by Lou Cadle
“What’re you up to there?” she asked.
“Making sure my bike pump works on the well.”
“Oh, so that’s your alternative. We installed a hand pump auxiliary a couple years back.”
He grunted.
“This is clever.” She visually traced the linkage from the bike into the well head. “So what kind of flow rate do you get?”
“I’ll show you,” he said.
She started to tell him not to bother but then thought better of it. Let him show it off, praise him, and get him in a more friendly mood.
It only took him a minute to switch from electric to manual, and then he dragged over a galvanized washtub and began to pedal.
She was glad she had agreed to see it. The tub was filled in perhaps five rotations of the pedals. “Wow,” she said. “That’s amazing.”
“Bikes are great,” he said. “They can do a lot of things.”
“Like horsepower,” she said. “Human power.”
“Yeah, they multiply it. I have two more inside that I might be using for other purposes.”
She’d been inside his house—cabin, really—a couple of times. He had hundreds, maybe thousands of bits of hardware in there. Gears, bikes, chains, pulleys, bits of scrap metal. He kept it all neat, some of it hanging from the walls, some of it on shelves. He even must dust it, for it was all clean. She’d told him when she’d first seen it that it was like a work of art, which it really was. The careful spacing, especially on the walls, where every inch was used but nothing touched the next thing: it was as if a strange metal sculpture was hung there.
And here he was, using some of that stuff to make something practical. “You heard about the gas shortage in town?”
“No. I haven’t turned on the radio in a month,” he said. “Too depressing.”
“Oh.” She couldn’t imagine that. “There’s a war—you know that, right?”
“Over in the Middle East? That one? Or did we get ourselves into one too?”
“The one over there. There was an attack on a strategic port, and oil imports are going to drop off a lot as a result. I’m not sure if it’s a direct response already, or some sort of rationing is going on behind the scenes, but either way, they ran out of gas in town this week.”
He looked surprised. “Both stations?”
“Both. Right.”
“Town people won’t like it.”
“No. I reckon they won’t,” she said. “So, the thing is, Curt. We think it will keep on like this for a while—through the end of summer, at least, but maybe until the end of the year. I want to get together, just the few people on this street, and talk about carpooling when we need supplies and so on.”
“Crocker has a hybrid.”
“Yes, and Mitch Morrow has a pure electric car that can make it up the hill. We have a little diesel stored up to put in our truck, but that’s for emergencies. If this lasts, it might become quite a problem to get down there to town.”
“I guess I need to expand the garden.” He had the smallest garden of all of them. He hunted a lot and she’d seen evidence that he’d eat nearly anything—squirrels or doves or even snakes. Whatever came his way.
“Are you willing to come over to the Morrows’ on Saturday, then? It’ll be outside, weather permitting, so you can come and go as you like.”
He gave her a strange look. “I’ll think on it.”
“Well, good,” she said, feeling suddenly awkward. “Love the bike pump. Hope to see you in a few days.” She bit her tongue against the urge to keep babbling and turned away, waving a hand over her shoulder.
Odd fellow. Not scary-odd, but awkward, and something about being around him for more than a few minutes made her feel awkward too, as if she were twelve years old again and not quite sure how to interact in the adult world.
She’d saved the hardest for last—and that was saying something, that anyone could be harder than Curt Henry. She walked up the drive of the Crocker property and looked around until she saw Pilar. He was working at the base of the turbines. She passed through the yard and their dog ran up to greet her. She patted it for a minute before going on. It followed her partway and then turned back.
As she neared Pilar, she saw he was painting the guy wires of his turbines. “Hey, neighbor,” she called.
“Kelly,” he said.
“Rust problems?”
“Regular upkeep, nothing serious.”
“You take good care of your property.”
He looked suspicious but thanked her.
“I have a couple things to talk with you about.”
“If it’s the stream or fence, I’m really not in the mood.”
“Nope. A party and another party and groceries.”
“Okay.” He continued with his painting. “Shoot.”
“Sierra is graduating. I didn’t know if you’d planned anything, but Devlin’s sixteenth birthday is coming up about the same time. I thought I might have a little party for them next weekend, just the people in the neighborhood and maybe a friend each?”
“If any friend wants to waste gas coming up here.”
“That’s a good point. Anyway, think on it and let me know. My second point is, I’d appreciate it if you took me into town on Thursday when you get gas.”
“You need things? I can get them for you.”
“I expect the shelves might be picked over, so I’d like to look myself.”
“Okay, I’ll be happy to take you, but I warn you, I’m leaving before dawn.”
She caught the subtle emphasis on the word “you,” which meant he was still irked at Arch. “Why so early?”
“To get in line. We might have to just sit there until gas gets delivered. I don’t want to drive all that way and have them run out again before I can get to the pump.”
“You could drop me at Walmart and I could shop for us both and walk back to you. It’s not a mile.”
“You know, that would be really helpful.”
“Happy to help. Depending on when they deliver the gas, I might be able to go to the grocery store and hardware store as well.” Those two stores were right next to each other, but the grocery store had suffered from years of competition with the Walmart a half-mile away.
“A lot of walking.”
“Not very much at all. I’ll take a backpack so I won’t even feel the weight of the food.”
“I was thinking I might buy a case of a couple things, if they have a case. That’s too much to carry.”
“I can at least scope it out for you first and tell you if they have what you want. If not, you don’t have to detour back and look for yourself. Do you have any idea when gas gets delivered?”
“I phoned the Valero, and they had a recording that said between nine and eleven in the morning.”
“Oh, good. So you won’t have to sit there all day.”
“No.”
“Arch will keep half an eye on your place while you’re gone.”
“Will he?” His voice was flat.
“Oh, Pilar, you know Arch. He’s quick to say angry things, but there’s not a bad bone in him.”
“I’m not sure he’d like you saying that about him.”
“It’s nothing but the truth. He’s a good man. And so are you. Which brings me to the third thing I came to talk about, and that’s this Saturday.” She explained her idea of having them all get together. “We can brainstorm what else we can do to help each other.”
“I suppose that’s okay, as long as Arch doesn’t bring up the gate or irrigation or Armageddon.”
“I’ll muzzle him the best I can.”
“So it’s at the Morrows’?”
“Arch’s idea,” she fibbed. “I believe he thought it’d be best to meet on neutral ground.”
“Did he, now?”
“We’re not your enemies, Pilar. We’re friends and neighbors, and we’ll need each other to get through these tough times ahead.”
That seemed to deflate something i
n him, some anger or resistance. “Of course you’re right.”
“I usually am.”
That made him chuckle. “You probably are. Maybe you should be elected President of the Road.”
“Empress, I think. Suits me better.” She winked at him.
“Well, Empress, then yes, if you so decree, I’ll be there on Saturday. What time, and what should I bring?”
“Just Sierra. Make sure she doesn’t have something going on in town. I really want the kids to be part of this. They’re old enough to take on adult responsibilities, I think.”
“It won’t hurt them to know how we’re thinking.”
“And worrying. And why we might say no to some request.”
“All true,” he said. “I’ll ask her about the graduation party—unless you were trying to keep it a surprise?”
“No. Not enough people up here for a good surprise party.”
“You have a date and time for that?”
“I was thinking Saturday next, but that Sunday afternoon would be fine too. We can discuss it on Saturday too. Some fun business among the serious stuff.”
“Okay, great. Thanks for building the bridge, Kelly.”
“That’s me, Empress and bridge-builder.”
“And chief baker.”
“I am a busy little bee, aren’t I?” she said. “Just beep your horn when you’re ready to take off Thursday morning. I’ll be listening for it.”
“I’ll drive up to your door. Ask Arch not to shoot me, okay?”
He had to have the last line, didn’t he? But she kept the pleasant smile on her face until she turned away.
Chapter 8
Thursday morning, Pilar Crocker and Kelly Quinn drove down the hill under a clear starry sky. “Look at that bright star,” she said, pointing through the windshield.
“Venus, probably,” he said. “When it’s out, that’s usually the brightest thing up there.”
“Are you into astrology?” she said, thinking it would make sense if he was. Hemp clothes and all that.
“No,” he said, with a chuckle. “Stuff and nonsense. I’m not even a good amateur astronomer. I only know how to identify a few things up there.”
“The Big Dipper?” she said. “I know that one.”
“And Orion. You probably know that too.”
“Right. I do.”
“And you can find the North Star with the Big Dipper.”
“Not sure I remember how.”
“Maybe we’ll all go out one night and talk stars. Another friendly gathering.”
“I bet Mitch Morrow knows something about it,” she said.
“He’s quite the Renaissance Man,” Pilar said. “I wouldn’t doubt it.”
They talked about the neighbors and the meeting until they pulled into the Walmart fifty minutes later.
“It’s dead-looking,” she said. “Are we sure it’s open?”
“Lights are all on, but we’ll try the doors.”
“Not these, those over there. They lock this side at night,” she said.
He pulled up to the other entrance and she said, “Let me try.” She hopped out, and yes, the door swung open as she approached. She went back and sat in the car, leaving the door open for the light so that she could read. “You have your list?”
“Here, on paper even,” he said, handing it to her along with a wad of hundreds.
She read through it and nodded. “You did a good job of putting down acceptable alternatives.”
“Yeah, and if you see anything you can think of that’ll keep, mark it down, if you would. If it’s there in large quantities, I’ll decide if it’s worth swinging by to grab it on the way out of town.”
She’d been planning to do that for herself, actually.
She counted his money. “You’ll get plenty of change.”
“We’ll have to see about that. I brought four hundred more for the gas.”
“You think it’ll be that much?”
“Fifty dollars a gallon doesn’t seem out of the question.”
She whistled. “Imagine what our grandparents would think of this.”
“They probably didn’t believe it would ever happen. Okay, I’ll see you at the Valero when you’re done. I appreciate your doing this.”
“No problem,” she said.
Inside the Walmart, she could see the lack of gas had made a difference in deliveries. Some aisles still had plenty of goods. She wandered through the whole store. There were still hours until the gas might be delivered, and she may as well reconnoiter here while she had the chance. Arch would want to know how things stood.
The food section was in the worst shape. Pilar wasn’t going to get his barbecue sauce. She hunted for alternatives for items on both their lists and did what she could. She ran herself through a self-checkout, separating the three families’ meager groceries, and fed in the hundreds to the maw of the bank note scanner.
One day, and maybe not too far down the road, these pieces of paper were going to be worthless. That was the thing about fiat currency. It only had value for as long as the government was strong enough to make it have value. Or, to think of it another way, it only had value for as long as we all shared the hallucination that these green bits of paper meant anything. In truth, they had no value.
Today, these slips of paper meant corn syrup and lentils and the cotton fabric remnants she’d found that she realized would be good for bandage material. In a year, the paper money might only be good for starting a bonfire.
Arch had plenty of gold hidden—buried, most of it—but Kelly never had believed it’d be of much value either once things turned bad. You can’t eat gold.
A good laying hen, though, one that gave you ten eggs a week in season and who could be bred to make more hens for next year? Better than gold. Bullets? At some point, nearly priceless.
She was giving herself a chill thinking about the world where that would be true, and how close at hand it might be, so she pushed it from her mind. Sufficient unto the day are the evils thereof. On the other hand, the plans of the diligent lead to abundance. The Bible was pretty confusing on the topic of prepping. Sometimes it said to plan, but other times it said that planning was useless because the Lord’s will would be done anyway. Whichever was the more true, Kelly was sticking with planning. Consider the ant. That was her.
She loaded the backpack, slung it on, and split the rest of the weight between two woven grocery sacks. She stepped out into the first light of dawn weighed down with the purchases, a comforting sort of weight—she was the ant, after all, gathering her food—and she made her way back toward the rendezvous with Crocker.
Five hours later, they had their gas. But after a discussion between a woman she recognized as the mayor of town and a man who must be the Valero owner, they announced it was to be rationed. “Six gallons, no more,” called an attendant, walking along the lines of cars, warning them in advance. By the time he was doing that, the line for gas was stretched back three blocks on the main road, and police had been necessary to direct the rest of the line down a side street.
If it were her telling people of the rationing, she’d be holding a rifle port arms while she said it. But while she heard some curses, no one erupted into violence. They were all getting full service for a change. The owners were not taking a chance anyone would sneak in an extra half-gallon. The price was a flat three hundred fifty dollars.
As Pilar made it to the head of the line and handed the cash over he said to Kelly, “Still worth the trip, I guess. I won’t burn all six gallons getting back home.”
“Makes you stop and think, doesn’t it? The price, I mean.”
“About?”
“About if it’s worth it to come into town at all any more.”
“Yeah.”
“We all have gardens, and staples, and chickens. We have the rabbits and will be happy to trade them for something you have and we don’t. We can all hunt or trap.”
“I’m not comfortable with huntin
g out of season.”
“Small game is always fine. Deer season isn’t that far away. August, for bow, including elk, though I haven’t seen an elk in our neighborhood in years.”
“I’ll need a refresher course on dressing a deer. I generally don’t butcher anything bigger than an old hen.”
“You should ask Curt Henry on Saturday. He’d be able to teach you every bit as well as Arch or me. And maybe it’d help draw him into being more social with us all.”
“I’ll give that some thought.”
He pulled into the hardware store and they bought what they could. The shelves here were also half empty. The grocery store had had a new sign up: “Open evenings only until further notice,” and when she looked through the windows, the shelves there looked as bare as Walmart’s.
When they had the hardware loaded into the back, she took a moment to look out over the view of the town. She’d not be coming back for a good long while, she believed. A twinge of guilt struck her, at failing at her plans for getting Devlin more social time with his peers when it was possible. But the world was what it was. He’d have his chance one day, somehow, she hoped. For now, they needed to batten down and prepare for the worst.
People had been good enough today about the gas rationing back at the Valero. But she didn’t believe that would hold. People are people, and people don’t like giving up what they’ve been used to. That bad temper of a few in line for gas today would turn to panic and violence if food deliveries didn’t resume soon. A regular city-sized yard behind a house couldn’t possibly feed a family of four or five. That must already be dawning on the smarter people here in town.
And when it dawned on enough of them, that’s when the trouble would begin.
Chapter 9
The party hadn’t gone as well as Kelly had hoped. The five ambulatory adults in the neighborhood had come with gifts for both of the kids, but the two friends Devlin had asked to attend had been refused by their parents, who didn’t want to burn the gas. She even offered to one parent, someone she’d attended church with for several years, to meet them halfway, but no go.
Sierra had a friend in attendance, and so the party had been awkward for Devlin. Kelly felt bad, that something she had wanted to do for her son to celebrate had ended up turning him quiet.
