The First Year

by Jeff Rosenplot

  It’s the last day of the year. I know that because I rediscovered time. There’s no reason to know that. That knowledge changes nothing. No crises will be resolved because of it. Time only connects me to what I’ve lost. That’s all.

  Oliver watches me carefully. He has affected a demeanor of grave concern. I’m aware of it like I’m aware of everything else that passes in front of my sunken eyes, as events in a movie to which I’m paying little attention. Probably some stupid foreign movie, with subtitles.

  I want to care. I want to step back into the storyline around me, but all I can do is sleepwalk. The days since Christmas have been a series of gelatinous, force-of-habit motions that are akin to flying a plane on autopilot.

  And I think. Great looping thoughts, like Kate’s gel pen handwriting. Sometimes I think that I’m back home in Flint. Other times, I think I’m still walking along the lonely highways. They’re waking dreams and they feel vividly authentic. Oliver keeps watch over me. I think about Oliver too, imagine his life if the world still worked. Would he have a family? Would he go to the dog park, make friends, sniff butts, chase dirty tennis balls? Would it be better than this?

  Better than this. That’s the question, isn’t it, that’s at the heart of everything. If life went on like normal, would life have been better? I’m certainly holding onto its relics. Does that mean I’m trying to hold onto some make believe possible future, too? I’ve played this mental ping-pong match enough to know the answer. But here I am, reading diaries and charging cell phones and peering like some Peeping Tom through the darkened windows of a dead stranger’s life. Whythis girl? I wouldn’t have given Kate Moynihan a second thought back in the world. And yet here this girl is, taking center stage like some multi-octave diva-wannabe on one of those singing shows. Why? Kate Moynihan was desperately unremarkable. Her private thoughts are as shallow as a raindrop.

  Because she’s someone else, that’s why. She’s someone other than me and pedantic or not, Kate’s words aren’t mine. I’ve always lived in own head. That’s nothing new to me. I’ve done so all my life. With one major difference. I had people around me to pull me back out. That’s why Kate has grown so large. Kate is all I have. The Kate who lives in the diary and in the photos on the phone, that’s my only human contact.

  So was before better than now? That’s tough to answer. I’ve adapted to now. In a lot of ways, my life is better. There are no rules, no curfews, no poverty or envy or sibling rivalry or getting teased in the gym class locker room. There’s no one to lecture me or torment me or give me permission or revoke those privileges. Thereare no privileges. Good, bad or indifferent, those are the perks. There’s no one to give me permission, no one to set the rules, ground me, to give me limits. There’s no one. I have no net below me. No one will catch me if I fall. Better or worse? Who gives a damn. I have no choice. Better or worse is a gel pen loop that simply goes round and round.

  Twilight has fallen on New Year’s Eve. The sun has disappeared behind the forest and the stars blossom overhead. I carry firewood outside, lay it on the beach. Walk back and forth, carrying and depositing wood until the pile on the beach has become a small tower. Oliver follows me back and forth, mystified but happy that now at least I seem to be doing something.

  I pick up Kate’s diary. Open it, ran my fingers over the edges of the pages and let each page pass between them. The diary becomes a kaleidoscope of pink and green and blue loops. Flipping through the diary makes the words into meaningless shapes. I pick up the smartphone and carry both of them with me down to the pile of wood. Light the fire. It takes some time for all the wood to catch. Once it does, the bonfire is spectacular. Worthy of the ceremony.

  We sit in the sand, Oliver and I, in front of the fire. Tiny explosions send sparks flying skyward to meet the stars. I check the time on the phone. 11:52pm. New Year’s Eve. I’ve rediscovered time. But time, it’s shone a laser light into the shadows. Time is what connects me to everything that’s gone. I don’t need to know. I don’t want to know.

  11:58pm. The fire burns hot. I stand up. I’m still wearing Kate’s clothes. Kate has proven herself a dark traitor. It’s Kate who brought me back to what I left behind. Strip out of the sweatshirt and the pajama pants. Toss them onto the fire. The firelight turns my bare body golden. I watch the flames engulf the words “SOUTH CHARLESTON HIGH SCHOOL CHEER”. And I’m laughing. It’s maniacal at first, the laugh you’d hear coming from the darkest corners of an abandoned house. I pick up the diary. Toss it into the fire. My laughter mellows, becomes anchored again. I look at the phone. 12:02am. New Year’s Day. I toss the phone into the fire. With that final act, I feel time slowly fade away again. I laugh and dance around the fire. Oliver jumps and barks and together we celebrate our tribal sacrifice. We’re free again. And thatis better.

  JANUARY

  What Comes Next

  I feel good. Three little words, but what words they are. After collapsing beside the New Year bonfire, I dragged herself back into the house and slept through the next day. The only reason I got up was because of Oliver’s persistent pawing to be let outside. I admire that about Oliver. If I were a dog, I’d’ve ended up peeing on the floor and called it a day. Not Oliver, though. He’ll hold his bladder for ridiculous amounts of time if I don’t remember to let him out. Wonder where he learned how to do that.

  I’ve had enough of the past. My little holiday breakdown wore me out. More than that, it hollowed me out. Problem is, the whole thing came out of left field. I thought I was okay. If not okay, then at least getting used to things. But I was anything but. And my crazed bonfire dance aside, what has really changed? I incinerated an iPhone and a dead girl’s diary. So what? If nothing else, it’s done a bang-up job of kicking me square in the butt.

  So how do I avoid a repeat performance? If nothing has really changed, then how… whatever. I don’t really care. What does it matter, anyway? The past is gone. Clinging to tired totems won’t bring it back. It hasn’t so far.

  “Do you know what I think?” Oliver wags his tail.

  “I think it’s time to figure out what we want to do next.” The first thing’ll be to start walking again.

  I throw on shorts and a sweatshirt and walk barefoot through the surf. The cold, salty water washing over my calves and ankles sharpens me. Gives me something to focus on other than second-guessing myself.

  Moving forward means that I need a plan. Our needs are basic; food, water, shelter, heat when it’s cold, and security from whatever hungry varmints decide to track our scents. The latter is precautionary only. Since my encounter with the cougar in Columbia, I haven’t seen any animals like that. The deer wander freely. If there’s a predator, the deer will know long before I do.

  So, shelter. Got that covered, more or less. The giant looming monstrosity of a house has started to feel more comfortable. It isn’t my beach house and never will be, but at the least it’s dependable shelter. I wonder if doing a bit of redecorating’ll help. Throw some of these awful paintings on the wall into the fireplace.

  I know how to cut down trees. I won’t be able to use the chainsaw forever, though. Gasoline’ll run out. Does gas have an expiration date, like milk? Wish I could Google it. Life was so much easier when the answer to everything was on my phone, even if I had to use the library’s WiFi.

  But that’s old world thinking. This is anewworld, Hannah’s undiscovered wilderness. If gasdoes have a best-by date, I’ll find out. In the meantime, I’ll just suck it up and learn how to siphon gas from car gas tanks. Suck it up. Literally. Gross.

  Food, of course. That’s the big one. My arm still aches sometimes from my miserable failure of shooting the deer. Fishing is easier, but it takes a lot of time and oh my God do I hate fish. Eventually the canned food’ll run out. I’m pretty sure those didn’t expire, at least not for a long time.

  Pick up a stick that’s washed ashore and throw it for Oliver. He bounds through the surf, his ears like wings soaring behind him.

  Why do
I even need to kill anything? Lots of people were vegan. The orchard produces a glut of fruit. But I can’t rely solely on that. And what about Oliver? He’s a true carnivore. Could I kill for him?

  The orchard is a start. I really need to plant a garden. Find some vegetables I can tolerate, that’ll fill in the gaps until the fruit matures. And Oliver? At this point, dog food is still an abundant resource.

  Water is another issue. I kick up the frothy surf. All the water in the world in my front yard and I can’t drink a drop of it. How many cases of bottled water are still out there? And how long will they last? Food, water, shelter, heat and security. I need a plan.

  I light a new fire in the fireplace to help take the chill off. Walking barefoot in the ocean quickly goes from refreshing to chilled-to-the-bone. I pull on socks and pants and curl up on the sofa. Oliver settles in beside me.

  Time to make a list. I did it before, back when it was all just for fun. Things have changed. When I’d sat in the beach house with my books and my grand ideas, a part of me, a big part, believed it was all temporary. Despite all I’ve seen and experienced, y’know, all evidence to the contrary, I really thought there’d be an end to my isolated survival. It’s only now, on the other side of New Year’s Eve and the rediscovery of time, that I clearly understand. Everything’s permanent. This isn’t going to end. No one will rescue me. This is my life now, forever and ever, amen.

  Feeling good is as much of an obligation as feeling grief. More, because there’s areason for grief. Happiness, like the cheese and me in gym class, stands alone. Happiness is another unsustainable resource, like gasoline or canned food. An intangible resource, the byproduct of random chemical reactions in my brain. I can find replacements for gas and canned food. Happiness requires tending. In my head, there’s always a storm on the horizon. There’s always something to fear. So happiness, feeling good, they’re targets that keep bouncing out of my sights. The problem is, these targets are the fuel that powers my ability to move forward. The obligation of happiness isn’t to appeal to anyone else, but to enable me to believe there actually is a reason to move forward.

  As before, I break my list into bite-sized segments. The solutions I’ve found so far are the easy ones. To live and not simply survive, I need more permanent answers.

  “I don’t even know what’s still out there. I’ve been taking only what I need at the time, and haven’t paid much attention to how much there is.”

  I helped take inventory at Dad’s shop in exchange for a bump in my allowance. Dad and Mom and me and if she was desperate enough, Grace, we each worked our way with clipboards among the long aisles of heating and cooling and plumbing supplies. Toward the end, as he was getting desperate for new customers, Dad opened a retail side of the heating and cooling store. It was an ill-fated endeavor of course, but it gives me my plan of attack. I need to take an inventory of Charleston. By knowing what’s out there and where it is, I can more clearly see what’s missing. And then maybe I can start consolidating it all into a single location. Make it my own private stockroom.

  I lay out a large map of Charleston on the kitchen table. Mark the locations of the major chain stores. They’re huddled together in North Charleston. Target and Home Depot and the like. Also mark the neighborhoods in which I’ve scavenged for gas cans. Can’t remember all of them, but it’s a good start. I mark the pharmacies, gas stations, office buildings. Each of these places will have either vending machines or sell bottled water. It won’t be much at each place, but there are enough of them to make a difference. I mark out the pet stores, both the big chains and smaller, local ones. It’s a plan, however ambitious, and having a plan means I intend to keep going.

  There’ll be more than enough to allow us to survive. Charleston isn’t the biggest place I’ve seen, but the supplies we need are minimal. If I conserve, if I harvest fruit from the orchard and plant vegetables and even sometimes catch fish, we can live for a long time. And that’s the point, isn’t it? To live. What living leads to, that’s a gray area. And that’s what my plan leaves out — the reasonwhy. But action supersedes that question. I’ll prepare, I’lllive, not because I know what’s coming next butdespiteit.Whyis the trapdoor that leads into the dark, dank basement of my head.Whyis the siren wailing on the fog-shrouded cliffs, drawing me closer only to slice my hull open and drown me in the murky depths.Whycan wait. And itwill wait, hovering in the shadows, ready to pounce like a tiger in the jungle.

  The Attack

  It’s a good plan. As time passes, I systematically found the supplies on my list and move them to one central location. I decide on the orchard shop. The building isn’t huge, but it’s on my side of the bridge and it seems a logical choice. The whole endeavor is a logical choice, one with a solid purpose, and I sink my teeth deeply into it.

  My orchard stockroom is filling up. It looks like one of those underground doomsday bunkers, the kind of thing the crazy people on TV loved to show off. Water, food, medicine, clothes, dog food, all of it lines the walls of the orchard shop in carefully organized groups. I have finite space but also finite needs. I end up leaving most of the supplies in their original locations. The big box stores in particular have too much to carry. I spend days taking inventory of what remains on the store shelves. I mark each location carefully on the map and eventually end up with several binders full of handwritten loose-leaf paper that’s the beginning of a pretty thorough list of what’s still out there. There’s still lots to do. I haven’t even touched Costco.

  We still sleep on the couch. I don’t have a specific reason for not sleeping in the beds. The fire’s hot and I’ve gotten used to the uncomfortable couch. That’s really all that matters. Having a routine.

  I’m lying on the couch and reading by firelight. I’m reading again. Oliver curls up beside me, his body pushing my hips aside awkwardly. I don’t mind. The warmth of the dog’s body against mine makes me feel like I’m home.

  Oliver’s hit another growth spurt. His body has become bulkier, and his puppy features have diminished. I still can’t determine his breed. He has bits of lots of breeds, German Shepherd, Golden Retriever, maybe Chow, and even Beagle. He looks like a mishmash of whatever strays must’ve lived in his neighborhood. Oliver’s eyes are brown and gold, with a soft, sensitive kindness that pours out like sunlight. I love him. Love is a small, insignificant word for such a massive emotion. There are moments, like now, when I feel like Oliver is an extension of my own body, another arm or appendage. I’m connected to him physically. It’s a strange thing to feel. Strange and kind of wonderful at the same time. Oliver’s my best friend. But he’s so much more than that. I don’t think there’s even a word for it. Maybe I’ll make one up. I can do that now. I’m kind of the de facto owner of the English language.

  “Heartfilltenderly? No, it’s gotta’ be new, not just a jumble of words. How about asasa? Or bindlegroot?”

  Oliver raises his head and cocks his ears.

  “You like that one? I’m not sure bindlegroot is my favorite, but if you —”

  Oliver growls. Never does that. He climbs out of his tangle with me and stands on the sofa with his front paws firmly planted. He looks at the night-blackened windows. He sounds horrific.

  A howl from outside. The sound freezes the blood in my veins. A dozen thoughts flash through my head. Werewolf? Monster? Wolves?

  Another howl, this one closer. Maybe the beach, maybe the woods, I can’t tell. The sound echoes and I can’t pinpoint its source.

  Oliver jumps down on the floor. The hair on his back stands up. His muscles twitch. Another growl from deep in his throat.

  I stand up. The dwindling firelight casts long, jumping shadows across the room. Oliver advances slowly toward the open French doors that lead outside.

  Two glowing eyes materialize out of the darkness. They catch the firelight before disappearing back into the night. Oliver barks. I scream.

  I run toward the open French doors. I left them cracked so I can hear the ocean. The sou
nd is soothing, like a lullaby.

  It happens quickly. Two dark shapes burst through the open doors. I barely have time to register their images. Dogs maybe, but too skinny and oddly shaped to be any breed of dog I recognize. Wolves, then? Coyotes?

  The two creatures push the doors wide open. The firelight’s reflection bounces off the panes of glass. Oliver barks, a steady and terrifying stream of sound. The two animals circle the room. One is in front of me, the other behind. I spin around, trying to pick the dark shapes out of the shadows. Oliver stands beside me, circling my body. The two intruders growl low in their throats. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a third shape slip into the room through the open doors. This one is larger than the other two.

  I back slowly toward the fireplace. My shadow dances and grows across the floor. The heat of the dying flames warms me. Oliver keeps pace with me, one eye on each of the smaller animals.

  I make it to the hearth. Reach behind me. The poker hangs on a small iron stand with the other fireplace tools. The poker is the only tool I’ve ever used. A couple of clumsy attempts and there, yes, its familiar weight solidly in my hand. Raise the poker in front of me like a sword.

  One of the smaller creatures knocks over a lamp. The crash is startling. Oliver’s attention is diverted. The largest of the animals takes its opportunity to strike. It leaps out of the shadows, bright, sharp teeth ablaze with firelight. It grabs Oliver by the neck. Oliver yelps, a painful and angry sound. The attacker’s momentum causes it to roll away before it can gain solid footing. Oliver doesn’t hesitate. He jumps onto his attacker, growling hideously. Oliver and the other animal roll across the floor. They knock over a table, bang into a chair. And then they’re outside. Their disappearance seems to take the two smaller animals by surprise. Both run out the door in pursuit.