Good Fences

by Boyd Craven III

  The sun was starting to warm the air finally, and I had several goats follow me to the fence line so I made like I had an apple and chucked it. When they turned to go hunt down the tasty morsel I didn’t actually have, I slipped between the two upper hot wires and into Lucy’s backyard. I walked around to the front and rang her doorbell.

  Or I tried to. Nothing sounded and I could smack myself in the forehead as an idiot, but I knocked instead of knocking myself out. I heard footsteps and then in the side pane of the door I saw the curtain pull back and Lucy smiled at me through the glass.

  “My parents said not to talk to strangers,” she said smiling, but her voice betrayed how nervous she felt.

  “Avon lady,” I called back.

  She grinned wider and opened the door for me. Her house was technically a McMansion, but it had been bought and paid for when Spencer Sr. was alive and they’d had dreams of filling the space full of children. That had been mine and Cathy’s goal someday in an unspoken future, but it was too late for that now. Instead, I had a farm and some animals. Some people have cats.

  “You doing ok?” I asked her.

  “Yeah, power’s out. Why?” Lucy asked.

  “Randy didn’t tell you?”

  “No, he said you’d be by in a little bit. My car won’t start by the way, I don’t know what’s wrong with it. I was going to call you this morning and see if you could give me a jump, but I forgot to plug in my phone last night or something.”

  “It’s or something,” I told her, wondering if Spencer was still sleeping.

  I explained what I thought had happened and Lucy held her hand to her mouth in horror. Of everyone who’d come out last weekend, Lucy was the one who didn’t believe that much of what we were prepping for would ever happen. She was happy enough to hang out with us and shoot and enjoy the company of the women folk, and us guys who didn’t snort like Ruby. She was obviously going to need some time to wrap her mind around it.

  Somebody knocked at the front door and Lucy stood to go answer. I reached to feel for my Glock and came up empty. Damn, I was getting twitchy already and the lack of routine had me off today. My Glock was still on my night stand and my house was unlocked.

  “Can you check on Spence for me? He’s in his room,” Lucy asked.

  “Sure thing,” I said, and headed down the hallway.

  The little man was rubbing his eyes and standing up in his crib. He grinned when he saw me and held his arms up. I recognized that, so I swooped him up and pulled him in for a quick Spencer Squeeze Specialty hug. His Mom’s words, not mine.

  “Where’s Mommy?” he asked in a sing song voice.

  “She’s at the door talking to somebody, let’s go see.”

  I walked out to see the door open and Lucy looking absolutely pissed. George Landry Sr. was in there, with a notepad in his hand.

  “… I don’t care what you think. Brian isn’t doing anything with the power.” Lucy spat.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked, stepping behind her.

  You’d have thought I’d just stabbed George in the heart and kicked him in the sack in the same instance, because the color left his face and he made a gagging sound in surprise.

  “George here is trying to get me to sign a petition to have you and your farm… What is it? An Injunction to stop operations?”

  I handed Spencer to Lucy.

  “Wow, you know what George, if I hadn’t seen this in person,” I snagged the clipboard from his hands, “I wouldn’t have believed it.”

  George sputtered and I read my supposed infractions. I wasn’t surprised to see this hand written with the power being out. Apparently my attempts at turning my property into a multi-family mobile home park and running illegal power feeds back to it had caused the power outage. I was being asked to cease and desist all operations that didn’t involve anything more than mowing the lawn. Even the animals were being asked to go. If it wasn’t the morning after the apocalypse, I probably would have been angrier than I was. Instead, I ripped the page off the notepad and handed it back to George, planning on reading it again later.

  “Give me…”

  “No, go make another one,” I said, swatting at his bandaged arm, “and trust me George, pray. I had nothing to do with this power outage. If I were you, I’d fill all your water jugs up and see if your four fancy fireplaces can actually hold a flame this winter,” I said, trying to be helpful but the hatred came out anyways.

  “Oh, and why is that?” he asked in a patronizing tone.

  “Because,” I whispered to him, “it gets cold in the winter time.”

  I slammed the door in his face, and he knocked again. I stood there, ready for him to reach for the knob but he cursed and walked away after half a minutes wait.

  “He has no idea, does he?” Lucy asked.

  “No, he probably really believes this power outage is my fault. I don’t know what he’s going to do when his Escalade won’t start.”

  “He drives a BMW actually,” Lucy said, and I did a double take.

  “Anyways, I wanted to walk over here and tell you that you and Spencer are welcome to come to my place. It’s going to take some work, but I’ve got running water and food and…”

  “You really believe this is it?”

  “Yes, yes I do.” I told her truthfully

  “Wait, how did you get here, I don’t see your truck?”

  “With the power out, the fences aren’t hot anymore. I’m not advertising that fact, but you can slip through and shortcut to my place whenever you want.”

  “The fence is hot,” Spencer told me.

  “Yeah, it sure was buddy. Not right now though, it’s a secret.”

  “I don’t know. Let me figure things out here first. What are you going to do?” Lucy asked me.

  “Go talk to Randy, see if he can help me run some pipe from the barn to the house sometime this week.”

  “Ok, you be careful,” Lucy stood on her tip toes and kissed me quickly before turning and heading back into the darkened rooms.

  I let myself out and walked across the street to see Brenda watching me from a second story window. The sunlight flashed off something and with a start, I realized it was a scope. She must be sitting up in her office looking at everything near and far. She gave me a wave and yelled over her shoulder. I couldn’t hear anything, but it was probably in response to one of their drills. I’d just gotten to the sidewalk when Randy came out, his usual excitement now tempered with worry.

  “Hey man, is everything ok?” He asked me.

  “Yeah, yeah. Thanks for the wakeup call this morning man. Uh… I have a favor to ask you.”

  “Sure, anything,” he said quickly.

  “I want to run a waterline from the cistern tank from the barn to the house. The barn is gravity fed, so I don’t know how to figure things for the pressure drop and…”

  “I can do it a little later on. The girls are packing things up and I’ve got the little trailer hooked onto the quad in the garage.”

  “You guys coming out already?” I asked him.

  “I talked it over with Brenda and we think it’s best to do it now instead of a week from now. Drive the quad out there once with the bulk of the stuff and move the rest in the middle of the night?”

  The enormity of the situation was flooring me, but it made sense. Then again, I did have the new camper trailer out back... I didn’t actually have to hunt in it, and it was cheap and easy…

  “Is that ok?”

  “Sure, sure, I was just curious. I figured you had materials and…”

  “Here comes trouble,” Brenda yelled.

  Walking down their side of the street was George. The front step to the front door was bumped in for some architectural reason and the bricks had sheltered me from the gentle breeze, but it had also blocked George’s sight.

  “Not again,” I muttered.

  “Come on in, I’ll get rid of him.” Randy said.

  I stepped in and off to the right behind
some curtains. The twins were in the living room there, laying on the floor in pink pajamas, with coloring books in the sunlight that came in from the windows to the south side of the house.

  “Hi, Uncle Brian,” they chorused.

  “Hi, shhhh…” I whispered and they nodded and went back to coloring. They were always great kids, and this was just one more example of what a good job Randy and Brenda were doing.

  I strained to listen.

  “……..your work truck is still in violation of the covenant agreement you signed—“

  “I don’t know what kind of bug crawled up your ass, but you better go somewhere and pull it out. The van isn’t working. The power is out and I have 30 days.” Randy’s voice rose and for the first time I was seeing him almost losing his cool.

  I almost wanted to see him punch the shit out of George, but that wouldn’t have been very Christian of me and I didn’t want to chance Randy getting hurt.

  “If the van isn’t working, then that violates—“

  “Call a tow truck on me then,” Randy slammed the door in his face and stomped towards me.

  He held up a hand as if asking for a moment then he paced and mumbled to himself.

  “The apocalypse happens and he’s worried about HOA conventions?” I almost laughed.

  “It isn’t funny,” Randy snapped back.

  “It’s what I’ve been dealing with ever since they put in your neighborhood man. George has sent what, six or seven complaints out now? Look at this,” I said handing him the note.

  “The man is crazy,” Randy said after reading the note and handing it back to me.

  “Yeah. Anyways, I just wanted to see about running water. If you need a hand moving, I can bring my truck out and we can do a bigger load.” I told him.

  “Naw, there’s bound to be a ton of quads and scooters, motorcycles that still run. An old truck in perfect shape that runs? You’ll be the talk of the town by the end of the week. Stash it for now man, stash it.”

  “I already did,” I assured him. “Come out whenever you’re ready. Here,” I pulled one of the keys off the keychain, “it’s for the front gate. We can always sneak in under the hotwire now the power’s out, but I don’t want the other neighbors to see it, you know what I mean?” I asked him.

  “You already gave me a key, man,” Randy reminded me and I smacked my forehead in a DUH motion. “Yeah, let me talk to Brenda and I’m going to go back to packing. Thanks, man.”

  “See you soon,”

  12

  The first full day of the apocalypse didn’t bring Zombies or angry mutant bikers of any sort or flavor. Instead, it left me wondering how to handle the mundane. What to do with what was in the fridge? The freezer? Should I open it to cook and eat things up first or should I let it slowly warm up on its own? I didn’t know, but I figured that soon it wouldn’t matter much and that my buddy and his family would probably be bringing their own food and supplies from their fridge.

  I was a little worried, but I knew I was somewhat prepared for just this. I’d war gamed in my head what would happen in this very scenario, but it still seemed surreal. I needed to figure out what to do with everyone, and decide where they would go. Maybe the two empty bedrooms upstairs? When my parents were hopeful about having more kids, they’d started to refurbish the upstairs from when my dad was a kid, but no siblings ever showed up, stork or no.

  So I had my parents’ room, my room and two small 8x10 rooms upstairs. Plenty of room and enough basics in furniture. I looked at the TV, and DVD Player and wondered what Spencer was going to be like without SpongeBob, and then figured it didn’t matter. Probably sooner rather than later I would be taking the useless electronic equipment out and discarding it, as space would become a premium.

  I headed into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I needed a wash and a shave - I’d gone out in public looking like I just came off a bender that had landed me in jail. I considered how to get the water going before everyone arrived, to make myself feel more human, and then it hit me. I could use the same trick I’d used to prime the house well pump the one time it lost its prime!

  I disconnected the washing machine hose, which had two female ends. I walked outside and connected that to the end of the hose that ran from the house, which was mostly used for watering my mom’s old rosebush. I uncoiled that as far as I could, and it reached halfway to the barn. Inside the barn, the animals didn’t know or didn’t care that there was no power. It was just another lazy day for them. The old school backup system my grandparents had installed was going to save me a lot of trouble.

  I stretched the hose from inside the barn to outside, until I met the hose from the house. With the washing machine hose, both were able to be joined perfectly. I went back and turned on the water from the barn, then went to the house and opened the tap from there. I crossed my fingers and went inside. I could hear the toilet filling up, albeit a little slowly, and I decided to wait a bit and see how it was going to go.

  While that was running, I went into my parents’ room and found the percolator. I turned on the kitchen faucet and was rewarded with running water, although it didn’t have the same pressure as it had had before. I filled the percolator and turned on the propane stove. When it got warm I was going to add the coffee grounds and make what my dad called cowboy coffee. I grinned at the memory and walked into the bathroom and tried the tub faucet. It sputtered violently and then water shot out. There must have been quite a bit of air in the line, so I let it run on hot for a minute and was soon rewarded with steamy water.

  Never before had I been so thankful to have a propane water heater. I’d threatened myself with replacing that and the stove a dozen times as the prices of propane had sky rocketed. But I sure was thankful I had it still, and I had about one and three quarters of a tank full, probably close to nine hundred gallons if the new tank was topped off. I quickly showered and shaved, praying the pressure didn’t drop too much at the critical moments when the soap was in my hair and in my eyes, but it didn’t.

  Feeling refreshed, I dressed and added the coffee to the now hot water on the stove. Now what? So much of my day was go here, do this. Look at my phone. React to what somebody says who called. Emailing links back and forth to Randy. YouTube. Watching Television. Listening to the radio… I smacked my hand on my forehead went to my parents’ room. I knew the old battery my dad had was probably toast, but it’d been kept inside. I pulled it out from under the small desk his radio gear was on and took it to the kitchen table where I hooked it up to the little folding Harbor Freight charger.

  I found the little charge controller attachment and hooked that into the solar panel, then added the alligator clips and watched. The lights on the cheap charge controller that came with the briefcase folding panel lit up and I waited to see the battery indicator’s charge status.

  “You know, I’m going to feel stupid if this is full,” I mumbled.

  It wasn’t full, but it was definitely close to being dead. I decided to leave that battery alone and spent some time in the garage, pulling the battery back out from the truck, then hooked it up and sat down. The emergency broadcast I heard while having my first cup of coffee was a repeat of the earlier one, with not a lot of new information. The reception wasn’t great, but hearing another human voice was a small comfort.

  Flipping through the channels, I found one where people were talking and mostly speculating on what was happening. I decided to try the CB band and found someone from downstate who was talking about the riots that had begun almost immediately in Flint and, from what the talker had said, also Ann Arbor and Dearborn. That confused me, until somebody on there got on and starting ranting about Muslims, Islam and ISIS in general. At first I was mortified that the guy’s bigotry was out in the open for everybody to hear, but I realized that it didn’t make what I was hearing untrue.

  At some point the previous night when the power went out, immigrant and guest students had started banding up. They weren’t a maj
ority, but when a mob of ten to fifteen decided to, say, beat down a Christian because of his faith, most of the bystanders stepped aside knowing they didn’t have enough numbers. Also, several planes had fallen, and a good chunk of Flint by the Bristol road area was on fire, with the flames marching east.

  I took all that in and felt sick to my stomach. I knew that area well, and had friends who used to live there. I turned the radio down low and laid down on my parents’ bed and listened to the radio until my eyelids got heavy. It wasn’t long and I was out cold.

  * * *

  Naps in the daytime, even mornings, left me groggy and fuzzy headed when I woke up. I was woken by a loud knock at my door, and I bolted upright, confused by the unfamiliar surroundings. I turned off the radio and grabbed the Glock from my bedroom and put it in the small of my back.

  I opened the door and rubbed my eyes. It was Frank.

  “Hey boss. How you doing?” I asked lamely.

  “Not good. Hey, nice gate man! I’m sorry you haven’t met the other couple before, but I was wondering if I could bring the doctors here at some point in the next week or two?”

  “Doctors?” I knew I should know what he was talking about, but my sleepy brain wasn’t yet putting the words into a cohesive pattern that I could recognize as speech. I struggled a second and then realized he meant the other members of Randy and Frank’s group.

  “Yeah, I’d like to meet them. Hey, did you have to climb the gate?”

  “Yeah, no way I wanted to tangle with that barbed wire. Now that things have happened, you might want to consider wrapping your gate in it or something.”

  “Or something,” I said thinking about it. What good was a gate if people could just climb it? For that matter, who was in the white truck and what would have happened if they had climbed the it instead of trying to shoot the lock off?