The End As I Know It

by Kevin Shay

  The food shed is arranged like a tiny warehouse, floor-to-ceiling rows of five-gallon drums, plastic tubs, and shelves of bottles, cans, and jars, with narrow aisles down the middle allowing access. “Well, I won’t bore you with the inventory,” Claude says, “but as you can see, we’ve got enough to hold out for quite a while. Little bottled water over there, and we’ll rotate more in as long as possible, but no need to go overboard on that because we can just filter rainwater from those tanks you saw.”

  In the backyard he points out something I noticed before, a rectangle about twenty feet by fifteen, outlined with a thin rope staked at each corner. “This is where the guest house will go. It’ll block the view from the kids’ rooms, but what can you do. Surveyor and the contractor agreed this was the best place.”

  “Kids don’t appreciate a view anyway,” I say supportively.

  At the other end of the backyard is a large area surrounded by a wire fence, divided into a grid of four-foot squares by stacks of wooden planks. “And here’s the garden, such as it is,” Claude says. “Plenty of work left there. Those boards get set into the ground, so we’ll have a nice little bunch of separate plots. Oh, and the tornado shelter.” He points to a hatchway jutting out at an angle from the ground over by the back of the house. “This is Texas, after all.”

  “Can’t forget about the natural disasters while you’re preparing for the man-made one,” I say, drawing a purplish smile from Claude.

  “Welp, that’s our little slice of the Lone Star State.”

  My cue to wax effusive. “You’ve done an incredible job, Claude.”

  “Oh, it’s ninety percent Hilary. I owe that woman my life, I’m not kidding about that.”

  “No, but this is amazing. Are you sure you just moved here this summer?”

  He runs his hand through his hair. “It does seem a lot longer, doesn’t it? You ever feel like you’ve had two lives, one before you found out about it, and one after?”

  “All the time. Except on the days I can’t even remember what it was like before.”

  “Yep, yep.” He shakes his head sadly. “I tell you, Randall, it’s a mixed blessing having the wool pulled away from your eyes.”

  “Claude, tell me about it.”

  I sit in the den with the phone in my hand, staring at my calling card. They’re all gathered together right now—my mother, Ted, Grandma, Morgan, Nicole, Boyd, Aunt Martha’s clan. Are they in Santa Fe this year? I don’t even know. I’ve never spent Thanksgiving apart from my family before, never gone without my own grandmother’s heirloom recipes. I should at least call. But I can’t bring myself to dial the number. Another dose of obliviousness from Mom, more passive aggression from my sister, having to explain why I’m in Texas—I can’t do it. I put the calling card back in my wallet.

  I come out of the den to find that Claude’s brother has arrived. Everyone’s out in the driveway, admiring Victor’s monstrous Winnebago. How the hell did he fit that thing up the dirt road? Hilary sees me and introduces Victor.

  “So you’re the mysterious dinner guest,” Victor says. He could be Claude’s flesh-colored twin, except a little balder and fitter. “How do you like my mobile HQ?”

  “Very nice!”

  He raps his knuckles sharply on the side of the leviathan. “Hear that? Armored! You can fire a .22 into this baby from five yards, bounces right off her.”

  “Wow. Great.” Something about the vehicle rings a bell, but I can’t put my finger on it. I notice Paige watching us.

  “Cost me a damn fortune.”

  “I can imagine.”

  Hilary and Claude have taken the kids to inspect the Winnebago’s interior. Victor leans close to me and lowers his voice. “Hey, I hear you were in California recently. Did you notice any of it?”

  “Um, I don’t, ah…”

  He nods curtly, pats me on the back of the neck. “OK. We’ll talk later.”

  “Um, sure.”

  It’s noon by the time the Victor hubbub has died down. Cold cuts and sliced bread are placed on the table “to tide everyone over,” and the cooking kicks into high gear. The younger generation mills around waiting for assignments. I join the crowd to volunteer my services. Hilary hands me a paper grocery bag filled with ears of corn, hands Paige another, and tells us to go outside and shuck. We station ourselves on the patio.

  “So?” Paige says.

  “So, what?”

  “Uncle Victor—what do you think?”

  Suddenly it comes to me. “Stripes!”

  “Excuse me?”

  “An armored Winnebago. Wasn’t that what Bill Murray had in Stripes?”

  “You know, I think you’re right.”

  I grab another ear. We have a long way to go. “Exactly how much corn is each person expected to eat?”

  “I think the theory is to can some of it.”

  “Ah. So, Victor. Well, he reminds me a little of the guy who sold me my computer.”

  Before I can elaborate, the door slides open and Hilary joins us on the patio, wearing a faraway expression.

  “Hey there. I came to give you guys a hand.”

  “I think we have things under control,” Paige says.

  Hilary sits down, reaches into a bag, and pulls out one of the ears we just shucked. “Oh, I know. I just needed to get a little fresh air.” She stares at the corn for long seconds as if it were an unidentified species. “What am I doing—this one’s already done.”

  “Are you OK, Aunt Hilary?”

  “Oh, Paige. Yes, I’m fine. I always get a little emotional around the holidays. You know, it makes me think about my mom and dad.” Her voice cracks. She sniffles, takes a moment to compose herself. “Sorry. But this year, it’s especially—all of this, I just keep hoping we’re doing the right thing.” She exchanges her corn for an unshucked ear and starts tearing at it, taking off a single husk at a time. Does she remember I’m here too? I ask Paige with a tilt of my head whether I should make myself scarce. No need, she replies.

  “It’s not that I don’t understand that it’ll—Y2K will happen. I mean, Claude and Victor talk about it and their reasoning is totally—well, you can’t argue with it. But once in a while, I think about the direction our lives have gone and it’s just some bizarre dream, you know? And I think, what if we’re wrong? If it does fizzle out, if it’s just a bump in the road? I mean, thank God, if that’s the case, thank God! But then you think, what would we do then?” She’s denuded the corn and now starts absently tearing a husk into narrow strips. “Because you see, Paige, I’m the reason we’re here. Some of my friends back in New York couldn’t believe what we were doing, moving here. They kept asking me, Are you sure Claude isn’t making you do this? But it wasn’t that way at all. If anything, I made him. I found this place. All those books? I bought them. The printouts? I printed them. See, Claude was such a mess when he started doing all that research. I mean, clinically almost, the depression, the—the nightmares, the insomnia. He couldn’t convince himself it wasn’t true, and he couldn’t see any way out of it. No appetite, no sense of humor, he was all bottled up and lashing out all the time. And I couldn’t live with him much longer like that. So I said to him, We’re moving. Let’s find a place where the kids’ll be safe. And it made him feel like there was finally something he could do about it, and he came back to life. And so I never questioned it from that day on, just put my head down and threw myself into it. So now I know about power inverters and septic tanks, and I have no friends here, and Megan is miserable, and if it turns out really bad I guess he owes me his life like he always says, and if it turns out not so bad—what happens then?” She stops and stares into the woods.

  After a minute, Paige says, “You did what you had to do, Aunt Hil. And hey, your family is all here together.”

  Hilary smiles and shakes her head. “You’re right. You’re right, you’re right.” She stands up, brushes corn residue off her lap. “And I should be thankful for that. I’m sorry, guys, I’m just a little o
verwrought today. I ought to get back inside.” And she goes, taking the ear of corn with her.

  “OK,” I tell Paige, “I think maybe I’m getting an inkling of what you were talking about.”

  “I have a bit of a surprise for everyone,” Claude announces once we’re all seated for Thanksgiving dinner. Everyone quiets down in anticipation.

  “Do you notice anything unusual about the lights in here?”

  No, everyone agrees.

  “They’re just as bright as they usually are?”

  “Yes!”

  “Well, that’s good…because we’re off the grid!”

  Oohs and aahs. “No! Really?” says Ned.

  “That’s right. I flipped the switch ten minutes ago. You didn’t even notice, right?”

  Not at all, is the consensus.

  “Course, we’ll have to go back on city power after dinner if we want to run the dishwasher. But I thought a little demo would be nice.”

  The table erupts into applause.

  We pray, and then we eat. Turkey and all the trimmings. Anyone need more cranberry sauce? Nobody mentions the millennium. I talk with Ned about the American League East, Frances about restaurants in Santa Fe, Gregory about electric guitars. Women demand recipes from each other, men argue about college football. There’s a lovely brunette smiling at me as she passes me the gravy. This is what a holiday should be like, what a family should be like. Hell, maybe this could work.

  After the main courses are cleared away, while Hilary and Frances are getting dessert ready, Victor excuses himself. He returns to the table a minute later with a blue clipboard folder, sits back down, and leans across the table, fanning out a series of color laser-printed photographs in front of me. Shots of the sky, with clouds, or the white trails airplanes leave behind, or the aftermath of skywriting, or something.

  He addresses me in a soft voice. “Randall, did you have any odd physical symptoms out in California? A persistent cough, a sinus headache, maybe vision problems?”

  “No. No, not that I recall.”

  Hilary, coming from the kitchen with a pie, catches sight of the photos. She stops in her tracks, staring at the back of Victor’s head.

  “Well, did you see any of this in the skies? They’re chemical trails? Because the West Coast seems to have the most sightings so far. Although these shots were taken in Iowa and Minnesota. They may look like ordinary contrails at first glance. But no. These are something totally different. The altitudes are all wrong. And look at the repetition, as if the planes were going back and forth in some kind of a pattern.”

  Um. Yes, airlines fly their planes back and forth from place to place, and in fairly regular patterns. I’m not quite following him here. These look like snapshots of the sky after a bunch of planes have flown overhead, like maybe near an airport. I mean, airplanes don’t always make those trails, but I thought it just depended on the temperature or humidity or something. Is it supposed to be alarming? I pick up the photos and study them more closely.

  Victor speaks louder, so everyone can hear. “In fact, this is something you all should be aware of. People are just beginning to piece this together—there’s only one or two sites with any info. But it’s becoming clear from all the evidence that whatever chemicals are in these trails are meant to affect the human body. And maybe the mind.”

  Hilary slams the pie down on the table next to Victor.

  “Whoa!” Victor says.

  “Hilary?” Claude says.

  The noise brings Frances hurrying in from the kitchen. “What happened?”

  Hilary’s face is a mask of barely controlled rage. “Megan, can you take your brother and sister into their room and just all play together for a while, please.”

  Megan scowls but complies, frightened into obedience by her mother’s demeanor.

  “Victor,” Hilary says with deliberate calm once the children are gone.

  “Yeah?”

  A deep breath. “Get that away from my table. Claude. Please tell your brother. To get that asinine nonsense. Away from our dinner table.” Her eyes spit poison.

  “Hilary, what’s wrong with you?” Claude says.

  Her composure breaks, her voice rises in pitch and volume. “Isn’t it enough that we picked up and moved to Texas because of a computer bug? OK, Y2K was one thing, I can buy that, it made sense. But do we have to join your brother in believing every fucking thing you two read on the Internet?”

  We all fidget with silverware, the tablecloth, our fingernails, trying not to meet anyone’s eye.

  “Please, Hil. We have company.” Claude nods in my direction.

  “Oh, you’re worried about Randall now? That’s funny, because I could have sworn you didn’t even want him to come!”

  “Now, that’s not fair. I just didn’t understand quite why you wanted—”

  “Why I wanted to be around another adult who doesn’t eat, sleep, and breathe this shit?” She reaches over the table, snatches the photographs from my hand, waves them disgustedly.

  “Well, he’s here, isn’t he?”

  “Yep, he sure is, so he might as well know what he’s letting himself in for. Randall, welcome to our little world! In our world, the white stuff that comes out of airplanes is part of a—what, a mind-control experiment! The Federal Secret Department of Scary Research shot down Flight 800 with a Martian death ray! A government scientist created AIDS in a laboratory! But don’t worry, a few doses of colloidal fucking silver will cure it!”

  “I’ve never said anything about a Martian death ray,” Victor says.

  Ignoring him, Hilary turns to Claude. “Oh, and speaking of that—that poison your brother convinced us to take, may I remind you that if I hadn’t put my foot down, you’d have had the kids taking it too? We’d have blue children! Their lives would be ruined!”

  “So my life is ruined? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “No, Claude! Mine! Mine! Mine!” Sobbing, she runs down the hall. We hear the bedroom door slam. And I see, trailing behind Hilary Bursey, my hopeful visions of taking shelter here with these people dissipating like sinister chemical clouds in the sky.

  Online, tonight’s big news concerns the Mormons. Unprecedented demand from the swelling legion of Y2Kers has forced the church to stop retailing its legendary supplies of canned food to outsiders. It’s going to get harder and harder to prepare, and that spells panic.

  A soft knock on the office door interrupts my research.

  “Come in.”

  Paige comes in.

  “Hey,” she says.

  “Hey.”

  “I was hoping someone else was awake. You busy?”

  “No, the Mormons can wait.”

  “Um, yeah, I don’t know what that means. Want to join me for a smoke?” She waves a pack of Parliaments.

  “Sure, I’ll keep you company.”

  The rest of the family has gone to bed. Recovered, at least outwardly, from what happened before dessert. Claude and Hilary had a long talk alone in their bedroom while the rest of us waited and tried to discuss the weather. They emerged with a mutual apology to all their guests for making such a stir on what should be a joyful day. The kids were invited back into the dining room. We had sweet potato pie. Later I was cajoled into playing a few songs. Apart from Hilary’s five minutes of honesty, a perfectly pleasant Thanksgiving.

  We stumble our way through the darkened living room to the kitchen, where Paige opens the refrigerator. “Beer or wine?” she whispers. “Ooh, they have terrible beer. Wine.” She hands me a three-quarters-full bottle. “You need a glass?”

  “Nah.”

  We can’t remember which switch is for the patio lights and don’t want to wake anyone by experimenting, so we grab a battery-powered lantern and sit down outside in its fluorescent glow.

  “Cigarette?”

  “I haven’t smoked in three years.”

  “And?”

  “Yeah, what the hell.” I take a cigarette. Bonnie had it right. Long-term heal
th, why bother?

  “Those crickets are fucking deafening,” Paige says, uncorking the wine.

  “Yes.”

  “I mean, how long do you think a person could really live out here without going nuts?”

  “Oh, it might be nice. Peaceful.”

  “For me, I’d say ten days. Then homicide.” She takes a drink, wipes off the mouth of the bottle on her shirt.

  “So how long are you down here for?”

  “Preferably as little time as possible. But I couldn’t get a flight until Tuesday without paying a million dollars.”

  “Back to New York?”

  “Back to the deathtrap. You should have heard the speech Victor gave me this afternoon.”

  “Let me guess. Something about Beirut.”

  “Yes! How did you know? Oh, you probably agree with him, huh?” The pity I see in her eyes somehow shames rather than infuriates me.

  “Well, Paige, not to put you on the spot or anything, but what do you think about all this?”

  “Y2K?”

  “Yeah. All a load of paranoid bullshit? Same category as Martian death rays?”

  “No, not necessarily. I don’t know—it’s not like I have, like, any data to suggest things’ll be fine. But it’s just such a good story, you know? The world blows up because of one little computer glitch. To me, it’s too good a story. It makes me wonder if people are seeing a good story instead of what’s actually there. This is pissing you off, I can tell.”

  “Sorry, it’s sort of a reflex. But, so, you think someone’s making up all the computers with problems? Because I can show you reports—”

  “No, I’m not saying that. I’m sure there are problems. My point is more, like, until someone decided to bundle up all those problems and call it Y2K, was it really something to worry about?”

  “I’m not following you.”

  She thinks for a second. “OK, listen. When you were a kid, did you ever see that little puzzle with the gnomes—no, the Vanishing Leprechaun? Where you have, like, thirteen of them, and when you rearrange the pieces on the top half, there are only twelve?”