Parched

by Lou Cadle

  “Maybe we’ll stick mostly to tweezers at first,” Sierra said. “And I’ll help with the cutting. Does your medical book have any illustrations we can look at, Kelly?”

  “A few. And I believe there’s a hunting guide of Arch’s that has more.”

  “Perfect,” Sierra said. “Okay, next animal I hunt or trap, we’ll do that, Zoe.”

  “Good!” she said. “What next?”

  “I need to figure out this garden problem. You could do me a favor though. Your grandma has something stored she’s going to share with me to help repair it.”

  “What?”

  “A box of straws. Maybe you and me can figure out how to make them work.”

  “Okay. I’ll get them for you.”

  She and Kelly walked back to the Quinn place. Kelly was moving slowly. Was she old enough to develop arthritis? Maybe she’d pulled a muscle. “Watch out for that dog on your way back. Don’t run.”

  “Okay!” Zoe yelled back cheerfully.

  Sierra wished she could catch some of that happy attitude. But right now, things seemed pretty bad.

  What were they going to do when a second turbine quit working? Or all three?

  She tried to imagine a future with worse heat and no electricity at all. In Arizona, all you had to do in order to get cooler was move uphill. But any cleared land up the mountain would have someone on it. The chance of finding another abandoned neighborhood like the one with their grain farm was nil.

  Don’t think about it.

  If she thought too long and hard, she would despair for her daughter’s future, and want to curl up and quit working. What kind of uninhabitable world had they left their children? Sometimes at night, she thought that humanity had committed slow suicide. She could see how they deserved the world that they had created, that it was a kind of karma operating here.

  But that didn’t help her feel any better about the people she loved suffering in the here and now. She wanted everything to be okay. And she wanted to be able to tell her daughter it would continue to be fine, for all the days of her life.

  Chapter 8

  The next morning, Dev didn’t want to leave his mother alone in the house with Janine. It wasn’t entirely rational. The pregnant woman was in bed almost all of the time, and she was so pregnant, to get up she made a lot of noise, including grunting and panting and an occasional curse under her breath. She hadn’t brought any weapons with her, and their guns were all locked up for the duration of her stay.

  Nonetheless, when his mother stood from harvesting and said she was going in to check on the woman, Dev found an excuse to follow a minute later. If she caught or confronted him about keeping a watch over her, he’d say he wanted to use the bathroom.

  He waited until the door had shut behind his mother, counted to ten, and walked to the porch, stooping to slip back the corner of the sleeping bag that a breeze had moved on his bed. He was sleeping out here right now, on the spare mattress from the bunk beds, laid on a tarp and covered with a sleeping bag to keep it from being damaged by the sun. Cold nights, he slept on the sofa.

  Inside the kitchen, there was no sign of his mother. He snuck into the hallway until he could hear her voice and eavesdropped.

  “I miss my family,” Janine was saying.

  “I know you do. When you go into labor, we’ll get Becca. I promise.”

  “I’m scared.”

  His mother made a sympathetic noise. “I wish I could tell you there’s no reason to be.” She was not one to lie about serious matters.

  “Is it going to hurt?”

  “I imagine so.”

  “Can you do anything for the pain?”

  “I wish. But we ran out of pain pills quite some time ago. It’s a tough life growing all your own food, as I’m sure you know, and accidents happen.”

  Dev was sure that was a lie. There was a bottle of aspirin still, but it was for emergencies only. Pilar brewed some amaranth-potato beer every year, which was awful, but it was what most of them used to get to sleep when an injury might otherwise keep them up. Purely medicinal, not recreational.

  Janine said, “I keep thinking about dying. And then I get angry.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I figure you’ve guessed how I got this way. It was not by my choice.”

  “Did you try to get rid of it?”

  “I did. I ate whatever might make me puke. I tried everything I could think of. I chewed on pine needles in the hopes it would somehow do it. I slammed my fist into my stomach. I begged Becca to try and put something up me, but she wouldn’t.”

  “That’s good. You probably wouldn’t have survived the infection that resulted. Maybe you were fated to have it. Did you ever think that?”

  “I don’t believe in fate. If there were such a thing, wouldn’t some of it make sense? The best person at the compound we lived at—she was a woman, a great leader, and she kept things running smoothly—died a few years ago. If fate had any logic to it, or morals, or any sensible plan, she’d have lived while others died. Bad people lived who I wish hadn’t.”

  “Did things get worse without her?”

  “That’s exactly what happened. How did you know?”

  “Seems logical.”

  “A kind of crazy religious group came to power. It took a year, but pretty soon my family was ostracized. We were given the most hated jobs because we weren’t in their cult.”

  “Did you talk about leaving then?”

  “We did, but they didn’t want us to. They wanted to keep using us.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “And we knew we couldn’t get away with a weapon.”

  “Did you ever think of leaving on your own? One person might have gotten away where a dozen could not have.”

  “I begged Becca to. But she wouldn’t leave her family. And the kids—” Janine stopped.

  After a moment, his mom said, “I know you don’t want to tell me about them, how many and how old. I hope they’re all healthy.”

  “At least there’s that, yes. We protect them as far as we can, and they get the lion’s share of the food we find, but there was a lot of bullying during our last year.”

  “And then you were attacked?”

  “I was. And I reported it. But nothing was done. He didn’t get so much as a hand slap. He should have been kicked out. I mean, just logically, to protect themselves, don’t you think?”

  “I agree. I doubt very much that a man only rapes once and is done with it.”

  “There’s nobody here like that, is there?”

  “No. Not at all. We have a good group.”

  “Your husband doesn’t much like me.”

  “He’s protective. He doesn’t like any strangers.”

  “I guess I understand that.”

  “How’s the bleeding?”

  “I wish you’d let me wash out the rags.”

  “I don’t want you standing for that long. No reason to strain your body more than it is already.”

  “Thank you for doing it. And for feeding me.”

  “You have enough of the pads? I’ll do a wash this afternoon in any case.”

  “I’m fine until then.”

  Dev shifted and a board in the floor creaked.

  “Arch?” his mom said.

  “Just me, Mom. Using the bathroom.”

  “Well use it and get back to work.”

  Dev had no choice. He urinated but did not flush. They only did that every few uses of the toilet. And often he and his father didn’t go indoors but just watered the compost pile, which needed more moisture than their gray water could supply.

  His mother stood at Zoe’s bedroom door and watched him exit the bathroom, eyebrows raised, clearly making sure he was leaving. She leaned against the doorjamb, arms folded. There were lines around her eyes. Worry? Or exhaustion?

  He said, “You look tired. If you want to nap, feel free to use my bed outside. It might be cooler.”

  “I’m fine,” she said. B
ut now that he looked more closely, she did seem worn out.

  Later, outside the woman’s hearing, he’d ask if she was staying up worrying about her patient. If so, he’d fix it somehow. Stay awake himself, sleep outside the woman’s—Zoe’s—room so he could wake if she was in distress, or something. “Don’t overdo it,” he said now.

  And he went out, still worried about his mother’s safety with the stranger, but not as much as he had been. He was worried more about her stress level. She wasn’t getting any younger. She was almost entirely gray now, and with the hot, dry air and exposure to sun drying her skin, she was looking every bit the grandmother.

  He stuck close to the house until she emerged, wiping her face with the back of her hand. And then he went about his chores, the worry in his mind shifting to Zoe. He knew Pilar and Sierra were taking good care of her, and he knew the wind turbine falling apart had not been anyone’s fault. But irrationally, he felt that if he was by her side, Zoe would be safer than without him.

  Chapter 9

  For the second night in a row, since the incident with the wind turbine, Sierra had the nightmares again—memories of that night so long ago with the details barely changed. Sometimes in the dreams, her rifle jammed, and she killed no one, and that was almost worse than the true nightmares, for when she woke up she felt grief anew.

  She rose from bed, taking care not to disturb her daughter, though Zoe slept hard and deep. The sleep of the innocent. The sleep of those with nothing to regret.

  In the kitchen, she put on water. The coffee was gone, the bags of tea were all gone, years ago, but there was still herbal tea. They had quit growing flowers years when Zoe was a baby, except for marigolds, which they still used to border the gardens and deter pests, and nasturtiums, which tolerated the drought well and were edible in salads. Marigold-petal tea was one sort they had. Another was wild dandelion flowers. She picked out a wild sage tea. It tasted bitter, but it woke her up, and she always wondered if that was more a psychological effect than a physiological one.

  There was a moon, so she opened the back door for more light and breeze, and made the tea in the light of the moon. It seemed like something from her childhood, when Pilar was very much into Pagan ritual. He still believed in Nature, of course, and the power of the seasons and sun and the wind…but did he have any belief left in a Goddess? She wasn’t sure.

  As if her thought had conjured him, her father came in and flipped on the light.

  She cringed back from it. “I preferred the dark.”

  “Sure.” He flipped it off, waited a second for his eyes to adjust, and made his way to the table. “Up early?”

  “What time is it?”

  “About four-thirty. Twilight in a half-hour.”

  “Not up early to work, at least. Fourteen hours of work is plenty.”

  “Are you sleeping okay?”

  She hesitated, and then realized he must know she was not. “Not really. Nightmares.”

  “The old ones?”

  She stirred her tea. “Yeah, basically.”

  “Why? The strangers down the hill?”

  “I don’t think so. The stress of Zoe almost being hurt is what triggered it.”

  He sighed. “I wish I could have done more for you.”

  She knew what he meant. “You did everything humanly possible. You’re a great father and a great friend.”

  “Maybe I should have had you talk with Joan back then. Used her as a therapist.”

  “I don’t know that would have done anything.”

  “I wish the Internet had still been up. Maybe I could have found something for you to do to make it easier.”

  She carried her tea to the table and sat with him. “It wasn’t your responsibility. It was mine. And I’ve done the best I can. We all need to live with that, I guess.”

  “I know you have.” He sighed again. “Do you think they’ll ever go away? The nightmares?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe not. Maybe every time someone I love is in danger, they’ll come back. Who can say?”

  “Zoe’s not in danger any more. She only was for a split second, right?”

  “My poor brain doesn’t seem to get that.” She stirred her tea again. “I’m sorry, do you want some sage tea?”

  “Gah,” he said. “I don’t know how you can stand that stuff. What I’d love is a nice big coffee.”

  “After all these years, you still miss it?”

  “I do. I can close my eyes in the morning, lying in bed, and smell it still. And sometimes I think it’s still back then, and all this has been a dream.”

  “Sounds pleasant, believing that.”

  “It only lasts a second. Then I remember. And life is what we make of it, and I’m not unhappy.”

  “I’m glad you and Joan got together.”

  “Well, we’re not really together.”

  “Are lovers. Whatever.”

  “It’s a comfort. I wish things had worked out with you and Dev.”

  “I don’t think that was in the cards. I wouldn’t mind having what you have with Joan for myself with Curt, but he has made it clear he doesn’t want it.”

  “I wonder why. He isn’t usually insane.”

  She laughed, surprised. “I’m not that great of a catch.”

  “You’re beautiful and competent and generous and all kinds of good things.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She wondered what kind of catch she would be. What kind of lover. It’s not as if she got a lot of practice. Though Dev had never complained, he didn’t have much to compare to. “It’s a shame Dev didn’t find a partner in Payson or in Wes’s group.”

  “Do you think of them often?”

  “Payson, never, to tell you the truth. Wes’s group, yeah.”

  “I hope they’re okay.”

  “I wonder if they came into contact with our new neighbors.”

  “Is that how you think of them?” Pilar said.

  “I’m not sure that once they stay a week or two that we’ll be able to get rid of them.”

  “What about the grain farm?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that.”

  “And?”

  “A lot of the trees are dead. We could clear land. It’d be work, and nasty hot work, but we have grain enough in the barn to start again up here. And that might be better anyway. The car is going to break down one day, don’t you think?”

  “Inevitably, though Curt is pretty good at fixing things.”

  “He’s damned good. I wish he’d had enough parts to build a second crossbow. I suck with the Quinn hunting bows.”

  “We trap some. And there are chickens in the freezer still.”

  “But if we lose the grain, we need more calories, and wild meat seems the most likely source of that. I need to develop skill with something. The guy Jacob had a slingshot. Maybe I can learn to use one.”

  “Easy enough to make. You don’t need anyone else for that.”

  “I’d like to watch an expert use it so I can see how it’s done.”

  “So you think we can make up that many calories with meat?”

  “Just until we plant more grain. Maybe we should have more than one site anyway—a second one some walkable distance, so that if there’s a disease or pest, maybe one or the other field would survive.”

  “That’s smart. We’ve been lucky that way—never had a disease or pest take up the whole garden. Except with the furry critters, who are getting worse every year.”

  Sierra’s tea was gone. She yawned. “I guess I should stay up.”

  “I can hear the birds stirring.”

  “Good ears for an old man,” she said.

  “Who’s old?” he said. They sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes and then he said, “Don’t get mad.”

  “Okay,” she said, wondering what he was going to say that would make her angry.

  “I wish you had the kind of relationship with Zoe that you and I have together.”

  That didn’t make her angr
y. It just made her sad. “I’ve been trying.”

  “I know. What is it between you?”

  “She has the Quinns. They’re her family. So she doesn’t really need me.”

  “Of course she needs you.”

  “I know. And I’m here for her. All she has to do is ask.”

  “Sometimes kids can’t ask. They don’t know what to ask for.”

  “Like now, you mean?” She snorted in amusement, though she wasn’t really amused. “Okay, I get your point. Do you have any advice for me?”

  “Just love her.”

  “I do.” But Sierra knew there was something wrong with her, a coolness, a distance. It wasn’t there with Pilar. But everyone she’d met during—and after—the violent events right after the end of oil, she didn’t connect with deeply. She’d slept with a couple of men in Wes’s group, but she’d felt nothing for them. And she loved her daughter, but she knew she didn’t feel it like a person was supposed to. It was hard to explain, even to herself. “I try.”

  “I wish I could help.”

  “At least she doesn’t hate me. There’s that.”

  “No one could hate you, sweetheart. Except maybe you sometimes.”

  There was more than a little truth in that.

  “Maybe if you can love yourself again—without reservation—you’ll get closer to Zoe.”

  “When she’s grown up we could turn into best friends.”

  “I hope it happens before then.”

  “I have a lot of stiff competition.” Before he said something, she said, “No, I know it’s not competition. But Dev’s such a great father. Like you’re a great father.”

  “I try.”

  For some reason, those two words stirred her anger. I try too! But she didn’t say it aloud. He was trying to help. She dragged herself away from the pull of anger and self-pity and thought about her father and what he might want to hear right now. “You do more than try. You succeed. If I don’t say it often enough, I love you and appreciate you.”

  “I love you more.”

  Probably so. He seemed to have a deep well of love, love of the sort that was obvious to anyone who spoke with him. She worried she was more like the dried-up creek that ran by their property. A good hard rain would fill it up. But most days, it was just a line of dust through the woods.