The First Year

by Jeff Rosenplot

  Try to get comfortable in bed. I’ve alternated between all four bedrooms, kind of like playing musical beds. Lying in the big bed tonight, in the master bedroom. During the day, the room has a spectacular view of the lagoon, the beach and the ocean beyond. At night, it’s just dark. The stars don’t cut through the tint of the glass. The absolute darkness is disorienting. It’s why my thoughts are so persistent. There’s nothing else to focus on.

  The family who lived in my house was named Charles. Jim and Sandy plus three kids, all teenagers, Jill and Jenny and Trent. It’s been hard to reconcile the framed photographs throughout the house with the dried and decomposing messes I found lying in the beds. The faces that smile back at me from the photos are confident, attractive, maybe even cocky. A lot of the pictures were taken in exotic locations. Standing in front of the Eiffel Tower. Riding camels in front of the pyramids in Egypt. Jim and Sandy’s drivers licenses were from New York. A few of the photos were snapshots taken in New York City, on a street that looked right out of some romantic comedy. I found twenty thousand dollars in cash in a leather briefcase in the study downstairs. I buried all five of them side-by-side in the sandy soil on the opposite side of the garage. Their graves were easier to dig than those I dug in Detroit. The soil gave way like a knife through butter.

  At first, I didn’t slept in the beds. The mattresses were still okay, the sheets had absorbed most of the mess, but the thought of sleeping in literal deathbeds gave me the creeps. A dozen restless nights on the sofa gave me the incentive to try. And I do sleep eventually, despite my persistent thoughts.

  Sleep isn’t coming tonight. It happens like that sometimes. I’ve gotten used to recognizing those nights. Get out of bed and pad barefoot down the dark staircase. After the night at the co-op and on the bridge, the dark doesn’t bother me as much. I’m aware of it, though, like a childhood toy I can never quite part with.

  Open the glass door and I’m rewarded with the welcome roar of the waves. It’s high tide, and the lagoon has reconnected with the ocean. I shiver. I try to remember to use sunscreen, but every once in awhile I forget and my translucent skin burns like a lit match. Yesterday was one of those sunburn days. The wind off the ocean stings the burn on my shoulders. Go back inside, dig out a long-sleeved shirt and pull it on over my tank top.

  Grab a bottle of water and go back outside. Stretch out in one of the lawn chairs I found in the garage. The stars glisten like white teardrops above my head.

  Maybe the purpose is that thereis no purpose. The tide and the stars and the wind, none of it cares whether I survive or whether there’s a piece of the world where human life still holds a stake. The tide and the stars and the wind are indifferent.

  “Maybe I can be indifferent, too.”

  That thought is strangely comforting. Doze off. Wake up with the sunrise, a sharp brightness over the ocean horizon. My body is stiff. The plastic lounge chair isn’t designed for overnight guests.

  There’s something in the house. Aware of another presence as soon as I walk inside. Months of being alone has made me hyper-aware of movement. Freeze. A series of quick glances left, right, up the stairs don’t produce anything obvious. Maybe my imagination is going on a test drive. It wouldn’t be the first time. It took me weeks in the beach house to realize the wind against the windows wasn’t a horde of zombies banging on the glass.

  No, it isn’t my imagination. The hair on my neck tingles. I’m not alone. I left the glass door open when I came outside last night. Step backwards, outside the door.

  A set of sandy footprints circles the plastic chair. They lead from the lounger into the house. My own bare footprints crossed over them when I walked into the house. The prints are from an animal. Not a deer — I’ve seen enough deer tracks to recognize those. Canine, maybe? A dog? Coyote? They’re big feet, roughly the width of my own. Maybe another cougar?

  Step warily back inside the house. Weigh my options. Wait it out, hope that whatever is inside decides there isn’t anything of value and moves on? Try to find the animal, scare it away somehow? Walk as quietly as I can across the living room floor. Look around for some sort of weapon. The boy, Trent, has a baseball bat in his bedroom closet. That, and a stack of dirty magazines. The baseball bat would be most effective, unless whatever had come into the house is an outraged feminist.

  If itis another cougar, I’ll definitely need some protection. Tiptoe across the floor toward the stairs. Hopefully whatever’s inside won’t hear me before I reach the bat.

  There’s a soft whimper from the kitchen. I pause, one foot on the bottom stair. Curiosity is quickly replacing trepidation. I know I should probably get the bat, but the whimper doesn’t sound hostile. Perhaps that’s just a distraction. Whimper softly and then attack.

  Hesitate a moment longer and then step cautiously toward the kitchen. Angle myself around the kitchen island, trying to see what’s behind it before what’s behind it sees me.

  It’s a dog. It’s dirty and thin, with large floppy ears and huge paws, both of which looked far too big for its body. The dog looks up at me with wide, brown eyes.

  “Where in the world did you come from?” The dog whimpers.

  “It’s okay, I’m not gonna’ hurt you. Maybe we can make that a mutual arrangement?”

  The dog’s tail begins to twitch. In a moment, the twitching has migrated to a full-on wag.

  “You’re not gonna’ hurt me, are you?” The dog whimpers again, but the tone of the sound has become less whiney. I sit down on the floor. The dog lowers its head expectantly. I make a tsk-tsk sound with my tongue and hold out my hand. Slowly, deliberately, the dog starts walked toward me. It’s a puppy, judging by its gait. Its paws and its head are too big for its body, and the imbalance makes it top heavy. I’m laughing. It isn’t a sound I expected. The dog loses its balance, sprawls across the tile floor. I laugh harder.

  “Come here, little guy.” The dog rights itself and skids the rest of the way across the floor. It collides into my outstretched bare foot.

  The dog isn’t bone-thin, but he sure hasn’t been eating regular meals. His brown fur is matted and clumped with dirt and burrs. Run my hand behind the dog’s ear. A fat flea jumps onto my knuckle. I crush it between my fingernails. The dog licks my fingers. Its tongue is soft and wet.

  “You sure are friendly, aren’t you?” The dog whimpers again and crawls up my body to lick my face. I close my eyes as the dog slobbers over my eyelids.

  “Easy, guy, I’m not going anywhere.” The dog is a boy, and he has no collar.

  “Yeah, that would’ve been too convenient. Not like I could return you to your owners, though, right?”

  I rub the dog and try to pick out burrs at the same time.

  “I’ll bet you’re hungry, aren’t you? I’m fresh out of Dog Chow, but you look like someone with a taste for Vienna sausages.”

  I disentangle myself from the dog and walk into the kitchen. The dog whimpers again and pads after me. I fetch a can of Vienna sausages, dig out a bowl from the Charles family’s cabinets and set breakfast out for the dog. He’s hesitant for a moment, and then swallows the tiny sausages in a half dozen huge bites.

  “You weren’t kidding, were you?” I open another can and pour it into the bowl. The dog devours it nearly as fast.

  “Okay, let’s let that digest. Maybe think about giving you a bath.”

  It doesn’t occur to me not to keep the dog. I’m not sure it’s my choice, anyway. Ownership has become an antiquated concept. I can’t own the dog any more than I can own the beach house. If the scores of bodies and miles of emptiness has taught me anything, it’s that life is just a rental property.

  I run upstairs to find a hairbrush. The dog tries to climb the stairs after me, but ends up whining at the bottom step until I come back.

  “See? I didn’t go far.” I sit down on the floor with my legs spread out in front of me. The dog climbs into the empty space between them. I sing to the dog as I brush him. It’s a hodgepodge of songs, ever
ything from the old Bob Dylan songs Dad loved to Taylor Swift and Katy Perry. Some of the dog’s knots are stubborn, but he doesn’t protest too much to me tugging on his fur. In fact, he starts snoring.

  “I’ll bet you’ve seen some tough things, haven’t you?” The dog snores. “I’d probably give you a run for your money, kiddo.”

  Using Dad’s pet name for me is reflex. I’m not sure if Dad had ever called me by name unless I was in trouble. Kiddo, sprout, munchkin, even booger. It made me feel special, like sitting at the cool table at school.

  “I guess I should give you some sort of name. Not that you really care, right? You’d probably answer to the name Booger, just like me.”

  I pull out another burr from the dog’s fur and drop it on a growing pile beside me. It looks like I’ve removed half the dog’s fur, but I don’t see any bald spots. In fact, the dog looks significantly better.

  “I’ll bet that feels good.” The dog shifts contentedly against my leg. It’s been less than an hour since I woke up outside and already I can’t imagine the dog not being beside me. That scares me a bit. I just began to get used to being alone. My fear of the dark is abating, and I’ve finally stopped expecting to run into someone every time I walk into a new building. The dog doesn’t frighten me. There’s nothing scary about the floppy little guy curled up against my thigh. My fear comes from how quickly I’ve given up my solitude. As soon as that thought enters my head I feel ridiculous for thinking it. Being alone isn’t my choice. It never was. It was foisted on me like a visit from an unwanted relative. But since the moment I made the decision to leave Detroit, I’ve embraced being alone. I didn’t choose it but I accepted it. I’ve come to expect it. The dog changes that. Is it a bad thing? No. It’s an unknown thing. And I’ve had quite enough of the unknown.

  “Oliver.” Not sure where the name comes from. I read so voraciously that it’s possible I picked it up that way, some character in a book. Regardless, as soon as I say it out loud, I know it fits. Oliver is a floppy, clumsy sort of name. Oliver the dog. His name fits him better than his ears do.

  At the sound of the name, the roll of the three syllables off my tongue, the little mutt chirps. It isn’t a bark or a growl, just a simple, satisfied chirp.

  “Oliver.” That’s his name. He’s my dog. And I’m his human.

  Sustainable

  Oliver gives me something to focus on. He isn’t helpless. He’s managed to survive in the same world as me. Wherever he came from, an abandoned shelter or loving home or dropped by the side of the road, he’s been scrappy enough to make it to the beach house. That isn’t to say I don’t dote on him. I’ve never had so much as a hamster. Grace, of course, was allergic, and that precluded having a pet. I argued that Grace could take allergy pills, but Her Holiness raised such an outraged stink whenever the subject came up that it wasn’t worth pursuing.

  Oliver follows me wherever I go. At first I carried him in the bike trailer, but he loves running so much that now I just let him keep pace beside me. Our first trip was to Petco, where I filled the trailer full of canned dog food, biscuits, toys and flea drops. The beach house is beginning to look like a child’s playroom. Ropes and plastic squeaky toys and devoured bits of stuffing are everywhere. Oliver never lets me out of his sight. He loves to chase me through the ocean waves, and the two of us spend long afternoons running up and down the beach. Oliver sleeps beside me in bed, sprawled out like a crime scene. Despite the rapidly growing dog taking up most of the bed, I’ve started sleeping soundly. It’s the first time I’ve consistently done so in months. The combination of sleep and exercise brings back my clarity of purpose.

  “Maybe it’s time to figure out how to get the lights back on.” I talk to Oliver non-stop, a one-sided monologue that’s both cathartic and hysterically funny to me.

  We find books on solar power and basic electricity. I read them by scavenged candlelight with Oliver’s head in my lap.

  “This doesn’t look too hard. The parts we need might be hard to find, though.”

  Oliver groans in his half-asleep voice. I absently put my hand on his head. My palm fits perfectly over his head, my small fingers curving behind his ears like I’m holding a football. Touching him has become such a natural part of my life that I barely notice it anymore. Oliver starts snoring again.

  “If we can get the power on, we can have lights and maybe even music and movies. An electric can opener, too, ‘cause I’m getting pretty sick of opening cans.”

  It also means we can refrigerate, if I can dependably generate enough electricity. That’s a lot of power I’m considering. The books I’m reading dance around the question of powering lots of things consistently with solar power. There’s a whole lot of talk in the books about selling excess power back to the electric companies, but that all seems a little ambitious. Maybe solar will work. It would involve a lot of solar panels. Big ones. Bigger than would fit on the back of my bike.

  There are two big hurdles that come out of all that. First, the logistics of transportation. The car crash in Ohio has made me averse to driving. Second, refrigeration means I’d have the capability of storing things, perishable things, for an extended period of time. Fruit. Vegetables. And meat. Which means I’d have to kill. A car and a weapon. Both have been abject failures so far.

  Eventually I’ll have to harvest my own food. I’ve known that since I first dropped the gun, and with each shop I’ve picked clean I’ve been acutely aware that the end of the cans was one step closer. Being sustainable is the next logical step. But sustainability isn’t something I can create with the wave of a magic wand. It’ll take time. The books sitting on the arm of the sofa are all consistent about that fact. Getting the power back on, finding and transporting and then installing the solar panels, hooking up the electricity and then figuring out what went wrong when it doesn’t work. It won’t work the first time. I know me.

  The orchard is still producing fruit, but I can’t possibly pick and eat all of it before it rots. Most of the fresh fruit falls in piles on the ground. It’s August, as far as I know. Fruit is seasonal. The trees will stop producing soon enough. I’m fairly confident Oliver and I will make it through the winter by subsisting on canned and packaged food. I haven’t even gone near the Costco and Wal-Mart SuperCenter in North Charleston yet. Both of those stores are too overwhelming. So there’s still a surplus. But what will happen eventually? We could become nomadic again. Hannah and Oliver wandering the empty cities and sleeping in convenience stores. But we’ve got a good thing going here. Kind of an awesome thing. Sun, sand, surf. And a temperate climate. Fruit grows here. Which means other things will grow here, too.

  I reach for the pad of paper and pen lying on the end table. My motion makes Oliver gurgle in disapproval. Put my hand on his head and scratch his ear. He settles down.

  I make another list. It’s something Mom would do. Mom was organized. Dad was all about ideas. Mom, she followed behind him and made sure his ideas didn’t blow anyone up. The only reason Barton Heating and Cooling stayed in business as long as it did was because Mom made it happen. Dad fixed mechanical things — Mom fixed Dad.

  “Let’s start with what we’ve got. The fruit trees are full. It’s stupid to just let them fall to the ground.”

  Write down “CAN FRUIT” under a heading called “THINGS TO DO NOW”. I’ve never canned fruit before, but I know people did it. That means it’s doable. Under “CAN FRUIT” I scribble, “GET A BOOK”.

  “Maybe find a generator? That means I’ll need gas. There are gas stations all over the place. And cars. But how does a generator even work?”

  Under “GENERATOR”, I write, “GET A BOOK”. Canning the fruit and hooking up a generator. That’s action. Doing something. As I look at the short list in my hand, I feel for the first time in a long time a sense of purpose. Everything that’s happened so far, both the gruesome and the good, it’s happenedto me. Making this list, I’m taking back control. And control has been something in very short supply.r />
  I get up and put the list on the refrigerator, held up by a magnet with a stylized skyline of St. Louis on it. The list grows, and by growing gives me projects to complete. Survival comes down to two things — luck and purpose. Luck is something out of my control. Purpose, though, that’s definitely something I can master.

  Amanda’s Pride

  Either I’m acclimating to the heat or it’s starting to cool off. Whichever, my ability to tolerate longer periods of exploration has increased. Oliver doesn’t mind. As long as he can slurp down buckets of water, he’s good to go.

  Charleston is surrounded by water. The ocean to the east and south, rivers and swamps and ponds and just about every kind of water source weaving through the city like hot chocolate syrup melting over a dish of ice cream. There are a half dozen marinas scattered throughout the various waterways. I’ve done some preliminary reconnaissance of them, but have left them largely untouched.

  I pull my bike and my awkward trailer to a stop in front of the largest marina. Oliver’s panting, so I give him some more water. The breeze is helping me cool down. I picked up my watch last week, but I still have no way of figuring out how to set it. The tower clock stopped a few weeks ago. I forgot to wind it. I tried turning my phone on for a second, but the time on my phone was generated from a signal from a cell tower. No power, no cell service, no time.

  The boats that are moored in the marina are big. Not like cruise ships, but maybe the size of tractor-trailer cabs. Each of them has a name, printed on the back of each. “Betty’s Paradise”, “Won A Bet”, “My Happy Place”, things like that. Really stupid names if you ask me. I guess naming a boat is a thing. Orwas a thing. The waves rock the boats gently, and they make a squeaking sound as they rub against the docks. The docks are metal and float on top of the water.