If the Light Escapes: A Braving the Light Novel

by Brenda Marie Smith

  In my mind, I see starvation ahead and this neighborhood a wasteland. I try to cast out these visions, but they keep assaulting me, like a flashing montage in a bad movie. Yet, this is water—clean, drinkable water. There has to be something good about it. Or maybe not.

  I’m huffing from running but shout with relief when the hail stops. Pretty sure we’ve already lost the wheat, and I want to scream in rage about that. Maybe we won’t lose much more than wheat, though that doesn’t seem likely.

  At last, I reach our front door, where rainwater is gushing off the roof and going right past the gutters, turning our front stoop into the bottom end of Niagara Falls. I jump into the water and burst through the door.

  Alma grabs me in a hug before I realize she’s there. I hug her hard, then let go.

  “I’m getting you wet.”

  “It’s okay. I was worried about you when the hail started.”

  “Sorry I worried you. Have you been waiting by the door for me?”

  “Kinda.”

  “Aww, baby. Let’s find you a chair.”

  “’Kay,” she says, wiping at her eyes.

  “I should get that rocking chair back from Grandpa for you and the baby.”

  “Yeah, good luck with that.”

  I help her sit on the couch then stoop in front of her, stroking her arms. Eddie, Phil, Jack, and Milo are clustered in the dining room, looking toward me with eyes full of worry. I want to sit by Alma so I can comfort her while I face the rest of them.

  “I’m all wet and muddy. I should go change,” I say.

  Alma tugs me toward her. “The couch is leather. I can wipe it down. I want you here.”

  “I’ll wipe it.” I snuggle up next to Alma on the couch and look each of the men in the eye. “I’m not happy with the way the wheat looks.”

  “How does it look?” Jack asks. Whoa, he’s wearing Grandpa’s clothes. I hope Grandpa never sees that.

  “Like it’s getting pounded to death and washing away.”

  “Goddamn it!” Eddie says.

  “Seems like God already damned it.”

  It’s dark as a dungeon in here, a dungeon with only a scrap of gray light coming through a tiny opening above us. I don’t see any candles lit. I figure they’re conserving candles, since we can see a little from the dim daylight pushing past the rain and through the windows.

  Alma curls up beside me, clutching my wet sleeve and trying not to cry. But she’s quivering, like visibly. I need to give her some hope. Lightning keeps flashing. Thunder’s booming and echoing, like we’re inside a bowling alley that’s as big as the sky.

  “I wonder, when the rain stops, if we could grab a bunch of people and run to the park to replant the wheat. I mean, some of it’s already down.”

  “We should totally try it,” Alma says, tugging on my shirt.

  “Sounds a little crazy,” Jack says.

  “Yeah, but Jack,” says Uncle Eddie, “what have we got to lose? We can at least try it.”

  “I’ll go,” Phil says. “I’ll round up others to go, too.”

  “I’m totally going!” Milo’s all enthusiastic.

  “I’ll go,” says Alma.

  “Baby, don’t you think it would be too hard for you?”

  “Being without wheat and flour would be harder.”

  I shake my head. Not having wheat or flour will make life damned bleak. But I see visions of Alma stooping to work in a hunch for hours. Early labor, lost baby, lost Alma. No. No. No!

  I turn her chin toward me. “Alma, you can’t.”

  Her face crumples as she searches my eyes. “But I want to.” The muscles in her face ripple with emotion. She looks to the other men in the room. “Can’t I?”

  They shake their heads at her sadly. Eddie says, “Honey, it would be dangerous for you.”

  “Damn it!” She flops against the back of the couch, and a loud sigh escapes her. I wrap my arms around her and press my lips into her forehead, holding her tight.

  Through the back window, I see someone in a yellow raincoat rushing through our yard in the drenching rain. It’s Mom. She stops under the patio roof to shake herself off, then hurries inside. She’s barefoot.

  “Mom, where’s your shoes?”

  “I didn’t want to ruin them in the rain. I only got a couple of stickers.” She hops around on the doormat with her raincoat dripping, brushing off the bottoms of her feet. “I’m cooking for us on the Mint’s grill because it’s dry. Just came to see what’s going on with the crops.”

  “Mom, you rock.”

  “I’ve been known to rock a time or two.” She chuckles a bit.

  Eddie tells Mom about the wheat and my cockeyed idea to save it.

  “Wow.” Mom looks worried. “Sounds like a desperate attempt to save what may already be gone.”

  “That pretty much sums up our whole lives, doesn’t it?” I’m hurt, but part of me knows she’s right. Not that I want her to be. “Shit. I guess it’s a stupid idea.”

  “Not stupid,” she says. “It might’ve worked if the rain would stop, but I don’t think it’s stopping anytime soon.”

  “Doesn’t seem like it.” I’m flooded with anxiety about Alma with no wheat. Her face seems frozen in shock. I don’t know how to help her. We shouldn’t’ve had this conversation in front of her.

  Jack breaks the desperate silence. “We need a plan for patrol tonight. I’m too old to tromp around in the rain for hours.”

  “Nobody should be patrolling in this deluge,” Mom says.

  “We’d be too absorbed protecting ourselves to notice dangers,” Eddie says.

  “But, if someone’s going to attack us—” I’m getting panicky. “—the rain would give them cover.”

  “Why don’t we go talk to other neighbors about it?” Phil asks.

  “Good idea,” I say. “Let me go change.”

  Mom says, “I better go watch those beans and get some potatoes going.” She rushes into the downpour, yellow raincoat, bare feet, and all.

  The lightning and thunder are rolling northwest, with longer intervals between them. Milo and I have to dig a while, but we find a raincoat upstairs. It’s an expensive-looking man’s trench coat with wide shoulders. I give it to Milo—temporarily, I tell him—since his shoulders are bigger than mine. But I don’t want him wearing this coat every day and ruining the damn thing.

  When we get to the bottom of the stairs, Eddie pulls me aside. Alma is at the dining table, watching the rain through the bay windows. Eddie backs me into a corner where she can’t see us.

  “Listen. Why don’t you stay home with Alma? She’s being brave, but you might be missing how scary being pregnant really is for her. She’s barely an adult, she doesn’t have her parents, and it’s a damned apocalypse with no doctors. We’ve got nurses but no medicine, no medical equipment.”

  “And no wheat.” I’m kicking myself for not realizing how scared Alma must be. She’s so good at acting brave.

  Eddie keeps going. “She spends lots of time alone, waiting for you. That’s got to be hard on her. You don’t see how worried she is when you’re not here. I know from my sisters that pregnant women have a lot going on with hormones and emotions. Alma doesn’t act out her emotions, but she lost her best friend, another pregnant teenager, in these same circumstances.”

  “God, you’re right.”

  “I don’t see why I can’t supervise the farming until the baby’s born so you can concentrate on Alma. You can work in gardens in the yards around us, where you’ll be close to her all day. She could go into early labor, and you’ll need to be close if that happens.”

  I gulp so hard I almost choke on my tongue.

  “Your priorities have to change.”

  “You’re right. Thanks for pointing it out.” There’s too much to learn in this world.

/>   Uncle Eddie gives me a hug.

  The lightning and thunder have moved on, but it’s still raining like crazy. Doesn’t seem like the rain has cooled this thick, drippy air one bit. You could practically take a bath in it.

  “Let’s go,” Jack says. “Get this over with before dark.”

  “Is it nighttime already?” Eddie asks.

  “Full dark’s probably an hour away,” says Jack. “We were out there covering crops for hours.” Shit, I guess we were.

  Eddie turns to the other guys. “Keno’s staying home to help Alma. Four guys are plenty for this.”

  They file out the door. Milo looks so grown-up in that trench coat with his sandy hair in a ponytail, the shadow of a beard. I feel sorta proud of him.

  I stand there for a minute, partly listening to the gushing water out front, partly scraping up courage to face the facts that Eddie put to me. This is a serious life we’re living, and I’ve got to be more in tune with the needs of my brave pregnant wife. It scares me, but I’m determined to do the right thing.

  “Alma.” I reel around to face her across the room and clap my hands together. “How’d you like for me to wash your hair for you?”

  Alma’s face is like a beacon of light inside this dark house.

  “Wow. Really?”

  “Really, baby. We should hurry before the daylight’s completely gone. I’m getting towels, soap, and shampoo out of this bathroom.”

  “I’ll get a pitcher. We can stick it into the rain from under the patio roof.”

  “What do you think if we hide on the side of the house and take showers in the rain?”

  “Ooh, I love that. But I’m keeping my underwear on.”

  “Ha. If you have to. Guess I’ll keep mine on, too, then.”

  Alma and I carry bathing stuff to the patio. We dart our eyes around to be sure no one’s looking, but nobody’s out in this rain. We laugh and peel off our clothes except for underwear. I grab the soap and shampoo, and with me gripping both Alma’s arms, we dash into the rain and around the side of the house.

  “I’m so holding on to you to be sure you don’t slip,” I say. I nuzzle her dripping neck when we reach the most secluded spot—away from the windows next door.

  There’s a bush between us and the street to give us cover. This grass is sloshy and soggy with patches of mud. It’s a drainage swale to take water from the yards to the storm drains in the street.

  Beautiful Alma and I take a shower in the rainstorm. I lather up her hair then mine, and we stick our heads under the eaves to let gushes of rainwater rinse out the shampoo.

  We soap up our bodies, even inside our ridiculous underwear. It’s so wet it’s see-through. Everything we’ve got is on display. We rinse off and linger in the falling roof water. We’re laughing, and for these few moments, we’re not thinking about drowned wheat.

  If God or Nature is going to drown us in a gully-washing storm after depriving us of water for a year and a half, then fuck it, because we’re so taking showers in the crop-killing rain.

  CHAPTER 27

  Alma can’t keep her eyes open after dinner and goes straight to bed. She’s so droopy-eyed and deflated that I go with her to be sure she gets there all right.

  As soon as I come back down, the guys gather around to tell me their new plan. Jack says he and Bobby are each standing guard on their own front porches. They live on opposite ends of the neighborhood, so that might work.

  “We’re going to Phil’s,” Uncle Eddie says. “We’re taking turns standing sentry on Phil’s front porch overnight. You and Milo might want to do the same here.”

  “How come?”

  “When we were out talking to neighbors,” Phil says, “I kept hearing footsteps in the grass behind me. I told myself it had to be rain. But then, I swear to God, I heard someone running through wet grass and around the side of a house. It was dark by then, and I couldn’t find anyone, but there’s no way that noise was rain.”

  “Shit. Where?”

  “Over on Mint Lane, down toward Bobby and Melba’s.”

  “Then I’m definitely standing sentry.”

  “I’ll get the rifles and load them,” Milo says. He’s suddenly a man before my eyes. He’s the only one among us who’s killed someone before.

  “Bad night to not have a patrol,” I say.

  “Yep,” says Eddie, “but we’re better off with more people watching from out of the rain.”

  We guys pat each other on our backs. Jack, Phil, and Uncle Eddie leave the house, all of them with guns drawn. Milo goes upstairs, and I carry firewood to the garage, hoping it will dry out by tomorrow, until Milo comes back wearing the trench coat, a rifle in each hand.

  “Want to take turns?” I ask. “Like in shifts?”

  “We could,” he says as he hands me a rifle. “But I kinda think we should watch one from the front and one from the patio, so someone has an eye on the Mint.”

  I gulp. “You’re right.” I feel like Milo is my big brother or dad or something. “I’ll take the patio. I’ll check on you in the night to be sure you’re awake, to help me stay awake, too.”

  “’Kay.” Milo ducks out the door with his rifle.

  I can’t see much on this patio except rain, silhouettes of things, and dim candlelight from our kitchen table, plus more candlelight upstairs at the Mint. It’s probably not midnight yet. It could be—I’ve been out here a while. I’m pretty antsy, and it screws up my perception of time.

  The rain’s so noisy, it could be disguising anything. I keep thinking I hear sounds made by people—breathing, whispering, squishy footsteps in the grass—but I’m hoping to hell it’s just rain. It’s probably not an animal. They’ve all been killed off, except for feral cats. It could be a cat, or a rat, or a few of them. If someone’s out here skulking around, they could be crouched behind the hedge or cedar fence, and I wouldn’t be able to see them from here.

  Alma was sound asleep when I checked on her before I came out here. I was glad—I didn’t want to tell her what Phil heard and that we’re all standing guard because of it.

  I put on a rain parka and walk the edges of the backyard. I’m afraid to look over the fences and hedge, but I make myself do it. I don’t see anyone or anything that shouldn’t be there. From the street-side fence, I see a glint of metal above Jack’s doorstep. His rifle, I imagine. I hope he doesn’t get sick from being out in the damp.

  Since I’m up, I better check on Milo. I start to cut across the yard to the front gate, but Milo might shoot me if I approach him from the yard on a dark, stormy night. I shake myself off on the patio, keep my rifle with me, and walk through the house. I don’t want to scare Milo, so I stamp my feet and tap quietly on the door before I open it.

  “Hey,” Milo says. He’s tucked under the eaves inside the nook to the left of the door. He looks cramped in there, but he has to stay that far back to keep away from this damned waterfall.

  “You okay out here?”

  “Fine. Good,” my cousin says. He might as well be my brother.

  “Want me to bring you a chair?”

  Milo slides his eyes toward the waterfall. “Can’t really sit on one.”

  “Guess not. I can bring you some tea.”

  “Nah. I’m good.” His voice is gravelly, it’s so deep. Stuffed up, too, from standing next to a freaking waterfall.

  “I’m proud of you, Milo. You’ve really stepped up lately.”

  He shrugs, looking down with a faint smile. He’s probably blushing, but it’s too dark to tell. All right. No use embarrassing him. I want to ask if he’s scared, but of course he is.

  “Hey, if it’s still raining at daybreak, you should take a shower on the side of the house like me and Alma did. I haven’t been this clean in forever.”

  Milo grins. “Maybe I will. Probably should get back to watchin’ now, though.”<
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  “Probably should, Mr. Adult.” I have the urge to rough up Milo’s hair or play-punch him, but I can’t get to his shoulder in that nook, and he might shoot me if I fuck with his hair. “See ya in a couple of hours. Having trouble staying awake yet?”

  “Nope. Not really.” A man of few words, my Milo. One of Nana’s phrases.

  I go sit in a patio chair, propping the rifle across myself and keeping my hand near the trigger guard. My worry about crop destruction, asshole intruders, Rick getting murdered, that stalking prick Ray—it all has me too agitated to think straight.

  The Mint’s back door jerks open. I hop to my feet as Grandpa steps outside.

  “Keno! Bring your guns and patrollers and get over here! Now!”

  Fuck. I sprint into the rain with my rifle, yelling, “Jack! Milo! Eddie! Come quick!”

  “Hurry up!” Grandpa barks, and he steps into the Mint.

  “What’s going on? Grandpa, where you going?”

  “Get in here. Hurry!” He calls from inside. I stomp across the Mint’s patio and yank open the back door. Grandpa’s standing in the doorway from the house to the garage. “Out here!”

  I run past him into the garage to find the big roll-up door wide open with rain pouring inside.

  “What—?”

  Grandpa steps into the garage with a lantern, and I see it. The gasoline! All ten of the full gas jugs plus the two garden wagons that we stored over here are gone. Jesus Christ!

  “Shit, Grandpa. Why was the door unlocked?”

  “Don’t know. Ask your damn friends!”

  Milo, then Eddie, then Jack skids to a stop in front of the open garage.

  “They got the gas. They’re pulling it in our wagons. They’ll be slow. Let’s catch them!”

  “Hank, when did this happen?” Jack shouts above the rain.

  “Heard them rolling wagons in the garage and called y’all.”

  Milo, Eddie, and I take off, instinctively heading toward the park. If they went any other direction, I would’ve seen them—probably Jack would’ve, too.

  They must be close. We’ve got to be running twice as fast as they can run pulling wagons. But the rain’s still pouring like a motherfucker, and we can’t see more than a few meters in front of us. We run all the way to the park and don’t find a goddamn thing.