We spread out, with Eddie and Milo running through the park to the woods and me running north two blocks then east down Dittmar until I meet up with Eddie and Milo, catching their breaths at the far edge of the park woods.
“Fuck! Did they hide somewhere? Did we pass them? How are we gonna replant the washed-out crops?” I plop down on my butt in the middle of the empty street in the blinding rain. “I told you, Eddie! We have to do something about those guys!”
“Okay! We have to do something, but there’s nothing we can do right now.”
“We should go after them,” Milo blurts out. “Let’s go!”
“Hell no!” Eddie cries. “There’s only three of us! And I’m responsible for you, so no!”
I jump up. “But we’ve got the cover of the storm. We can’t just sit here and let them take everything we need to survive!”
“I’m not letting you run off half-cocked. We’ll make a plan in the morning.”
“You’re wrong, Eddie. So fucking wrong.”
“Cut it out. Go home and guard your house!” Eddie runs toward home.
Milo and I shake our heads at each other, and we follow our uncle through the soaking rain, my anger building and building.
“After this, I’m done listening to him,” I tell Milo.
“Me too,” he says.
The sky’s a tiny bit lighter by the time we reach home and stop in front of the waterfall.
“Guess I’ll take my shower now,” Milo says.
“I’d rather be chasing those guys, but since our uncle won’t let us, you might as well get clean. I’ll stand guard out here.”
He runs inside for soap and shampoo.
I squeeze into Milo’s sentry nook with my rifle pointed at the eaves. Goddamn thieves are gonna be the death of us.
Before long, Milo’s splashing on the side of the house. Right after he stops, Doris Barnes comes out across the street with Pedro and Chris to wash laundry in buckets they’ve left in their driveway. I watch them, trying to get my mind off what just happened.
Alma startles me when she opens the front door.
“Milo said you were out here standing guard,” she says.
It’s light enough now for me to quit, and the rain, at last, is slowing down. I shuffle inside, fall onto the couch, pull Alma into my lap, and hug her with all the energy I have left.
“I just want to hug you,” I say, “then I’m gonna make you breakfast. I saw some dry firewood at the Mint.”
“Aw, Keno. Really?” Alma snuggles into me, and I breathe in her scent to wake me up and keep me alive.
Eddie doesn’t show up to make a plan. Fine. I’ll just have to make one myself.
CHAPTER 28
I never could’ve guessed how much rain we got from the storm, but Jack and Mr. Bellows figure it was eighteen to twenty inches. Freaking unreal. The pace and force of it did the damage. That was too real.
The crops were pretty well pummeled. It’s hard to look at them—flattened out, washed away, all broken to crap. Neighbors gather with my family, and we walk from one yard to the next, surveying the destruction. We cry over the wheat; we stay slack-jawed all day. The work we have ahead of us is mind-breaking. Makes it hard to even get started.
Alma doesn’t go with us to check the crops. She says it’s too much heartbreak for her, and I’m glad she’s not seeing this. It’s bad enough for her to see the crops in our own yard.
We’ve lost about half the squash, peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes. The peas, green beans, and melons were practically drowned. Lentils and pinto beans don’t look too bad. Potatoes and other root veggies are growing in the barrels that once held our bulk food, and we stuffed them into garages, so they’re all right. At least Nana left us with a big stock and variety of seeds.
We have to wait until August to plant oats, but they grow fast. We can’t plant more wheat until late fall, so we’ll have to try quinoa for now. But our flour will run out before the quinoa’s ready, and quinoa won’t be nearly as useful. It’s gonna take days before we can even walk in the boggy sludge of our former wheat field, and more days to stack dead wheat to dry for mulch and to plant quinoa by hand. Still, as long as it doesn’t freeze early this year, we should have time for the quinoa to mature, if the summer heat doesn’t kill it. Too many ifs, but it’s all we’ve got.
What worries me most is the soil. It was so shallow to begin with, only a few feet deep above the limestone bedrock. And with the way we plowed front yards into furrows for the corn, it’s like we built canals to carry our soil away.
Eddie’s organizing tweeners and teens who are smaller than Milo to crawl into storm drains and scoop out sludgy soil goo before it hardens like concrete, which would make flooding worse in the next big rain. Because there will be a next big rain. There always is one in Austin, if you wait long enough.
We’ll add the drain crud to the compost piles, where we’ll try to work in more nutrients so we can build the lost garden soil back up. One piece of luck is that this year’s corn crop was pretty well-established, so I think it will survive. But if we don’t do something big to make that soil better, next year, there won’t be much yield in our mini cornfields.
I’m seriously wondering if farming our subdivision has any prayer of working over the long haul.
Plus, all the while I’m counting up crop losses, I’m boiling about the assholes who stole our gasoline. It’s so malicious. Yeah, we might be able to get more gas, but for all they knew, they were leaving us to die. Without gas, we’re hundreds of years behind with farming technology. We don’t even have horses or plows.
With all this work to do, how will I ever get away from here to spy on the camo guys?
While we were out covering crops during the storm, Grandpa pumped a couple hundred gallons of water from the cistern into jugs and buckets so that the cistern had room to catch more rain. Wish we’d thought to keep it more pumped out, or that we’d used more of the water—we could’ve caught thousands more gallons if the cistern hadn’t been so full.
Once in a while, the old man does something right. I just wish to God he’d used his damned machete to chase off those gas-stealing fuckwads.
After a couple of days, we open the cistern for people to take thirty gallons per person for laundry and cleaning. It’s a thing we’ll only do once in a while, when the cistern gets topped off.
So much laundry and so many sheets and blankets are getting washed that we’re running out of places to hang them. Even our second and third sets of sheets are clean, when most of us haven’t seen clean sheets since the world fell apart.
All the fences are covered with drying sheets and blankets, defining our boundaries, billowing in the breezes, slightly stained by the cedar fences, but making it look like a party around here.
A farewell party for the crops.
CHAPTER 29
Today, I’m trying to focus on what’s in front of me, but how can I? Crops that look like Godzilla stomped on them, assholes stealing our gas, other assholes I had to shoot, still another asshole who traumatized Alma, Rick getting murdered by the fucking National Guard that was supposed to protect him.
God has got some serious answering to do with me, if he ever comes out of his hidey-hole.
All this bullshit is making me hard and cynical and angry, so fucking angry. I never thought I could feel so much rage.
It’s like I’m on a Spin-Out carnival ride that’s whirling so fast, and I’m plastered to the sides of the big-assed spinning wheel by the centrifugal force, only I’m not strapped in. I’m just spinning and spinning, faster and faster, and I’m in danger of rocketing off the planet, never to return.
Christ! Somebody, please come save us over here!
For days, I’ve been doing what Eddie suggested: working in gardens close to home; checking on Alma every couple of hours. Near dusk, I come in the house
after cleaning up the pepper garden in Mr. Bellows’s yard. It’s a huge job, and I’ve done nothing but rip out dead plants by their roots in the broiling sun the whole damned day. Nana’s outdoor thermometer says it’s ninety-five degrees in the shade. Shit, it’s only March! It’s gonna be like working inside a skillet by April.
I’m sunburned all over, hungry as hell and thirsty, and I ache down to my pinkie fingers and toes. I’m stinky and sticky with sweat, and I’m in a freaking bad mood about it. But I kind of don’t give a fuck.
Alma can see the mood I’m in the minute I come in the back door. I guess it radiates off me so everyone can see it, but especially her. The only reason I care about my screwed-up attitude is Alma. And the baby. They shouldn’t have to put up with me when I’m like this.
“What’s up, Keno?” Alma asks from across the kitchen counter. She’s wearing her scrutinizing face, the one she uses to read my bad moods with painful accuracy.
“I’m hungry and thirsty as fuck.”
She twists her mouth sideways. She’s none too pleased with me, and I don’t blame her. I’m none too pleased with myself.
“Where’s everybody?” I ask.
“Milo’s hanging with Danny, Mazie’s with her mom, your mom’s having dinner with the Zizzos, and Jack’s patrolling. Don’t know where Eddie and Phil are.”
I go up to Alma in the kitchen, wrap my dirty arms around her, and kiss her hard. Even in a bad mood, I can’t keep my hands off of her, with her belly all round now and smooth. I get horny just looking at her. I want to screw her right here, hard and long and deep, but mostly hard.
This bad mood of mine makes me want sex even more and in a fiercer way. But it would be disrespectful—unacceptable—to go after Alma the way I want to. And I’m frustrated as fuck about it. My dick is hard and throbbing in my pants.
“Better go wash up,” I say, so I can break away to go jerk off in the upstairs bathroom. Because I have to right now is all. I’m gonna come in my pants if I don’t.
Alma squints at me. She’s wondering what’s wrong with me. But I can’t tell her what’s in my head, not with the mood I’m in. That would be disrespectful, too.
So, I run upstairs, lock myself in the bathroom, yank off my pants, and get to work.
I hate the world and everything in it except Alma and the baby, and even them—with the crushing responsibility of it on top of all the other shit—even they piss me off sometimes. It’s not their fault. I know this. But still, I’m in a flaming rage.
I hear Uncle Eddie come in through the front door. He’s talking all loud to Alma, saying I-don’t-know-what. I’m not stopping what I’m doing for him or anyone else.
“Keno?” Eddie hollers.
Shit! I try to ignore him. I’m venting my rage, and this is the only relief I’ve got.
“Keno, come down here. You’re gonna like what I have to show you.”
Eddie just won’t shut up. Can’t a man jerk his dick in peace in this hellhole? Or a man who’s supposed to be a man but doesn’t fucking feel like one?
“Keno? Supper’s ready,” Alma calls out.
“Okay! I’m all filthy and trying to get clean with no water up here!”
Oh, I’m filthy all right, coming and coming in my hand.
I wash up as fast as I can, staring into the mirror in the fading light, trying to straighten my face and slow my breath so it won’t be obvious what I’ve been up to. Why should I care if it’s obvious? Men jerk off. So what?
I rush out of the bathroom, throw on a less filthy T-shirt, and run down the stairs only touching every other step. I’m suddenly all energized, and people are waiting on me, like I need that pressure on me, too.
“Look what I’ve got!” Uncle Eddie says the second I show my face. He’s grinning his head off. He’s got two big-assed bottles, one in each hand, and he’s waving them around. I have to get all the way up to him before I can read the labels in the candlelight.
“Black Label Scotch? Where the hell did you get that?”
Eddie can’t stop grinning, and I’m grinning with him. Maybe this is exactly what I need.
“Me and Phil found it in the Mint cellar in a cabinet. I brought these bottles home for us.”
“Let’s get drunk and break shit.” I laugh. This is a goofy saying in Texas, but Alma’s glaring a hole straight through me, and I don’t care.
We sit down. Eddie sets the big bottles of crazy-expensive scotch on the dining table. The squared edges of the bottles reflect the candlelight like prisms, throwing sparkles of light around the room.
Alma scowls at the bottles, and she scowls at me. She dishes herself a plate from the kitchen. She doesn’t set the food on the table the way she usually does, she’s that mad. My gut clenches about this, but part of me thinks, fine.
What’s she so mad about anyway? Can’t a man get pissed off when things keep pissing him off? Can’t he ignore his wife and jerk off—just fucking once—when he’s practically killed himself working in the hot sun day after day so his family will have something to eat?
“Let’s get some food,” I say to Uncle Eddie, “so we can get busy drinkin’.”
Alma drops her fork, and it clangs against her plate.
“What?”
She folds her arms and glowers at me, her brown eyes reflecting the gleam of the candlelit scotch bottles, her pupils like laser beams.
“Well? What?”
“You’re gonna get drunk tonight? Seriously?” Tears well in Alma’s eyes, angry and hurt tears, tears that just hang there, making the candlelight all wavery in the liquid of her eyes. “I thought you’d want to be with me.”
“Yes, Alma. I’m going to get drunk. So what?” I glare back at her, hating myself for it, but I’m so pissed I can’t stop. “I suppose you think it would be bad of me to get drunk because I haven’t worked hard enough to deserve a break? Like I don’t have enough heartache to make me want to drown myself in this fucking scotch?”
“Keno, cut it out!” Eddie’s shaking his head at me. “Why would you talk to Alma like that?”
Now I’m breathing all fast, glaring at Uncle Eddie with his back to the windows.
And behind him, the sky outside explodes with color, its reflections swirling around the room. Alma screams.
“The fuck?” Eddie shouts, and we’re all on our feet with our faces plastered to the back-door window while the sky twists and changes like a neon kaleidoscope of red and blue and yellow and green. Undulating bands of light, like the northern lights we had, but every color of the rainbow.
“Another solar pulse!” I turn the doorknob. “I’m going to—”
“Don’t!” Alma latches on to me, and I squeeze her hand, but fear and the need for truth have me peeling away to run upstairs for the wind-up radio.
“Hey, you can see it better up here in the big arched window,” I call downstairs.
“What are you doing?” Eddie asks as he and Alma make their way up.
“Auroras are supposed to make radio waves. I want to see if I can hear them on the radio.” I rush with the radio to the big front window and open it. “Holy shit! It’s crackling and sighing out there.”
“Oh my God. I hear it!” Alma says. Eddie looks dumbstruck.
I crank up the radio and turn it on, but there’s no sound coming out of it, only the sounds of the light show outside. I twist the dials in a panic, switching from AM to FM and all seven shortwave bands, but there’s no static like usual, no cracking and popping or any sound at all.
“Maybe I can’t hear it over the outside sound?” I take the radio into the bathroom and close the door. But there’s no buzz, no crackle, not even a vibration in my hands.
“God damn it!” I yell, and I rush back into the game room with Eddie and Alma. “It’s fried!”
“Maybe it’ll work again when the lights go away,” Ed
die says.
“Don’t think so.” I step to the window and start detaching the screen.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking the solar panels.”
“Keno, you can’t go out there.” Alma looks scared to death.
“Yeah, I can. We were outside for the other two. We were a half-mile from home for the second one.” I look at Alma in her fear and I try to smile, but I don’t have it in me. “It’s electromagnetism, not lightning. Be back in a minute.”
With ultra-intense multicolored light shooting across the sky above me, I climb out the window and clamber over the roof crest to the solar panels that point south and southwest, facing the backyard. Part of me is fascinated by the light show, but the strobing and flashing are making me dizzy. I’m thirty feet off the ground, and this ain’t no Fourth of July.
Before I reach the panels, I smell it. Burned electronics, like our TV smelled after lightning fried it when I was a kid. Scorched wiring and circuitry.
No, no, no! This can’t be right!
I scramble across the roof from solar panel to solar panel until I’m in the middle of all three dozen of them, where the burnt smell is so overpowering I gag on it. Still not wanting to believe it, I fall to my knees. There’s nothing inside the panels to burn out, so I trace the wiring to the east edge of the roof. Red light pulses in the sky, but not bright enough for me to see much. Then a yellow stream of light followed by lime green. And I see it—the inverter on the exterior wall below me is black with soot.
“God damn it!”
It’s all fried. All my hopes for freezers are dead like the cock-sucking wheat. It’s all I can do to contain myself as I slide down the front roof to go back inside.
I reach the big window, and Eddie and Alma move aside to let me come through. “The solar’s fried to a crisp,” I say before my feet hit the floor.
“Oh no!” Alma cries.
I tromp past Alma to the bathroom and the radio. “Radio’s fried, too. It’s all fried!” I slam the radio into the stone counter, and the radio shatters to pieces.
If the Light Escapes: A Braving the Light Novel Page 19