Winter Study Read Online Free PDF Page B

were
filled with milk, orange juice, potatoes, cheese, onions, butter and a
dozen other perishable food items.
No
electrical power; this was the Winter Study team’s refrigerator. She
turned and started toward the bathroom in the mirror-image apartment on
the other side. Halfway there, she could see three large, round plastic
containers with spigots on the sink counter.
“Our well,” Jonah had said of the hole chopped in the lake ice. There was no running water.
No flush toilets.
“It’s
by the woodstove,” a soft voice said, and Anna realized she was not
alone. Hunched in front of a computer was a small woman in gray sweater
and cargo pants, on her feet the indoor version of Mrs. Steger’s
moose-hide mukluks, available only in Ely and only from the store owned
by übermusher Will Steger’s wife. The woman’s bland face was pleasant
enough, and the brown eyes, small behind the thick glasses of the truly
nearsighted, moderately welcoming. “There.” She pointed toward the
stove.
Anna
looked where she indicated. Beside the woodstove, half hidden behind a
rack of worn dish towels and industrial-strength winter boots, a toilet
seat leaned against the wall. It had been lovingly decorated with
bright red kissing lips and holly, WINTER STUDY painted on it in what
looked like crimson nail polish.
“Thanks,” Anna said, trying to look as if she’d not been foolish enough to hope for indoor plumbing.
“The outhouse is through the kitchen door a ways,” the woman said helpfully.
Anna
caught up the ring of porcelain — or, more likely, plastic — on her way
toward the northernmost kitchen, the one the study used. The toilet
seat was warm from the stove. Evidently even the hardiest of souls
required some few comforts.
JONAH
FIRED UP THE GENERATOR and informed Anna they would have power each
evening till lights out at ten. Anna bunked with Robin on the
refrigerator side. She divested herself of her layers and dressed in
Levi’s and one of Paul’s old sweatshirts. On her feet was the one
luxury she permitted herself to stuff into the two small-to-medium
soft-sided duffels she was allowed to bring, fuzzy slippers, a sedate
black but frosted with yellow-and-white cat hair. She joined the others
in the working kitchen.
Bob Menechinn was enthroned at the Formica-topped table in the chair nearest the wall, a glass of the boxed red wine, ISRO’s
vin ordinaire,
in
his hand. Robin sat opposite him, quiet and smiling. The woman who had
shown Anna where the bathroom facilities were hovered between Bob and
the door to the outhouse as if, at any minute, she would make good an
escape.
Menechinn
smiled at Anna appreciatively. “You clean up nice, Miss Pigeon.” The
woman behind him shot him a look of alarm, quickly quelled, and Anna
wondered if the woman stood where she did to be ready to protect her
turf, in the person of Bob Menechinn.
“Have you met my able assistant,
Doctor
Kathy
Huff?” Bob said, affecting a drawl that made his words seem to linger
in the air after he’d spoken. Smiling with a bonhomie that wrinkled his
bulldog cheeks, he winked. Dr. Huff looked at her feet.
Maybe
Menechinn was proud of his helper’s doctorate. Maybe she was shy. Maybe
he mocked her and she was hurt. Maybe they were lovers. The
undercurrents were lost on Anna. She was too hungry to care.
“What can I do to help?” she asked the kitchen in general.
Adam
peeled and chopped. Ridley cooked. Robin was allowed to make a salad,
but only after begging for the honor. Over five decades of tradition
was squeezed into the small kitchen: jobs were not up for grabs; one
had to be grandfathered in for every task. Realizing the study’s dinner
rituals were as full of social land mines for the uninitiated as the
kitchen of a kosher chef on the eve of Hanukkah, Anna sat down out of
the way and watched.
It
was the first time she’d seen her housemates divested of layers and
hoods, gloves and down pants. Ridley was as she had envisioned him: a
smallish man