Burn District 1 (13 page)

“Okay, you gotta point. Sorry, Laura,” he said, smirking at me.

Chapter 11

Carol

This is like a bad dream. I thought of my house last night. Randy built it himself. It’s on a hillside overlooking the Brandywine Creek. Our view is amazing, or
was
amazing; the time of year when the leaves are changing color, every chance I got I looked out over the beautiful, breathtaking vista, just in case something like this happened. And you know what? It wasn’t enough. The memories of the color change, the view of the homes below us with their lights on in the winter, at Christmas the colorful display almost as though they’d decorated just for our benefit; it’s not enough. I don’t want to be here in Arizona. Its barren, treeless terrain, same weather everyday, glaring sun is boring.

Going through the motions with my granddaughters is just so I don’t lose my mind.

“Grannie, you need to give yourself a break,” Carin whispered. “It hasn’t been that long. Don’t be so hard on yourself.” I’m trying to take her advice, but it’s so hard. My daughter-in-law hasn’t helped matters.

Laura always makes things look
so
easy. She worked full time and raised a household full of perfect children, while I was at home, (except for my little part time job at the garden,) and even then, I couldn’t do motherhood right. Oh, don’t get me wrong; Mike is great. He’s a great dad and a great son. I see how he acts with his kids and it brings joy to my heart. He’s a real family man.

You’ll never hear us talk about Dennis. Dennis is Mike’s older brother. He hasn’t spoken to Randy or me for almost ten years. I discovered he stays in touch with Mike, not consistently, but enough for us to know he’s alive. Dennis isn’t Randy’s son. I was pregnant with him before I met Randy, and Randy said he didn’t care that I’d been with someone else, but as it turned out, he cared. He cared a lot. It didn’t make any difference that it happened before we even knew each other. That’s what is so odd.

I spent most of my time protecting Dennis from Randy. He wasn’t physically abusive to him, but everything the boy did he took exception to. If he chewed his food a certain way, or tucked his shirt into his jeans unevenly, or any one of a million other things, Randy would let the boy have it. His words seared. Most of the time, I acted as the buffer and took the brunt of his harshness.

Finally, when Dennis turned six, I got pregnant with Mike. Randy did an about face; now he was seeing a little boy that he was madly in love with and couldn’t imagine allowing anyone to talk to or treat Mike the way he’d treated Randy. But it was too late. Six years of severity leaves its scars. Dennis submitted to Randy because he worried the alternative would be painful. He could never trust either one of us. It’s so sad! My little boy. He was so cute, too.

I hate it when I go down memory lane. No one cares about Dennis. Laura might have met him once, but he didn’t attend their wedding, refused to stand up for Mike, never acknowledged the births of the grandchildren. Mike loved him, too. It was really sad when Dennis left home at seventeen to join the Marine Corps. He was technically too young, but I signed the papers. Mike was just eleven at the time, heartbroken. He wrote letters to Dennis in his childish cursive, and occasionally he’d receive an answer.

Oh well, it’s too late now. If I hadn’t married Randy, I wouldn’t have Mike. Everything in life is a tradeoff. Randy has never apologized to me for the way he treated Dennis. I believe that after Mike was born and he had the change of heart, he supposed that would be enough.

How did I get off on that topic? I don’t seem to matter much around here. I enjoy caring for my grandchildren. The girls are a joy. We sew together, and do crafts. The boys are fun, too, Junior so loving. But the adults ignore me. I enjoyed being in the trailer with Steve and Kelly. We had a routine, playing cards at night, talking around the campfire. Steve probably thought he was doing us a favor by finding the camper, but all the evening activities ended when we moved. No one wants to play cards now, and to get Randy out of his recliner is almost impossible.

I’m so isolated here. I don’t have my Facebook friends to chat with or any of the games I used to play with them. Does Facebook still exist? I’d spend hours on the phone with my friends at home. Are they alive? Do they think about me?

Oh! I just remembered what I started to say. About Laura. She has a relationship with everyone but me. I always feel like she is waiting for me to take over her duties. Don’t get me wrong, I love cooking for the family and that sort of thing. But I don’t feel the love. Oh well, I’ll keep doing what I want to do and try to stop longing for more.

Chapter 12

Laura

After Elise and Chris left, it was quiet and empty at the trailer without my efficient daughter scurrying around and everyone helping Chris with physical therapy. I did math problems or worked on essays with the kids after breakfast in a feeble attempt to homeschool, and then we split up to do our chores. We finally had our wagon train set up like the old-time pioneers did as they traveled across the country; our trailer sat along the ridgeline with the Mexican border fence running along the gully behind it, the refrigerator truck next to our trailer to the right, and the fifth wheel at a right angle to it. To the left of our trailer was the little camper now belonging to Carol and Randy. My dad’s truck, the van and two other vehicles completed the circle, the space surrounded by salvaged stockade fencing. All the buildings and vehicles were partially covered by desert camouflage netting. My dad built a covered structure so we could have a fire at night, but the concern over sparks giving away our location meant we could only do it if we really wanted to stay outdoors and it was too cold to do so without a fire.

Our nights together took on a routine that was comforting even though we were prepared to leave at a moment’s notice. That meant before we relaxed for the evening, we took baths and laid out clothes for the next day. I arranged coolers and baskets of food to grab, just in case. The cars were full of gasoline. If we needed to evacuate, we’d leap into our clothes, grab our food and run. The fifth wheel was ready to hook up to my dad’s truck, until one day Mike Junior had a good idea.

“Grandpa, let’s hook up your truck permanently and get another truck to drive from the dead people.”

“Oh, my god,” Carol said. I nodded; it was not the kind of dialogue I wanted my son to engage in, but the times were different.

“That’s a great idea, Junior,” Steve said. “Let’s look for one now.” They’d take off together, and come home with either another car or truck, or a trailer full of useful items.

I looked forward to looting for groceries. We were loading up at an abandoned grocery when another vehicle stopped and a very pregnant woman and her mother come into the store. Steve was ready to draw his gun, but they put their hands in the air as soon as they saw him reach behind his back.

“I’m Candy Silver,” the woman said quickly. “This is my daughter Jessica. We live over there.” Pointing to the area where the trailer park was, where we’d found Chris. I stepped forward and offered my hand, knowing my dad had my back.

“Did you just move there or did your place survive?”

“We’ve always lived here. Our house was far enough from the last blast,” Jessica said. “I can’t imagine coming here on purpose.” I heard Steve cough behind me.

“We’ve been taking stuff from our neighbor’s homes, but our power’s off so there’s nothing fresh left. I saw this place, hoping we could find at least some fruit for Jess.” Steve pointed over to the produce department, piles of fresh fruit still nice. The refrigerator cases were loaded with berries and other perishables that could be frozen. “There’s enough fresh fruit here for a year if we get it into a freezer right away.”

We took as much of it as we could, putting the baked goods and meats we didn’t have room for back at the camp into the gigantic walk in freezer. Candy made trips back and forth between her trailer home and the grocery. We filled Candy’s car until she said she didn’t have room for any more. “I can’t fit another crumb into my house!”

Our truck was full of potatoes, onions and root vegetables that we would put into a huge root cellar my father-in-law dug with a backhoe he’d taken from the farm across the street. Opening up into the gully facing the border fence, he considered putting a pad lock on it to prevent illegals from using it as a shelter, until we heard that the reverse was happening. People were fleeing into Mexico from the US.

Then what I was dreading happened; the electricity went off. We didn’t know if it was purposeful, or there simply wasn’t anyone to operate the plants. Electricity in Yuma County was coal generated. In my hysteria, I thought maybe it just ran out of coal or there was no one to shovel it into the furnaces, a childhood picture of a man in overhauls shoveling coal into a round furnace with an oval door. My mind couldn’t fathom the magnitude of coal it took, train-car-loads that traveled on vast conveyor belts into behemoth furnaces. I begged Mike to help me find the plant; we could keep it running if we had to I argued, but he wouldn’t take me. My family was laughing at me, Kelly included, as my hysteria about it mounted. Everyone had their turn at being unreasonable, and I’d finally gotten mine. Later, after my meltdown, I apologized, but something had shifted. A sense of survival at any cost inched out what little hope I had that our new way of life was temporary, sure it would get worse, that I was going to die living this way.

After that happened, my obsession with hoarding food escalated. I wanted to make sure we got everything we could from the store freezers before it thawed. Stuffing as much as we could get into the refrigerated trailer, leaving nothing behind for others, the worry over what might happen when we ran out of food possessed me. When I wasn’t washing clothes or doing something with my children, I was organizing food. It was a constant concern; making sure I was using items by their expiration date, moving things around in the refrigerator truck so it didn’t get freezer damage, rotating canned goods. I was making it a full time job.

“Laura, you’re starting to lose it,” Mike said to me one night. “We have enough food for a year already, give it a rest.” That pissed me off. Before this happened Mike was a fanatic; our cars for instance, maintenance, tire rotation, oil changes, registration. He’d go on and on until I wanted to plug my ears. I wanted to remind him, to make him try to see how important it was for me to be confident about our food supplies, when I realized I would never feel good about it until we were self-sufficient and maybe even not then. The effort it was taking us to get a ten-foot by ten-foot plot of my father’s rocky sand ready to cultivate was more than we were equipped for. I had to hand it to Kelly; she didn’t stop trying to garden that plot, using a pick ax to try to break up the cement-like ground, working peat moss and manure into it from the farm across the road.

“What happens after a year? Then what?” He looked at me and shook his head, and started to leave our room, but I wasn’t having it. I grabbed the back of his shirt.

“Oh no you don’t,” I said, and fortunately, it came out like I was teasing or we might have ended up in a battle to end all battles, but he smiled and let me pull him back.

“I guess I’ve got this coming,” he said, smirking. “What do you want?”

“We need to start growing our own food. This rocky ground is not going to cut it. Right across the road is a gigantic, abandoned farm. We’re already using their equipment. Let’s take part of the land close to the road and plant it. It already has the rows in and the irrigation is in place. We need more solar panels.”

“You talk like there are panels laying around for the taking. I think we have what we’re gonna get. If we need more than this, we’ll have to go into Yuma, and I don’t think we want to do that.”

“Because of what those looters told us? It might not be so bad now.”

“Let’s wait and see,” Mike answered. “You can start working on the farm if everyone else agrees its safe enough. We’ll have to take turns standing guard. But it has to be without irrigation if the pumps require electricity. There might be enough pressure in their system to water a small area without power. I’ll go over with you tomorrow and we can check it out.” I felt like he was really in touch with me, that he cared about what my concerns were. I went to him and he hugged me, and then we kissed.

“Can we do it tonight?” he whispered. “It’s been a long time.”

“Yes, I guess so,” I said teasing. “Meet me here after everyone else is in bed.”

Our trailer had been the place for game playing and movie watching, but the others were spending more time in their own spaces in the evening, occasionally inviting our children along. Carin was the loneliest, missing Elise as she cared for Chris, but trying to make the best of it by staying busy. When we weren’t toiling in the small garden plot, she was sewing curtains for the little trailer her grandparents were in, and making slipcovers for every cushion in sight using fabric we’d looted. The sewing machine motor running into the night became a soothing sound in our trailer.

The connection between Kelly and I continued to be strained. I tried not to watch her and my dad together too carefully, but it was obvious they were a couple. It made me both angry and a little sick feeling, like she’d traded our friendship for a date with a man fifteen years older than she was. My dad was distancing himself from me too, that was the sad part. Her friendship was definitely expendable, but my bond with my dad was not. I didn’t know how to navigate it.

One day when we were at the grocery store with Candy and Jessica packing up more food, Candy turned to my dad.

“Would you be interested in coming for dinner sometime?” It was clear she’d caught him off guard, but I had to hand it to him.

“That’s so nice of you,” he answered. “But I have an idea. Why don’t you come to our compound? We’d like you to meet the rest of the family and trust me, you don’t want all of us coming to your place.”