by Hughey, J.
“What about water? You said before he was out making sure the cattle had water.”
“The ash seems to settle out of still water, so the troughs have been good so far. What cattle don’t like is eating sandy grass and grain. At least their guts aren’t as sensitive as horses. Ranchers are trying to keep them in under cover but, well, Nebraska is windy. Ash is blowing everywhere, infiltrating everything, and horses are getting colic.”
“They say the ash is going to be here today.”
“Yep. How are things in Indiana?”
“I dunno. My parents are acting weird. When I talked to them last night, they were asking how things were here. I think they might be thinking about coming east, which is freaking me out.”
The conversation with them had been odd. Both Mom and Dad had been on the phone with me, and for a moment they’d taken a tangent into a head of household conversation about heating oil and electricity and food, wondering out loud if they should go somewhere warmer, like down to Nana’s—my mom’s mom’s—house in Florida. The prospect kept me awake last night. Could I stay in Pennsylvania while they went south? Would I?
“Can they pick up and leave? What about their jobs?”
“That’s part of why they’re worried, I think. My dad sells dental equipment. A couple of doctors already cancelled big orders for next month. Everybody is so unsure of what’s going to happen they’re scared to do anything.”
Boone slowed to ride behind me past a fallen branch that blocked most of the trail then accelerated to regain his lost ground.
“What’s your mom do?”
“She writes science articles for the paper. Local stuff like whether wind or solar makes more sense in Martin County. She’s in her geeked-out glory right now.”
“I guess it’s an awesome time for scientists.”
“Has anybody heard from Dr. Potter?”
“No. I asked the department head after he taught Intro yesterday. He seemed kind of ticked, but how can he blame the guy for going to rescue his family? I mean, I don’t expect anybody to put his job before his wife and kids. Family comes first.”
Traffic sounds grew around us from a major highway nearby. We stopped talking for a mile or so. A steep ramp led to the Hot Metal Bridge, a pedestrian and bicycling bridge originally used to carry crucibles of molten steel across the Monongahela River. Or so the historical plaque said.
We leaned on the railings to absorb the view of the urban skyline to the north. On the far side of the river, steep banks lifted into impressive hills packed with trees and buildings.
“If you squint and take the hills away, this could be Omaha,” Boone noted.
“You miss home.”
He hesitated to answer. “I don’t cry myself to sleep at night, but I’m anchored there.” He looked westward. “Feel it more now with this going on.”
Family comes first. “I never thought I’d want to go back home,” I said. “Still not sure I do. You’re right, though. The separation is weird while a national disaster is going on.”
The river flowed far beneath our feet, though the scene wasn’t peaceful. Traffic and a nearby train yard muffled any gentle lapping sounds the water made against the supports. The odors of dampness and exhaust reminded me of the great population rather than the great outdoors.
“I brought some sandwiches,” Boone said. “It’s close to five o’clock. Do you want to eat now or after we’re done?”
“Now’s good,” I said. His pack had seemed heavy when I lifted it out of the car, but I thought maybe he carried bike tools or parts.
We sat with our back to the railing. He handed me a bundle of white paper. Opening it felt like Christmas as I revealed half a roast beef and provolone hoagie with lettuce, tomato, and Italian dressing, obviously from my favorite off-campus sub shop. I gave him a questioning look.
“Mia,” he said nonchalantly. He stretched his mouth wide to bite down on a concoction with every kind of meat imaginable piled on.
“What’s that monstrosity?” I asked.
“Combo of a club and an Italian special,” he mumbled around the food. “My own protein-packed creation.”
“Yuck,” I said. He tossed a bag of nacho corn chips on my lap.
“Are you kidding me?” I said. “Mia told you all my bad habits, didn’t she?”
He swallowed his mouthful. “I like those too, so don’t eat them all. I left the sodas in a cooler in the truck. I can’t ride after all that carbonation.”
I laughed and settled in for the perfect dinner. The harsh lines of the city silhouette softened as the light transitioned from afternoon to early evening.
We pedaled back to the truck, away from the sunset.
Text to Dad:
A week later, Boone and I rode south from the Duquesne parking lot. We followed the rail-trail into a less populated area along the river. I counted these Thursday afternoon rides as dates. Ideal, comfortable, invigorating dates compared to occasions like prom and Parker’s big productions that had always turned me off. Especially his last fiasco. Anyway, the uncertainty I’d felt about Boone reciprocating my feelings for him faded with every turn of the pedal, replaced by the steady hum of excitement.
He liked me. I liked him. We enjoyed spending time together at the same activities. Hard to believe, but real.
Boone drove back toward campus as another sunset cast the sky in flaming red, a symptom of the ash now sifting almost imperceptibly through the air of western Pennsylvania. His right hand curved around my thigh when he didn’t need it on the steering wheel. We passed a gas station at the exit near school. I shook my head at the skyrocketing prices. “Pretty soon you won’t want to drive to football games or rail trails.”
My cell rang. Normally I’d ignore it, but I hadn’t gotten through to my parents all week. When I saw HOME on Caller ID, I explained to Boone as I accepted the call.
“Violet? I’m so glad we finally got through.”
“Hi, Daddy,” I said, instantly embarrassed I’d let such a childish moniker slip. I hadn’t realized how much I’d worried until I heard Dad’s voice. “Has your phone been out?”
Boone removed his hand from my leg.
“We got some wet weather here, and something about the ash on the lines and cell towers is causing short circuits or something. Your mom could explain it, but she’s at the paper, trying to help get it published before the power goes kaput again. You doing okay? Is the school able to get enough food and everything?”
“Yeah, except they have less salad and fruit. Is that because of Florida?”
“Well, western produce isn’t getting through either. Mom went out and bought three bushels of local apples. She’s storing them in the basement.”
“Where did she put the wood stove?” I asked.
Boone smiled. I’d told him about my Mom’s prepping.
“In front of the fireplace. And we’ve got two cords of wood stacked in the garage.”
“Cords?”
“Picture more firewood than you’ve ever imagined in one stack and multiply it by two.”
“Do you think you’re going to need it? The stove, I mean, and the apples, and everything?”
He sighed. “I don’t know, pumpkin. We’re planning for this winter, at least. You’re sure you’re okay? What have you been doing today?”
“I was on a bike ride.”
“It sounds like you’re in a car.”
“Oh, well, I, umm, I…a guy took me to a rail trail south of Pittsburgh.” Dang it, I hated when home life infringed on college life.
“A guy? What guy?” Dad’s tone went from conversational to stern alertness.
“We’re almost back to campus. Gotta go.”
“Wait. What guy?”
I sighed. “Dad, I’m fine. I’ll text you later. Say hi to Mom and Sara, okay?”
He grumbled, but hung up. I suspected this wouldn’t be the end of it. As soon as he told mom I’d been out with a boy, my phone would light up big time.
/> Boone quirked a brow. “I guess your parents don’t know about me?”
“No,” I admitted. “Do yours?”
“No.” Still smiling, he reached over to put his hand on my leg again as the truck purred up the hill to WCC.
I curled my fingers around his. “My dad said food isn’t getting across the country.”
“Yeah, we were talking about transportation in Econ this morning. Wanna look at a map when we get back?”
He pulled into a parking spot near the dorm. Before he got out, he handed a road atlas to me from the pocket on his door. “Bring that up to your room. And this, please.” He held out his half-finished soda and, again, warmed me in my silly glow of couplehood.
The glaring compact fluorescent bulbs had already come to life by the Caples entrance. I held the door open while Boone jockeyed my bike through. Grit scratched underfoot, like stairs at a cheap beach hotel instead of a northeastern college dorm.
Mia greeted us exuberantly from her reclined position on her bed. “Felicitations. How was your afternoon in the park? You’ve missed teatime.”
“Hey, Mia,” Boone said, by now familiar with her forays into Regency England.
She held a dog-eared novel in her lap.
“What happened to biology?” I set our drinks on my desk and toed my shoes off.
“I took a study break.” She ruffled the pages of the book. “Two hundred pages ago. I’ve almost given up on this heroine, though. She’s too stupid to live.”
I tried to help Boone rack my bike, but he rolled his eyes at me.
“Chivalry is not dead,” Mia observed, twirling a lock of black hair around her forefinger.
“Did you spill some bleach on your head by accident?” Boone asked without looking at her. She’d dyed the bottom layer of her hair platinum blonde last weekend, giving an edgy contrast to her fashion-forward-and-backward appearance.
“You wound me, sir,” she cried, unwinding her hair so her hand could flutter over the Jimi Hendrix decal on her shirt. “And let me correct myself. Chivalry is dead. So, so dead.”
I held up the atlas.
“Roadtrip?” she asked, immediately distracted. “Can I come?”
“No road trip,” Boone said. “Violet’s dad said something to her on the phone that reminded me I wanted to look at a map.”
“You heard from them?” Mia didn’t have much contact with her own family and clung to my supportocating normalcy.
“Yeah. Mom bought firewood and apples this week. In other news,” I said, mocking the news anchor voice, “Dad says food shipments aren’t making it across the country.”
“It’s not only food. Nothing is making it,” Boone said, opening the atlas to the U.S. map. Mia and I flanked him. He pointed to a red line that dipped near the dark green square of what used to be Yellowstone National Park. “Route 90 and 94. That’s obviously buried for good. I think it opens up in the middle of nowhere in North Dakota. Here’s Route 80,” he said, moving down to the next red vein bisecting the country. “It runs north of my house. A lot of trucks use it, but it’s closed for 1,300 miles, give or take. Route 70 to the south is closed from somewhere in Kansas to its end in Utah.” He slid his finger further southward on the map. “That leaves Route 40 and maybe Route 10.”
“My sociology prof said Route 40 is a mess,” Mia added. “It’s carrying like 400% of its normal traffic. Or it was before it became a traffic jam. There’s no gas, no food, no hotel rooms left. Rest stops are becoming tent cities. People are mobbing fuel trucks, thinking they should be able to pull up and pump out fifteen gallons for their minivans.”
Boone nodded. “The National Guard is escorting convoys but fuel supplies were already screwed up from the hurricane. With Wyoming production offline….” He shrugged.
My stomach started to knot. “So, my mom isn’t crazy for buying a wood stove and firewood?” My voice sounded tiny and sad. Neither my roommate nor my maybe-boyfriend hurried to reassure me.
Mia pointed at the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania where we stood at this moment. “I heard they might close the school. That they might need places like this to house people, like they’re doing out west.”
I took a deep breath and held it. I’d averted my eyes from TVs, Internet news sites, and bulletin boards for the last week, hoping the hotspot for this volcano would sink back into the earth’s mantle, and all the people in refugee shelters could go home, and I could stay here.
Boone added, “A few more professors from western states have left.”
“And some international students flew home while they still could. Remember Diya? She had to get a ride all the way to New York City to get out,” Mia said. “She was crying all over her boyfriend on the sidewalk while she waited for the car. Somebody-get-that-girl-a-valium sobbing. It was sad.”
“She’ll probably never see him again,” I said, remembering her arranged marriage. Without thought, I twined my fingers with Boone’s, seeking a connection for as long as possible.
He pulled my hand up so the knuckles rubbed his lips while he closed the atlas with his other hand. The shadow of Yellowblown ash filled the room.
“I guess I’d better get caught up on my history reading,” he said. “I knew I avoided the Western Civilization requirement for a reason.”
“You could bring it back here. Sit in the lounge, see if there’s any more good news on TV.”
“Sorry. I have to spend a few hours on the floor tonight, with my peeps. And I need a shower.” He gave me a wink, reminding me of my sweat comment. “I’ll see you in geology tomorrow.”
“I’ll walk down with you.” We reluctantly descended, me still in my socks. “Thanks for today. I like riding on trails.” Especially with you.
“Me, too.”
“If we go again, you’ll have to let me buy dinner, okay?”
We stopped on the small front stoop. “Maybe we should go on Sunday?”
I saw in his face the reality I tried hard to ignore. We might not have many more afternoons together. After a quick peck on the lips, he reached up to tuck a piece of my hair behind my ear. “See you tomorrow, Biker-girl.”
A faint beam of happiness cut through the gloom of Yellowblown as I padded back upstairs. “He calls me Biker-girl,” I sighed to Mia.
She lowered her book enough to see my face. “Wow, you got it bad.”
“Yep.”
“I’ve never seen anything cuter than him asking what kind of sandwich you like. I told him to hold the mayo, take it through the garden with Italian dressing, and throw in a side of condom.”
I stared for a second or two. “You did not.”
“You need to get some salami in your diet, girl!”
“Mia,” I sighed.
“If you’re holding out for someone nicer or better looking, you might want to reset your expectations. That’s all I’m saying.”
“For someone who doesn’t even date, you’re sure eager for everybody else to get busy.”
“Hey, when a man treats me the way he does you—opening doors and thinking ahead to buy a hoagie just the way I like it—I’ll sneak out of the ball, ready to be compromised.”
My head spun as she swerved from profane diner speak back to her romance novels.
“You’re right,” she conceded. “You gotta move at your own speed. Hey, there’s a volcano party over at the Sigs tonight,” she said, shifting gears again. “The drinks have to be either red or hot.”
The bed protested as I flopped on my back. “I don’t wanna go out.” I pouted for half a minute. “I feel so bad for Diya. She and Bruce were inseparable. I wonder how her parents got her to leave?”
“That’s how things are over there.”
We were both silent again.”
I pulled Gloria to my chest. “What if we have to go home?” I finally asked, addressing the hippo in the room.
Mia threw her book to the floor. “This whole thing blows.”
“Yeah. Yellowblows.”
Driz
zly weather over the weekend brought short-lived power outages. The sporadic, intermittent darkness, evidence of the eastward march of the disaster, sobered the campus.
On Monday morning, the substitute geology prof explained the wet ash particles created alternative paths for electricity. It bridged gaps over insulators and mucked up the insides of transformers. Even a fine layer exploited weaknesses.
Though the moisture caused power problems, rain could be good, too, he explained. Eventually, it would wash the ash away and work it down into the soil.
A guy whose T-shirts regularly advertised his tree-hugger status raised his hand. “The major networks say the ash isn’t dangerous, that it doesn’t leach any chemicals. Do you believe that?”
The professor nodded. “Based on early sampling, the ash—and we assume the lava spreading around Yellowstone—is rhyolitic. None of you have had mineralogy, but it’s composed mainly of quartz, with lesser percentages of feldspars.” He held up a softball-sized chunk of black glass, its edges curved and cupped in the way a hard candy breaks. “Near the eruption we would probably find pieces of obsidian like this. If given time to cool in the crust, the same magma would make granite like this.” He showed us a piece of salt-and-pepper rock like the rough edge of a headstone in a graveyard. “These rocks, and the ash, are essentially no more reactive or dangerous than sand on the beach. Its physical properties are much more problematic than its chemistry.
“It’s lightweight, at least this far from the volcano, though, as we all know from carrying sand buckets at the beach, quantities of it will have significant mass, especially when wet. There are areas in the west where I’m certain roofs are collapsing, though we hope those locations have been evacuated. The weight also creates problems with moving and removing the ash. This isn’t like plowing snow, both in the sense of clearing areas and disposal.
“I have images of particles under the microscope.” He paused to plug his laptop into the projector then searched through the computer’s files. Boone turned off the front set of lights in the lecture hall. “Note how porous yet serrated the grains are.” He moved his cursor around to select magnified images of our tiny, nearly invisible enemies, blown up to the size of bed-pillows on the white screen. “Some of them are minuscule shards of glass. You can see why they wreak havoc on anything mechanical. Belts, bearings, water pumps or engines not properly filtered are failing due to constant abrasion. Similar to our power situation, the weak die first. Poorly maintained or heavily used equipment, such as freight locomotives and trucks, or public water supply pumps, or exposed belts at grain elevators, for example, is especially susceptible.”