by Lou Cadle
Dev ran to catch up to his father.
Chapter 12
Pilar found them out in the woods. “Hey, guys,” he said.
Quinn sat back on his heels. “You gonna scream at me for hurting your trees?” He had a manual staple gun in hand.
“Nope. Something as thin as a staple won’t hurt these guys.” He touched the tree bark. “Surprised you can get it to hold, though, without a pneumatic gun.”
“I’ll probably need to come out and redo some of these later. I’ll haul it out this afternoon, probably, the air compressor and extension wire and so on.”
“Gotcha,” Pilar said. “Seems like a good idea. Trip wire, right?”
Quinn looked surprised. “You think so?”
“I do. Anyway, we’re all here except Henry, and you know him. He might not come at all. We’ll be waiting for you two when you can take a break.”
He turned away and went back to where Kelly and Sierra and Mitch were talking. Bodhi had stayed home with the chickens, typically responsible about his job.
“Coffee, tea?” Kelly asked him as he walked up. “I can make up some lemonade from powdered.”
“I’m okay,” he said.
“Have a seat. The boys about done?”
“They’ll be here.”
In five minutes, Quinn and his son showed up.
Mitch said, “I’d like to be back in fifteen minutes. So if we can start with the most important item first, I’d appreciate it.”
“The most important,” said Quinn, “and the only important point is protecting ourselves against the next person coming in here to steal the food. We need to organize. First thing, I want to build a heavy-duty gate out there, something you can’t just climb over.”
“I have a different idea,” Pilar said.
Quinn’s face twisted in derision.
“Look, if we build a big gate, and put a new lock like you bought, that’ll p.o. the sheriff. And,” he said quickly, to stop Quinn from jumping back in, “with the way the sheriff is thinking about you right now, you really don’t want to make it look like you’re trying to keep him out, if you see what I’m saying.”
“I do,” said Kelly. “So what’s your idea?”
“It won’t help us if it’s obvious to anyone—strangers, I mean—that there’s a road and houses back here. So I propose we take a tree down, right at the main road. We can even fiddle with the cut, both ends of it, with axes, to make it look to a cursory examination that the tree fell in a windstorm. Pick one of the bark-beetle-damaged ones, and it’s not such a stretch to tell the sheriff that it began to fall and we cut it the last bit to avoid an accident. But what it’ll do—”
Mitch said, “Is hide that there’s a road at all, you’re thinking.”
“Exactly.”
Quinn said, “I’m surprised you’d kill a tree.”
“If it’s infested, it has a death warrant anyway, so we may as well use it to our advantage.”
“It’d take some doing to hide the road altogether,” Kelly said.
“We can do that,” said Pilar.
Devlin said, “Mailboxes?” There were locked mailboxes right out on the highway, across from their road, and any mail was delivered every Wednesday.
Quinn said, “We’ll take ‘em down. Hardly get any mail anyway, and who cares if the post office is mad at us or not?”
Pilar knew that was him agreeing—and probably as much praise for the idea as he’d ever hear from Quinn. “I have other news.”
“What?” Mitch said.
“I’ll let Sierra tell it. It was her texting several of her friends that gathered it.”
Sierra said, “It’s getting bad in town. There hasn’t been a gas delivery since Pilar was in town. Everybody is walking, but like old people and stuff, they’re not doing okay. The last delivery to Walmart of fresh food was small, and it sold out within a half a day. They’ve had town meetings twice a week, three of them now, and they’ve started a big community garden, but all the stores are out of seeds. Amazon isn’t delivering and no one else is either except a weekly post office delivery, so they can’t get more seeds but once a week through the post office. So they’re trying to garden, but they’re starting late, and everybody is worried. Even my friends.”
“Also, I checked the news feed for Phoenix,” Mitch said. “And thanks, Sierra—that was good work. In Phoenix, they’re still getting food delivered, but there are severe gas shortages, rationing, long lines, and they had a brownout a couple days ago.”
“I thought Phoenix was on all nuke,” Quinn said.
Mitch nodded. “But at least one website said that without gas, people were staying at home more, and using appliances more, and that was the cause of the brownout. That and regular June levels of usage down there.”
“What’s the temp there?” Kelly said. “I didn’t listen to the radio this morning.”
“A hundred twenty-five yesterday.”
“Those poor people. What if they lose electricity for a day or more?”
“Some will die,” Quinn said. “And those with gas and the means might drive up here, looking to get cooler. And what will they do when they’re up here and have run out of food and get hungry?”
Mitch looked worried.
Pilar was too. “We should take that tree down today, I think. No reason to delay.”
Kelly said, “Have you picked out which one?”
“Not yet. There are plenty of sick ones, unfortunately.”
Quinn stood. “Let’s go down there right now. We can have it down before lunch.”
“Don’t you rush the job so much you hurt yourself,” Kelly said. “None of you.”
Mitch stood too. “I’m going to beg off. I need to get back to Sybil. I’m not going to be much help as a lumberjack, I’m afraid, not at my age. But when it’s down, I’ll come back and rearrange small branches, or whatever we do to disguise the road.”
When he had closed the door, Kelly motioned for Quinn to sit down again.
“What?” he said.
“Shh.” She glanced at the driveway.
Pilar knew she wanted to say something about Mitch. After another minute he said in a quiet voice, “He’s probably out of earshot by now.”
“Might have his hearing aids out, even,” Dev said. “He doesn’t wear them unless he has to.”
Quinn grunted. “He should start wearing them more. You need to be able to hear intruders.”
Kelly said, “I think Sybil needs electricity to stay alive. Oxygen, nighttime breathing machine, CPAP or whatever.”
“He makes his own, just like the rest of us.”
“I know,” she said. “We just need to make sure he has whatever he needs for her.”
“You know,” said Quinn, “in shit-hits-the-fan times—”
“Don’t,” Kelly said. “Do not say she’s expendable, Arch Quinn.”
“Well, she is,” Quinn said. “She can’t shoot, she can’t cook, she can’t hunt.”
“That’s not what the Bible says,” Kelly said. “And you know it. She’s a member of our community, and we need to do whatever it takes to keep her alive, and comfortable, and cared for. If Mitch, God forbid, dies, she’s our responsibility.”
“You’ll want her here?” Dev said, looking horrified.
“I will, and you don’t have a thing to say about it. In fact, you’ll be helping with her diapers.”
“Oh, Ma,” he said.
“Not another word.” Her gaze shifted to Quinn. “From either of you.”
Pilar didn’t want to get in the middle of a family argument, and he did want to get going on blocking the road. He’d tossed and turned all night, thinking about the intruder, the orphaned girl, and what being an orphan in this new world might be like. If she didn’t have grandparents or aunts or uncles to take her in, he shuddered to think how she might end up. If gas shortages continued, if food shortages began in big cities like Phoenix, no one was going to line up to be a foster parent. “W
e’ll all protect the Morrows, Kelly. Mitch can use a rifle still, but he can’t run fast, nor climb up the cistern quick like Dev did the other day.”
“That’s so,” she said.
“Anyway, don’t worry. We’ll all watch out for the Morrows.”
“Good.”
Quinn, Dev, Sierra, and Pilar walked down to the road and started hunting for a likely tree to take down. There were none with advanced disease, turned totally brown, but one showed plenty of bark beetle damage. “This one, unless you guys have found a better one,” Pilar said. All four of them looked as he traced the holes in the bark.
“It’s still green up top,” Sierra said, looking worried.
“It’d be dead in three or four years anyway,” Pilar told her, dragging his finger over the sick-looking holes in the bark. “See? They’ve girdled it.”
“And we have to take one,” Quinn said. “There are some closer, more conveniently situated, but if you want this one, we can make it work.”
“Thank you,” Pilar said. “Yeah, this one. It’s even leaning the right way. A bit of luck there.”
Dev said, “Should I go get the chainsaw?”
Pilar said, “Not just yet. We’ll have to be careful. It must weigh a ton.”
“At least,” Quinn said. “Has to be seventy feet tall.”
“Yeah,” Pilar said. “So we’ll need chainsaw, axes, ropes, safety glasses and a plan.”
“What kind of plan?” Sierra said.
“An escape plan, in part. If it comes down the wrong way, despite our undercutting correctly, whoever it comes down toward needs a place to run to, a clear way out to the side, far enough the branches don’t hit him.”
“Or her,” Sierra said.
“So you want to be part of this?”
“Yeah. I have to learn, don’t I?”
Pilar was pleased she was interested. “You too, Dev?”
“Definitely.”
“We have our work crew, then. Want to do it now, Quinn, or would you rather finish your other project?”
“Now,” he said. “I’d hate to have another incident this afternoon we could have prevented. Let’s get ‘er done and no stranger, no casual passerby will know we’re even living here.”
Two hours later, the tree was down. They’d taught the kids how to undercut, backcut, and push the tree down. The ropes hadn’t been necessary. It fell almost perfectly where they wanted. It took the four of them ten minutes to budge it the last eight inches.
With axes, he and Quinn limbed it, taking off the branches that reached to the main road. After a short debate, they decided a three-foot space cushion was about right, far enough from the road that they’d not have the sheriff come in here and demand they remove it, but still enough cover to disguise that there was a residential road.
They broke for lunch, sandwiches with homemade bread that Kelly brought down, along with a wool blanket to sit on, a pitcher of lemonade and sugar cookies. She sat and ate with them.
“Haven’t had a picnic in a long time,” said Pilar.
“We eat outside all the time,” Sierra said.
“But not on a blanket.”
“That’s weird, that a blanket and a table make it two different things.”
“And it’s different if you pull the table into the yard and leave it on the deck.”
“That’s so,” Kelly said.
“You adults are weird,” Sierra said, grinning.
“Old people,” Dev said.
“We’re not old!” Kelly said. “Hardly middle-aged.”
“I think probably middle-aged,” Pilar said. “We have two kids on the verge of adulthood, so I think we have to quit thinking we’re young. Also, my body keeps reminding me whenever I do something like this.”
“You hurt yourself?” she said.
“No, but I’ll feel it tomorrow. You okay, Quinn?” The man had been quiet for the whole time they had worked, only speaking when absolutely necessary.
“Fine. Just want to get back to laying that wire.”
“Why don’t you?” Kelly said. “When we’re done, you can carry the dishes back to the house. Me and Sierra and Pilar can finish this job.”
“‘I,’ Mom, not ‘me,’” Dev said.
“Don’t correct your mother!” Quinn said sharply.
The rest of them froze for a second. Dev had been joking, as Sierra had been about calling them weird. It took Pilar a moment to remember that Quinn had killed a man not twenty-four hours ago. He was probably feeling the fallout of that still. Might be for months. Or years.
Quinn said, “I can finish the wire myself. Devlin can stay here.”
When Quinn had left, and the kids had gotten back to work again, Pilar said quietly to Kelly, “I don’t want to pry.”
“But you will.” Her tone was friendly, though.
“I was thinking of Quinn. And PTSD.”
“I doubt he believes in it.”
“Still. If there’s anything I can do.”
“Not wanting to be rude here, but I don’t think you’re the one to do it.”
“No, I guess not. He doesn’t see me as a friend. More like a pain in the ass. So if there’s anything I can do for you, to make it easier for you to do something for him, you’ll let me know, right?”
“I will. And thank you. I think he’ll be fine. But it depends on what’s coming next.”
“You think there’s something coming?” Sierra said. Pilar should have realized she’d be eavesdropping.
Kelly said, “And so does your father, or he wouldn’t have had this idea.” She looked at Pilar. “Would you have?”
He said nothing. He hoped that he was preparing for an eventuality that would never come. Not only did he not to be in harm’s way, he didn’t want Sierra in harm’s way. He’d do anything to keep her from having to shoot at an intruder. A sick tree was a small enough sacrifice, but if it’d help, he’d kill every tree in the forest to protect her.
“While you’re in a self-defense mood,” Kelly said, “let’s talk about some military training for all of us. The two families, and Henry if he’ll agree to take part.”
“Shit. Henry,” he said. “Should have asked his permission to do this.”
Sierra said, “I can’t imagine he’d care. He hardly ever goes anywhere.”
“Still,” Pilar said. “We can’t make unilateral decisions for everyone. I have some apologizing to do.”
“You do,” came a voice.
Chapter 13
Sierra nearly jumped out of her skin when Curt Henry spoke. He’d melted out of the woods, it seemed, right where she’d been looking not five seconds before. She dropped the heavy branch she’d been shifting over to disguise the edges of their road and backed involuntarily a step away. Had he heard what she’d said about him? He must have.
Mr. Henry made her nervous. He was so strange-looking and quiet. It wasn’t that his looks at her had any kind of sexual edge, but when she felt his eyes on her, she felt creeped out by it nevertheless. And there was a quality about his silence she didn’t like either. It wasn’t any of the familiar types of silence she knew from school, not the shy person, or person with a speech impediment, not the quiet of the smart, fat kid who knows to keep his head down, or the quiet of a student unprepared for the day’s discussion.
She had a feeling that Curt Henry had never been unprepared for a day’s discussion in his life.
“I am sorry,” Pilar said. “We need to go back to yesterday to explain.”
“I know about yesterday.”
Kelly Quinn shook her head. “Not about our meeting that you—”
“I have a police scanner. I know what happened.”
“Ah,” said Pilar. “Good. We think there are going to be more people coming up here, maybe from Phoenix eventually. Did you hear about the brownout?”
“They losing electric down there? Why?”
“We discussed it this morning, but we don’t know for sure. Mitch guessed that the gas sho
rtage has them at home more, running more appliances. It’s bad enough that they may have food shortages soon, depending on the gas situation out west. But if they have electrical problems too and need to escape the heat....”
“No gas to drive up here.”
Kelly said, “They could still walk. You figure each carries a backpack of food and water. About the time they got here, they’d be damned hungry.”
“I see your thinking,” Mr. Henry said. “Still, I would have appreciated being part of the decision.”
“I am sorry,” Pilar said. “Terribly sorry. I think maybe we’re all a bit discombobulated from yesterday. The dead man, the little girl, interviews with the sheriff.”
Henry’s expression was unreadable. “How will you get out in case of an emergency?”
“I was thinking about parking my car at the next forest road, but I decided against it. Surely it would get ticketed or stolen.”
“You’re hoping for no emergency, it sounds like.”
Dev spoke up, surprising Sierra by joining in the discussion. “If there is an emergency, a serious medical problem, like if this tree had fallen on me? I’m not sure driving to Phoenix or Flagstaff would be a smart idea.”
Sierra had no idea why. That’s where the hospitals were. There and Cottonwood. Where else you would drive if you’d gotten smashed by a tree? Of course you’d just call an ambulance, but—she realized that ambulances might not have gas either. Or maybe they did right now, but maybe in a month they wouldn’t.
She became aware again of the conversation. Dev was still talking with Mr. Henry. She couldn’t call Curt Henry by his first name, not even inside her mind. He was distant, like a school principal. But he was attending to Dev as closely as he would to an adult.
And that made her attend more to Dev. He was standing straight and making eye contact, not at all leaning away, seemingly untroubled by Mr. Henry’s odd looks. He explained what they’d been doing, and why, and finished with another apology. Or not really an apology. What he said was, “I know it was wrong to do this without your okay. If you want us to move the tree, we will. And you can have the firewood from it.”
“No. It’s fine where it is,” said Henry. “My own fault for being late.” Without another word, Mr. Henry joined in the task, working alongside Dev, moving some of the bigger branches.
