The End As I Know It

by Kevin Shay

  “But you follow the newsgroups, Randy, I’m not telling you anything new, right?”

  Ned and Helen look uncomfortable but not surprised. What have I walked into here?

  Hilary tries to reorient the conversation. “Oh, we didn’t live that close to there. Long Island is huge. Anyway, last year when Claude and Victor—”

  “My brother,” Claude says.

  “Right, when they started becoming aware of Y2K, we talked about it and decided the Northeast wasn’t where we wanted to be if something happens.”

  “When it happens,” Claude amends.

  “Yes. Well, so my sister lives down in Austin.”

  “Speaking of which.” Helen looks at her watch. “Shouldn’t they be here soon?”

  Hilary rolls her eyes. “You never know with her, do you? So we started looking for a place down here. Then this summer we made the move. Taylor, sit up, please.” Taylor, ignored for four agonizing minutes, is trying to slither down out of his high chair.

  “Well, you found a beautiful place,” I say.

  “Oh, thank you! If you had any idea how much work it still needs—”

  “Doesn’t look like it to me.” I’m trying to pretend the Brookhaven thing never happened, or at least convince myself it’s not a leading indicator of more wackiness ahead. “And I really appreciate your inviting me here. Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it!” Claude says. “Hon, should we get some dessert on? I’m sure Randy wants to finish up and get situated.”

  After the cookies and frozen yogurt are eaten, the table cleared, and Taylor tucked into bed, Claude takes me into the den, which is also the computer room, and also where I’ll be sleeping, on an air mattress.

  “I have to stress that this wouldn’t be the long-term arrangement if you do end up coming to stay here,” he says. “We’ll have our little guest house up by midspring. One nice thing about Texas, you can do construction almost year-round. But for now, I apologize for the accommodations.”

  “No, please, this is perfect.”

  “I’m sure you want to get on and check your email. If you’re like me, you get itchy if you’re offline too long.”

  “Definitely.”

  “Be interesting to see whether the Net stays up, eh?”

  “Yeah. I tend to doubt it.”

  “Me too. So how long does it take to come back up, if it ever does?”

  “It won’t even matter, unless the local phone company’s alive.”

  “You have a point there. It’s everything, isn’t it? All connected, all going down.”

  “Yep.”

  I hand over my laptop for him to plug into his little network. Nice setup he’s got, a slew of computer equipment spread out across a huge desk that takes up most of one wall. While he hooks me up, I scan some of the titles on the bookshelves. Getting Off the Grid. Strategic Relocation. Electric Utilities and the Year 2000. Outrage in Waco. Why is it always Waco with these people? From outside the window I hear an engine, wheels on gravel. “Aunt Frances is here!” Ann yells from the living room.

  “Uh-oh! Sorry, Randy, we’ll have to stave off our cravings until a little later.” I can’t bring myself to ask Claude not to call me Randy, and it’s almost too late. If you correct someone after he’s already done it for a while, it makes him angry at you for not telling him sooner.

  We return to the living room in time for the entrance of Hilary’s sister and her two teenage sons, the older a beanpole, the younger a fireplug. The boys each drop two large suitcases on the floor and greet their aunt and uncle. Frances hugs and kisses Hilary and Claude, whose blue skin must be old hat, because nobody acknowledges it. The Bursey girls hang back, Ann out of precocious politeness, dour-faced Megan out of a mixture of shyness and hostility.

  “And who do we have here?” Frances says.

  “This is our new friend, Randall,” Hilary says. At least she’s not Randying me yet. “Randall, my sister, Frances.”

  “How nice to make your acquaintance,” Frances says with a hint of a drawl, and dangles a recently nail-saloned hand in my direction. I’d put her at fifty going on thirty-nine. That face has almost certainly been lifted at least once. She’s impeccably made up—I picture them pausing on the dirt road for lipstick freshening—and in an expensive casual-chic outfit more appropriate for a society brunch than a survivalist retreat. She introduces me to the boys. In their crew cuts and warm-up jackets, Gregory and Sean look like they were born with, respectively, a basketball and a football in their hands.

  Another car door slams shut outside. Hilary and Claude turn toward the entranceway, puzzled. And in walks a woman about my age in a green suede jacket, carrying a garment bag. Big soulful brown eyes, dark wavy hair pulled back in a clip.

  “And this is Paige,” Frances says.

  “Hi, everyone!”

  “Oh, Paige! We didn’t—I mean, we’re so glad to see you,” Hilary says, hugging her niece, recovering nicely from her obvious surprise.

  Paige frowns at Frances. “Mom! You didn’t tell them I was coming along?”

  “Didn’t I? I thought I mentioned it.”

  “This is typical,” Paige tells me, laying the garment bag over the back of the couch. “Anyway, nice to meet you.”

  “Hi, I’m Randall.” We shake hands. Hers is unexpectedly strong and rough-skinned.

  “I’m from marriage number one, in case nobody filled you in. Hi, Uncle Claude.”

  “Paige is an artist. She lives in New York,” Hilary tells me. “Randall is a musician,” Hilary tells Paige.

  Now Ann and Megan come forward to receive their familial fawning. Megan has an obvious affinity for her cousin—she went so far as to smile when Paige walked in, and now she hovers close to her side.

  Paige’s presence requires rejiggering the sleeping arrangements. The Burseys decide Taylor will sleep with them, Megan in Taylor’s bed, and Paige in Megan’s. By the diplomatic way they present this plan, it’s clear they expect Megan to throw a fit at being consigned to her little brother’s bed, but she likes Paige so much that she swallows her pride and accepts her fate.

  “OK!” Hilary claps her hands. “Time’s a-wasting. Let’s get cooking, shall we?” She and Frances and Helen march into the kitchen. The men take up positions on the couch in front of ESPN. Paige and Megan and Ann start a game of cards. I excuse myself and head to the den to scratch my Internet itch.

  A little later I’m pumping up my mattress when someone knocks on the door.

  “Come in.”

  It’s Paige. She shoves open the door, which hits the half-inflated mattress and bounces back at her.

  “Sorry,” I say. “Let me move this.”

  She comes into the room. She’s taken off the sweatshirt she had on earlier and has on a tight tank top that draws my eye to inappropriate places. She nudges the mattress with a bare foot. “They’ve got you in the lap of luxury, huh?”

  “Hey, as long as it stays blown up.”

  “Do they ever?”

  “No.”

  “So, listen, sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if I could take a look at the books in here. Forgot to bring anything to read.”

  “Sure thing.”

  She goes over to the shelves. There’s not much room to maneuver around the edges of the mattress, and my hand brushes her bare arm as I lean back to let her through. She surveys the books. “Oh boy. This is Uncle Claude’s library, all right. Do you see, like, a novel anywhere? I mean, you’d think they’d want a little escapism mixed in with all the…whatever you’d call this. No offense if you happen to be a big fan of…” She reads a title. “Hologram of Liberty: The Constitution’s Shocking Alliance with Big Government.”

  “None taken. That’s a real page-turner, by the way.”

  She looks at me. “Seriously?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, good, I didn’t think so, but sometimes it’s hard to tell around here. I mean, like, for instance, when my mom told me Uncle Claude had turned b
lue, I was pretty sure she was joking.”

  “Yeah, I can see how that’d throw your sarcasm meter out of whack.”

  “Right?”

  “Hey, do they need any help out there with the food?”

  “Nooo.” Her eyes widen in mock horror. “Tonight’s when they make the desserts. Grandma’s secret recipes—only her daughters can lay hands on the ingredients. Even Helen’s barely permitted in the kitchen on Thanksgiving Eve. And she’s relegated to cranberry sauce.”

  “The recipes haven’t been passed down to you?”

  “I think it’s maybe, like, a deathbed thing. I’m better with appetizers and cocktails anyway. Mom trained me to make her a manhattan when I was eleven.”

  “Sweet or dry?”

  “Perfect, you philistine.”

  “Sorry, I lost my head. Hey, here you go. Atlas Shrugged.” I hand her the book.

  She grimaces. “Oh, God. Has it come to this?”

  “You have my sympathies.”

  “Yeah, maybe I’ll go see if Meg has her old Sweet Valley Highs or something. Well, thanks, Randall. Good luck with the mattress.”

  “Thank you.”

  For my own bedtime reading, I take a three-ring binder from the shelf. The Burseys have printed out thousands of pages of Y2K essays and online discussions, a hedge against the Internet’s demise, filling a half-dozen binders. I’ve read a lot of the stuff before, but I find a set of chat-room transcripts that are new to me. I lie down on the mattress with the binder and prop myself up on an elbow, which pokes right through to the floor. Probably should have kept pumping a little longer.

  I start to read but can’t seem to focus on the pages in front of me. My mind keeps turning to the Burseys’ niece. Her eyes, her tank top, her slight Texas accent. Replaying our conversation somehow appeals to me more than finding out what hoarder0884 has to say about his local hydroelectric company. That’s funny—TEOTWAWKI usually distracts me from pleasant thoughts, not the other way around. I set the binder aside and turn off the light.

  chapter 13

  401

  Days

  Where am I? Lying on the floor. A bright room. Outside, singing birds. Oh, right, Texas. Blue dude, pretty girl. The air mattress has deflated completely during the night, leaving only a sheet and two layers of vinyl between me and the carpet. And the curtains in this room are thin and gauzy, not meant for sleeping quarters. The collapse of my bed has done interesting things to my back, and I could use some more sleep, but I rise with an unexpected inner calm. Something to do with waking up for the first time among people who know what I know, a whole houseful of folks I don’t have to convince of anything. I dress, brush my teeth and hair in the guest bathroom down the hall, and wander out to see my surrogate Thanksgiving family.

  Only nine, but everyone’s up and about. Claude, his parents, and Frances sit at the table over newspapers and empty plates that my nose tells me held sausage and eggs. Through the sliding glass door I see the kids in the backyard. Frances’s boys play Frisbee with Ann, while Megan herds Taylor out of their way and keeps one admiring eye on Paige, who’s reclining in a chaise lounge on the patio with sunglasses on and a sketchpad in her lap.

  Hilary comes out of the kitchen. “Good morning! How’d you sleep? Was that air bed comfortable at all?”

  “Yes! It was great.”

  “Well, as you can see, we usually do catch-as-catchcan for breakfast. How do you like your eggs? Or we have cereal too.”

  “Get the young man some coffee!” Ned suggests.

  I join them at the table. Frances lays a chilly pair of fingertips on my forearm. “Mr. Knight, my sister tells me you were in California recently.”

  “San Francisco, yes.”

  “Well, I spent a couple of the worst years of my life in Palo Alto. Paige’s father was in the computer software business. She probably wouldn’t even remember those days. My goodness, why would they build such dreary towns in such a lovely climate? Not San Francisco, of course, I mean that whole Silicon place. And the hours those men used to work!”

  Ned chuckles. “Working overtime to make all the Y2K bugs.”

  “That’s probably not far from the truth, you know,” Claude says. The daylight takes the edge off his skin’s ghastliness, but he still couldn’t pass for normal.

  Hilary sets a toasted English muffin in front of me. “Eggs’re on the way. After you get something to eat, Randall, I’m sure the kids would love to see those puppets you were telling me about. Can they be taken outdoors?”

  “Sure, absolutely. They could use some airing out.”

  Frances summons her sons to join her on a ride into town for the traditional Thanksgiving last-minute grocery run. After my eggs, I get the puppets from the den and step outside into a cool sunny day, what I think of as perfect mid-October weather, except it’s late November.

  “Morning.” Paige gives me a wave, not looking up from her drawing.

  “Morning.”

  I set down the sack of puppets, pull up a green resin chair, and start laying out my cast of characters on the patio. Taylor and Ann drift over, intrigued.

  “You want to meet my puppets?”

  “OK,” Ann says.

  “This is R. K. Raccoon. R. K., this is Ann.”

  “Hi, Ann.”

  “Hi,” she says, giggling.

  Taylor picks up Carlos the Crab by one claw and shakes furiously. His sisters instantly descend on him.

  “Taylor!”

  “Taylor, don’t do that!”

  “Hey, it’s OK. They’re pretty sturdy. And I brought some extra eyes.”

  But Megan relieves him of the crab anyway. This sends him to the brink of a tantrum, so I distract him with a gentle raccoon bite on the neck. He squeals and falls over onto the grass.

  “Who’s that one?” Ann says.

  “Her name is Salmon Ella.”

  “Cute,” Paige says.

  “Oh, yeah, that’s some of my best work.”

  “What’s up with the really big ant?”

  “Him? He’s a sight gag.”

  I do a couple of other characters for the kids, mainly for Ann, then ask if they want to try out the puppets themselves.

  “Yeah, can I put on the salmon one?” Ann says.

  “Sure! You can play with whichever ones you want.” I help her position Ella on her hand. “Megan, just don’t let your bro put his head in them.”

  I sit down on a chair near Paige. She turns her pad around and shows me a pencil drawing. The page is divided into two panels. On the left, a deftly rendered cartoon face: exactly how R. K. Raccoon would look in an animated Disney movie. The right panel is a realistic still life: R. K. the puppet, lifeless, lying in a heap on the ground.

  “Wow. That’s…depressing. Nicely done, but depressing.”

  “Thanks. I thought you’d like it.” She puts down her pad and pencil. “So you’ve been living in your car or something, right?”

  “Or something, yeah.”

  “And you’re hoping to come here when everything goes down from Y2K.”

  “It’s a possibility. If they’ll have me. You?”

  “My mom paid for half this place. Not that she’s lifted a finger to help them get it renovated, but if something bad happens she’ll sure as hell show up. Probably with half her book group in tow. I guess I’d come along, if I happened to be in Texas at the time. I don’t tend to plan that far ahead, you know?”

  “Well, the Burseys seem like a great family.” We look over at the kids. Megan has stepped out of character to join in, teasing her sister’s puppet with her puppet, laughing unself-consciously, while Taylor runs hyperactive figure eights around them.

  “They do, don’t they?”

  “You sound skeptical.”

  She shakes her head. “No, I don’t want to sow any doubt in your mind or anything. Uncle Claude and Aunt Hilary are both incredibly nice. You just—here and there you pick up a little hint that—Well, you’ll see, maybe. Hopefully not.”r />
  “All right.”

  “And then there’s Victor.”

  “That’s Claude’s brother?”

  “Yeah. I’ll be curious what you think of him. Anyway, I’ll tell you one thing.” She pushes her sunglasses down on her nose and looks me in the eye. “You can’t turn a color like that without throwing off the domestic balance. Orange, maybe. Blue, no.”

  After the kids have had their fun and I’ve put the puppets away, Claude shows me around the property.

  “I guess you’re probably wondering why we took a place so close to the main road. Worried me too, at first. But see, look around—the dirt road’s the only way in or out for a vehicle. Woods on all sides. The south perimeter is fenced, and past the fence is a stream. And over there to the north, you’ve got a thirty-degree grade and brush so thick you could barely claw through it on foot. So if things get real bad, we just cut the road with the backhoe—which we’ll have by next month—and then we should be pretty snug.”

  “Gotcha. Good plan.”

  He’s hanging on my reactions, boyishly eager for approval. Focused as I’ve been on making a good impression on the Burseys, I keep forgetting that this is an audition for them as well as for me. Not that I’m such a desirable addition to the household that they’re dying to have me on board, but they want some external validation for the quality of their Y2K preps, their choice of real estate.

  Claude leads me to the pair of identical sheds at the side of the house. One for food storage, one for fuel and power generation. The roof of each is set up to collect rainwater into a tall tank. We go into the power shed first. It’s filled with a plethora of carefully placed machinery and containers, everything labeled, the cables neatly clamped and channeled. Claude walks me through the equipment, giving each device an affectionate pat.

  “These are the real workhorses, steam boilers. And over here, the gas generators, one, two, three. Different kinds, so if one breaks and we can’t get parts for it, you know.” He points to a large modern-looking machine with a digital readout. “Here’s Mission Control. The inverter—this takes all the juice and makes it AC we can use in the house. And, of course, a little backup.” He opens a big wooden bin filled with dozens of industrial batteries.