by Will Weaver
Mr. Worthing turned to us. His face looked strange, too white. “I have a cousin who lives—or lived—near Tacoma. We’re pretty sure he’s dead.” And then he turned back to the screen.
The room was quiet. We all looked at each other. Leave it to a teacher to ruin a good time. Nathan Dale Schmidt, a skinny kid with yellow dreds, pushed out his lower lip and made the sign of the cross. We all cracked up, but silently.
“Math question, Miles,” Mr. Worthing said without looking.
I can’t tell you how I hated the man when he did that.
“Mount Rainier is gone. Vaporized. If it was approximately cone-shaped, with a height of 2.65 miles and a base radius of 6 miles, how much volume would that be?”
I had the usual two options: act dumb and lie, or be smart and look like a geek. The formula popped quickly into my head: 1/3 πr2h. And if you had the formula, the rest was easy. Sometimes I wished I had recall like normal people. When I was small, at home we played a card game called Memory. Dozens of little animal cards were dealt facedown, and then we took turns drawing two and trying to make pairs. I beat everybody, kids and adults, every time. Memory Boy, my parents called me.... Now I scrunched up my face and crunched the numbers. “About a hundred cubic miles, boss,” I said.
There were giggles about the room over the “boss” part.
“One hundred cubic miles—and that’s just one of the mountains!” Mr. Worthing said. He didn’t take his eyes off the screen.
We continued to watch the ash rising from the crater of the former Mount Rainier. Talk about boring. The ash cloud billowed up as gray and repetitious as a screen saver designed by a dropout from Cobol 101. The newscasters hyperventilated over the same stuff: “… ash plume will soon reach the stratosphere, about nine to twelve miles above the earth, and begin to disperse into the jet stream,” and “… possible wide-reaching implication for global weather patterns....”
“Mr. Worthing?” I asked.
“Yes, Miles?”
“Shouldn’t we get out of school for this?”
“Why is that, Miles?” Mr. Worthing said without looking.
“I mean, it’s a national event of tragic proportions.”
“I think our school administration will hold that it’s very important to carry on in times like these. Don’t you agree, Miles?”
“I’m not sure, sir. At least Mr. Litzke should cancel our oral-history project.” There was a chorus of agreement. The dreaded oral-history project was supposed to start today in social studies. I didn’t mind the ninth-grade science project, but I hated anything to do with reading and writing. And in this case, old people.
“We should study volcanoes instead,” someone called.
“I’m sure Ms. Guilfoile will be happy to talk about volcanoes in your science class,” Mr. Worthing said.
Discussion lagged. The newscasters continued to quack on. There were scenes of bodies being dug up from the mud. I felt some pressure to make a move.
“Mr. Worthing?” I said.
He sighed. “Yes, Miles?”
“Watching this is making me very sad. I’m experiencing feelings of anxiety and grief.”
There were snickers.
Mr. Worthing detached his gaze from the screen and slowly turned to me.
I kept a straight face. “I don’t think I’m coping well at all, Mr. Worthing. All those dead people. Can I go to the counselor and talk to someone about feeling sad?”
More snickering across the room. Mr. Worthing pursed his lips. I could see he was disappointed in me. Which made me feel terrible. But I couldn’t back out now. Once you begin a move, even a stupid one, it’s terminal not to follow through.
“Yes, Miles. Of course. If you think you need professional help, then you should have it.” There were hoots of laughter—on Mr. Worthing’s side this time. He scribbled a pass. “Get out of here,” he said. His gaze cut right through me, and then he turned back to the screen and its unending geyser of ash.
I made a triumphant exit, slapping hands here and there. And then I stood outside in the long, empty hallway. For one last laugh I peeked back through the little rectangular window of the classroom. My friends had already turned away.
I watched them for a while, but no one looked my way again, so I plodded along the rows of battered lockers toward the counselor’s office. I handed my pass to the secretary. “Hello, Miles!” she said cheerfully. They were always so cheerful here. A couple of losers, one with long hair, the other with a shaved head, stared at me from the battered chairs and couches.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” they replied, and looked away.
I took a seat and paged through a Teen Esteem magazine. The pages were thick and gummy to the touch; all the pictures were defaced. The cheerful, handsome teenagers had poked-out eyes, extra genitals, and rude dialogue boxes added. I sighed. I wondered what was going on back in my advisor pod.
After a while the losers were called inside, and soon Mr. Montroy Jones appeared. “What say, Miles?”
I nodded.
“This way, kid.”
I was glad it was him. Mr. Jones was a huge black guy who scared everybody but me. He had once been in prison but then was born again or something. He still had lots of bad tattoos, which he kept to remind him of his “stupid days,” as he called them. He was the nicest adult in the school.
He scanned my pass as we entered his office. “Feelings of anxiety and grief over the volcano, Miles?”
I nodded.
He closed the door.
We settled into our chairs.
I tried to put on a sad face. “I have a cousin who might be dead,” I said.
He stared at me, then slowly wadded up my pass and made a perfect shot through the tiny basketball net clamped on his wastebasket. “So, Miles. Your old man’s still on the road with Shawnee Kingston?”
I shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Next time he plays in Minneapolis, you think you can get me tickets?”
I stared.
“Kidding, Miles,” he said. “Kidding.” He tipped back in his chair and laughed hugely.
I smiled. It was funny. Kind of.
In second-hour science Ms. Audrey Guilfoile was pumped. She was one of those younger teachers who tried to “identify” with her students. I found this annoying, but at least she was lively and always had interesting facts. “The Cascade Eruption is not the first in the world, gang. In fact, dig this.” She talked and passed out a sheet. “Way back in A.D. 79 there was the huge eruption of Mount Vesuvius, near Pompeii, Italy—but everybody knows about Vesuvius.” As she went on about it nonetheless, I scanned the handout:
Iceland, 1783, Skaptar Jokull volcano. Hundreds of deaths, and the following years 1783–84 were unusually cool. A “dry fog” hung over the land, cutting off incoming sunlight; “rays collected in a burning glass would scarcely kindle brown paper.” —Benjamin Franklin.
“This material comes from a great book called Ring of Fire, by author David Ritchie,” Ms. Guilfoile said. “It’s available in the library. Anybody know where the library is?”
There were a few distracted chuckles; most everybody was actually reading.
Indonesia, 1815, Tambora volcano. It sent 36 cubic miles of rock ash into the air. The following year, 1816, became known as “the year without summer.” Eastern Canada experienced such a poor harvest that starvation became a significant cause of death among low-income families. France and Britain were plagued by crop failures, and in some parts of Europe the populace was reduced to eating rats, cats, dogs, and anything that would fit into a pot.
“Does this mean we’re going to have to eat our pets?” Dara Jamison asked.
There was laughter. She was very weird, always dressed in black and purple—the kind of girl my sister thought was cool.
“This is a volcanic incident, Dara, not a Stephen King novel,” Ms. Guilfoile said. “Be sure to tell your dogs and cats and hamsters they’re safe.”
I read on:
Indonesia, 1883, the Krakatoa eruption. Although it killed thousands … the most striking effect had to do with the air. Much of the material blown into the atmosphere by Krakatoa was exceedingly fine. The volcano acted like a giant grindstone during its eruption. Bits of pumice lifted easily into the air and spread around the earth, wafted along by the jet stream.... World climate cooled perceptibly all through the late 1880s.
Ms. Guilfoile softly drummed her fingers as the class read. Some students moved their lips and were still on paragraph one. But she couldn’t wait. I liked that about her.
“Let’s jump ahead to 1980,” she said. “Washington State and the Mount Saint Helens eruption—also on the Cascade Range. Its gray cloud turned noon to midnight. Ash the consistency of confectioners’ sugar piled up in the streets of Yakima, Washington, and other towns. Some could be bulldozed away, or scraped off rooftops, or shoveled out of the way, but most had to be hosed away. This put severe strain upon water supplies and sewage systems. Several small towns were almost totally buried.”
There was silence.
“Aren’t bodies totally preserved in the ash?” Dara said.
People groaned.
“She’s obsessed with dead bodies,” someone called out.
Dara didn’t hear. “Like at Pompeii, people can be dug up almost two thousand years later and still have their eyelashes,” she added.
There were louder groans.
“Not sure about the eyelashes, Dara,” Ms. Guilfoile said easily. “But we’ll definitely see the effects of the Cascade blast even here in the Midwest. First, we’ll probably start to notice some haze, and more intense sundowns and sunups. Not that any of you have seen a sunrise recently.”
There was laughter, and science class rolled on.
Dara whispered to me, “I still think we’re going to have to eat our pets.”
CHAPTER THREE
ALL ABOARD
THE ALI PRINCESS WAS READY. “It’s time,” I said. With my parents reunited on their bicycle, I gave the Ali Princess a push start. She was heavier than I’d hoped for—a lot heavier. However, once moving, the Princess rolled easily, and I scrambled into the back bay and took the right rear pedals.
“Hey, this is not hard,” my father called over his shoulder as he steered us down the curving cul-de-sac driveway.
“Great,” I said evenly. We’d been on the road only ten seconds, plus we were going downhill. But I’d given him the front for a reason: He might feel like he was making some kind of family contribution. For a change.
I had to be in back by the main axle and sprocket in case we had mechanical problems. As well, the whole drive-chain assembly would need occasional oiling. I saw myself like one of those smudged, greasy oiler guys in the bowels of the old steamships where pistons were as big as cars. In the movie Titanic the best scenes were of the engine room followed (a very close second) by Leonardo DiCaprio doing his charcoal sketch of Kate Winslet. I’d rewound to both a few times.
But the Ali Princess was not the Titanic. It was clear sailing ahead, and all parts turned smoothly. White pumice kicked up behind, then exhaled back onto our skinny tire marks and obscured them. Perfect. The less evidence that we had left town, the better.
When I lived in the woods, I never walked the same trail twice. Nobody knew where my cabin was. That’s because I never left any tracks. I was as paranoid these days as old Mr. Kurz, my oral-history “buddy” from ninth grade. Twice I had seen footprints in the ash alongside our house and garage, tracks that led back toward the Hofmeyers, our nearest neighbors. We’d been sort of friends with them—parents and the children—for several years, but things were different now. People had passed through a “come-together, help-your-neighbor” mentality and now looked out for number one. Hoarding was against the law, but everybody did it. Nobody thought they had enough food. Everybody worried that their neighbors had more.
The Ali Princess rocked briefly side to side.
“Everything okay?” I called to my father.
“Just testing the steering,” he said. He glanced back at my mother, who pedaled steadily. “Piece of cake, really.”
We rolled on. Houses were all nearly dark. Electricity was rationed and expensive. Most streetlights were shut off as well, which was fine by me. The less attention tonight, the better. We turned onto the empty boulevard, heading east toward the freeway entrance. Any vehicles out after dark would be the cops, ambulance drivers, or truckers. Gasoline supplies were restricted, though available on the black market—especially from farmers. But big deal. Who knew any farmers? And anyway, “nonessential” travel was forbidden. If the cops stopped you for a destination check and found out you were just cruising, your car was confiscated on the spot.
It was not that the country was low on supplies of gas or other forms of energy. Rather, the big power plants were part of the problem. Nuclear generators, oil refineries, coal-burning producers—all were reduced to minimum operating levels in order to keep from further screwing up air quality. And since the biggest contributors to air pollution were automobiles, they were first on the government’s air-quality hit list. On the other hand, those empty streets were great for skaters, in-liners, bicyclists—and the Ali Princess.
We neared the streetlights of downtown Wayzata. The ever-falling mist of ash swelled their globes into giant round dandelion pods ready to burst with white seed. Below their skinny iron stems, the streets were empty. The Fresh Mart Produce Store marquee read, LETTUCE AND TOMATOES AVAILABLE WEDNESDAY! (CUSTOMER LIMITS). The hardware store, with plywood on its lower windows, read, NO GASOLINE/PROPANE/BOTTLED WATER KEPT HERE OVERNIGHT. Here and there a business was boarded up. Dust drifted and swirled down Main Street, which looked like a ghost town.
I didn’t like it. The lights above were too bright, the street below too dim. I kept a sharp eye through the dust-fog and touched my aluminum baseball bat, ready in the cargo bay. I hadn’t played baseball since Little League—I quit when I got into skateboarding—but I also had not forgotten what it feels like to get whacked. Big Chris Long struck out one day, and flipped his bat behind him toward the dugout. I was on deck—had my helmet on—but still got knocked cold. I remember hearing the Whack! on my head, then seeing bright, floaty things. Now I squeezed my bat’s rubber-wrapped neck. Strange how things like bats and hammer handles and golf clubs feel so good in your hands. Like they were made to be swung.
We were just about through town when I heard a noise. A sharp chirp—then another—nails being wrenched from wood. “Look,” my mother whispered, and pointed. Through the haze, ahead on the right, four figures in dark clothes with dust rags tied over their faces were prying loose a sheet of plywood from a house that looked abandoned. Nails groaned under their crowbars.
“That’s not the Sears home fix-it crew,” I whispered. “Keep pedaling.”
Sarah, slouched in the luggage bay, sat up and began to look around with alarm. We leaned harder into our pedals, and the wheels purred faster over the pale, floury street. The Princess had no squeaks or rattles, and we were almost past when Sarah, the know-everything tough girl, spotted the housebreakers and shrieked.
Just a small screech, but it did the job. The nearest masked man spun around. His head jerked backward as he took in the image of the Princess. He pointed, and I heard him grunt something to the others, who turned as well. Suddenly the main (biggest) guy came trotting across the street on an interception course with the Princess.
“Oh, damn!” Sarah shouted.
Great. Just great.
“Hey! Hey there!” the man grunted. His voice, muffled by the dust rag, sounded like a bear huffing. He pointed with his crowbar as he ran at us. “Stop. I want to talk to you!”
“Faster!” I hissed to my parents. We leaned into our pedals big time. When we were at top speed, I grabbed the baseball bat and hunkered beside Sarah; she was trying not to look. Crowbar Man kicked up dust as he charged. I read his mind: He would jam his crowbar into the rear wheel spo
kes and bring us to a crashing halt. It was not a bad plan, but he had not reckoned on a retired Little League catcher who batted over .500 in his golden years.
Things went to slow motion. About two seconds from impact—his crowbar was in range—I went into a batter’s crouch and swung. A level swing. Got my hips into it. My bat caught his smaller iron bar just above his fingertips with a sound like a church bell rung by a sledge-hammer. His black bar spun away through the air. The Princess slewed briefly sideways from my motion—Sarah herself grabbed my shirt or I might have fallen overboard—but then we regained the straight and narrow. Crowbar Man lay flopping in the street wringing his arm and screaming like he was holding a bare electrical wire and could not let go.
“Next time wear work gloves, loser!” I shouted back. I gave him the one-finger salute, and we sped on. The rest of his gang huffed and puffed into the street, but they were nowhere near as fast as him or us, and soon they disappeared behind in a haze of pale dust.
“That was close,” Nat breathed.
“Good work, Miles,” my father called. “Couldn’t have done it better myself.” He tried a laugh, but it went nowhere.
We rolled on, panting and silent. Sarah peeked back wide-eyed. “Are they gone?”
“History,” I said.
She turned to me. “Sorry,” she said.
I shrugged. “Thanks for grabbing me, by the way,” I said.
She managed a small smile.
I touched the sweet spot of my bat. It had a serious dent, which felt good when I touched it, kind of like a scar that had already healed. But scars are memory buttons: Touch them and you get an instant replay. Weirdly, my heart only now started to pound and my armpits to get clammy. I glanced back over my shoulder, but the gang of four was long gone. I let out a breath. Someday it would be nice, again, to be just a slack kid pushing himself around a driveway on his skateboard and doing grinds on the curbs. I felt a little bit like crying. “You all right?” Sarah said.
