Lakewood, Continued

A "Brief" History of the End of the World

Italian

Back at the trading post, I explained what had happened. I felt hollow, adrenal, my short term memory shot, dehydrated. Dan took me aside, sat me down, and handed me a cup of hot tea.

“Listen,” he said, his voice a rasp, deep, grated. “You’re not going to get over this, not in the way that you think. There’s before today, and after. There’s no sense in trying to catch back up to before. You’re going to overplay that moment, and it’ll take you unless you talk about it. Talk about it. Talk to me, talk to whoever you can, but you need to keep putting words to it.”

I nodded. I felt empty as it was, but I didn’t want to be alone.

Dan and I sat. I explained to him again what happened. He explained that I’d done what people who want to live do. He told me, life is sometimes a very fast series of brutal choices, and they’re all bad choices, so your instinct will choose the best of the bad. He told me, the way forward wasn’t going to be getting over, but finding my way through. He walked away for a bit, I heard rummaging in his van, and he came back with a book. He told me, read this. “On Killing” by Dave Grossman.

It was weeks before I slept normally. I’d wake up with that click from Earl’s pistol ringing in my ears, I’d roll over and start reading. I talked to everyone who would listen, and they all wanted to listen. I worked at it like a loose thread. I’m still not over it.

After three weeks, during a break in the weather, I drove to the nearest location on Earl’s map. Dan and Susan recognized all the map markers; Dan knew where everyone lived. Susan talked to everyone who came to the post and told them about Earl, about me, and about how maybe it would be a good idea to be a little tighter, get together, meet in one place.

So I drove to the nearest location, which was a house next to a school about five miles from my house. The house bordered what had been a football field at the school, which had been turned to farm land. The folks in the house had put in planters with covered winter crops. They had built four smaller greenhouses. There were animal coops or pens, and a couple of lazy dogs. The gate had a sign: honk three times. I honked, and waited. After a few minutes a young woman and a bearded man looked out through a window, then came out and walked down the driveway. He was armed, rifle at the ready. She was wiping her hands on a towel, both had on aprons.

I got out of the truck and stood, hands in sight, no weapons.

“Hey there,” I said. “Thought I’d drop by, you’re my nearest neighbor. I’m Cade.”

The woman smiled, and the man relaxed. “Cade! We’ve heard about you. You’re the guy who may have saved our bacon.” She was younger, maybe 18. The bearded guy was maybe 20.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” I said. “But I’m glad to meet you.”

“I’m Carla, and this is Rick,” she said. We were standing now with just the gate dividing us. Rick offered his hand, I offered an elbow bump.

“Man,” Rick said, “it sounds like that guy was bad news. I’m glad you’re OK.”

“I’m OK, but we might need to be ready for more like him,” I said. “I mean, I hope not, but we should at least entertain the idea.”

We exchanged more small talk, and they invited me on to their farm.

They’d been farming for three years, and had amassed a serious library of books on farming and gardening and homesteading. They had the two dogs, a flock of geese, chickens, rabbits, and as many vegetables as they could coax: carrots and potatoes and cabbage and brussels sprouts and spinach plus some other greens. I’d brought some rabbit, cleaned and smoked, along with some fish that I’d smoked. We traded for greens and a handful of potatoes, along with hand-written instructions on how to grow potatoes in a garbage can.

After touring their property and trading, we sat in their warm sun room and talked while tea steeped.

“We were kids, you know? Still would be in the way we used to look at things. I’m 20, Ricky is 22. I was tiny when the first pandemic hit, I don’t really remember any of it. My dad died, I don’t really remember him, just a sort of presence? Like a memory of a dream about a big guy that I liked. My mom passed three years ago. Still tough to think about. She’d been so good for so long, but we had this storm, and I guess she wasn’t thinking about what she was using for heat, or something bad happened to the heater. She just looked like she was asleep. I almost passed out trying to wake her, the air was bad. Something wrong with the kerosene heater.” Lookinng down, she wiped her eyes, took a breath.

Rick filled in. “We buried her out back, next to that cottonwood. She loved that tree.” He was looking at Carla, a kindness in his eyes. He’d been caring for her for a while.

“Yeah,” Carla said, a tiny smile surfacing in the grief. “She did love that tree.” A deep breath, she looked up. “Anyway, Ricky and I just tried our best, and we managed pretty well. Our grandparents had a farm in Kansas, and we went there for a long time during the worst of things. When we got back here, it was about a year before Mom died, the house was in rough shape but we managed it.”

“So you two are siblings?” I asked.

“Yep,” Rick said. “One year apart. Our parents had planned for a big family but after me, Mom had a lot of miscarriages, and it was too tough, so we’re it.”

“Well I’m glad to know you both. I’m from California, originally headed to the east coast and maybe further, but stopped here because it seemed like a good idea,” I said with a little chuckle. We talked for a bit about my journey, about my house, and about Earl. I didn’t say too much, wasn’t comfortable with the idea of trauma in front of strangers yet. I had a checklist of details of the thing, and I stuck to them in the retelling. Rick and Carla were thoughtful, expressed gratitude for stopping him.

“An influence like that, we don’t need,” Rick said.

“Speaking of, we’re talking about forming a counsel, I guess. A way to share information and material, share news and just get to know each other. Bud is talking about maybe opening up one of the larger buildings, like the indoor arena, that Pepsi Center? Anyhow, just getting the word out.”

“That’s a good idea,” Carla said. “I see a few others from north of here pretty regular, we can start getting the word out. Coordinate with the trading post?”

“Sounds perfect,” I said. “We can get a list of names and dates, just have everyone check in once a week and we’ll settle on a date in the next month or three, you know how people are.” I wasn’t even sure what that meant anymore.

“Mail would be good,” Rick said. “We should see about putting together a route.”

We talked more about rebuilding. What we needed, what was failing. There was a water treatment plant west of us that had developed some leaks, and polluted water was pouring into some ditches. None of us knew anything about how to manage that, other than damming it up. We talked about electricity and what to do with it. None of us knew what fed the grid, or how. Things like that could be the death of us all if we weren’t aware of them.

We talked about society, and what sort of ways we could support one another. Rick mentioned trade routes, but we were pretty far from that. Carla and I talked about findign older farms, and sorting through what was available, getting larger scale agriculture set up.

We had a long way to go. But for now, I felt much better knowing that maybe we could start to move in a positive direction, away from decay. Grow and figure out how to make our path into a future.

That night, with one of the wood stoves quietly burning, I sat and thought about why. Why we bothered, but more why I bothered, what my point was. These were not new questions, not new to me, not new to this time, not new in any way. The shelves of books in the house had psychology and philosophy books, religion and neuroscience, and I was sure that they held some answers, but for me? Personally? What was the reason, the thing that got me to this room, away from the camp?

In the end, it might just be some low level imperative, or it might be because death felt so much like just giving up, and I didn’t feel like giving up, even if I couldn’t rationalize any of it.

I opened a book about Italian kitchens, and how to make pasta from wheat, and how to make sauce from tomatoes. Maybe my reason for being was to just ponder the question of ‘why’ for longer. Giving up wasn’t a good option. Pasta was a good option.