Parched

by Lou Cadle

  “Will that happen to Grandpa or Grandma or Pilar?”

  “No, I’m certain it won’t.” There wouldn’t be any oxygen tanks or drugs to keep them alive. You got that frail and sick in this world, and it was goodnight forever, and fast.

  “What else can we find in the pigeon?” She pointed. ““This stuff we all throw away. Guts.”

  “We have guts too, though they’re a little different in how they work,” Sierra said.

  “And chickens don’t pee.”

  “Not like we do.”

  “And it all comes out of one hole.”

  “The vent. The eggs too.” She pointed it out on the pigeon.

  “I know.”

  “You’re a pretty good biologist already.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Biology is the study of living things, and someone who does that is a biologist. Anatomy is the study of the structures of the body. Physiology is the study of how those things all work. What they do.”

  “So there’s biologist and anatomy-ologist and physi—” She frowned, a little lost.

  “Anatomist and physiologist, yes.”

  “And people did that? Back when people got paid money to do things?”

  “They did.”

  “Didn’t they have to gather the eggs and hoe the garden and put up food all day?”

  “Not really. Other people did that. Big automated machines did a lot of it.”

  Zoe shook her head. “I don’t understand. I mean, I saw pictures of things like a steam shovel in a book. But there were machines that picked broccoli? Cooked it? Canned it?”

  “All those, but it could be that broccoli was picked by hand. Tomatoes probably were picked by hand, because they’re so tender. But corn, they had machines to pick it, and beans—hard beans, dry beans, not green beans.” Though what did she know? She knew more than a lot of city people had back then, people who thought green beans magically appeared in bags of cleaned, frozen bits, and who’d never had the chance to eat a sweet raw bean right off the plant. But she’d never been to a big commercial farm.

  “What kind of machines?”

  “I never saw one. They were pretty amazing though. Like you drove the machine over the fields, and it cut and threw things into another machine right on board and could winnow and do all that right there, even cut up the stems before spitting them out for compost. And you’d end up with grain or beans or corn and no stalks in them.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “I really don’t either, tell you the truth. It’s like a fairy tale, isn’t it? Giants and fairies are about as likely.”

  Zoe pointed inside the bird. “What’s this?”

  “Lung. You know what that’s for.”

  “Breathing,” Zoe said, and took a deep breath and blew it out.

  “Why do you think there are two lungs and only one heart and one gizzard?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “I don’t know either. Hearts are important, so it always seemed wrong to me that we only get one of them. If one lung quits, you still have one to get you by.”

  “What is this?” she asked, pointing again.

  “That’s the crop. It should be attached somehow to the gizzard.” She pointed farther down to the dark shapes half-hidden by the intestines. “And I think these things are kidneys.”

  “What do kidneys do?”

  “They filter the blood and then get rid of what the body doesn’t want as urine.” Sierra hoped she was remembering that right. High school biology had been ten years ago.

  “Birds don’t pee,” she said again.

  “No, but the white stuff is pretty much that.”

  “Why isn’t it like ours?”

  Sierra ignored the urge to say because that’s just how it was. Her daughter deserved a more accurate explanation. “I’m not sure. I bet someone along the block here knows. Or, wait, we might have an old pamphlet on raising chickens somewhere. It might explain. I’ll look for it later, okay? Right now, if we’re going to cook the dove, we should get to it.” It was too hot to let it sit around any longer.

  “We can eat it?”

  “We can eat it, though there’s not much food on it.”

  “I like chicken legs.”

  “Yeah, these dove legs are pretty tiny. The breast of a dove is all that’s worth eating, really. Or you can clean it, burn off the feathers, cut off the head and feet, and put everything, including bones, into water and have dove soup. They’ll be better as breasts cooked over the grill. The other bits we can try in a trap, as bait.”

  “Dad says I can’t mess with the traps yet.”

  “Soon. You could lose a finger if you’re not careful, and we all love every one of your fingers too much to let that happen.”

  “He says maybe I can learn to shoot this fall.”

  “Gun or bow?”

  “Gun. I tried the bow, but it’s too hard.”

  Sierra wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Of course Zoe had to know how to defend herself, and how to hunt for the table. But she didn’t want her to have to ever kill a person, the way Sierra had. “Maybe we can get you good enough with the blowgun you’ll be able to feed everyone that way.”

  “Not everyone,” Zoe said, watching as Sierra finished cutting out the tiny breasts. “I’d need a hundred birds just for my family.”

  That stung. She didn’t say, “But I’m your family too,” because Zoe knew that. Her daughter had just been unconsciously saying what she felt. It had been a good few days with Zoe, and they hadn’t quarreled but once, and that was at the end of the day when Zoe was tired and whiny and wanting to stay up far beyond when she should have been asleep.

  The Quinns were Zoe’s real family. Whatever distance there was between her and her daughter might be impossible to bridge.

  Sierra feared it was she herself that caused it, that she somehow projected an arm’s length shield. Like a bubble of ice all around her that no one dared to crack through. She had no idea how she was doing it, but it must be happening. Her fate. Her punishment. Or her nature.

  Didn’t really matter which, did it?

  That night, as they were preparing supper, Sierra noticed the refrigerator wasn’t very cool.

  “Maybe it’s the power,” Pilar said. “We haven’t had much wind and we might not be getting enough to run it right.”

  “I’ll check,” Sierra said. She went out to the power center where the controller was and checked the digital readouts. The two working turbines were spinning lazily in the bit of early evening breeze, an effect of the mountains creating drafts more than real weather. And they had full batteries, according to the readout.

  She went back in and said, “We have power.”

  The refrigerator was pulled out, and Pilar was getting to his feet, brushing his hands. “It’s plugged in. And I should clean back there.”

  “I hope it isn’t the refrigerator itself.”

  “It might be coolant. If so, we’re in trouble.”

  “Is it running? Can you hear it?”

  “I’ll turn it up and see.”

  Zoe was at the kitchen table, cutting up green beans. “Can I help?”

  Pilar said, “We’ll let you know if you can. It might be something simple.”

  Sierra said, “Do you want to check and me finish cooking? Or vice versa? You’re still the better cook.”

  “We only need to warm up the meat and blanch the veggies.” He wiggled the refrigerator out farther from the wall.

  The water was already on the fire. “I’ll do that. Yell if you need me.” Sierra went outside, a hard knot of worry in her stomach. Losing the refrigerator would be terrible, especially in this kind of weather. They could live without one in winter. And the freezer was still good, so keeping meat wasn’t an issue. But keeping eggs was. She trusted them for about a week on the counter, but no longer than that in this heat. Even with an exhaust fan running in the house, it was usually over 100 degrees in there by mid-afternoon
.

  In spring, strawberries would be more likely to rot, but that was simple to fix by canning any excess once a week.

  Maybe it was time to dig a food cellar. The ground here was rocky and hard from no rain, but she couldn’t think of another option. Underground, food could be kept cooler. But what a loss the refrigerator would be.

  If she and her father couldn’t figure it out, she’d ask Curt to take a look at it.

  Between the broken turbine and a broken refrigerator, life was about to change, she sensed. And not for the better.

  Chapter 13

  “It’s not the coolant,” Curt said, after holding his ear to the side of the refrigerator and listening for a full minute. He’d checked the refrigerator over for almost an hour, testing, taking apart, and putting back together. “There might be a tiny hole somewhere, but I don’t think so. Not unless you’ve been jabbing around with a knife.”

  “Then what is it?” Pilar was not happy.

  “How old is it?”

  “Twenty years, I think,” Pilar said.

  “I barely remember getting it,” Sierra added. “So it might be a bit older than that. I was younger than Zoe when you got it.”

  “They don’t last forever,” Curt said.

  “No,” Pilar said. “I know that.”

  “I’ll take out the compressor and work on it. Soak it, take it apart and clean connections, and put it back together. It’ll take me a day. And your seals are getting old, I can tell. It might just be that.”

  Sierra said, “So we’re refrigerating the whole kitchen?”

  “In a sense,” Curt said.

  “I’m surprised our batteries are topped off.” They were only a smidgen low this morning, not unusual at all.

  “There’s probably a shut-off that doesn’t allow the compressor to run forever. Let me clean it, and check the valves. And it could be this thing here, the evaporator pressure regulator. That could also be the problem. So if you want, I’ll look this over too, clean them, and bring them back and re-install them.”

  Pilar said, “I appreciate your help.” He sighed. “I guess we can make block ice in the freezer, put it in the fridge, and have an old-fashioned ice box instead of a refrigerator.”

  Curt said, “That’s a great idea.” He stood and put the parts on the kitchen table, then brushed off his pants.

  Sierra said, “Can I do anything to help you with the compressor and other thing?”

  “No. But I guess we need to talk about this new grain field before I go.”

  Pilar said, “It’s a good idea.”

  “Between us three and the wallpaper,” Curt said, “how do you feel about those people down there? I haven’t talked to them. You have.”

  “Not me,” Pilar said. “Except for the two women at the Quinn place, who I met up here. They seem okay as far as it goes.”

  Sierra said, “They seem a lot like us. Except they lost their place. I mean, this whole situation has turned us into people we wouldn’t have been otherwise. But they have their basic humanity, if you know what I’m saying, despite having some rough times.”

  Curt nodded. “I’m glad you feel that way too. I trust Kelly, of course, and she was adamant about having them. But Arch seemed less than happy.”

  They had a neighborhood meeting about it, and Kelly had pretty much laid down the law on the matter. Let the strangers stay. Give them the fields after this year’s harvests, and start anew closer by. Sierra said, “I’m not sure the car won’t come down with a problem just like the fridge did. That’s a long way to haul grain sacks on our backs. So it’s a good move for us in the long run, if hard work in the short run.”

  “If the car broke and we kept those fields, we’d have to flail and winnow it there,” Curt said. “Or you would. I seldom do the work, so I shouldn’t talk as if I do. Though more of us should go to split the weight of the sacks in that case.”

  “We could do that, and stay overnight to get it all done. But we’ve been watering every week this June, and most of last summer, and so it’d be a full day’s job to do that every week. Or a half day, riding the bike there and back.”

  “And the loss of calories you burned on the hike,” Pilar pointed out. “It’s probably past time to move the fields up here. There sure are plenty of dead pines we could clear.”

  “We could use the low land on the other side of the road,” Curt said. “It might be slightly damper. And while there are trees, it’s mostly scrub. Easier to take down.”

  “I’m willing to do a lot of the work of that,” Sierra said. “One person from every household can be spared a few hours a day.” She shook her head at Curt. “You don’t have to help, since you’re single.”

  “I can. In fact, I want to. I only garden for one, and I only check my close-in traps once a day. Outer line every second day. So the days I don’t do that, I can clear land.”

  “You still doing tanning?” Pilar said.

  “Yeah, but that takes no time at all. You all have an extra adult or two—three in Joan’s case—but I’m only growing and cooking and cleaning for one, so it really comes out to the same thing. None of us have eight hours a day to spare, but we all could probably spare a few.”

  Pilar said, “Maybe we should split into teams, with two people per day working on it.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Curt said. “I’ll take these parts to my place right now, unless you have something else you need of me?” He looked at Sierra.

  “Maybe you and I can walk across the road and look at the land down there first,” she said. “Try and get an idea how many hours of work there are to do to clear an acre.”

  “Two acres would be better,” Pilar said.

  “Two acres then,” she said. “A per-acre estimate of work hours.”

  “Sure,” Curt said. “Now?”

  “Pilar, check on Zoe in fifteen minutes, would you?” She was out in the garden, weeding.

  On the walk, Curt said, “You get your water system fixed? For the garden?”

  “Yeah. It’s good for now.”

  “I realized if there are a few little leaks, it wouldn’t be the worst thing. I mean, the plants would find it.”

  “As long as the olla pots themselves get filled. No way to know they’re not except for dying plants.”

  “How’s it going, having Zoe with you?”

  “It’s nice,” Sierra said.

  “You didn’t sound entirely sure.”

  Sierra shrugged. “I love her,” she said.

  “Of course you do.”

  “But I’ll never have with her what Dev does. They’re close in a way I can’t manage.”

  “Sounds like it hurts.”

  “A little, I guess. I don’t know.”

  “You don’t?”

  “It seems so selfish to want more than what I have. I’m alive. So many people aren’t. I’m not driven out of my home like those people down there. I eat. The walls are still up. I’m still clothed, though it’s pretty patchy by now.”

  “Glad I had a lot of heavy-duty jeans and work pants right before all this started. There was an online sale and I got ten of these.”

  She pointed. “Your knees are patched.” The pants were heavy. Though they had once been beige, they were stained with grass and animal blood and possibly a bit of oil. It looked like someone had done a bad job of making camouflage pants.

  “A minor problem.”

  Her own jeans were patched in a dozen places, frayed at the bottom hem, and both her front and rear right pockets had been torn off and replaced several times by other material, whatever was available. “Better off than any of mine,” she said. “I doubt I’ll be entering the Ms. Post-Apocalypse beauty contest anytime soon.”

  “You’d win anyway,” he said.

  She was so surprised, it took her a half a minute to say, “Thank you?” The questioning tone was unintentional, and she laughed awkwardly when she heard it. She said, “I mean, thank you,” this time without the question.
r />   “I’m surprised you even know about beauty contests.”

  “I suspect there aren’t any now.” She was still trying to work out if there was any chance in hell he was trying to come on to her. Because the answer was yes. Yes, she liked him, yes she wanted sex, yes, please and an extra helping.

  They had arrived at the edge of the road, and whatever he had been thinking, he was all business now. “See how the few pines down here are in better shape?”

  “Yeah, I’ve noticed that.”

  “The drought helps bark beetles establish a colony in a tree, as I’m sure you know. Also, that there are more deciduous trees down here shows us that there’s more water.”

  “Well, it’s lower,” she said.

  “True, but something else might be contributing. Maybe there’s a very slow seep, or something about the soil. That’s part of what I want to check right now, make sure there’s not too much clay to plant grain.” He flipped out a folding knife and bent down to dig in the soil. “Rocky, but so would any place be. Here’s a bit of obsidian.” He held up a thumb-sized piece of shiny reddish-brown rock. Glass, really.

  “Maybe I can learn to make dart heads from it.”

  “I thought you hated the bow.”

  “I’ve taught myself to use a blow gun this week. For now, just two of the straws end to end, but I keep meaning to dig through the barn and find a piece of PVC pipe scrap that is the right diameter and length. If I can’t at our house, I’ll go begging through the neighborhood.”

  “Smart,” he said. “Any good with it?” He had enough soil dug up that he was able to show it to her.

  “I got a dove with a pebble today. Lucky shot I guess, because it was killed with one hit. I thought I’d just stunned it and would need to twist its head off.”

  “Excuse me,” he said, and spit into the soil, then rolled it into a ball. “It’s okay. On the clay end, but not too much so. It’ll be hard digging because of the rocks and roots, but the leaves the trees dropped have basically composted it. Probably part of why it retains moisture. That and the shading.”

  “A little of this, a little of that,” she said. “It all adds up.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So taking away the shade will mean it’s dryer. And the compost effect won’t last forever. A few years.”