“Blue spruce…” Jack whispers, sounding horrified, while I give both him and Rose a severe look.
“Thank you, that’s very kind,” I tell Mike. A year in West Virginia has taught me it’s just as important to accept hospitality as it is to offer it. Maybe even more so.
As I step into the cabin, I am happily surprised at how homey it is. The earthen floor is covered with bright rag rugs, and there is a rocking chair pulled up close to the fireplace. A double bed takes up one corner, piled high with patchwork quilts, and in the other corner, there is a hutch filled with crockery, as well as a cook stove with a pipe going through the roof and a barrel for water. The only other furniture is a table with two rickety chairs.
I feel like I’ve stumbled back in time until I turn to take in the corner by the door and see a gun rack with at least a dozen rifles, some of them looking seriously high-powered.
I swallow hard.
“Can’t be too prepared,” Mike says without a shred of self-defensiveness as he follows my widened gaze. “Now, how about that tea?”
Rose, finally overcoming her shyness, ventures toward the stove where a pot of water is boiling, with a handful of pine needles thrown in. It looks like something the kids might have made in their play kitchen outside when they were little, and the smell it emits is quite… woody.
“Is that the tea?” she asks dubiously, and Mike chuckles.
“It sure is, missy. Packed full of vitamin C. Keeps off a cold like nothing else, and with a little honey, it goes down nice and easy. It’s been steeping for a while now, so we should be good to go in just a few minutes.” He goes to the hutch and takes down a few enamel mugs before glancing at me askance. “Now, I hate to be presumptuous, but I feel I have to ask… are you expecting?”
“Oh.” I touch my growing bump self-consciously; I’m seventeen weeks pregnant and have come to accept the reality of my blessed state only recently. “Yes, I am.”
“Because blue spruce can act as an abortifacient,” he states seriously, “and I wouldn’t want that on my conscience. You can have some of my rhubarb and rose hip cordial instead, if you like.”
“Oh… thank you,” I say, a little startled by this heretofore unknown fact. Clearly, Mike the Prepper is an experienced naturalist. Jack throws me a pleading look, and I know he’d rather have the cordial too, but I give him the kind of forbidding look that says as plainly as if I’ve said it out loud—no dice. Blue spruce tea it is for my two.
Mike pours out the tea without straining out the spruce needles, so what my children get is what looks like a cup of dingy water with a few pine needles floating in it. Rose throws me a panicked glance, and I smile back beatifically as I accept a glass of ruby-red cordial. I take a sip—it’s both tart and sweet. Delicious.
Meanwhile, my children are staring morosely down at their mugs of hot tree.
“So, Mike, where are you from?” I ask.
He’s pulled the rocking chair up to the table, along with a sawn-off tree trunk that serves as a stool, so we all have seats. I take the rocking chair at his insistence, and Rose and Jack take the chairs, while Mike perches his large frame on the tree trunk.
“Where I’m from?” He scratches his jaw as he takes a reflective sip of tea. “Well, all over, mostly. I was born in Kentucky, but my dad was an army man and a mechanic, and we moved around a lot. Indiana, Mississippi, Texas, Oklahoma, a short spell in Montana…” He subsides, shaking his head ruefully. “To be honest, I don’t know where I’d call home.”
“Where did you move from?” Rose asks practically.
He smiles, the curve of his lips creasing in a way that makes him seem like a big, cuddly teddy bear, despite the inescapable fact of the gun rack behind me.
“Well, now, missy, I moved from Richmond, Virginia. That’s where I was last, working as a carpenter.”
“Why did you move?” Rose asks. “Did you not like it there?” She is eyeing Mike Landry with the wide-eyed curiosity of a child, and fortunately, he doesn’t seem to mind.
“Why did I move?” he asks. “Well, I liked it there just fine, but I always had a hankering to live a simpler life, do things for myself, the way I can here.” He glances at me, his bushy eyebrows raised. “Isn’t that why y’all moved?”
“Yes, it is,” I agree, shooting Rose aslightlyquelling look. I don’t want to come across as too nosy, not on our first meeting… and especially not with all those guns.
“And,” Mike continues, seeming to warm to his theme, “truth is, little missy, I think the world’s going to you-know-where in a handbasket. There’s going to be a food shortage, and an electricity crisis, and maybe a civil war, mark my words, if not in the next year, then certainly in the next five years, and I want to be ready for it when it comes. No sense getting caught with your pants down, if you get my meaning.”
“A war?” Jack says, perking up. He sounds equal parts incredulous and interested.
“Yourpantsdown,” Rose repeats, and giggles.
Mike chuckles, and as nice as he is, I think this is probably our cue to leave.
“Well, thanks so much for the tea,” I say brightly. “And the cordial. Delicious!” I set my glass on the table. “But we should probably be getting back.” I’d considered inviting our new neighbor to dinner before I met him, and as friendly as he seems, I’m not sure I want someone going on about the apocalypse in our home. We’ve got enough to worry about already. “If you need anything,” I add as I stand and nod to Jack and Rose to do the same, “do let us know.”
“Oh, I won’t be needing anything,” Mike assures me with an indulgent chuckle. “But thank you kindly all the same.”
I nod once, noting that neither of my children has taken a single sip of their spruce tea, then edge toward the door. “Well, nice meeting you!” I practically chirp, and then we are outside in the fresh spring air, heading back toward home, where normality still reigns. Sort of, anyway.
