Outside the Fire

by Boyd Craven

  The actual making of the air conditioner was more like a Rube Goldberg affair. Steve knew how he wanted to do it, but let the parts make the design. He had enough filter material to fold it in half and run it from the top to the bottom of the inside. About halfway up, he ran some small screws he had from a hinge set into the side and let the bottom drop, attaching the plastic filter media at about the halfway mark. He let it just hang free and brush against the floor of the cooler. Next, he marked and outlined the opening and the outlets using the vent pipe as a template. Both sides were cut out using a drill and a jigsaw.

  He was pushing the fitting in to attach the inline fan when Amy came up.

  “That doesn’t look like it’s going to work. At all.”

  “You don’t know what I’m doing,” Steve told her grinning.

  “You’re making an expensive mistake,” she told him and then turned when a snort alerted her that she wasn’t alone.

  Steve turned to see both Angela and Amber sitting at the snack bar, both grinning.

  “What? That’s what you said, Mom?”

  “Hey,” Steve called out.

  “I plead the fifth,” Angela said.

  The lights blinked off and everyone groaned.

  “You stored a bunch of water, right?” Steve asked.

  “Yes, Dad,” she said with a dramatic sigh. “Can I walk down to Matt’s in a little bit?”

  “Yeah, I don’t mind,” Steve said. “See if Lucy is back from last night. I’m curious what went on. There wasn’t anything on the radio or TV about any riot.”

  “I will, but I’m going to wait a little bit. It’s too hot right now.”

  Angela and Steve had been talking about that and what was going to happen when school started back up. Prices for everything had gone up, but with the inflation and power outages, the news had remained oddly silent on the subject. With no power, there was little on the way of internet news that was reliable. It ran the gamut of wild conspiracy theories, alien invasion, to human interest stories about a dozen puppies from three litters that were rescued from an animal hoarder who’d died and was about to have become the next kibble for the critters.

  “Ok, then you can see if this is going to work. Can you go set up the small panels like I showed you?”

  “Yeah, you want them on the back patio, not the grass?”

  “Yeah, the patio,” Steve told her, “Then run the wires in here.”

  “Got it,” she said and slowly untangled herself from the stool she’d been sitting on.

  “What are you doing?” Angela asked as he drilled another hole in the cooler, this one in the back, under the lid near where the hinges were.

  “This is going to sorta be like a swamp cooler. I don’t know how good it’ll work here, but I’m going to try,” Steve said, taking the pond pump out and putting it on the bottom.

  “Ok, I remember what those are. So the pump there is going to circulate the water?”

  “Yeah,” Steve said pulling the power cord out of the freshly drilled hole.

  Angela grabbed the outlet hose and studied it for a second and then snapped her fingers. She was back a minute later with some golf tees. She shoved one in and Steve could see the cords of her arms stand out as she pushed. It wasn’t a big pump, more for those little three-foot round ponds you make as a water feature on a walkway, but the golf tee worked perfectly.

  “Do we need a clamp for it?” she asked.

  “If it leaks a little bit, it won’t hurt anything. We’re going to be making holes in the line anyways,” Steve said taking it and laying it out across the top of the filter media.

  He strung it out, and then headed into the kitchen, coming back out with a handful of wooden clothespins and started pinning the two pieces of filter media and the now blocked hose across the tip. He took his Leatherman off his belt and opened the punch and worked it back and forth until he had small holes punched in the plastic tubing, mostly facing down or inside of the filters. Then he made sure he had enough line and cut off the excess before plugging that into the pump itself.

  “Here’s the power, is it safe to close the door with the uh…wires coming in?”

  “Yeah, that’s fine. I don’t know if this fan is going to be powerful enough to do this, but we can always replace it with something else if it doesn’t work.”

  “I still think Mommy is right,” Amy said, having taken her sisters spot on the stool.

  “Yeah, well, if this thing works, you and Mommy can sit in front of it last, how’s that sound?”

  “Hey, that’s not fair!”

  “Yeah well, how about you go run the rabbits and chickens some water real quick while me and your mom finish wiring this thing up, and I’ll let you know before I kick it on?”

  “Ugh,” Amy said in her best Amber sound, and went stomping to the sink to get a large pitcher out of the dish drying rack.

  “Is that why you froze a ton of water jugs yesterday?” Amber asked.

  “Yeah, so we got two freeze cycles out of it, they should be rock solid. I’ll make sure to keep it full so it doesn’t run as much. Is the water in the tub cold?”

  “Yes, but you said that’s not for drinking….” Amber said.

  “It’s not,” Angela told her. “Now I get what your dad is going to do. Go get those jugs and I’ll get another pitcher while he wires this up.”

  Everyone scattered. Steve started wiring up the solar panels to an ACDC converter and tested the connections. He skipped using the charge controller that he was saving for the bigger system and then started plugging things in. Both the pond pump and the vent fan ran on 110, and as soon as he got water in it, it’d be plugged in. While he waited, he duct taped around the holes he cut for the vent, and the hole the pump plug came out of on the middle side. He stood and stretched, his tendon’s popping when he felt something ice cold touch his back. “Holy—”

  “Shhh,” Angela said as the cold was removed.

  She grinned at him and put two one-gallon water jugs in the bottom of the cooler, followed by Amber who had a pitcher of water.

  “How much more?” Angela asked

  “Let’s get another couple of gallons,” he said as Amy headed out the door with a pitcher. “If this works, we can probably run this for hours and hours.”

  “I hope it works, this heat sucks.”

  “At least we don’t live up north anymore. Can you imagine how cold it’d get with the power only being on a few days at a time?”

  “So this is like, a nationwide thing?” Amy asked, heading back in to get another pitcher of water for the critters.

  “Yes, it is now,” Angela answered.

  “This is kinda scary,” Amber said pouring water into the cooler.

  “Naw, nothing scary here,” Steve lied to her and got up to go get a jug from the garage.

  They worked on putting about six inches of water in the long white cooler, and with the animals fed and watered, Steve plugged in the fan to the converter. It started up and Amy immediately flopped down on the discharge side.

  “I can feel the air!” she said.

  “Well, is it any cooler?” Amber said flopping down and pushing her sister over half a foot.

  “Hey, no shoving,” Amy said and shoved back.

  Steve gave Angela a quick grin and plugged in the pump. The effect was delayed, but they could hear water running somewhere in the cooler.

  “Oh, Mom,” Amber said, her voice dreamy.

  “Is it…working?” Angela said, hurrying over.

  “I think you both need to move over,” Steve told them as both parents laid down in front of the six-inch outlet pipe.

  They stayed like that for a good ten minutes, feeling the cooler air blowing on them.

  “It’s not going to cool a big area, is it?” Angela asked after a while of lying on her stomach, her face into the cool airflow.

  “Probably not. This takes very little power to run. What we had before…I don’t know if we have roof enough to run the
big air conditioning unit. That’s why we’ve left it cranked for when we have power—”

  The lights blinked and then the power came back on. The air conditioning turned on and the younger girls shrieked in happiness, and Amber ran to the TV.

  “I wonder if they’re going to have…”

  “I want to watch Power Rangers,” Amy said.

  “You’re so 2005,” Amber told her, pushing her back.

  “Twice in a day?” Angela said. “Maybe things are looking better?”

  “Yeah, I hope so,” Steve told her, turning to kiss his wife who was still lying beside him on the tiled floor.

  “Uh, Dad…”

  Steve stood up and walked towards the TV. The images on the screen reminded him of the first gulf war, where smart bombs had cameras strapped to them. Instead of mere bombs, there were for images on what looked like a split screen on the local news station. One hit what looked like a concrete building, another hit a naval vessel with what had to have been a cruise missile before it went dark. The other two he only got a glimpse of, but it looked like their explosions were over land.

  “The President has declared war with congressional approval, against both China and North Korea in retaliation for the sinking of the US Aircraft Carrier George H.W. Bush this morning. Rescue operations are underway, and it’s too early to guess at casualties. Rumors of an underwater battle between the three nations by unnamed sources have told our news station that most of China and North Korea’s first strike capable submarines have been targeted and are being hunted as we speak.

  “The country is on high alert, and the emergency broadcast network will override all network stations if an attack is imminent. There is no threat to the homeland at this time. Let me repeat, there is no threat to the homeland at this time…”

  “Dad?” Amy asked and walked over to her dad.

  Steve was shaking as Amy walked up and hugged her dad and took one of his hands.

  “Let’s sit on the couch,” Angela said as she pulled on Steve’s other hand.

  This was the thing he was dreading. With the currency already slipping, too many sabers had been rattled. It had been an on again and off again shooting naval matchup, but he hadn’t seriously thought that the Chinese or North Koreans would start this. Unless nuclear weapons were used, the US Navy was larger than any ten nations combined and far more advanced. At least, that’s what his research was telling him.

  For the first time in weeks, he remembered the Russian satellite that had been hacked. Would this be the tipping point? Only about half of what the hacker had uncovered had been tried, but…

  “…the DOW Jones and S&P Index were both sinking to new record lows and trading was halted at noon, Eastern Standard Time. In other news, Russia has pushed back against sanctions by turning off the gas flow into eastern and western Europe. Sources say it is only a temporary measure, one meant to make a political point. The US Stock Market fluctuations and now fears of instability may make this an interesting week. Power outages that have been plaguing the nation will soon be restored as a shipment of replacement parts have been flown in from multiple sources…as always, we will keep you up to date, right here.”

  The TV’s logo flashed across the screen, but the ticker giving out information across the bottom continued as a commercial came on.

  “Oh, shit,” Angela said.

  “Oh, shit,” Steve agreed, sitting in the cooling air.

  The goosebumps weren’t from the difference the homemade air conditioner/swamp cooler made. It was fear. He had to get to the bank before it was too late. He still had close to four-thousand dollars left, but worried that wouldn’t be enough to buy a can of soup. Monday morning, he would withdraw everything he could. There was little he could do tonight, and he was too morose to go talk to Dwight.

  The tractor was the loudest noise for a long time. The auger on the smaller tractor and the fact that there was little to no traffic noise from the main road made it a beacon. More than a few times, Amber would see the curtains on the Wilson’s house move and turned to flip them the bird. Steve stopped her the first time, but after a while, he considered joining her. The process was pretty simple, and it went much faster than Steve thought it would. Dwight backed his tractor up to the opening where the gate had been removed, stabilized the tractor and used a PTO driven auger to sink an eight-inch hole almost six feet into the ground. He would pause, every now and then for Steve or Amber to drag dirt out of the way with a shovel. It seemed to them it took less than a couple of minutes from when he started to where he was raising the leveler’s legs and pulling the tractor forward and killing the engine.

  “Will that get you going good?” Dwight asked as he walked up.

  “That’s going to save me a couple hours of digging,” Steve said looking at the mixture of soil and clay.

  “Let’s hope you can get that sand point driven down into some water,” Dwight told him.

  “What happens if he doesn’t hit water?” Amber asked.

  “Well, then nothing comes up out of the pipe, genius,” Dwight said nudging her with a callused hand.

  “No, I mean, do you pull it, drive it deeper….”

  “Drive it deeper,” Steve told her. “Before the power and internet went wonky, I looked it up. Where we’re at, I should have to go more than twenty, twenty-five feet down.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” Amber said and then turned to Dwight and stuck her tongue out at him in a very immature fashion.

  The farmer laughed at the young woman’s antics and threw a finger flick at her nose. She ducked out of the way at the last second, but she was grinning too. Steve watched in amusement. Losing power and seeing the store shelves diminishing had a chilling effect on him. It was stressful, like watching a roller coaster that was under construction climb to the top, not knowing if the track down below was finished or not. Seeing Dwight and Amber goofing around was a relief. Sometimes he worried the stress was affecting everyone, but it wasn’t evident today.

  “Quit flipping off the neighbors,” Steve told Amber, catching the motion as he was pulling a shovel full away from the dirt.

  “Dad, that was Billy Wilson,” Amber said.

  “Oh, well, in that case,” Steve said and turned, flipping off the general direction of the Wilsons.

  He was joined by both Dwight and Amber who were grinning. The curtains opened and closed and briefly they saw him scowling.

  “I wonder when they let him out?” Dwight asked.

  “I don’t know. He was being held on a low bond. I wasn’t too worried; his dad’s the loose cannon.”

  “Yeah, Billy is just creepy,” Amber repeated.

  “Yeah, well, he’s going to be even creepier while you hold the pipe as I put the sections together I’ll bet. Ignore him.”

  “You need a hand? I have to rotate the pig’s pen today,” Dwight asked after a second.

  “I should be the one asking you. You just saved me a ton of time with your tractor,” Steve said.

  “Naw, I don’t need a hand. I’m going to put them on the far side where it’s kinda rocky. Away from the fence.”

  “Did somebody steal another one?” Amber asked.

  “They didn’t get a chance. They hit the new hotwire. I electrified some barbed fencing with a home charger. I heard the screaming and ran out, chased them off.”

  “You get a look at who did it?” Amber asked.

  Steve had already fit the first portions of the sand point onto the first five-foot pipe with a special fitting and slid that into the hole, waiting on the old farmer to answer.

  “No, but I don’t think it was a guy. Had the wrong…profile,” Dwight told them.

  “That’s…ok, that’s a little bit strange,” Steve said. “Food is hard to find, but it’s not impossible.”

  “Yeah, but can you imagine what happens when most people don’t have more than a couple days’ worth of food in the house and then they go to the store and they don’t have anything for a couple more days.
What are they going to do?”

  “Empty out the freezer?” Amber asked, trying to sound hopeful.

  “Eventually, yeah. But this has been going on for a good while now. Hell, it was starting way back when your daddy was still working at the software company.”

  “How could you tell? I don’t remember any shortages or big power outages back then?” Amber asked a little confused.

  Steve placed the pipe and sand point in the hole, seeing that the point plus pipe had made it eight feet tall. In a six-foot hole, it was sadly two feet above ground level. He got the pipe wrenches out and put another coupler and then started on another pipe, listening, fascinated.

  “The cost of commodities. The way the stock market was shifting, the way the price of corn per bushel was being traded.”

  “Farmers have to know about the stock market?” Amber asked in disbelief.

  Another pipe put on, Steve stood on his tip toes and hand threaded on a driving cap.

  “Hold this straight,” Steve told her.

  She did and he got the post driver over the top with a ton of cursing.

  “Yeah, that’s how we know what’s a good price when we sell our corn or soybeans. Yeah, there’s some lag to take into account, but when the prices were way off, it wasn’t that hard to figure out when to talk to a different sales broker.”

  Amber was taking it all in, watching Dwight when Steve slammed the post driver down, the driving cap inside it ringing out.

  “Ow…that hurts,” Amber said after a second, but braced her feet and held the pipe tighter.

  “Won’t need you to hold it for long….” Steve said as he pulled it down, gravity assisting his muscles as it rang out again.

  Amber let go and backed up, wiping her hands on her jeans, “That vibration…”

  “I got it,” Dwight said, and walked over and put one gnarled hand around it.

  Several blows later Dwight let go and stood back. The pipe was more or less level and the tip of the sand point had been driven deep underground, giving them almost two feet of depth. Amber and Dwight talked about the aspects of farming that Steve had never imagined. Cashflow, budgeting, and even commodities trading. He was wearing himself out when he finally got the pipe down to the two-foot mark again and pulled the post driver off.