by Lou Cadle
“If people get desperate for food, or blankets, or medicine, they’ll do whatever they think is justified to find it.” And a few idiots would loot for the joy of it. Gale sighed. “Angela, Sophie, Megan, I want the three of you to go check your homes, and your husband, Angela, and your cats, Megan.”
Angela was reluctant to leave, but he shooed her off and sat on a bench with the returning staff, bringing them up to speed. He wished there were more they could do in the dark, but all they could do was accumulate knowledge as it dribbled in on the radio or from visitors. Gale felt as though precious time were slipping through his fingers, but he couldn’t think of a thing more to do without light. He was anxious to hear back from power and water about the status of repairs, but he knew they’d call when they knew something more.
About nine, they got a visit from a power truck, a supervisor coming to report what was being done. In brief, everything possible, but nothing very useful. The power plant was on the river, a coal burner, and they were fighting flooding there from the levee breach and liquefaction. Lines were down all over, and for safety’s sake, they’d shut all off power to the town. Crews were fixing lines, but they would run out of replacement poles and line before long.
“And if we get many more aftershocks like this last one, I don’t know that the replacements will stand for long, either,” said the power guy. “We had a guy injured with that aftershock. A safety line came loose and he fell twelve feet. Broke an arm.”
“They take him to the hospital?”
“Such as it is,” said the guy. “They’ve got it outdoors. They can’t operate outdoors, can they? And if it gets colder, how will they keep people warm there?”
“Everybody is doing what they can,” Gale said. “And I’m sure your man is getting good care.”
“Yeah, but this earthquake pretty much sucks.”
A master of understatement. “Agreed.”
“I mean, everything is screwed up. Water and the hospital and the roads.”
Buddy, you haven’t seen the half of it yet, Gale thought. But he merely made sympathetic noises.
The power supervisor took off then, his truck grinding gears at the end of the block, and Gale went back to the open-air EOC. He checked in with fire and police again on the radio, and he tried to get his staff to sleep on the benches, or at least lie back and close their eyes until the next emergency arose. A few more had trickled back.
By eleven, he was the only one awake. Someone should stay up, and he was in charge. But he’d have to get sleep at some point. Alone, in the dark, he had a powerful urge to talk with Bash, to be with him, to hold him for five minutes and reassure himself that he was okay. Bash had suffered from earthquakes in the past, and Gale hoped he was holding up emotionally. He wished he could be there for his husband to lean on. But he had a job to do and couldn’t indulge himself with personal concerns.
At midnight, Angela came back, carrying a pile of blankets. “Some of these are pretty ratty,” she said, “and one of them used to be my dog’s, Flake, who died last year. But they’re clean and I thought we could use them.”
“It’s great. Thank you for thinking of it,” he said. “How’s your house?”
“Inside, a mess. Could be worse, though. It’s wood. Man, you really don’t want a brick house in one of these, do you?”
“Not even one tiny bit, no.”
“Did you think of that when you two bought here?”
“That and location. Nothing on river bottom. And I ordered a geologist’s report, made it a contingency of my offer.”
“Then your place should be okay.”
“I hope. You can do everything exactly right and some damned thing will happen anyway, reflection of quake waves at that very spot, or whatever.”
“You should go check it. Doesn’t look like much is happening here.”
“I wish more were happening. I wish we could do something useful. We’re going regret in a few days what we didn’t do fast enough, I’m afraid.”
“We pretty much are relying on others to do something, right?”
“Yeah, technicians. Power, and water, and cell phones. Fire, rescue and medical. For some of what needs to be done, we need daylight. Or a hundred generators dropped from the sky so we can see.”
“Have you had a chance to talk with Bash?”
“No.” He waved the thought away. “Tell me about your house. Michael is okay?”
“Yes. He made it home on foot a half hour before I got there.” She went on to describe the damage she had seen walking there and back, and concluded. “We’ll know better in the morning, of course.”
“Everybody on staff will get some daylight hours at home.”
“I know.” They sat in silence for a few moments. Then she said, “You talk to FEMA again?”
“No. I need to in the morning. I keep thinking of more we need.”
“Get some sleep now,” she said. “I’ll stay awake.” She handed him an old blanket.
He nodded. He took the blanket, which smelled faintly of motor oil, and moved to a free bench and lay down. With his eyes closed, the initial quake replayed in his mind, the falling telephone pole, the crushed SUV, the stunned faces he drove past. The collapsed City Hall, and he couldn’t help but dwell on all the useful EOC equipment buried and out of his reach. Without opening his eyes, he said, “Bulldozers, Angela. A temporary site for debris.”
“Fine. I’ll write it down. Now go to sleep,” she said.
He pushed the images aside and tried to remember something else, something soothing. He remembered their wedding, out on a beach, how crazy windy it had been that day, whipping the hair of the officiate around, the gulls diving crazy circles through the wind, how happy he had been. Bash’s eyes, bright with unshed tears. Their friends applauding the kiss. And he drifted into sleep.
Another hefty aftershock woke him some time later. He found himself grabbing on to the seat of the park bench before he was fully awake, his heart in his throat. He rode out ten conscious seconds of shaking.
And then he was wide awake.
He found his headlamp where he had hung it over the end of the bench and strapped it on, then sat up, rubbed his eyes, and went to look for Angela. He found her sitting up, where he had left her.
“You ready for some sleep?” he asked.
“I can’t. I’m too wired.”
He checked his watch. 2:02. “Anything happening?”
“Not a thing. A fire fighter got injured hunting through the hospital. The chief told his guys who were on the day shift to get some sleep. I don’t think they liked it.”
“No, they wouldn’t,” he said, knowing the commitment of rescuers to their jobs. “The chief is going to have a lot to deal with in the next few days.”
“You mean searching all the fallen houses?”
“That, too. I was thinking of the psychology of his men. People who are trained to save lives get terribly depressed when they’re only finding bodies. And they’ll all be overworked and short on sleep, like the medical people. Like us, for that matter. Are you sure you can’t sleep now?”
“I’m sure.”
He sighed. “Then I’m going to leave for an hour, or ninety minutes maybe, if you don’t mind. I want to drive by my house, see if it and my earthquake kit survived. And drive by to see Bash, too. Just for a second.”
“Absolutely. You need your turn, too.”
“And I’ll try to dig up food for us all. I’ll be back before dawn. In time for you to get some shut-eye while it’s still dark.”
“If I ever can sleep again while these aftershocks last.”
He squeezed her shoulder and left. On the way past the sandblow in front of City Hall, he could smell sulfur again. He leaned down and shone his headlamp on the belched-up sand, wondering if any of it was new, coming from the aftershocks. He saw a lighter patch several feet away and walked over to it. The sulfur smell was definitely stronger here. On a whim, he reached down to touch the sand. Hot. He
snatched his hand back, then realized, no, it hadn’t burned him. Tentatively, he touched it again. Maybe 110 degrees? Something like that. Superstitious people seeing this would be talking about belching from the fires of Hell. He brushed his hand off on his slacks and went on.
The streets were nearly empty as he drove up to the house, though twice he saw people congregated in small groups, talking. And he saw tents, camping tents, as people set up camp in their own yards. They were lucky it hadn’t gotten cold yet. It didn’t feel any worse than 60 right now. He didn’t even need to turn on the car’s heater.
Driving time to his house was doubled, partly because he had to slow at every intersection with a dead traffic light, and as he approached this house, his stomach clenched in sick anticipation. He expected the worst. Bumping over a cracked sidewalk, he pulled into his driveway and was relieved to see that the house and garage still stood. So the emergency supplies were still accessible. He dithered about what was in his trunk. Part of him wanted to hoard, to take that stuff in the trunk and put it with the old stuff and keep him and Bash alive and healthy, no matter what. But there was a week of supplies in the house, and even if the water had passed its stamped expiration date, it’d still be fine. Lots of foods were fine past their sell-by date, just not as tasty. He’d leave the old stuff for the two of them for now, and the supplies in his trunk, he’d leave there. If he needed to share it with the staff, if he couldn’t find another way to feed them, it’d provide maybe one light meal.
He left the car’s headlights on, illuminating the house, and opened the garage. First thing, he shut off natural gas — though if it hadn’t burned down yet, it probably wasn’t necessary. Then he shut off the feed to the hot water tank. Since no one was running water, that should still be uncontaminated, certainly safe enough to wash hands and do dishes.
Then he turned on his headlamp again, and took a tour around the house’s exterior. The first thing he noticed — how could he not? — was that there was another garage in his back yard. Up the slight slope, someone’s detached garage had jumped its foundation and slid its way through his cedar fence. Its back wall had collapsed and brought it to a halt. It wouldn’t be moving any further. He shook his head. Deal with it another day. Or another week or even another month, more than likely.
The worst damage to his own house was the chimney, which was the only brick on the house and was now a pile of brick and mortar rubble flung out from the back wall. On the bedroom end of the ranch house, there was a cracked window, and he thought the window frames looked out of true.
Now for the inside.
He got in his car, hit the garage door opener and when, after a few seconds, it didn’t open, he slapped himself on the forehead. No electricity. The front door into the house was stuck and he had to yank on it. It had been shaken out of alignment. He wondered if the house was safe to live in, and if the damage would be fixable. The door opened at a hard yank. He flipped on the light switch as he entered house and shook his head at himself again. Automatic, to hit the lights, mere habit. He made it through to the garage, found the lantern flashlight right where he had left it, and turned it on. It took him ten minutes to figure out how to disconnect the automatic garage door opener so that he could manually raise the door. He went back into the house.
The kitchen was a mess. Almost every drawer had been vibrated open, and one had fallen out, strewing spatulas and whisks and wooden spoons over the tile floor. A glass vase with silk flowers had fallen from a shelf and smashed over the counter. The refrigerator has danced halfway across the room and unplugged itself. The dishwasher door had popped open. He left it all as it was.
The living room was odd. The TV was down, and everything on that wall and the opposite wall, every painting, a ceremonial mask from Zaire, a knick-knack shelf, all were down. But on the other two walls, everything was still where they had left it, though canted, making the direction of the earthquake’s waves obvious.
He went quickly through every room and saw similar damage. A wall of bookshelves had puked out the books but the shelving all still stood because he and Bash had bolted it to the studs of the wall. He was looking at three days work of picking up the house, but he didn’t have time to do it now. In the spare bedroom, he muscled a reluctant closet door open and pulled down old blankets and pillows, and a pile of older towels that matched a bathroom back in California. He grabbed a 12-pack of toilet paper, only two rolls gone, took out half, and piled those rolls on top of the towels. The other half he’d take in to work.
Moving faster now, aware of the minutes ticking by and Angela sitting up at the EOC, he changed clothes, putting on jeans and a long-sleeved ribbed t-shirt, then putting on his new ugly work boots. He grabbed a sports jacket in case he needed to look slightly more official. He went back into the kitchen and found the stack of paper grocery sacks they had kept wedged in between the fridge and the cabinets and snapped open three. He opened the fridge and started cleaning it out. Almost everything went in the sacks. No reason to hoard food that would go bad within a day. He’d feed his staff and their families that had come along breakfast, and a weird breakfast it’d be. There were still eight eggs, and he’d make “everything” omelets, light on the eggs and heavy on the everything. All that went into a picnic cooler and then into the back seat of his car.
In the garage he found a tiny hibachi they took camping, and two bags of lump mesquite charcoal, one full. He grabbed the nearly-empty one. He was rushing now, feeling the clock spinning away on him, and wanting to lay eyes on Bash just once before his responsibilities to the town took control of his life again. Back in the kitchen for the cast iron skillet they kept in the oven, and then he dug through a cabinet for a gallon-sized Dutch oven — one of Bash’s good pans, which he’d likely get chewed out for taking. And then he grabbed at the scattered utensils on the floor, finding a spatula, a big spoon, a bread knife, a long fork, and he tossed them all into the Dutch oven and took them to the car.
One last look around the garage and he spied a hatchet. He thought about fuel for cooking, as the charcoal wouldn’t last even one day, and he thought of all those nice trees in the green space. Some of them could do without their lowest limbs. He grabbed the hatchet.
He slammed the garage door and turned the handle to lock it. His back seat was full of supplies. He was headed to the hospital in no time flat, checking his watch as he drove 2:43. He could only spare ten or fifteen minutes for Bash, but he had to see him.
As he turned onto hospital row, he saw the lights glaring from two spots — in the distance, two fire trucks working at the hospital and emergency lights were illuminating where they were still doing rescue. Nearer was the makeshift hospital and its emergency lighting. He could hear the generator as he pulled up. A National Guardsman was there to direct traffic. People were still bringing in their injured family members.
He pulled over and rolled down his window. “Where can I park for ten minutes,” he called.
The Guardsman — woman, actually — came over. “You have someone injured?”
“No. Family member in the medical staff. I wanted to check on him.”
“Park over in the lot by the sandwich shop,” she said, pointing, and backed away from the car.
He did and jogged back across the street to the makeshift hospital.
It was controlled bedlam. An ambulance, silent but lights flashing, pulled onto the sidewalk, and the driver leapt out to help unload a patient on a stretcher. Gale hung back until they’d moved the patient out. To the far left was the row of turquoise port-a-potties. At the center of the area fronting the street, what looked to be a reception area. Piles of boxes on tables behind reception were being opened by a young woman with a clipboard. She glanced in one, make a note, wrote something on the box, and then she carried it to a new spot, under a different table.
Family members milled about, looking anxious. They didn’t have a place to sit. Every chair seemed to be taken with a wounded person, waiting for treatment
that Gale thought, from the looks of things, might take a little while. The medical staff — at least the ones who were dressed for that role — didn’t seem numerous. He wondered how many they’d lost in the hospital collapse.
The receptionist was busy with the new emergency patient, so Gale went to the clipboard woman. “I’m looking for Bash Hill? Sebastian Hill? He’s a nurse.”
“He’s back there, in surgery, I think.” She pointed to a bright light off to the right side of the parking lot. “You shouldn’t go back there if you’re not sterile.”
“I won’t get close or interfere,” he said. His heart fell. He hadn’t thought through that he might not be able to get near Bash. But of course he was busy. They’d have to make do with a wave, maybe. He wanted to hold him, to feel for himself that Bash was okay.
The woman shrugged and went back to work, too busy to argue with him.
He wound his way past injured people. A broken leg being set. A woman weeping over an unconscious or dead child lying across two chairs serving as hospital bed. A man moaning in delirium or pain. Two smocked medical workers holding down another man who seemed to be going nuts, raving and fighting them. “Hold him still!” one snapped at the other. “I’m trying!” was the reply. Gale thought of stepping over to help, but no. He had no idea what was going on there, and he’d probably hurt more than help.
He kept moving toward the light of the surgical area. A pair of teenage girls sat in chairs, watching the surgery, as if the audience at a play. A pair of white porcelain bowls sat at their feet.
As he moved past them, he felt a tug on his pants leg. “Hey,” said one of the girls. “Where you going, buddy?”
“I’m trying to find someone.”
“Who?” she said, challenge in her voice.
“Bash Hill.”
“Oh.” She looked him up and down. “You must be the boyfriend.”
“Husband.”
She gave a nod and the expression on her face said, “you’ll do.” He felt, oddly, that he’d passed a test.
