If the Light Escapes: A Braving the Light Novel

by Brenda Marie Smith

  CHAPTER 8

  It’s too hot for December in this tomato garden, but at least it’s not summer.

  We had a lot of trouble with our tomatoes earlier this year—some kind of blight or fungus. Now we’re trying this heirloom variety. They’re healthy and juicy, more orange than red, but we have to save seeds for the spring, and I’ve got no idea how to do that. Jack thinks he can figure it out. We’ll be out of tomatoes forever if he can’t.

  Maybe we could find seeds or abandoned tomato plants in another neighborhood, but we can’t leave this one anymore.

  I’m picking juicy tomatoes and piling them up in buckets, but I can’t get my mind off Grandpa. What does he think he’s doing, anyway? Some idiotic power-trip bullshit. Like he thinks if he controls everything, then Nana leaving him and lying to him won’t hurt so much? Like that’s going to work—like he didn’t deserve to be lied to.

  If you’re gonna be a dick, people are gonna lie to you. It’s a rule of life, or it ought to be.

  This crazy life we live could turn anyone into a dick, but Grandpa had a head start. Even as a little kid, I knew I never wanted to be anything like him.

  Milo and Mazie finally show up to help with the tomatoes after I have most of them picked.

  “Where have you been? I told you to come after lunch.” The kids are still growing, so they get lunches every day. The adults, not so much. Milo’s grown four or five inches in the last few months, and he’s gonna pass my six feet any day.

  “Sorry,” Milo says. “We had to help Alma bring herbs into the house for the winter.”

  “I forgot about the herbs. I shoulda done that this morning.” Alma has filled half the patio and part of the yard with pots of herbs and medicinal plants. She dug some out of the woods, and neighbors gave her more. She’s learning how to make poultices and teas. She thinks they’ll help us the next time someone gets sick.

  “She has so-o-o many herbs,” Mazie says. “We had to fill all the southern windows with them, even the windows upstairs.”

  “Very cool. So, I want you guys to pick those tomatoes down there, and I’ll finish the other end.”

  We get to work. For Mazie, that includes jabbering at Milo; for him, it’s half-listening to his sister and teasing her. Work gives me a chance to think.

  I wanted to be an environmental scientist, but that’ll never happen now. The solar pulse blew all the giant transformers in the country, and Nana said that no one kept spares. It could be decades before the grid comes back, if it ever does. By then, the whole society will have to be rebuilt before anyone can go to college.

  I’ve been digging through Nana’s books and pulling out any that might help me figure out how to get us some electricity. She has hundreds of books, all over both her houses, but I need technical details, and I haven’t found too many yet. I’d like to ask Nana about it, but I hate to frustrate her when she probably won’t be able to answer me. It’s the water I need to know about first.

  I wanted to fix Nana’s solar panels that she was so smart to have. She thought she’d set them up to generate electricity without the grid. But the manual says the system won’t work off-grid unless it’s attached to some kind of big-assed lead-acid battery. I have hope, though, that I can figure something out, maybe with car batteries, if I can only find instructions somewhere in those books.

  Nana was mad that the solar sales guy didn’t tell her about the battery. I don’t get why she didn’t know, since she’s been an environmentalist all her life. She could’ve afforded the crazy-expensive battery plus a bunch of spares. She was a millionaire before money got worthless. Grandpa didn’t know she inherited all that money. None of us did.

  For months, I’ve been spending all my time growing food, but winter’s here again and I should have more time to search for answers. Refrigeration is what we need most, so the food we grow won’t go to waste before we can eat it. Those canning jar lids that seal—we’re going to run out of them in less than a year. We could starve without freezers.

  If I have to build ten windmills out of scraps, I’m going to find a way to get freezers working—I hope by spring, when the winter veggies come in.

  I’m picking the last few tomatoes at my end of the garden when Mazie hollers, “Stop it!” I spin around to see Milo chasing Mazie and squirting water at her from his drinking bottle. I open my mouth to tell him to stop just as he catches her and dumps two whole liters of water on her head.

  “Milo! Are you insane?” Anger and alarm propel me across the garden. I grab him by the shoulders. “Stop that shit, man! You’re wasting water!”

  “Milo, you’re mean!” Mazie cries, wiping water off her face, shaking it from her hair, water that should’ve been Milo’s drinking ration for the rest of today and into tomorrow.

  “Shit, I was only having fun,” Milo croaks, wrenching himself away from me. “Can’t even have fun in this shithole.”

  “How’d you like to go without water until tomorrow? You wasted your ration. Now whose water are you gonna drink? Mazie’s? Nana’s?”

  Milo’s face crumples and his shoulders sink, his defiance falling away. “Shit,” he mutters.

  “Shit is right.” I step back from him, trying to calm down. “You need to limit yourself to one cup of water until morning. I don’t want you getting dehydrated, but you’ve got to feel how stupid that was.”

  “I’m sorry. Okay?” He whirls around and stomps toward the gate, like he’s leaving.

  “Get back here. We’ve got shit to do, and you’re helping!”

  Milo stops past the edge of the garden and plops to the ground on his butt, facing the cedar fence like he’s putting himself in time-out. Time-out is probably a good idea.

  “Mazie, are you all right?”

  “I can give Milo my water.”

  “Aww, you’re sweet. But I want him to think about what he did.”

  “But I don’t want him to be thirsty,” she says with trembly lips.

  I wrap Mazie in a hug. Though it pains me to say it, I add, “If you forgive him, I guess I should, too.”

  “You should. You love him, don’t you?”

  “Mazie, you blow my mind. I do love that punk kid.” I kiss Mazie’s cheek and squeeze her. Then I walk over to Milo and sit down, staring at the fence with him.

  We’ve been getting most of our water from the drainage pond by the railroad tracks on the western edge of our area—not the place where the train crashed and left so much poison in the ground, but upstream about a mile. We’ve also built rain-barrel systems with house gutters running into them to catch rain. We have about five systems already, but we never have enough rain. And with Mom and them home, we have more people using water. If we don’t get several good rains this winter, we could go completely dry. Totally terrifying.

  The neighbors could turn on us about this, about bringing in more people and using more resources. Especially with Grandpa being such a dick.

  “Sorry I got so mad,” I say to Milo. “I’ve been crazy-worried about the water.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me it was so low?” He looks at me like I’ve hurt him.

  “I didn’t want to worry you.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “No, I really didn’t—”

  “It’s bullshit to try not to worry me. Aren’t we in this together? Don’t you need my help?” His eyes are boring into mine.

  “Is that what you want, for me to tell you everything? I know your dad said you’re a man now, but you’re really just a kid.”

  “So are you.”

  I flop back into the dead grass. “That’s true, but I’m supposed to be a man. I didn’t mean to leave you out. If I get all busy and forget to tell you stuff, remind me, okay?”

  “’Kay,” he says, nodding at me like a man would.

  “You could also learn to look at things and think them
through for yourself. No one told me we were low on water. I figured it out by looking and thinking.”

  “I didn’t think of that,” he says.

  “That’s ’cause you’re a kid.” I poke him in the ribs with my elbow, and he swats at my head. “C’mon. Let’s put straw on this garden for mulch.”

  Mazie runs over to hug Milo, and he ruffles her damp hair. The three of us grab big bunches of straw that we got from the park after no one mowed the grass for a year.

  Together, we pile straw about a foot thick on the garden, and then we stomp the straw down so it won’t blow away. I hope it rains soon to pack the straw better—also to make it less likely to catch fire from cinders blowing out of chimneys or grills. A bad fire could take out the whole neighborhood.

  “Can I have my tomato now?” Mazie asks me. She’s so cute with her straight blond hair all messed up with straw in it. The straw sorta blends in with her hair. She looks like a pixie who’s been rolling in hay.

  “Yup, I promised you a tomato, didn’t I?” I hand her a good-looking orange one.

  “Thanks.” She grins so big it makes me laugh, and she takes a huge bite. Juice squirts out over half her face.

  “Don’t you want to take it home to wash it and put salt on it?”

  “Nope. I like it this way.” Obviously.

  “A little dirt never hurt no one,” Milo says.

  “A little dirt never hurt ‘anyone,’” I say. Nana wants us to have dignity and good grammar, and to carry knowledge and civilization to the future. I don’t know if there will be a future. It doesn’t seem like it, but I act like there is one, just because.

  “I get a tomato, too, don’t I?” Milo asks.

  “Pick one out. Then grab buckets, and we’ll take them to the canning house.” That’s the house next door to us where Nana’s friends June and Charlotte, the nurses, live. They do most of the canning, but they’re older than rocks, so I figure someone else will have to do it before long.

  CHAPTER 9

  At home, I lead Alma into the old laundry room and shut the door so we can kiss without everyone watching. She’s been cooking and she tastes like jalapeños, which makes me hungry and horny at the same time. I really, really don’t want to let go of her, and I know she doesn’t want me to.

  We get back to the dinner table just as Uncle Eddie comes in with Phil. They’re grinning at each other and sort of glowing. I knew something was up with those two.

  Alma has cooked us beans, tortillas, and lots of collard greens. Alma can whip out tortillas like a factory, only hers are better. She makes them just right: not too thick, not too thin. And her homemade salsa is so freaking good.

  “So,” I say while we’re dishing up our food, “what are we gonna do about Grandpa and getting into the Mint?”

  Phil gives Uncle Eddie a sad, sympathetic look. He must know what it’s like to get trashed for being gay. Probably why he didn’t tell anybody.

  Uncle Eddie sighs. “I’d like to take Dad out back and shoot him.”

  “You can’t shoot Grandpa!” Mazie cries.

  “I know,” Eddie says. “Sometimes I want to, though.”

  “That’s mean.”

  “Well, Grandpa’s mean,” Milo says.

  “It’s just a saying,” I tell everyone. “Uncle Eddie’s not shooting anybody.”

  “Talk to him,” Nana says, and we look at her, surprised. “All of you.” She sweeps her good hand around the table, toward each of us. “Together. Just family.”

  “Me too?” Mazie asks.

  “Not me. I’m not goin’,” Milo says.

  “You’re going.” I point my fork at Milo. I notice I’m doing this and put the fork down. I’m not his dad, even if I feel like I am sometimes.

  “There’s not enough of us, Mom,” Eddie says. “There’s only me, Keno, Alma, and the kids.”

  “I’ll go,” Nana says. Wow, that shocks me, and everyone else, from the look of them.

  “But he’s so mad at you, Mom. He might refuse to talk to you.”

  She half-smiles. “I’ll make peace.”

  I want to ask how she plans to do that when she can’t talk much, but it would be disrespectful. Besides, Nana has her ways of getting what she wants.

  Jack says, “When are you doing this?”

  “Tomorrow,” Nana says. “Morning.”

  People mutter their agreements, and I’m just glad as hell we’re not going tonight.

  We scarf up our dinner in silence. I don’t want to talk. I just want to eat. We finish and rinse our plates in a dish pan with only a little water in it. If you ever don’t rinse your plate around here, someone will yell at you, and I do as much yelling about plates as anyone. We cannot waste water by letting food dry on plates. Not a drop.

  I shoo Mazie and Milo over to the Mint. Mazie needs to get home, and Milo needs to visit at least once in a while. It’s more exciting for the kids at our house, but they owe their parents some respect.

  Jack and Nana head home, and Alma looks like she’s about to cry. She shakes her head, blinking, turns around, and hurries upstairs.

  “Um…” I look at Uncle Eddie and the dinner mess, pointing my thumb toward the stairs.

  “Go see about Alma. I’ll get the dishes,” Eddie says.

  “I’ll help,” says Phil.

  “Thanks, guys.”

  Upstairs, I stop at the bathroom to wash my face and to pee in an enamel pot that Nana calls a chamber pot. I don’t have a lot of pee, like I used to. Sometimes, my pee’s so yellow it burns me. Alma says I should drink more water, and I should, but we don’t have enough, so I don’t.

  In our room, I yank off my clothes, leaving them where they land on the floor. I fall into bed beside Alma, and when I crawl under the covers, she’s naked. Her cheeks are wet and her eyes are red. I can’t stand seeing Alma cry, so I grab her with all my strength.

  “I love you so much,” I say, brushing hair from her face. “What’s wrong, baby?”

  “Sometimes I watch you with your family, and I miss my mom and dad so much I feel stabbed in the chest.”

  “I’m so sorry.” I kiss tears off her cheeks.

  “I don’t know how they’ll ever find us.”

  “I thought you left our address in their house for them.”

  “That’s true. I did. I just wish they’d hurry up and find it.”

  “I’m here for you, Alma. I’ll always be here for you.” I put my hand on her heart. “Is this where it hurts?”

  She snuggles into my hand. “Make love to me,” she says.

  Alma needs me right now. She is hurting. She kisses me hard and long and good, like she’s channeling her pain into love. Then she rolls me to my back and climbs on top of me. She grabs for me, and I’m already hard and reaching for her. She kisses me there and I almost come, but I hold it in. I need to be inside her and she needs me there.

  She sits down on me, and I go all the way in to a deep new place. Oh God, everywhere she touches me heals me. I can’t believe how good she feels and how much I need her and want her and have to have her. I’m dying a little right now, with her all wet and slick and moving up and down on me more and more and faster and faster.

  I want to cry out, but I can’t because people. So, I cry out in my throat, and she hums and quivers all over, and it’s too good. It’s too—too—too good and I can’t, I just can’t, but I do it. I come. I feel Alma vibrating inside and coming with me and our juices spilling out of her and onto me.

  Holy shit, and I mean holy holy. Because that, this—this right here—this is love.

  I clutch Alma to me, and I kiss her so much. I say, “I love you,” and she says it back and kisses me on my face and chest. I slip out from inside her. She wipes us off, and then she scoots around until she’s plastered to my side. I tingle where she touches me. I want to keep making l
ove, but my body has other ideas, and I start falling straight to sleep.

  Then Alma raises up a little. “Keno?”

  I open one eye and look at her sideways. “Yeah?”

  “I think…” She glances at the ceiling for a second, and then she drops her eyes until they’re boring into mine. And she says, a little louder, “Baby, I think I’m pregnant.”

  What?!

  I shoot up in bed and bust out crying, pulling Alma up and holding her so tight our lungs are crushed. I keep holding her until I freak out for air. She’s crying, too. We don’t say anything. We can’t. There’s too much to say and too much emotion to say it.

  Euphoria, anxiety, happiness, dread—it seems impossible to feel so many extreme emotions at once. I hold Alma’s face in my hands and rest my forehead on hers.

  Finally, I say, “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure. I haven’t had a period for two months.”

  “You’d think I would’ve noticed that.”

  “Guys don’t notice that stuff.”

  “I thought I would. I thought I’d be different because I love you so much.”

  “It’s okay, Keno. Two months can fly by.”

  “I guess they did. So how do you feel? Do you need to barf? It’s not morning yet. Tasha always barfed in the morning.”

  I wish I’d never said that. Tasha died from being pregnant with no doctors around. Alma can’t die. I won’t let her.

  We stare into each other’s eyes. Alma’s face is puckered up. So is mine. I shake my head, sniff my nose. I’m not going to cry anymore about this. Not in front of Alma.

  “I’m not sick,” Alma says. “But my breasts are bigger and kind of sore.”

  I touch my fingertip to one of her breasts, then I squeeze it a tiny bit. I don’t want to hurt her, but I want to see what they feel like.

  “It does feel different. Not harder, but—”

  “Firmer,” she says.

  “That’s it. Firmer. I didn’t notice that when we were all busy having orgasms.” I put my hands over both her breasts. “Does this happen when women get pregnant? I never knew about this before.”