Houston, 2030

by Mike McKay

  “Comfy, darling?” Mary asked Mark, placing the red donation bucket on the cardboard in front of him. Sure, honey, give me a kiss. The light kiss followed; Mary and Clarice, with the rest of the family, departed on the trike. OK, what should I do now? How William explained the procedure another day? Ah, it must be simple. I could have guessed myself. For this, he did not need his University degree, or even his school diploma.

  “Change for Vets, Ladies and Gents! Change for Vets! A dollar? Thank you, sir. Thank you from the Salvation Way. Great donation. Thank you.”

  I must be way more aggressive, Mark decided, or the Collector of the Month would be still with William.

  “Have a look, Ladies and Gents! I have neither arms nor legs. No, it does not sound right. Too pompous. I have no arms and no legs, Ladies and Gents! A single negative is perfectly fine here. No, also not right. How about this? Change for Vets, Ladies and Gents! I don't have no arms and no legs no more! How are my triple negatives, hey? That is how the beggars on the street are supposed to talk. Now I am in-line with the target audience. What about you, ma'am? Want to give a donation? Change for Vets!”

  An old lady stopped in front of Mark's cardboard, lowered two loaded baskets on the pavement and took a bamboo pole from her shoulder. Oh, this must be Rosalind, one of the fast-food ladies from the 'Fill. The youngsters were doing something silly under her windows…

  “Two bucks? What? Three? Thank you so much, ma'am. You are so kind. I hope, those naughty kids don't bother you again? No? That is surely good news, ma'am. Have a nice day. See you tomorrow.” Mark started liking this collection business. It was pleasant enough: sitting on the street, talking to people. And nobody, nobody could blame us for the ‘spot holding’ either. We, the ‘Quads,’ we had our rights. Only William would be spot-holding today, making Mr. Todd grumpy. But these would be William's probs, not ours… Sorry, he should be called ‘Billy’ now. Having only one little stump instead of two arms, how did he qualify for a full-blown ‘William,’ or even for ‘Bill’? I would call my son ‘Billy’ from now on, as everybody else. He would not object.

  “Hey, stumped! Here is your dollar, buddy,” there was a voice from above. A man was standing in front of Mark, with a banknote in his hand.

  “Morning, sir. How are you today?” Mark replied: “actually, my name is Mark, by the way, but you may call me anything you want. ‘Markie,’ ‘buddy,’ or even ‘stumped.’ No objections, whatsoever. Would you be so kind, sir, to drop your dollar straight into the bucket? You see, picking it up from the cardboard is a bit difficult for me. Thank you, sir, for helping our program. Thank you so much. Have a nice day! Change for Vets, Ladies and Gents! I don't have no arms and no legs no more! Cha-a-ange for Ve-e-ets!”

  “Mark! Mark! Mark?”

  Mark opened his eyes again. Clarice was over his bed, her face worried. “You just closed your eyes and drifted off,” she said.

  “Must be this wonder drug in my IV. Still working its magic.”

  “The doctor ordered to reduce the drip this morning.”

  “Is his name – Roger?”

  “Who's? Doctor's? No, he is, I think, Justin.”

  “Oh, so it all must be a stupid dream…” Now the ‘no-worries’ part of Mark's brain had somewhat weakened, and the other, ever-worrying, but acute and critical part was slowly taking over. The bed was not air-soft anymore, and there was a feeling in the body. Mark lifted his left hand and investigated its condition. Few scratches here and there, generously painted with Iodine, a broken nail, but nothing serious. He tried to move his toes. The feet pleasantly responded. “Why am I in the collar?”

  “You have a tiny crack in the fourth vertebrae. Plus a slight concussion. One of your Police guys said, you broke a coffee table with your head.”

  “I guess, I did. OK, great then. Nothing serious. Not counting the broken arm…”

  “Broken arm?” Clarice sounded strange, and her eyes opened wider. “No, Mark, you had an operation. You don't remember anything, do you?”

  “What operation?” Mark twisted to the right (the shoulder responded with a jolt of sharp pain) and stared at his right arm. Now he saw that what he took for the heavily plastered arm was really an above-elbow stump, generously wrapped in gauze and stretched amongst a contraption of pipes and rods. Somehow, he did not feel surprised. The bloody Minié ball! There was a hole as large as his palm. It would be stupid to expect any other outcome. He was not too upset either. After being a ‘Quad’ in his dream, having his two legs and one arm back felt like an unexpected Christmas present.

  “I see… And how long have I been – like this?”

  “Four days. Well, you were asleep. Most of the time, anyway.”

  “Was I talking nonsense?”

  “Something about a cuttlefish. A lot about the chainsaw maintenance. Bad O-rings, wrong gas. Also, you wanted to see somebody called Barney. Who is it – a witness?”

  “No, Clarice. Barney is a T-Rex. Friendly, purple, and huggable. Can I… have a sip of water?”

  “Oh, sorry. I didn't think about this,” Clarice reached for a glass with drinking straw. “Just a little. Doctor said: don't give too much at once.”

  Mark took a sip. The water was warm and smelt of some chemical disinfectant, but for Mark it tasted as the best Champagne. “You said, Samantha had an acid burn.”

  “Oh, nothing serious.”

  “Really nothing serious?” Mark asked. Yeah, if Davy just had a ‘little polio,’ ‘nothing serious’ could be anything.

  “Really, Mark. A small burn on her forehead, and another one – behind her ear, that's all she's got. She is already back to the gas plant, fixing those bombs, or whatever. Mister Stolz can't pay no money, but everybody agreed to work for free, just to get the thing going.”

  “The others? Mary? William? Pamela and Patrick? David-senior?”

  “All fine, Mark. Everybody is alive, and in good health… No cholera in our immediate neighborhood, thanks God! We are washing the hands and boiling the water, like crazy! Mary is fine, Grandpa David is fine. Billy is also fine. Last three days he did the Loop, all by himself! Well, since I am sitting here, with you and Davy.”

  “Goddamn Salvation Way! At least after the hurricane Mister Todd got to give his collectors a little break.”

  “The Salvation Way is no more.”

  “What do you mean: no more? What about the charities, and all these support programs?”

  “The local Command is closed since the hurricane. But the charities are running fine. People figured out they can run soup kitchens and collect donations without having a bunch of old-timers in blue uniforms telling everybody what to do.”

  “Wow! I guess, I can't complain about Mister Todd anymore. What else?”

  “The school is closed. Cholera, polio, and so on. Ricky and Pam are helping at home. They managed to clean up the garage, and now making the veggie beds and digging through whatever was left of the house. Ricky found this Thomas Engine yesterday.”

  “Wait a moment. Whatever was left of the house, you said?”

  “Oh, perhaps, I shouldn't tell you this. We only have the garage now. The rest of the house is, more or less – gone.”

  “More? Or less?”

  “Uhm, only, don't get too upset. We don't have no house no more. Only the garage part is standing. Should I tell you the whole thing?”

  “Go on!”

  “That night, during the big flooding. Remember, you called? And I told you Mary, Billy, and Sammy were not back yet? We were watching the DVDs. Then, the water started coming up, and up, and up. Well, I told Pam and Ricky: let's bring what we can – upstairs! So we kept moving the stuff: from the kitchen, and the TV, and all. Then, the water started coming through the back door…”

  “And?”

  “We kept moving things upstairs until the water was up to our knees. So I said: fine, can't save everything anyway. And we went upstairs. Got ourselves some towels and dried up. Then: ka-boom! Like an explosion, un
der the kitchen. All the house was shaking! Then once more: ka-boom! And it went quiet.”

  “The main battery blew up?”

  “Yeah, that's what Grandpa David said: must have listened to the bloody electricity man.”

  Right, Mark thought. After the grid was disconnected, they had to modify the house wiring. Back then, the electrician said the hybrid car battery – the only source of electricity during the night, should be installed on the second floor, and not under the kitchen. But Mark did not want the ugly contraption in one of the bedrooms. In the hindsight, it was not a very smart decision.

  “So we got under blankets,” Clarice continued. “In the boys' room. There was less wind. The phone had no signal, but we had Ricky's emergency radio. With the crank. That present, from the FBI… We took turns cranking it, and were listening for the weather updates. Could not sleep, see. It was so scary! The wind was blowing like mad, and the rain… So we were like this till the morning…”

  “And?”

  “In the morning, the wind was a bit less, but the rain was still going strong. I went to the stairs – the water was about waist level, that much. The wall panels downstairs – all broke off. But I thought: the wind is down, the water will come down too, we just need to wait it over. The food – we had upstairs, so I fixed some breakfast from the jars. Then, we hear, like: creak, creak! And the floor started… moving a bit. So I told everybody: guys, we need to get out – on the roof! If the house goes under, it's better to be outside than inside, right? We opened the window above the garage and got onto the roof. Got the food and some other stuff too. Pam wanted to go back for the blankets, but I said: forget it!”

  Mark imagined Clarice, with her seven months tummy, climbing to the garage roof through the window. “And the house collapsed, right?”

  “Yeah. First, the thing went, like, sideways. Then: boom! Crashed into the water. But the garage was still standing, lucky us! OK, here we are: sitting on the garage. It was so cold! The wind went quiet, but the rain… And we hadn't no blankets! And almost no clothes! And the worst thing: we hadn't no water! Imagine, you are surrounded by water, and – nothing to drink! But I told the kids: the water down there – don't even think about it! All these backyard latrines, and the canal, and the goddamn Simpson-Kaufman fertilizer, you know… I thought: we need to get some clean water. I told Ricky: take your T-shirt off and start wiping the rain from the roof. We can squeeze the water from the shirt – and drink.”

  “That was a very smart move, Clarice. I am sure, the cholera is because people were drinking the contaminated water.” Thanks God, we let William marry this girl, he thought to himself. Maybe, she was simple-minded, not too educated, and in-hurry to make babies, but without her, half of the family would be dead by now.

  “And then, the rain was over, and the water started coming down. As it got to about knee-deep, we got off the roof. The house was pulled almost to the canal. Not the whole house, of course, but all the pieces… I am thinking: so good, they didn't give Billy his compensation money right away! We would spend them on my stupid renovation, and other such things, like I wanted. But lucky us, the money are still safe in the Pentagon, right?”

  “Right, Clarice. In the Pentagon, your money would be completely safe. This is surely a good thing…” Amazing, how Clarice could find a silver lining in any cloud! But considering… “How are the other houses? I mean: the neighbors?”

  “The Levins lost part of the roof, but kinda OK. The Kongs don't have no house no more. Gone completely, even the garage. And the other one, down the circle, also – completely. Missis Levin let two rooms to the Kongs, for free. Until they build themselves something… Instead of the house. And there are a lot of houses a bit like ours: broken, but something is still standing.”

  Mark closed his eyes and imagined how their cul-de-sac would look like. Not right now, but let say, in one year time. The ‘strippers’ would take apart the piles of rubble, and the dwellers would construct some shacks to live in. The endless rows of vegetable beds would be restored, no doubts. Top priority, or they would have nothing to eat. Their battery blew up. Too bad. Likely, the solar panels were also beyond repair. Well, they would have to survive without electricity. The TV and the computers were gone, anyway. In the night, it would be even darker. Only the stars and the Moon. Instead of the shower, they would wash themselves in the stinky West Canal. Instead of a proper stove, there would be four bricks. Perhaps, with the same sun-dried dung for a fuel… What he saw in his mental picture, looked still marginally better than the Garret Road Slum, especially the northern, Indomerican part, but already worse than the Mesa Drive Slum. Correction, Mark thought. I am imagining the GRS and the MDS as they were before the hurricane. Now, there would be hardly any difference between those two slums and our neighborhood. We should give our place a new name. How about ‘the West Canal Slum,’ or WCS for short?

  The Arthur was the wrong name, he realized. They should call it like that Colt's gun: the Equalizer. One week ago, it was all in comparison. Social gradation. Classes. My house, in a ‘good neighborhood,’ is larger and way more comfortable than your shack in a ‘slum.’ You wash yourself in a dirty pond, and I can take almost-warm showers (even if my kids have to bring the water from the Reservoir one mile away). I work for the federal agency, any you dig the stinky garbage at the 'Fill. Your kids are dressed in rags and permanently barefoot, and mine have reasonably new second-hand clothes and even – the old tire sandals, although the younger kids refuse to put those ugly sandals on. I am an upper middle-class, and you are – whatever… But now, after the hurricane, we became all the same. We live in the identical slums and cook our chowder on identical sun-dried dung. The United Slums of America! In the United Slums, we don't need no stinking middle class! Perhaps, the Year Zero, from that sad book about the Pol Pot's Kampuchea was not too far away?

  Chapter 27

  When Mark opened his eyes again, it was nearly sunset. Clarice said, he suddenly went into a deep, peaceful sleep, and she decided not to disturb him. Thankfully, this time Mark had no dreams whatsoever. Obviously, his body started getting rid of the RPBP ‘designer drug.’ Now, Mark felt a little pain in the shoulder, but his mind was clearer, and not split anymore.

  “Strange. Mary and everybody else are not here yet,” Clarice said, “I sent them a message at two o'clock.”

  “Would it be easier to call?” Mark asked.

  “Not really. Our area doesn't have no coverage no more. Patrick and Pamela have to go a mail-fetch two or three times a day.”

  “How do you ‘go a mail-fetch’?” Mark asked, smiling at Clarice's triple negative. Her way around the modern English was even more creative than Pamela's.

  “About the same as our neighbors from the east used to do. Jump on the bike and go a couple of miles. Towards the local market. As soon as you get the signal, the phone downloads the mails and says: beep. So you may turn around and ride back.”

  “Did they say when this will be fixed?”

  “The phone people said: in our area there is nothing important. Only slums, so they call us: ‘no priority area.’ ‘Maybe,’ they said. But must wait a month or so.”

  Right, Mark thought, our neighborhood became now a ‘slum,’ even officially. A ‘no priority area.’ The cell tower would be fixed. Maybe. After some ‘no priority’ wait. But only if the ‘strippers’ would not get there first. Interesting enough, everybody took it as absolutely normal. ‘Conditioning’ at work. The water in the pot was almost boiling, but the frogs were still happy.

  “And how do you charge the phones now?” he asked.

  “The house at the corner, they got the solar panels working. Damian, that boy without both hands, opened a new business: telephone charging. Ten bucks a piece.”