by Betsy Ashton
“What is it, dear child?”
“Steps.”
We were on what had been a residential street. Rows and rows of concrete steps marked where houses once stood. Steps leading to empty slabs.
Emilie opened her door and climbed down. She pointed at something on the ground a dozen yards ahead. Propped against a step to nowhere was a mud-caked teddy bear that had lost its child. She picked it up, shook the dirt off, and carried it back to the RV. It sat on her lap for the rest of the trip.
I drove away feeling guilty because we had luxurious accommodations compared to the people from this small, destroyed town.
####
When I pulled up to a chain link fence, Johnny waved me through and pointed to the rear of the site. He unhooked the Rover and backed the RV between the school bus and his trailer.
“The homesteaders circled the wagons.”
I had been told time and again we were camping in a church parking lot. When I looked for the church, more concrete steps led upward to another slab of nothing. No wonder Johnny howled when I suggested putting people up in the church.
No church. No basement, just a rapidly filling parking lot.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mississippi, September 21 and 22
Johnny returned to the compound covered in dust and sweat from the first day supervising his road crew. About the only thing recognizable was his gleaming white smile in a dirty face. He waved in passing and headed to the shower tent. When he re-emerged scrubbed pink, I met him halfway with a cold beer.
“What did you mean this morning about more than birds attracting a crowd?” I waited for and accepted a kiss. His cryptic statement rattled around in my brain all day while Emilie and I straightened out our RV.
“I talked with the men after we got in. Some have seen guys following them. Everything’s in such a state of flux that we should stay alert. It could be nothing more than people looking for homes or family.”
“But you think it could be something more?” I leaned against Johnny’s solid chest.
“I didn’t say that. I’m going to keep watch until I know what’s going on.” He kissed the top of my head. “You should too.”
“I agree. I don’t want to live with fear hanging over my head like a cloud filled with broken glass again.” I wrapped my arms around my body, chilled in spite of the late-day warmth.
Johnny dropped an arm across my shoulders. “Don’t worry, pretty lady. I won’t let that happen.”
Men emerged from tents and trailers and moved toward the heads and cook tent as I finished my second caffeine injection of the day. The fenced area where we’d set up our construction camp had a great deal of open space.
“Everything will change within a week when more of the crew arrives,” Johnny said.
Whip and the teacher weren’t in yet, although the bus, which would serve as the classroom, was parked next to my RV. The area on the other side of the fence might have been barren, but a small community formed inside the boundary.
Emilie and I introduced ourselves to each worker the night we arrived. In the morning, I nodded to individuals I recognized. Once they spent the day working in the sun, they walked to the showers looking like dust-covered zombies. They waved or lifted their hats each time they saw me, but none had ventured to our side of the compound.
A separation developed between our side and that of the workers. Thus far, Emilie was the only child inside the perimeter. I hadn’t thought to ask Johnny if the workers would bring their families. Regardless, I wasn’t going to let the separation linger more than a day or two. We were too small a collection of neighbors to be merely nodding acquaintances.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Mississippi, September 25
A small tap at the RV door demanded my attention.
“Señora, I’m Pete, the cook.”
“I remember you. We met yesterday.”
“Do you have any bandages?” He stepped back when I opened the door.
“Come on in. Are you hurt?” I didn’t see any visible blood.
“Not me, señora. One of the workers has a large cut on his head.”
“Do you need help?” I turned back into the RV when Emilie materialized behind me with our small first aid kit. We followed Pete to the cook tent, where a wiry young man pressed a wet towel to his head. I pulled the towel away. A deep cut ran through a purpling lump behind his right ear. I swabbed and cleaned the wound.
“You need stitches.”
The bleeding slowed, but the wound seeped.
“Can you put those little strips of tape over it?”
I pulled the wound’s edges together. “You didn’t get this bumping your head on your truck door. What happened?”
“A man hit me with a bat. I went to the ATM about twenty miles away to be sure my wife got my paycheck.”
The man winced when I pushed the tape into place.
“Did you see anything we could use to identify him?”
“All I remember was he was black and had no hair. I don’t remember anything else.” He shook his head. “He ran off when I yelled.”
Emilie raised an eyebrow.
A man attacked by a bald black man with a bat? An ATM that might be a magnet for attacks?
“We’re going to need a bigger first aid kit.” Emilie led the way back to our RV.
Emilie went back to reading a novel, leaving me to putter around the kitchen. So little to clean. So much time on my hands. I sank into a chair and rested my chin on my hands. The stillness and emptiness outside highlighted how many challenges I faced. In that moment, I felt more alone than I’d felt in decades. I reached for my cell and called Raney.
“I don’t know how I can stay here, Raney.” My brain was foggy. Today was another IV caffeine drip kind of morning. I tucked the cell under my chin. “I feel out of sorts.”
“What happened? Did you step out of bed into a whole pile of Mondays?”
“It’s not Monday.”
“You know what I mean.” Just like Raney to put her special spin on my woes. “What’s bothering you?”
“I never thought Mississippi would be so, well, flattened. All I’ve seen is destruction and rubble. No sign of people.” Nothing in my life prepared me for living amidst devastation, not when I was accustomed to noise, hustle, cars, and people everywhere.
“You’ll have to fix that. You need people around you.” Raney turned down the stereo until it played softly in the background. She was in a Bach frame of mind. I leaned more toward The End by The Doors.
“We have some great guys in camp, but they work all day. Besides, I don’t have much in common with them.”
“Get out of the damned trailer.”
“It’s not a trailer,” I said on autopilot. I laughed.
Raney had done it again. She’d gotten me out of my funk.
“I doubt I’ll find anyone who just wants to have coffee.” I missed the social side of my life in Manhattan more than anything else. “My gut tells me when people come back, they won’t be in the mood for idle chitchat. More like cleaning up and starting over.”
“Kind of like what you’re doing.”
Wasn’t that the truth? I was starting over or, as Alex insisted, rebooting my life. I had Eleanor’s “doo-wop” to live out.
“What about the teacher? Can’t he help?” A new CD clicked on in the background.
“Maybe, if the kids give him free time.” I knew almost nothing about the man I hired and who would be living as part of our extended family. Getting to know him could be a blob of color in a monochrome world.
I told Raney about the undercurrent of menace running through the camp, about the possibility that men were following us, and the attack at the ATM.
“Please don’t tell the other Great Dames.” I didn’t want to worry Eleanor. And I didn’t need any of Rose’s “I told you so” high-minded comments.
Raney closed the balcony door against a sudden yowl of a police car’s siren. “You thi
nk I won’t worry?”
“You can handle it.”
We hung up after I promised to work on gaining new situational awareness. Some situation. No people. Plenty of human detritus.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Mississippi, September 27
Emilie blinked sleep from her eyes and padded into the kitchen area for coffee before heading for a shower. With limited water in our holding tanks, we were forced to bathe quickly. We named the exercise a minuture shower, as in “one minute you’re in, one minute you’re out.”
One week in my new environs. One week, and I was bored out of my flippin’ skull. It didn’t take long. I could clean and organize our living quarters so many times. I could write in my journal every day, but each entry would sound like a teen-aged whine of “I don’t have anything to do.” If I didn’t explore our greater surroundings, I’d go stark raving nuts.
In the post-Katrina desolation, Mississippi was less populated than the Sea of Tranquility. I hadn’t seen any local residents driving past our encampment, but I couldn’t find people when I hid inside an RV.
Whip and Alex were still on the road, so after breakfast Emilie and I hopped in the Rover. We spent an hour driving through debris fields and barren ground. A shack or two stood, but each looked abandoned. We found a metal building, a large but tattered tent, and a brick church, but no humans. When we finished our first venture outside the compound, Emilie pointed to a structure of sorts about half a mile to the east.
“Someone’s over there.”
“Wonder who it is.”
She shrugged and stared at the barely organized pile of trash.
From a distance I couldn’t tell if the figure was a boy or a man. Whichever, he was furtive as a skunk. Did he have anything to do with the men who were missing from the road crews? A day after we arrived, Johnny told me about the unrest among the crews along the highway.
“A worker from a crew a few miles up the road vanished, truck, paycheck, and all. That makes three we know about,” Johnny said.
“‘That we know about’? Do you think it could be more?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have the entire picture yet. Until I do, I’ll station one of the guys at the front gate to provide some safety.”
“I hope he has a gun.” I didn’t want to live in fear, but a guard on duty would make me feel better about Emilie and Alex living in this wilderness.
“If he does, he’ll keep it hidden.”
I pretended to feel secure, but I was on edge.
Emilie reemerged from the RV. “Let’s take a bike ride to the beach before everyone else arrives.”
“Good idea.”
We dressed in bike shoes, T-shirts, hats, and sunblock. Emilie wore a pair of Daisy Dukes she bought at Walmart. I had on more age-appropriate bike shorts. Emilie wanted to find the Gulf; I wanted to find other humans. We didn’t take suits and towels, because I didn’t think we’d have time to swim. We accomplished Emilie’s goal. We found the Gulf. We didn’t accomplish mine. We didn’t find anyone lounging on the sand.
We were halfway back to the compound when a dirty pickup clattered along the broken roadway and passed us too close for my comfort.
Emilie glanced at the driver then away. “Not good.”
####
The next morning I perched on a folding director’s chair outside the girls’ dorm, cell phone once again tucked against my shoulder. Emilie was off for a jog.
“It’s creepy here, Raney.”
“Creepy? How?”
“It’s too darned quiet at night. I mean totally quiet. No traffic noise. Few natural sounds either. No light except moonlight. Pitch black.”
“For someone who loves the Manhattan bustle, silence would feel unsettling. What else?” Raney knew me too well. My angst had to be driven by more than an absence of sound.
“No people. Em and I’ve done a bit of exploring, but we’ve seen only one truck that wasn’t owned by the workers.” I sipped some water. “Em’s reaction to the driver was, ‘Not good.’”
“Do you think you’re in danger?”
After the troubles of last year, all I wanted was peace and serenity. “Too soon to tell.”
“You need to re-establish your radar. You need a different kind of screening process from what you have here.”
“I guess.”
“I know.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Mississippi, week of September 26
“How did you know where to begin when you first went to Kosovo, Eleanor?” I never knew when a call would go through or how long I would stay connected. I’d seen a temporary cell tower about twenty miles to the west, but not all calls connected. When I had Eleanor on the phone, I went straight to the reason I called: I needed confirmation I’d made the right decision coming to Mississippi.
“Overwhelming, is it not?” After the fighting ended, Eleanor, an economist and war historian of international stature, had led a team of advisors into the war-ravaged country to develop a strategy to rebuild the shattered infrastructure. “When we arrived, the capital city Pristina was little more than bombed-out buildings, head-high piles of debris and unexploded ordnance. We could not move freely. It was too dangerous.”
“There’s nothing but rubble here, too.” I failed to keep the despair from my voice. “At least there are no shells lying around.”
“After we had a chance to get settled, we realized we had to break the project into a series of tactical steps.” Eleanor’s team concentrated on reconstructing a central bank, which adhered to international rules, regulations, and responsibilities.
“I wish I knew where to start.”
“Maybe you are looking too far away.” Eleanor’s decades of studying and teaching war and its economic aftermath could serve as guidance in our domestic war zone.
“What do you mean?”
Eleanor advised me to find one thing I could do to help. I could leave the kids to Ducks and the highway work to Johnny and Whip. “Do not try to change everything all at once. Everything is too hard.”
“Em told me to look closer to my feet.” I recalled her words after we left the town of steps.
“Wise child. Look smaller. When you take the first step, others will follow.”
“You make it sound like that old movie with Bill Murray.”
“Which one?” Eleanor had little interest in movies.
“The one about the agoraphobic.” I searched my brain for the title. “What About Bob?”
“And what, my dear, made you think about that?”
“Because Bob’s psychiatrist got him out of the house by taking baby steps.”
“I see.”
“Anyway, I wish you’d send a strategic team in to create a redevelopment plan.” I rubbed my throbbing temples. “Each project, be it roads, bridges, rail, housing, electricity, or water mains, feels independent of all others. If anyone has the big picture, no one’s sharing it with me.”
“We should treat our citizens and their needs the same way we treat other countries.”
“Indeed.”
“Follow Emilie’s advice. Look closer to your feet.”
####
So far, Johnny, Emilie, and I were the only family members residing in a bare lot surrounded by chain link fencing somewhere in totally flat, east-of-Jesus Mississippi. Whip called to say he’d arrive in a day; Ducks was perhaps another day behind in the “and a bit” part of his week-long journey somewhere near the western edge of Florida. He wasn’t sure where the heck he was.
“My GPS keeps sending me down roads that don’t exist.”
“So did mine. Keep heading west. If you reach the Mississippi River, turn around.” We hung up.
“I wish Dad and Alex would get here.” Emilie worried about her father. “I’ll feel better when they’re with us.”
“Me too.” I washed the breakfast dishes and wiped down the countertop. Dust accumulated on all surfaces. “Do you want to go back to the beach? It might be your last day
off for a while. School starts as soon as Mr. Ducks arrives.”
“I don’t think so. I want to do some reading. Take a run later.” Emilie looked out the front window of our RV. I’d parked it with its tail pointing east, its nose west.
“Something’s all wrong over there.” Emilie pointed to an ever-increasing column of birds over the distant bayou.
“You can say that again.”
The birds unsettled me, although I didn’t see them swooping down to hook talons in my hair like they did in Hitchcock’s movie. Since we’d arrived, more columns of buzzards had formed.
“I don’t like this one little bit.” I put the last clean cereal bowl away.
“Uncle Johnny needs to take a look.”
“You mean, you don’t want us to go explore?” I folded the dishtowel and hung it on a rod. I reached over and tapped the tip of her slightly freckled nose.
“I’m not Alex.”
####
Emergency sirens shattered the midmorning silence in the empty camp. With nothing to muffle the wails, the vehicles could have been right outside the camp’s perimeter rather than a few miles off. Blue and red lights flashed. I looked out the window but made no move for my car keys. I wasn’t going to chase ambulances.
Two vehicles, huh. No, wait. Three. Not good.
Emilie set her novel aside. “Uncle Johnny found someone dead.”
“How do you know Uncle Johnny is involved?”
Emilie gave me her favorite du-uh glare. Why did I bother to question her? If she felt Johnny was involved, he was.
“Three ambulances?”
“If my count’s right.” I called Johnny’s cell.
“Hey, pretty lady.” A distracted voice with our standard greeting.
I couldn’t respond with “Hey, funny man.” This wasn’t the time to joke around. “Did I see three ambulances going toward the buzzard column?”
“Yeah. I came over this morning. It took me a while to find the bodies.” A siren screamed in the background. “Gotta go. Sheriff’s here. I’ve got to call you back.”
