Fat in the pan snaps and sizzles and fills the air with greasy wet and salt. I want to dance. I want to sing. But I can hardly walk from one side of the cabin to the other. I have salt. We saved more salt than things that need flavor. I tap a palmful into the pan, feeling like a child stealing cookies. Knowing I shouldn’t love this so much.
Phillipina and Alda left me four days ago. I told them to go. I can’t, and it is my own doing. I should have been looking where I was going… but shouldn’t we all? Outside the cabin the air is cold as glass, the sky is the bluest I have ever seen, and the snow sparkles like it is worth something more than death. But who can put a value on what melts and disappears, as life does, always? As snow does also, or so I am fond of believing.
I have the pan on my lap, my face is greasy from the spattered fat, and the fire is still smoking. It’s like breakfast with meine muter, so long ago I am sure it never happened. Oh but this gift from God is here, burning my knees.
I am the last. No. I am the last who breathes. The snow outside the cabin is littered with what is left of the others. Like me, but silent.
We are all evil. A piece here, a piece there, good Lord, we’d eaten everything else that could be consumed. Mrs. Foster, who shared this cabin, went out whenever a child stopped crying. She’d just go out in the night with a knife, and cook something, and feed the children in our cabin, and me. She always fed me. She carried our madness like a sacrificial goat, and everyone who ate pretended not to know.
I use my hunting knife and cut a slice, gently holding the steak in place with my fingers. Clear juices run first, then blood, and then, dear God, a piece is free. I put it in my mouth and chew, feeling the warmth, the energy moving through me - every cell expanding with the fullness of this gift. The sweetness of my own saliva, the full delicate crunch of a seared fat edge. I drop the knife. I pick up the steak as if it were watermelon and press my face hard into it, sucking it like love. Every swallow feeds something in me I might once have called my soul.
The old woman died, she was crazy, but I had come to love her. Now I am alone and she is out there in the snow. Probably deep down her blood is still warm. I know it is. I can smell it like a dog might, if we hadn’t eaten them all.
I will die here.
The wind rose today and spoke to me through the pines. “Live,” it said. I asked it, “Why?”
The Reed boy was closest to the cabin. The snow preserved him, kept him pure. I only took what I needed.
I bite and the juices run along my tongue and lips.
I am a madman in the wilderness, I have no one to judge me. The dead are my only company. I give them all I have, my blessings, and my songs. In the silence, in their gratitude, they grant me hope and nightmares.
Well written, on the brink of being powerful, but a lot is lost when we learn half-way through what this person is having for dinner. I'd rather the story skirt this and leave me confused as to who this person is and why they're alone until the end (as the story isn't that long). It seems this person is injured, but it's not real clear. Can barely move to one side of the cabin and yet can manage to "forage" in the snow. Gender is unclear (I assume male as you said "madman," but gender isn't important). Love the closing sentence.
This book explores how U.S. presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy failed to stand up to Soviet aggression during the early Cold War—despite America's overwhelming nuclear advantage.
