Seal Intestine Raincoat
a novel by Rosie Chard

The List

Only the sound of Grabowski, whistling through his nose, disturbed the dead air that folded over the sleeping group early the next morning. Fred had woken from a brief nap with an unidentified worry sitting at the bottom of his stomach. He mentally sifted through the contenders: they were running out of logs, they were running out of food, they were running out of time. And no one was coming. That was the nub — no one was coming.

How he yearned for a policeman to rap on the door, shout commands to minions, write notes in a stiff little notebook, take complete and absolute control. And when not longing for policemen, he fantasized about rescuers clad in green cotton and staggering behind towers of plastic boxes, exuding meat-scented steam. He thought of Ata. The old man had spent his whole childhood in a group of seven people without outside help. Seven was the number of mouths connected to hungry bellies, seven was the number of caribou parkas stitched each winter. And seven was the number of people that worked together, to get through life. No hour could slip by without calculations being made, blubber levels checked, ice floes prodded, and fish counted.

A rough reckoning totted up in his head. How much food do people actually need in a day? No tenth-grade math formula seemed applicable to the complications of appetite, body size, and teenage growth spurts, and any attempt at fairness would be skewed by Rennie’s absence of appetite and Grabowski’s greed.

Grabowski. He was the essence of the problem, wolfing down most of the food and hogging the fire. Could they overpower him? Could they throw him out of the house? Could they get him drunk and stab him with the long kitchen knife? Fred pressed his forehead. Those deep, secret, evil thoughts were pouring out now. He saw blobs of blood on steel, toes blackened by frostbite, and slices of human face served up on a plate, boiled potatoes on the side. There was no stopping them as they crowded into his head, hijacking his reason and crushing his last shreds of rationality.
“Stop,” he said out loud. He had to get a grip on things. He pulled his list from beneath a cushion, read it, and frowned.

People: Me, Mum, Marcie, Ryan, Buster, Grabowski
Food in the fridge:
Half jar mayonnaise, three quarters jar chutney, jar curry sauce, bit of cottage cheese, two half lemons
Food on shelves:
One bag pasta, two tins tomatoes, one onion, two tins baked beans, one bottle Tabasco sauce
Firewood:
Thirty-five logs

He ran a finger down the names. Something was not right. Someone was missing. Six people. Six. But it was not six; it was seven. Rennie was missing. With his heart pounding he rushed to correct the mistake, pressing his pen deep into the paper as he wrote her name, only allowing himself to stop when the nib scratched through onto his fingers. Feeling satisfied there were no more errors, his eyes lingered on the last line and a rough timescale took shape in his mind for the first time: thirty-five logs, burning night and day.

Click here to purchase a copy of this title.