The First Year

by Jeff Rosenplot

  “Whose boats were these?” Oliver cocks his head but doesn’t answer. He’s not much of a conversationalist.

  “Probably the same people who lived in the houses around ours. Who knows, maybe one of these belongs to the Charles’. I wouldn’t put it past them.”

  I’ve started learning more about the Charles family. It’s not because I’m terribly interested in them. There’s just not much else to do. Jim, the dad, does something in finance. Did, sorry, keep having problems with the tense. Past, present, future, it’s confusing. Jimdid something in finance. I can’t quite figure out exactly what he did, though. As near as I can tell, Sandy, the mom, was a lawyer. They were both forty-three. Their birthdays were three months apart. Jill and Jenny, the girls, were twins. Seventeen last fall. Maybe they got to see their seventeenth birthdays. Who knows? I can’t find pictures less than two years old. I don’t think anybody was taking pictures last fall. I’ve got all their phones, collected in a shoebox that sits on the dining room table I don’t use. Chargers, too. Not much good to me, though. Jill and Jenny and their younger brother, Trent, were all athletic. There are soccer and baseball uniforms in the photos that line the wall going upstairs. Trent was twelve. And that’s about all I know. Without their phones, I’m limited as to what I can discern. So much of so many lives were virtual. Social media doesn’t exist anymore. All the servers are shut down, and even if they weren’t, the internet doesn’t work without everybody using it.

  Maybe it’s because I didn’t have much access to social media that I’m able to exist like this. Being isolated isn’t entirely new to me. The lack of much documentation of the Charles’ lives, especially the lives of their kids, indicates that they probably lived most of their lives virtually. I still read real books. That’s a big difference. I haven’t found any books in the beach house. Just phones and tablets. I’m not sure Jill or Jenny in all their athletic glory could’ve tolerated this kind of silence.

  “I need to stop making value judgments. I’m not sure who got the better deal, them or us.”

  Oliver’s found a place in the shade to lie down. Smart guy. It’s starting to get hotter.

  “What are we gonna’ do, buddy? Stay in the beach house? I don’t know why I keep asking you that question. We’ve got everything we need. And now we’ve got each other. What else am I looking for?”

  Whatam I looking for? If it’s the lights on the water, too late, I haven’t seen them again in months, or what feels like months. Why do I even care about them, anyway? What the hell could they possibly bring me that I don’t already have?

  I’m swearing a lot more. I don’t even think about Mom anymore when I do it. I don’t think she’d care, anyway. Or give a shit. There, better. Mom probably has other things on her mind right now.

  What would happen if Mom had lived? I say Mom because she’s the first face that pops into my head when I allow myself to go on this stupid and pointless mental journey. Mom would’ve survived. If all of them had been immune, my family, Mom’s the only one I’m certain who would’ve survived. Doing so requires practicality. Dad was the opposite of practical. Grace? Come on. And Gabe, he had the deck stacked against him being deaf. Who knows, maybe he would’ve been okay, too. After spending his life in his own silent world, he would’ve been uniquely prepared for the isolation.

  No, it would’ve been Mom. Hands down. I’ve spent a lot of time talking to Dad, thinking about him, but that’s because I know Mom’s okay. I also know none of them are actually with me. I buried them, after all. Maybe I talk to Dad because I know he would’ve fallen off a cliff halfway through the Adirondacks. Mom would’ve been okay.

  Dad and I were close because our relationship was easier. Fun was always easier. Mom and me, we were too alike. I didn’t appreciate that when she was alive. But I’m alive because of that.

  Damn it, tears again. It’s been awhile. I thought for sure I was past all this.

  “C’mon, Ollie.” I snap my fingers and he jumps up. I wish I could nap like him for two minutes and wake up like I’d just snapped out of a coma. I jump down onto the metal dock and Oliver follows.

  The marina is constructed by a series of interconnected metal docks, a central pathway and then perpendicular docks where the boats themselves are moored. The boats closest to shore are moored lengthwise, so that one full side of each boat is tied along the dock. At the end of the docks, quite a ways down, larger boats are moored with their bows perpendicular again to the horizontal docks. Smaller metal docks extend between the larger boats. There’s a locked fence separating the main entrance of the marina from the big boats. Rich boats. You generally don’t have fences unless you have something to protect. The boats rise and fall with the swell of the water. It’s peaceful to watch. Soothing, like lying on my back and watching clouds mill across a summer sky.

  Amanda’s Pride is docked halfway down the marina. It has a white hull. Most of the ships do. White or silver. Like that old joke Dad used to tell, you can have any flavor you want as long as it’s chocolate. I don’t remember the joke’s context. I just remember Dad laughing like a crazy person every time he said it.

  I don’t know who Amanda was or why she was so proud. It’s a nice boat, though. Shiny and clean, with a long and low cabin area and a spacious deck at the back. The stern, it’s called. Yeah, I read.

  Oliver and I step ontoAmanda’s Pride and I feel the rock of the waves as I do so. I wonder if I’m prone to being seasick. I don’t know. I’ve never been on a boat before. I’ve seen them, of course. The big cargo ships used to pass under the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit, heading from Lake Ontario to Lake Huron, or vice-versa. Smaller pleasure boats used to follow them, like fish trailing behind a whale.

  Oliver follows me through a door into the main cabin. A set of stairs leads below deck. A steering wheel and a console of computer monitors is ahead of me, to the right. Ollie stands at the top of the stairs. He’s become pretty good at sniffing out dead bodies. I don’t smell them much anymore. But there’s nothing to smell here, regardless. As good as Ollie is at smelling them, I’ve become pretty good at sensing them. The hair on the back of my neck prickles whenever there’s one near. Weird.

  I tap my hand on the chair in front of the steering wheel. Oliver bounds over to me. I pick him up and plop him in the chair. He sits up happily. He’s getting bigger and bigger. The floppy little puppy is growing into his feet and ears. It won’t be long before I can’t lift him anymore.

  “Take her to sea, Mr. Oliver.” He wags his tail, looks up at me expectantly.

  “And go where, though? Head south? Find an island? Live on coconuts and hermit crabs? A dog and his girl, the last of the pirates.”

  Yeah, go where? I think I’ve had enough of going. I have a house, food, water. I have the beach. And I have my friend. In a lot of ways, I’m better off than I was before the world ended. That’s a horrible thing to think, but it’s true. Pound for pound, my life is better than it was. Materially, anyway. And maybe even emotionally.

  I don’t like to think about that. I don’t like to think about the ease with which I left my family’s bodies behind. Sometimes I get homesick. Not for a house or even for my family when they were alive. I’m homesick for their bodies. Wasn’t my job to watch out for them? To keep the wild animals at bay, to bring them flowers and to keep them company? A daughter’s duty. A sister’s duty. That’s what makes me homesick. To be the steward of dead bodies. What a stupid thing to be homesick about. Stupid or not, though, it’s what I feel.

  “Can I ever get far enough away to not feel that anymore?” Oliver cocks his head. I talk to Oliver now instead of you. I think I’ve traded up. Neither of you answer me, but at least I know Oliver exists. That is a step up.

  Amanda’s Pride rocks gently back and forth. The hull squeaks as it brushes against the metal dock. Who was Amanda? I don’t know. There’s a photograph taped to the wall behind me. A family, father and mother, three little kids. Looks like it was taken on the deck of this boa
t. One of them must be Amanda.

  Who were any of these people? Not just the ones in the photo, but the ones lying dead in every bed and bathtub and car and church in this city? Every city. Who were they? I’ll never know. If someone wandered into my house, the abandoned old mansion in Detroit, would they find the things I left behind and wonder about me? Would someone else ask who we were, too? What could I tell them? That the daughter and the sister who should have stayed behind instead decided to walk away?

  When will I stop feeling guilty for that? How much time needs to pass before I’ll forget? I don’t know. I just know that today isn’t that day. Maybe tomorrow will be far enough. I keep waiting. I keep passing time in hopes that time itself is the antidote. But time doesn’t exist anymore. I’ve already determined that time is an antique from a dead world. I’m timeless now. And if that’s the case, it means that time will never move on, and I’ll never be free of my spoiled obligation.

  More tears. Wipe them away. I’m tired of crying, tired of feeling. I’m moored to my own dock. I’m anchored to this guilt. But if I pull up the anchor, if I let it go, I’ll be adrift. And there’s a great big empty ocean out there. Lots of room to get lost.

  It’s hot. Step out of the cabin and onto the open deck. Oliver jumps down from the chair and follows me.

  “Let’s go home,” I tell him. It’s a long way back but the ride will clear my head. At least I hope it will.

  SEPTEMBER

  Lights

  It all comes down to focus. That was my mistake in Ohio. Looking for CDs made me cocky, and look where that got me.

  The Land Rover in the garage is much bigger than the little blue Kia I drove out of Detroit. But that means there’s more cargo room inside. I’ve carefully weighed my options. The generator I need is very big. Found one at a Home Depot north of town. My reading gave me a list of criteria to check off.

  The generator is too big for my bike. I held out hope until I measured it. Maybe I could’ve strapped it down with bungee cords, but the weight of the thing would probably have crushed my little bike trailer. Plan B was to push one of the Home Depot flatbed carts across the bridge and down to my beach house. Toyed with that one. The obvious solution, of course, is parked in the garage. Driving is the solution to a lot of things.

  “And if I screw it up again, I might not walk away this time.” Oliver cocka his head.

  “Yeah, I know. No pain, no gain, right?” Another of Dad’s favorites.

  I found the car keys in a bowl on one of the dressers in the master bedroom. There are a bunch of keys on the ring. One of them unlocks the front door of the beach house. Haven’t given much thought to locking the door, so having a key for it took me by surprise. Another pinprick that reminds me of how things used to be. I had a key for the house in Detroit. It completely slipped my mind to take it with me. It would’ve been just another useless reminder of something I’ll never need again. Still, I miss it.

  Oliver trots proudly after me as I walk toward the front door.

  “Oh, buddy, no. I know, you always come with me. But if I get in an accident, I don’t want you to…”

  I think about it as the words are coming out of my mouth. If I leave Oliver in the house and Ido get into an accident, it’s not like some kindly neighbor will look in on him. If I lock him inside the house and never came back, he’ll be just as dead as if he was in the car beside me.

  “Maybe you’ll inspire me to drive more carefully. Guess I can’t do much worse, can I?”

  Open up the front door of the house. By my undoubtedly flawed calculations, it’s early September. The air is still oven-esque, but early mornings whisper the first verses of the fall-is-coming song. Oliver is at my heels. He rarely leaves my side, even when we scavenge shops together. He’s my floppy brown shadow.

  The garage is separate from the house. Haven’t been inside it that often. It’s where I found the shovel I used to bury the Charles family. Other than that, I have little use for that part of the property.

  The garage could hold three cars comfortably. Three identical garage doors give it the look of a repair shop, or one of those places we used to go to get our oil changed. I open a side door, human-sized instead of vehicular, and lead Oliver inside.

  The building smells stale and hot. It’s been closed up since long before I arrived, and the smell of hot concrete and motor oil is heavy. I push the button to open the garage door.

  “Right.” It’s a weird thing for me to do after such a long time. Turning on the lights and expecting them to work is a process that’s been relegated to the past. After the first dozen houses I scavenged in Detroit, I stopped flipping switches. Pushing this button is just silly.

  I unlock the black Land Rover’s doors and open both the passenger and driver sides. A wave of stale heat hits me across the cheek. Oliver scratches at the doorframe of the truck.

  “Wanna’ go for a car ride, huh?” Oliver whines with excitement.

  “Yeah, give me a minute.” I lift open the garage door. It rattles and echoes in the silence outside. The moist, cool air of morning sucks out some of the garage’s heaviness. I lift Oliver into the passenger seat. It’s a big vehicle. Not as big as some of the other monstrous SUVs I’ve seen, but big enough to make me second-guess my plan.

  “Go big or go home.” Another one of Dad’s classics. I close the passenger door and walk around to the driver’s side.

  I climb into the driver’s seat and push it as far forward as it’ll go. Even with the seat fully contracted, my feet barely touch the pedals.

  “Barely’s close enough, right?” Oliver wags his tail. He sits proudly in the passenger seat. I adjust the mirrors until I can see everything clearly.

  I turn on the ignition. The truck hesitates, but after a moment roars to life. The Land Rover smells like hot leather and something else. There’s an open pack of cigarettes and a lighter in one of the cubbies under the dashboard. Someone in the Charles family smoked. The truck retains the ghost of that odor.

  The dashboard springs to life with a multitude of lights and digital dials. The truck still has almost a full tank of gas. Most of the lights stop glowing after a few moments. I put on my seatbelt.

  Deep breath. I pat Oliver on the head and put the truck into reverse. I let off the brake hesitantly, and the truck lurches backwards. Soften my touch and ease my way slowly out of the garage.

  The driveway is spacious and allows me plenty of room to turn around. Even so, I almost end up backing into the front door of the house. I put the car in drive and slowly make my way down the long driveway.

  It’s kind of amazing how fast I’ve reached the bridge. Months of riding my bike along the same familiar roads has made me realize how far away things are. Quick glance at Oliver. His tongue hangs out of the side of his mouth as he stares straight ahead out the front window.

  Driving across the bridge freaks me out. The water on both sides seems closer than it does on my bike. Take it slow.

  It’s only after I pull the truck to a stop in front of the Home Depot that I realize how scared I am. Have to pry my hands off the steering wheel in order to put the truck in park. Take a long, celebratory breath and turn to Oliver.

  “Not sure how, but we made it.” Oliver barks.

  “I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

  Open my door and we climb out. Oliver scampers to a nearby bush and marks his turf. I push open the sliding doors of the Home Depot and prop them open with a couple of landscaping bricks. Oliver trots into the store after me.

  I stacked the generator onto one of the flatbed carts yesterday, along with what’s probably an excessive amount of tools and supplies. My shopping list is extensive, and I don’t want to make a second trip.

  Triple-check my list against the supplies on the cart. Yeah, everything seems to be here.

  “All we need to do now is load up. Sure wish you had thumbs, dog. I could use an extra pair of hands.”

  Open the Land Rover’s cargo door and fold the
back seats forward. They lay down flat, creating a wide-open cargo bed. I stow the smaller items toward the front of the truck, things like screwdrivers and a ratchet set and extension cords. The last thing to load is the generator.

  The heavy contraption was a bear to get onto the flatbed cart. I angle the cart as close as possible to the open cargo door.

  “Lift with your legs.” I lift the box onto its end. Something shifts inside. Shit. Hope I haven’t broken it.

  With the box standing upright against the bumper of the truck, I stand on the opposite side of the flatbed cart, anchoring it in place with my legs. Bend down, wedge my fingers under the box and begin to push. At first it doesn’t move, but a few huff-and-puff heaves later the heavy thing budges. Oliver yips his moral support. God, this heavy. Push, push, and then finally the generator box makes it over the edge of the truck’s bumper and into the cargo bed. I fall over onto the flatbed cart. Oliver rushes over to lick my face.

  “I’m okay.” I give Oliver a reassuring scratch.

  We make a pit stop at the orchard. I fill six large buckets I’ve scavenged from Home Depot with fruit, pears and overripe peaches and as many bananas as I can find. The banana trees are near the orchard store. I know these things are tropical, and still hot or not, the change in seasons is coming. I have no idea if I can figure out how to can fruit before it all rots, but I’ve picked up enough cases of canning jars, pectin and glycerin to give it a try.

  My comfort level has increased significantly since we set out this morning. Memories of the airbag and my bloody nose are still fresh, but with a little caution and common sense, driving doesn’t seem that difficult.

  “Sure would’ve made the trip down here easier. But I probably would’ve missed out on that house on the mountain. You woulda’ loved that, by the way.”

  Give Oliver another rub behind his obese ears. The dog has grown even in the few weeks since we found each other. His run has become less spastic. He’s growing into his ears and his paws. I’m starting to forget about the time I spent alone. In my mind, Oliver has always been with me.