“Hi,” I said, setting the basket on the flagstones next to the fireplace.
“How you doing?” Mr. Marcus gave a short wave and brushed a thick lock of dark hair off his forehead. He held a black metal cane in his other hand.
“I want to say, better than you, but I won’t.” I grinned.
“You stay over there.” He scowled and then a crooked smile broke out on his lips. “Ray, how and why do you put up with this?” He limped over to the couch by the front door and sat, propping his bad right leg on the big rectangular coffee table between the couches.
My uncle leaned against the counter that separated the living room from the kitchenette. “I’m a neutral observer now, just enjoying the show.”
“You’re a big help.” Mr. Marcus shook his head.
“I know.” He grinned. “How’s the knee?”
“Oh, now you care!” Mr. Marcus planted the foot of the cane on the floor between his boots. “Hell, I could use an operation, but I don’t foresee becoming a cripple, thank God.” Seriousness came into his voice.
“Where’s Sara?” Uncle Ray frowned. “She’s coming, isn’t she?”
“Oh, yeah, she’ll be here soon. Jay Harper’s walking her over. But it’s been hard trying to get her out of the house and away from her mother for a few hours. Maggie Waite, a nurse-friend of Jay’s is looking after her.”
“How is Maureen?” Uncle Ray crossed his arms.
Mr. Marcus gazed at the floor as if collecting his thoughts.
I slipped into the chair by the radio table and wondered how Mr. Marcus thought of his wife’s dying.
Mr. Marcus was a few years older than my uncle, but not much more. He had some gray in his dark hair, and he was tall and lean. His hands flexed, tightening on the hook-handle of the cane, and loosened, and flexed again.
“Maureen is going to die,” he said. A glassy wetness brimmed in his eyes even as he took in a long breath and held the sadness in. “It’s just a matter of time. The leukemia is going to win.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. The words just came out, though I knew her dying would come.
“Thank you.” He smiled again, and nodded. “I should ask how you’re doing.”
I pursed my lips a moment. “Things really could be worse, so not bad.”
“I like your outlook. You’re a brave, tough, young . . . man.”
“Yes,” Uncle Ray said.
My face grew warm with embarrassment. Mr. Marcus could’ve been referring to Johnny’s death. Or the man I had to kill. Or both. But the complement startled just the same.
“You have a right to be proud of yourself,” Mr. Marcus said.
He’d meant the dead man, but the word ‘proud’ sounded strange to me, almost like something I had to dodge before it hit me. But that was okay, my uncle was alive and that was what mattered.
Someone knocked at the front door.
Chapter 4
I sat up a little straighter. No one just opened doors anymore. Being suspicious, peeking out windows, having a gun nearby was the way of the world now.
“Who is it?” Uncle called out, not yet moving.
“It’s Sara, and Mr. Harper.”
Uncle Ray took a quick look out the side window, drew back the bolt and opened the door.
Sara came in wearing a pink jacket with a white fur-fringed hood. She pulled back the hood and shook her yellow hair loose. “Hi, Dad,” she said almost whispering, and leaned over, giving her father a kiss on the cheek; then she looked around the room, and said, “Hello,” to Uncle Ray and me.
“Hi.” I gave a short wave.
Sara unzipped her jacket and pulled it off, putting it with her father’s. She wore blue jeans and a light-gray sweatshirt with Minisink City High School in blue letters on it. She sat down next to her father, snuggling into the embrace of the arm he wrapped around her shoulders.
Jay Harper came in right behind Sara. He was a tall man with big shoulders. He pulled off his brown corduroy jacket, stuffed his ball cap into a sleeve and dropped the jacket on the counter next to Uncle Ray. He greeted us with a nod and a smile. He looked at Mr. Marcus and said, “On the way over here, my wife, Jean was with me, but she decided to stay with Maggie at your place and spend some time with Maureen.”
“I appreciate your wife doing that.” Mr. Marcus gave his daughter a firm squeeze with his arm. “You see, Sara, she’ll be okay. Somebody’s watching her.”
“I know, Dad, but . . .”
“Yes, I know, too, but you—”
“Yes, I need a break.” Sara’s voice cracked.
“Okay, everyone let’s eat and then talk,” Uncle Ray cut in.
“Good idea.” Mr. Harper sat next to Sara.
I was happy with the agreement. I didn’t know Sara well, but I understood how she felt about her mother dying. We all knew it was coming.
“Get some bowls and spoons,” Uncle Ray said to me and headed over to the fireplace.
Soon, he ladled rabbit stew into the bowls, which I put on the large wood coffee table set between the sofas. We ate in silence, and the only sound being the clinking of spoons against the glass bowls and the crackle of the fire.
The rabbit stew with the cut carrots and potatoes soaked in the brown gravy, filled my belly, even making me sleepy. I glanced at Sara and caught her looking away, and suddenly, a funny sense of embarrassment threatened to rise up warm on my face.
“Ray, this is really good,” Mr. Harper said.
“Thank my nephew for the rabbit.”
“Good shot!” Mr. Harper winked.
I grinned.
“Hey, eating’s important, especially now,” he added.
“And that’s why we wanted to have this little meeting with you, Ray.” Mr. Marcus set his bowl on the table.
“Yes. You see, Ray, this was a good meal,” Mr. Harper said. “The rabbit was very good, but my guess is you used canned vegetables, right?”
Uncle Ray slowly chewed and nodded.
“Well, the canned goods won’t last forever, and I don’t see any sign of things improving anytime soon.”
My uncle swallowed. “No, I don’t either.” He put his bowl on the table and leaned back.
“You see this?” Mr. Harper pulled a thin cell phone out of his shirt pocket. “I’ve wasted some time and energy recharging this thing. I have a habit of carrying it around, but I know it’s a waste of time. I can’t remember the last time I made a connection. But it’s been months. This phone is now a bad habit.” He dropped the cell phone and it clattered on the table.
The black plastic phone spun, fast then slow, a winding down of hope.
“Thanks for the drama.” Mr. Marcus grinned.
But I saw Sara was not happy. Her eyes widened slightly, and she sank back into her father’s arm.
“So, what do you have in mind?” Uncle Ray rested an arm across the back of the sofa.
“Well, between you, me and Jay,” Mr. Marcus said, “we own most of that valley out there, and what smaller parcels of land there are, I’m sure the people who own them will be as interested in farming them as we are. And there’s Dan Hansel up the valley and an older man by the name of Ken Wheeler, who has a big piece of property south of the valley
“But farming what?” Uncle Ray rubbed his chin.
“Corn,” Mr. Harper said. “We can grow corn. Up and down this valley.”
“But why here? Just clearing the land will take weeks and you already have available farmland.”
“I think I got it,” I said, nodding, but more to myself.
Everyone looked at me, and a sense of speaking out of turn caused a hollow feeling deep in my stomach.
“Yes?” Mr. Harper set an elbow on a knee and then rested his chin in his hand.
That emptiness grew.
“Really, what do you think?” Mr. Marcus asked. A faint grin curled his lips.
“Well.” I looked at my uncle.
“Go ahead,” he said.
“Well, since I’
ve been here, hunting, walking the valley, it’s just a great place to hide. The valley is a narrow strip of land held between two low ridges. No one could see in, I mean, the nearest road is on the other side of this ridge.” I pointed with a thumb over my shoulder toward the rear of the cabin.
“And the only other road cuts, east-west, across the lower end of the valley,” Uncle
Ray added, giving me an encouraging wink.
“No one would know we’re here,” I said. “Unless someone wandered in.”
The pleased expression on my uncle’s face eased a little. He realized I was speaking of the three men we killed. “True,” he said, “So, we’d have to have some kind of scheduled watch or patrol.”
“Yes, we’d have a patrol.” Mr. Marcus’s glance moved from Uncle Ray to me.
“You see, I told you this was a good location, didn’t I?” Mr. Harper looked at Sara’s father.
“I didn’t doubt you!” Mr. Marcus held out a hand palm up.
Sara looked from her father to Mr. Harper and then to me. She smiled.
I grinned. Her smile was approving like my uncle’s, and warm.
Uncle Ray, Mr. Marcus and Mr. Harper leaned toward each other, talking about how many people can be relied on, about getting gas for Mr. Harper’s farming equipment, and how soon we could begin clearing the land.
I listened for a few minutes as they went back and forth. I didn’t have anything to offer, but somehow I think my comment about how secure the land was gave the farming idea some vote of confidence. Or maybe I was imagining it. At the time it didn’t seem to matter to me. I was still looking for a way to be part of something, but I couldn’t seem to make this place home.
The fire burned low and a chill creeped into the room. I added a couple pieces of wood from the basket, and with a small black metal shovel I pushed a few scattered embers back into the hearth. I stood the shovel back in the stand by the wood basket.
Sara began to carry a few of the bowls and spoons into the kitchenette. I grabbed what remained. She set the dishes and utensils into the sink we kept filled with water.
The conversation in the living room increased in intensity as my uncle and the others hunkered down over the coffee table. Mr. Marcus made notes on loose-leaf notebook paper with a pencil.
I stepped next to Sara. “Can I help?”
She dipped a bowl and rubbed a dish cloth over it. “Water’s cold. And a little dirty.” She held a palm full of soggy crumbs and dropped them into a trash can standing in the open space under the sink.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Sorry?” She looked at me, and must’ve seen the embarrassment rise up my face like a thermometer. “Don’t be sorry. It’s the same with us. Washing with the same water for days. I haven’t had a bath in months.” She smiled, then flushed pink with embarrassment, and looked back to the sink, continuing to wash the dishes.
“Yeah. It’s weird what you end up missing.”
Sara’s thick hair swayed as she nodded.
I pushed myself up onto the stove, sat and watched. The talking went on in the other room. The washing of the dishes didn’t take long, just a few more minutes, but the way water sloshed in the sink and the clatter of the bowls being set in the drying rack made me think of my mom; seeing her taking plates, and forks and knives from the sink to the dishwasher caused me to take a big, deep breath.
“What?” Sara asked, wiping her hands dry on a towel.
I shook my head, and slid off the stove. My boots made a light thudding sound on the floor. “I’m going out.”
“Outside?”
“Sure.” I paused. “You want to come?”
For a moment, Sara seemed unsure, and then nodded. We went back into the living room and began putting on our jackets.
“We’re going out,” I said.
“Okay,” Uncle Ray said. “But not far.”
“No.”
Mr. Marcus didn’t say anything, but peered at Sara. His eyes narrowed.
“I’ll be fine,” she said.
A tension tingled in the air between them. For an instant, I couldn’t read what was going on, but then understanding came, people saw the world differently now, just as I did. Sara’s father saw the danger.
“Don’t worry,” I said, “I’m taking my bow.”
Mr. Marcus looked from Sara to me and nodded. “Don’t go far.”
***
A portion of a gray boulder protruded from the slope offering enough room for Sara and me to sit. Off to the right, most of the cabin was obscured by the rising swell of the ridge, but that was enough to keep Sara comfortable. I understood that. A creeping paranoia still latched onto me. The urge to continually look around, trying to spot something out of the ordinary, something dangerous that wouldn’t go away.
Noon was long gone, and a chilly breeze swept through a clear blue sky. The sun arced across the sky, heading to the western ridge, throwing down light. The shadows of the trees grew long and skeletal.
I adjusted the strap of the quiver across my back, and gestured with my bow, up and down the valley. “So, all this is going to be corn,” I said, trying to visualize tall stocks.
“You really think that?” Sara asked, with a doubt in her voice.
“Maybe it’s easier to think it’s not going to happen, but I think it will happen and I want it to, especially now.”
She nodded and crossed her arms as if she was fortifying her disbelief, and somewhere in me the urge rose to fight her doubt. I wanted her to believe, so I had to believe.
“Soon,” I said. “All that brush and those little trees will be gone. And corn will grow. I can see that.”
Sara frowned. Her jacket hood was down and the sunlight glowed on her yellow hair. “Really?”
“Yes, really”
“Good.” She sighed.
“You’re convinced, already?”
“I want to be.”
I chuckled, relieved.
“What?” Her brow wrinkled with the question.
“I wanted to be convinced, too.”
A broad smile came to her lips, showing white teeth. “Yeah, and the talking helps.”
“True.”
“I need to talk with someone besides Dad.” She sighed again and said, with a pain in her voice, “And I can’t with my Mom.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Her mother didn’t have much energy to speak, being so weakened by the cancer. I nodded. “Well, we can talk. We can do that. We’re friends?”
“Friends.” She confirmed. Her eyes widened with a spark of enthusiasm.
We shook hands and the smooth warmth of her palm drew me. For a moment, I feared that I held her hand an instant too long. But she looked at me, nodding her head and said, “I used to have a lot of friends.”
“At Minisink High School, right?” I recalled the stenciled name from the sweatshirt she wore, and said so.
“Oh, yeah, that’s right.” She tapped her temple and wobbled her head like some Looney Tunes character. “I used to wonder about them, a ‘where they are now,’ sort of thing.”
“I did too,” I said, and then a quiet flowed over us like a memorial silence to commemorate lost people and times.
The faces of those few good friends hadn’t faded from memory yet, but when life changed so drastically, so irrevocably, considering lost friends like Jeff Lasher and Henry Faber and the others in that world we moved in, going from class to class, having lunch, complaining about homework or teachers, thinking about them and all those school problems just didn’t make any sense. All of it relegated to that different time and place. Where I lived, there was enough trouble to avoid and there was so much to be done.
Chapter 5
A heavy rain had fallen for two days, and a few gray clouds remained, hanging heavy in the sky. Sara and I spent most of the morning working the small vegetable garden behind the cabin. About noon, we left the garden to the afternoon sun. Damp earth stuck like black paste to our hands and the knees of our
blue jeans. Under the eave of the cabin roof a white plastic bucket, half filled with rainwater stood on a plastic green chair. We washed our hands, leaving a brown fog swirling in the water, and walked around to the front of the cabin.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get the dirt out from under my fingernails.” Sara picked at the remaining crust under her nails.
I snorted and shook my head.
“Shut up!”
“I didn’t say anything!”
I kept grinning.
The freckles across the bridge of her nose crinkled up with her grimace, but I could see the smile in her eyes. She knew it, and then laughed.
Everyone had a garden now. Each planted a variety of lettuce, radishes, beets, and potatoes and pumpkins. Mr. Harper, the farmer, provided the supplies and the know-how, which was more than appreciated, simply because he didn’t have to. All this gardening came with the clearing of the valley for the planting of the corn. Everyone, almost a hundred families, helped do the work.
“Something isn’t it?” I gazed along the valley.
“It is amazing.” Sara nodded.
“It’s amazing it got done.”
“Yeah, but you did get gung-ho.”
“Sara, I’m happy we did it, but to actually get all those people, people we didn’t even know, to do this.” I waved a hand out to the field.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. It is amazing.”
The long furrows of dark soil stretched off to the north and south. Not that all the rows were straight. Rocks too big to be moved, still stuck out of the ground like huge petrified bones, and a few trees were also too big to bring down. But everyone worked hard for almost three weeks. There were no holdouts, everyone worked. Hanging together was the only choice, but to see all those people, men, women, teenagers, even little kids, moving brush and freshly cut branches, everyone was amazed at the end of that last long day. To harvest by July, to have anything to harvest, Mr. Harper told everyone Mid-May was the deadline.
“I hope we don’t have a drought,” I said.
“Boy! You’re full of optimism!” Sara shook her head and grinned.
“Yeah, I am optimistic, believe it or not.” I was serious.
Dark Land: An Apocalyptic Novel Page 3