by Sweet, Dell
“I've heard of that too,” she said.
“Well there's a couple of others who swear the same sort of thing happened to people they knew. A few others are talking about end times.” Glenn paused and looked out over the lake wringing his hands restlessly in his lap.
“I don't know,” Glenn continued. “I guess it makes about as much sense to them as anything else.”
“You mean they think it is the end times? That it was real?” Haley asked.
Glenn shook his head. “I ain't saying I believe it at all,” he replied. “I'm simply telling you we're going to have to be really goddamn careful who we deal with.” He arched his eyebrows. “Strange winds blowing.”
“Seen it while we sat here. I can't believe something like this can throw someone that far off. But we've heard a few similar things this morning.” Joel said.
“And that was strange stuff while we weren't seeking it out... Just sitting here minding our own business.” Haley added.
“Well,” Glenn began, “let’s say that this is the beginning of the end of the world. I ain’t saying it is, but for the sake of argument let’s say it is.”
“All right,” Haley replied, “let’s say it is.”
“Well, so let’s say it’s the end of the world. What does that really mean?”
“I can't say I follow you.” Joel replied calmly. “I think it's self explanatory, right?”
“That's about how I feel about it too,” Haley said when Joel had finished speaking.
“You went too deep,” Glenn said, as she finished speaking. He laughed lightly. “I meant, what is the end of the Earth? It's obviously not the end of the Earth right now or we wouldn't be here. What it really means to these people, I think.” He raised his hands to gesture at the people milling around everywhere. “Is the end of their way of life. They can't call a cab. Take the train into New York and see a play, fly to the Bahamas for vacation. That is their end. They can't see anything past that, and so when that ceases to exist it is the end of everything for them. They snap... Jump in the river... Sit down in the road and wait for God... Or Moses, or Muhammad to show up. The mother ship... I don't know.” He sighed, leaned forward, cupped his face in his hands and looked out at the devastation. He straightened up, rubbed at the small of his back with both hands. “It's too soon in my life to be the end of anything. I need some more time. And, anyway, when something ends something else begins.”
Joel was surprised into laughter. “The Mother Ship?”
“Hey, I talked to that lady earlier... She's pretty much doing just that,” Haley said.
“I don't know what I believe myself. It's a question that I never felt a need to answer. I mean, I've had a few Bible-thumpers come knocking on my door from time to time. I ain't mean about it, I just listen politely is all, and when they ask me if I want to be saved, or get to their point, I just pass. I just always figured to each his own, you know? I mean they ain't hurting me,” Glenn continued, “and if they want to go around knocking on doors, hell, let 'em do it.”
“I just don't answer the door anymore,” Haley said.
“Me either,” Joel added, and continued. “I kind of got into the habit of looking through the peephole lately anyway, on account of the crime being what it is, and if it's a Jehovah, or some other Bible people, I just don't answer the door.”
They all three shook their heads in agreement.
“I've done that too,” Glenn said and then went back to his original argument. “But suppose it is their end? Then what?”
“Well,” Joel started, “I suppose that you could have a lot of people just waiting for God... Or maybe even the mother ship. Right?”
Haley just sat quietly, listening to the conversation, as it went back and forth.
“So you would, but,” Glenn continued, “what if there really is a God and a Devil? How does that change things? What if the people that believed in God were taken up?”
“I've thought of that,” Joel said, “I guess probably it was the first thing that jumped into my head this morning. It seems pretty far-fetched to me. I mean... Would God have a need to be this dramatic? And doesn't God just do things and then, I don't know, after ten thousand years or so the people fall in line and things are okay again?”
“Yes... God is not known to be really easy on his believers,” Glenn agreed.
Joel continued. “Take Joanne Hamilton over there for instance,” he said as he waved his hand at a group of people. “I worked with her husband down at the mill, and he's one of the meanest bastards I ever knew. Everybody knows he used to beat the shit out of her, and there was that business a few years back where he got himself caught with a young girl out on Jefferson Road, parked to the side there where the kids hang out. That kind of blows their theory doesn't it? I mean if there was ever a meaner son-of-a-bitch I don't know him, and I can't see what good side there could be to him, do you?”
Glenn seemed to think a second before he shook his head. “I don't see anything good about him either,” he stated flatly. “I knew him myself, and I couldn't stand him, but hear me out a second, Joel.”
Joel nodded his head, and Haley leaned closer to Glenn to listen.
“I think those people are dead as dead. Swallowed up by the Earth, drowned in the rivers. They're gone and that's that. But what about these others? All I'm saying is it doesn't matter to us whether we don't think that's what happened it only matters that they think that's what happened.”
“Then I guess they try to bring us into their psychosis,” Joel said. He looked around at the crowd.
“But that doesn't make it so,” Haley said.
Glenn Laughed wryly. “I wasn't looking for truth,” he said softly, “I'm just trying to make sure I live... Both of you too. We have got to be careful with some of these. I have been in war, seen how easy it is for people to turn into primitives just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “I say, we need to think about leaving here. It's only going to get worse.”
Joel turned from looking over the crowd and nodded. “Makes sense. You have a long way of getting to the point, Glenn, but logical... Thought out.”
“I spent a whole six months in college before I had to leave to help my mother run the gravel pit after my dad died,” Glenn continued. “This makes me wish I'd spent a little longer. Maybe I'd know more about it. Whatever it is though, it's natural. Something that just happens. I don't want to get tangled up in someone’s ideal.” He paused and then began to speak once again, changing the subject slightly.
“The other thing that's been bothering me is something we can all agree on.”
“What's that,” Joel asked.
Haley answered the question for him.
“I think I know,” she said, “it's the Earthquakes. I mean if we really were hit by that meteor, shouldn't we all be dead by now? What I mean is, when I was outside last night, I didn't see any fall out, but I did feel the earth shaking, it felt like an earthquake too, a big one, but that couldn't have been the Yellowstone one, that's, what, a few thousand miles away anyway, we wouldn't have felt it like that, would we? And still have aftershocks?”
She stopped and drew a deep breath inward and then continued.
“The television said that the meteor was sighted inbound, and I could have sworn that, for just a few seconds, there seemed to be a huge glow from the west in the sky. I remember thinking it was where it landed, but when I looked again it was gone. If it was though, why are we still alive?”
“That wasn't my exact concern,” Glenn said, “but it runs along the same lines. I felt the shaking too, and it felt more like a heavy thuds the first couple of times I felt it, something close... Not far away.”
“...I'll tell you what though, I was talking to Jasper Morrison, he fishes Lake Ontario for a living, you know, and he was just docking when it started. He had a pretty good view from there, out across the lake, I mean, and he said he could clearly see a white streak running across the western edge of the sky. He said he was
expecting to see a mushroom cloud or something, but the sky glowed for a split-second or two, then the glow just disappeared. But a man’s line of sight is only about 3 miles or so, after that the curve of the Earth drops off. So you are looking at something fairly close, or further away but high up in the air.”
“He also felt the ground shaking after the hit,” Glenn continued. “But that's not hard to explain. You may not know this, but there is a fault line that runs all across the Great Lakes basin. Ontario included. The fault line runs all the way across the continent to the gulf coast. Could be that the impact did trigger some sort of earthquake. My point though, is that if that meteor did hit in the west, close enough for Jasper to see, we should be dead.”
“Joel was telling me about the fault,” Haley said.
“What else did he say?” Joel asked.
Haley nodded her head slightly as if to voice the question herself.
“Well, like I said, he had just brought the boat into the dock and tied it off. That ain't a little boat, I've seen it, forty-five-footer, and the water where he ties it off is damn deep too. Well,” he continued. “He tied it off, and he's standing there and the waves are starting to really build so he hot foots it off the dock. Just as he gets off the whole damn thing just sinks. It took his boat and a couple others with it too. That ain't the end though. As he's standing there, this is the weird part; the lake just drops about five feet, real fast. He knows that lake, and it could be, if that fault line opened up, it could have dropped. If so I'll bet we have one hell of a new river running from here down to the Gulf a Mexico, or at least one hell of a lot of damage.”
“Jesus,” Joel whistled softly.
“I don't know... Food for thought though,” Glenn concluded and leaned back into the bench.
Joel recalled the dream of the night before and quickly related it to Haley and Glenn. When he finished, Glenn turned to Haley.
“Did you see anything? Maybe dream about anything?”
“No,” she replied, “nothing at all, except for what I told you. But I was up all night after it happened”
“I haven't had any myself,” Glenn said quietly, “Of course; I was awake all night too in the woods.”
All three sat back into the bench and stared out over the square, lost in thought.
“So what does it all mean?” Joel asked to no one in particular, as he continued to stare at the lake.
“I wish the hell I knew,” Haley said, as she turned her gaze away from the Square and back to the two men on the bench beside her.
Besides a few guy's from the mill that he would have an occasional drink with, or maybe shoot a game of pool with, Joel was a loner, and he had never married. It was not something he had chosen to be, it was just the way the world was. You really couldn't trust people, he thought, you could never really know what they were like. It was a thing that had bothered him for as long as he could remember.
He had known men who seemed to be perfect fathers and husbands, but when they were at the bar, and the kids were home with the wife, they were completely different. It was something he had always hated, and something he had constantly fought with whenever he had noticed the same sort of inconsistencies in himself. It was a battle though that he had always won, and would continue to fight. It was one of the main things that had decided him against religion when he was a kid, that and his father.
His father had been a strict Catholic, and had fought with Joel's mother to get her to agree to let him take Joel to attend the local Catholic Church. Joel had hated it. His father, who was normally drunken, or at least drinking, would sit calmly through mass with all his other drinking buddies every Sunday, then when he got home it was, “Bring me a fucking cold one, woman.”
He had actually been glad when his father had died, he had never said it aloud, but he had been. He had only wished he had died a lot sooner so that his mother could have had more than the one year she had lived past him, to enjoy life. He pulled his mind reluctantly back to the conversation, when he heard Glenn speak his name.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was just thinking.”
“That's okay,” Glenn smiled, “we all are.”
Glenn continued. “What I think is that the world has changed... That simple. We just need to get on with this different life. I know that's over simplistic, but it beats staying around here waiting for the mother ship to show up. What I was wondering is what you're going to do. Hell, what all of us are going to do now?” He paused as most of the silent crowd that had gravitated to them turned their eyes towards him.
“Maybe it's time to sacrifice an animal... Pray,” an older woman in the crowd said.
Glenn continued when no one else answered. “I don't think, or maybe I'm just not convinced,” he offered the woman who had just been speaking a small smile, and then continued, “That praying, or a sacrifice, will do us much good. Maybe what we should be doing is trying to figure out what we should be doing. Catch my drift? We can't just stay here and wait for someone to come, it ain't going to happen, and I think we can all agree on that.” He looked around at the faces that surrounded him, and stopped at Joel's.
Joel nodded.
“Did any of you notice the temperature?” Glenn asked.
Several people looked expectantly to one corner of the Public Square, where the Watertown Trust Bank had sat with its digital clock, which alternately flashed the time and temperature. They turned quickly back when they realized it was no longer there.
Many of them had noticed the difference in temperature though. Northern New York, even in the summer months, rarely reached the high seventies, low eighties, on the hottest days. The surrounding air was much hotter and humid.
They looked back at Glenn.
“Haley and I noticed it this morning,” Joel said.
“I picked this up when I went in Samson’s Five and Dime earlier,” Glenn said, holding up a small plastic thermometer. The red line on the thermometer hovered just short of one hundred degrees.
As he looked at the thermometer, Joel recalled how warm it had seemed this morning. When he had first opened the front door he had felt it, but then forgotten it as he had gazed out into the street. As he looked around now he noticed that several people in the small crowd were sweating profusely. In fact, he realized, he was sweating a great deal himself.
“Anyway, my point is this,” Glenn said as he began to speak again, “there may be something to that earthquake theory some of you have been kicking around. It could be that the fault line may have been triggered,” Glenn was saying. “If it was, we really ought to be thinking about finding a safer place to be. I remember reading about that fault line, and it seems to me the book I read, said that if the fault were somehow triggered, it could, and probably would, crack the entire Great Lakes Basin. That means that Ontario, along with all the other lakes in the chain, probably would drop. At least a small amount at first, but after they recover from the initial drop, they're probably going to rise... They're probably going to rise, a lot. I don't know what most of you know about this city, but I'll tell you what I know. Got it from the same book,” he paused. “...It’s built on pretty low ground. Now... that river,” he said indicating the bridge that spanned the Black river on the opposite side of the Public Square, “has surely been rising.”
With that the discussion went back to where they should go, and what they should do once they got there.
“You're right,” Joel said at last, “We do need to make some decisions,” he paused for a moment and then continued. “When was the last time anyone here ate? I know that sounds a little stupid at a time like this, but if we're going anywhere we should also think about food, and in this heat dehydration could become a factor as well, couldn't it, Glenn?” he finished, looking toward him.
“I should have thought of that myself,” Glenn said, “how many of us are there?”
Haley quickly counted heads and replied. “Twenty-seven, Glenn.”
Glenn nodded his head. “Okay.
.. Let’s do this. We do have to eat, so let’s head up Maple Street to Jacobs Superette, get something to eat, and finish this discussion there.”
Everyone agreed, and the small group left the public square and walked the three blocks to Jacob's Superette in a light rain that had begun to fall.
Jacob's Superette
Joel, Haley, Glenn and several others were standing by the rear doors that led to the stockroom in Jacob's Superette.
They had been discussing where they should go. A few others from the small group were there with them.
Joel looked around at them as the conversation went back and forth. They seemed solid enough. Terry Jacobs who had worked for Glenn, Amber Johnson who was married to a GI from the base who was now stationed overseas, and Scott Vincent, a carpenter working on one of the many housing developments in the area. There were others but many of those others that had followed them to Jacobs Superette did not really seem to be doing anything other than following. The ones that had gathered at the back of the store seemed to be on the same page, leaving Watertown.
Ed Weston and Dave Jackson had joined the small group earlier. Ed had worked for Glenn at the gravel pit for over ten years. He was tall with dirty-blonde hair and a slim muscular build, and Joel liked him. He'd grown up right here in Watertown on Fig Street, down by Jackson's Lumber. A piss poor family, but Ed himself was a damn good man. He seemed a little rattled today, but weren't they all? He was a hard worker and would be an asset to the group if he chose to come along.
Glenn and Haley both knew Dave. He owned one of the local lumber mills: A small family mill. He had also driven truck for Glenn once or twice when things were slow. Joel had never met him, but he had seen him around: Watertown was a small city. Neither of the men had voiced their opinions, but had been standing quietly as the other three had talked. Dave was younger than Ed, but just as tall, and his dark black hair was tied in a small ponytail that hung down his back.
The conversation at the market never really got going. The crowd that followed had spread out into the store, taking what they wanted to eat and then split up into smaller groups, discussing their own plans. A few had congregated near the beer coolers. That discussion was sometimes heated, and more than once Joel had caught some nasty looks directed at them from that crowd.
