“Is there a difference?” After a few seconds I said, “These.” I reached out and stroked a hand down one of Eric’s arms, and my other hand down one of Thom’s arms. Thom shivered. No one spoke for a few minutes.
“What is your ideal meal?” Eric inquired.
“Now or Before?” I asked, since no one had answered after a few seconds. Matthew and Thom were seriously trying to choose.
“Whenever. Ever,” Eric replied.
I thought about it. “Seems all I can think of is meals I wouldn’t want and why.”
He waited, but I wasn’t discussing that further.
“You?” I asked, trying to think of anything but clam chowder.
Eric shrugged. “Dunno. Can’t pick just one. Egg bake. Potato wedges. A huge bacon cheeseburger with a fried egg on top.”
“I miss TV dinners,” Matthew said.
“All the hypothetical food in the world and he wants something from a microwave,” Thom commented.
“I miss seeing the food in its little sections and then piling it all together,” Matthew said.
“And the texture that says, ‘Guess how long I’ve been frozen!’” I appended.
“I miss good soy milk,” Thom said. “Not the unrefrigerated carton stuff, though I’ll miss that when it’s gone. I miss fresh spring rolls, with the rice paper wrappers. And tofu.”
Eric said, “I miss eating out.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, trying hard not to laugh at Eric’s inadvertent message, but it was too late. Matthew had already collapsed on his side on the float’s surface. Then Thom started laughing, too, and I lost it.
“You guys!” Eric exclaimed.
The next morning, I left the lean-to and climbed a tall pine tree. The sky slowly grew lighter. A fossil was dredged up from the Tar Pit’s depths. The first time my stepfather had broken my wrist. Wrist and forearm, more accurately.
He’d come home from some sort of genetics or chemistry seminar. He was excited, stressed, muttering about how this could fill in some of the gaps in his research. I delivered a dinner tray, but he stuck his foot out and I tripped. The milk toppled over, splashing across his food and onto his lap. He forcefully knocked the tray across the room and stood up. Food splattered onto the drab beige wall and old brown carpet. Mashed potatoes. Gravy. Green beans. Turkey.
“You can clean that up later,” he said contemptuously. He grabbed me tightly by the wrist and dragged me into his workshop.
He pushed my hand onto the metal workbench and turned around for a moment. I pulled away and put both hands behind my back while he searched for something in a large wooden toolbox.
My stepfather swore, using combinations of words I’d never heard strung together. “Motherfucking shit-dripping cuntass.” He rattled them off in a nonstop stream. The tools in the box made metallic crashes as he fished around in it.
He turned to look at me, then tapped the workbench with a fingernail. I placed my hand back where he’d indicated, and he snapped a handcuff around my wrist and affixed its other half to a meat grinder that was welded to the bench’s top. I tugged at the restraint.
“I will teach you.” He smashed a heavy mallet down on my forearm, just below the handcuff. I instinctively yanked my arm toward me, as far as the cuffs would allow, but a look from my stepfather stopped that: he was daring me, hoping that I would keep pulling against my binding. He gave the meat grinder’s handle a spin. The warning was perfectly clear. Shaking, I returned my arm to the cold metal bench. My stepfather smashed his mallet down on my wrist again. Then he worked on the wild rose carving for a couple hours. Annie and Rose had to get supper ready for him again.
Later, blubbering like a baby, I splinted my arm with some sticks and a prickly rope that cut my mouth when I bit on it to tighten the knots.
Now, I watched the sun rise.
The fossil sank back into the tar.
Eric and I were on Scout Duty in the woods. I loved Scout Duty with him. He knew how to keep his wits about him. He was never worried he’d get lost by wandering in a random direction. Most people would only pick a straight line and follow a compass.
Back at camp, we had been training groups in different farming methods so we could have sustainable food sources. Until this process was further along, though, we’d still need to forage. We’d probably always need to forage for some things. Our campers went through a lot of food.
Eric and I had stopped to pick mushrooms, filling a basket. I leaned over and placed the basket into one of our carrying bags. I enjoyed living off the land. I didn’t think I could stand another meal of potted meat mush.
“We could always—” I began.
When I stood up and turned around, Eric was directly in front of me. Before I could stop my forward motion, I ran into him. He put his arms around my waist and drew me closer. He’d been patiently giving me time to be ready to move forward. My words went away and we smiled silently at each other for a moment. I slung a hand around his neck and outlined his ear with a finger.
“Do you want this?” he asked, pressing his body against mine. He meant the relationship. Well, he probably meant his body too. I wanted it. The relationship. His body.
“I want this, yes,” comprised my lame response.
Suddenly he was everywhere at once: the tickle of his hair, his hot breath, the warm wetness of his tongue, the scratchiness of his stubble against my neck, the way his fingers caressed the small of my back. His hands were in constant motion, mapping my body and memorizing its curves. A haze spread over me. I closed my eyes and saw a searing light, then fireworks. For a moment, my soft, ragged breathing seemed to be the only noise. My legs felt weak. My entire body vibrated. I could feel him feeling me tremble.
Then he asked with a small laugh, “Did you just…?”
I nodded, laughing too.
“But I didn’t even…” touch you there.
“Guess you didn’t need to.”
“Wow,” he exhaled, grinning widely.
And that was the first climax I had that I’d be able to remember.
Was this what I wanted?
No doubt.
We strolled into the picnic area on our way back to camp. I sat on top of a picnic table and Eric kissed the side of my head, then sat down next to me. He leaned in.
“I love you,” he said, his lips lightly rubbing my ear.
He stood to pick a dandelion and sat back down at the far end of the table, giving me a bit of space. He spun the dandelion between his fingers. I watched it twirl, unbalanced and wobbling.
I looked at the ground. Too-long grass waved in the soft breeze.
He went on, “At the city? I thought I was hallucinating when you showed up on the rooftop. ‘Thanks’ was such an inadequate thing to say.”
I was disoriented by hearing the word “love.” I flinched at it, I was intimidated by it, but I also felt an odd mix of good things over it, too. I was mystified. I knew it was what I felt for Eric, but it wasn’t what I’d expected it to be at all. Perhaps merchandisers had gotten to me, setting expectations for love that were unrealistic, but they’d inadvertently gotten the message totally wrong. Love wasn’t the frilly, silly, simplistic emotion I’d expected. It wasn’t something that could be embodied by wrapping an idiotic, oversized bow on a pompous, overpriced vehicle. Love wasn’t… it wasn’t something I could describe even if I tried to for the rest of my days. It was a masterpiece of compromises and seemingly contradictory ideas, harmonizing. I could feel myself getting lost in it. Hell, speaking of inadequate things to say, “I love you” didn’t begin to cover the dazzling, indefinable mess of emotions I felt for Eric. “I love you” struck me as almost a lie of omission; a meiosis understating the significance and magnitude of the feeling.
Eric knowing me well enough to scoot away after saying those words, surely wanting to hear them back but also understanding that I would need some room to process them, made me love him even more. But it also made the words stick ever more firmly inside
my throat, like a popcorn hull, or a large pill that didn’t make it all the way down.
“You wouldn’t have abandoned me there, on the rooftop,” I finally added, trying not to drown in my thoughts.
“No. But Rob wouldn’t have dared try to drag me down the stairs. He did pay for that.”
We both laughed. Rob’s face had been creepy before, but had become more so with those teeth missing. I’d also broken his nose, which was now very crooked. Overall, he looked far more interesting. Just not in a good way.
“And you rescued me. At Lowe’s. Thanks,” I said inadequately.
I reached out my hand. Eric’s hand crossed the remaining span dividing us and he shuffled his fingers together with mine.
We sat under low, gray clouds that were stingily withholding rain. I wouldn’t have minded being rained on.
e had a herd of rotters to deal with out on the road a couple miles from camp. Our group of “warriors” was twenty strong, easily enough to put down the ninety or so rotters limping our way.
Our group met up with theirs, and we engaged in the requisite carnage. It’s not like they put up much of a fight. This kind of engagement was old news. There wasn’t even any adrenaline rush I associated with it. Might as well have been gathering wood for the fire or trimming my fingernails.
My mind wandered. I realized, randomly, that I missed jigsaw puzzles. The farmer’s wife had always kept a puzzle in progress. When she finished one, she’d leave it out for a night to be admired. It would disappear the next day, to be replaced by new pieces. She’d sort out all the edge work first, then she’d arrange the remaining pieces by color.
Next time I have the chance, I thought, I’ll pick up a puzzle. I stabbed a rotter in the eye. It’s been too long. I smashed my hammer into another rotter’s brain.
And then I remembered another thing I missed. These were such mundane things, but I missed them nonetheless. In the farmer’s barn, there was a small power converter. Who knows what it went to? I never bothered to look. Its tiny green light flashed off and on and off and on. It flashed always, that little bulb. I could see head-on that the light was green, clearly. But the peripheral view always turned the green into amber, a trick of rods and cones.
The next day, my life’s green light turned amber: I nearly got myself exiled from camp.
It was laundry day. We’d worked out a pretty good system. I like doing laundry—so much so that I’d taken on the job of washing clothes for the guys when I did my own. I’ve always felt satisfied by taking a dirty garment and making it clean again. It’s the same with mowing a lawn. You can see the results of your work. I found it to be a pleasant task, even though it took a long time.
If they weren’t off hunting or scavenging, the brothers lugged water for the job. If they were away, I carried the water. The difference was they could each carry two five-gallon pails at a time, but it was a struggle for me to manage just one, so I used one-gallon jugs instead. Doing laundry alone meant I’d have to make several trips to the lake, and we didn’t do laundry right by the lake. We needed that water to be clean.
The camp-style laundry machine we found at the sporting goods store consisted basically of a plastic tank on a swivel rod, with a handle to make it spin. When the tank’s cap was sealed and the washer spun, pressure would build up and pull soil from the clothing inside. It was far more efficient than using a washboard. The tank could only hold one or two outfits at a time. We had plans to work out a bigger one with some plastic barrels. When we found plastic barrels.
As I was hanging up some clothes, Thom came by with a couple of buckets of water. I thanked him.
“Thanks for doing this,” Thom said. Then his stomach rumbled.
“Granola bar? Backpack, front pocket,” I offered, securing a towel to the clothesline.
“Thanks!” He grabbed out a granola bar and ripped into it. “Wish I could stick around. Got Doody Duty.”
“Enjoy your doody,” I told him, glad I didn’t have to clean the outhouse pits today. I didn’t know how he could eat food and immediately head off to wheelbarrow sewage away from camp, but it didn’t seem to bother him.
It felt like it hadn’t been very long before I used up all the water. I grabbed two one-gallon jugs and trotted down to the lake.
Sarah, one of the camp’s twentysomething single ladies, and her friends were knitting by the shore. She looked up as I approached to fill the water jugs for my next round of laundry.
“Rubbish,” she muttered under her breath.
I figured she was talking to someone else, completing a conversation I hadn’t heard, and I finished filling the jugs.
“Jeff thinks you’re so special,” Sarah started up again, looking at me. What? “But you aren’t. You hang out with trash. That’s just whatcha are, too. Garbage.” The other women clucked. “Filth.”
Where did that come from? I walked away from them. There was no point in arguing. They were entitled to their opinions. I knew my friends weren’t trash.
Eric sidled up to me. “I heard the ass end of that,” he said, putting an arm around my shoulders and reaching to take the two water jugs with his other hand. “You okay?”
“Yeah. I just…”
We walked on a bit.
“Hmm?” he nudged.
“I feel sorry for them.”
He chuckled. “Good. That’s a good way to view their bullshit.” He set the jugs down. “Mattie’ll be by to fetch more water in a bit.” He gave me a squeeze, then walked off, whistling to himself.
A few minutes later, Sarah clomped into my laundry area. Apparently she wasn’t done berating me. This was noise I was accustomed to. It was noise I knew how to tune out. She spouted off as I worked. Her voice sounded like the buzzing of an insect; it held no significance.
When she realized I wasn’t listening and wouldn’t react, Sarah threw a fit. She pulled a bunch of clean clothes from their drying lines, stomping them in the dirt. I almost wanted to be angry, but it still wasn’t a big deal. I would clean the clothes again.
Furious at failing to get a rise out of me, Sarah charged forward with an opened knife in her hand.
I dropped the wet shirt I’d been holding, grabbed her wrist, and twisted it so she dropped the knife. I would’ve let it stop there, but she attempted to hit me. I kicked her knife away.
Sarah wanted a fight. I realized I wanted one, too. It would be a good release. I didn’t generally watch fights, but I’d been in plenty of them.
I missed everything about fight training with the farmer. I was sitting at book learning one day, and he walked in and said, “I’ve enrolled you in the Bovine Institute of Combative Arts. Skills training starts tomorrow.” He made me work hard at it, like everything else. I was especially grateful for it now.
I punched Sarah in the gut. Not very hard. She did that pathetic slapping thing people do when they don’t know how to defend themselves; her hands mostly waved air at my face. I swiped a leg out from under her and she crashed to the ground. She stayed there, panting. She wasn’t equipped for fighting. She didn’t know how to go about it.
And that quickly, the fight was over.
I retrieved her knife and Sarah cowered as I folded it closed and dropped it in the dirt beside her. Her chest heaved with uneven, sobbing breaths as she put the knife away in a pocket. I offered my hand to help her up. She refused it, rolling onto her knees and standing.
As she walked away, Sarah hugged herself. She loudly, proudly said with certainty, “Jeff’s gonna kick you out for this.”
I was dumbfounded. Was this what she’d visited me for? To make an excuse to excise me from the camp?
I watched as she disappeared from view, worrying and feeling a twinge of panic well up through my solar plexus, grow, and spread throughout my chest and abdomen.
“It’s not going to happen,” a calm voice asserted from several feet behind me. Matthew.
I turned to look at him. “How much did you see?”
Matthew picked
dirt-caked clothing from the ground. “I arrived when she was pulling these down,” he said sheepishly. “I’m sorry for not… you know. I was so surprised, and then things happened so fast. And you had it under control. Figured I’d let you deal however you needed to, and then I’d help with these after. Are you mad at me?”
“No. I’m mad I might get booted and I didn’t even have a satisfying opponent,” I grumped.
He laughed at this, but I was serious. He noticed the extent of my anxiety. “Hey! Like I said, it’s not going to happen. She picked that fight, and you defended yourself. I even heard a bit of what she said before I could see you two. I’ll vouch for you, but it won’t be necessary. What’s her deal, anyway?”
“Beats the hell outta me.”
We loaded the clothes into a large basket.
“I knew you were a spitfire when it came to rotter-whompin’, but I didn’t know you could fight. If you want to get some of that out, I’ll spar with you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah!” He secured the deal with a fist bump. He grabbed the two empty five-gallon buckets and moseyed down to the lake to lug water as I reloaded our little washing machine.
As he walked away, Matthew called out, “That was totally HOT!” and laughed.
With Matthew’s contagious laughter, most of my apprehension about being forced to leave the camp was swept away. I set to work again.
Eric had begun resting an arm over my side, or one under my neck, or both, when we went to bed. I allowed this even though it was initially difficult for me. I liked the way it felt, but I was afraid of it, too. I’d watch Thom’s breathing, and it calmed me. Soon, my panic vanished and was replaced. By desire for his touch. I began to look forward to bedtime and the gentle reassurance of having Eric’s arms around me.
In the morning, Eric woke me up.
“Present,” he said. “Breakfast first, though.”
I made a little grumble, and he chuckled. I took the opportunity to get dressed in the lean-to while Thom pretended he was still asleep.
After breakfast, Eric and I left camp in the truck. He drove us out to a small town. He took me into a roller rink and presented me with a high-quality pair of white quad roller skates. With lowered toe stops! Just like I’d told him I loved skating in! I hadn’t expected him to remember that; we’d been having a random conversation about skating and… and I realized now it might not have been so random.
Survial Kit Series (Book 1): Survival Kit's Apocalypse Page 13
