Page 12 of Embers

It’s eggs, as it nearly always is, but I open a can of Spam we found yesterday and fry it up to eat on the side. When Cal comes back in, we eat. Neither of us talks much, but that’s fine. We still enjoy the meal.

When we’ve cleaned up, I pick out one of the new books, and I curl up on the old recliner to read while Cal cleans our guns and sharpens our knives.

I put down my book when it gets dark. No sense to waste a battery in a flashlight or lantern just to read. “I’m going to get ready for bed.”

Cal nods and gets up to go outside.

I’d be perfectly fine changing behind my curtain, but he always leaves the cabin completely whenever my clothes come off. I really appreciated the consideration the first year, but now it seems like a useless gesture.

I wouldn’t dream of objecting, of course. That would only make him grumpy. Sometimes, when Cal falls into a really bad mood, he’ll barely talk to me for days. I hate when that happens, so I almost never poke at his boundaries anymore.

I pour well water into a basin and wash up quickly before I pull on a cotton pajama set. It covers me up as much as my normal clothes, and I no longer feel self-conscious around Cal anyway.

When he returns, he’s got his shirt off. He’s obviously been washing up outside because water is dripping from the edges of his beard and hair.

I’ve seen his chest plenty of times before. When he’s wearing clothes, he always looks big and bulky. Like he takes up too much space in any room. But without his shirt, he looks different. His shoulders are broad and the muscles in his chest and arms are well-developed, but his abdomen is flat and trim. His hips are lean, and his thighs are thick. The scars on his arm will always stand out, but they aren’t really ugly. They mark him as strong. Resilient. Cal.

His body has a fierce kind of grace, and I notice it unexpectedly.

For no good reason.

“Whatcha doin’, kid?” He scowls at me as he empties onto the bed the bag of men’s clothes I left on his side earlier.

“I’m not doing anything.”

“Somethin’ wrong?” His scowl transforms into a searching urgency.

“No. Of course not. Are you going to wear those new clothes?” I nod toward the pile on his bed.

His shoulders and jaw relax as he picks up a light blue button-down. “I dunno.” He holds the shirt out in front of him like it might sting him. “Don’t look too comfortable.”

I snicker. “I could maybe find you a tie somewhere, and you’d be all ready to go on a business trip.”

He gives me a mild eye roll and drops the shirt, picking up a plain white undershirt.

He’s about to pull it on over his head when I get a glimpse of his back. I remember the lotion we found at that gas station this morning.

“Hold on,” I say, walking over to get one of the bottles from the shelf where I lined up our new toiletries earlier. “Let me get your back with this.”

He snarls. “It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not fine. It’s terrible, and it’s getting worse. It’s got to be killing you.”

He grumbles, but he doesn’t actually object, so I understand his response as agreement.

A few months ago, something he came into contact with triggered eczema all over his back, and it hasn’t gotten better. I tried to use some other kind of lotion on it—anything I could get my hands on—but it seemed to make it worse. He told me it used to happen to him sometimes, and the only thing that helped was this lotion.

Finding it this morning was another windfall.

“Stand still and stop whining,” I tell him, squirting out some lotion on my palm and rubbing it between both my hands. “It will just take a minute.”

He’s completely silent, completely still, as I rub the lotion on his back. He stands next to his bed, his hands held in loose fists at his sides.

The skin is reddened. Scaly. Peeling. Some areas have little bumps like a rash. I hate the sight of it. It makes my chest hurt. “Damn, Cal, this looks terrible. Why didn’t you tell me it was so bad?”

He grunts.

I shake my head and rub my palms in slow circles over his shoulder blades. When my hands get drier, I add another squirt of lotion and rub it into his lower back.

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