the impatient animal butting the backs of my legs. When we near the pens, the ewe barrels past me, taking me down like a linebacker. That’s when I see blood oozing from her rear. At first, I imagine a fox biting her in the ass. Then I count back the months since I segregated the ram and realize she could have been pregnant. But if the ewe has given birth, where is the lamb?

I retrace my steps, red flecks of blood marking the route, until I spot a slick lump on the bank of the pond: a newborn lamb, frozen stiff. I would run to it if I could, but by now I can barely walk. With a final lurch, I fall to my knees, wetting my legs as I scoop it up. The lamb is a blood-smeared block of ice in my arms. It seems to be dead, but what do I know about livestock? There might be a spark of life left in it yet.

I unzip my parka and tuck the lamb inside, its freezing body lowering my core temperature like an ice vest. I manage to get back to the pens, where the ewe, licked clean by her sisters, is contentedly munching hay. Introducing the stiff lamb to its disinterested mother proves futile. What the creature needs is warmth, and the only warmth to be had is in front of my fireplace.

I’ve already battled through the snow between the barn and the woodshed, where a beaten path leads back to the house, but those are the two long sides of a triangle. The house is right there, directly across the lawn. Believing the shorter distance will make up for the added effort, I zip the lamb back into my parka and set off through fresh snow.

Somehow, though, my legs have stopped working like they should. I fall forward, lose a mitten, get back up again. The frozen lamb swells my parka like a pregnant belly, throwing me off balance. There’s a buzzing in my ears, as if thousands of bees were circling my head. Do bees swarm in winter? I don’t remember reading about such a thing in City of the Bees. Maybe I missed a chapter?

Oh, I’m not walking anymore. The snow is at my shoulders now. How has it gotten so deep? Because I’m on my knees, my body buried up to my chest. Maybe I’ll be warmer here, like inside an igloo. I can’t tell anymore if I’m cold or hot. The lamb in my coat is melting, wetting my stomach and lap. At least my mittenless hand has stopped hurting. It’s the same hand I pricked with bee stings, I realize. I hold the foreign thing in front of my eyes and count five red fingers. I can still count to five. Doesn’t that count for something?