Year's Best SF 17

“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.