Part Four -Heading Out

(This is about halfway through, now. Comments and questions are welcome.)

Part Four
Sharkey.

Before I go on I should say a few words about Sharkey. He was more my father than Papa. Not that Papa wasn’t a good man. He was. But he was gone more than he was home and he never spent much time with me. And both my parents were mild people who had no idea what to do with the little hellion they’d spawned. The first time I started a fight at school (started, mind, not got into) Papa simply sat me down and asked me why. What he should have done was what Sharkey did when the same thing happened: turned me over his knee, gave me two hard swats, and then set me down for a severe talking-to.
“We don’t start fights,” He told me firmly. “We finish ‘em but we don’t start them. You hear me, Edna Jean?”

I never started a fight again.
No, I didn’t start that fight at the Saddleback. Jeremiah did that when he beat my dog so bad I had to put ‘im down. Toby was so old at the time he was half blind and arthritic as hell, but that don’t matter one whit. You don’t do that and get away with it, not with me around.
Sharkey was waiting for me on the porch when I got home, but he wasn’t angry. Nope. He had his last bottle of good whiskey beside him and two glasses. That was the first time I ever got drunk.

Sharkey’s family had lived on that farm for at least three generations. But Shakry didn’t want to be a farmer. No, he wanted to be –of all things –a vet. But college was expensive and his family didn’t have the money. Scholarships were hard to get and wasn’t a good enough ball player to go that way. The only other way to do it was to go so deep into hock he’d never have seen the light of day. Sharkey, being Sharkey, took the only other route available: he joined up. I don’t know if he was ever infected with the kind of hyper-patriotism that a lot of those in our area had, or if it was sheer practicality, but he went and joined the marines after high school. A lot of kids did that.

It turned out that Sharkey was good at being a marine and he actually liked it. But war makes you question a lot of things and Sharkey did a lot of thinkin’ in the marines. He went in a garden variety Baptist and came out a card-carrying atheist. He joined up to become a vet and came out an entirely different kind of vet. He lost his right foot far from home in a place called Iraq on his third tour of duty there. They drummed him out and he came home to help Mama Jo.
By that time it had become obvious to anyone with eyes to see that there was some serious shit hittin’ the fan in our country and the world. Sharkey could read the writing on the wall and knew that most of the dogs we had weren’t going to hunt much longer. So he sat about changing some things. Mama Jo had always kept a garden. He expanded it and started planting wheat and corn in some of the old fields. He planted an orchard. Then he upgraded all the appliances and insulation in the house, reduced the power load, and converted it all to solar power. I don’t know where he got the money for the last, because that was expensive as all hell, but he did it. Somewhere in those years he married and Mary Ellen and Jane were born. His wife Kelsey died of cancer the year before the fever and his sister (Robert Earl’s mama) was in New York when it happened and we never heard from her again.

Sharkey being Sharkey, he quickly realized helping himself get through hard times wasn’t gonna be enough if his neighbors were hurting. They would come to him for help and he would either have to help them (and he would; he was a teddy bear inside) or be an asshole. So he started helping people around town do things to help themselves. He helped Grandpappy and several others plant orchards or even single trees. He helped insulate a lot of houses. And so on and so forth. He also bought a buttload of shortwave radios with solar batteries in case things ever got really bad. Sharkey was not exactly a survivalist; we’d one of those around, before the fever. Jed Hudson was his name. He lived in a bunker and expected world war three to happen any day, but it was the fever that killed him. Sharkey was just practical and determined to keep going no matter what happened.

After the fever it was Sharkey and a few others who got us organized and kept things together. Sharkey was elected Mayor of Elvis. It hardly mattered that he lived outside of town. His father and grandfather had both been mayor at one point or another. It was easier to get things done when it became obvious things weren’t going back the way they had been. Someone came up with the idea of apprenticing kids to the doc and the midwife –Widow Harrison I think –and Sharkey seized on it, then expanded it to include just about anyone with any kind of practical knowledge. He even convinced the Amish to take some of the boys on as apprentices. When we started having trouble with drifters and bandits he formed the militia. Things like that.
Sharkey taught me just about everything I know. I’m not just talking about practical things like how to kill a deer or use a compass. He taught me the really important things: honor, justice, ethics. The kind of things more of us should have. He treated all of his adopted kids and his nephew like blood, and we grew up thinking of ourselves as one big family. Which is why we all hung together even after we were grown.

In the evening of the fourth day I walked up to see Sharkey. It was a perfect summer evening. The heat of the day had passed and there were fireflies twinkling everywhere. He was sitting on the back porch sipping a glass of ice tea. He didn’t yet have the strength to do much more than hobble back and forth from his room to the porch or the hammock. I leaned against the porch railing and pillowed my head on my arms. “How you doin’ tonight?”

“Better’n I was. I’d be better still if those two mother hens would leave me alone for a hour.”

I smiled. Mary Ellen and Jane fussed over their father constantly. “At least you haven’t spent half the day hoeing corn and the other half trying to figure out the guts of a washer.”

“There is that.”

We were silent for a while. “I reckon I need to go after the boys.”

“Ah reckon so. Someone has to. I can’t. Jim’s too young, Amanda’s with child and Todd doesn’t have the sense.”

Todd was a good man. But he was also a very big nerd, and the first time he saw some interesting doohickey he liked he’d forget all about the boys in his haste to get it home and get it working. Even as Sharkey and me were talking most of the family was inside watching a movie on an old VHS machine he’d fixed up.

“When you fixin’ to leave?” Sharkey asked after sipping some more tea.

“First light.”

“Things are bad out there.”

“I know.”

“There’s worse things in this world than death, Edna Jean, and if you go out there’s a bigger chance of them happenin’.”

“I know. Sir. They could happen to the boys too. Family takes care of family.”

Sharkey nodded. “You scared, girl?”

“Yessir.”

“Good. Fear’ll keep you alive out there. What are you planning to take?”

We sat and talked for a long while. When I left he asked me to stop back by on my way out. It was nearly midnight when I headed back to our house. Most of the family was sleeping on the back porch so I slipped in the front way. I stayed up late packing and when I finally lay down I couldn’t get to sleep.

A couple of hours before dawn I finally gave up. I dressed and had breakfast before preparing to head to Sharkey’s. I’d said my goodbyes to everyone before I went up there the night before. But to my surprise Maria appeared in the kitchen just before I stepped out the door.

“You leave now?” She asked. I nodded.

“Come with me first,” She said and beckoned.

Maria was Catholic, like most of the migrants from down south. Or at least she said she was. I never heard her praying to Jesus or his father, much less the Holy Ghost. She did an awful lot of praying to the Virgin Mary, though. Day and night. She wore a Virgin of Guadaloupe pendant that her mother had given her when she was a girl. It never left her neck. She clutched that pendant now as she led me through the house to a small room at the back. It was too big to be a closet and too small to be much of anything else, and Maria and her girls had converted it into a shrine to Mary. The walls were lined with purple velvet, there was a nice rug on the floor, and there was an altar with a large statute of Mary taken from some defunct church or other. Some of Maria’s homemade incense was burning on the altar. The cat lay next to the statute, giving me one of those looks cats can give, the kind that make your hair stand on end.

“I pray to her,” Maria told me as she looked at the statute. “I pray to her all night to bring you and the boys home safe. And she say –she say,” Maria clutched at the pendant. “She say I should give you this. It will keep you safe, she says.”

Before I had time to realize what she was about, she took the pendant off and fastened it around my neck. “Maria, I can’t-”

“Hush,” she said and patted the pendant. “See you soon.” She hugged me.

Oh great. What if I didn’t make it back?

I managed to get out of the house before anyone else was up but as I walked off I heard the baby crying. The dogs followed me all the way to the property line and then Sharkey’s dogs took over as my informal escort. When I got to Sharkey’s it was still dark. There was a light on in his study. That alone was unusual. We tried not to use the electric lights. They drained the batteries too much. Sharkey’s study had once been his father’s and his grandfather’s before that, and their imprint was still all over everything. Civil War crap filled half the room. Books, statutes, flags, even the uniforms his ancestors had worn in the war. One for the North and one for the South.

Sharkey’s family never did anything by halves.

His imprint was all over the study too, course. He had solar power blueprints tacked on the walls and detailed maps of the entire area. Memorabilia from the marines was scattered about here and there. He looked up and grunted when I slipped in. “’Bout time you got here.”

“Maria wanted to pray over me.”

“She think Jesus is going to keep you safe?”

“Not Jesus. Mary.”

Suddenly Sharkey grinned. “A mother is more likely to do that, isn’t she? Have a seat. I got some things for you.”

I took a seat across from the old man. He wasn’t looking too good. He was nearly gaunt. What was wrong with him? And why hadn’t the Doc been to see him? He gave me a bunch of things, mostly trade goods. There were several bottles of liquor, including the one Tulu had given him. We’d both agreed that one was too valuable to drink. There were a carton of old smokes and some old jewelry. He also gave me a thick roll of greenbacks and some gold and silver coins.
“Lord only knows what they’re usin’ for money out there, but hopefully these will help. Take these too.” He handed me one of the two pairs of night-vision goggles we had. “They’ll be more use out there than here. And I want you to have this.”

It was then that he gave me his prized knife, a real Jim Bowie type that had never to my knowledge left his side. I stared at it. “Sharkey-”

“It’s yours now. I don’t want it back. I was gonna give it to one of mine but they clearly don’t want it. And as far as I am concerned you ARE one of mine.”

Wordlessly I slipped the sheath onto my belt. Sharkey looked at me for a long moment. “You’ve grown up, Edna Jean. I’m proud of you. You should know that.”

I felt my ears burn. “Thank you. Sir.”

“Don’t ‘sir’ me anymore. You’re not a child, now.” He was a silent for a long moment. “You know something may have all ready happened to those idiot boys.”
“Yes.”
“And it might not be an accident.”
“I know that, too.”
“There won’t be any proper way to bring the ones who done it to justice if that happens. What do you plan to do?”
“Take care of it.”
Sharkey nodded. “Good.”

I tucked the last of the trade goods into my backpack. “That it?”
“Except for one more thing. Be careful. I’d kind of like to see you again.”
I grinned. “What makes you think I wanna see you again, you old coot?”
“I’m not a coot, you nitwit.”
“Then you’re a codger instead.”
“Lunkhead.”
“Jarhead.”
He grinned. “You better make it back. I’ll miss you.”

To my surprise most of the family was waiting outside when I came out. Mary Ellen put her hands on her hips and glared at me. “You didn’t think we’d let you sneak off like the boys did you?” Before I could reply she threw her arms about me and kissed my cheek. “Be careful,” She told me. “I want y’all back safe. Okay?”
“I’ll do my best.”
“You better. Todd wanted to go too but he doesn’t have the sense God gave a goose. You do.”
My ears burned again.

Finally I got away, with Sharkey’s help. I headed north by northwest, cutting cross-country to reach the road that eventually would hit old highway 64. The road turned southwest to meet the highway. The boys would have reached Huntsville by now if nothing had happened. By the crow’s route that was only fifty miles or so away, but I wasn’t following the crow. I was following two idiot boys who couldn’t read a compass if their lives depended on it and I had to follow their tracks if I had any hope of finding them. Anything could have happened to them in between here and there.

Tim and Bobby Earl had planned the simplest route. They cut across familiar country to the old road and highway 64, then skirting Fayetteville (more ‘cause it was out of the way than anything, I was sure) by going down 275 ‘til it met up with 231, and taking that south to Huntsville, where they could join the interstate. I was sure they were walking on the road, too, instead of paralleling it, which is what I did.

It was another hot day and we had still had no rain. I drank as little water as I could and only stopped twice. Mary Ellen and Maria had given me some of their bread and cornbread, respectively, and I ate a piece each of that by lunch. In the late afternoon I found their first campsite, sited just off the road. It showed all the signs of being built by someone who’d had their training in fire prevention and was in the right spot. The boys were taking their time, walking leisurely on their little vacation, while what I was doing was more of a forced march. It started raining towards evening, a light sprinkling that nevertheless made sleeping outside an unpleasant prospect, so I holed up in an old pharmacy at a crossroads on the highway. All day I had been watching but had seen no one. The few tiny towns I had passed through had been deserted and I had seen no sign of the boys.

The pharmacy had been looted, of course. They all had. Some of them by us, of course. But I still took the time to search. All the good drugs were long gone but I found a few bottles of aspirin and some first aid supplies and stuffed them in my pack.

The second day was similar. I found their second campsite in the morning and kept on going. Today I actually ran into some people. There were a few living on farms or old homesteads just off the highway. They were friendly, as long as I kept my distance. One old man swore he had seen the boys. I showed him the most recent polaroid of the two and he confirmed it. I gave him the last of the cornbread as a thank-you and thanked God I’d brought that picture.

Todd’s passion for electronics actually had some use. Who knew?

As it drew near to evening again I came across an old, broken down farmhouse just off the side of the road. There was a large patch of corn growing out back and a fence around what I assumed was a garden. I decided to approach the house and as I got close an old woman came out of the screen door, a shotgun in her hands. A very young boy peeked out behind her.
“That’s far enough, drifter,” she said, leveling the gun at me.

I stopped. “I’m no drifter, ma’am. I’m just passing through.”
“Whatcha want?”
“I’m lookin’ for two idiot boys who up and ran away from home.”
The shotgun lowered just a bit. “Two, you said? What’d they look like?”

“I have a picture.” I took it out of my breast pocket and held it up. The old woman squinted. “I can’t see that. They ‘round sixteen?”
“Yes’m.”
“Hmm, they spent the night with me a few days ago. Had some fool notion about going to the ocean.”
“Yes’m, I reckon they did. I’m on my way to fetch ‘em home.”

“Hmm. Reckon someone needs to before they get hurt. You’ll not get much farther today, boy.” She looked at me closely. “You been washed in the Blood?”
“Yes’m.”
It was perfectly true. Mama Jo wanted me to be baptized, so I did. It made her happy, so what did I care?
She lowered the gun. “Come on in. I’m Etsell.”

“Ed.” She let me come in and have dinner with them. They had plenty, she said. But I still insisted on paying them with some of the smokes. She wouldn’t take any of the liquor and a bit later I found out why. I don’t think she ever realized I was a woman. Which was fine, since I was trying to pass. It wasn’t hard. Not for me. I’m as tall as most men and about as flat-chested and even then I was only a bit more pretty than the average mule.

The boy was two. He was her great-grandson. They’d lived there alone since her granddaughter died in childbirth. The place wasn’t hers. They had found it while wandering after the fever. They made out pretty good, she said, and I wondered how until she showed me the still after her boy was asleep.

“My grandpappy made moonshine durin’ prohibition.” She told me. “Never stopped. His still kept the family fed durin’ the Depression. The first one, that is. He taught me how to run it when I ‘twasn’t much older than my boy and I ‘elped ‘im with it ‘til he died. We were in West Virginia in those days. My Daddy was a coal miner. Then the bastard evil coal company decided to blow up our mountain aways back. ‘Etsell,’ my grandpappy told me. ‘When times get hard, liquor is money. Anyone who can make it is gonna make out just fine. Times have been good since you wer born, but they’ll get bad again. Mark my words. You remember how to make this and you’ll do just fine.’ I never forgot, and when times got hard, I made myself a still. Folks come from as far as Fayetteville for my whiskey.”

It was good whiskey, I had to admit. She let me have a glass. “Haven’t you had any trouble?”
“Oh some. They always let me alone when they try my whiskey. No one wants to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Or even harass her much. I might poison their next jug, after all.” She laughed.

The next morning before I left she looked at me critically. “You mixed, ain’t you, boy?”
There was only one thing that question could mean and there was no sense denying it. “Yes’m. My father was half black.”
“Hmm. Well, yer light enough to pass. It don’t bother me, mind. One of my girls married a colored boy. Nicest of the lot. But you be careful, ya hear? The white sheets are in charge over ‘round Fayetteville and they’ve taken to stringin’ up colored folk. I told your brother too, but I don’t think he believed me.”

That would be just like Tim. It didn’t surprise me that the Klan was back, only that they’d taken so long. I wondered how long it would take them to realize they were outnumbered now that we’d had so many Hispanic refugees from Mexico’s collapse move in.

The old woman and little Neil (after Neil Armstrong, she told me, so that someone would be alive for a while to remember we once went to the moon) hugged me before I left. I went on, trying not to worry about them. Etsell had to be nearly ninety, and the odds of her living until Neil grew up were slim. I’d offered for them to come live with us and she said she’d think about it. It was more mouths to feed, sure, but as she said, liquor is money. Neither of them should be alive, and yet they were.

That’s the thing about survival. You can’t always tell who is going to make it when something goes down. Sharkey told me that for years before the troubles people had been predicting it and some of them took outright glee in predicting all the people who were going to die. Survival of the fittest, and all that. Only to them ‘fittest’ meant ‘strongest’ and they were wrong. Dead wrong.

Oh, they were right about a lot of people. Insulin dependent diabetics, people who’d had organ transplants, others who were drug dependent all started dying as drugs became less and less available. But there were plenty who died who anyone would think should live. A lot of strong young men and others. The fever got some of them but a lot of people just seemed to give up. Something in them snapped, and they laid down and died. Or killed themselves, fast or slow with drink or drugs. Or got themselves killed.

There were also a lot of people who lived who should have died. Like Widow Harrison. When the troubles started she was two hundred pounds overweight and borderline diabetic. After the fever she managed to lose weight and get healthy. In her case it might have been sheer spite and a desire not to miss any gossip.

Or Lucius Hatchett. He was put in a wheelchair by a carnival ride when he was a teenager. His wife died of the fever and they lived so far out no one thought to check on them. Two years later I was hiking over by their farm and stumbled upon him, thin as a rail but alive, dragging himself down the rows of his garden weeding it. Of course, once I found him people started helping out and by the time Tim and Bobby ran off he was not only healthy but remarried to one of the migrants and had two kids.

Sometimes survival just boils down to what Mama Jo would call the soul and I would call the human spirit. How strong you are often has nothing to do with your body. It has to do with your spirit and your no-how, and a bit of luck. We had an advantage down our way much of the country lacked. In the South most of us were only two generations or less off the land. That meant the knowledge of how to do it was still in living memory. It also meant some of us fought the changes tooth and nail for a while, but we got through it.

It was the grannies, mainly. Old southern women who’d been through everything and lived to tell the tale. They’d seen hard times before and when things started getting bad they did what needed to be done. They went out and started or expanded their gardens. When times got worse they expanded them again. They began to organize, first amongst each other and then reaching out. They held canning bees and quilting bees and cooking classes. They roped the grandpas in, and young mothers desperate for any way to feed their kids. Then they reached out to the kids. Grandkids really, their own or someone elses. It’s a lot easier to train a ten year old than a thirty year old. Nothin’ against the older person, but that’s the way it is. It was those old grannies who got a lot of us through.

Mama Jo was one of them. She took care of all of us kids and Sharkey too, though he’d deny it. When the Doc told her she had cancer she looked him in the eye and said “I ain’t got time to die right now. I got kids to feed.” He gave her six months and she lasted nearly three years, and took care of us right up to the end. Etsell was another one. A man might have the luxury of giving up, but as long as there are kids to feed and diapers to change most women will keep on going. Especially the old women. There is something about the quiet strength of an old woman who’s outlived her husband and some of her children that no young man can ever hope to match, no matter how strong his back.

Part Three -Tulu and Mary Ellen

(This is coming a lot faster than I thought it would. It is also turning out to be much longer than I expected. I'm all ready working on Part 5!)

Part Three
Tulu was a drifter. There were a lot of drifters in those days. The troubles put a lot of people on the move. We had people come through from as far north as New York City and as far south as Colombia. Most of those who came through our area were men. Some young, some not. There were some women and a few families. Most of them were harmless but some stole, or worse. Most all of them begged. If we had the food to spare we’d give them a meal. One. After that, if they were willing to work we would trade food for work. Some of them stayed and became members of the community. Most moved on.

Tulu was different. He came back two, sometimes three times a year. He wasn’t looking for a place to settle down. The old marine liked to wander. It was the war, Sharkey said. It did that to some people. Back in the old days they might’ve been able to treat him for PTSD and make him ‘normal’ again, but even then he would have probably been just another homeless person. He had been in Sharkey’s unit at some point and Sharkey still felt responsible for his boys even all these years later.

The old drifter always camped in the same spot, under an overhanging bank down by the creek that ran by Elvis. He only came into town to trade with Jim Bo and hardly spoke to anyone. He didn’t much care for people. He never begged, never stole, and almost didn’t drink. He was also the best source of information we had found for what was going on outside the area.

“Hail the camp!” I shouted loudly as I made my way down the bank. Tulu was generally harmless but if you startled him he was likely to shoot.

“Is that you, Ed?” Tulu called back in his damn refined Yankee accent. He was a Chicago native, though his parents originally came from somewhere in Asia. “I knew you or Sharkey would be around soon.”

By this time I was close enough to see him squatting by his campfire, working on some soup. “It’s me, Tulu. How goes it?”

“Better, if you brought something for the pot.”

I grinned and tossed a package of beef from Jim Bo’s at him. He caught it deftly, smiling. “Knew you wouldn’t let me down. Not Sharkey’s girl.”

That Sharkey was not my birth father had never seemed to register with Tulu. I finished climbing down the bank and joined him at the fire while he began cutting up the raw meat.
“Where you been, Tulu?”

“Here and there. On walk-about.”

“Got any news?”

“Yes.”

He was silent for a while. You didn’t press Tulu. He would tell you what you needed to know in his own good time. Well, maybe not everyone. But he would tell us.

“Where’s Sharkey?”

“Sick. He’ll come round to see you in a day or two if yer still here and he’s better.”

Tulu grunted in reply. Finally he finished with the beef and got it into the soup pot. He went to the creek to wash his hands. When he came back he dug a bottle out of his pack and tossed it in my direction. “For Sharkey. His birthday present. Sorry it’s late.”

I turned the bottle around to read the label and nearly dropped it in shock. Whiskey, ol’ Jack. And not the cheap Jack either; this was the premium stuff. “Hell’s bells, Tulu, where’d you find this?”

“I came down from Lynchburg.”

“I thought it’d all be gone by now.”

“There’s some left, if you know where to look.”

That was a damn valuable gift. In those days liquor was money. Especially good liquor. But Tulu knew that. I put the bottle in my backpack. “Thanks, Tulu. I know he’ll be happy. He’s always liked Jack.”

Tulu’s only reply was another grunt. He picked up a stick and began poking at the dirt with it. Finally he spoke. “I headed west this time. I wanted to see the old river again. The Mississippi, that is. I worked on tugboats over that way a long time ago before I joined up. The river’s still dirty but it’s cleaner than I’ve ever seen it. Maybe all that’s happened has been good for something. There’s still trade going up and down, too. I hitched a ride on an old paddleboat that’s been put back in service. A few things are going up and down. Mostly food, paper, that kind of thing. There’s some man in Louisiana calling himself their Governor, but of what I don’t know. Not with Orleans gone and Baton Rouge next. There’s tolls at every town on the river and on quite a few of the roads as well.

“Memphis is a mess. No one’s in charge there these days. Not even pretending. There’s no power and no running water. They’ve got sewage in the streets. It’s the damn eighteenth century, there. Malaria is back, too. You should know that.”

I sucked in my breath. If it had reached Memphis –coming up the river, no doubt –how long would it be before it reached our neck of the woods? I would have to stop back by the Doc’s.
“Anything else?” I asked finally.

He shrugged. “I made it upriver almost to St. Louie. Word came down that there was a cholera epidemic in that old burg and I cut back east. Cut back by Nashville.”

He was silent again. “How are things otherwise? The camps still there?” Labor camps, refugee camps, or ‘displaced person’ camps, call ‘em what you would, they were no place to be.

Tulu started. “Oh yeah. There still there. I skirted the ones around Nashville. They’re holding together up there but the city’s been split in two or three. Some places have held together and some have fallen apart, like Memphis. Some are ruled by gangs and some aren’t ruled at all. I ran into a guy who said he’d walked east from L.A., trying to reach family in Georgia. He said the black and latino gangs are still fighting out there. Over a piece of desert with no water!” He laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Whoever wins that fight is going to get the worst booby prize in history. This guy said he left after the third time a mayor got killed for trying to stop the gangs fighting. I’ve heard some places still have power but I haven’t seen it. Of course, I skirt around most of the cities. It’s bad in the smaller places but not that bad.” Suddenly he grinned. “I stopped in this one river town in Missouri. The one in charge there is this little old black woman. She’s got the strongest personality of anyone I’ve ever met, bar none. She keeps those people in line, believe me!”

“Oh, I believe it. I know southern-”

“-women” We finished together, and laughed, for real this time. Especially the grannies, I thought to myself. Don’t fuck with them, and they won’t beat you to death with the nearest stick. Tulu pulled another bottle of whiskey, this one much cheaper, out of his pack and took a swig. He offered it to me.

“No thanks.” I didn’t think he had anything but there was no since taking chances.

He shrugged and put it back in his pack. “I keep meeting people who say there’s man in D.C. –or what’s left of it –calling himself President, but I certainly didn’t vote for him and I doubt he rules over much more than Virginia and Maryland. Maybe part of Carolina. I think I’ll head that way next and see what’s up. Maybe there is something left of this country. God knows enough of us gave enough of ourselves defending it.” His voice was bitter. His eyes stared into his fire, far away.

“You be careful.”

“I will. Wait, I almost forgot.” He pulled an old baggie out of his shirt pocket and handed it to me. “For the doc.”

It was filled with seeds. “What are these?”

“Poppy seeds.”

“Why would the Doc want to grow flowers?”

“They’re opium poppies, you nitwit. After all the time I spent in ‘Stan I’d recognize them anywhere. I expect he’ll have some use for them. You know where I got them?”

“Where?”

“Jeremiah Rhoades’ land. He’s growing them. I don’t know why, but it can’t be good.”

I cursed. “He gave them to you?”

“Hell no. I stole them. That man is terrified of you, by the way. He has been ever since that fight at the Saddleback.”

I was surprised that Tulu knew about that, but I shouldn’t have been. It was a local legend. “He shouldn’t have killed my dog.”

“Worst mistake he ever made.” Tulu agreed.

I pocketed the seeds and thanked him, then took my leave. I had a few other stops to make, mostly minor trades, and it was nearly suppertime when I made it home. Well before I made it to the house two of the dogs came running out to meet me, barking joyously rather than in warning. Nothing larger than a squirrel came on our property without the dogs knowing about us, and letting us know. They were better security any human could be.

There was an unholy banging noise coming from the open windows of the house. The smaller kids were in the yard playing and Maria and the older ones were in the summer kitchen making dinner. I didn’t see Tim anywhere. Maria pushed open one of the screens and leaned out. “Careful, Eddie, Beth lost her mind.” She tapped the side of her head. “The baby sickness.”

I stopped, and blinked. “Okay.” I wondered what that was (not morning sickness, surely) and decided against trying to find out. Maria’s English wasn’t good enough and my Spanish wasn’t either. We’d both end up confused. The kids might know. They were fluent in both languages.

Little Andrea was sleeping peacefully on the back porch when I got there, oblivious to all the hubbub. The first thing I noticed was that all of the ceiling fans were off and the fridge in the kitchen was unplugged. Secondly I noticed a hose running across the kitchen floor, out the door, and down towards the pond. The banging sound became much louder when I stepped inside. It was coming from the laundry room off the kitchen. I found Beth inside, crying and beating the side of the old washer with a wrench. Her little boy stood in the doorway, watching with wide eyes.

“Beth?” I called uncertainly. “What’s wrong?”

Beth stopped in mid-swing and looked up at me. Her eyes were red from crying. “I don’t miss the radio,” she told me. “I don’t miss the tv or the lights. I don’t even miss the air conditioning or the microwave much. But. I. Just. Want. A. Working. Washer.” With each word she hit the washer again. It was collecting an impressive array of dents.

“Beth? We don’t have running water-”

“I carried water in from the well.”

That stopped me for a moment. Carrying water would still be less work than washing the clothes by hand. We’d had it so easy, once. Push a button and an hour later you had clean clothing. “What were you going to do with the dirty water?”

“We have a pond, Eddie. That’s what the hose is for. But it won’t work. It won’t work!” Her voice scaled up higher and approached outright hysteria.

“The washer up at Sharkey’s still works-”

Right away I knew I’d stepped in it. She brandished the wrench at me. “I don’t want to have to walk a quarter-mile to wash my clothes! I just want clean clothes.” She burst into tears again.

I sighed. Clearly this fell under the heading of ‘Things Eddie Must Fix Because She Is The “Man” Of The House'. I would have to find someway to get it working. Keeping Beth happy was too important. My heart ached again for Joey, who’d been as much a brother to me as a friend. He could have gotten it working as easily as me and he would know just how to calm Beth down. There were ways to run the washer without taking juice form the panels. Pedal power, maybe. That would give the kids a way to burn off some energy. Especially Tim.

Where was that boy?

I hugged Beth and gently took the wrench out of her hand. “I’ll fix it. I promise. Tomorrow, when the light’s better. Okay?”

Beth nodded and wiped her eyes.

The screen door banged and Callie, one of the kids who lived at Sharkey’s came running in. “Eddie! Mary Ellen wants you. She said come quick. Tim’s done something’ again.”

Dear Jesus, what foolish thing had the boy up and done now?

It was still light when I got down the road to Sharkey’s. It was June, after all. Sharkey’s damn horse was grazing contentedly in a pasture near the road. She was still the only horse we had. The Amish and the Cory’s were breeding them as fast as they could but things like that take time. Their stock had been hit by the fever too, which is another reason I think it was the flu.

Having only one horse was fine with me. I didn’t trust anything that big with a mind of its own.

Jane was in the field by the road, sitting on a blanket under a parasol and reading. She was dressed in what I think was a fair approximation of a Victorian lady’s outfit, gloves and all. I had long since eased being surprised at anything she wore. As long as she did her fair share of the work no one cared.

She was different, was Jane. She had been born Mary Ellen’s little brother Bobby Joe. But Bobby Joe hated being a boy the way most folks would hate being turned into a monkey. He spent half his childhood in tears and the other half angry. Finally one day when he was about ten (I was thirteen or fourteen, then, I think), he went crying to his father because he wanted to wear a dress and Mama Jo wouldn’t let him. Sharkey, at his most pragmatic, shrugged and gave the boy a dress. It didn’t matter to him what the kid wore or what he wanted to call himself. There were too many more important things. Thus Bobby Joe became Jane and to my knowledge never wore pants again. Joey and me only had to fight two kids in school before they stopped bothering her about it. Mama Jo, good Christian woman that she was, threw a fit at first but it soon became obvious even to her that her precious grandson was a lot happier being a girl.

Today Jane had a poultice wrapped around her cheek. I winced. “Bad tooth?”

She looked up from the book and nodded. “Doc says I need to go see the dentist in Blackberry.” She sounded scared and I didn’t blame her. Not only was seeing the dentist no cake walk, but Jeremiah tried to make trouble the last time she went over there.

“I’ll go with you.”

“Sure?”

“Sure.”

Jane’s relief was obvious. “Thank you. Be careful. Mary Ellen’s in one of her moods again.”
She picked up the book again as I moved on. Little Women. I shook my head. How had any of us managed to survive this long?

Sharkey was pretending to sleep in a hammock by the garden. He was pale and had lost more weight. I tried not to worry about that. If he was very sick surely the Doc would’ve been up. He opened one eye and winked at me. I felt myself relax. Whatever it was it couldn’t be too bad if Sharkey wasn’t upset about it.

Mary Ellen and Todd lived with their kids and Bobby Joe in one of the trailers. She must have been watching for me from the kitchen for as soon as my feet hit the porch she came flying out the back door, braids bouncing. Mary Ellen was a small woman with a big personality. Her features were too strong to be called pretty but she was the most beautiful woman I ever knew. She had deep black hair that she loved to braid with ribbons. Tonight they were braided with ribbons the same emerald green as her eyes. She still had quite the figure, despite having had three children (including a set of twins), and the red dress she was wearing showed enough of it to thoroughly distract me from the reason I had came.

“About time you got here!” She snapped. “What took you so long? I tell you we have an emergency and what do you do? Stroll up here like you’re taking a walk?”

“Now Mary Ellen-”

“Don’t you patronize me, Eddie! I’m no little girl you can pat on the head and send on her way. Well? What do you have to say for yourself? ”

Oh hell. She really was in one of her moods. When she got like that anything I said was going to get me in trouble. It took forever for me to figure out how Todd stayed out of trouble when she was like that. He did it by simply keeping his mouth shut.

That’s a skill I’ve never managed to master.

“Callie never said it was an emergency!” I protested desperately. “She said Tim had done something stupid and I figered if it was bad, she’d ‘ve said. ‘Sides, Beth was hormonal-”

“Beth was hormonal? Like you’ve never had that particular problem. You pretending to be a man now? As far as that fool brother of yours is concerned, yes it’s bad. Worse’n it’s ever been before. Come in.” She opened the screen door. I moved to go in and she stopped me and then held her hand out.

I stared at her blankly. “What?”

“Your gun. You know I don’t let guns in my house. Give it.”
“Mary Ellen-”

“Give it, Edna Jean.”
Hell, she really was pissed if she called me Edna, much less Edna Jean. Reluctantly I handed over the handgun I kept tucked in my waistband. She sat it on a table just inside the door. Todd’s shotgun and rifle were there as well. Then she held out her hand again. “I want the other one too.”

I managed not to roll my eyes as I gave her the gun I carried in my boot.

“That’s it?”

“That’s all my guns.” I decided mentioning my knives would not be a good idea.

“How’d you get so paranoid, Eddie?” She sounded exasperated.

“Ask your father. He made me that way.”

Mary Ellen leaned out the door and yelled loud enough for Sharkey to hear. “Daddy! Me and you are going to have a talking-to later.”

Sharkey raised a hand in a friendly acknowledgment. He looked like he was trying not to laugh.

I expected to see Tim and possibly Bobby sitting at the kitchen table, looking sheepish. It was a surprise when they weren’t there. Todd was there though, looking slightly grim but also as if he too was trying not to laugh. On the table in front of him was a mapbook –the large kind that would fill your lap –and a note. He shoved them at me. “We found this on Bobby’s bed. The note was sticking out of the top."

The mapbook was open to Alabama. Someone had taken a pink highlighter and traced a route from our region in Tennessee all the way to the coast near Panama City. The note was in Tim’s handwriting and addressed to me.
Sis, Bobby and me decided to take a walk. We want to see the ocean while we still can. We’ll be back in time for school to start. I promise. See you soon. Love, Tim.
P.S. Please don’t be too mad.

“Well?” Mary Ellen demanded when I’d had time to read the note. “I told you it was bad. What are you going to do?”

I stood staring at the note for a moment. It took some time for it to sink just how stupid my little brother had been this time. Anger started welling up and then abruptly it changed to humor. I laughed.

Mary Ellen was taken aback. “Why are you laughing? This is serious!”

I looked at Todd. A smile was playing around his lips and he was clearly trying not to laugh too. “How much food they take, Todd?”

“About four days worth.”

“Guns?”

“Nope.”

“What else?”

“A couple of knives, some camping gear, water bottles, some rope. A tent. That’s about it. And my polaroid and most of the film.” He sounded disgusted and well he should be. Todd had a passion for archaic machines and had kept that camera going far longer than it should have.

Of course they had taken a camera. To take pictures of the beach, no doubt.

Stupid gits. No guns, no trading supplies, and only a few days worth of food. Yep, they were going to get real far like that. And the idiots were planning to take the road the entire way. The road, in those days!

“Well?” Mary Ellen repeated. “Aren’t you going after them?”

I shook my head. “Nope.”

This was clearly not the answer she expected. “Well why in Jesus’ name not? You know those boys can’t take care of themselves out there.”

“I know, but there’s no need to go after ‘em. They’ll be back.” Todd nodded his agreement.

Mary Ellen opened her mouth and before she could get going I rushed on. “Think, Mary Ellen. Those two ain’t never spent a night away from home before. Remember when they tried camping? They didn’t even last the full night, and that was in the field!” Less than half the night, if the full truth were told. I’d sat up with Sharkey that night, drinking and waiting on them.

“They were younger then-”

“Mary Ellen, it was LAST YEAR. Look, they’ll probably come draggin’ in ‘bout supper time tomorrow, or even later tonight, tails between their legs. And no harm done.”

Mary Ellen glared at me. “You- You are just as bad as Daddy! That’s what he said. And here I thought you, at least, would have the sense to go after them!”

That stung some but I pushed it aside. “I will if they’re not back in a day or two.”

“You had better.” She looked at me with those flashing green eyes. “I don’t want to lose my cousin or Tim.”

“Neither do I. I promise I’ll go after ‘em if need be and fetch them back.” I would’ve promised a lot more to her than to track down a couple of idiot boys I’d go after anyway. Looking back, I should have saddled the horse and went after them then and there. I could have brought them home in the middle of the night and been done with it. Except the stupid pups probably would‘ve tried again. And I really did think they would be back.

They didn’t come back the next day. One day stretched into two, and then three, and on the fourth day it became obvious I was going to have to go after them.

Part One

I've been wanting to try my hand at writing some post-peak and otherwise futuristic fiction for a while now, and I finally got around to it. This is my first crack at it, so keep that in mind. This is the first part of what will be a many-part serial. Please post any comments. It is a work in progress.

Before I post the story below I want to make a couple of comments. First, I do not necessarily agree with all of the main character's views. In fact, I disagree with several of them. Writing fiction would be really boring if you only wrote about people you always agreed with.

Secondly, many of the places listed in this story are real. They say 'write what you know' so I have. This story is set in the Deep South, right around the Alabama/Tennessee line and in places in Alabama. Hence the vernacular and cultural refrences. I am from the South, so keep that in mind before flaming me for stereotyping or making fun of Southeners. Also, as I said many of the places are real. A few have had their names changed, and I have denoted this by an asterik after the names the first time they appear. Everywhere else is real.

The setting is sometime later in this century. You can guess just when. I will post at least one update a week to this until its done. Unless, that is, I get an avalache of comments telling me how awful it is.
Anyway, here goes.

Part One
Every story must have a beginning, and this one is no exception. I suppose the proper place to begin is with an introduction, but if the truth is to be told, I do not want to tell this story at all. Why? There seems to be no point. For posterity, Mary Ellen would tell me if she were here. But it seems to me that most of our “posterity” couldn’t give a rat’s ass about my life, or its story. It is their own lives, and their own stories, that they will be concerned with. But Mary Ellen is still nagging me to tell this story, so I guess I will. For her, if for no one else. Yes, she’s dead and has been these past twenty years and more, but she’s still nagging me. She nagged on me for fifty years in life and you would think that would be enough, but no. She still nags me even though she’s dead and gone. I may sound cross about it but I’m not. I’d give both my legs and my arms too if she could still be here to nag me. It never really bothered me, though I groused about it enough at the time. Still do. Sometimes I think I hear her calling me, you know. Usually when I am about to drop off for a nap or when I’m trying to get to sleep at night. I’ll be almost asleep and then I will hear her voice and jerk awake. I look around, expecting to see her walk through the door, and only then do I remember she is long gone.

What was that? Oh, the story. Have some respect for your elders, young man. Kids these days. (Laughs.) No, sorry. I don’t mean that. Every generation from the cave men on down has railed against the younger. It’s the way of the world, I suppose. But I at my age I’ve earned the right to ramble if I wish. I’ve outlived all of my contemporaries. Far outlived, in most cases. I guess I’m just too stubborn to die. When I was a kid my grandpappy used to say I was as ornery as any mule ever born, and it’s true. Believe you me. I’ve known a lot of mules in my time.

But where was I? Oh, the story. I’ve got a lot of stories. Mary Ellen wanted me to tell them all, and have them written down. That’s your job, boy. I’ll do the tellin’ and you do the writin’. I’m running out of time, I suppose, and I promised Mary Ellen on her deathbed that I would do this. It sure took me long enough to get around to it. (Laughs again.) I’ll start with the first one, I suppose, and I can work enough of the back story into that to give you the picture.

But first things first. In case anyone ever reads this who actually gives a hoot, I am Edna Jean Davis, and I am a hundred and three years old, but back then I was still young…

Approximately 50 miles north and east of Huntsville, Alabama, near Elvis* and Blackberry* Tennessee.
“I want to see the ocean.”

The remark came out of the blue one warm, late spring day. It was hot, despite the fact that we were not yet into June. Every year it seemed like the heat came sooner and left later. We were on our grandparent’s land, planting sweet potatoes, my brother Tim and I, when he made this odd remark. Tim was always making odd remarks. He always had his nose buried in a book or his head up in the clouds instead of on the ground where it belonged. Had I known how much trouble that simple sounding remark would cause, I would probably have turned around and clocked him then and there. I should point out that Tim was my brother by blood and not just by raising. Not that it matters, but I still haven’t figured out how our parents managed to produce two children as different as the two of us.

“Ed?” Tim called when I didn’t answer after a moment. “Did you hear me? I said I want see the ocean.”

I felt a surge of irritation towards the boy and choked it down. He was only sixteen –ten years younger than I –after all, and all boys were prone to make stupid remarks occasionally. Particularly when they were between fifteen and twenty. Not that I hadn’t made plenty of stupid remarks in my time, but nothing like teenage boys are prone to do. That Tim was more prone to do it than most was just a function of his personality. Suddenly I realized that this one was probably my fault. How many times had I told him of the trips our family had taken to Gulf Shores and Panama Beach when I was little?

We were almost finished with the sweet potatoes. Tim had just finished putting the last starts in the last row, and I was close behind him with the hoe, which I used to fill in the trench. One person could have handled the job but it was easier and faster with two. You learned to minimize labor when you had to grow all your own food.

Finally I stopped working for a moment. I took my hat off with my free hand and transferred it awkwardly to the hand that held the hoe. Then I took my handkerchief out of my front pocket and wiped the sweat from my brow. After that I took a long swig from the water bottle at my belt. I took my time, rolling the water around my mouth to wet my parched tongue before I finally swallowed.

Tim was still looking at me expectantly.

There was no help for it. “Yes.” I said finally. “I heard you.”

“Well?” He replied. “Do you have anything to say?”

“Like what?” I let a bit of my annoyance show as I resumed hoeing. “So you want to see the ocean. Great. I want to ride in an airplane. Both are about as likely to happen. And so what?”

“That’s not true. The ocean is still there, but no one has an airplane anymore. Or if they do they don’t have any fuel.”

He had me there, I had to admit. It had been at least five years since I had seen a contrail. Maybe six or seven. I tried to remember when the last time had been and gave up. It hardly mattered.

Tim was still talking. “We could still get to the beach. It’s not that far, maybe not as far as it used to be with the way sea level has been rising.”
“We’re hundreds of miles from the ocean, Tim. You’d have to walk. You don’t even like walking to Elvis. And who knows what’s between here and there these days?” I was thinking of all the rumors about Huntsville and Birmingham, in particular, but did not say what I was thinking aloud. Maybe I should have. But then, Tim had always been the sort who thought no one would ever try to hurt him. I doubt he would have listened.

“So? We could do it in a summer. Me and Bobby were thinking-”

“Hold it right there,” I stopped hoeing again and gave him The Look. You know the kind a parent turns on a child who is in trouble. Tim was my son as much as my brother, as I had most of the raising of him. “Timothy Joseph Davis the Second, I don’t give a rat’s furry ass what you and Robert Earl have been thinking. Put it out of your mind right now.”

“But Eddie-”

“Don’t ‘But Eddie’ me. The last time you two got to thinking together you both got hurt and I got to drag your butt to Sharkey’s on a litter and then walk all the way to Elvis to get the Doc. No more ‘buts’. Stop thinkin’ whatever it is you’ve been thinkin’. Now get yerself over to that well and get the water to do the sweet potatoes. Ya hear?”

“Yes’m.” He muttered, almost too low to hear.

“What was that?”

“Yes ma’am.” Tim repeated, this time much louder.

“That’s better. Now get on with you.”

Tim turned and shuffled off, muttering rebelliously to himself. Only a teenager could manage to look that sulky. I finished planting the sweet potatoes and headed back to the house. Tim passed me on the way, a full watering can in each hand. He glared at me as I passed. “Aren’t you going to help?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“I’m going up to Sharkey’s. Water the tomatoes and beans when you’re done with the potatoes.”

The boy said some words as I moved off, none of them very nice. I chose to ignore them. He was still small enough for me to wash his mouth out with soap if I chose but he was getting close enough to being a man to speak his own piece. ’Sides, I knew it would help him to cool off and the sooner he cooled off the sooner he would get back to work and wear himself out enough to get the foolish notions out of his head.

Walk to the beach, indeed.

Maria and her daughters were in the strawberry patch picking the last of the berries. They waved and called “Hola!” as I neared. I took off my hat and waved back. “Hola! How are the berries?”

“Good, good!” Maria assured me, as her children chattered at me in a strange patois of English and Spanish that I had gradually gotten used to. She had seven girls, though only two were hers by birth. She and Miguel had had four of their own, counting the boy, until the fever that had also taken my parents. Miguel too had been carried off that winter, along with many others. Including the parents of her adopted girls. Like Sharkey she had taken in as many of the orphaned children as she could care for. Three of the girls weren’t even Hispanic, and the other two were Guatemalan instead of Mexican.

That hardly mattered, either. We were well past the time of the riots.

Twelve people shared my grandparent’s house back then. At one point we’d all been crammed into Sharkey and Mama Jo’s place like a basketful of puppies but as we’d all grown we’d felt the need to spread out. The day I turned eighteen Sharkey handed me the deed to the land and house. “It’s yours now.” He said simply. “I took care of it like I promised but now it’s yours.”

I looked at it and back at him. “What the hell am I supposed to do with it?”

Sharkey shrugged. “Move over there with some of the folks? You won’t have to walk so far to tend the fields and we need the room.”

So we did.

Beth was sitting on the back porch, sewing. Her feet were propped up on an ottoman and she had a glass of peppermint tea at her elbow. Cold, since we had enough power from the solar panels to run the fridge and ceiling fans, if not the air conditioner. A fan was turning lazily overhead. She was so big with child she could hardly walk. Her two-year-old slept on the porch swing nearby. The boy had his thumb in his mouth. He was the spitting image of his papa, and I was glad for Beth’s sake. Joey had been killed by a stray bullet over the winter.

A supposedly stray bullet. He had been on his way back from visiting the Amish community and cut a little too close to Blackberry. Jeremiah and his crew knew Joey and Beth lived with me, and he might have been trying to send Sharkey and me a message. But I had no proof, and I wasn’t about to do anything without proof.

No matter how much I wanted to.

“You all right?” I asked as I came up the porch steps.

Beth nodded, smiling. “I’m fine. Sister Ruth is coming out to check on me this afternoon. She reckons to stay here until the baby is born. That all right with you?”

I nodded. The unassuming young Amish midwife was always welcome, and I certainly didn’t want to have to try and get the truck going or ride Sharkey’s damn horse pell-for-broke in the middle of the night to fetch her. The Amish didn’t have any of the shortwaves. One of our girls was her latest apprentice, just as another was apprenticing with the Doc. There were certain skills we daren’t lose. “The Doc’ll be on call, I take it?”

“He’s taught her fine how to do a Caesarean, Eddie.”

I jutted my chin out in my most stubborn manner. “I still want the Doc on call.”

“Fine. But I’ll be okay. I’ve done this before. What do you think?” She held up her work for my inspection. It was a tiny dress, just the right size for a newborn girl. I stared at it in bewilderment.

“Hell Beth, we have enough baby clothes for all of Tennessee and half of ‘Bama between what we’ve got here and the stockpile up at Elvis. What are you making more for?”

She shrugged, still smiling. “It’s a new baby. I figure she should have at least one new outfit.”

“Your call. Not mine. I’m going over to Sharkey’s. Keep an eye on Tim for me, would you?”

“Sure. What’s he up to now?”

“Jesus only knows. Not me.”

“Well, tomorrow’s Monday so he’ll be back in school and out of mischief then.”

Frankly, I thought having so much school was part of his problem. Sharkey may have taught me everything else he knew, but he somehow infected Tim with his love of books. I stopped inside long enough to have a glass of tea and then walked the quarter-mile over to Sharkey’s. There weren’t as many people packed into the house and the two trailers as there had once been but there was still plenty of people about, most of them around my age or even younger. Most of the household was out working before the heat really sat in for the day. Sharkey had gone into town for a trustee’s meeting and Mary Ellen had gone with him. But Todd, Mary Ellen’s husband, was there and I explained what Tim’s latest foolish notion was. He rolled his eyes.

“Those two! They’re the devil’s own children, I swear. We’ll keep an eye on Bobby, don’t worry, if ya’ll will keep an eye on Timmy. They’ll get it outta their heads soon enough.”

I nodded, and that was the last I thought of the incident, save for keeping a closer eye on Tim for a few days. Two weeks later I had forgotten about it completely. So when he asked to sleepover at Bobby’s I didn’t hesitate to say yes. School was out for the year and he’d been good all week, so I didn’t have any reason to say no.

The trouble was, he didn’t come back the next morning.