Chapter 10: The Cellar Is Full

"Seventeen days," I said, the next morning, at the barn door. "How did you know?"

Conroy didn't look up from the fuel drum he was labeling.

"I counted from the first news report."

"There wasn't a count in the report."

"I can add, Devon."

"You said it as if you'd been counting for years."

He set down the marker.

"It's a long time ago and a long way from here," he said. "Ask me when you can stand to hear it."

I stared at him.

"Is that a threat?"

"No." He met my eyes. "It's a promise."

I let it go, because I had twenty people coming and no time.

Ten nights later, at sundown, my gate opened to a whole crowd for the first time.

They came up the farm road in cars and trucks and on foot.

The farrier and his wife.

The woman who kept bees, in a veil, with a hive on a cart.

The county nurse with two duffel bags and a thermos.

Hattie's brother, riding a delivery truck Conroy had fetched him from town, with the two kids in the cab.

Two deputies in their own cars, one with a baby asleep on her shoulder.

Nineteen people, a goat, and a rooster in a cage.

I stood at the barn door with a ledger and wrote down every name.

"Anyone who brought nothing," I said, loudly. "Don't worry. Come in, eat, and we'll find you a job."

Hattie rolled her eyes and kept ladling soup.

The cellar was big enough, just.

Conroy and Hattie had built bunks along the walls and hung lanterns from the beams.

Down there it was cool and dry, and nobody was afraid of the dark yet.

I came back up for a second load of blankets and found a man standing in the middle of my barn with a clipboard.

He was stocky and sunburned and wore a hunting vest.

I had seen him in the diner.

"This is your setup?" he said. "Pretty disorganized."

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