I felt like I was going to cry, but I managed to hold it together until he left.
It’s almost time for dinner, so I’d better get ready. I’ll write more about my day later tonight once the kids are asleep. Right now, I’ve got to go tell Dylan and Violet to finish the game of Candyland they’re playing and start getting ready for dinner.
8:43 p.m.
I don’t feel like I’ve been writing enough lately. We’ve just been so darn busy with work and getting settled in that it seems like it’s one thing after another after another…which is good in a way. Staying busy keeps my mind off things…things like our old lives and of course, Chris. The worst is at night when I’m trying to fall asleep. Sleep used to come so easy. Heck, Chris even said I could sleep through the apocalypse. Well, that’s certainly not been the case. Now I try not to let my mind race when I go to bed, but our lives are so filled with chaos and the pain of what the flu has done to our world that sometimes it’s hard to think about anything else.
But on to other subjects – I don’t want to fall into one of those funks again.
Dinner tonight was a little calmer than yesterday. I think some of the excitement surrounding my arrival is starting to fade, but I was still the main topic of conversation and questions for the evening. Spaghetti with sauce and garlic bread was served. It hit the spot.
After dinner, I asked to borrow one of our work trucks and made a trip back to our former Victorian home to pick up a few more things that would help furnish our little apartment. Speaking of “things”, I can’t believe how much stuff the town has managed to stockpile. When we were offloading the day’s haul at the old National Guard armory, I was amazed at what an array of supplies has been accumulated. There are stacks and stacks of all sorts of just about every kind of useable supply imaginable. From food, clothing, and tools to cigarettes, fuel, and alcohol, it’s all there.
After we were done unloading the day’s haul, Chase sent me and Dylan over to the courthouse with a list of addresses of the homes that we’d cleaned out. There is a big map of the city there. Every day, one member of each scavenge team takes a pen and crosses off the property lots they’ve finished scavenging to ensure we aren’t backtracking over places we’ve already been. According to the red X’s on the map, we’re only about a quarter way through the town. I guess that’s a good thing considering that once we’ve collected all the remaining goods, we’ll be largely on our own to make due with what we’ve collected and what we can produce ourselves.
Well, I’ve got another busy day of work tomorrow, so I’d better try to get some sleep. While falling asleep can be difficult with all that’s going on in my head, at least I can take comfort in the kids. We have a queen-size bed in our single bedroom. It’s a little tight with all of us in it, but we make it work. It’s actually kind of nice, all of us sleeping together, especially now that the nights are starting to get chilly. Violet sleeps in the middle. She likes the comfort of having me on one side of her and Dylan on the other. Personally, I like having the kids in bed with me, and not just because of their warm little bodies. I’m finding that when I have trouble sleeping and my mind won’t turn off, watching their peaceful faces provides me with a badly needed sense of calm.
Friday, October 4 th
12:43 p.m.
For lunch, some of our scavenge team brings their food with them so they can eat on site. Others take some personal time for a more private lunch back at the square. Dylan and I tend to return home so we can pick up Violet and eat lunch together in our apartment. It doesn’t take me long to get back since we’re working just a few blocks away. Preparing lunch is pretty much slapping some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches together, pouring some warm juice, and opening a bag of chips. Not too difficult.
Today, I’ve already eaten, and the kids are finishing their lunches. Edna told me she didn’t mind making Violet lunch so that she can eat with the rest of the kids, but I like having the chance to see my sweet girl, and I think Violet likes it too. I’ve got about ten more minutes before I drop her back off at Edna’s and return to our current job site – still on North Harrison Street. From what I’ve heard, next week we’ll start on a new block.
So far, I’ve been amazed at all the stuff we’ve managed to collect just from this lone street. We’ve harvested things like batteries, battery chargers, cigarette lighters, cigarettes, matches, fuel, tools, light bulbs, toiletries and medicine, paper goods (tissue/toilet paper), chopped wood from woodpiles for the coming winter, car batteries, and plenty of food and bottled water. Of course a lot of the food we come across is spoiled, but most of the canned foods and items sealed in airtight containers are still okay. We’ve also found a lot of guns and ammunition. I’m amazed at just how many. We’ve found a weapon of some sort – handgun, rifle, shotgun (even some bows and arrows) – in just about every house we’ve searched. I never realized how many people owned firearms. I guess the ironic thing is that when it came down to it, all that firepower did nothing to protect these people against what ultimately killed them – the Su flu.
I’d better finish writing. I’ve got to get Violet back to Edna, and me and Dylan back to work. We have been invited to dine with Gerald and his wife Carolyn tonight. I’m kind of looking forward to the break. It’s exhausting fielding the barrage of questions I get at our communal dinners.
9:58 p.m.
Oooo, I’m feeling a little loopy. Sorry for any spelling errors. I had a couple drinks at Gerald and Carolyn’s and now that I’m home, I’m having a glass of wine from the bottle Chase brought over.
So dinner with Gerald and Carolyn was very nice. The kids were both very well behaved. We had fried chicken, fresh vegetables (brought in last Saturday from a farmer who lives a couple miles outside town), fresh bread (baked by Carolyn), and milk (also farm fresh). During dinner, Carolyn asked how we were settling in, and I told her how nice everyone had been to us so far and thanked them for welcoming us into their community. Then we talked about how work was going (skimming over the more distasteful details), and how Violet was getting along in Edna’s care. Eventually, Gerald asked if I could provide any insight on how things were being run in town. He explained that it was hard for him to see things from an objective standpoint. Since he has largely been responsible for the town’s day-to-day operations, it’s difficult for him to remain unbiased regarding how things are proceeding. He takes so much pride in how the post-flu recovery has been managed that he said he needed an outside prospective – “new eyes” he called them.
I told him that I thought things were very well set up here – much better than what we’d left behind in Chicago – and that I really didn’t see much that could be done to improve them. My only recommendation from the brief time we’d been living in Spencer was that maybe some entertainment options might be a good idea. Such distractions could help take peoples’ minds off the trauma suffered over the past month.
Gerald (who kind of reminds me of Jed Clampett on “The Beverly Hillbillies”) and Carolyn both thought that this was a good idea. He admitted that at times he gets so caught up in the job of just surviving that he forgets we need to LIVE a little to. He said he had a few ideas, and asked for some of mine as well. Before I could say anything, Dylan immediately piped up that having some video games to play would be nice. I explained that I was thinking more along the lines of hooking up a couple VCRs or DVD players so that we could watch movies at night. Gerald thought that both of these ideas were not only good ones but quite feasible. And he agreed that they could be great ways to provide some much needed stress relief to the town’s citizens.
For dessert, Carolyn served an oatmeal crumble with cream. It was superb! The kids and I left their home (located on the north side of the square) full and content.
Gerald and Carolyn are such a happy couple, even after all that has happened. It makes me wonder if they lost family in the flu. No one really broached the subject at dinner. I think people understand that for those who have experienced th
e loss of someone close to them in the flu (which I think is pretty much everyone), the feelings are still too raw to discuss, especially with relative strangers. But sometimes I think about our own family. Chris and I were never that close with the other family members (mostly from his side of the family) that lived around Chicago. I wonder how many of them survived the flu? And of those trying to get down to southern Illinois, I wonder how many of them actually made it…if any?
Saturday, October 5 th
9:34 a.m.
I just got back inside from a weather check. It’s a bright, sunny, blue sky (which will be great for the farmers market), but it’s kind of chilly out – I’d say only in the upper 40s.
We’re scheduled to be at the farmers market at ten this morning. Dylan and Violet are finishing their bowls of cereal with powdered milk. They are going to help me at whatever I’m supposed to do at the market.
I’m not exactly sure what to expect. Guess I’ll see here shortly.
P.S. Violet’s been asking about why I write in this journal so much. I wasn’t sure exactly how to answer her sweet four-year-old question, so I told her it was my way of putting down thoughts about our lives and what’s happening, and that it helped me feel closer to Daddy – to talk to him in a way. Now she wants to talk to Daddy too, so I’m going to let her.
The following is her entry:
Der daddy
i luv u so mush. i mis u so mush. i wis i cud see u an giv u a big hug an luv. dylan mis u to. i hop i see u rel sun.
luv violet
Now she is working on a picture to put with her letter to Daddy. I feel like crying.
4:33 p.m.
Well that was actually kind of nice. I got to meet a lot of the people that live outside of town. I guess I shouldn’t say “a lot”. It was more like 20 or so. Still, these days, that can seem like a lot.
People trickled into town for the farmers market throughout the day. All of them brought something to trade for canned goods, clean drinking water, or supplies such as gasoline, ammunition, tools, and other items that we’ve collected from around town. I helped at one of the “stands” (which was actually just a pickup truck, its bed loaded, tailgate down) that offered an array of canned goods available for trade. There were cans of corn, peas, potatoes, carrots, black beans, green beans, kidney beans, navy beans, baked beans, pork and beans, diced tomatoes, stewed tomatoes, black olives, mandarin oranges, peaches, pears, pineapple, fruit cocktail, and much more. In trade for these goods, people offered items like fresh milk, chicken eggs, live chickens, fresh meat, and fresh veggies.
There were other trucks like mine. One had one and two gallon containers of gasoline and tanks of propane. Another had packaged dry goods like crackers, cookies, pasta, rice, beans, and potato chips. One offered various herbs and spices including salt and pepper. There was also a truck with an assortment of paper products, toiletries, and medicine and another with guns and ammunition.
Each truck had several people there to assist those arriving with items to trade. Gerald and Carolyn moved among the trucks, acting as supervisors to help the bartering process along when needed since there were no clearly defined rules as to how goods were to be exchanged. A live chicken might be worth an entire case of canned goods, while a dozen eggs might be worth just six cans. It was all very subjective and somewhat confusing at first. But by the end of the afternoon, I’d gotten the feel for it and felt fairly comfortable making trades on my own and unsupervised.
After I’d completed a deal, Violet and Dylan would serve as my little helpers. Violet would collect the items we were accepting in trade (except for the live animals), and Dylan would hop up in the back of the truck and gather whatever we were giving in exchange. The kids weren’t super efficient in their works, but I think the outside-of-towners just liked seeing and being around kids again. Children provide a small sense of normalcy in what is far from a normal world.
I’d say that most of our work came in the form of customer service. I don’t think that many of the people who arrived to town today get much, if any, social interaction. A lot of my day was spent explaining who we were, where we’d come from, how we’d gotten here, and what we’d seen in Chicago and Indianapolis. The negotiation of the actual trades seemed secondary to these people compared to the social and news aspects of their visits. Most of them were surprisingly friendly and quite talkative.
At three o’clock, I was not so much physically but mentally exhausted from rehashing our story for the umpteenth time. So it was perfect timing that as we took to the armory what remained of our supplies as well as the new ones we had gathered, it began to rain (it’d been clouding up throughout the day since our crystal-clear start this morning).
At the armory, items like fresh milk, eggs, meat, and fresh veggies were put in several generator-powered refrigeration units. The four live chickens we’d accumulated went into several cages to be processed later. I ignored Violet when she asked what the word “processed” meant.
After we were done with our work, since we were already at the armory, we took time to do some shopping of our own, loading up on the supplies we’d need for the week. Residents are allowed one paper shopping bag of goods per person, per week, which seems both fair and feasible since dinners are provided by the community.
After I got what we needed, Chase dropped us off at our building so we wouldn’t have to walk back in the rain.
The sound of the rain is nice as I write. It’s heavy enough that we can hear it pounding on the rooftop. It makes it dark and cozy in our little apartment. I’ve lit several candles, and Violet is reading while Dylan watches the rain trickle down the windows that overlook the square. I wish Chris were here to share this with us. He’d be so happy to know that we’re safe here and re-establishing our lives. I’m sure that he’s proud, looking down on us now knowing that he is the reason for us being here. Without him, we would never have made it this far, I’m sure of it. He has been, and continues to be, my inspiration along this arduous trek. His presence in my heart and mind continues to serve as motivation to forge ahead in building this new life of ours.
In other news, Gerald invited us to CHURCH tomorrow! He told me the entire community attends (minus a skeleton crew of the town’s security force), so it feels more like an expectation that we be there than an invitation.
It’s been forever since I’ve been to church. In fact, I was just a child the last time I went. I think it will be a good thing. I remember there being some good lessons to be learned from church sermons. And being a part of a church can provide a nice sense of security and belonging that could be good for the kids, especially now that they no longer have a father around. Plus, I don’t want us to be the community infidels who don’t attend church. The last thing we need is to be viewed as social pariahs. I think that not attending would be strongly frowned upon and certainly wouldn’t help us assimilate with the rest of the community. It’s not something I’m particularly looking forward to on my Sunday off, but like a family gathering, it’s something I SHOULD do.
But for right now, I’m going to light a few more candles, pour myself a glass of wine, and settle down with the kids to do some reading and enjoy listening to the rain.
Sunday, October 6 th
1:33 p.m.
It rained all last night and this morning. I’ve never seen rain like this – a hard, steady, driving rain that has hardly let up from the time it began. I don’t know how much rain we’ve actually gotten, but the streets have standing water in them and it feels like it must have been several inches at least.
Church was good this morning.
The kids weren’t too excited about going this morning when they woke up. They said they just wanted to sleep more. But once we got there, they seemed to get into it. Almost the entire town was there. Gerald (who serves as preacher) took the opportunity to recognize our family, formally introducing us to the rest of the congregation (although I think everyone knows us by now). It was nice he thought of us, th
ough, and it made me feel good that he appreciated our presence. He went on to say how pleased and grateful he was that God had brought us to Spencer and that he hoped we would stay and continue to be a part of their community…their “family” as he called it.
There was lots of singing that the kids seemed to like. Then Edna took all the children downstairs to do some educational activities and play games before the full sermon began.
After the service was over, we all trudged – as careful as we could, to avoid getting completely soaked – over to what I now call the “cafeteria”. A big Sunday dinner of beef stew and noodles was served. It was warm, hearty, flavorful, salty deliciousness.
When we were done, the storm had dissipated for a few minutes, and everyone took the break in the rain to hurry home for naps or whatever.
The kids and I have decided to use the opportunity to walk off some of our Sunday dinner. These stuffed bellies are weighing us down, and we need to get a little activity to help us digest. We decided to do it now since we aren’t sure how long the break in the weather will last. That’s what the kids are getting ready for as I write. They’re putting on rain boots and coats. I think we’ll walk over to the river. Dylan mentioned he’d like to see what its water level looks like after all this rain.
I’d better wrap up this entry and get ready too because I see some darker clouds starting to roll in on the horizon.
The Pandemic Diaries [Books 1-3] Page 19
