After the burn, p.6
After the Burn, page 6
“Morning,” he said.
She pretended not to hear him.
He took a seat on a chair next to her and put the house keys on her plate beside a runny egg.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“The keys to your new house.”
“What?”
“The barn house that Chuck’s fixing up.” Jules nodded at it across the street. “It’s yours now. I just bought it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m leaving town, but I think you should stay. Barning’s a good place. Folks here are decent. I think you should stick around. Maybe see if you can get a job at the tavern. Get married. Raise a family. Whatever you want. Shit, you can even sell the house and keep the money. Up to you.”
“If it’s such a nice place, why are you leaving?”
Jules looked at the fields in mid-harvest and potholed road he had walked along for the past twenty years. A column of smoke rose from the woodstove at the ranch.
“Because I have a home,” he said. “But it’s not here.”
“What do you want from me?” she asked.
Jules shrugged. He tried to say nothing but couldn’t bring himself to. If he wanted something from her, it wasn’t something he could articulate.
Jules got up and stretched. He had a long way to go, and he wanted to get started. Before he left, he turned to look at Sarah one last time. “Take care of yourself.”
***
Within an hour, Jules had everything packed. Considering his job was to find things for people, he had surprisingly few possessions of his own. He loaded up the saddlebags on his ten-speed. He hitched up a small trailer, one that had once been used to carry a toddler. Now it held fifty pounds of wheat, dozens of jars of tomatoes and chicken, a few boxes of ammunition, five gallons of water, a cast iron skillet and two backpacks of clothes. There were two atlases of America’s highways and a hardcover of The Old Man and The Sea. He carried a .22 rifle slung over his back and a handgun tucked into his jeans.
Chuck knelt beside the bike, rubbing sunflower seed oil on the chain. “This place won’t be right without you.” Chuck had the same fake smile he had used a lifetime ago when he had to explain how he got a D in Psych 100 to his parents. It made Jules feel young again, or at least like a young man with thinning hair and the beginnings of osteoarthritis.
“You won’t even notice I’m gone.”
Chuck stood up and dusted off his knees. “It’s not true.” He held out his hand.
Jules shook his hand and looked away, blinking quickly. Chuck pulled him in for a long hug and took off Jules’ Lake Monster baseball cap. He replaced it with his own handmade leather cowboy hat.
***
Some of the townsfolk lined up outside like a choir, waiting their turn to say goodbye. There were teary-eyed good lucks and joking see you soons.
Jules got onto the bicycle and began to peddle, tilting his new cowboy hat to block out the sun. It was a long ride. Best as he could tell with the old atlas, Barning, Vermont to Red Oak, Iowa was one thousand four hundred and twenty-six miles. With some luck and good weather, he could make it before November.
A memory suddenly came to him. It was late fall. He could see his father standing in the driveway of their house. He wore a greasy sleeveless shirt and a bandana. Jules had just learned to ride his red bicycle without the training wheels, and now he was going to go meet up with his friends to play baseball.
His dad waved a meaty hand, stained with grease from the tractor, and called to him: “Come home before it gets dark.”
Jules smiled, his teeth rattling as the bike bumped along the rutted road. He was going home.
Dehydrated
by Chloe Viner
I imagine myself
living in the water
in a cubbyhole between
bubbles and seaweed
rain takes me to the treetops
shooting downward I find
myself
weeping out of a willow
but my feet are in
brown dirt and gravel
in springtime, in wintertime,
orange days, black days,
days where the sun seems to never set
days where the blisters bleed into my tracks
I’m just another wounded
animal being hunted
I feel hope when it rains
running down my
cheekbones.
Whitey and the Kid
by Karen Marie Menzel
for Melissa Wubben, Oak Creek Farm
My day started normal enough. Well, what passes for normal these days. Fed the animals, cleaned up. Sat at the breakfast table staring out the window, held down by weighty memories. Concave triangles of soot darken the window corners—leftovers from The Burn even though it’s been a couple decades. Grey drifts slowly collect on windowsills, worse than gravel dust. I don’t know where it all comes from. Barning, VT, might be the “Oasis of the Collapse,” but ash and dust still killed our crops.
“Ecology doesn’t care how special we are,” Chuck used to say. It’s been six months since cancer took him, and I hear his voice as I scrape the remains of my goat-milk omelet into the scraps bucket. Unlike planet Earth, I’m sliding into my old age disconnected from the rest. The sun still shines through the haze, but each day is just a little less bright. This is life now when I’m not with the animals. Grey and dull. I know Chuck wanted me to “keep hope alive” after, but it’s harder without him now than surviving the Collapse together. Apocalypse is easier with a partner, I guess. Especially a survivalist eighth-generation farmer and genuine Vermont Woodchuck.
Mouse’s deep bark jolts me out of my woolgathering. He gets the other dogs going. It’s too damn early for that racket. God, I miss coffee. Why couldn’t Vermont have been the coffee bean capital of North America? Vermont’s famous dairy cows died, but feral hogs are everywhere. I never thought I’d get tired of bacon and maple syrup over acorn-flour and cornmeal pancakes, but it turns out there is a limit. Thank God the hens are still laying and indoor potted cherry tomatoes and onions won’t quit. They’re tougher than either of us. Probably still be here after we’re gone. After I’m gone.
I shrug on a flannel, shove my feet into wellies, and holler at the dogs to pipe down, but I’ve still got my Collapse instincts. Excalibur is an ancient but sharp pitchfork I keep by the door, the wood handle polished from use. There’s a tone to Mouse’s bark I don’t like. Intruder. Best to be ready. I take the back way around the house.
Fog is thick on the ground in the valley, and our yard is white with mist. I move through the garden softly, making my way around great grandma’s iron-handled well pump. The old well with the squeaky windmill keeps the house, barn, and irrigation system supplied with running water. Without it, I wouldn’t be able to water the animals and keep the garden going. I don’t know what kind of rock is under the farm, but whatever it is keeps the local aquifer clean. Maybe that’s why Barning’s an oasis. Some trick of fate left us clean water.
Mouse and Mister bark their heads off, wild to get at something on the garage’s flat roof, their dark shapes displacing the swirling fog. As I come closer, pitchfork lowered and ready, a hunched form is visible on top of the small building.
“Shut it,” I holler at the dogs. “Back.” I get a whine of protest out of Mister, but both cattle dogs jump away from the whatever-it-is and run to me, then past me, around back to the wall, yipping in disobedience brought on by over-excitement. I haven’t been exercising them enough since losing Chuck.
The shape lifts its head. It’s a small person. A kid.
“Mouse,” I say in my most commanding tone, then back it up with my get-over-here-right-now whistle. Mouse yelps and then slinks back to my side, Mister right behind him.
“Doc, you gotta help,” the kid says. “Down the crossing. Please.” The kid stands up as the words tumble out of her, apparently not bothered in the least by the fact that she’s still on the garage roof.
I don’t see any injuries. Well, no blood anyway. She’s wearing what most of the village kids wear—whatever they can find. In this case, it’s a much mended and stained t-shirt and sweatpants. No shoes, hair cut short in the careless sort of way a parent with too much to do might manage for a child who won’t hold still. Her face is streaked with dirt. Tears maybe.
“Who’s down crossing way?” I ask. All the villagers call me Doc, especially when they want something, even though I’m only a veterinarian. Either way, useful skills, and these days you make do with whoever you’ve got.
“Bunch of kids,” she says. “Come quick.” And just like that she leaps from the garage and scampers down the walnut tree, tearing off down the dirt road.
Mouse and Mister perk up their ears, look at her, look back at me.
“Oh alright.” I sigh. Both dogs leap after the kid, clods of dirt flying up behind them as they dig in. “Mud season…” I duck into the garage, grab a first aid kit, then squelch down the dirt road as fast I can in a pair of wellies. Fortunately, the crossing isn’t too far.
I hear the kids long before I can see them. Yelling, laughing. They don’t sound like they’re in distress.
I scowl. A peaceful morning disturbed for nothing.
Then I hear one of the dogs yelp. It’s not a “you’re playing too hard” yelp. It’s an “ouch, that really hurt” yelp. Then I’m up over the curve of the hill and I can see what’s going on.
There’s a knot of scruffy boys on my side of the bridge. They’re clustered around the base of a tree, throwing rocks at Mouse and Mister and the girl. Most of the rocks are off target, but one hits the girl right in the chest. It must have hurt like hell, but she isn’t fazed. She nails the perpetrator in the head with a rock of her own. He doesn’t go down, but he ducks and covers. Mouse and Mister are barking and running around and nobody’s noticed me yet.
I’ve still got Excalibur. And my llama whistle. It’s actually a goose call, but you blow on it just right and it sounds like a llama in danger. It’s a horrible sound, and if you haven’t heard it, go startle a llama if you can find one. No. Don’t do that. Llamas are not like other “prey” animals. They are fierce, territorial, and protect anything they consider theirs. Like the farm. Like me and Mouse and Mister.
Kuzco and Pacha’s grazing meadow borders the river. It won’t take them long to get to the bridge. I raise my pitchfork over my head and shake it, blowing on the llama whistle. A god-awful racket rises above the yelling kids and barking dogs. Mouse and Mister peel off and come running back to me, leaving the girl alone in the middle of the road, but the noise I’m making is sufficient distraction, so the boys don’t keep clobbering her.
Everyone stares at the old woman waving her pitchfork, blowing her goose call. The boys look at me and at the rocks in their hands and at each other.
I brace myself.
Then two angry black llamas crest the ridge and charge past me. Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” plays in my head. The boys break ranks and scatter, beelining back to the village side of the bridge.
Kuzco and Pacha run back and forth, chasing off the stragglers. Mouse and Mister are smart enough to stay out of their way. The girl darts over to the tree the boys had first surrounded and climbs up, out of the llamas’ reach. It takes me a while to calm all four animals and make my way to the tree.
“You okay, kid?” I see her curled around a branch, shaking with sobs.
“They hurt him,” she says, snot running over her lip. “Whitey’s hurt.”
My eyes track down to a grey-brown bundle wedged between branch and trunk, splashed red with blood. It’s not moving. The stillness of death.
“Pass him down, kid.” I say gently. Poor child—this is probably her first dead cat. I’ll have to tell the sheriff about the boys and the attack. Cruelty to animals is a sign of worse to come, and with everything we’ve lived through so far, I’m not about to sink back down into that chaos again. I’d label it a return to animalistic natures, but no animal’s ever been as intently evil as mankind.
This cat is like us, I think. We’ve lived through hell and we’re dying one by one, beaten. Sniffling but trying to be grown up about it, the kid masters herself and passes down the bedraggled corpse. I gather it up gently and…
Oh. Oh lord. It’s not a cat.
The kid slides down the trunk and wipes her nose on her forearm. Kuzco trots over, but the dogs aren’t reacting like the kid’s a threat, so he and Pacha leave her alone.
I carefully lay the limp opossum on the ground and kneel, checking its wounds. Its eyes stare—open and glassy. It’s battered and bruised. The blood is from a torn ear. And even though it stinks to high heaven, I lean until my ear rests against its small body. It looks dead, but, well, “playing opossum” isn’t just a saying.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” The kid watches, tears continuing to fall, looking at death. Things around here have been pretty calm the last few years and she’s young. Maybe this is her first experience with this kind of loss?
It’s faint, but I hear a heartbeat and shallow breathing inside the small animal’s chest. I sit up, and I’m puzzled why smiling hurts. Guess I haven’t used those muscles for a long time.
“Nope. What’d you say his name is? Whitey? Whitey is alive.”
The kid’s dark eyes glare at me dubiously. I guess she’s had adults lie to her before.
“Whitey is an opossum. They don’t move very fast, so when they are threatened or get really scared, their bodies sort of… shut down. This tricks the attacker into leaving them alone, thinking they are already dead.”
The kid listens to me carefully, and I watch her slowly give in to hope.
I take advantage of Whitey’s temporary paralysis to treat his…uh, her injuries. Whitey is female. The kid watches everything I’m doing as if she’s memorizing proper opossum care. While I’m at it, I give her a lesson on marsupials and show her Whitey’s pouch. She already knows about the prehensile tail.
“I found him, I mean her, when she was just a little baby,” she tells me. “I fed her all by myself. She likes to ride on my shoulders.”
Food was scarce in the village sometimes—I bet it was hard on the kid to share her food. Probably her parents didn’t approve of it either. “Did your parents let you keep him inside?” People did, on occasion, eat opossum, and I was curious how Whitey had made it to adulthood.
“I don’t have any.” The kid says it matter of fact, without emotion. Ah. One of the pastor’s orphans, then. I’d been to the church to treat them on occasion. I vaguely remembered a kid who could have been this one, but I definitely didn’t remember an opossum. Opossums didn’t live very long, though, and I hadn’t been to the village for a year. Too busy taking care of Chuck—and mourning him. The raising of Whitey probably happened while I was away.
For the first time in months, thinking about Chuck didn’t suck me under. I was still sad, but it didn’t take me over.
“Well,” I say, getting slowly to my feet, making sure I don’t tweak my trick knee. “Let’s get her somewhere safe to recover, yeah?”
The kid looks at me then back at the village. The church has been lost in the fog. The town looks quiet, but the fog hides those boys. I don’t have high expectations of Whitey being long for this world if the kid goes back into town.
“Okay,” the kid says, carefully picking up the limp opossum. Then she starts walking back to the farm. Mouse and Mister escort her, running ahead and then back, as if she’s a miniature me. Kuzko and Pacha nose me for treats, but finding me empty-handed, they snort indignantly and go back to their meadow.
I make a mental note to give each of them something special after I get Whitey and the kid settled. Normal is going to look different now. I’m smart enough to realize that Mouse is happier with Mister and Kuzco is happier with Pacha. I lost my Woodchuck, but I don’t have to stay alone. The whole world’s been paralyzed, heartbeat slow, breathing shallow, hoping the predators don’t see us. Shut down. Me most of all, since Chuck died. There’s a time to stop playing opossum.
The kid walks with purpose and confidence down the road. She doesn’t remember a “before” when electricity worked. There’s never been refrigerators or ambulances in her world. An antique train buff will get the steam-powered locomotive going again and change everything. It’s the nature of human beings to evolve, face challenges, improve the human condition. Yes, those village boys were cruel. But there’s also a preacher who takes in orphans, a kid who adopts an orphaned opossum, an old veterinarian who had just about given up considering taking on an apprentice.
I pick up Excalibur, squelch through the mud, and let myself slowly give in to hope.
Always Too Much and Never Enough
by Chloe Viner
They get mad at me
for smiling
it’s inappropriate in
such times
also
I need to smile
more
for to be a woman
is to always be too much
