by Nathan Poell
Along the same lines, Barb left. In hindsight, it had been a long time coming. She was none too happy when we moved out here from St. Paul, but eventually got used to it. Then, you know, everything stopped working and she couldn’t get her medications and just got really unstable. I told you all about that before, I don’t want to talk about it again. But last spring, when the rain was so bad and the river was rising, things got real bad again. I tried to calm her down, told her more times than I can remember that we personally were safe – living so far uphill and to the east of the river – but she wouldn’t listen. Once we got word that the Chippewa crested its banks she lost it and took some cabbages some beef jerky and cheese and a bottle of brandy and climbed into the attic. She slammed the door behind her and slid something heavy on top of it – I think that old day bed. I didn’t want to get things to get violent again, so I just went out and tried to find Dr. Carter. Well, he was busy with other hard cases, but he said he thought that some St. John’s Wort might help her out. That was all he could recommend, and I didn’t want to take up his time any further. So, I picked up a tincture of the stuff from the local “alternative apothecary”.
When I got home late afternoon, Barb was outside, sitting in that little rowboat we own and holding an umbrella. She said she was going to wait there for forty days and nights, just to be certain, and that I had to bring her food and brandy every day. Well, so again, I didn’t want to cross her because I knew that if I tried to coax her inside or argue that one of us would have gotten hurt for certain, so I went inside and slept by myself. The next day she was chanting “39 days, 39 nights” over and over when I went out to talk to her. I went back inside and fixed a little bit of breakfast for her: an egg on toast and a little pinky glassful of apple brandy. (Brandy is/was all Barb would drink when in an episode, and so I mixed a few drops of the St. John’s Wort tincture in with her aperitif.) She ate her whole breakfast in maybe four bites, and drank her brandy in one fell swoop. I took everything back inside and waited. This all repeated itself every meal for a couple days. Then, she came into the house mid-afternoon and said she wanted a bath. So, I heated up some water on the stove and gave her a decent pan bath and she let me put her to bed afterwards.
I had hoped that I could keep dosing her with brandy and St. John’s Wort. But a couple days after I thought I got her stabilized, I had to go help survey the damage to the mill. When I got back to the house, I found the front door open. Half the cheeses and all the beef jerky in the pantry were gone, and Barb’s bicycle wasn’t in the garage. There was a little note in the kitchen that read, “36 days left, going to Pike’s Peak so I won’t drown. You can come, too. Bring rest of cheese and another bottle of brandy.”
I looked at a map and guessed which road she’d be most likely to take, and bolted down it to try and catch up with her. Violence or no, I’d catch up and bring her back. But I hadn’t caught her by the time I reached Menomonie, and it was so late by the time I got there, I had to spend the night in a barn. I asked the exceedingly friendly farmer whose barn I crashed in to keep his eye open for a woman meeting Barb’s description and to spread the word then took off back towards Eau Claire at first light the next day, stopped at home just in case she’d found her way back, then zipped southeast towards Fairchild. I didn’t see her at all by the time I’d reached Fairchild so I had a quick lunch and asked the local authorities to please remain on the lookout for Barb, then I rode through Osseo on the way home and did the same thing. And I didn’t sleep that night or at all, I guess, for a week or so. It was the worst... it was bad. I still can’t think of where she might have gone, what might have happened to her. The local sheriff had his deputies on the lookout all summer for any indication of where she’d been, but they never found any sign. He suggested a couple things that might have happened to her, but I can’t bring myself to mention them now. I kept riding all over Eau Claire and Chippewa counties trying to locate her, but found nothing, either.
The worst was I rode over to Cadott one day and didn’t find her or get any news of her from anyone there. On the way back I saw a little trail heading off the road. I was pretty much out of my head at that point, so I thought there was a chance Barb had gone off in there and so I followed the trail into a thick tract of woods. After about 15 minutes of slow riding along this track the trail ended abruptly and there, right there was a huge airplane wreck, an honest to God 747 or whatever strewn all through the woods. I’d never heard anything through the grapevine about there being a plane crash out here, it was a saddening sight. Most of it had broken up, just disintegrated, but there were still a few sections intact. It must have crashed when everything went dark, it seems like forever ago. I stood looking at it for probably five or ten minutes. Remember wondering if things this big skip, like a flat rock on a pond. I suppose so, because the tail section had flipped over and into what looked like the center of the wreck. It smelled really disgusting, like melted plastic fused with metal and bodies. I was walking a little more around the perimeter of the whole carcass when I heard something shuffling around. All of a sudden a black bear waddled out from behind a bunch of bushes. It looked at me in surprise for a few seconds then lowered its head and started charging. I’m pretty certain now that it was a sow, and it probably just had cubs in the area and was protecting them. Something to be said for that, but at the time I was scared. And, shit, you know I don’t move all that well, but like I said I was out of sorts and just forgot all the things you’re supposed to do in that situation so I started running in the opposite direction, toward the tail section. I ran past the few seats, occupied by buckled-in and decayed bodies, to the restrooms. The door to one of them was open and I darted inside it, slammed it shut and locked the door. The bear hit the door about five seconds later, growling and pawing. It was pitch black in the restroom, cramped and hot. The body and plastic smell was even worse, but I didn’t dare open the door back up. I don’t even remember how long it was before the bear went away, but by the time I was sure it was gone and opened the door it was pitch black outside. I was disoriented from the shock of seeing the wreck and bear and from the chase, so I decided to sleep there in the restroom for the night. But I could hardly fall sleep, knowing there were bodies right outside the door. Who were they? Their families can’t possibly know what happened to them, like I may never know what... I opened the door the next morning and sunlight flooded in. This helped me get my bearings, as the open end of the tail section was clearly facing east. I peeked out the opening and listened for about five minutes before deciding the coast was clear. Before I left, and I know this is horrible and I still feel bad about it, I rooted through the little kitchen area and took all the bags of pretzels and chips and cans of soda that I could load onto my bike.
So, I – Obviously, fall and winter have been difficult for me. But in addition to the reading and keeping up shop, I’ve tried to keep busy planning new solar heater set ups. So busy I was last spring and summer with fixing up the mill and trying to both keep my mind off what might have happened to Barb and find her that I wasn’t able to continue on with the solar heater business. But I had to prioritize, and the fact that most folks around here are able to put up plenty of wood for winter made the solar heater thing less a pressing issue than having good flour and cracked brewing grain for everyone. I fully expect to get back into the swing of things this April or May, once it warms up a bit. Year before last they were in demand, and I don’t think that will have lessened any, what with the bitterness of the weather right now.
I’ve included some design sketches for you. They’re not blueprints, as such, but they should be enough information to get you underway if you wanted to make one for yourself. The damn things are so simple that chances are you could put together a pretty decent one with just the information here. But, I know there was a good article about these in Mother Earth News several years ago. If you can dig one up at the library, it’d probably help immensely.
So, regardless of what happened la
st year, I wish you a Happy (and hopefully not belated) Easter! I hope you all had a great passion play, if you’re still doing that. Tell Marty, Yasmin and Betty their uncle says hello, and that they don’t have to share this cheese with their friends if they don’t want to. (It’s too a-Gouda for that!) Also, I’ve packed in a few of those sodas and chips for them – they’re too young to remember what Pepsi tastes like, and I wanted them to have a chance to try it. Just don’t tell them where it’s from.
ROD
Rod’s stew
Four cups pearled barley
Two pounds fatty beef (or pork or whatever, just make sure it has a bone in it)
Three turnips
Three carrots
Two onions
Three or four cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons of salt if you have it
Plenty of black pepper if you can find some
One gallon or so of water
Bring the water to boil on top of stove and add barley, meat (cubed up best you can) and bone (if it’s whole, crack it open to expose the marrow) and boil for a few minutes. Move the pot to the edge of the stove and simmer it for an hour or two, then add the rest of the ingredients, all sliced up thin as you can do it, and bring it back to a boil for another few minutes. Then let it simmer for another hour or as long as you can stand smelling it before breaking down. You can remove the bone at this point. The stew will look oily on top – soak up the fat off the top with good barley bread and eat that first with a little bit of salt. Keep the pot on the edge of the stove so it will stay warm but not boil off. You can add more water afterwards to stretch it into a soup, if you need to.
To: Berringer Axehead, Kansas City, Kansas
From: Teddy Alstott, Golden, CO
Day 1056, Day 1057, Day of the Yellow River
Berringer Berringer A.,
Before I begin, I want you to put these glasses on. OK.
Now put the glasses on. Did you do that? OK. Now you can read the rest. I tested it before sending the letter to you.
Here’s the situation. The cans are almost all empty now. Almost all of them! And I can’t use just the cans as sustenance. But I could really use some down home Kansas sustenance. You’re in Kansas City so you have some, I know. I’d like some more, please.
I told you told you that those would come in handy some day. Some day has some how been happening for some thing like more than two years. The notches on the wall tell me as much. I counted them all three times before writing to you. Wanted to be certain that today was the write day to right. Right, right.
Nobody wanted to believe me. When they brought the pallet to my cabin they laughed and laughed. I told them that the pallet would serve my palate just fine, and that they should be so lucky to have such a backup when “some day” happened. They laughed again and waddled off. Jumpsuit crab people. I wish somethymes that I had different flavors to eat, different and maybe some pepper or powdered parmesan cheese. An egg or a steak or both even would be nice, too. But you can eat the cans all cold, so that’s a clear advantage. Just need a can opener and a fork. Don’t even need a fork, but I do have one and do use it. And I think they would notice the difference in my waste if I ate something different. The meatballs would show up on their scanners too easily. They found Almond Charlie that way. When I ran out of dog food I had to start feeding him what I eat and he liked it but it changed his waste signature. One night I heard him barking outside and there was growling that didn’t come from him. The next morning he was gone and never came back. I’m pretty sure they got him.
Doc Smythe didn’t believe me when I told him what was going to happen. He said that I should have known better than to buy so much of one thing at one time. He said he understood why I did it – that I had done this thing, but was not responsible for doing it. I tried to convince him that what I was doing was important – oh how I tried I tried, but he would not listen. He was not a bad man... and he was a man. A human. I’m certain of it – I have ways. He just would not listen to me. I don’t think he understood anything at all. I pleaded with him. His jacket got ripped and he said he had to go and that he’d get me a new and better script. Not sure what he meant by that – this is real. I saw him talking to Amy on his way out. I saw but I could not hear it. Doc Smythe mumbled mumbo jumbo boyardee. Amy didn’t look at me at all when they were talking, she just kept her eyes closed.
Then, two days seven hours and ten minutes later, some day came. It was dark in the cabin. Not even the night light came on that night. Even then I could tell. I could not see any lights coming from the city. No noise coming from the highway. They always sounded like I thought the ocean would sound like, the cars coming down from the mountains. Sounded like waves, like my head being pushed by waves of sound being pushed by waves of water being pushed by God.
The water didn’t work when I went to use the bathroom. It didn’t work in the kitchen, either. So I went outside to go and get a drink from the creek. I used a cup so I didn’t have to drink straight out of the creek. It was cold, the water. I sat there a minute and a half I remember with my teeth hurting. Then it got so quiet outside I was afraid to move. I knew that some one was watching, nearby. So I ran back inside and locked the door and shut the windows and bolted the door to the bedroom and hid beneath the covers and still I was cold and my teeth hurt.
I resisted breaking the pallet up for a long time. Afraid that the cubic symmetry had to be kept – any asymmetry in something that large increases the risk of detection. This is a fact. But I thought I had found a way around it, found a win win. I take off one can from each corner of the pallet at a time. Four! North south east and west and the order matters. It seemed to have done the trick for quite some time. I can’t eat four at a time, of course, but I was certain the single cans by themselves presented no issue. The empties presented a different challenge, but I was able to find some symmetry in stacking them in the corner of the room. The loss of mass in the cans compensates somewhat for the asymmetry, I’m sure of it. I had a proof somewhere around here but it eludes me now. Regardless, I believe I’ve been found out, or at least they’re getting much closer to determining my location. Fortunately, I was recently tipped off to more surveillance activity.
Just last Tuesday morning I was eating and had almost finished off can number one thousand and fifty three. I heard a coughing sound and ran around the cabin three times trying to find out who made it. I hadn’t made it. I waited a while, then sat back down to eat the last ravioli and I saw something moving on the can. The man on the can was moving. He was motioning to me... me of all people. And then, once we got really face to face, he pointed at his name and then stroked his chin. He just stroked his chin twice and smiled and winked and then stopped moving and I knew he had given me an important clue.
Boyardee ] BoyRD ] BoERD ] BERD ] BEARD!
Thanks to the tip off I started grooming myself a bit more regularly. The day after I got the tip I took a good bath in the creek. It was so cold that I couldn’t sleep for two nights straight I just shivered the whole time.
I thought I had caught one of them in my facial hair this morning. Chitinous exoskeleton. Red exoskelton. Bug. I dropped it in a glass of water, but didn’t hear it squelch the way it’s supposed to do. It has to make a staticky sound like shhh. So I think it was a decoy. The real bugs real surveillance bugs they’re machines are harder to get rid of. Scatter in the light when I open the blinds or door. I hold my breath when I see them and then try to sneak up but they always seem to escape between the cracks in the floorboards. They seem to cluster around the corner with the empty cans, trying to sniff out asymmetries. They’re either self-assembling or the entities behind them know they’re getting closer, because there are more and more of them patrolling the corner every day. It’s clear to me why they’ve got my place staked out. I’ve got the high ground, overlooking all of the town and even further down to Denver. It’s a unique spot and that’s why they want it and that’s why they have to get rid of me.
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Denver, can’t trust anyone in Denver. Denver’s trying to contact them. Sent a huge message this summer, not even trying to be discrete. I saw it – it lasted for several days. Several days it did last. If someone comes to you from Denver turn him turn IT away. Contaminated or converted or worse much worse I don’t even have to imagine hard how much worse.
They got Denver, they did. Might be why they’re getting more aggressive with me. Trying all different methods. Calling my name out at night, even in the middle of the day. I don’t hear it hear it, but they can talk directly to my brain. It’s some kind of wave form they send out that can go through logs and bone. I don’t know how they learned my name. I didn’t tell them. Sometimes they communicate to me using Amy’s voice and have manage to even project her image into my brain. But I know it can’t be Amy because she’s in the underground now and I’m pretty sure is in Kansas now and besides we obviously can’t be seen with one another so I just ignore the projected image until it stops yelling at me and goes away. It’s possible that they subverted one of my compatriots in town and learned my name that way. People in town should be used to dealing with aliens, though. You know, there used to be a show about an alien and it took place here. I don’t remember much about it because I was too young then but Amy watched it a lot. The woman in it – she wasn’t the alien – looked kind of like Amy, but with brown hair and she was a bit skinnier. The alien looked like a man and he wore a vest. That was fiction, I know. But this is real I know this is real.