by Boyd Craven
“Take a breather,” Dwight said, taking the driver from the shaking arms of Steve.
“Let me get the—”
“You’re not used to this,” Dwight said and pulled a wrench out of his back pocket and turned off the driving cap.
Steve stood there, almost panting, his chest heaving and handed a special coupler to the farmer before handing over one of the wrenches he’d put in his pocket. Dwight put it on and then tightened the third five-foot section of pipe, the driving cap, and started pounding.
“I had no idea,” Amber said, getting another section of pipe and coupler ready and leaning against the back gate.
“What’s that?” Steve asked his older daughter.
“That there was so much to it. Soil management, pest management, banking…it’s a huge business, and TV makes it look like guys like Uncle Dewey sit on a tractor all day.”
“Want to know the secret, kiddo?” Steve asked, his breathing getting easier.
“What’s that?” she asked, in between the rhythmic banging of the post driver.
“When he’s on the tractor, he’s planning the next thing out and learning something new.”
The line at the bank confirmed Steve’s fears. There were half a dozen parking spots left open and people were lined up to the door. Steve got out and got in line and checked his watch. He knew his bank usually opened five minutes early, so he thought he’d go to get into the front of the line. Instead he found himself about the twenty-fifth person to come in and get in line. There was a lot of ugly words, people complaining about the lack of news. They confirmed to Steve that on the drive over that his radio hadn’t died in his ancient Ford. The radios of others weren’t getting broadcasts either. Steve was worried that the president would call for a bank holiday, and nobody would be able to do business in order to prevent a bank run like what had happened in the great depression. He knew withdrawing all of his money would further aggravate the problem, but like the great depression, the ones who got there early were the ones who ended up with more options.
The door was unlocked about ten minutes early, and the line started heading in. After the first ten people, the door was shut, with the manager barely able to be heard over people yammering in line.
“Excuse me,” the mousy man said, “we’re letting people inside in groups of ten. With the power acting up, we’re doing a lot of this by hand, and it cuts down on the disruptions—”
“You expect us to stay out here in the sun? It’s hot out here,” a woman yelled indignantly, interrupting him.
Steve saw she was next in line and something about her looked a little bit familiar. He was puzzling that and missed the rest of their exchange but not the grumbles as he allowed her to go inside with him.
“Can you believe this?” A man asked Steve from behind him in line.
“They probably don’t have much in the way of lighting in there,” Steve said, hoping that there wasn’t going to be any panicky people, “plus with the computers down, they have to use adding machines and calculators.”
“My dad was telling me that they’re talking about limiting the amount of money people can take out, so there isn’t a bank run.”
Steve turned to face the man. He was shorter, younger, with sandy-blonde hair, and a hint of stubble on his face. He had a weathered look with a half-unbuttoned flannel shirt tucked into a pair of jeans.
“I haven’t been able to get online to do my banking,” Steve lied. “So I figured I would come here and make a couple of deposits and get some money out.”
“Is it true?” a woman in front of Steve asked, “They are limiting—”
The door ahead of the line banged open and two people came out, cursing. The manager pointed to the next two and the line moved up slowly.
“What business of theirs is it if I wanted to empty my account? It’s my money,” one man griped to another.
“Good thing I didn’t have to worry about going over the limit,” one said as they were nearing Steve.
“Limit? What kind of limit?” Steve asked.
“Oh, uh…they are holding cash withdrawals to ten-thousand dollars,” one of the men said. “Not that I have that much in my savings, everything’s so damned expensive nowadays.”
“Thanks,” Steve said, and watched them start up their griping again as they left.
“Ho boy,” the man behind Steve said finally, “this is going to be a fun one.”
“You have no idea,” Steve said under his breath, rolling his shoulders, still sore from putting the hand pump in.
CHAPTER 17
Steve was able to come back every day for a week to withdraw money before the bank didn’t open the following week. When the power was on, there were very few channels operating. When they did, it was government announcements and updates about the power status. Rumors were flying around about unrest in the larger cities, and more than once, Steve woke up with nightmares of people from downtown Macon or even Atlanta heading their direction. He felt like he was sitting on an anvil with a hammer hanging over his head.
School should have sent out notices for the kids to start, but nothing came. The grocery stores had less than one tenth of the products they had six months ago when the prices started creeping sky high almost overnight. Business had dried up, and having his bills paid in advance, the Taylors were better off than most, but not with everything. Living in the middle of suburbia USA, it wasn’t like Steve could store a ton of fuel or run a generator nonstop without neighbors noticing. He had started working with Dwight more and more as he became at first bored and then depressed.
Angela noticed it first, and then Amy which surprised him. He thought for sure it would have been Amber, but a lack of things to do and McDonald’s closing down had given Amber a lot of time to visit with Matt. What came as a surprise though, was when the Sheriff’s Department car pulled in his driveway. Amy had heard it first, she’d been laying on the tiled floor in the laundry room, reading a book in front of the part-swamp cooler, part-air conditioning unit and had gone to tell her parents.
“Mom, it looks like Mr. Fitz’s girlfriend is here,” she said almost interrupting her parents trying to sneak some alone time in during the cooler part of the day.
“Oh hey, is she…” Steve started to ask but was interrupted by loud knocking.
“I’ve got this,” Angela said, giving her husband a look. He’d had the least clothing on and she was still wearing a loose pair of shorts and a tank top.
“Ok,” Steve said.
Angela closed the bedroom door. “Knock next time,” she told Amy.
“How was I supposed to know you were taking a nap? The sun’s been up for hours.”
“It’s ok—”
More knocking interrupted her, and on quiet feet, she hurried to the front door and looked out the side window first before opening it up.
“Deputies,” she said, noting that both Deputy Lucy Javier and Lewis were both in uniform and in their cruiser, “want to come inside?”
“Sure,” Deputy Lewis said. “Sun’s hot today.”
Angela agreed and showed them in and they headed to the snack bar just as Steve walked out of the bedroom.
“Hello, deputies,” Steve said cheerfully.
“Hey, Steve,” Lucy said.
“Mr. and Mrs. Taylor,” Deputy Lewis said, “we’ve got some news.”
“On what?” Steve asked, standing on the other side of the bar from them.
Lucy pulled a packet of papers out of her back pocket, something everyone had noticed when she’d come inside the house.
“The HOA is having kittens about your hand pump, apparently,” Deputy Lewis told them, and nodded to the folded stack.
“I’m not really surprised,” Steve said, taking an edge, pulling it to him, and unfolding the stack.
It was on letterhead from their attorney’s office and notarized. It was a cease and desist, with a request for removal of the hand pump. Steve showed it to his wife who giggled like a school
girl who’d been passed a note. Steve waited a moment longer and started laughing out loud.
“What?” Lucy asked after a moment.
“It’s not a permanent addition, structure or anything that requires permitting. Since we’re not running the line into the house, we’re not in any code violations and the most they can say is it’s decorative. With the rules, this isn’t anymore against the HOA conventions than a bird feeder being pushed into the grass,” Steve told her with a grin.
“What do you mean?” Deputy Lewis asked.
“We installed the final section of pipe with a coupler just in case this came up. We disconnect the last few feet of pipe, cap it and tell them to kiss our ass. There’s nothing they can—”
Both deputies were familiar with the chaos the HOA had caused and were familiar with the Wilson’s and Doug Morris’s antics. They had been called out on many of an occasion and were getting tired of dealing with the micro-politics of the HOA and the small-minded creeps who were trying to micromanage everyone’s lives. Since they were expecting anything but the Taylors laughter, they were surprised when it happened. Realizing that once again the Taylors had stuck it to the HOA, grins popped out on their faces.
“Oh man, old man Morris and Arellano are going to be pissed,” Lucy said, and then snorted before she could catch herself.
“Yeah, better to be pissed at than pissed on,” Steve said.
“Language,” the girls all chorused, and he shot his wife an innocent look as if to say “oops.”
“You know,” Deputy Lewis said, “with most of this area having wells, having a hand pump would be real convenient. I don’t know why more of them don’t? I know we have to run the water at our house while the power is on to get enough to last the next day.”
“Yeah, it’s a pain,” Lucy said. “Matthew was talking about putting in one like yours….”
“So you are seeing him,” Deputy Lewis said, and grinned as Lucy turned a bright red. “This girl,” he said, using his thumb to point at her, “been my partner going on eight years; she still keeps stuff from me.”
“Well, I don’t think we really made whatever it is we have official,” she said turning a furious shade of red, her ears looking like they had been badly sunburnt.
“Well, I can tell folks how to do it easy. It took us a couple of hours and if I had to dig the first six feet, it might have only added another half an hour or so. Cost me a couple hundred dollars for everything.”
“Really?” Deputy Lewis asked.
“Yeah, let me go get you my list,” Steve said and headed off in the direction of the garage.
“Is that all you two are doing out this way today?” Angela asked.
“No Mom, they’re still investigating the pig thief,” Amy said.
“Somebody stole Uncle Dewey’s pigs again?” Amber said coming out of her bedroom, her hair plastered to the side of her head from the nap she’d been taking.
“Not that we know of,” Lucy told her, “but the suspect that Mr. Abbott saw ran towards this subdivision. So we’re still thinking it was somebody that lives in this area.”
“You mean we have bad guys here?” Amy asked. “What are they going to do with the pigs?”
It had been something that she was deliberately being obtuse about, as they had told her where bacon and ham came from. Not that either had been available at the stores lately.
“Because somebody was probably desperate for food,” Lucy told her.
“Got it,” Steve said, coming back with a sheet he’d kept from the sand point that gave the basics and handed it to Deputy Lewis.
“Thanks,” he said looking at it.
“Listen, there’s another thing I’d like to tell you guys,” Lucy said, cutting her eyes to Lewis who nodded to her. “There’s going to be a broadcast later on tonight. The power is going to be coming back on between six and eight o’clock, if the rumors are right.”
“Broadcast? Like when they told us that they’d declared war on China and North Korea?” Angela asked.
“Yeah, something like that. I guess until they get all the replacement transformer parts that it’s a risk and a danger to energize a large area, but with the news blackout and radio stations going off the air…”
“What is it?” Steve asked them. “Martial Law? A gun turn in?”
“We don’t know,” Lewis told him. “But I’m guessing ‘yes’ to all of it at this point.”
“You can’t be serious,” Amber said, surprising them all.
“Do you remember that big call we got called out on a while back, when we were at Dwight’s?” Lucy asked.
“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask, what happened? It was an all hands-on-deck call.” Steve asked.
“Large riot. Mix two kinds of politics and a bunch of broke, down-on-their-luck people… It was bad, we were stuck in Atlanta for a day and a half just helping with paperwork.”
“Wow… I had no idea all that was going on,” Angela said. “The news never reported anything like that.”
“They can’t,” Deputy Lewis said. “We’re kind of under martial law right now.”
That bombshell had everyone who was jabbering quietly sober up and stand up. Even Amy knew what that was, having heard her father talk about it a time or two, and looked up in surprise.
“What?” Steve asked, the words almost coming out a whisper.
“Since the war started and the blackouts happened. That’s why the bank runs weren’t as severe as they could have been and why stock trading gets suspended so much. The government is quietly filtering the news and shutting down TV and radio stations,” Lucy answered.
“How do you guys know this? I mean why doesn’t everyone know this?” Angela asked.
“Because we’re already at near riot points when the local grocery stores get trucks. The price on things keeps going up because the value of the dollar—”
“Keeps going down,” Steve answered, and both deputies nodded.
“Why tell us now?” Amber asked, sounding far more grown up than she was.
“Because even if they dragged you guys into court, it might not have gone anywhere,” Lucy said softly.
“It can’t be that bad, can it?” Steve asked, “I’ve been to Macon off and on lately. It’s not like I see roving gangs robbing people for food and—”
“Right now, it’s fuel, but things are not as ugly because of the media blackout. If somebody panics and a large call out is needed…People have been walking off the job lately,” Lewis said, interrupting Steve.
“You mean cops quitting?” Angela asked.
“Yeah, we haven’t gotten a paycheck in weeks now,” Lucy said. “If I didn’t have some money set back in the bank and Matthew helping with things…it would be rough. You can’t just walk into the grocery store and buy a cart of groceries anymore. I mean you guys have seen that, right?”
There was an uncomfortable silence and everyone looked back and forth.
“No, not really,” Steve told them, “just for milk and bread and stuff.”
“Definitely avoid Monday mornings and the first of the month—especially the first coming up.”
“Why?” Steve asked, already having an inkling of what was going on.
“Because, the food stamps aren’t going to work,” Lewis said quietly.
“Are you spreading this info around or…?”
“No, actually we’re telling very few. When we got the delivery for your papers we both talked. We were going to let you know one way or another, and it sounds like we’re going to go talk to Lucy’s boyfriend.”
She turned slightly red in the face at that, but she nodded. They talked another ten or fifteen minutes, and then both said their goodbyes before leaving in their cruiser.
“Want to go to the laundry room and cool off?” Angela asked Steve, watching as both girls fled in that direction already.
“No, I was hoping to retry that nap you were telling Amy about,” he said, stepping into her arms and pulling he
r close for a kiss.
“Ew…I’m sticky now. Besides…we need to talk. You, me, the girls. We haven’t been out and didn’t know about any of this. Those two seemed worried and it sounds like both of them are at their wit’s end, not getting a paycheck.”
“Yeah, I know, I just like being close to you,” Steve said and then backed off a step. “What worries me is that I had no idea it was getting bad. I mean, it’s something I guess we should know if everyone else is going through it and somebody mentions food shortages and we say ‘what?’ It becomes obvious that we’re not even hurt by this. I mean we are—”
“But we aren’t, because you prepared.”
“It’s part of my job as a husband and father,” he said quietly.
They both entered the laundry room, a dark room that was between the garage and the rest of the house. The girls were playing a hand of cards but when they saw their parents, they scooted back to make more room. Both parents sat across from them.
“Teams?” Amber asked. “Or are you here to talk to us about not talking about what the cops told us about?”
“Mostly to talk, but how about a quick game of Euchre?” Angela asked.
Amy groaned, but Amber grinned and started shuffling the cards. “And then can I go to Matt’s?”
“Sure,” Steve told her, and watched as his daughter deftly shuffled the cards.
The game was a favorite in Northern Ohio and Michigan, and often confusing to people who weren’t acquainted with it. While they played, they discussed what they’d heard, why it could be dangerous to share what they had heard and some things they were going to have to change. Amy was telling her dad how some of the kids she saw sometimes in the summer never really left their house this summer, and she thinks maybe their parents were still working in the city. They were about to play another round of cards when a knock interrupted their talk.
Steve hated to leave the air conditioning, but he headed to the front door, wiping the sweat from his forehead and then drying them on his hands. He was about to grab the knob when the knocking began again, louder this time. Instead of just opening it, he leaned to the side and looked out the window. His neighbors, Sarah Wilson and Billy were standing there, with Sarah holding her hand, blood dripping from it.
