299 Days: The Preparation

by Tate, Glen

  “Your father died,” Grant’s mom said. She started crying uncontrollably. She had devoted her whole life to that piece of shit. Now he was dead and she didn’t know what to do with herself.

  Grant didn’t feel any emotion at all. What kind of person doesn’t break down in tears when they find out their father is dead? Me, Grant thought. That’s who.

  Sometimes, Grant amazed himself at how unemotional he could be, especially when bad things were happening to bad people. Instead of sympathy for them, Grant would mentally shrug.

  Grant was nice to his mom and told her he would be out to Forks in a few hours. Lisa had awakened. She really hated Larry for all the mean things he had done to Grant (although Grant never told her all the things). Grant didn’t even think to ask her to come to Forks for the funeral. He just left.

  The drive to Forks was a time of reflection. Grant realized during the drive how much he had changed since he lived there. College, marriage, law school, law jobs, kids, successes in his profession— he was a totally different person. It was hard to put into words.

  As Grant got closer and closer to Forks, he came upon landmarks that reminded him of growing up. Memories came flooding back.

  The place hadn’t changed much. Now that he had been living in suburbia, the place seemed like more of a dump than he had remembered it. Was he getting too good for Forks? That thought scared Grant.

  The sun was coming up and he could see all the signs that people lived differently in Forks. They had gardens, fishing boats, and wood piles; signs of self-sufficiency. The pickups had gun racks. It was apparent that they could get by much better in hard times than in beautiful neighborhoods like the Cedars.

  Grant started ruminating again about how dependent he and his family were on society functioning flawlessly. A man needs to take care of his family; you can’t do it when you’re dependent on all the comforts you’re living in now. He’d thought this a thousand times recently.

  All the things Grant saw in Forks that early morning reminded him of a skill he’d lost. He didn’t garden; Lisa would laugh at him for suggesting they put some potatoes in their immaculately landscaped yard. He hadn’t fished in years. He hadn’t split wood either, and probably couldn’t fall a tree like he could back then. Guns. He hadn’t shot in years.

  Grant went to his old house. It was more of a rundown shack than he had remembered. There was a strange newer pickup in the driveway.

  Grant parked his Acura, which looked absurdly out of place at the shack.

  He knocked on the door and his mom answered. She was in terrible shape. Steve was there. It was great to see him, all grown up. Grant assumed the pickup was his.

  The occasion didn’t lend itself to idle chitchat. Grant comforted his mom; he owed her that. He got down to business, planning the funeral and making arrangements. Larry had died of a heart attack.

  Grant’s sister, Carol, arrived a few hours later. He had kept in touch with her, on and off over the years. She was a professor at the University of Washington teaching literature or something. She seemed to be doing well.

  The funeral was a blur. Grant was just there because he was supposed to be. He kept feeling guilty that he wasn’t sad. But he wasn’t. He didn’t really know his mom and dad. His childhood seemed like a lifetime ago. It was; he had a new life.

  After the funeral and consoling his mom until she fell asleep, it was late and Grant went out onto the front porch. Steve drove up. It was so good to see him and be able to catch up. Steve had married a nice local girl and they had three kids. Steve was not logging, of course, since the state and feds had virtually prohibited logging for the sake of the supposedly endangered spotted owl, although there seemed to be a lot of them flying around. Steve managed the local auto parts store.

  “I need to get out of here,” Grant said. “Let’s go have a beer.”

  “Roger that,” Steve said. That’s what Steve and Grant always said back in the day when they worked the radios on CAP searches.

  Grant looked at his Acura and said, “Why don’t you drive?” Steve smiled. They left for one of the two taverns in town. No one recognized him in Forks, which was just fine with Grant. Besides, who has a beer after their dad dies? He didn’t want people to recognize him.

  In his conversation with Steve, Grant focused on how Steve was living. He made a little bit from the auto parts store, but he hunted, fished, gardened, and did some small custom logging jobs on the small pieces of land still available for logging. Grant was drawn to how Steve lived. He realized that Steve and his family could live just fine if the auto parts job went away. They could feed themselves. And they were perfectly happy. They didn’t need big screen TVs or a closet full of clothes they never wore.

  Another thing Grant focused on was the community in Forks and how it banded together. Steve talked about friends giving him deer meat and how he repaired a guy’s boat for free. Everyone knew carpentry, electrical, and even welding skills. Steve had a pretty well- equipped home shop and could just about fix or build everything there. This was how everyone lived in Forks.

  Then a song came on the jukebox. It was one of Grant and Steve’s favorite songs from high school, “Country Boy Can Survive” by Hank Williams, Jr. Steve and Grant were singing along to the lyrics:

  I live back in the woods, you see

  A woman and the kids, and the dogs and me

  I got a shotgun rifle and a 4-wheel drive

  And a country boy can survive

  Country folks can survive

  I can plow a field all day long

  I can catch catfish from dusk till dawn

  We make our own whiskey and our own smoke too

  Ain’t too many things these ole boys can’t do

  We grow good ole tomatoes and homemade wine

  And a country boy can survive

  Country folks can survive

  Because you can’t starve us out

  And you can’t makes us run

  Cause one-of- ‘em old boys raisin’ ole shotgun

  And we say grace and we say Ma’am

  And if you ain’t into that we don’t give a damn

  Wow. That was it. A country boy can survive. Grant can’t. Steve can plow a field all day long and catch catfish from dusk till dawn. Ain’t too many things that ole boy couldn’t do. You can’t starve‘em out and you can’t make ‘em run. These old boys would, sure as shit, raise that ole shotgun.

  That song explained everything missing in Grant’s life. It explained the thoughts he was having about being dependent. He was having them because, unlike most people in the suburbs, Grant actually knew how rural people could survive. Grant could see how dependent he was because he knew how people lived without being as dependent. Grant could see it; regular suburban people couldn’t.

  “Hey, Steve,” Grant asked, “you still got that old Hank Jr. tape we used to listen to?”

  “Nope,” Steve said. “But I got the CD.” Oh, that’s right, Grant thought. It had been many, many years since anyone had tapes.

  “Does it have this song it?” Grant asked.

  “Yep,” Steve answered.

  “Can I borrow it for the trip home?” Grant asked. “I’ll mail it back to you.”

  “Got it in my truck,” Steve said with a smile.

  All the way back to Olympia, Grant listened to that song. Each line had a profound meaning to him. So did the landmarks as he drove. Especially the sign that said, “Leaving Forks.”

  Chapter 12

  You are the man. Do something.

  By the time Grant pulled into his neighborhood in Olympia, everything had changed. He was noticing things he had never noticed before.

  When he was on the outskirts of Forks, Grant noticed all the signs of independent living he’d seen earlier like the wood piles and fishing boats. They got fewer and fewer the closer he got to Olympia. The denser the population became, the fewer signs of independent living he saw. On the outskirts of Olympia, there were no more signs of independ
ent living; quite the opposite.

  On the highway as he came back from Forks, Grant started to notice all the semi-trucks. They were everywhere. They were full of everything people needed to live. Trucks full of food, gasoline, medicines, and parts to run all the machines and gadgets everyone relied on. What if the trucks stopped rolling?

  When he was back in Olympia, Grant stopped at the grocery to get his favorite lunch: stir fry at the deli in the store. He and Lisa rarely cooked anymore; they ate take out pretty much exclusively. As soon as Grant walked into the store, he noticed things he hadn’t noticed before. He noticed that there was a stunning variety of products, but not too much of any given product. For example, in the chilled drinks aisle near the deli, there must have been fifty kinds of cold drinks— but only six or so of each one. Where was the inventory they would use to restock?

  For the first time in his life, Grant walked around the parking lot to the back of the store. He was on a quest to answer this nagging feeling about being dependent.

  Grant walked around the outside of the whole store. There was no giant warehouse with the inventory. There was only a loading dock with semi-trucks constantly coming in and out.

  Semi-trucks. That’s how they did it. It was “just-in-time inventory.” It meant that stores kept just a little bit of product on hand and ordered more when that little bit was sold. This saved the store money by not having to pay interest on inventory while it was sitting before being sold, and it saved on the cost of shelf space. Just-in-time inventory explained why the store would be out of milk and bread within two hours of the announcement that some snow was coming. When that happened, Grant had seen otherwise nice people become angry when there wasn’t any of a particular kind of food that they liked. The idea of going through two days without that one kind of Belgium goat cheese was too much for some people to bear.

  What was wrong with me? Grant wondered. Was he really walking around a grocery store thinking about how much food they had? What a weirdo. He went back and got his stir fry. He ate it and headed home. The nagging feeling wasn’t going away.

  When he got home, Grant saw that Lisa and the kids were out somewhere. He started looking at things in the house. The food pantry. It had maybe a week’s worth of food? The particular cold cereal Manda always ate: two days’ worth. The pancake mix Cole loved: maybe enough for three days. This explained why they were going to the grocery store about every other day. The Matson household had a just- in-time inventory system, too.

  Grant looked at his computer. They couldn’t do much without it. Businesses would be done for in a crisis; no internet, no business. America would grind to a halt in about twenty minutes without the internet. How would all those stores order more inventory without the internet?

  Electricity was even more critical. Without electricity there would be no internet, plus no refrigerators, lights, or anything. Grant scanned around the living room. Everything ran on electricity. Everything.

  He went out to his car to get his phone. In the garage, he noticed that he had no tools. In Forks, everyone had tools. Not just hand tools, but chain saws, shovels, everything. He noticed the furnace in the garage. It ran on natural gas. That seemed like a pretty stable thing to supply, but it took electricity to turn the fan that delivered the heat. Grant remembered the two-day power outage a couple of winters ago and how cold it got in the house.

  Well, we have a fireplace, right? He thought. Except that he had never actually had a fire in it. Lisa said it would make a mess and she didn’t want to use it. The fireplace was a decoration. Besides, they didn’t have any firewood. That would look “junky” at their immaculate house.

  The Matson house relied on water coming out of the tap. The water had never gone out. But there was a giant water treatment plant serving about 100,000 people in Olympia. What if a key part broke and it took a semi-truck or FedEx to get a replacement to the plant?

  What about security? There was no crime in their comfy neighborhood. In fact, Grant could only recall once ever hearing a siren and that was a fire truck going to a barbeque that got a little out of hand. That was it. He had wanted to keep his old .22 at their house, but Lisa said no. She didn’t want a gun in the house. Grant offered to get a trigger lock, which was reasonable given the kids. Still no. “Guns are dangerous,” she said. So Grant’s .22— the one that he had slept with that night he waited to be stabbed by his dad— stayed in Forks. Calling 911 would have to be their only way to stop crime.

  At this point, that nagging feeling about dependence was screaming to him. A criminal, or a group of them, could drive right into the Cedars, get out of their car, walk into any house or knock the door in, and do whatever they liked. That last thought was horrific. He knew what criminals did when they found defenseless pretty women.

  You are the man. Do something.

  There it was again. The outside thought. Talking to him clearly, without speaking. Just a thought from somewhere in his mind. Grant was listening this time to the outside thought. He knew what he needed to. Grant was going to do something.

  Chapter 13

  Capitol City Guns

  Grant got in his car and went to the local gun store, Capitol City Guns, that he’d driven by a hundred times. It felt weird— dirty, actually— going into a gun store. He didn’t want people to see him going in there, like it was a porn store. He sat in the parking lot, gaining the courage to go in. He started to chicken out. Lisa would get so mad if she saw him at a gun store.

  What is wrong with you? Take care of your family.

  The outside thought was getting louder. Grant thought again about what criminals would do to Lisa if they had a chance. Maybe the kids, too. It was the most horrible and terrifying thought.

  In he went. He knew from Forks that a shotgun was the perfect home defense weapon, so that’s what he was going to get.

  The second he walked in the store, he knew he’d done the right thing. There was nothing scary or “dirty” about a gun store. It was like any other store.

  The sales people in the store were very helpful. They could spot a yuppie getting a first gun a mile away, and they wanted to help. Grant got an inexpensive pump 12 gauge, a Winchester 1300 Home Defender. It would do. He got one box of twenty-five shells and a trigger lock, too. He paid cash; no credit card for Lisa to find out about. He had just cashed an expense check from work reimbursing him for a few months’ of miles he had driven on WAB business. He had been planning to turn the cash over to Lisa, as usual. Not anymore.

  Right then and there he decided he would start to put the cash from expense checks in an envelope in the car. This is how he would spend money without Lisa knowing.

  Grant noticed that, unlike the grocery store, Capitol City had plenty of inventory in the back. It made sense that a gun store wouldn’t have just-in-time inventory. If the grocery stores are empty, then people will be flocking to gun stores.

  Did I just have that thought? Grant wondered. What is wrong with me? That trip back to Forks had really changed him. Now he saw signs of American society’s dependence everywhere he looked.

  The whole experience of walking into a gun store was over in about twenty minutes. He filled out the paperwork and got his shotgun.

  “Isn’t there some kind of waiting period for getting a gun?” he asked the sales clerk.

  “Nope,” the guy said. “Not in Washington. No waiting period on long guns, only handguns.”

  After calling a phone number where the police checked out that Grant wasn’t a felon, the clerk rang up the sale and handed Grant a large rectangular box labeled “Winchester.” That was it. Grant was now a gun owner.

  Grant thanked the clerk and picked up the rectangular box and put in his car. When he got out to his car and put the box in his trunk, Grant chuckled. That was easier than I thought, he said to himself. Then it hit him: he had changed. A half hour ago he was a helpless and frightened sheeple. Now he was a gun owner. He immediately felt more at ease. The world isn’t so scary when you
can protect yourself.

  As he left the gun store parking lot, Grant started to wonder how he would get the gun into the house. What if Lisa was home? He felt like he was smuggling contraband. He laughed again because many husbands were going to the porn store and then smuggling it into the house. He was just trying to have a gun to defend them. What a horrible husband he was.

  On the short trip from Capitol City Guns to the Cedars, Grant practiced his line. He hated lying to Lisa but, as the Jack Nicholson’s character in the movie “A Few Good Men” said, “You can’t handle the truth!” That was it. She couldn’t handle the truth and he needed to do this.

  Lisa was unloading some groceries— of course, it had been since yesterday that they went to the grocery store— when Grant came home. He walked in with the shotgun box.

  “Hey,” Grant said, “look what my dad gave me. Mom said he wanted me to have it. Don’t worry, it came with a trigger lock.” Grant was afraid for her to see the shotgun. It was one thing to see a box, but another thing to see a scary gun.

  Lisa glared. But she was thinking. She had secretly been wondering why Grant didn’t have a gun in the house. She had heard about a friend of a friend who had a prowler on the front porch and it took several minutes for the police to come. And the trigger lock would take care of the concern about the kids. She saw lots of things in the ER from unlocked guns and kids.

  “Let me see the trigger lock,” she said. Grant opened the box and the trigger lock was on. She thought about it. This gun actually made sense. She was actually a little proud that her couch potato husband was finally taking responsibility for something around the house like their security. Maybe he wasn’t so worthless, after all.

  “As long as the trigger lock is always on,” Lisa said. “I mean always except if there’s a robber. And the bullets are kept separately. And the gun and the bullets are kept up high where the kids can’t get them.”