Laura was in the freezer aisle. The doors were hanging open.
“You think these will keep?” She held up a couple of pizza boxes.
“Maybe,” Eddie said. “For a little while, anyway.”
She put them in her pack, and he followed her to where she took a box of cheese crackers.
He gave her a can of whole mushrooms and a couple cans of beans. “Here, put these in,” he said. There was a woman standing just behind them, staring at the empty space in the shelf where the beans had been. She wore a long nylon trench coat, and held on to the handle of a metal cart—a low wire basket on wheels—to support herself. Eddie took one of the cans of beans from Laura’s pack and extended it to her. He assumed she spoke no English. He made a Go on motion with his chin.
The woman shook her head, and Eddie put the beans back on the shelf. When the woman didn’t move, Laura took them and put them back into her pack.
“I’m running out of room,” she said.
“We’ve got enough. I’ll take one more lap.”
He walked toward the hardware aisle and stopped in front of an endcap of insect products. The cans of wasp poison read: SPRAYS UP TO 22 FT. The nozzles looked like little megaphones. A gray-haired man the shape of a bell dropped four of them—one at a time—down his shirtfront. His midsection bulged in geometric shapes from all his shopping.
“What do you need all those for?” Eddie asked, but the man only stared at him, spooked, and scurried away.
Eddie put a can in each of the water bottle pouches at the side of his pack.
At the registers, Laura was leafing through a Cosmo. When she saw Eddie, she put it back in the rack.
“So, we’re just taking all of this,” she said.
“There’s no one here to pay.”
“They must have insurance.”
“Everyone has insurance.”
Outside, people walked across the lines in the parking lot. There were only a few cars and they looked abandoned.
Eddie took a bag of charcoal briquettes that had been stacked in a pile on top of a wooden pallet. He held it in both arms across his chest.
“To cook the pizzas,” he said.
“We’re going to feel ridiculous with all this junk when the power comes back on.”
“It’s not ridiculous to be prepared,” Eddie said.
They crossed an empty street and walked along the sidewalk.
“You’re limping,” Laura said.
“I twisted my knee a little.”
A couple rode a tandem bicycle down the center lane without their helmets on. The woman’s blond hair streamed back behind her.
“Like they’re on vacation,” Laura said.
In their neighborhood, the sky was eggy-white and the heat was rising. Eddie saw a man standing down the hill, arms akimbo. He was tall in the way Bill Peters had been tall.
“Let’s go this way,” he said to Laura. He nudged her with the bag of briquettes and they made a left onto a side street. It was a longer way to go.
“Why?”
Thinking of the cyclists, Eddie said, “It’s nice out, anyway.”
They were in front of the Davises’ when Eddie saw the boy. He was stumbling through the street like a drunk, as gray as an early shadow. Eddie put the charcoal down.
It was like remembering a dream so clearly, it turned real.
“Who’s this now?” Laura said.
Eddie flinched. He looked hard at Laura to see what she was seeing. That the boy was real. That he was standing right in front of them.
She went to him and Eddie followed. The boy’s chest and shoulders were stained with ash. Laura touched his arm and then removed her fingers quickly, rubbing them together. The boy’s hair looked spiky, Eddie saw, but it wasn’t. It was singed.
“What are you doing out here, sweetheart?” Laura asked.
The boy looked at Eddie.
“Was there a fire?” Laura said.
The boy nodded his head.
“Where was it?”
“Laura—” Eddie said.
She turned to him so that the boy couldn’t see her lips and whispered, “What are we going to do with him?”
“What do you mean?”
“We can’t let him wander.”
“He didn’t get here without knowing his way back home. Were you playing in the woods by yourself?” Eddie said, sternly. “You need to stay with adults. Listen when they call you.”
Laura kept her back to the boy, her face hard with concern. She said, “We can’t just let him go.”
Behind them, Mike Jr. came out and stood mutely against the end post of the Davises’ chain-link fence. His little round face was white, and he stared at the boy as if into a tinted mirror. Mike Jr. was six. He held on to a five iron like it was a walking stick.
Eddie nodded at him. “You look after this guy for a minute,” he said. “Teach him your golf swing.”
Mike Jr. continued his vacant staring, and Eddie pulled Laura up their steps.
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
“Laura. He belongs to someone. We can’t take him inside our house. We’ll put the groceries away, and then I’ll come out and help him find his parents.”
“And what if his parents aren’t back?” She set her jaw in a way that suggested the horrible consequences of Eddie’s nearsightedness.
“What else can we do?” he said. “I’ll walk him around the neighborhood.”
“Turn around,” she said, rummaging in his backpack. She pulled out one of the plastic barrels of juice and peeled the aluminum circle off the top, going back down to the sidewalk.
“Here,” she said, handing it to the boy. “Drink this. It’s okay. I’m not a stranger.”
The boy took it in both hands and tipped it to his mouth. When he let up and breathed, his lip was red and the ash there was muddy.
They went inside and put the backpacks down on the kitchen table. Laura started putting things away.
Eddie reached to help, but she caught his wrist.
“I’ll go around with him,” she said.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I want to.”
But when he went outside, the boy was gone.
Mike Jr. was still standing at the edge of the fence.
“What happened?” Eddie said.
“What?”
“You were supposed to be watching him.”
“Who?”
“The other boy.” In his mind, the other boy was Wemmick—his dimensions unknowable by anything but the most impenetrable vaults of his imagination—but, no, the boy had been standing right there. Laura had seen him, too. “Which way did he go?”
Mike Jr. pointed down the street, holding his hand outstretched, and Eddie went in that direction. The day was still quiet—the streets in the neighborhood bright and wide. He was halfway down the block before he turned around and hurried back.
“Mike Jr.,” he said. “Let me borrow that.”
Mike Jr. scowled and wrapped his arms around the golf club. “It’s mine,” he said.
“I’ll bring it back. Promise.”
Eddie grabbed the sticky black grip and struggled to tug it from the child’s grasp. When he did, Mike Jr. said, “Hey!”
“I’ll bring it back, all right?” he said. “Just be cool. Okay? Sit tight.”
He walked and held the club by his side like a weapon, hot blood beating in his ears. He’d have been no less discreet dangling a shotgun.
The neighborhood was empty, and Eddie’s mind was addled by the silence, the aloneness of the streets. It was useless. He wasn’t looking for the boy, he realized. He was waiting for Bill Peters.
Hedges guarded yards from the street and threw long shadows. Even in this sun, there were blind corners. It wouldn’t be hard for Bill Peters to conceal himself. Eddie could imagine him squatting with his jug, and gripped the golf club tighter.
Down another street, he saw a man standing behind a car with the hatchback open. He was
making room inside the trunk.
Eddie rested the club on his shoulder like a Sunday morning golfer, and went to the man as if he’d been called, catching his attention. The man stood up straight.
He was loading camping equipment: a frame pack and a sleeping bag cinched tightly with webbing.
“You got power?” Eddie asked.
The man slammed the trunk, and when he turned back around, there was a Buck knife in his hand.
Eddie laid the club on the street and backed away from it. He held up his hands. “I was just walking by,” he said. “I’m going.”
“No,” the man said. “No—ha—it’s not for that.” He rolled the knife over in his hand and considered the blade. “I’ve got knives I haven’t opened in years. They’re rusty. I’m just checking.” He had a gray mustache and the kind of fat muscles developed with protein shakes. He folded the knife and pressed it behind him into his back pocket.
“No power, then?” Eddie said.
“No power here or anywhere. I came up from the city. That’s where all the crews are.” His face began to exert itself a little around the edges. “It’s hell down there already,” he said.
“I imagine they’ll be up here soon.”
“You hear any sirens? Let me know if you do. They’re all in the city. People here are in a state of emergency, too—trust me—but what do we get? Nothing. They leave all the good folks out here to rot. What kind of America is this where you buy a house and pay your taxes and no one comes to help?”
“I heard a helicopter.”
“Yeah? Which way was it heading?”
“South.”
“Into the city.”
“They’ll come back,” Eddie said. “The electric people will be here soon.”
“Shit they will.”
“Where are you going?”
“My brother lives up in Shepherdstown.”
“You won’t make it north,” Eddie said. “The roads are blocked.”
“I’ll hike it if I have to,” he said. “I’m not waiting around.”
“He’s got power up there, you think?”
“He’s got a bunker. He’s prepared. I’m too damn stupid to have one myself.”
“But you were here in oh-eight? I heard it was out six days. It’ll come back on.”
“In oh-eight nothing blew up. We had water.”
Eddie felt the quiver in the man’s face enter his own lips and arms and knees. “What blew up?” he said.
The man smiled in a patronizing way. “Nothing, kid,” he said. “Just wait here for everything to be okay.”
“I saw the stream,” Eddie said. “That’s what you mean, right? There was a fire.”
“Where were you?” the man asked, his mouth tightening.
“Right up the street. At the spillway. And underneath the Beltway bridge.”
“That makes sense.” He folded his arms behind his back and Eddie flinched. But the knife stayed in his pocket. “I got a call from my brother right before we lost the signal. He’s got his pilot’s license; he calls me from the plane. He saw the whole Potomac do it, the whole river go up.” He smiled again, relaying this news.
“It isn’t funny,” Eddie said, keeping his voice under control.
“No. It’s not.”
“Did you see it in the city?”
“What?”
“The water burn.”
“I didn’t see it there, no.”
“Then you don’t know what really happened.”
“You saw it. You saw beneath the bridge. Just pack a bag and get out. Don’t you know anyone?”
“The electric people will come here when they’re finished in the city.”
The man closed the trunk of his car, locked it, and turned to go back inside his house. “If you say so,” he said.
“Did you see a little boy?” Eddie asked. “All burned up? I mean like all … ashy?” He rubbed his thumbs across his fingers as if the ash was on them. “He was down by the stream, I think.”
“What was he, fishing? There must be a real fish fry down there,” he said, smiling again. “I don’t like mine blackened, though.” Then, more soberly, he said, “No, I didn’t see any boy.”
He went up the walk and into his house and left Eddie to the silence of the street again. Eddie picked the golf club back up.
When he returned home, Mike Jr. had gone inside. Eddie leaned the club against the chain-link fence.
He heard voices coming from the back.
Mike Sr. was talking to Laura there.
Eddie liked Mike Sr. He owned a landscaping business and sometimes brought ornamental plants home for Eddie and Laura to plant in their yard. They had a miniature Japanese maple next to the walk that had already doubled in size. He saw it there now. It looked the same as it had the day before. The man with the Buck knife hadn’t witnessed anything. People would believe anything when they were scared.
“You got him home?” Laura asked as Eddie came around. She was talking about the boy, but Eddie looked at Mike Sr. instead of answering her.
“Welcome back!” Eddie said.
“Yeah, yeah, I made it,” Mike Sr. said. “I had to leave my truck in Virginia, though.”
Laura stepped closer to Eddie.
“You got him home?” she whispered.
He nodded.
“Really?”
“Yeah.” Eddie squeezed her hand because of the way she was staring.
To Mike Sr., he said, “It’s blocked all the way down in Virginia? That’s why it’s taking them so long. What a mess.”
“Or because they’re incompetent shits,” he said. “We were out for six days in two thousand eight. They just aren’t prepared, is what it is.”
“Do you have supplies?” Laura said. “We just got some things.”
“Oh, you were out there looting with the rest of them?” Mike Sr. laughed.
Eddie could feel the heat of Laura’s blush. “There’s no one working,” she said. “I’m making a list of what we took.”
“I’m kidding. Ed, can you give me a quick hand with something? I might be able to solve some of our problems.”
He followed Mike Sr. into his basement stairwell. Inside, it was dark and full of junk, but there was fresh lumber framing the walls, and the junk was stacked up in an orderly way.
Eddie said, “I just met one of these survivalist types. He lives right up the street.”
“What, he’s got a year’s worth of canned peas? I’d rather die.”
“Maybe it’s smart.”
“Living in a hole in the ground? No. This is smart. Get over here.” Sometimes he spoke to Eddie as though Eddie were a child. There was a workbench at the other end of the basement, and he bent down beneath it and took out a black case the size of a lunch box.
“If stuff gets crazy, you two are welcome to stay with us.” He thumbed the numbers on the lock and popped the clasps open. There was a silver handgun in a foam cutout. “Just a burglar alarm,” he said. “One that really goes boom.”
“What’d you see out there?” Eddie said.
“It’s bad. I’m not going to let on in front of your wife or mine, but I can be straight with you. It’ll settle down, but it’s bad right now.”
“I saw some stuff, too,” Eddie said.
“Let’s just say I’m glad it was me who got stuck that far away. I don’t know what I woulda done if Patty and Mike Jr. had been along.”
“Laura had to walk home on the Beltway. I was really worried.”
“Here,” Mike Sr. said. “Let’s take this up.” He pinched a tarp off a pile in the corner. There was a generator underneath. Eddie took the black bar on one side, and Mike Sr. picked up the other, and together, they humped it up the steps. When they had it next to the house, Laura was still standing there. She’d reached across her chest to grab her elbow. It wasn’t like her to stand around. Mike Sr. unscrewed the gas cap and said, “Yep.” Then he ripped the cord a few times. It whined, but only weakly. He r
ipped it again. Then a few times more. “Shit on it,” he said. “I thought maybe it was busted.”
“We’re about to cook some pizza on our grill,” Laura said. “You’re all invited.”
Eddie went back around the fence and poured in the briquettes. He had some lighter fluid in a dented can, and sprayed it on before throwing in a match. In the rush of flame, the pleasantness of summer returned to him, and when the coals were hot and low, he put the pizzas on the grate. Mike Jr. came outside with a Wiffle ball and a plastic bat. Seeing him there with his smudged face, he could forget that the other boy had come by.
“You’re gonna hit the ball with me?” Mike Jr. said.
He stood on the sidewalk with the bat cocked over his shoulder, and Eddie walked down and threw the ball to him. When he made contact, it went knuckling into the street. He was a good little athlete.
“You get it now,” Mike Jr. said.
“I get it? You’re the one who hit it.”
“Yeah, but. You.”
Mike Sr. cracked a beer. He was sitting on his porch stairs watching them. “You better go on and get that ball,” he said to his son, and Mike Jr. scampered into the street.
When the pizzas were ready, Eddie brought out the cutting board and sliced them into wedges. He took five of the barrel-shaped juices from his backpack. Mike Sr. and Patty had some patio furniture, and they sat outside and ate. The evening cooled a little, and a couple of the stroller-moms passed by on the sidewalk.
“I might take a walk up the street later and check on some of the neighbors,” Mike Sr. said. “If you want to join me.”
“Okay,” Eddie said.
When they were finished with the pizza, Patty brought out ice cream and poured it into bowls. They slurped it up like soup.
Eddie and Laura sat on their sofa as the sun faded outside. He thought of Mrs. Kasolos—that jug of water she had in the basement.
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