Welcome to the Greenhouse (5 page)

“Are we getting more tornadoes than we used to? My mom keeps saying that, but my dad thinks she just doesn’t remember.”

“I don’t think anybody knows for sure. But a lot of information about climate change passes through this house,” Jane says, and pauses, and Kaylee can tell she’s thinking,
used to pass,
so she hitches forward and looks very interested, and Jane catches herself and goes on: “… and I’ve seen several articles about the effect of climate change on weather lately, and quite a few climate scientists seem to be leaning that way. The argument goes that warmer ocean temperatures mean more storms. Heat is just energy, and heat affects how much moisture there is in the atmosphere.”

“So more heat and more moisture in the atmosphere means more tornadoes?”

“It means more frequent and more violent storms in general, apparently. There are computer models that say so, not that that proves anything necessarily. Tornadoes are complex, lots of things affect their formation—but it
is
true that they’ve been occurring earlier and farther north than they used to. Unusually high temperatures, unusually frequent tornadoes, so the thinking goes, and it does make sense. Though actually,” she adds, “there’ve always been more tornadoes in Kentucky than people think.”

“We had something last year in science about Hoosier Alley,” Kaylee chimes in. “It was something about a new definition of Tornado Alley—if my SmartBerry was working I could look it up! But anyway, there’s still Tornado Alley but now they’re talking about Dixie Alley and Hoosier Alley and something else.”

“I hadn’t heard that.” Jane winces and shifts in her chair.

Pleased to think there was anything she knew that Jane didn’t, Kaylee says, “Hoosier Alley, that’s Indiana and the western two-thirds of Kentucky, and pieces of a couple other states too. So what all do you have here?”

“Besides what you see?” Jane considers. “Mostly food. Cans and PowerBars. Dishes. Spare clothes. Tools. Stuff to clean up with. Also cans and kibble for the dogs—birds too, as it turns out.” Kaylee grins happily. “And speaking of birds, before it’s time to feed them again, would you mind helping me with this cut? I can’t see the darn thing, and I want to pour some peroxide in there to clean it out and bandage it with something less, ah, bulky. It’s going to need stitches but we’ll let a professional handle that part.”

Kaylee
does
mind, quite a lot really, but she takes herself in hand and acts like she doesn’t. They climb back out the window—Jane’s set a little step stool just outside, to make it easier to come and go—and then Jane takes off the bloody shirt, and the tee shirt too this time, and holds the arm out from her side while Kaylee pours most of a bottle of peroxide into the jagged mouth of the wound, struggling to keep from gagging while pink bubbles froth and fizz there. In nothing but a bra, Jane’s back and arm look scrawny and old. She
is
old, Kaylee thinks uncomfortably; and while she’s helping apply the clean bandage and wash dried blood off the arm, and helping Jane into a clean shirt from one of the plastic tubs, she’s hoping she won’t have to do this again. She’s not proud of it, but that’s how she feels.

When the arm has been dealt with, Jane becomes managerial. Feed the baby swallows. When that’s done, get the dogs out by lifting them through the window (Kaylee lifts, Jane directs, protecting her arm). Bring the boxes of supplies outside. The porch above the patio is gone, but they clear the pink insulation batts, tumbled firewood, broken branches, and nameless debris away, and have a firm, level surface to work on. It’s also enclosed by fencing which has survived the tornado, making it a good place for the dogs to sleep if it doesn’t rain tonight, and in fact the sky has cleared completely and the radio robot says it will stay clear. Roscoe and Fleece can look through the patio doors straight into the shelter.

Amazingly, the outhouse has withstood the storm. A tree right next to it is down, but the little structure is still sitting there a trifle cattywompus on its foundation. “Praise the Lord,” Jane says, “at least that’s one problem we haven’t got.” She also says, “It might be a good thing these patio doors won’t open. They may be reinforcing the wall. We can stay in here and keep dry till they come to get us, unless there’s another storm.” Kaylee doesn’t want to think about another storm. “Let’s make a fire,” Jane says. “It’ll cheer us up to have something hot. Want to build it, Kaylee?” Kaylee admits she has no earthly idea how to go about building a fire. “Watch and learn, then” Jane says. “Next time it’ll be your turn.”

The evening has turned chilly; the fire feels good. Kaylee puts down her empty plate and holds her mug of instant hot cider in both hands. She’s sitting on a log of firewood, but Jane’s chair has been handed through the window and Jane is sitting in that, cleaning up her plate of beans with the shambles of her house around her, as if nothing could be more natural. The dogs, stomachs full and bladders empty, lie peacefully on either side of Jane. There’s almost a campfire feeling to the moment, except when Kaylee accidentally looks at the light fixture from which the phoebe nest with its five babies has disappeared without a trace. She looks away quickly, and thinks instead about how deftly Jane built the fire. How she assembled the big sticks, smaller sticks, really tiny twigs, and dry grass Kaylee collected for her—combining them like following a sort of recipe—then lit one match, and hey presto! magicked forth the coals that heated the pots of water and beans. She says, “Where did you learn to build a fire like that? Without even any newspaper? My dad always uses lots of newspaper.”

Jane hands her a granola bar and unpeels one for herself. “I usually use paper too, when I’m firing up the wood stove,” she says, and then there’s another one of those pauses when Kaylee knows she’s thinking
But I’ll never do that again.
Jane takes a deep breath. “But I always make fires for grilling or whatever without paper. One match, no paper, that’s the rule. I can’t do the ‘one match’ thing every single time, especially not if there’s any wind, but it seems like a good skill to keep up.”

“But
where?
Did your parents teach you?” She bites off the end of the bar.

“I learned in Scouts,” Jane says. “I was a Girl Scout from Brownies clear through high school. We did a lot of camping. Then later I was a counselor at different Scout camps for several summers. Primitive camps, these were, with latrines and cold water from a hydrant, and lots of campfire cooking. Plenty of fire-building practice, all in all.” In a moment she adds, “I never had any kids, but I always assumed I would, and I always thought that when I did I would teach them certain basic skills. How to swim, was one. How to build a fire with one match and no paper, that was another.”

“I wish somebody’d taught
me.”

Jane laughs. “The last time I looked, somebody
was
teaching you! By the time you get home you’ll have something to show your dad. But the skills kids need nowadays are so different than they were when I was your age, it’s hard to believe. What are you, fourteen, fifteen?”

Kaylee swallows her bite. “Fifteen last month.” She takes another.

“You’ve got so many skills already, at fifteen, that I don’t have and never will have. I wouldn’t have the faintest idea what to do with that SmartBerry, for instance; I’ve seen your thumb going lickety-split on that thing and wondered how the dickens you do it!”

Kaylee grins, feeling proud. Then the grin fades. She says slowly, “Right now those skills aren’t too useful, are they?”

“We’re in a sort of time warp here, just for a couple of days. A natural disaster. When things get back to normal—”

“But you were saying before,” Kaylee says, feeling funny, “that there’s going to be more and more natural disasters. Because of climate change.”

Jane looks at her sharply.
“I
didn’t actually say that, you know. What I said was, some scientists think there will be, but we don’t know for sure.”

It was obvious she was trying to avoid saying anything that would offend Kaylee’s parents if it got back to them, but Kaylee wanted to know what she really thought. “We’re pretty sure though, right?”

After a moment Jane nods. “Yes, we are. We’re pretty damn sure. But it’s good to know how to manage whenever a crisis
does
come, nobody could argue with that.”

“Right, but what I’m thinking now,” Kaylee says, refusing to be deflected from her line of thought, “is that there’s something wrong with getting so far away from knowing
how
to manage. I mean, if you weren’t here, what would I do? I don’t know anything, nobody I know knows anything! My mom would
die
if she had to use an outhouse! Let alone go in the bushes! I mean,” she said more quietly, “it’s not about outhouses, that’s dumb, but it seems like there’s just something
wrong.
About everybody getting so far away from, like, the basics.”

Now Jane is looking at Kaylee in a new way, more serious, almost more respectful. “It could be argued,” she says finally, “that getting so far from the basics is one way of thinking about climate change. Why it’s happening. Why people don’t want to believe in it, so they won’t have to stop doing the things that make it worse.”

“My parents sure don’t believe in it: they think it’s hogwash,” Kaylee admitted. “Nobody in my church believes in it. But,” she says, “you do, you live like this on purpose. Is that why? To stop making things worse?”

Jane stands up carefully and stretches. “Time to feed the babies. When we’re done, if you really want to know, I’ll tell you about that.”

Kaylee lies in the dark, thinking. She and Jane are sleeping in their clothes on the basement floor, in beds put together from a hodgepodge of old porch cushions and blankets. Kaylee has insisted that Jane take the only pillow; her own head rests on a bundle of Jane’s spare clothes stuffed in a bag. The dogs are sharing a blanket on the patio. A funky lamp in what looks like a pickle jar, that burns olive oil, is a comforting source of light in the otherwise total darkness.

It turns out you don’t have to feed hatchlings every forty-five minutes all night, only during the daytime. The six babies are asleep too on the work bench, their dog bowl nestled in the hollow of a hot-water bottle, covered by a towel.

Kaylee’s thinking about Jane’s story. It turns out that living like this—conserving water, composting, recyling everything, composting, driving as little as possible, generating some of her own electricity, growing most of her own food, buying most of the rest locally (“Except tea. I could give up tea only if there were none to be had.”)— is
consistent
with trying to reduce the impact of people on climate change. But Jane had been living like this long before anyone had thought to worry about global warming. The reason is that when Jane was in college she had met an old couple who were living completely off the grid, except they had an old car they used to go to cultural events sometimes. They had no electricity, no phone or indoor toilet.
Their
cistern was higher than the house, so they didn’t need a pump. They would never have even noticed a power outage. “They would have noticed a tornado,” Kaylee had said darkly, and Jane had nodded ruefully. “They were lucky. A huge tornado came quite close to their place about forty years ago, but it missed them.”

The term for that sort of life was
homesteading.
“They did things I could only dream about—grew and put up
all
their own food, for instance, plus picked berries and nuts and wild greens. And they kept goats for milk and cheese, meat too.”

Kaylee is intrigued. “Why don’t
you
have goats? You’ve got plenty of room.”

Jane sighs. “I always meant to have some. Tennessee fainting goats—they’re a cashmere type. But before I could get that far I broke my wrist, and that’s when I found out that you can’t have livestock if you live by yourself. Somebody has to be able to take over if you get injured or sick. Orrin had Hannah, you see, that’s why it worked for them—plus Orrin was tough as nails. But even he got snakebit once, and Hannah had to go for help.”

Their names were Hubbell, Orrin and Hannah Hubbell. Orrin was a landscape painter. He had built the house they were living in, on the Ohio River, and all the furniture. Hannah cooked and put up food on a wood-burning cookstove, Orrin fished and gardened and milked. Jane was nineteen when she met them, five years older than Kaylee, and she had fallen utterly in love with their homestead on the river. “I thought their place was magical, and the life they were living there was magical. I could see it was a lot of work, but the work seemed to keep them, well, you said it yourself: in touch with fundamental things, things they got enormous satisfaction out of. They were old by then, and got tired and cranky sometimes, but underneath there was always this—this deep serenity. It was like—well, as if what they did all day every day was a religious calling, as if they were monks or something, living every moment in the consciousness of a higher purpose.”

And
that
was why Jane had chosen to live as she did. “Oh, I compromise in ways they never would have. I’ve got electricity, though I make as much of it as I can myself, and conserve what I make. I’ve got gadgets: a washer, a TV, a computer, a landline phone.
Had
gadgets,” she corrected herself, and paused again. But then she went on without Kaylee having to prompt her. “The purity of
their
life came at the cost of ignoring society—though society didn’t ignore them, people heard about them and were always dropping by. I didn’t aspire to go as
far
as they did—they paid no attention to current events, never voted, they basically chose not to be citizens of the world. But if there had been another person or two who wanted the life I wanted, we would have been able to come much closer to the Hubbell’s self-sufficiency than I have. Sustainability, that’s the word for that.”

“But nobody did.”

“Nobody did. Not really. Not after they’d tried it for a while, experimentally.”

“So you finally just went ahead and did it by yourself.”