by James Evans
As they approached the center of town they heard music and smelled the smoky aroma of cooking fires. Tents and booths were set up in Open Space Park. Children were running around, chasing each other, their faces bright with laughter. Parents tried to keep an eye on them while engaging in conversation with others.
Michelle noticed the state of their clothes. Compared to how clothing would have looked at a festival a year ago, the clothes these people wore looked stiff and wrinkled. The colors weren’t as vibrant, and some of the clothes had stains or patches. Life without washing machines, dryers, fabric softener and detergent, Michelle thought ruefully. It’s going to take a lot more work to look nice. I’m glad I never relied on makeup to feel decent.
Two things hit Kevin at once: the smell of cooking food and the sound of a barbershop quartet’s ringing vocals as they hit the final chord of an exuberant song. The audience gave them a solidly enthusiastic round of applause.
He looked around, trying to locate the source of the aroma and the barbershop singing when Carolyn walked up with a smile.
“Hi, you two, I was hoping I’d see you here!” she said, looking back and forth between them. Michelle was immediately on guard; she wasn’t sure about Carolyn’s intentions.
“How’s Doc doing?”
“When I left, his fever was dropping a bit and he was comfortable. He was awake for a while and was flirting with the nurses. He’s feisty, even when he’s sick. I’ll bet he’s a real card when he’s well!”
“He’s a good man,” Michelle said. “I’m proud to call him my father.”
“He’s your father?!” Carolyn asked with a surprised look on her face.
“Well, not by birth. But when he moved in with us, we became very close. Like family. He’s a good man. It’s true what they say, a good man is hard to find!”
And a hard man is good to find! thought Kevin. He was still glancing around, fascinated by all the activity. He hadn’t seen this many people in nearly nine months, and the atmosphere was a cross between a carnival, a party, and a family reunion. “Man!” he said, “the food smells delicious! I wish we had something to barter!”
Carolyn held out her hand. “Here’s twenty credits. Have some fun tonight.” Kevin reached out and accepted her gift. “That’s awfully generous of you!” he said.
“Aah, what else am I going to do with them? I earn them faster than I use them. Besides, I want to make sure our new nurse practitioner likes the place.”
Michelle smiled and said, despite her misgivings, “What are your plans for the night? Why don’t you join us?”
“I just want to get off my feet a while. It’s been a long day. I’m going to the music tent.”
“Mind some company? It’s been a pretty tiring day for me, too. Being pregnant is tiring, even without hiking and canoeing!”
“Are you on prenatal vitamins?”
“No, although I wish I were. Maybe I get so tired because I need vitamins. Most people think prenatal vitamins are for the baby.”
“Isn’t that what they’re for?!” Kevin asked.
“No, the baby is going to take the nutrients it needs from the mom regardless of anything else. The vitamins are for the mother. I’m pretty sure we have some to give you,” Carolyn replied. “Kevin, you don’t mind if I borrow your bride, do you?” she asked with a wink.
“Not at all! As long as you promise you'll bring her back! I’ll wander around a bit and come join you,” he said, giving Michelle a peck on the cheek. As the girls walked off, Kevin overheard Michelle ask how people kept clothes clean without detergent. Carolyn was saying something about soap-making when the smell of cooking food once again lured him away.
He followed his nose as he wandered through the festival. He passed a few people eating dried fruit and off-white bunches of cotton candy. Many of the adults were drinking from plastic Stormcloud cups. He distinctly smelled grilled meat and found a man slowly turning a pig over a spit as a group of onlookers stood around drooling like bachelors at a burlesque show. Every time drippings sizzled onto the bed of coals, a puff of smoke rose into the air. It was intoxicating. Kevin was tempted make a purchase, but decided to eat with Michelle rather than eat alone. He moved on.
Vendors were selling everything from raw alpaca wool to spring vegetables and smoked fish. One guy had a well-attended booth selling nothing but hot sauce. Kevin saw at least a half-dozen labels, and patrons waited in line for samples. A large hand-drawn sign hung in the back, Zombie Blood Hot Sauce: Reanimate your Taste Buds!
Intrigued, Kevin approached the booth and waited his turn for a free sample. When he finally reached the table, one of the attendants asked him which he’d like to sample, Zombie Blood, Infected Zombie Blood, White Zombie Blood, or Black Zombie Blood?
“What’s the difference between them?”
“You probably know about regular Zombie Blood . . . although come to think of it you don’t look familiar. Have you tried it? Do you like hot sauce?”
“I love hot sauce! I grow my own hot peppers! . . . or I used to, anyway.”
“So let’s start off with the original Zombie Blood.” He offered Kevin a small piece of squash and a bottle of hot sauce. “Zombie Blood has seven kinds of peppers including Carolina Reaper, Trinidad Scorpion, Ghost, Piquin, and habanero. It also has a unique combination of savory herbs and spices for a taste you’ll never forget!”
Kevin dripped the hot sauce onto the squash and munched away, unafraid of the heat. He considered himself fireproof, and was very pleasantly surprised at the savory taste followed by a wallop of heat. “It’s delicious! I can see why it’s so popular! What other kinds do you have?”
“Infected Zombie Blood is extra hot, White Zombie Plasma is only made with Peruvian white habanero peppers and yellow ghost peppers.” He held up a bottle. The liquid inside was pale yellow instead of blood red. “Black Zombie Blood is only made with black habaneros, so it’s much darker than usual. They’re all made with the same spice profile, only the peppers are different.”
Kevin was impressed. “You grow the peppers yourself?”
“We have a pepper collective. Jake grows some and overwinters the plants. He makes clones in the spring and offers them to us. Rick and Brian at Stormcloud grow some as well.”
“I like Zombie Blood on my fried eggs,” a man at the booth volunteered. “Now that my chickens are producing, I’m a happy and healthy man!”
“We also have ZNSensate, which is basically a capsaicin tincture. People with arthritis say it works wonders, but you have to be very careful! We even have a special applicator so you don’t get the oil on your hands. If you’ve ever gotten hot sauce on your Johnson, you’ll know what I mean.”
“I do indeed,” Kevin said, remembering the time Michelle jokingly fondled him, her hands tainted with hot sauce. He was soon outside shoveling snow onto his burning pecker. “It’s an experience I’d rather not repeat. I’ll take a small bottle of Zombie Blood.” He exchanged two credits for the bottle and dropped it into his pocket, pleased to have a supply of hot sauce, and moved on.
One man was selling honey; another man offered bins of fishing bait, and fly-fishing ties were mounted on a canvas wall.
Kevin walked past the wall of ties and saw a small group of people in the next booth. Jake and Lee were standing behind a counter engaged in conversation with patrons. To their right, an elderly woman and a thirty-ish dark-haired man were providing samples of marijuana edibles and small samples of marijuana wrapped in plastic. Every time someone took a sample, their hands were stamped with green ink in the shape of a star. In front of Jake a small line had formed, each person waiting his turn for advice. There were adults of all ages in line. Some looked to be father and son.
As Kevin watched, Jake said something to Lee, who reached inside one of a number of canisters, then dropped a bud of marijuana into a small paper envelope. She’d nod and laugh as she made conversation and even giggled once. Naturally her blouse was very low cut.
It reminded Kevin of his wife, even though Michelle wasn’t wearing anything low cut. Then again, she wasn’t an exhibitionist. Being noticeably pregnant made her more body-conscious than usual.
Lee and Jake were so busy they didn’t notice. He rounded their tent and was immediately enveloped in a wall of male voices harmonizing a capella. Standing in a tight knot on a stage enclosed in a large tent, were four men dressed in matching red-striped jackets. Didn’t they used to call that an Ice Cream Suit? he idly wondered. They were singing what Kevin recognized as Alexander’s Rag Time Band. As he looked on, trick canes suddenly appeared in all of the singers’ hands except one, in whose hands appeared a bouquet of bright flowers. The audience laughed when the men tapped their canes on the ground in time to their song while the man with the flowers looked exaggeratedly befuddled as he tried to them. It was obviously a shtick, but it was funny and they performed it well. As they finished the song with a ringing barbershop chord, Kevin looked around at the crowd until he spied his love sitting with Carolyn.
After Michelle and Carolyn had left Kevin, they chatted amiably. For Michelle it was a novelty; engaging in girl talk was a luxury she hadn’t enjoyed since the Collapse. As they neared the tent, Carolyn touched Michelle on the arm.
“Earlier you said Doc is a good man. Kevin’s a good man, too, you know,” she said.
“Yeah, he is,” Michelle responded, once again feeling the stir of jealousy at the thought of Kevin and Carolyn spending time alone.
“Did he mention me?”
“He did. He said a man who’d been bitten in the leg came to the hospital to die, it got Kevin upset, you bought him a beer and he walked you home.”
“I don’t know why I’m admitting this to you, but on our walk we ended up on the beach. I was feeling very lonely. I . . . please don’t hate me, but I came on to him. He turned me down flat. He told me he wanted to be the man you deserve, especially when you weren’t around. Which of course just made him more attractive. As we sat on the bench, I tried my hardest to pretend he was my boyfriend and we were enjoying a quiet moment on the beach. But it was obvious he was only thinking of you. He was a gentleman all the way, damn it,” she said with a smile. “He told me some really bad zombie jokes. Then he walked me home. All he talked about was you. So,” she said with a sigh, “I’ll say it again: he’s a good man.” Michelle felt her heart surge and berated herself for doubting him.
“He is a good man. He saved my life. Did he tell you we were neighbors when the grid went down? If he hadn’t let me move into his basement, I wouldn’t have survived.”
They made their way into the tent and sat down. The barbershop quartet was quite entertaining and the girls laughed good-naturedly at the bad jokes and funny songs. Carolyn grew misty-eyed as the men sang the final verse to Old Folks at Home, usually called Swanee River:
All the world is oh so sad and dreary,
everywhere I roam
Oh, Lordy, how my heart grows weary,
far from the old folks at home.
She briefly thought of her childhood in Manistee, and said a quick prayer for her parents, hoping they’d somehow survived and were okay.
During one of the interludes between songs, Kevin came over and quickly sat down next to Michelle. She reached out and grasped his arm affectionately, an action Carolyn noticed with a slight pang of jealously.
The quartet finished with a barbershop rendition of An Irish Prayer, followed by a generous round of applause. As the folks dispersed, Kevin, Michelle, and Carolyn began wandering among the small crowd.
“I don’t know about you, but the smell of all this food is driving me crazy! I’m starving!” As he said this, a young girl walked past, happily plucking bits of cotton candy and poking them into her already-sticky mouth. “How do they have cotton candy?” Kevin asked. “Isn’t sugar a luxury?”
“Definitely,” Carolyn responded. “Notice how it’s not white or pink but a slight shade of tan? They don’t make it from cane sugar, which is increasingly scarce. They use maple syrup, something we have plenty of.”
“How about the chicken?”
“We have several farmers with flocks of chicken. They’re allowing a good many of the eggs to be fertilized, and they sell the chicks for credit. Now that it’s getting warm, many families raise a few chickens for eggs and meat. Cooking the chicken over the fire is a clever form of advertising. I'll bet they triple their sales over the next few weeks.”
“I don't know if I’ll be buying any chicks, but I definitely want to try the chicken! What else do you recommend?”
“The roasted root vegetables at the Eldridge booth. They have a peach syrup glaze.”
“Stop, you’re killing me! Are you hungry?”
“No, I ate earlier. Why don't you two go ahead and I’ll head back to work. It must be pretty quiet, because they haven’t called on the radio, but even so, it never hurts to drop in.”
Kevin was surprised when Michelle gave Carolyn a hug as they said their goodbyes, and felt himself grin when she reached out and took him by the arm as they walked along. Kevin steered them toward the chicken vendor and purchased a plate for both of them using Carolyn's donated credits. The vendor had several large squeeze bottles of Zombie Blood near the tableware. They followed her recommendations and added the glazed root vegetables to their plate, then found an empty table and sat down. Kevin went to get them something to drink and returned with two cups from Stormcloud.
“What’s this?” Michelle asked, taking a sip.
“I got you a cider and an IPA for me,” Kevin replied, relishing a sip from his cup.
Michelle’s eyes opened wide. “This is delicious! I haven’t had good hard cider in a long time!”
They dug into their food, the first real meal they’d had in a long time. Mid-chew, Kevin exclaimed, “Damn, this Zombie Blood is hot! Great flavor, though!” As Kevin was stripping the last few bits of chicken from the bones, he saw Jake and Lee walking near their table. Lee noticed Kevin and her face lit up.
“Kevin!” she said, “how’s your friend?”
“On the mend, from what I hear,” Kevin replied. “Come join us!” He introduced Jake and Lee to Michelle as the couple sat down, accompanied by the sound of a bluegrass band launching into their first song.
Michelle gave Lee an appraising look. Her ample cleavage was on display and she saw Kevin glance at Lee’s breasts. Once a breast man, always a breast man, she thought. Michelle was pleased as both Kevin and Jake glanced at her rack, too. Kevin moved his hand surreptitiously to her thigh.
Lee thanked Kevin for the Petoskey Stone he’d tossed to her on the beach and asked where he’d found it. Kevin told her about the gray house and the dry fountain on the patio, and they began an enthusiastic discussion about the best Petoskey Stones they’d ever seen. Meanwhile, Jake and Michelle told each other a bit about themselves. As they finished their meal, Lee handed them a couple small brownies. Kevin gladly devoured his while Michelle experimentally tasted hers.
“This is delicious!” she exclaimed, “where did you get the cocoa nibs? Or the flour?” She popped the rest of the brownie into her mouth and relished the flavor.
“We have a few cocoa plants in our greenhouse. They’re kind of tricky, but we’ve been growing them for a few years and got the knack for it. The flour is actually made from marijuana seeds. This is our most popular weed brownie.”
Michelle stopped chewing and swallowed. “There’s marijuana in the brownies?!” she asked, “I’m pregnant!”
Lee’s eyes opened wide. “My gosh! I forgot! Kevin told me, but it completely slipped my mind! I’m so sorry!”
“Don’t worry about it,” Jake said reassuringly. “There’s no proof that occasional use of marijuana is harmful during pregnancy. Smoking or ingesting in excess is not a good idea, but I’m sure the small amount you had won’t do any harm. You might as well enjoy it. An hour or so from now you’ll probably feel the effects, especially if you don’t partake on a regular basis.
”
“I haven’t smoked in a very long time,” Michelle said, still looking concerned.
“If it eases your mind, in countries where marijuana’s legal, midwives recommend occasional use of marijuana for morning sickness and stress. If you’re worried about it, don’t have any more until the baby is here and you’re finished breastfeeding.”
Michelle tried to look relaxed and took another sip of cider.
“Think of it like you do alcohol. An occasional glass of wine or cider won’t hurt, it’s been proven.”
“Speaking of cider and wine, what are you doing tomorrow afternoon?” Lee asked. “We’re having some folks up to the house. We’d love for you to join us, especially considering you’re a nurse practitioner and brought a new doctor to our little town! Believe me, you’ll both be welcome!”
Kevin and Michelle gladly accepted the invitation and agreed to meet them at the dock around six o’clock. Jake and Lee finished their meal and explained how they were helping people figure out what strain of marijuana would be best for them.
“Some people here were using opiates, now they’re using our herb. Some people say it helps them deal with anxiety or depression, one lady uses it to slow down ALS,” Jake said. “We ask new patients a few questions before suggesting a strain. We only give them one sample and stamp their hands so they can’t keep coming back for more. We want to give them a taste of the medicinal effects, not get them stoned!”