Surviving Home

by A. American

  “Salmon patties, macaroni and cheese and green bean casserole.”

  “Damn, sounds good. We should have company over more often.”

  “No, we shouldn’t. I’m starting to get worried about food. Are we going to have to feed those two now?”

  “I was thinking about food on the way home. We’ll have to for a little while, but I’m going to start looking at some alternatives.”

  She got a sour look on her face. “What kind of alternatives?”

  I just shrugged my shoulders. “Whatever I can come up with.”

  That statement didn’t improve her mood any. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  “Where’re the girls?”

  With her spatula in one hand she pointed toward the door to Lee Ann’s room. I found the girls gathered around the iPad still. It looked like they were drawing or something on it. They didn’t even look up, though Little Bit and Lee Ann did say, “Hi, Dad.”

  “Hey, Taylor, when did you come home?”

  Without looking up from the iPad, she replied, “Earlier.”

  “I know that. How did you get home? I told you to wait for me, remember?”

  She looked up at me, her mouth hanging open, then said, “Rene fell asleep, so I left.”

  “And you just walked home alone?”

  “No, her dad walked me home.”

  “Did he come up to the house?” This worried me; I didn’t want anyone getting near the house right now.

  “No. When we got to the gate, he turned around and went home. He told me to tell you thank you for the food.” She swiveled around so she was sitting. “They were all crying and stuff.”

  “Did they give Rene the Ensure?”

  “Yeah, they were giving it to her. She liked it a lot. Can I go back over there tomorrow?”

  Before I could answer, Little Bit piped up, “I wanna go!”

  Taylor looked at her with a scowl on her face. “You can’t go; she’s my friend!”

  They began to argue, Little Bit complaining that she didn’t have any friends to play with and was tired of being at home all the time; Taylor, being a typical big sister, didn’t want her little sister tagging along. I’d heard enough, though, and said, “Knock it off! I don’t want to hear it. You guys do what you’re told. If you’re told to wait for me, then you wait; if you’re told not to leave, then don’t leave.”

  As I turned to walk out, Lee Ann asked, “When’s dinner gonna be ready?”

  “Soon,” I said as I closed the door.

  Passing through the kitchen, the smell was wonderful. Mel asked, “Are we stuck here in this house forever?”

  “Oh come on, not you too. You know we can’t just go running around.”

  “I know, but I was thinking about my mom today.” I looked over just in time to see the tears start. I had wondered how long it would be until she started to worry about her mom. She probably had been for some time and I was only just hearing about it. I walked around the island to where she was and wrapped my arms around her. She wiped the tears from her face.

  “Babe, I’m sorry, but there’s no way we can go to Orlando. We’d lose the truck on the way to either cops or bandits, and who knows what else could happen. There’s just no way.”

  “I know, but I can’t stop thinking about her.”

  I just stood there holding her. She knew there wasn’t anything I could do, she just needed to talk about it. I really felt like shit knowing there was nothing I could about it. Her mom lived in downtown Orlando, and I mean right downtown. It’d take a damn tank to get down there, and once we did we’d probably find she was gone. At least this way she could think of her as she was and not how we might find her. That sounded cold even to me, but the thought of finding her mom dead in her house was worse in my mind than wondering how she was doing. That’s the logic I used about my mom and dad, and so far it had worked.

  They lived on the St. Johns in Debary. I guess I could have gotten there on the river, but it was a long trip and who knows what would happen. I just hope the small community they lived in had come together. They were actually in a pretty good spot, or so I hoped.

  I was stoking the fire when I heard Meathead start barking. I looked out and saw Thad and Jeff coming down the drive. Meathead was on the porch with raised hackles. I stepped out on the porch and waited for them.

  Thad was looking at the dog as he walked up. “He gonna eat me?”

  “Not in one sittin’,” I replied, and they laughed.

  “I think it’d take a herd of ’em to eat him in one sittin’,” Jeff said.

  “Come on in,” I said.

  As Thad stepped through the door he said, “Man, it smells good in here.”

  “After dinner we’ll take a load of wood down to the house for you guys,” I said.

  Jeff asked, “Hey, Morgan, you got anything we could use for light? It gets freakin’ dark in that house.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. “I have some oil lamps, a bunch actually. We’ll take a couple of them down too.”

  “That’d be nice. He’s right, it gets damn dark in there,” Thad said as he passed through the living room. “Evenin’, ma’am,” he said when he saw Mel behind the stove.

  “Hi, Thad, you guys get settled in?”

  “We’re getting there.”

  Jeff walked in behind Thad, trying to look around the big man. “Man, what smells so good?”

  Mel looked up with a smile. I was surprised at how at ease she was. Before, she had hated to have people just drop by. But then again, she hadn’t been around too many people and maybe it was nice to talk to someone, anyone, besides me. “I hope you guys are hungry,” she said as she took the last salmon patty from the skillet.

  “Oh yes, ma’am,” Thad said, followed quickly by an “Oh yeah!” from Jeff.

  Mel called the girls out. Since Jeff and Thad were over they had to sit in the living room in front of the fireplace. The three of us guys sat at the table. Mel made plates for the girls and they took them into the living room and then she fixed plates for the rest of us. Once everyone had a plate, Mel took a seat and we talked while we ate. The talk centered around my concerns about food. Now that we had even more mouths to feed, we needed to come up with more. I asked the two guys if they had any ideas. Jeff said he was clueless; he was from the desert and didn’t know shit about what you could eat in Florida, ’cept maybe alligators.

  Thad was a little more help, though he didn’t think of anything I hadn’t already and didn’t mention a bunch of things I was pondering. The result was that things were about to get serious. The menu was going to start to suck and everyone was going to have to work to find enough food for all of us. There wasn’t much more to say about it right then and the conversation tapered off.

  Jeff brought things back around. “Mel, this mac ’n’ cheese is awesome. Is it from a box?”

  “It started out that way, but I do my thing to it, gotta spice it up,” she replied.

  “Whatever you’re doin’, it’s workin’. I really like the bread crumbs on top.”

  Thad held up a forkful of pasta as a salute and grunted.

  I said, “It’s great, Mel.” I had to hand it to her; she did a good job on it. Mel had taken time to learn from some books like Making the Best of Basics, and had always written down recipes from a website called Hillbilly Housewife.

  The girls all came in about the same time wanting more mac ’n’ cheese as well. Mel was eating, so I got up and spooned them each some more out, then carried the pot over to the table, where Thad and Jeff immediately set upon it. I watched Thad and Jeff as they ate, thinking about the pretty basic dinner we were having. I remembered the day we had found those cans of French-fried onions on sale. Mel bought a bunch of them. It was a simple thing, one you wouldn’t give a second thought to. But tonight, here, for the small group
of people gathered around my table, it made a big difference. It made me think about what other things that we had acquired on a whim that would make a difference, be they food or something else.

  When everyone was done I helped Mel clear the table. The guys offered to help but I told them we’d get it. As I was setting the last of the plates in the sink, Mel carried a stack of the paper plates over to the table. I hadn’t heard anything about a dessert. She went to the fridge and came out with a cake, of all things. It wasn’t very big, maybe eleven inches square, but it was two layers and frosted.

  I said, “How in the hell did you come up with that?”

  She smiled as she set it on the table, to the obvious delight of Jeff and Thad. “It’s a Coca-Cola cake.”

  “A what?”

  “A Coca-Cola cake. It’s basically a box of that Jiffy mix, and I used Coke for the liquid. The frosting is some of the Jiffy powder as well.”

  Thad had a curious look on his face. “Never heard of that, but it sounds good.”

  With talk of cake in the kitchen, it wasn’t long before the girls arrived. Mel cut the cake and handed out pieces to everyone. Little Bit naturally wanted a bigger piece, or to lick the knife used to cut it, or to scrape the crumbs off the plate, or anything she could think of to get some more. I finally shooed her out of the kitchen so we could eat ours. I had never heard Mel even mention Coca-Cola cake before, but it was excellent.

  Once the table was cleared again, I sat back in my chair. Everyone was feeling fat and happy.

  “Only one thing could make this any better,” I said, pausing for a moment before continuing. “A drink.”

  Jeff looked up. “I would kill for a drink.”

  “Well, I have some medicinal whiskey in the shop, and right now I think it would be good for my health to have a nip,” I said.

  I went out to the shop and returned with a bottle of Jim Beam and set some glasses out on the table. I dropped some ice into each of them and poured a couple fingers of whiskey. Mel said she didn’t want any and went to our room. The girls were gone to one of their rooms, so Thad, Jeff and I sat there and enjoyed our Beam. The first one went down so well we thought another was in order, so I passed the bottle for another round.

  Before things got out of hand, I suggested we go out and load some wood in the Suburban to take back to their place. We donned our coats and collected our weapons and went out to the woodshed. I grabbed the old green cart on the way and we loaded it full of nice seasoned oak. While Jeff and Thad took it to the back of the truck, I went to the shop and grabbed a couple of oil lamps and two half-gallon jugs of oil. After putting them in the back seat, I grabbed a double handful of lighter wood from the old ammo can on the front porch.

  Fortunately for me, our property is covered in old lighter stumps. When my stash gets low I just go out and cut about one foot off the current one I’m working on and split it up. I had been surprised to find a log almost eight feet long that was completely cured into lighter wood. On a cold morning, or better yet a wet one, it made it really easy to start a fire. After cutting the piece I split it out into pieces about a half-inch in diameter and piled them into the can by the front door. A pile of pine needles and piece of fatwood, and you had a fire in a matter of minutes.

  As I was putting the fatwood into the back of the truck, the old bell at the roadblock sounded out into the night. Jeff and Thad both looked over at me. “What the hell is that? Little late for church,” Thad said.

  “That’s not for church; it’s the warning from our barricade. It means trouble. We need to go out there and see what’s up,” I said as I ran around the truck to the driver’s side. Jeff jumped into the passenger seat and Thad got in behind him as I started the old Cummins up. We were in motion before Thad’s door slammed shut. I flipped on the high beams as the old truck swung out on the road. In the light we could just barely make out the two guys standing behind the logs, the fire in the barrel off to the right cast a yellow light on the bush, but I couldn’t see anyone on the other side.

  Rick was at the barricade along with one of the young guys from the neighborhood. On the other side was a group of four or five people. I couldn’t tell if they were men or women from where I was. Stepping out of the truck, I was able to clearly hear the shouting. Seeing the arrival of the three of us caused those on the outside of the barricade to pause and exchange glances.

  Rick was crouched behind the logs with his carbine at his shoulder. He stole a quick glance our way then quickly looked back at the group on the other side of the logs. The three of us approached the logs, spreading out across the back side. Thad had his old coach gun laid over his shoulder. Jeff didn’t have anything in his hands, but I knew there were at least one and maybe two Glocks on him. I had my trusty old Bushy slung around my neck. I’m sure the added firepower got the visitors’ attention.

  “What’s up, Rick?” I asked.

  “I want ma boy!” a short, fat pie-faced woman on the other side of the barricade demanded. Her hair was matted and she was red-faced. In the light cast from the old truck, she really looked rough. Beside her was a skinny man with long hair. He didn’t look particularly dangerous or even interested in being there at the moment. With them were two other men. Those two had rifles with them, lever actions of some sort.

  I looked over at Rick and said, “What?”

  “She thinks her son is here or some shit and wants us to bring him out,” Rick replied.

  “He is ’ere, dammit, don’chu fuckin’ listen?” the old woman cawed.

  “Look, lady, I done told you, I don’t know who in the hell you’re talking about. I ain’t seen anyone come in here. No one just walks in, as you can tell,” Rick said.

  “Ma boy come here to see Randal; whur’s he at?” the skinny man asked.

  Rick looked over at me. I just shrugged. Rick looked back to the gaggle on the other side of the logs and said, “He ain’t here anymore.”

  The old woman squinted an eye and her upper lip curled up over her two top teeth. “Whur’d they go?”

  Rick shrugged. “Don’t know, they’re just gone.”

  “If’n my boy ain’t home tomarra, we’ll be back,” she said as she turned and headed over to an old Suzuki Samurai that I hadn’t noticed. I was surprised that the thing would actually run. The skinny man got behind the wheel while the other two climbed into the back and that woman got in the passenger seat. It started with a loud rattle and headed off down 19 into the forest.

  “Where’re they from?” I asked Rick.

  “I don’t know. From the looks of them, I would guess a rock out in the damn woods somewhere. You seen anyone around here? Their kid maybe?”

  I thought about the body I had seen draped over Reggie’s four-wheeler. “Nope, haven’t seen a soul.” Rick looked as though he didn’t believe me.

  Jeff said, “Gabions.”

  I said, “What?”

  “Gabions were fortifications used during the Civil War. They’re baskets filled with rocks or dirt and stacked up to form defensive positions. That’s what y’all need here.”

  I was thinking about that when Rick said, “I’ve seen those, that’s good idea. It’d provide a lot better cover than these logs. I don’t know what we’d make ’em out of, though.”

  I said, “We could use that stand of river cane back near Reggie’s house.”

  “River cane would work real good. Use whole stalks for the verticals and split halves to weave around them, that’d work great,” Jeff said, nodding his head.

  “How big do they need to be?” Rick asked.

  Jeff rubbed his chin for a moment. “Prolly three feet in diameter would be enough.”

  “Damn, that’ll take a lot of cane and a lot of dirt to fill,” Rick said.

  “And a hell of a lot of manpower to complete. Just moving the dirt to fill them would be a hell of a job,” I added.
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  “Well, these fuckers ain’t doing anything else,” Rick said, nodding over his shoulder toward the neighborhood. “If they’re not gonna stand guard, they sure as shit can help make sure we don’t get shot doing it for them.”

  We went on to discuss the logistics of such an undertaking and whether it was even worth doing. We could only block the road here; the rest of the neighborhood could be entered from the rear of any of the houses. Then we talked about whether or not the folks in the neighborhood would even help do it. I doubted that they would do anything to help out. Some would, but the majority of them wouldn’t. They didn’t even help man the barricade. Rick said he would talk to Mark about it and asked me to go and check out the stand of cane in the morning. Jeff said he’d go with me, and Thad, Jeff and I headed back to the truck.

  I helped the guys unload the wood on their back porch, the closest approach to the fireplace. The lamps made a huge difference. Having my solar set up enabled me to use the lights in the house and I hadn’t gotten used to how dark the nights were without them. Over at Thad and Jeff’s place I was able to see just how dark it was. With the aid of the lantern it was no big issue to get a fire going. There was already quite a bit of kindling in the house and a large box of strike-anywhere matches. I told the guys to come down in the morning for breakfast and left them for the night.

  As I was heading home, I slowed at the side road that Reggie lives off of. I thought about going down there to look at the cane, but really I wanted to go talk to him about his passenger and our visitors. Instead I went home to spend some time with Mel and the girls. The girls were already in bed by the time I made it back, so after banking the fire with a couple of logs I headed off to bed, where I found Mel buried in a pile of blankets.

  After a breakfast of tasty casserole, Thad, Jeff and I headed down toward Reggie’s house. As I was getting in the truck, Little Bit came out wanting to come with us. I told her to wait a bit and she could go with me later. I didn’t pull into Reggie’s drive, instead stopping the truck at the end of the road where the stand of cane started. The three of us got out to look it over, trying to figure out if there was enough there to make what we wanted.