The Long Dark by B.J. Farmer (reading women .TXT) 📕

just a teen having fun playing a game.  Avery was just an oversized kid enjoying his distraction from the perfunctory role as the guy people wanted to shut up until they needed him to answer a question. Quill didn’t judge him, and he sure as hell didn’t judge her. It was that exact same reason he was so close to his sister. When she died, it left a gaping void in his life. It changed him forever. I tried to fill that role, but I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t innocent. I was judgmental; most of all, I was selfish.

“I don’t like making decisions on an empty stomach. How about we talk about it after we’ve had supper?” Duane said, not taking his eyes off the two of them.

“Sounds good to me,” I said.

“Yeah, I’m so hungry my asshole’s startin ta gnaw on ‘is cushion I’m sittin on,” Sam said.

Duane gave Sam a questioning glance. Sam just smiled real big and innocently shrugged his shoulders. I had a feeling it would take Duane a little while to become accustomed to Sam’s Samisms.

***

I helped Duane prepare food. It was a way for me to talk to him one on one, without all the Grays and end-of-the-world apocalypse shit. He was a good guy, and I think he was beginning to realize we were good people, too. I’m not sure how I would’ve handled a scraggly group like ours randomly showing up at the Patch and heralding the doom and gloom we had.

The beans and franks we ate were about the best thing I’d ever had in my life. The rush of endorphins I felt as I scarfed down spoonful after spoonful was nearly enough to make me forget just how shitty things were. By the looks on everyone else’s faces, they felt the same. I savored the time as much as I did the beans and franks. Because In the near recesses of my mind, I knew that moment was fleeting.

The jovial atmosphere, aside from raising everyone’s spirits, had the secondary benefit of brightening the dark cloud that followed us to Toolik. The lighthearted conversation seemed to have erased much of the bad initial impression Duane had gotten from us. I can’t take credit for that. Sam was the source of good tidings. Aside from laughing at the idea of him in a suit and tie, I always said he’d be a perfect salesman. He knew how to turn on the charm when he needed to. He made Duane feel like he was the most important person in the world. That was a talent I didn’t have. While he regaled Duane with past debauchery not fit for Quill’s ears, I drifted off to darker contemplations.

I suppose my job as the leader didn’t allow for the same allotment of joy, and staying happy and positive really wasn’t my forte to begin with. I laughed, smiled, or interjected when called for, but my mind was slowly wandering back where it was before we met Duane. After all, I was the one who had to decide what we needed to do next.

“’member ’at time when Joey tried ta pass ‘at fake money ta ‘em strippers, son?”

I laughed. “Yeah, he tried to lie his way out of it by saying his daughter put the money in his wallet without him knowing.” Before I could finish, Sam took the conversation back over, which was fine by me.

“He took his kids ta one of ‘em kids pizza places the night ‘fore. At the end of the night, his girl cashed in ‘er tokens and gotta cash register ‘at had all kinds of play money in it. Since the broke-ass done spent all his money on pizza and tokens the night ‘fore, he got the bright idea he’d just use some of his kid’s fake money when we got ta the strip club. The idiot reckoned no one would notice.”

Avery cut in. “Joey was incarcerated for trying to pass counterfeit currency. When he told his wife what had happened, he blamed it all on his daughter. His wife did not find humor in Joey’s childish actions. She was angry.”

Okay, Sam had told the story a bunch of times. I wasn’t sure if Avery’s retelling, which, let’s just say was lacking vibrancy, was a result of him mocking Sam for the number of times he told it, or if he was trying to be funny. Either way, it was a good ending point for the night. It kept me from entering a downward spiral, and it stopped Sam from talking the rest of the night.

Duane showed us where we would be sleeping. He said there were showers, which was beyond wonderful to hear. There was also a laundry room where we could wash our clothes. The only issue was the showers had to be kept under five minutes because the water truck never showed up for the new rotation water delivery. Some shower was better than no shower, I thought.

There was still some unfinished business to attend to before we could take those much-needed showers. We needed to set up a watch rotation. When I asked Sam if he wanted to flip for the first watch, he sighed before saying, “Don’t know why.” As inexplicable as it was, Sam almost always lost a coin toss, and that night was no different. “You gotta be riggin ‘at shit somehow, son.”

Sam pulled the Ripsaw within a short running distance of the cabin, just out of sight from the main entrance, that all of us besides Duane would be sharing. He said we could all have separate cabins if we wanted, but we decided that might be a bad idea; after all, there was safety in numbers. I believed Duane was a good guy, but we weren’t going to put all our marbles on belief alone, especially with what happened with Tish so fresh on our minds. He was going to have to prove himself before he earned our trust.

Duane stopped me