“Been working at the communications center,” Lem replied.
“That busy, huh?”
“Busy.”
“So busy you have to work until near midnight? Anybody keeping you company there? Maybe Martha?” Thaw gave Lem a sideways look and continued. “Nat and I were coming back from visiting her family Wednesday. It must have been almost midnight. Passed your house. No truck.”
“Yeah. Well, the center…And Alba.”
“Isn’t Alba that pretty little Puerto Rican woman from near where you used to live?”
“Well, she’s from south of Waxton. Closer to Ariana…From about ten miles south of Ariana.”
“Didn’t she lose her home in the fire?”
“Yes…and her husband at Magdum.”
“I’ve seen her down at the swap market on Thursdays. With a boy and a girl. Hers?”
“Oswaldo is eleven. Elena is eight.”
“Seems to me you are getting pretty informed on them. Anything I should know?”
Lem was busy screwing the bunch of little hooks into the board he had cut. “Well, I came upon them when we were working on the outside privies. The three of them had set up in that old fishing shanty that used to belong to old man Winters. They were digging a privy a bit behind their shanty and out of view from the path to the lake. Alba had a trowel and the kids had some pan lids. I offered to help. One thing led to another. Soon I was dropping off rabbits, fish, towels and the likes. So for a while now I have been going down almost every day. The kids miss their father. And Alba needs a helpmate.”
“Anything smoking of seriousness in this?”
“Well, we were thinking…what with fall coming soon and winter not long after…we were thinking that they would all be better off up with me. At first I couldn’t figure out how to tell my sister but then she tells me her home is in the safe zone and she’s been thinking about it…how she misses her church friends and the children miss their school friends…so the end of the month she’s moving out and then Alba and the children are moving in. Not immediately perhaps as we only got our license.”
“License?” Thaw’s voice remained level, but he was almost incredulous. Could Lem be thinking of marriage?
“Yeah…” Lem took his time in answering, caught up as he was in an apparent difficulty with one hook. “Yup…a license…a marriage license…Alba doesn’t believe in living together outside of marriage.”
“Your kidding!” Thaw didn’t know whether to jump up and down with joy or to just push the whole idea off as a joke. But the look on Lem’s face and the levelness of his voice told Thaw that this had to be for real.
Lem must have read his mind. “No. No kidding…I know there’s a pretty big difference in our ages. Almost twelve years. But she says she prefers older men.” He looked at Thaw and held his gaze a while before he asked, “We were wondering if you could stand up for us?”
“Hey, Lemme. Lemme tell you how happy I am for you first! Then let me say of course I’ll stand up for you!” And he shook Lem’s hand and hugged him hard, careful though not to upset his healing forearm. Then the two of them headed down the hill to the house, Thaw all animated and looking at Lem, his good arm thrown loosely over the older man’s shoulders…no sense in bringing up now his notion of making a similar proposal to Natalie. Anyhow, he had decided to wait a while for some cue that it was the right time to ask her. There wasn’t any hurry and there was no way Thaw was going to pop the question only to be turned down. So instead he and Lem concentrated on Lem’s big decision, the implications it had for his future, and what the women would think of it when they heard it.
“I think it’s great,” May heard Thaw say as they came through the outer door. “But you could’ve knocked me over with a feather.”
“What are you guys all aflutter about?” asked May as they entered.
Thaw raised an open hand between himself and May. “Don’t ask me.”
So May looked at Arthur. And Arthur reached for the coffee in the cabinet above the sink. To May, it looked like they were going to sit for awhile.
3. At Martha’s
After the bitter event at the Heights, from the various and sundry homeless that had arrived in Locklee, those who came to Martha stayed the year, except for Manfred, the young man who had since been hospitalized with radiation sickness and was not likely to be released anytime soon.
Among the house residents at Martha’s were Miriam and her two teenage daughters, Rozlyn and Juanita. In the months before the Red Cross located their father, the girls slept in the upstairs guest room bunk beds while their mother occupied the double bed in the same room. Then there had been two young adults downstairs in the mudroom, so called because Martha had tiled the floor to accommodate the comings and goings of muddy feet in wet and wintry weather as well as the sloppy eating habits of Marlena, who ate in a corner to the right of the porch door. One of the young adults had been the youngish Manfred. The other was his pregnant girlfriend, Elaine. Until Manfred was hospitalized with radiation sickness, they had slept together on an opened couch. Since Manfred had to be rushed off to the infirmary—and from there to a hospital for more intensive treatment including intravenous hydration and feeding for life support—Elaine used the couch alone. The doctors had told her that the radiation had knocked out Manfred’s defense system against invading germs and viruses and it was even questionable as to whether or not he would even survive the illnesses that preyed upon him now.
Also there was Granny…although whose granny she was, no one had ever rightly determined. She slept on the pull-out couch in the living room along with her long-haired black cat.
In a way one could also count Dody, who, from some unstated general habit, seemed to bounce in and out unannounced, at times to do odd jobs and at times just to share the news.
Martha’s “Mix,” as Dody generally referred to them, had settled into a kind of routine with Martha volunteering at the communications center, the sickbay, and the clothing and supplies depot near to forty hours a week all told and Granny cooking and supervising the gardening. But after the girls’ father, Jorge, was back he then shared the double bed with their mother and Rozlyn’s and Juanita’s bunk beds were down to the living room near Granny. These they used as if each equated to their own room. There they might sit or lie and read or write or draw or listen to the walkman radio which they shared with little discussion except for comments suggesting the other should listen to this or that, the headphones moving back and forth from one dark head to the other.
As Manfred had been allergic to Granny’s cat, after Manfred was hospitalized, the cat became free to move about the house. Meantime, despite her frequent nausea and mild radiation sickness, Elaine advanced steadily in her pregnancy until the fifth month when she miscarried precipitously, upsetting the girls and Miriam terribly. For weeks thereafter they hovered around Elaine, continuing to keep her well-hydrated with the mix of sugar and salt in water that the doctor had recommended, coaxing her out of the house for trumped-up reasons, bringing her special treats, and showering her with such love that even with her worries over Manfred and the loss of their child, her body seemed to stabilize and once again her cheeks began to bloom in a healthy pink and Marlena’s antics and Dody’s stories began to cause her first to smile and eventually to laugh again.
For weeks after her seemingly miraculous reunion with Jorge, Miriam drifted on a cloud of happiness at having him back at her side each night. And almost nightly, Martha could not help but hear in her room situated next to theirs the soft rhythmic sounds of their lovemaking, suggesting their pleasure in having been reunited was probably mutual.
And the whole household took an interest in any news of Manfred’s recuperation from the radiation sickness, although none got to see him because local hospital overcrowding and the intensity of his needs had resulted in him being moved to a hospital at the other end of the state.
Initially, the household remained prepared for news of Manfred’s demise a
s his condition was so progressed, but to their pleasure and surprise, slowly, slowly he began to recover. It was but a couple of months after the doctors told Elaine that Manfred didn’t have much of a chance then they contacted her again to report that his immune system seemed to be regaining strength. Then word came that he might be expected to return “home” in a few months, giving them all cause for celebration.
But with all the residents in the household and their respective visitors, it was Marlena who was truly in her heyday. She had finally stopped greeting each person on their return to the house by jumping on them. Instead, the return of each brought a scene in which the tail wagged the dog as Marlena circled and nosed the entrant. She loved the girls, who seemed never to tire of playing with her, and although she still behaved at times as if she belonged to Martha and would demand from her special attention, in general she was perfectly happy to have any one of the residents or guests pet her or coax her to sit, stay, lie down, or fetch.
Because the leash law was so firmly enforced now, a run for Marlena had been put up from the back porch to the back shed in the corner of the yard. But generally she preferred to remain in the house with easy access to human company and petting. This morning was not much different from most mornings. It was time to play. Rozlyn, the younger but larger of the two girls, grabbed Marlena by the collar, affixed the lead, and let go of the collar only to be pulled out the door which Juanita had opened as she stood ready to grab Marlena, hook her up to the run, remove the lead, and jump back, permitting Marlena her first wild leap forward and down the steps. Rozlyn appeared with a stick, which she threw.
Elaine came to the door to watch.
Rozlyn pointed with her whole being. “Marlena! Marlena! Over there. Over there!”
Marlena grabbed the stick and brought it to her, refusing to let it go.
“Drop it! Drop it! Let go! Let go!”
They struggled joyfully until finally Marlena’s jaw began to release. Rozlyn managed to twist it from between her teeth. Marlena stood there, caught in a series of clonic clompings of her jaw and teeth. Both girl and dog were out of breath.
The game continued until both of the girls and Marlena were fatigued, at which time they all sat together, the girls on the bottom step and Marlena between them on the pavement, each girl with an arm draped loosely across Marlena’s neck and back. Then Elaine, who had remained in the doorway to watch their antics, seated herself in the empty space beside Rozlyn.
It was Rozlyn who slipped her arm first around Elaine’s once again tiny waist, to which Elaine responded by stretching her arm across Rosyln’s back, grasping Rosyln’s outer arm.
FIVE Autumn 2020
By end of summer the system of community education and proactive involvement had resulted in numerous positive outcomes, including the sprouting of some much needed outhouses to supplement the molding privies. Although these required the use of lye, they, too, helped lessen the spread of illness as contagious diseases miraculously had not hit the community hard. But with the coming, inescapable drop in temperatures soon to be upon them, pneumonia and freezing threatened to descend like a scourge if better insulated housing could not be provided. And as the lake in warmer weather had provided a place to bathe daily for those who could get to it, personal hygiene was anticipated to become increasingly problematic.
Winter would require that bathing water be available from pipes that would not freeze and wandering the roads in search of a refreshing drink would no longer be as reasonable a task as it had been in summer. And no longer could Newcomers sleep on beaches or under makeshift lean-tos. And so began the massive effort to build more winter-safe minimal housing for these people who had lost so much and were just grateful to be alive.
Early in September the local Red Cross began to receive more support from the National Red Cross and the National Disaster Medical System and a second or third stage National Magdum Heights Relief Effort finally began to reach Ellensville and Lochlee. The key concerns remained water and shelter. But as the crops from the gardens went out of season and were used up, the need for food increased. Also, with the cold it was expected that the medical needs would change. But what was not expected by the townspeople was the sudden number of Newcomers beginning to evidence delayed effects of the nuclear fall-out.
It would be many years post-exposure before the tumors and cancerous thyroid nodules some would suffer would be likely to present, still, instead of fifteen in the sickbay, there were fifty to seventy-five, most with rapidly advancing open sores. And when so belatedly the military arrived ready to build family dwellings, they were forced instead to first build a hospital, and rather than transporting the sick and dying out, they were called upon to provide the supplies to permit keeping as many as possible in Ellensville near their families. Further, instead of enlarging the graveyard they found it better to enlarge the crematorium, which resulted in an increase in thick, acrid smoke that on any humid day was enough to make the eyes tear.
And so it was not until October that the military, on orders from FEMA, began to build the family housing. At that time, calls went out all over the United States for help. These calls resulted in, on the one hand, more money and materials, but, on the other hand, an increased workforce. This of course meant more people in the town and with that increase, the problem of overpopulation increased proportionately.
To solve the population problem, the military flew in temporary housing that a family could themselves assemble. These houses were formed by bent galvanized pipes being used as the “backbone” over which was fitted a wind-proof tarp-like cover that had been treated to resist mildew and water. And with each unit came a 2400 BTU gasoline or gas run heater large enough to keep the windowless emergency twelve-by-twenty foot shelter adequately warmed on the coldest of days. Drinking water was trucked in and the outside showers at the fire station were enclosed in a large emergency truss-framed “industrial building” which was really not much more than a very large heated tent, but which worked quite nicely as shelter. Then they divided the showers with sheets of plastic affixed to pipe frames. A degree of quasi-privacy was further ensured by a plastic shower curtain that closed over the front of each stall. Also, each stall included a small bench onto which the showerer might drop his or her clothes, and those of any child who accompanied them. And because of this dry area, each shower came to provide not only a way of cleaning oneself but also a brief respite from the overcrowded conditions resulting from whole families living in temporary housing generally composed of only one large undivided room.
After this, the rush became to bring water to the émigrés through pipes that would not freeze. This was done by installing extra sinks with spigots at the various heated emergency relief shelters that dotted the edges of the shanty town. Meantime drinking water could be obtained from a water van that circulated through the village to which the Newcomers clambered to fill their various and sundry water jugs and bottles.
A seemingly false urgency developed that was associated with an effort to fill over the beds of the outside privies and to replace them with Porta Potties so that on cold days one could be better sheltered from the wind when responding to bodily necessities. But some of the residents held out for the keeping of the privies as they were easier to maintain; they successfully argued for emergency shelters to be assembled over them. And so by dint of luck, hard work, some skill and great determination, as with that first winter all those years ago, by Thanksgiving each person and each family had, minimally, a place to take shelter from the cold and a generous supply of blankets, access to drinking water, toted running water for cooking and cleaning, the glory of a hot shower, access to a Porta Potty or covered privy, and a month’s supply of dehydrated rations to be renewed within the month with another month’s supply until such time as spring returned and they could plant again and supplement their monthly minimum.
But not all was roses. Many traumatized children under three refused to walk at all and had to be carried by o
ne or the other of their parents at all times. A child fell head first into the hole in the seat of an unlatched Porta Potty. One man killed himself, but not before he had slaughtered his family.
As the number with radiation sickness peaked, again the school was utilized, in full this time, to accommodate the ill. Thus classes became a thing for a better time, another year. Pets became status symbols, generally available only to those who lived in “real” houses. One of the Red Hats intervened to stop a fight and forgot his gun was loaded and shot another Red Hat through the eye. A young couple died of poisoning from mushrooms they had picked along the road, and as their children did not care for mushrooms, they left behind three orphans, a girl age five and twins age eight. Two teenagers seeking to pillage some food had climbed into a home protected by a vicious dog that bit not one but both of them on the legs. Luckily the dog had been rabies-protected and the children were smart enough to go for medical help and the wounds did not become infected. Thaw survived the bear mauling, but it had taken sixty stitches to sew up his arm. The repair of the muscle remained incomplete and the arm remained in a slightly flexed position thereafter. Lem had a mild heart attack from which the doctor expected him to recover completely.
As for the villagers, there was not one among them who did not look forward to the day when, in theory, the ugly emergency housing with its reminders of the past and potential harbingers of the future would be torn down. How long it would be before that would be likely to occur, however, was anyone’s guess.
SIX Winter Again 2020
Winter set in with its customary lack of warning. The emigrants buckled in and tried to keep warm and cheerful. They experimented with ice fishing with varying degrees of success, mostly due to the difficulty of keeping warm. As only a small number of them were hunters, by and large the hunting was left to the Villagers, who now and again brought down part of a deer carcass to share. Home schooling was in full swing in many of the homes. In the village homes more time was spent on crafts, circulating privately owned videos, cooking and just sitting around talking. The cold and snow and ice had frozen each family into the ghetto from which it came…some frozen-in beside the lake…others wintered-in among the Villagers. Only in the village homes that had become more communes than traditional family homes did the Townees’ and Newcomers’ children mingle.
Jolt Page 28