If the Light Escapes: A Braving the Light Novel

by Brenda Marie Smith

  CHAPTER 12

  The men in camo live three miles east of us, and now we’ve seen them a mile and a half to our northwest. They’re hemming us in. It’s so claustrophobic I want to scream.

  It makes my brain go numb to think about these guys. It’s a threat so potentially huge it could paralyze me if I dwell on it. Kind of like worrying about environmental collapse and nuclear war—you have to go on living in spite of it all.

  I wish I knew if they killed the man in the church, but I’m sure they’re not the only bad guys around. That corpse didn’t keep the camo guys from robbing the church—cold-ass motherfuckers.

  In the back of my mind, I never stop stewing about these guys, but by morning, I’m also obsessed with the problem in front of my face: Grandpa not letting us into the Mint.

  Alma goes next door to make salsa for canning. Silas needs help harvesting lentils today, so I send Milo on over, and I go to the Mint to try another tactic on the old man.

  I don’t know how to expect him to act today. He’s crouched in the Mint’s garden, digging up potatoes with a sharp spade. If he’s losing it, he could bludgeon me with that spade.

  “Hi, Grandpa. How you doin’?”

  Grandpa mutters, “I’m fine,” but we both know he doesn’t mean it.

  I sit on the patio bench. While Grandpa digs potatoes, I talk to him about the tools and the ingredients for bread and for canning that are inside the Mint, and how they belong to the whole neighborhood, and we need a way for people to get them. Grandpa keeps his back to me but turns his head and twists his mouth.

  “Why are you feeding so many goddamned people? It’s wrong. And where’s your little wife? I never saw her yesterday.”

  “Alma was exhausted. She wanted to come because she likes you, but I didn’t want to wake her up.”

  My mom would call this a white lie. Alma’s nice to Grandpa because she’s nice to everyone, but she doesn’t exactly like him. I figure it can’t hurt to let him think people like him more than they do. I’m trying to butter up the old fart and get some cooperation out of him.

  “Grandpa, while you were gone, we needed our neighbors to help guard the Mint so everything wouldn’t get stolen by crazy people with guns, like those guys who did steal a bunch of it. And we needed the neighbors to help us farm. We couldn’t grow everything we needed in one yard or even two. Plus, we were afraid that someone—if they saw us sneaking in at night to get the food, they would take it away from us.

  “Nana had this brilliant idea to make a deal with the neighbors. She’s already made the deal, and we have to stick by it—to trade them food for farming work, for building outhouses and rain-barrel systems.”

  “Bea gave away every goddamned thing and didn’t think once about the rest of us,” Grandpa says.

  This makes me mad, sick mad. Nana thought about all of us every day of her life. But there’s no point arguing with Grandpa about it. He’s probably always gonna hate her, like my mom hated my dad forever after he left us.

  “Nana didn’t give everything away. She has stuff hidden in the Mint cellar for the family.”

  Grandpa drops his spade and whirls around, shooting to his feet to glare at me. “The Mint has a cellar?”

  Damn. I guess no one told him about the cellar. But who can tell shit to an old jackass who doesn’t listen?

  “I gotta get to work, but what if I come back tonight after dinner? I’ll show you how to get down to the cellar and all the cool stuff that’s in it. I’ll bring Alma, too. She’s never been down there before. How does that sound?” I’m thinking if I do him a favor, he might make a deal. I also want to look for Nana’s hidden water down there.

  “Shit, I forgot about it,” Grandpa says, “but that must be what they built in this yard when we all went to Big Bend years ago. Bea lied to me about that, too.” He picks up the spade, frowning again, the craggy lines in his cheeks and forehead craggier than ever.

  I sigh so loud that he looks at me funny.

  “Grandpa, I get it that you’re mad because Nana lied to you. That must be hard to take. But it’s all in the past, and she said she’s sorry, and it’s real hard for her to talk, but she still said it. Plus, whatever way Nana made all this happen—the Mint and the food and seeds and tools and honeybees and the cellar—aren’t you glad she did it? If she didn’t, none of us would be alive.”

  Grandpa studies me with his arms folded in front of his skinny waist, not like he’s mad at me so much, but like he’s mad in general. I wish he would listen to me like he’s listening to a grown man who makes sense. I don’t feel much like a grown man, except I’m gonna be a dad, so I have to be one. And I’m tired to death of Grandpa being a dick. I want him to act like a grown-up for once.

  He keeps studying me and not saying anything. I get up to go. “Can I send people over today for tools and stuff to can the food and make the bread? Please, can I?”

  “Shit. Y’all don’t care about me. Why should I care about what you all think you need?”

  And now I can’t help it. I’m pissed.

  “Shit, Grandpa! How do you think you have water right now? Who grew the beans and veggies you had for dinner? And who planted that garden you’re digging potatoes out of? Not you, that’s for sure. Why should we feed you if you’re gonna be a dick?”

  Grandpa rears back like he might try to hit me, so I leave, glaring back at him like if he pushes me, I might hit him. I won’t, but I want him to think I will.

  We won’t be getting any flour today. Now I don’t know if I should show Grandpa the damned cellar or not. He’ll probably find a way to screw that up, too.

  Weeks ago, Silas pushed his cars to the street so we could store different kinds of beans in his garage. We can do that with more garages and starve Grandpa out, force him to cooperate, if it comes to that.

  “Jack!” I holler when I make a side-trip to his house on my way to Silas’s.

  “What? Who’s yelling?”

  I run into Jack’s backyard that’s filled with pinto beans growing up poles. Old Mr. Bellows is there with Max and Greta, the only single woman in the neighborhood except for Mom.

  “Jack, do you have any flour left? Can you make biscuits for dinner? Grandpa’s still being a dick, and we’re almost out of flour, and Alma’s busy making salsa for canning, so I don’t know what we’ll eat.”

  Jack stands up from behind a row of pinto beans. “Don’t worry. I already have a big pot of these pinto beans cooking.”

  “Cool. Maybe Alma will bring salsa home.”

  “We can hope,” Jack says, and he goes back to work.

  I’m just glad as hell that most people here are a thousand times nicer than Grandpa.

  Late this December afternoon, it’s already getting dark. I feel like I haven’t worked long enough yet, but it’s hard to see. We got about half the lentils harvested and piled up in Silas’s garage, still in their pods inside a pen he built out of worn-out plywood.

  Alma brings lots of salsa home. I scrounge a couple of straggler tomatoes and a little head of lettuce out of our garden so we can have a touch of salad with our beans and biscuits. These biscuits of Jack’s are so damned good, I could eat a ton of them, and I might before dinner’s over.

  Once I’ve eaten enough to calm my growling stomach, I want to ask my family whether I should show Grandpa the cellar after our crazy meeting. I’m just getting started with my story, still taking bites of food.

  “Keno!” Grandpa hollers from the Mint’s backyard.

  “What now?” I give Alma my please-save-me face while I jump up from the table and go out the back door.

  “What?” I yell to Grandpa. “I’m eating!”

  “Stop eating and get over here.”

  Shit. “Why? I’m hungry.”

  “Because I said so!” Grandpa shouts, as if doing what he says is ever a good idea.


  “Give me a minute. You’re not on fire, are you? Because you’re acting like you are.”

  “No, but hurry, for God’s sake!”

  I have a string of cuss words in my head so long that I can’t think them all fast enough before I’m back in the house, shoveling the last beans out of my bowl, sticking a biscuit between my teeth, and pulling on my hoodie.

  “What does he want?” Uncle Eddie asks.

  I yank the biscuit out of my mouth. “No clue. He wants me to hurry because he said so.”

  “I’m going, too.” Milo is protective of me. He already has one hoodie on, but it’s freaking cold out, so he puts on another one.

  “Uncle Eddie,” I say, “after you eat, maybe you’d better help Silas get the rest of the lentils in. It’s cold enough that it might freeze. I’ll come help after I see what Dickhead wants.” We just call Grandpa Dickhead now, and everyone knows who we’re talking about.

  “Shit. I guess it could freeze,” Eddie says. “I’ll go over to Silas’s in a minute.”

  “I better get back to the pinto beans,” Jack says.

  “I’ll come with you, Jack,” Phil says.

  “I’ll watch Nana,” Mazie says.

  Everyone’s wolfing down the rest of their dinners. Nana’s face is crumpled and her eyes are darting around, like we’re confusing her with all this activity. I don’t have time to explain it to her, and it’s wrong not to explain what’s going on to Nana.

  “Mazie, will you tell Nana what’s up?”

  Mazie nods with her mouth full.

  “I’ll clean up dinner, then go to Silas’s,” Alma says. I whirl around with my eyes all big, trying to ask her silently if that’s a good idea, being pregnant and picking lentils in the freezing cold night. She smiles and nods toward the back door for me to go on. I make my eyes wider for a quick second to let her know I’m not sure about this.

  “Bring lanterns,” I say to the table. We don’t have much kerosene left, but we’ll need the lanterns to harvest at night even if the moon is full because of shadows from the houses and cedar fences. I grin and swivel around to face my family. “Wish me luck! Let’s go, Milo.”

  “You’re gonna need some luck,” Eddie says.

  CHAPTER 13

  The steel door to the Mint’s garage is wide open, and wind’s whipping around inside. We have to lift garage doors by hand now—no electric openers. I didn’t think Grandpa would be strong enough to lift this big-ass door to the three-car garage, but he probably lifted it when he was pissed off, like he is again now, because who knows why.

  “Goddamn lock!” Grandpa’s saying. He’s got bolt cutters, trying to snap a lock off a door in the back of the garage. I never noticed that door with a lock before. Too much stuff must have been stacked in front of it until we ate most of the food that was stored in here. Plus, the woodstoves, rototillers, and lots of tools are out in the neighborhood, helping to keep everyone alive.

  “What do you want, Grandpa? We need to finish harvesting. It might freeze tonight.”

  Milo and I stand under the rolled-up garage door, staring past tools, wagons, and bulk food barrels in the shadows to where Grandpa’s crouched with a flashlight and fuming. He’s ignoring us.

  “Can’t you do that in the daytime so you don’t waste batteries?”

  “Hell no, I can’t,” he barks. “Get over here and help me!”

  “Why are you trying to break that lock? Did you even try to find the key? I bet you didn’t.”

  “I need to get into this cellar to see what’s in there.”

  “That’s not the cellar!” Milo shouts.

  Grandpa drops the bolt cutters, and they bounce and hit him in the shin. He hardly notices. “Where’s the cellar then, and what the hell’s in here?”

  “Don’t know what’s in there,” I say. “Never saw that door with the lock before.”

  “Me neither,” Milo says. “The cellar door’s in the pantry.”

  “I didn’t see it in there,” Grandpa says, like Milo’s lying.

  “You probably never go in the pantry,” I say. “How would you see it?”

  Grandpa stares at me with his face all balled up. Finally, he says, “I need to know what’s behind this door. I don’t like having shit in my house that I don’t know is there.”

  It’s Nana’s house, not yours is what I want to say, but I don’t.

  I pick up the bolt cutters, but Grandpa’s frozen in front of the door. “Move over,” I say. “Let me try.” I squeeze between him and the door. I don’t have time for this shit.

  My mind’s racing so fast, thinking about freezes and lentils and pinto beans and Alma being pregnant, working in the cold in the dark. I feel like throwing down the bolt cutters, breaking them to shit, and hurrying to help Alma, leaving Grandpa to deal with his crap on his own. He’s creating a bogus emergency in the middle of a real one, and I kind of hate him for it. I figure I’ll open the damned door and leave him with it.

  I snap the lock off the hasp like it’s nothing, and it falls. I flick the hasp, and Milo yanks the mystery door open. Grandpa crowds me out, trying to see inside. He shoots the flashlight beam through the doorway into a closet with a high ceiling. There’s something big and shiny inside.

  “What is that?” I ask, forgetting that I was gonna leave. This is some kind of important-looking thing. Something with a long red handle shooting out near the top.

  Grandpa jostles Milo against the doorjamb and jumps into the closet, shining his dim flashlight around this big thing.

  “It’s a pump! A big goddamned hand pump sticking out of the concrete!” Grandpa’s all out of breath, and I’m getting that way myself. So is Milo.

  “What the fuck does it pump?” Milo asks, and Grandpa shoots him the evil eye.

  “Don’t know. Could be gasoline or kerosene.” Then, for once, Grandpa wants to know what I think. “Should we pump it?” His voice is suddenly quiet, as though he’s in awe or afraid.

  “I don’t know.” I lick my cracked lips and run my hands backward through my dirty hair until my fingers get tangled in hair knots. I’m kind of mind-blown, imagining that it could be fuel under that pump and all the shit we could do with more fuel.

  “It could explode!” Milo hollers, which causes Uncle Tom to rush into the garage from the house.

  “What’re y’all doing?” Tom shouts. He’s half out of breath, too. “You scared me.”

  “Come look,” I say. Tom crowds up behind Grandpa and lets out a whistle that hurts my ears. So, of course, Aunt Jeri and Mom rush into the garage, asking a stream of questions that I can’t listen to or answer.

  Because Grandpa’s saying, “Get a bucket, and let’s see what’s in here.” Now that’s the kind of thing I’d like to see Grandpa do, think of practical shit like buckets when you’re about to pump a big handle and don’t know what will come out.

  “Great idea, a bucket.” I run to the other end of the garage to grab a metal bucket out of a stack. The wind’s all blowing, making it freaking cold in here. I want to shut the garage door, but it will be dark if I block the moonlight. I don’t have time, anyway, because of Alma and lentils that are about to freeze.

  “Hurry up, boy!” Grandpa yells.

  I want to yell something smart-alecky, but I figure he’s just excited, like we all are.

  “I’m coming!” I run back with the bucket and thrust it at Tom.

  “Milo, you hold the bucket,” Uncle Tom says to his son, making Milo more excited.

  This is the most thrilling thing that’s happened in a long time, except for Alma being pregnant, and the rest of them don’t know about that yet.

  “Hank, get back and let me pump it,” Tom says. Grandpa scowls, or maybe that’s how his face looks all the time after scowling for years. He steps out of the closet, Tom goes in, and we crowd around.

 
Grandpa shakes the flashlight, which is about to go out any second, and those may be the last batteries we have for it. But this shit is important. He shines what light is left on Tom and the pump handle, and then he steps back and leans against me so the light can fill the whole closet. His heart is pounding, making my heart pound faster, too. I put my hand on his shoulder. He takes a sighing breath.

  Uncle Tom pushes the red handle up in the air. It goes almost to the ceiling. He’s about to push the handle down when Grandpa hollers, “Wait! We might need to prime it.”

  “Maybe,” Tom says, “but how do we know what to prime it with?” He examines the pump on its top and sides. “I don’t see a place to prime it. Do you, Hank?”

  I don’t know what they’re talking about with priming. It seems like I’ve heard of it, but—

  “No,” Grandpa says, so quiet I can hardly hear him even though he’s leaning against me.

  Uncle Tom and Grandpa scratch their chins and muss their already fucked-up hair. “Guess I’ll pump it and see what happens,” Tom says.

  “It might take a while,” Grandpa says, and Tom pushes the handle down hard and fast. Nothing happens.

  “It might take a while. I told you.”

  “We get it, Hank. Hold your horses.”

  Tom starts pumping harder and faster, getting into a rhythm, up and down, up and down. We’re all making noises in our throats and fidgeting around. Grandpa hunches forward to see better, shaking the flashlight. I sort of miss him leaning on me, making peace by touching without words.

  Pumping, pumping, up and down, up and down. Uncle Tom’s getting red in the face, and I’m starting to think, shit, maybe there’s nothing in it.

  But Milo says, “I hear something.” He’s crouched down holding the bucket, and he crams his ear against the body of the pump. “It’s gurgling!” he shouts.

  “Gurgling,” we repeat, hoping that whatever’s gurgling is good.

  Tom rubs his hands on his pants and starts pumping again, getting the handle going so fast I wonder if it would keep pumping without him.

  “Still gurgling,” Milo reports.