A Marriage Testing Event

by Law Hamilton

The match burned out from between his fingers… darkness.

“Ouch,” he uttered, before sucking on the burned appendages, “I guess I should have a bowl of snow for such injuries..”  A long exhale and a small chuckle.

The storm had hit with enough force to take out six telephone poles at the top of the road.  Even if they had dug out the cars there was no where to go.  Plows could not make it into the town.  They were expecting the snow, but the winds had left the neighborhood dark.

The electricity had been out for four days. The sun had set and the cold started creeping in from the corners of the house.  The cold like a dark blanket from an unwanted friend.  The fire no longer provided illumination and was a slow smolder.  The futon was in front of the fire with a wool blanket and a down comforter on top with the dog as close to the fireplace as it dared.

“We should do another wood run,” he said.  

She looked at the empty wood rack that they had just filled at what she thought was noon.  They had both lost feeling in fingers and toes as they hauled the wood into the house. All wood they had stacked on the porch was gone, as of yesterday.  It had taken an hour of shoveling through three feet of snow and high winds that lashed at them on the way to the woodshed earlier in the day.  The distance had seemed so short, when they had stacked the wood from the fallen oak in the spring.  Now it was their only source of warmth and so far away.  

 Neither sleeping well the past few days - lack of food, caffeine, and warmth - as one or the other had to stir the fire in the negative degrees that was night.

“What’s your plan for dinner?” he asked.

“Whatever you can make,” she answered.  She loved to cook - but without a stove and a previous day’s argument about how to make a grilled cheese sandwich, she was at wit’s end.  The lingering smell of the burnt cheese both nauseated her and made her hungry.  She would have to deal with the pan when the power was back, but she had half a mind to throw it out and not have it linger as a souvenir.

“I need to know there is food at the end of our next wood run...”  he said, trying to soften the request.  Neither had any coping mechanisms at the moment.

She lit a candle from the coals in the fireplace, cupped the flame and headed to the kitchen.  They had finished the bread and milk trying to make coffee (burned) and sandwiches.  The canned soup was gone two days ago, and all the tea that was left was herbal.

“There is tinned crab meat and gin, left - no limes and no tonic.”  She tried to remember the recipe she had purchased the tinned crab meat for, but dropped the candle in her wanderings, “F%$K!!!”  

The candle went out.  She longed for warm summer days when after a Saturday lawn mowing and tending to the veggie garden, they would ceremoniously pour a gin and tonic, heavy on the lime and enjoy their bounty.

“Let’s bundle-up for the next wood run,” he replied to the darkness.

Epilogue - The power come on in the wee hours of the fifth morning.  After waiting for the hot water heater to do it’s job and for batteries to recharge, they grabbed hot showers and started a google search on how to survive power outages.  Their Amazon Wish List now included, a generator, a butane burner, waterproof matches, a coffee percolator, and several other survival items.