Argosy All-Story Weekly/Volume 123/Number 4/Deadwood

by John D. Swain

 

Deadwood

by

John D. Swain

MISS LETTY wept continuously, her thin shoulders shaking, her dainty cambric handkerchief soggy with the tears she had wiped unavailingly from her pretty, withered-rose cheeks.

She had cried at least weekly for nearly three score years; but Dr. Knapp, who had inherited the Pritchetts along with the rest of his father's practise, had never before seen tears in the eyes of the older sister, Miss Hetty. He was stirred by them more than by the childlike grief of the weaker sister.

“It's an outrage!” he rumbled. “Your brother is an impostor!”

Letty dried her eyes once more as well as she could with her crumpled ball of moist cambric.

“He—he is s-so heavy!” she quavered. “He says he is p-p-perfectly helpless and can't use his muscles.”

“If you two women keep on lifting him around about six months longer, you'll lose the use of yours!”

Miss Hetty spoke in a dry, unemotional voice which had in its prime been the sweetest soprano of the old meeting-house choir.

“We wish to be just; isn't there really anything the matter with Elmer?”

“There is,” admitted Dr. Knapp. “He has a very serious and usually incurable disease known as encephalitis lethargica.”

“Oh!” said Letty, in an awed whisper, “Really! Is it as bad as that?”

“It is as bad as it sounds—and its English name is chronic laziness.”

The country practitioner enjoys exceptional advantages. He not only knows the life history of his patients from the cradle, but he also knows that of their forbears. He knows that gout “runs” in the Brown blood, and pulmonary ills in the Hicks'; that the Jenneys are inclined to be hypochondriac, and that four of them have committed suicide since they settled in Pepperill in 1720, while half a dozen more have been “odd,” two at least enough so as to end their days in an asylum. Where the local practise has also*descended from father to son, the data is so complete that diagnosis becomes almost an exact science; and when a villager dies before attaining four score years, there is a strong suspicion that Providence has removed him in his prime for inscrutable reasons of its own.

The middle-aged man who sat between the two sisters in the front parlor, knew all there was knowable about their family connections, physiques, religious views, dispositions, financial condition, ability as housekeepers, and what they read.

His frosty blue eyes, as penetrating as a mariner's from his thousands of miles cross-country in pitch dark, scorching sun, howling gale, and starlight, lingered on the familiar objects in the room without seeing them. Yet he could have listed them all unhesitatingly, since he had beheld them so many times. The hit-or-miss center rug; the shiny brass fire-irons and candle-sticks: the dull red mahogany; the big Bible, its gold tarnished; a peacock feather in a blue and white vase; seven assorted Pritchetts hanging on the wall in every medium from oil to charcoal, but one and all wearing a fixed stare, as if hypnotized and given a very unpleasant suggestion.

Instead of thinking of them, his mind ran back to Elmer, the brother who had returned to the old Pritchett place the previous fall, after years of wandering. It would not be strictly accurate to call him the black sheep of the family; white elephant is much the better term. A husky man of fifty, Jack of all trades, he could readily get a job in any town or city; but his indolent habits always kept him from holding one.

He had unquestionably been run down when he turned up with the rusty valise stuffed untidily with the soiled linen of several weeks, and the tools of many trades; a slow fever had taken many pounds of his overweight. His two old sisters readily forgot all the trouble he had made as a boy, and that he had used up his share of the patrimony. After Dr. Knapp had reduced the fever, and his appetite returned; they stuffed him with the wholesome and palatable food they knew so well how to prepare. They were not even conscious of any sense of duty; their spinster hearts glowed with love, and the recollection of Elmer as a pretty, chubby little brother, who refused to study his school lessons and wheedled them into helping him do his share of the family chores.

For the first time Elmer found his ideal realized. He lay in a feather bed, ate prodigiously, outraged the maidenly Pritchett noses with the reek of his old cuddy pipe, read a little, slept much. Fat returned to his bones. Outside, the snow lay deep on field and road. Inside, the wood fire crackled soothingly—every room in the house had its fireplace—and there was no tyrannical boss to set him to shingling roofs, painting barns, mending harness, digging wells, or setting dull saw blades.

Strongly suspicious that his patient was shamming, Dr. Knapp had this opinion confirmed by Dr. Robbins, from Winchendon. Thereupon he was exceedingly angry. He was an overworked man, and detested calls from people who merely fancied or liked to pretend they were ill. He could not resist the gentle insistence of the Pritchett sisters that he continue his visits, nor could he afford to take the two-mile drive from the village for nothing. He hated to see the slender substance of the women wasted, because they had watched with his sick in that nurseless countryside, had spent themselves freely in doing good. Above all else, he hated to see Elmer succeed in his mean stratagem to hold a soft berth.

Thinking of this while his restless eyes passed unheeding over the homely adornments of the front parlor, and came to rest abstractedly upon the little cambric wisp soaked with Letty's virgin tears, a sudden inspiration came to him.

The best of his prescriptions were not dispensed from the fat black bag resting between his square-toed boots. He believed in powerful and devastating drugs when medicine was indicated—loved to see results; but his experience had enriched him with a fund of practical psychology based on a profound. if circumscribed knowledge of human nature—in and around Pepperill. With characteristic energy, no sooner did the great idea come into being than he proceeded to put it in operation. He leaned forward, a broad, capable hand on each knee.

“Listen!” he began abruptly,

For five minutes he talked in fluent, jerky idioms, interrupted from time to time by faint gasps or shocked protests from one or another of the Pritchett girls.

When he had finished, the two looked uncertainly at each other. Letty's tears had dried. A decided flush made Miss Hetty's thin face almost pretty. She was the first to speak.

“Do you really mean he is to be—we are to—that is—”

“He's dead!” Dr. Knapp barked. “You know how to act. You've been in enough houses of mourning. Just think of Elmer—and treat him—as if he was in the Great Beyond—wherever that is! If he is obstinate, remember nothing in the world will do him so much good as to fast for a few days. I, sha'n't come near you—no use to send—for three days. If he's still holding out then, we'll try something else. But it's my guess he won't be!”

The cheery jingle of the doctor's departing sleigh-bells was still audible when the Pritchett sisters went into executive session with Nancy Hines, their hired help, a gaunt, gray haired woman of a very even temper—since she was always grouchy. For the past few months her grouchiness had been directed against brother Elmer, and incidentally against the sisters who let themselves be buncoed by him. With all her shrewdish temper, she adored them, tyrannized over them, and during the thirty years of her employment always sat with them at table, and in their square box pew on the Sabbath. She came of worthy Pepperill stock, and lost no caste whatever by her humble occupation.

Laughter was rare with her, but a harsh cackle of delight broke from her lips when, after wiping her red, bony hands upon her apron, she heard the plan Dr. Knapp had induced the two spinsters to adopt. They were by no means devoid of a sort of dry, subtle humor peculiar to the remote countryside; and joined in a discreet, ladylike way in Nancy's rude mirth. The sounds penetrated to the guest chamber above, where the chief character in the impending play reposed in fat content, digesting a bountiful dinner while the westering sun embraced him with warmly comforting arms.

He opened his heavy eyes, and decided that it was time for an afternoon smoke. Knocking out the dottle from his black pipe upon the glossy mahogany surface of the little table beside him, he sucked at the worn stem, and found it plugged.

There was a broom in the room, but it stood primly aloof in the far corner, by the bureau; and Elmer had not, unaided, risen from bed for close on three months now. Were he to call out, one or the other of his old sisters would hurry up-stairs at once, and—with veiled disapproval—pluck a stiff straw from the broom, so that he could clean his foul pipe. He knew this well enough—had often called upon them for matters as trivial; yet he hesitated.

His hearing was excellent. He could not make out what they were talking about, but he could identify the laughter of all three. There was the genteel indulgence of Hetty, the lighter, more frivolous, but equally discreet note of Letty. Above them rose the raucous tones of the odious Nancy Hines, whom he detested, and who detested him. She refused not only to enter his room on any pretext whatever, but even to cook any dish exclusively for him. She could not decline to make bread and bake meats a portion of which—an undue portion—found its way to his stomach, but she could and did refuse to prepare beef tea, dropped eggs, milk shakes, and other delicacies designed for him alone.

Elmer felt a certain satisfaction in the laughter which came to his ears from below. Like most selfish people, he greatly preferred to have those about him contented, because it made things smoother for him. He would not take the trouble to make others happy, but was rather glad when some one else did. Satisfied that all the occupants of the house were accounted for, and that no one could spy upon him, he sat up in bed, threw back the coverings, and rose with surprising agility for a man of his years and weight, let alone one who had lost all use of his muscles.

Pattering noiselessly across the floor in his bare feet, white and clean from the daily scrubbing given them by his sisters, he secured the splint he needed and returned to bed.

No untoward accident marred this little adventure. He did not bump into a chair, nor set up the broom so clumsily that it would fall down and startle those below stairs. Two minutes later he was puffing away contentedly, after having stuck the broomsplint under the mattress.

His mind dwelt with pleased anticipation upon his coming supper. He was to have a thick, juicy steak, with lots of fried potatoes. The Pritchetts always lived well, but beefsteak rarely appeared upon their table. It was considered almost sinful extravagance to buy it when there were so many cheaper, equally nourishing dishes available. But he had asked for it, and the grocer had delivered it that afternoon.

When he had exhausted this theme, he reached under the mattress and drew out a worn leather wallet. From it he took a thickish pad of dirty bank-notes, which he counted with relish, although he knew perfectly well that it contained three hundred and twenty dollars. Elmer never had been a spendthrift, save of time. His sisters knew nothing of this hoard; they supposed that the ten or twelve dollars in his trouser-pocket represented his wealth.

He replaced the wallet, laid his pipe on the little mahogany table, and closed his eyes. Presently his loose and flabby mouth opened, and a gentle snore escaped. He slept peacefully until Hetty entered with his steak and potatoes, sizzling hot under a pewter cover. Letty followed with tea, toast, and barberry jelly.

While he ate, the sisters chatted. They always did this, and from time to time Elmer interjected a remark, if his mouth was not too full. Sometimes he did anyhow. Usually the talk was inconsequential; harmless village gossip, “do-you-remembers” of events in childhood, or when their parents had been in their primes, inquiries as to his enjoyment of the meal they had prepared so carefully, and the like. To-night—he gave it little thought at the time—a more somber note crept in.

“I always think, sister,” said the elder, “that some day we shall sit down to our last meal together. That is why, when I feel tired, and like sort of scraping something together most anyhow, I always say to myself: 'this may be the last meal I shall ever get!' And how sorry I should be if I hadn't taken pains with it.”

“You wouldn't know,” commented the practical Elmer between two mouthfuls of fried potato. “Not if I understand what you're driving at.”

Letty sighed.

“How wise a provision it is that we don't even know! We should be miserable all the time; for of course there'd be a last time for everything else, too; going to church, lacing our shoes, making over a bonnet, or letting out the cat at night.”

Miss Hetty refused to be turned aside.

“I said to-night when I fried this nice steak, 'now I'm going to do this just as well as I know how, as if it really was the last meal I'd ever cook for Elmer.' And I put on a clean napkin, though the one he had this noon was hardly rumpled.”

“Well, you needn't worry about this being my last meal!” Elmer grunted, not quite enjoying the topic.

“One never knows,” Hetty solemnly averred. “But Dr. Knapp says a sick man never stands still; either he gets better, or he grows worse and dies.”

“Knapp is an old fogey! I'll live to 'tend his funeral.”

Neither sister replied immediately. Finally Letty timidly suggested that unless Elmer got back the use of his legs she didn't see for her part how he'd be able to attend anybody's funeral but his own. As there was no obvious answer to this, conversation languished, and Elmer thought no more of it that night nor in his dreams.

He awoke next morning with the pleasant odor of home-cured bacon intriguing his nostrils. He felt no premonition that this day was to be different from any other—save that he had asked Hetty to dress a chicken and fricassee it for his dinner. But his ears, accustomed to all the house noises, noted the faint clatter that meant washing up the breakfast dishes. This surprised him, because his own breakfast was always served before the others ate. At the same time, feeling a little cold, his eyes turned toward the fireplace. The embers were banked each night beneath a layer of ashes; and before he awakened, one of his sisters would tiptoe in, rake out the live coals, and put on fresh birch sticks, which would be crackling cozily while he breakfasted in bed. This morning, only cold, dead ashes littered the hearth. He reached under his pillow and consulted his watch. It was nearly eight o'clock.

Indignation kindled within his breast. Unable to understand this sudden forgetfulness on the part of his faithful servitors, he drew the log-cabin quilt closer about his chin, and whiled away the time by thinking up sarcastic comments to utter when the delinquents should finally appear.

This form of mental repartee soon palled on him. Elmer had a healthy appetite, not having tasted food since the night before. He was about to raise his voice in angry summons, when he heard light footsteps on the back stairs. He settled back, ready to meet abashed explanations with one or the other of the ironic phrases he had devised for the occasion.

The footsteps pattered down the hall, accompanied by subdued dialogue; and an instant later Miss Hetty, followed by Letty, entered his room.

To his astonishment, neither of them bore anything to eat. No gold and white eggs on hot buttered toast; no curly, crispy strips of bacon; no potent coffee with its attendant pitcher of thick yellow cream. Nor did either sister so much as glance at him.

This attitude upset his system, which was based upon the natural expectation that they would express contrition for their neglect; whereupon he would reply briefly and cuttingly. He remained silent, his angry eyes fixed upon them.

Letty went to a window and gazed drearily out.

“I can't realize that he is no longer with us!” she sighed.

The older sister coughed dryly.

“One always has that feeling in a room where somebody has recently died. After a time it passes away. I never feel it now in any of the other rooms, and somebody has died in every one of them, at one time or another.”

“How glad I am he could end his days at home, among his own folks, instead of in some city boarding-house with unfeeling strangers around him!”

“Yes, it is a great comfort to think he was laid out by neighborly hands instead of a hired undertaker. And how he seemed to relish his last meal! Do you remember what pains I took to have that steak done just as he always liked it?”

“And how nicely I browned the potatoes?”

“Poor Elmer! He was a great sufferer at the last. Do you think, Hetty, that he was resigned? That his soul has gone to—that it is—”

“I don't have to decide that. God is just, and will make allowances. You know mother, when she took to her bed for the last time, told us always to be tender to Elmer. 'He ain't quite all there!' were her very words. He won't be judged like other men who have all their faculties.”

Elmer listened in speechless indignation to this dialogue, as his sisters moved aimlessly about the room, setting back a chair here, picking up a thread from the floor, straightening the candlesticks on the mantel. Before he could grasp the amazing fact that he was cast for the rôle of the departed, they gently passed from the room, closing the door behind them.

No sooner had their footsteps echoed down the hall, than he was seized with a frenzy of energy. Grasping a heavy cane which stood at the head of his bed, he pounded furiously upon the floor with it, this being his summons at such rare times as his voice failed to evoke an immediate response.

The racket he made was considerable. The sisters, now descending the stairs, paused. Letty pressed a handkerchief to her lips, and trembled violently. Even Hetty turned a little paler than usual. But the grim Nancy, in the kitchen below, showed her yellow fangs, and gazing at the ceiling, shook a gnarled fist at it.

“Pound, ye old divil!” she muttered. “Much good may it do ye.”

The floor timbers of the Pritchett house were solid, the planks hand hewn and well over two feet wide. In a modern house or apartment, Elmer might have made quite a ruction; have sent flakes of kalsomine down, jarred vases from their place, rattled glasses on their shelves. Here, his frantic pounding was futile, and soon died away in intermittent taps as his arm tired. Silence descended upon the house.

He was no fool. He was greatly surprised, having had no inkling that his sisters were growing tired of waiting upon him; but he realized that they were trying to force his hand—or rather his legs—by withholding his meals until he got up and came down-stairs for them. Well—he'd show them! He disposed his limbs as comfortably as possible and tried to go asleep again.

He had slept his fill, however. Besides, his brain was active with resentment, and above all he was hungry. His overeating created a false desire, so that he seemed to be even hungrier than he really was. His meals had been served regularly as clockwork.

Half an hour later his sisters entered a second time. He had not heard them until the door opened. He noticed for the first time that they were dressed in black.

“I want my victuals!” he bawled, before they were fairly within the room. “What you think you're doing, anyhow?”

Neither answered him, nor indeed looked his way. Letty, however, spoke to her elder.

“I feel as if he were right here now,” she breathed: “As if he might speak out loud, any minute.”

Hetty did not reply, but went directly to the fireplace. She carried a tin pail, and Elmer watched her curiously. First laying down an old newspaper, she carefully spread her black silk skirt and knelt down, and began to shovel the cold ashes into the pail. When she had finished, she swept and garnished the hearth carefully with a turkey wing.

As she rose and lifted her pail, a large black cat entered the room. He marched up to the bed, and with the light, effortless grace of his kind, leaped upon it.

Elmer did not like cats very well. [And] now he did not like anybody or anything

“Scat!” he yelled, striking at the animal, which, its tail swelling, sprang to the floor and rushed from the room.

“Did you notice how queer old Tom acted, Hetty? Just as if he saw something invisible to our eyes.”

“They say cats can sense things we mortals can't. Grandma used to say that her house was haunted, a cat could always tell. And you know how we always keep them locked out when there's a body in the house.”

Following the cat, the sisters left the room, which was by now quite chilly.

“When you going to stop this blamed foolishness and git me something to eat? Want me to starve to death, or git pneumony, or—”

The door closed on Elmer's unfinished sentence. He thumped his pillow viciously and resumed his watchful waiting.

Never had a day passed so slowly in the Pritchett home. The sun seemed to stand still in the heavens, the sharply defined shadows upon the unsullied snow not to lengthen. It seemed that the very clock pendulum hung poised, defying the law of gravitation. Dinner came, and was eaten in a silence broken only by the strident comments of the unfeeling Nancy Hines. No sound of thumping cane issued from the room above, where Elmer lay plotting darkly. °

Not one of them went near his chamber that afternoon, and as the sun sank—even though it seemed not to move—the room became colder and colder. In her kitchen, Nancy sang doleful hymns in an excruciating falsetto. The sisters wandered aimlessly about, or sat listlessly by the sitting-room fire, fancy work idle in their hands, the village weekly unread on the table. They spoke seldom, and sighed often.

Neither of them could eat any supper. The thought of the hungry brother lying alone in his cold room kept them from doing more than pick at the fricasseed chicken which had been intended for him. Spurred by the scolding of Nancy, both managed to swallow cups of hot tea, but rebelled at anything more substantial.

Early hours prevailed here. For a little while they sat about the big kerosene lamp, and after Nancy had clumped up-stairs to bed—it had been her weekly ironing day—the sisters lingered a few minutes longer. Letty dampened another cambric handkerchief—her third that day—and sniffed genteelly.

“I—I'm afraid its impious! We're wicked old women, Hetty!”

“Nonsense!”

“To think of him up there alone in his own father's house, in the very room he was born in, and on an empty stomach!”

“Didn't you hear Dr. Knapp say it was the very best thing he could do, to fast?”

“Y-yes—but I know I shall never be able to live through another day like this!”

“Sufficient unto the day, sister! Let us go to bed, and not cross any bridges till we come to them.”

Hetty rose, and Letty obediently followed. They let out the black cat, carefully examined al} the doors and windows, lighted their bedroom candles, put out the lamp and slowly mounted the stairs, glancing askance at their brother's closed door as they passed it.

In the hall before Hetty's room they kissed each other's withered cheeks as usual, murmured “good night,” and popped through their doors like frightened rabbits.

It was only nine o'clock, and within fifteen minutes their simple toilets were unmade, and their candles blown out. Elmer, brooding somberly, having failed to pacify his outraged stomach by many pipefuls of rank tobacco, waited impatiently for fifteen minutes longer before carrying out the plan he had had ample time to perfect. He could not be sure they were asleep, and he knew they had sharp ears; but his necessities demanded an attack upon the enemy base.

He threw back the warm coverings, shuddered a little, thrust his feet into the warm bed shoes knitted by Letty, and slipped his great coat over his flannel night-shirt. Crossing the room inch by inch in the dark, he noiselessly uncaught the wrought iron latch, opened the door and stepped out into the hall. Feeling his way along the wall, he came presently to the back stairs, and descended without mishap. The woodwork throughout was so substantial that no board creaked, no stair gave warning.

Below, the kitchen felt pleasantly warm. The stove was not yet cold, and the back log in the fireplace gave out not only heat, but enough light to point the way to the pantry-door. Not until he was inside did he venture to light the bit of candle he had borne with him.

Its frail beam revealed a ravishing vision to his hungry eyes. There was a shelf of flaky pies—mince, pumpkin, dried apple, and half a custard. There was part of a boiled ham, with mounds of cabbage and potatoes nestling about its base. The remainder of the fricasseed chicken stood in a blue bowl, a nice rice pudding in a yellow one. A huge pan of milk, thick with unskimmed cream, a cottage cheese, loaves of bread in a tin box, a glazed crock full of doughnuts, and a great pot of baked beans with a noble island of succulent pork, to say nothing of squadrons of jams, jellies, pickles, and preserves—the splendor stunned him momentarily, leaving him unable to decide upon which point to direct his attack.

Only for the moment, however. In ten more the wreck of the larder was pitiful. Gone was the chicken, the cottage cheese, the rice pudding. No longer was the milk-pan richly coated with cream. The gaunt ruin of the hambone thrust upward from the scattered potatoes, the fragments of cabbage. Baked beans littered the shelf, and even the floor.

Elmer's plan looked not alone to the satisfaction of the moment, but to the grim siege of the future. In a clean huckaback towel he proceeded to store all he could carry up-stairs and hide beneath his bed. When he had finished, he unfastened the pantry window and threw it wide. He scattered some crumbs upon the sill, dropped half a doughnut and a boiled potato outside. It might be that they would not believe some tramp had ravaged their stores—but at least he'd fix it so they never could disprove it! He blew out his candle, and, bundle in hand, began his return trip.

There was no trouble crossing the kitchen. There was even less in going up the stairs in the dark than in coming down. But Elmer had been away from home for years. On this last visit he had been taken directly to his room, and had not left it until now. There were six sleeping chambers up-stairs, three on each side of the hall which ran straight through the house from front to rear. His own, the guest chamber, was the front one on the west side. Next to it was Nancy Hines's. Nearest the stairs, an empty one, facing another across the hall, the other two being used by Hetty and Letty.

A journey in the dark always seems longer than in the light. To Elmer, inching along the hall in pitch blackness, it seemed that he must have gone even farther than his door; and the latch which his cautious hand touched at length, he accepted without question as his own. It was the portal of Nancy Hines's virgin bower.

Like many people who rasp the nerves of others, Nancy had none of her own. She slept the innocent, untroubled slumber of a hibernating cobra. She did not hear Elmer as he stealthily opened her door and closed it after him. She did not hear him when he knelt by her bed—not in silent prayer, but to thrust far beneath it the forage with which he proposed to withstand a long siege. But when, his stratagem having succeeded as he fondly conceived, he sat down heavily upon the bed, his hundred and ninety pounds causing Nancy's side to shoot up and catapult her spare frame into the air—then she awoke.

The full details of what next took place will never be clearly known. The two sisters, quaking in their beds, heard Nancy's hyenalike yell, and Elmer's calls upon his Maker. They heard furniture crashing, and finally a door being violently slammed and the bureau dragged across the room against it. Nancy herself, seeing nothing, could not have testified accurately. Elmer, who should know better than any one else what happened to him, often pondered the matter in later years, and finally decided that it would be better to enumerate the few things that didn't happen to him. It would save much time!

Upon hearing Nancy's preliminary yell, he was scared nearly out of his wits. He forgot where he was, or even who he was. When the dreadful truth dawned upon him he was completely turned around in the dark, and couldn't find the door. It was while he was seeking it that the worst things happened to him. He barked his shins so many times that he lost count. His nose rammed into something that would not yield, so that he tasted sulfur. But what remained his most vivid single impression was the time Nancy hit him a chance blow on the head with a hair-brush, bristle side down. The bristles were of wire; they left ninety-seven tiny punctures in his bald scalp. There may have been a few more; it was hard to count them accurately next day.

All things must have an end. He found himself in the hall a few years later, as it seemed, and still later, in his own bed.

Letty crept chattering into Hetty's room, and spent the remainder of the night with her. From Nancy's room not another sound came. The incident was closed, in her opinion. She went to sleep again. No one else did, save for brief cat naps.

Very early next morning Letty rose and peered out of the window. The east was aflame, turning the snow a faint rose color. Water dripped from the eaves.

After a moment her startled voice roused Hetty, who joined her at the window.

Swinging down the road toward Pepperill was brother Elmer, fully dressed, and bearing his old valise. He limped some, but was making surprisingly good time. Letty began to whimper faintly.

“I c-can't help feeling guilty to think that we let him go out from his own old home on an empty stomach!”

Hetty said nothing, but looked as if she, too, would like to cry.

A little later, when they beheld their pantry, their minds were entirely relieved. Enough for their own simple dinner was salvaged from beneath Nancy Hines's bed.