The three people at the gate put a blue medicine tin on the post. Jo knew who had taken it before she saw the writing on the lid.
Harlan marked every container with his square H. The tin had been in the settlement’s storeroom on Sunday. On Monday, when Jo counted supplies, its space on the shelf was empty. Harlan told her he had moved it to keep it dry. There had been no rain for a week.
Now there was snow, the first in three months without grid power. It came sideways over the fields and collected in the gate latch. The strangers were a woman of about fifty, a young man with a split lip, and a girl holding a red scarf over her head. They had walked from the road. No packs, no cart.
“Is this yours?” the woman asked.
“It was.” Jo kept both hands on the gate. “Where did you find it?”
“A man gave it to us for a belt. Said it was useful.”
The young man touched his lip. “Our truck quit four miles back. We’re asking to come inside until the weather passes.”
Jo looked at the girl. She was trying not to shiver visibly. Jo had been assigned to count meals and beds, not to decide who counted as a person. There were seventeen people inside the old seed warehouse. They had room for twenty on the floor if they moved the tables, but room was not the same as a week of food. The storm might close the road for a day or ten.
“Wait here,” Jo said, and hated how foolish it sounded. She opened the pedestrian gate and led them to the covered loading bay. It was out of the wind. She could not bring them into the living room without calling the others, and she could not leave them in the field while she did.
The girl saw the row of boots by the door. “People live here?”
“For now.”
Inside, Harlan was feeding kindling to the stove. He saw the tin in Jo’s hand and set down the wood.
“You traded this,” she said.
“We needed the belt.”
“You told me you moved it.”
“I was going to say.”
“When?”
He looked toward the loading bay. “Are they out there?”
“Under a roof. Come tell everyone what happened.”
The settlement held its meetings at the long table where they also ate. The table had belonged to the seed company; a faded chart of planting dates showed through the varnish. Jo called the others from their work. Harlan told them he had traded the tin for a belt to keep the old truck running. The belt was on the truck now. He had thought they could spare the contents because nobody had asked for them that month.
“You didn’t ask,” said Etta, who kept the storeroom key.
“I know.”
“We agreed to ask.”
He nodded. Jo put the tin in front of Etta. The seal was intact. She did not open it at the table. The strangers had returned it; why they had done so was still a question.
“Bring them in,” said Harlan.
“We need to count first,” Jo said.
“You can count with them in here.”
“And if the count says no?”
Harlan had no answer. Neither did she.
She went back to the bay and asked the woman their names. The woman was Sal. The young man was her son, Kit. The girl was Nessa, a neighbor’s daughter they had promised to get to an uncle north of the pass. Sal said Harlan had been stranded with a broken truck on Monday. She had given him the spare belt from hers. She had not wanted the tin. He insisted on leaving something; she took it to end the argument. When their own truck failed, she saw the settlement’s name under his H and followed the road signs.
“I didn’t bring it as payment,” she said. “I don’t know what’s in it. You can keep it if we go.”
Jo believed her. Belief did not add a bed. She asked how long they had been walking. Sal answered without embellishment. Nessa sat on an overturned bucket and watched Jo’s face.
“Come inside,” Jo said. She opened the living-room door before she had a plan.
Etta made tea. Kit took a cup, then put it on the table for Nessa. Harlan moved a chair closer to the stove. No one thanked him for it. The settlement had taken in people before, at the start of the outages, but they had stopped when the trucks stopped bringing flour. Jo could feel the old argument gathering at the table.
She opened her ledger. Seventeen names, seventeen portions, two empty cots and a space by the stove where they could put a third. For supper there was enough for twenty if she cut the loaves differently. Beyond tomorrow, the ledger held estimates: a mill delivery that might arrive, potatoes that might not keep, a broken truck with a new belt. She refused to draw a line from any of those guesses to a promise of permanent refuge.
“For tonight,” she said, “they can stay. Tomorrow we count again.”
“You promised my mother the space by the stove,” Etta said. “She comes back from the mill road when it clears.”
Jo had promised. She had not written it down because Etta’s mother wasn’t here yet. In the ledger there were two empty cots, not three places to sleep. She drew a line through the third space she had imagined and looked for another. Sal saw her do it.
“Nessa can sleep beside me,” Sal said. “We don’t need a cot each.”
“It’s always tomorrow with you,” said Harlan.
“It’s the date on the page.” She pushed the ledger to him. “If you have a better count, show me.”
He read it. Etta said the storeroom had one more sack of oats than Jo had listed; it was behind a crate. Kit said he could look at their stalled truck when the storm lifted, but did not claim he could repair it. Sal said she and Nessa could leave for the uncle’s place if the road cleared. Each statement went into the ledger with a name beside it. No one called it a solution.
After supper Jo took blankets to the two cots. Nessa had fallen asleep in Harlan’s chair. Sal tried to wake her; Harlan said to leave her there. He sat on a crate near the door with his coat around his shoulders. Etta put the blue tin back on the shelf, after checking its seal and writing the date on a fresh strip of paper.
In the night, a gust rattled the bay door. Jo went to make sure it was latched. Harlan was awake. He had the ledger open across his knees and was copying the count onto a clean sheet, slowly enough that his pencil left dents.
“You can sleep,” she told him.
“I lied about a box,” he said. “Now it takes three people and a storm to make me say so.”
Jo took the pencil before he snapped it. “The storm came on its own.”
In the morning the road was white but visible. Nobody knew when it would be passable. Harlan came in from the truck with his hands black from the engine. The new belt had torn. Jo crossed out the mill delivery she had penciled into Friday’s column. She wrote three new names on today’s meal page. Under next count she wrote noon. Sal stood beside her while she did it, watching the pencil wear down.