Steplings: A Novel

Chapter 7

S~V~7t Smoke woke him. Emmanuel had built a fire in a stone circle and had set a blackened grill across it. He stood over the fire, squinting with his head craned to the side to avoid the smoke while he positioned a skillet over the coals. From a small blue cooler he plucked plastic bags and set them on the picnic table. Jacob was apparently still asleep, as was Emily. Jason crept out of the van and stretched. It was near dawn, and a layer of blue-gray haze hung over the field across the barbed-wire fence. Beyond the field, the woods were still a dark, undifferentiated mass. Three red-winged blackbirds alighted briefly on the top strand, yelled at one another, flew off. The fragrance of honeysuckle drifted into his attention. "Good morning," said EmmanueL "You're the cook, huh?" Jason slid onto the bench at the table. "Yes, until someone says 'This is not good,' then that one is the cook!" "My stepmother's that way." Jason wished for coffee but none was being perked. He watched while Emmanuel lifted eggs from the cooler, broke them on the rim of an empty thirty-two-ounce can from which the label had been stripped, dropped them into it. The walls of Jason's empty stomach lurched and rubbed against one another like cold hands seeking warmth. He should've had the foresight to eat dinner before they took off last night, though '20 it would've meant a loss of face: not eating showed you didn't need anything from the people who brought food into the house. Poor planning. He wondered what Emily had in her backpack. He didn't expect to take food from these fellows as they were obviously dirt poor, but he knew if it were offered, he'd surrender. Eating showed you did need something and were willing to accept the help. Emmanuel chopped onion, a small green chili pepper, and a tomato on a cutting board and added it to the eggs. He sprinkled oil from a can in the skillet. He plucked a plastic package of round bread-like thick flour tortillas and placed two on the grill. He stirred the contents of the can vigorously and added salt and pepper to it. T hen he poured the eggs into the skillet. "You would please join me, Jason?" "You don't have to ask me twice." T hey ate from plastic plates taken from a grocery bag. The bag had the name of an upscale grocery chain in Dallas, Jason noted. The grilled bread, like a thick, unsweetened pancake, was chewy and delicious. "What's this bread? It's great! Is this something from where you come from?" Jason was aware that he'd made a reference, and none too slyly, to the young men's obvious foreign extraction and hoped the underlying intent of the question would be addressed. Emmanuel chuckled. "No, no. It is ratio From India. But made here in America." He winked at Jason. " It comes from the grocery where I work." While Jason was silently considering alternative probes, Emmanuel said, "\'(le are from Africa." Emmanuel said that he and his cousin and their friends in Houston were meeting to celebrate their arrival in the United States five years ago. Church groups brought them over from refugee camps where they'd been for many years. Some went to Minnesota, some to North Dakota, some to Chicago, Dallas , Houston. They were just boys, then. They knew nothing. The church organizations put the boys in apartments together, and one church even appointed a member of the congregation 12' to deliver groceries and teach them how to use the gas stove and the refrigerator. "T he refrigerator?" asked Jason. Emmanuel nodded, smiling. "Yes, if you have a box in the window that makes cold air and a bigger box standing up in the room that does the same, how do you know to keep the door to that one closed?" T he camps had generators, but no refugee had control of a machine run by electricity. In America , the new world around them was strange and frightening. Jason considered all the things in his home that he operated without any thought of how he learned their secrets: can openers , lamps, flush toilets, telephones, doorbells, garbage grinders, hot and cold water faucets, furnace thermostats, toaster ovens. Outside...