Eleven dollars and a third of a tank

At 8:40 this morning the woman two doors down told me the corner store had water. At 9:10 I drove past that store, 600 m from my own driveway, and went 18 km to the next town instead. I came home with 8 L of water, $1.04 in change, and a fuel gauge a third lower than when I left.

What eleven dollars buys

The house had $11 in it. One five, one two, four ones. The ATM outside the bank had a black screen. The bank door was propped open with a chair, and the woman inside said the machines had been down since the storm. Then she said the thing I have now heard from four people: cash only, and nobody has cash.

I went alone. She stayed with the dog, because the dog would not stand up on the ice and somebody had to be in the house. That was the first cost of the day. The store had posted a limit of two jugs per customer, on cardboard, in marker. Two of us would have been 16 L.

There were 14 people ahead of me and the line took 40 minutes. Nobody pushed. A man in his sixties, in a coat with a broken zip, got there before me with two jugs and a bag of rice. When the woman behind him found the shelf empty, he put one of his jugs in her cart and said he had a camp stove at home. I do not know whether that was true. I have thought about it most of the day.

I was angry about $2.99. Not at the store. At the arithmetic. I have paid less than a cent a litre from my own tap for eleven years. Then I stood in that line for 40 minutes to buy 4 L for $2.99, and when I reached the till I said something sharp. She looked at me for a second and said she did not set it. I paid and did not apologise. I should have.

What was on the shelf, with prices:

• 4 L spring water, $2.99, limit two, about 30 jugs left at 10:20
• 40 wooden matches, $1.99
• Tinned sardines, $1.99
• 4-pack AA batteries, $8.99, sold out before I got to the aisle
• 1 lb propane cylinder, $8.99, behind the counter, limit one
• 10 kg bag of ice-melt salt, $12.99
• Wind-up torch, $19.99

I bought two jugs of water, the matches and one tin of sardines. That came to $9.96. I put the change in my coat pocket: $1.04.

The salt was $12.99 and the torch was $19.99. The batteries were gone by 10:15. Four things I could have used, and I could afford the one that keeps us drinking.

The gas station on the way out had bags over every nozzle and a sign in marker: CLOSED, NO POWER. A second station, 6 km further on, had one pump running off a generator and 11 cars in line. I did not join it. I assumed they were taking cards and I did not ask.

What the trip cost in fuel

The car has a 55 L tank. The gauge read a quarter when I left, about 13 L. The book figure is 9 L/100 km.

The round trip was 36 km, 18 out and 18 back, on plowed road. That is 3.2 L. I idled in the store lot for 22 minutes with the heat on. It was −1 °C outside and I had just spent 40 minutes standing still. That is another half litre.

The gauge came home just under the sixth mark. Say 9 L left, down from 13. So the trip cost about 4 L, a third of the tank. It bought 8 L of water that was sitting 600 m from my door at the same price.

I did the sums at the kitchen table with a pencil, in a room that was 8 °C. At 9 L/100 km, 9 L is 100 km. That is not a reserve. That is two trips to town and nothing left in the tank.

So the car is furniture now. It will play the radio with the engine off, 20 minutes at a time. I will not drive it again unless it is to move a person. I do not know how many 20-minute sessions the battery has before it will not crank. That is a number I should have known on day zero.

Two litres

Water at dawn: 12 L. Water at dark: 18 L. In between, 2 L left the house in one bottle: 1.5 L between the two of us and 0.5 L for the dog, who should have had a litre. Then 8 L came back in two jugs.

The card on the fridge says 8.6 L a day. We took 2. That is not thrift. It is the mistake of the day, and it is worse than the fuel, because I can see the fuel gauge and I cannot see a headache coming.

Here is how it happened. We left at 9:10 and were back at 14:40, and we drank what was in the one bottle. At home I did not open a jug, because I was saving them for the evening. Then we ate cold food and went to bed at 20:30. Nobody was thirsty enough to say anything. By 16:00 I had a headache behind my eyes and I put it down to the drive.

Two adults and a 30 kg dog, one day, 2 L. I have written the number down so that on day twelve I can look at it and see when the slide started.

The drive home

The woman two doors down had been on her step at 8:40 with the wind-up torch in her hand. She did not offer it as a kindness. She held it out, said bring it back before dark, and went inside. She has two. Ours has been dead since September, when the batteries went into a toy, and she knew that without being told.

She was not frightened this morning. I was. I do not have an explanation for the difference and I am not going to invent one.

The dog met me at the door and found the sardines before I got my coat off. She had asked me for coffee. I brought sardines. She said it was the same shape of disappointment as the furnace filter I bought the wrong size in 2019. We laughed at that longer than it deserved, and then she took the blanket into the front room. The dog has started sleeping against the oven door, which is cold, because it is the flattest thing in the kitchen and the kitchen is 8 °C.

In the lot, with the engine running for the heat, I said the four words I say when the car nearly hits something. Then I tried to say more, and it came out as a list. Water. Fuel. A pump that works. Her knees. I stopped, because it sounded like my shopping list read to somebody who was not going to fill it. I said it again at the table with the pencil and got the same result. I do not know whether it was heard.

The number I keep running is this. At $2.99 for 4 L, 8.6 L a day costs $6.43. We have $1.04. Eighteen litres is two days at the card's rate. If this lasts past the weekend, water becomes something I carry, not something I buy, and I do not know where from.

What I should have had on day zero

• $150 in fives and twenties in the house, not $11. A card is not money when the terminal has no power.
• Two 20 L water cans, filled and rotated, instead of 26 L in a bathtub.
• A 20 L jerry can of gasoline, kept full and treated as part of the car rather than an errand.
• A torch on the kitchen wall with batteries that stay in the torch.
• A paper list of the three nearest towns and which stores in them open early.