Rationing [2]

In the end, nature had conquered, and did rule. He thought about his little shack, nothing more than a trapper's cabin in the upper Appalachian Mountains really, meant to be a resting place for weary travelers on the trail.

It was the last bastion of humanity for as far as he knew, and he had travelled very, very far.

Man had done nature's job for it, now it reigned supreme. Where once proud cities had defied the landscape, taunting the trees and animals, now there was rolling grass. Pine grew the fastest, and with the least concern for others.

The evergreens had quickly dominated the landscape. Deer and rabbits, foxes and wolves, fauna and flora of every kind had come back with a vengeance to take what had rightfully been its own so long ago.

As the taste of the tobacco started to sour into the taste of ash, he grumbled. Not Cavendish at all.

Captain Blacks Gold was what he was longing for, but he knew better than to chase the ghost of a long forgotten brand of a long forgotten product. The truth in the title struck him yet again though, it truly was as rare as gold now to find any remnant of tobacco.

It was as ironic as the fact that the thing that he found the most comfort in was also yet another one of man's self destructive products.

He walked back in the sanctuary and redid the string on the door. He had learned there was no such thing as too much caution.

Paranoia kept a man alive. He dumped the insides of his pipe back into his makeshift bowl and sorted out the partially burned and unburned product from the ash. He tossed the ash and put the remnants in his little plastic zipper pouch with the rest of it.

When his cigarettes ran out he would smoke this, and if it had run out too on him, well then he could always look on the bright side; he had lived far longer than he had expected.

With his monthly cigarette now done and his pipe emptied he found himself depressed. He always was when he quit his relaxation time. He briefly considered emptying another rolled up treasure and lighting it but the thought was fleeting.

Rationing had got him this far, and he had no intentions of stopping now.

He put his plastic bag into his poorly tanned leather skin to protect it from the moisture and air. He hadn't been very good at making leather back then, having only read about it, but his first skin still meant something to him, so he kept it around.

The holes where it had worn through were superficial to his cause; he wrapped his stash many times before it fit in the large doeskin.

He walked over to his table, a children's table once full of vibrant color, the plastic now dull from age, and gingerly checked his water. The multitude of cigarette filters he had pulled off was here.

He added the newest one, checking that the snug fit did not inadvertently crush any of the others.

The water on top of the filters was a faint greenish color, so light as to be almost imperceptible, but he knew better than to drink of it. The poisoning of the waters had killed many a man woman and child, but left nature unaffected.

He wasn't quite sure how, but he thought it had something to do with the natural flora of the intestines. Animals had different bacteria in their stomachs than humans, and he believed the poison was targeted at those bacteria instead of the people.

If he drank the water as it was now he would begin to have watery bowel movements.

The bacteria would have multiplied to catastrophic numbers in his intestines in a matter of days, leaving no room for absorption, all his food would pass straight through him and he would suffer an agonizingly slow death of starvation even as he ate.

Doctors could have saved people from the sickness with ease, but there were no doctors left.

All the doctors had been pressed into field work, to attempt to help the wounded millions, but when the war had turned nuclear front lines had went not long after the cities, as had the doctors serving in them.

The water below the filters was clean enough, at least after he had purified it through his other means it would be. He grabbed his little cooking pot and put a piece of deer fat in it to let it sizzle and melt.

After it had melted he pulled his fox hide from his shoulders and laid it flat on the floor. Pulling his short handled knife from his side, he began carefully applying the melted fat to the skin.

The fat would repel the water so it wasn't absorbed by the skin. He wished for some long sheets of plastic or the remnants of a raincoat perhaps, but he knew just how much wishing would get him, so he made do with what he had.

After the tedious task of covering the hide with fat the fire had started to burn lower, he put two small logs of oak on the fire. They would burn slowly, and with a gentler heat than the cedar.

He carefully put his piece of iron directly in the middle of his fire on the bottom, sliding it into the four inch notch he had made in the hearth. The iron was nothing more than the remnants of an old crowbar, about two and a half feet long, long ago worn down to nubs, but it suited his needs perfectly.

Once the pot had been cleaned with a piece of rabbit skin that made a decent enough rag, he poured the filtered water into it. He set the pot over the fire again and this time he put the fox hide over the top of the iron making a small shape reminiscent of a teepee.

He carefully put four empty water jugs underneath the skin, one under each leg that had been left about nine inches long. The legs could be tied together which he often did to keep the warm hide on his shoulders.

As the water steamed up and hit the hide, it began to coalesce into droplets that ran down the leg flaps and soon he could hear a few drips as they dropped into his jugs. It was a slow process, but a necessary one.

He began to yawn and stretched out his arms as he sat and listened to the melodic drip drip from the water. He banked the fire with a few chunks of asphalt he had for that purpose, and began to strip off his pelts.

It was the middle of autumn and more than a little chilly this far north, but his cabin kept the weather out fairly well, and he needed his hides to form his bed.

He gently laid them on top of the other hides he had in a stack relatively close to the fire then went over to his trunk. Opening it from the side he rummaged around and pulled out his blanket.

Of all his possessions, this he cherished the most. It had been made for him by Her.

It was a conglomeration of browns and whites and blacks, the skins of various rabbits he had tanned, and in the middle was a two foot by three foot quilting of a pony and the stars that had once been a baby's blanket.

His eyes moistened at the thought of her, and his minds eye flashed a vivid memory of her glossy black curls before he could shut it out. He went to his pelts and laid down on them, wrapping himself in the blanket.

It was fairly large as it had been meant to keep two warm not just one, and sometimes he thought he could still smell her in it. He curled it around him tightly in a lover's embrace that he could never give again.

As he drifted off to sleep he could still hear the crickets in the night. He felt more like the frog.