Compared with the shed, the Millers’ home was enormous, and durable, its exterior built of stone and wood. The family must have heard them approaching because all four of them were waiting outside the front door.
“Are they getting their portrait done?” Cal whispered. Frida barely registered the comment, so transfixed was she by Bo’s naked face, no beard to obscure it. Cal himself had a thick beard going, the same look Micah had sported when he left for college, as if he hadn’t been raised in a city, as if he’d ever gone camping. She kind of liked Cal’s copper-colored beard, but maybe this Bo could teach her husband how to shave with a knife. What she missed was having the option.
“Welcome.” Bo stepped forward and shook hands with both of them. He did not smile. He was shorter than Sandy but sturdy with muscles, barbed with them. His seriousness took something away from him, Frida thought, his high cheekbones and heavy black eyebrows menacing rather than dignified. And he squinted, as if he’d lost his glasses. Perhaps this was a man who had been broken down by blurriness.
“We’re so happy you made it!” Sandy said. She wore the same overalls but, thankfully, had added a blue T-shirt to the ensemble. She held Jane’s hand, and Garrett was slung on her hip. At Frida’s greeting, the boy rubbed his left eye with a fist and shook his head. “He just woke up from a nap,” Sandy said. The little girl nodded, as if confirming her mother’s story.
Bo invited them inside, and Jane skipped forward to lead the parade. The house was one large, low-ceilinged room, with two cubbylike spaces for bedrooms. They slept in real beds; Sandy and Bo’s had a wooden headboard, and the children slept on what looked like sturdy cots. Frida saw Cal take in these comforts. In the shed, she and Cal had four sleeping bags, which they rotated or layered. No pillows.
“What a place,” Cal said. Later, when he was trying to make Frida laugh, he would refer to it as the Miller Estate.
There were no windows, so the house was dark, but it was surprisingly cool, like a basement. They could open the door for light and air, Sandy explained.
In the middle of the room two mismatched couches faced each other. The setup reminded Frida of a rundown rec center or a home for the elderly gone sadder than expected. Someone had built smaller chairs for the kids, but they looked about as comfortable as birds’ nests: twiggy and sharp. On the rudimentary wooden table nearby, Frida counted two oil lanterns and half a dozen candles.
With Garrett still on her hip, Sandy moved toward the kitchen area. It was just a stone fire pit, and a trashed card table. No chairs. Bo had built shelving into the walls, and on these the family’s dishes and tools were crowded. Frida took note of the plastic tarps, folded on the bottom shelf. She wondered if the house leaked.
“We do most of our cooking outside, or we eat raw,” Bo said. “Smoke from the fire pit in here won’t kill us—there’s a chimney of sorts—but we could’ve designed it better.”
Sandy smiled. “I hope you’re hungry. We’ve got rabbit, just need to put it on the fire.”
Frida squeezed Cal’s hand; she couldn’t remember the last time they’d eaten meat.
“We use snares,” Bo said, and Cal said he’d love to learn more.
Bo offered to show them the root cellar next and the outhouse and their new underground shed, where they were doing their curing.
Despite his initial austerity, Bo treated Frida and Cal with a tenderness that seemed Southern. He often used their names when speaking to them, as if his conversation were a gift. “You see, Calvin,” he would say, “snares can be difficult to build, but they’re quite efficient.” Like his wife, Bo wore a gold band on his left ring finger. So they’d been out here awhile, Frida thought, long before the world really went to shit. Hilda and Dada had given Frida their rings as a wedding present, but she and Cal had sold them not long after.
“You two married?” Sandy had asked her at the creek. No wonder.