by Sean Little
I spent many days of the spring and summer mounting solar panels on the roofs of the house, barn, and garage. It was a laborious, dangerous process that took many hours climbing up and down tall ladders, and hauling heavy panels to the roof with rope. I took an empty section of field and built a large framework to hold more solar panels. Using magazine articles, I learned how to wire the panels together and run long sections of electrical cords to an inverter that I had to wire into the main electrical grid of the house. It took a lot of solar panels (less than I thought I would need, though), but I actually managed to get enough juice running into the house so we could use electric lights at night. A few solar panels later, and we could run a TV and DVD player. The well pump and plumbing were on my lengthy to-do list. We were edging back toward civilization!
The night we got the TV working, Ren and I curled up on the couch in the living room and watched “Ghostbusters” and “Ladyhawke,” both favorite movies of mine that Ren had never seen. Huddled under a lap blanket together, eating jelly beans, bathed in the blue-white glow from the TV screen, it was almost like being back before the Flu. It made us feel like we were just normal people again. More importantly, the solar panel kits allowed us to have simple luxuries like electric fans. The difference between sweltering to death on a still Texas summer night and being able to stick a box fan in a window to get some relief was everything, especially for a pregnant woman made miserable by the relentless heat.
That night we whispered our grand plans for the future. More solar power would get us a working hot water heater, and the electric well pump would pump clean, clear ground water into the house. No more bucket filters! No more running out of clean water. There would be a washer and dryer. There would be showers again. There would running taps. The more we dreamed, the more improvements we made, the more it seemed like it would all be possible. Maybe we were talking pie-in-the-sky, but it felt possible at that moment.
A hurricane hit the Gulf of Mexico late in the spring. Inland as far as we were, we were spared the brunt of the initial landfall, but the winds and rains were bad enough. Anytime there was rain, we tried to funnel as much of it into buckets for storage as possible. I had raided a few paint stores after we moved into the farm for just such a purpose. That was the only bright spot to it. We got a lot of clean, fresh water fast. The rain filled dozens of five-gallon buckets. The rest of the storm was terrible. It was several days of unrelenting rain and nasty winds. The wind ripped shingles and gutters from the roof and tore off three of the solar panels I’d mounted to the roof of the barn, doing damage to the underlying plywood in the process, damage that would need to be repaired. Wind-propelled debris cracked several more solar panels I’d mounted in the field near the house. All of them would have to be replaced. Winds and flooding killed a sickening number of plants in the garden, too. There was nothing to be done but replant and move forward. That was just how it was going to be. The extended growing season was also why I had moved south. There would be time to recover. If the plants could not recover, I would simply scavenge more. By this time, there were fruit and vegetable plants growing wild thanks to animals spreading seeds. It would be more difficult, but we would make it work. What other choice did we have?
The farm was not the only thing growing. Ren was a tiny-framed girl. It took almost no time for the baby to make its presence known. Her stomach began to bulge about two weeks after she revealed her pregnancy to me, and the burgeoning baby quickly asserted itself into her life. Her old jeans and shorts became too tight. She was able to find some maternity clothes at a nearby house, but the woman who had used them before was at least six or eight inches taller than Ren. Ren wasn’t good with a sewing machine or needle, so she just used a scissors to lop off the excess leg and walked around with frayed hems.
The Texas summer heat made Ren cranky and uncomfortable. She was in a constant state of misery. She would sweat at the drop of a hat and had to make sure she was drinking a lot of water to keep from dehydrating. This, in turn, made her already baby-compromised bladder work overtime. “I swear to god, I’m either walking away from that toilet or going into it all day long. It’s a miracle I get anything else done.”
Even though there was a lot of fear in both of us associated with the pregnancy, there was also a lot of joy and hope. One night, in bed, I rolled over and curled my arm against her expanding belly, and as if claiming his space, a little foot lashed out and kicked my arm. I felt a tiny thump that startled me and woke Ren. She grabbed her stomach with one hand. “He’s doing cartwheels, I think.” We looked at each and other broke out laughing, equal parts nervous laughter and excitement.
I became very enamored with the baby. I wanted to see it. I wanted to hold it. I know that women have to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to carrying a baby, but I actually got envious of Ren’s relationship with the little guy. I wanted to know what he was doing in there. She would occasionally groan and hold her stomach, or she would suddenly gasp and arch her back. I had no clue what was going on. I tried telling her that she was lucky because of that, and she offered to change places with me anytime, anyplace. The more she grew, and the more I thought about it, the more I really began to look forward to seeing the little bruiser.
We began to prepare for the baby in earnest, too. I rode my bike and cart to a furniture store and brought back all the baby supplies we would need in terms of a bed, crib, and changing table. I loaded them all into the house, and Ren set up a nursery. We started hoarding boxes of diapers. I rode to the one of the warehouse stores in Houston and brought back a cart full of disposable diapers for all stages of development from infant to toddler. With Ren riding in the cart, we went to nearby stores and took mountains of clothes, baby blankets, towels, toys, picture books, and everything else we thought we would need. The baby would want for nothing, we told each other. If it had the unlucky fortune being born into a world without other people, we were going to give it every advantage we could.
The first major problem we experienced came toward the end of summer. We had been on the farm for nearly a year. We had established a rhythm and flow to living there. We had adequately civilized the place, gaining electricity for the house and several animals to raise. I was on the verge of making the running well water dream a reality. I had holes dug for my stockade wall around the farm, but I could not figure out a way to plant the posts by myself. They were heavy and unwieldy. I could not get enough leverage under them to stand them up on end and plant them in the holes. It was just too great a strain. Ren, obviously, could not help. A skid loader would have let me make short work of mounting the posts, but that was not possible, either. I was stuck at an impasse. I needed a system of pulleys and ropes. I needed some tall stepladders, too. I could envision a way to do it in my head, but I simply did not have the necessary equipment. I would need to go into Houston to get the supplies. Because I did not want to take the long trip to get the supplies while there was too much to do around the farm, I postponed it. We had not had any issues for a year, we would be fine a few weeks or months more, I told myself. My mother used to say that if you tempt Fate too long, Fate will eventually give in to that temptation.
On a particularly hot, late summer night, Ren and I were trying to sleep. All the windows were open and we had a box fan running on full blast in the window and another large, oscillating fan at the foot of the bed. It was not helping. The fans only helped regulate our bedroom from “hellish” to simply “unbearable.” We were both sweating and miserable. I had tried to be nice and massage Ren’s sore lower back, but the heat of my touch made her recoil. It was so hot, a pregnant woman refused a back massage. If that’s not hot, I don’t know what is. I was staring at the ceiling and trying to remember what it was like to feel too cold. Outside, I started hearing our growing family of pigs squealing. It was heavy, panicked squeals. Fear. Terror. I knew why horror movies used to use the sound of screaming pigs as a special effect. It chilled the blood.
“What’s that?”
Ren sat up in bed. She pushed her bulging form off the bed and squinted through the screen at the barn. “I don’t see anything.”
I had already pulled on a pair of shorts and sneakers. I grabbed the shotgun I kept on a wall rack next to the bed and the MagLite I kept on the end table. I ran down the stairs and out to the yard. The sound of the pigs suddenly decreased a little. One of them was dead, I just knew it. I shined the MagLite toward the pens next to the barn. Reflected back was the tawny, golden coat of a massive African lion.
The thing was a large male with a thick, bristly mane surrounding a wide head, angular head. One of my younger pigs, already dead, was clutched in his massive jaws. His eyes lit up like fireworks in the glow from my flashlight. I felt prickles of energy along the scars on my back from where a tiger slashed me last fall. When you come face-to-face with a lion, your first instinct is to run. I was not allowed that luxury. I had a farm to defend. I had animals that needed me. I had a wife and child to protect. I had to run at it, shotgun raised. I dropped the MagLite with the beam pointing toward the pens. I needed two hands for the gun. The lion saw me coming. Contrary to every Tarzan book I’ve read, lions are not usually willing to attack a shirtless man. The lion had its dinner. It had taken easy prey. It turned and climbed over the fence of the pig pens carrying its meal, and disappeared into the night.
I took a few moments to survey the damage. The fence was still intact. The pigs had calmed down and stopped squealing. We still had several pigs left, so it was not as if this one being taken was going to break the farm, but I knew that a lion who knew where there were easy meals would be back. Maybe not the next night, maybe not the next week—but it would be back. I got angry. I ran after the lion and screamed curses at it. I fired at it, but I knew the shotgun wouldn’t have the range to do more than give it a welt, at best. I fired the gun into the air a few times. I wanted it scared to come back. I knew it was a fruitless gesture, but I was powerless to do anything else.
The rest of the pigs were scared, but they were safe. I herded them into the riding arena to spend the rest of the night with the Thing sisters and Hera. I made sure the chickens were safely cooped. I checked and double-checked all the doors and closed the open windows on the lower floor of the house.
When I told Ren what happened, she looked worried. “Will it be back?”
It will. I knew it would be. I just didn’t know when. “We are going to need to make the stockade wall a priority. The low fences aren’t going to be enough to stop lions or other animals that decide to make our farm their personal buffet.” I knew that building the wall would mean finally making that trip into Houston. I knew Ren didn’t want me to go. She wasn’t due for at least another month or two (without calendars, who knew for sure?), but she was getting very large and could not do everything she wanted to do around the farm anymore.
“How will you get there?”
I could take the bike, I told her, but I needed some heavy gear. I needed more power than I could generate personally. I would have to use the horse. I would have to make the bike cart a four-wheeled cart and figure out a way to hitch it to Hera. I could ride her, and she could get the cart home. “I’ll need her pulling power.”
“If you’re loading a cart, it will be a lot to get there and back in a single day.”
“Hera can do it. It will be a long, slow walk back, but we will make it work.”
“It might take two days. Maybe three.” Ren was not wrong.
“It might. Do you want me to stay?”
She nodded. Then, she shook her head. “No. No, this needs to get done. If we don’t have the supplies to do it, we need the supplies. We need to protect the animals.” Her hand moved to her belly. I knew what she meant.
“I will only be gone two days, at most. It won’t be too bad. You can stay in the house with the doors locked and a gun on your lap, if you want.”
Ren scowled at me. “I’m not a helpless delicate flower of a girl, schmuck. I will be fine.”
“I know you will.” I backpedaled. “It’s just…I know how it can be when you’re alone.”
“I’m not alone. I’ll have Fester.”
It was settled, then. “I’ll leave tomorrow as early as I can.”
We slept, but only a little. I was out of bed by dawn. I rigged up a simple collar system to hook around Hera’s neck. I drove two pins through the ends of the bike cart arms and hooked the pins to the ends of the collar like a yoke harness, and then I added two simple wheels onto the front of the cart to make it so it could roll flat. It was an ugly cart, but once Hera was saddled and hooked to the harness, she could pull it with no real struggle. I threw a few pitchforks of hay into the cart and a five-gallon bucket of water, well-sealed with a lid. I grabbed my rucksack of tools and supplies, enough food for two days, and a blanket, just in case I needed it.
Ren came out to the driveway to see me off. “Keep a gun on you anytime you’re outside, just in case,” I told her. “I don’t know if that lion will come back, but if he does, the sound of a gunshot will likely scare him off. If it doesn’t, shoot to kill.”
“I will.” Ren looked grim, but I did not see fear in her eyes. This was just the way of things, now.
“And don’t overexert yourself. Rest, if you feel like it. Sleep. I can stay home,” I said. “I can do this another day, if you want. We can just keep the animals inside more.”
“Don’t be silly.” Ren waved off my concerns. “Just come home to me as soon as you can, okay?”
We kissed. I stepped into the stirrups, threw myself onto Hera’s back, and we set off. I glanced back over my shoulder to take a mental picture of my pregnant wife, standing in the driveway waving good-bye to me, with a fat, black-and-white cat doing figure eights around her legs. I waved good-bye to her, and she went back into the house. I didn’t want to leave, but a stockade wall was a very necessary thing. I settled into the saddle for the long ride to Houston.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Alone on the Farm
Did I want him to leave? Of course not. When Twist first brought up the notion of him going into Houston for supplies so he could build the stockade wall, a large part of my brain thought about telling him no, but I did not want to be one of those women who freak out about every little thing. So what if I’m roughly the size of dwarf planet? So what if I have no idea how close I am to actually giving birth? So what if the thought of being alone in this house terrifies me right now? I was not going to break down and tell him that. I had made up my mind to live alone if I had to after my sister died. I had resigned myself to being someone who would have to struggle and scrape for everything she got in this new world, so I certainly was not going to go into codependent fits over someone who was actually trying to make our lives better. If he was strong enough to do all this work on his own, then I would be strong enough to let him go. He would return. You will be fine. You will be fine. You will be fine.
I watched him until the cart was out of sight. Then, there was nothing else to do but to keep on keeping on. There were still chores to do. There were still meals that needed to be made. There were still animals that needed looking after, and without Twist all that fell onto my shoulders. I went into the house and got my slim, black semi-automatic pistol. It was a slick-looking Sig Sauer. I practiced with it occasionally, and I think I was a better shot with a pistol than Twist. I liked carrying it, but I did not particularly enjoy the sound of it. It always felt a little profane to make a big noise in this quiet landscape. I could not fasten my gun-belt and holster around my waist any longer. The future Baby Stickler had expanded to enormous proportions, so I just slipped the belt over my shoulder like a purse.
Fester and I fed the remaining pigs. We fed the Thing sisters. We fed the chickens. I walked the perimeter of the property to check my live traps. I had caught two angry squirrels in the night. I was not about to start eating squirrel, so I let them go. I kept hoping for rabbits. In all the books I read, the quick-breeding of rabbits made them ideal for s
urvivalists.
After I checked on the animals, I busied myself around the house. I swept and mopped the wood floors, and plugged in a vacuum to do the rugs. The solar panels were keeping us supplied with enough power to run a lot of our electrical items. How Twist figured out how to make solar power work is beyond me, but he spent several weeks reading books at night about electrical wiring and solar kits. He said that some people back before the Flu had such good solar power that they were able to kick energy back into their local grids, and then their power companies had to cut them checks for the surplus every month. I just looked forward to him getting enough power running through the house that we can have all the electrical power we need. A year ago, I was living by candlelight and scrap-wood fires in a Brooklyn flat. Now, I had a nice, big house in a beautiful part of Texas with electrical lights and a vacuum. It seemed so crazy to me. A year ago, I would have gladly cut off one of my toes to have a working TV again just to break up the boredom. Now, I have one. Granted, there is no more over-the-air television or cable, but at least we have a massive DVD collection. I don’t take power for granted anymore. Every time I flip a light switch in the bedroom and the room is illuminated with clean, bright, white light, I say a silent prayer of thanks.
My “nesting” instinct started kicking in a couple of weeks ago. I read about that in one of the pregnancy books I picked up. It’s apparently a common inclination of women heading toward childbirth. It is an overwhelming desire to clean things, get rid of detritus around the house, and prepare the home for the arrival of the child. My nesting was getting ridiculous. I wanted to sanitize everything. I had dozens of spray bottles of cleanser in my “store” home next door. I brought a couple of them over to the “living” house and started spraying down surfaces and scrubbing them a sponge. I heated water to boiling to kill any germs on the sponges first, and then I worked myself to near-exhaustion just preparing the house. It felt like nothing could be too clean. One of the pregnancy books I read said that the nesting instinct gets stronger when the baby gets closer to arriving. I hoped that wasn’t true. I was not ready for this baby to arrive.