Seventy-two out of two hundred and twenty-five

At 7:40 this evening I wrote the seventy-fifth question on the last clean sheet of a pad I started on Day 1. Seventy-five questions, ten domains, each one scored 0 to 3 against this house as it stood at 6:40 p.m. on the first night. It comes to 72 out of 225.

Seventy-five questions

Every question had to be answerable by looking at something, not by remembering. 0 meant it was not here. 1 meant it was here and would not work without power, or there was not enough of it. 2 meant it worked and would be gone inside seven days. 3 meant thirty days without anybody's help.

The method broke in the first week. I scored the first thirty over three nights, from memory and from intention. I gave myself a 2 under water because I would have filled the tub. A tub is a container, not storage, and it sat in the room where the bucket was going to live. On Day 21 I read all thirty against what had actually happened and took a point off 23 of them. The questions were right. The answers were aspirational.

• Water — 5 of 27. Nine questions. Twenty-six litres in a bath, 8 of them under plastic by one o'clock on the first day.
• Food — 13 of 24. The best domain in the house, and still 13, because half the pantry needed a hob.
• Heat — 7 of 27. One room at 12 °C, and a furnace that runs ninety seconds without a blower.
• Light — 9 of 21. Three candles, one jar, and the torch cells that went into a toy in October.
• Medicine — 4 of 24. Eight questions. No written list, no buffer past the current bottle, no gauze.
• Sanitation — 7 of 18. Six questions. The bucket went in the bathroom, which was the first wrong answer.
• Information — 9 of 24. A phone at 34 percent, no radio of my own, no numbers on paper.
• Money — 2 of 18. Six questions. Eleven dollars, and a card for terminals that were dead.
• Community — 8 of 21. Seven questions. I could name three people on this street.
• The house — 8 of 21. Seven questions. A 5 mm gap under a door, an unsealed attic hatch, and no week-one baseline to compare anything to.

The seventy-five questions are the audit in the store. I wrote them for this house first, in pencil, and scored them badly enough that I am keeping the number.

She read the sheet at 8:05, in about a minute. She put her finger on Water and said, "The bath was a one." She was right, and I had known it since one o'clock on Day 1. She changed nothing else. Forty words today, thirty-one of them about the bath.

The dog is not in any of the seventy-five. Thirty days at a litre a day and I never wrote his name on the pad.

The three worst

Money, 2 of 18. The two points were for having a bank account and a card, and neither of them was money in this house on a night when every terminal in town was dead. The question I scored 0 on was whether there is more than $200 here in bills under $50. There was $11. The fix was $640: $600 in twenties and tens in a tin, $40 in coins.

Medicine, 4 of 24. Eight questions, and the worst was the simplest: could I name my medication, the dose, and what it is for. On Day 9 I had to turn the bottle over to read the number off the side. My kit had eleven items, no gauze and no gloves, which makes it a drawer. The digital thermometer read 35.9 °C in a cold mouth three mornings running, and I stopped trusting it. The fix was $91: three extra dispensings a year to keep ninety days on the shelf at $12 each, $46 to restock the kit, $9 for a glass one.

Water, 5 of 27. Nine questions, and all 5 points came from the 26 L in the bath and the jugs bought on Day 5. $5.98 bought 8 L that day. Six 10 L jugs at $14 would have held 60 L, which is seven days at 8.6, and they would have cost $84. The whole repair is $143. The 50 L in the water heater is not on that list because it was not a purchase. It was a fact I did not know for twenty days.

The three together are $874. The whole seventy-five, costed at prices I can check now, comes to $2,180, and nine items had no price at all. Cash spent since Day 0 is $192.90 at $6.43 a day, and none of it bought a thing that will be here next winter.

Water: 15 L this morning, 14 L tonight. 8.6 L out at the card. 7.6 L back in from the creek in two 4 L jugs, one of them spilled 400 mL on the path. The creek is 400 m east and it has been there the whole time.

What I should have had on day zero

• 60 L in six 10 L lidded jugs, filled in October, $84, with the fill date on every lid.
• $640 in the house: $600 in twenties and tens, $40 in coins.
• Ninety days of my own tablets on the shelf, and a card in my coat with the name, the dose and what it is for.
• A 12 m hose and a tap wrench, $37, so the 50 L in the basement is a supply and not something I find on Day 20.

The question on the step

I was on the step at 6:20 with the pad on my knee when he came across the road. He had his coat on and no boots, which meant he was not going far.

He asked whether ours was on yet. I said Thursday, if the mast is straight. He said Thursday for his too. His kitchen was 14 °C on a cord through the window and his hall 5 °C, which is my house with a cord in it.

He said, "Can I ask you something." I said yes. He said, "Do you think God did this?"

I said no. Then I said I did not know what I meant by no, and he waited, so I kept going.

I said the storm was weather. Warm air over cold, rain that froze on the lines, nobody aiming it. He said that was not what he asked. I said I knew.

I told him I had prayed on the stairs on the second night for the woman two doors down, badly, twice in one night. I told him Day 7 was mostly swearing, and that somewhere in the last two weeks I had stopped, without deciding to. None of it had told me anything about the ice. He said, "So you got nothing."

I said I got the habit back for a while. I said that is not an answer. He said no, and we stood there.

Then he said he had asked because there was nobody else on this street he could ask. I said I was the wrong man. He said he knew that. We laughed once, badly, and he went back across the road in his shoes.

I do not know what he wanted, and I did not ask.

At 7:05 I came in and stood the torch on the table, head down, so the light came off the ceiling. The dog had been against the stove since five and did not get up. Cedar Street behind us has been lit since yesterday morning and this one waits for Thursday. The water waits longer: the main is shut on a 22 mm split in the north wall and there is no coupling on any shelf in town. I wrote the last question under the other seventy-four. It took four minutes. I had been carrying it since the night of Day 26, and when I put a number on it the number was a 1.

75. Does she know where the main valve is, and which half of the night is hers?