Recipe for a Stew

There are rules to chopping wood. Chop with the grain, not against. Chop early in the year, so it has time to dry before winter. Chop in quarters, or eighths, for more barkless surface area. Bark holds in moisture. Bark catches fire quickly, but it pops loudly when lichen, bug eggs, or fungi catch flame. Loud noises are startling, avoid them. And chop wood on the old stump next to the shed, so that the ax doesn’t dull more than it has to.

Chopping wood has eaten up her mornings nearly every day since she turned 12. Wood is essential to life out here in the woods. It is fire, it is shelter, it is creativity; out of all tasks today, chopping wood may be her most important. She has to cut twice the amount they’ll use today, so that they can store up enough for the cold months over time. Gives her strong shoulders, he says. It’s soothing at this point, the way the ax methodically thuds over and over, so she doesn’t really mind the gnawing ache that comes from it. The birds around don’t like it much, but they’re a picky flock to begin with, so she doesn’t bother with them. They don’t eat the seed she gives them, she stops trying to please them. No need to force it down their throat. They clearly prefer the wild raspberry bushes around the house, and the more they eat, the more seeds are spread and the more bushes there are. Her next task today is culling those plants before they start climbing the house’s slats. That’s what he says will happen.

She’s not entirely convinced they can even do that. He’s lied to her before, especially when she was a child and nobody thought she knew much at all. He should know better by now, but she can tell he still holds opinions regarding her, and probably will as long as she never says a word to him. The doctors call it being non-verbal. He calls it being thick in the head. No common sense, he says, Darwin’s personal nightmare.

She wasn’t about to show him that Darwin wrote an entire book on non-verbal expression, if he even knew how to read. She’s not stupid. She simply knows what she wants and doesn’t want, and right now she doesn’t want to pull up those damn bushes. The bushes have thorns, mean ones, and they tore up her garden gloves the last time she tried to pull them up. They haven’t gone out to town to get a new pair yet, so it was either bare hands or his old pair. Both bad options. His gloves are scratchy and oversized, and last time she wore his, they left little pinpricks of blood behind from the roughness of the material. He’s never bothered to try and understand her, so her efforts to communicate that point went unnoticed.

She keeps chopping wood. Hopefully he won’t be that upset if she doesn’t get around to it until they go to town on Sunday. And maybe tonight he will tinker with the antenna on the roof and they will watch the news while eating dinner, which she needs to bring wood in for after chopping. Lunch doesn’t need wood. Lunch is always a sandwich, despite him knowing she’s never liked sandwiches, but dinner is her home cooked stew. He’s bringing home game today, and she can cut up the tough bits for stew and it will be delicious, she’s sure. Maybe he’ll even compliment her cooking, like a father ought to.

Is she really so sure of that? She’s out here because he is the only one who doesn’t mind her being around, so they say. Maybe all a father ought to be, ought to do, is exist as that doorstep to be left at with one small suitcase and a bottle of water.

She reaches for the next log, but there isn’t one. It’s all been chopped up faster than her usual pace, which would be great if not for the thorns hungry for her hands in her near future.

Don’t think about it. Follow the schedule. It’s time for bundling, and that also has rules. Six logs a bundle. Don’t waste twine. Stack in the woodshed, not this shed; it has a leak. Bring in one bundle for dinner. Sweep the ground for splinters and put them in the kindling bucket. Sharpen the ax and put it away in the tool shed, which used to be the woodshed until it started leaking.

With that, it’s time for lunch, but she really does hate sandwiches, even when they’re good. She puts a plate in the sink, as if she ate off it, then hears a honk outside. He’s home early. That means he’s done hunting, which means she needs to clean and portion the hunt, which means no bushes.

He honks again, and she goes out to see his kill. An elk. A big elk. He never hunts elk, he doesn’t like the taste. Why get an elk instead of a deer? It’s not winter, they’re not desperate.

He holds his arm on the horn of the truck, an extensive honk, and her hands go straight to cover her ears. He shouts out something. She can’t hear it, but it’s easy to imagine. Go clean the damn thing, he says, or maybe, those damn bushes are still there, he says. It all means the same thing. It’s easier for her to start chopping off sections to carry over to the garage than try and get the exact words out of his mouth. The poor thing’s head is caved in, an ugly sight. Reminds her of the jack-o-lanterns from last fall, the way they rotted inside out. The meat seems fresh, not old enough to be decomposing.

She can swear the eyes even move to look at her as she brings the butcher’s knife down on its neck.

 

It’s a quick job to cut off the shoulder meat and bring it to the kitchen to wash, cube, and toss into the pot to brown. Butter, bones, water, rice, roots, flour. Black pepper. Salt. Let simmer. Delicious.

How much meat should she freeze, what should be steaks, and which ones should be thick or thin? There aren’t enough preset rules for cleaning meat. He doesn’t care as long as there’s a meal at the end of it all. Useless. She writes down her own rules to follow. Be efficient. Waste little. Prioritize steaks over other cuts. Sharpen the knife when the meat resists more. Feet, bones, and the head go into the pile out back. The antlers go in her room. She’ll mount them tonight.

He comes into the garage and says that she’d better go pull those fucking rat nests out of the ground tonight instead of playing with school crafts.

No mounting, then. Follow the rules.

When dinnertime comes and she feeds him the stew, his mind changes. He wouldn’t want her out in the dark late, and she worked hard today, he says. He talks without looking at her, swimming his spoon within the bowl.

She has no response but to go upstairs to her room and screw the new rack onto an oak block. This one’s good. She could sell it for good money, if he’d let her. She’ll probably spend the rest of her life in this cabin at this point. It’s not like she hates it here, but she’s never been given another option. What does the world look like outside of these evergreen woods?

Late that night, he knocks on her door and asks for help. His arm is bleeding something nasty from a scratch, and it’s hard for him to bandage up on his own, he says. She sits him on the bathroom floor and wraps the gash, and it really was a gash more than a scratch, but nothing terrible. Perhaps this was the closest to a father and daughter they could get at this point, with their own respective conditions and inabilities.

Love you, he says as she closes her door. His own rule to follow every night. One she doesn’t need to follow.

The day repeats tomorrow. Chop the wood double than they’ll use, bundle it up, put a plate in the sink, finish cleaning the elk that’s now chilled from the ice box, avoid pulling the bushes. Maybe she likes the bushes, secretly, and the animals they invite closer for her to watch. The raspberries are refreshing when ripe as well. She’s not meant to remove all of them, just the ones closest to the house, so there’ll be a few left. It’s not the end of the world.

Still. It was something she liked.

She heats up the leftover stew for dinner and pours him a bowl, but he won’t eat it. Sometimes he rejects leftovers, she supposes, but pushes the bowl back towards him, insisting. He says it looks like shit.

Like hell it looks like shit. It looks good. It’s stew.

She doesn’t say that outloud, not that she ever could. She has to take the time to figure out how to communicate that the stew is fine, and takes another bite. An awkward smile might do the trick.

He reluctantly takes a bite. His face turns sour.

He spends his night at the bathroom’s porcelain bowl, overdramatizing his sickness.

The next day, she makes steak and potatoes instead. Butter braised. Mashed. It takes longer than the stew, because she has to watch it more, and perhaps it is yet another excuse regarding the bushes, but they’re going to go to town in just two days, and couldn’t they just wait the couple days for her to get new gloves?

And yet, he will not eat it. He looks disgusted by it, and she can’t help but think it’s his own fault for hunting an elk instead of their usual deer if he wasn’t going to like the gamey taste so much.

He doesn’t bother to eat anything else either. Not breakfast the next morning. Not even a sandwich.

Again, she chops her wood, bundles it, and has nothing more to do than attempt to pull these bushes. She gets one out of the ground through some intense tugging, but a thorn catches her skin and scratches down her arm. It’s not deep enough to scar, but it drips down with intent and deters her from going after any more. When he sees her tending her wounds in the bathroom, he stares, almost shaking, and begins to approach her. He grasps her arm and squeezes it, feeling the heat of blood surround his fingers in a wet embrace. It takes her whimpering to get him to back off, his stares transfixed to his hand. Stares of yellow, shot veins, shaking pupils.

He leaves the bathroom hurriedly and slams the door shut. She doesn’t see him for the rest of the night, and she doesn’t particularly want to after that.

He’s gone the next morning, with the truck and his hunting gear, and she knows she’ll have to make room in the icebox for what he’s bringing back to replace this elk meat. What a waste, she thinks, and it’s impossible to not feel frustration over how they won’t be going into town this week.

 

He comes back late in the night when she’s in bed and honks the horn twice. He’s only going to keep honking if she ignores it, so she grabs a sweater and heads down into the summer night. Clean it, he says, then locks the truck and goes inside. He leaves a bloodied hand print on the doorknob.

When she looks in the bed, the meat that lays is no beast.

It is young, and it is fresh, and it is all too dead.

She can barely touch the skin without recoiling.

It must have been a while since she last moved, because he comes back out with words in his mouth too foul for her to remember. Directing her, yelling at her with hunger deep in his teeth. He hasn’t eaten in almost a week, she knows, and perhaps the best thing is to just listen. Survive.

So she drags its carcass to the garage, it’s easier if it’s an it, and she takes the big butcher’s knife to cut off the head, the feet, the hands. Tosses them aside. Cuts down the spine, cracks the ribs, filets the skin. Would it be better to leave the skin on one side, like a fish? Or would it end up too chewy, like pork? You don’t leave the skin on a deer steak, she concludes, and off it goes into the excess bag, as does most of it. Too many organs, not many cuts.

So much blood. Who knew it could bleed so much.

She looks over at him, and the right hand is already in his mouth. He gnaws on a finger and it is the most delicious thing he’s ever eaten. It’s gone, the hand, and soon is the other.

His arm is seeping, black. Thick. The bandages are yellow. Her own arm aches at the sight of it. Hair falling from the roots, dusting his shoulders. Shoulders that don’t look quite right anymore, like a disjointed doll.

Survive, she repeats in her head.

She finishes cutting the steaks, wraps them, and puts them in the ice box. No, she brings them inside, in the fridge that holds her food, and she can’t help but feel it no longer belongs to her, even if it never really did.

The next morning, he comes out coated in jaundice and weakness and sweat, and he asks her to make stew. With the new meat, he says. He’s hungry, he says. Her stew is the best, he says, and she doesn’t even need to bother with the bushes anymore, just leave them. Love you, he says.

He’s smiling, and his eyes are begging.

She nods and goes into the kitchen. It’s dark and ruminant, and the fire is not starting, as if it knows she doesn’t want to cook this either. She can’t help but remember that he is her father as she strikes another match.

She makes stew. Butter. Bones. Water. Rice. Roots. Flour. Black pepper. Salt.

Meat.

 

She no longer chops wood, nor does she pull the bushes, and she does not even clean the house, which she usually would on Thursdays. When she awakes, he begs her for food, and when she sleeps, he is crying so loud it pierces her dreams. His skin clings to his bones. She can barely feed herself at this point from the nausea induced by her actions.

They run out of it on Friday. His meat. He’s no longer in a state of mind that he can go get more, just writhing on the ground in devouring pain. She tries to feed him elk, prying open his jaw like a dog that swallowed plastic, with flies crawling out on his tongue and buzzing away. Yellow phlegm cakes down the back of his throat and smells like old cigarettes. She can’t help but cry for him to just eat, you fucking selfish bastard.

His head is caving in, slowly. A pumpkin rotting from the inside out.

He does not appreciate her attempts to keep him alive.

The bones of her thumb and forefinger crunch in his mouth with satisfaction, and it is delicious. Screams of pain ring out.

She rips her hand out of his mouth and runs, and he follows with more speed than he had experienced in the time he’d been back home thus far. Into the kitchen, holding the door closed, but to no avail. He’s stronger than her attempts to brace. There are no locks in the house, for her younger self’s safety in no lack of irony. She can only think to rush out the back door, freezing at the loud slam of wood on wood. He barely misses her as she runs.

Her hand bleeds a trail, a dark scent of fear and adrenaline for him to follow. Off into the woods, past the stumps of trees cut down, to the shed she spends most time in. She fumbles with the door, crying out when the rusting metal scrapes against her open wound, but throws it open.

Her ax is sharp as his eyes are dull behind her. She swings on reflex, trying to garner distance between herself and him, looking for a gap to get out of the cage she trapped herself in. She tries again to gain distance, eyes darting, blood dripping, and with a hiccuping breath, she pushes her way past him outside the shed. Her shoulders don’t buckle yet.

She can’t run anymore, not with the dizziness growing in her head from blood loss, she won’t win the race. She swings, but with hesitance, too fearful to get close enough to him to actually hit. He too has hesitance, somewhere in the remaining gaps in his head, as if he still knows who she is to him. She sees it in his eyes. Her father’s eyes.

No. It’s gone. It was never there.

He charges, she dodges past the chopping stump. He doesn’t, legs clumsy and uncontrolled, and falls to the ground. Bones snap and trip him up as he tries to rise.

Help me, he says, or at least the idea of it comes out of his mouth.

She swallows. Love you, she thinks.

There are rules to chopping wood. Steady feet on the ground, with a good grip on the ax. Two hands. Make sure the log is balanced on the stump, perhaps with something around it to keep balance. Swing overhead, to get enough speed and power to splice the log in half with ease. Watch out for splinters. Keep the ax sharp.

The result is a resounding crack down the center. With the grain. Not against.

 

She’s never made elk stew for one before, and she’s made much more than she needs for dinner. It’s okay though, stew is her favorite meal. The elk meat is slow roasted and savory, and the vegetables have the perfect bite. She’s thrown out the bread and sandwich materials as well, which was exhilarating. It’s hard to pour a serving with a hand and a half, but it was even harder to bury the body earlier, and she did that on her own. She gave him as proper a burial as she could earlier, considering the speed at which he started to decay, and considering the death she almost experienced at his hands. She thinks she should feel bad about the whole thing, or rather, she thinks everyone else would think so. She doesn’t, though, not at all. He met his end, and that’s all there was to it. He would feel the same about her.

She sets the dinner table with the nice silverware and glasses that were hidden in a box in the basement, and she turns on the tv without help. The news is talking about a missing persons case that the police are looking into. The mood in the house is calm, lacking the tense air he would always bring. It’s nice.

She takes a bite of her carefully prepared meal.

And retches.