by Joshua Gayou
“This is Robert and Samantha,” Otis offered, coming around to stand behind a chair. They both nodded and said “Hi” but stood well back, neither putting a hand out. Otis gestured to the chairs and said, “Please…”
As we sat, Otis pulled his rifle off one of the chair seats - an old fashioned looking, wooden, bolt-action weapon with a large telescopic scope – and placed it butt down in the dirt against the backrest. He looped the sling over the back of the chair and then held onto it as he sat down to ensure the weight of the rifle wouldn’t pull it over. Ben sat down next to him on his left side, to his right were Robert followed by Samantha while on our end from right to left was Billy, Jake, myself, and Lizzy.
We all sat for a moment, silently awkward. I can’t say for sure but I think it may have been the first time any of us had been in such a situation. We’ve certainly been in plenty like it since that day. Finally, looking for a way to break the ice, I said, “Otis, is that a Southern accent I hear?” A Southern man always loves to talk about home, in my experience.
“Well, yes it is,” he said, smiling. I was momentarily hypnotized by how a face so dark could appear so full of light by smiling. “We were living in New Mexico when Ben was born but I’m originally from Atlanta.”
No one brought up the absence of the mother, a fact which was entirely conspicuous for its lack of mention. Otis picked up on this, apparently, and said, “Oh, we didn’t lose his mother recently. That was some time ago.”
Our side of the lineup breathed in unison and now Ben smiled as well, as though he wanted to put us at ease.
“You’re a good ways out from New Mexico,” Billy said. “Do you, uh, mind if I ask where you’re headed?”
“Sure,” Otis nodded, making the word sound like “shoo-wuh”, “we’re making our way to Oregon. My folks passed on years ago but Ben’s mother still had some family up that way. We’re going to see if we can find them. We picked up our friends here along the way. They, uh, they weren’t so lucky with their people.” I saw Robert’s hand clench into a fist as Otis said this; there was a lot of anger there. “How ‘bout yourselves?”
Billy cleared his throat and shifted. Jake answered without hesitation: “We’re on our way to Wyoming. There’s some land up there. Fresh start, maybe.”
“Fine. That sounds fine,” said Otis.
“So,” said Jake, “you flagged us down at great potential risk to yourselves. What can we do for you?”
“Well, like I told you, we’re looking to trade supplies. Ammo is what we need the most but we can talk over anything, really. Water is what we’re doing well on right now – we came across several flats of it a few days ago.”
“More water is always a good thing,” Jake said.
“Yeah. Our problem right now is we’re out of gas. We’ve been hopping from car to car as we go. It was easier with just Ben and me but now we gotta make sure we have enough automobile to move four people plus all the supplies we need.”
“You haven’t worked out refueling, then?” Billy asked.
“I tried siphoning with a plastic hose I’d found but it didn’t work out.”
“Yeah, it’s the anti-roll stuff they build into the tanks,” Billy said, and looked across Jake to me. “You know if there’s anything like an auto parts store around here, Amanda?”
Before I could answer, Otis said, “We just passed an Auto Zone on the way in today. It’s not far from here; just down the 6.”
“Oh, there you go,” Billy said. “You folks staying here tonight?”
“I reckon yes,” said Otis. “Anyway, haven’t found a way to get us moving again.”
“Okay,” Billy said and looked back over at us. “We done travelling for the day?”
“We can be,” said Jake.
Billy looked back to Otis. “Let’s you and I head out early tomorrow. I’ll help you get your gas situation sorted out.”
Otis nodded, clearly pleased. “That sounds like a plan, Billy. Thank you.”
“Finally get that damned jack stand,” Billy said and struck his knee lightly. I cough-snickered into my hand.
“So aside from that, sounds like ammo for water?” asked Jake. “What’s that rifle there?””
“Thirty-aught six.”
“Hell,” said Billy. “We’re not carrying any of that.”
Otis nodded his head. He looked disappointed but also had the expression of one who was expecting the news. “I’ve had a hell of a time keeping this rifle loaded. It’s not even mine – a good friend who didn’t make it through had it. Had a whole collection of hunting rifles and revolvers in all manner of odd calibers. He even had a Smith and Wesson 500. Can you imagine trying to find bullets for that?” He shook his head and sighed. “I have twelve rounds left for this and then we need to get serious about trading up.”
Jake leaned over to Billy and whispered to him. They conferred for a few moments, gesturing back and forth. Finally Billy shrugged and gestured over to me. Jake leaned in close to me and I heaved over in his direction to put my head close to his.
“Water’s going to be a big deal soon. We’re talking about giving them the Bushmaster and a box of .223. Thoughts?”
“What, you’re going to trade him for his rifle?”
“No, even trade for the water.”
I wrinkled my nose at him. “Seems like a lot to avoid scavenging for water. You know we’ll be able to find some. Plus, we’re going to spend some time getting them refueled tomorrow, apparently,” I whispered, looking across at Billy.
“Amanda,” he said, pulling my eyes back to his. “You know what happens if they run into the wrong people. We have the AK, your Tavor, the shotgun, the two AR’s, and the pistols. Even giving him the Bushmaster we still have the extra AR.” He didn’t bother mentioning the bullets. After Barnes, the rear of the Jeep was sitting nearly six inches low from all the extra weight we were dragging. “There’re more guns in this world now than there are good people, or any kind of people, really. We’ll find more.”
I nodded, knowing he was right. Jake put his hand out and I dropped the keys into it.
“Just a moment, please,” Jake said, and got up.
“What’s up, folks?” asked Otis, as Jake went to the rear of the Jeep.
“What the hell’s going on? What the fuck’s he doing??” asked an alarmed Robert, really speaking now for the first time. His face was flushed and angry. He was coming out of his chair, moving in front of his sister.
“Hey, calm down,” Billy said.
“Boy, sit DOWN,” commanded Otis with the sound of someone now fully out of patience. Robert slammed back into his chair in a fury, not even bothering to conceal the mask of rage on his face. “You got to think, Robert! If these people wanted us dead, Amanda here could have drawn a line right across our bellies with whatever the hell that nasty lookin’ thing is, ain’t that right Amanda?”
I swallowed and nodded. I had been halfway to doing exactly that. I hoped it wasn’t too obvious and pulled my hand away from the trigger while trying to avoid drawing any attention to it. I failed miserably.
Jake came walking back from the Jeep with a black rifle hanging from his right hand, index finger threaded through the front sight. From his left hand dangled a plastic ammunition case.
He came back to his chair and sat down. Billy said, “Thirty-aught six isn’t exactly ultra-rare but it’s going to be harder to find than .223 or 5.56. It’s probably just best if you trade up right now.”
Jake pulled the handle back on the rifle to check the chamber and passed the rifle across to Otis, who accepted it with his mouth hanging open.
From the side, Billy said: “This here is a Bushmaster XM-15 MOE. It will fire both .223 and 5.56, which were probably the two most popular rounds in this country right before everything went under. It is a very nice rifle and I’m going to insist that you treat it like a lady.” Billy said this last part with the most serious of expressions. We knew he was joking but Otis only coughed and said, �
�Yes, sir.”
Jake picked up the plastic case and handed it across to Otis with both hands. Realizing that it must be heavy, Otis laid the rifle across his lap and received the offering with two hands.
“That’s over 400 rounds of .223 and two magazines,” said Jake. “When we get you fueled up tomorrow, you folks are going to take a side trip.”
“A side trip?” repeated a numb Otis.
“’Bout 20 miles south of here down the 15 is a building on the East side of the freeway standing by itself out in the middle of nowhere. It’ll have “Barnes” across the front in big, red letters. They were an ammunition manufacturer. We came from that way and there was more in that place than we could reasonably carry on our own. There’s plenty still there. You’ll find more .223, 5.56, and even some more .30-06 for that hunting rifle.”
Otis sat dumbstruck for several seconds. He tried to speak once or twice but the only sound that came was a slight grunt. Finally, he cleared his throat and said, “Uh…how much water do you think you need?” I was surprised to detect a quaver in his voice.
“Dude,” Ben said before any of us could reply, “I’m saying give it all to them.”
We burst out laughing uncontrollably, the kind of roaring, rib cracking laughter that only comes on the tail of some tense, psychological trauma. The punchline doesn’t even need to be that funny in these situations – on some level your body realizes it needs that release desperately and seizes control whether you want it or not. I laughed until my stomach muscles hurt and I was gasping for breath. I saw Otis wipe tears from his eyes more than once and even Robert and timid Samantha were smiling despite themselves. The only one of us not laughing and in control was Jake, of course, but his face carried perhaps the most unfiltered smile I’d ever seen from him. I’m almost positive his eyes were moist as well.
When we all came back under control, Otis put his hand on Ben’s shoulder and said, “Let’s get them three flats of the water, son.” Ben jumped up and ran to the back of the minivan, pulling up the hatch. I heard him grunt and he backed away with a massive flat of bottled water. He carried it over to our truck where Billy was already waiting with the gate down.
“There’s thirty-six of those to a package,” Otis said. “Even if you have no water at all, that should get all of you to any point in Wyoming you want to be with some left over.”
Jake reached out across the center to rest a hand on Otis’s shoulder (an uncharacteristic familiarity that surprised me) and said, “Thank you. That’s going to make a big difference to us.”
“You folks are having dinner on me tonight as well,” he continued. “Won’t take no for an answer.”
“That’s much appreciated,” I said.
“You have any more of those guns?” Robert asked out of nowhere.
Without missing a beat or hesitating in any way Jake’s head rotated to him, any of the warmth his face held freezing over in that one fluid motion, and he said, “’Fraid not.” He offered no further explanation but also did not look away.
After a few moments, the perpetually sour look melted from Robert’s face and settled to an expression of uncertainty. He looked down at his lap and said, “Fine, then.”
“Cheer up, Squirt,” said Billy. “You can take the Remington, there. After tomorrow, you should be able to shoot it as well.”
“My god damned name isn’t Squirt,” growled Robert. He got up from his chair and walked off on his own towards the overpass to the north of us.
“I’m sorry…about him,” said Samantha. Listening to her speak, I thought I understood the true definition of a ‘mousey voice’. “He’s been really angry since our parents…” she trailed off.
Jake nodded. “Lost them on the road?”
“We…yes.”
Jake nodded again and looked off at Robert’s retreating back. “Yeah,” he said to himself in a low voice.
-
As promised, dinner was provided that evening courtesy of Otis and what provisions his people had found on the road. Mostly this was canned food, some of it Chef Boyardee, some of it Campbell’s, but he did produce a profound delicacy in the form of a nearly two foot long dry salami that he had been saving either for when they were feeling very low or very high. He said that he insisted on sharing it on account of our “extravagance and generosity”. It was so delicious that I half wanted to offer him another rifle to see what other food he might have stashed away. We do a lot better these days with the subsistence farming and our hunting parties mean that meat is often available, if not plentiful. One tends to forget those early days before any of us had managed to establish a real toehold anywhere. All food was canned, dried goods, or MREs if you were really lucky to stumble across a cache – most of which tasted like “a wet bag of ass” (Gibs’s words, not mine), to tell the truth. A regular old piece of salami cut fresh from the package was heaven.
We managed to produce a fire, get the food warmed up, and put the fire out before the sun went down. We were in an exposed position out in the open located next to two major highways and decided it would be best to avoid a fire during the evening. I recall there was no moon during that time; however the starlight has been forever strong since the lights went out – we couldn’t rely on the night to obscure us from view, so part of the discussion during dinner involved arranging a watch schedule between us throughout the evening. The larger number of the group meant very short shifts even if we ran two people to a shift; one of the first of many benefits I would come to realize in living in greater numbers.
With the logistics of the evening out of the way, the conversation turned to the exchange of news between our two groups. Otis brought a good deal of information with him out of New Mexico.
“They started rounding us up and transporting us by vehicle to the tent cities outside of Albuquerque,” Otis said. “School buses, greyhound buses, Army trucks…hell, we even saw people getting pulled behind trucks on flatbed trailers and big shipping semis with containers full of people. Sick or healthy, minor symptoms or nothing at all. Didn’t matter what your condition was; if they found you, they brought you.”
Billy got up as Otis spoke; made his way to the truck and the container marked “pantry”. Otis’s story halted as he moved and Billy said, “Please go on. Don’t mind me.” He came back to his chair with a very familiar brown bottle and some Dixie cups.
“Hey,” Otis said in appreciation. “Whatcha got, there, Billy?”
“Tellin’ stories is thirsty work,” Billy said as he offered a cup to Otis, who took it and nodded. He filled two other cups a third of the way full and passed them out to Jake and me. He looked to Robert (who had come back when the food came out) and Samantha to ask, “Will you share a drink with us?”
“Seems pretty stupid, honestly,” said Robert. “What good does it do to stand watch if we’re all going to do it drunk?”
Billy, who had just been getting ready to pour two more cups, betrayed a fleeting expression of hurt before he covered it up with a smile and said, “Well, no one’s planning on getting drunk, kid. It’s just to take the chill off, you know?”
“No, I don’t know,” Robert said. Samantha tried to lay a calming hand on his arm but he shrugged her off and I could see that he was winding up for quite a tear. “Please explain to me how you take the chill off without drinking to a point of being numb. I mean, it seemed perfectly clear to me that the same thing is accomplished more easily by putting on a fucking sweater as opposed to intentionally thinning out your blood. Exactly what backwoods, shit-kicker, home remed…”
“Robert.” It came from Jake. His voice was flat and low; I almost didn’t hear him. Robert certainly did – the tone of Jake’s voice stopped him in his tracks before he could truly unload.
“Yeah?” Robert asked. He looked less than pleased at being interrupted while in the process of building up momentum. His voice was impatient.
“Not a single thing that’s come out of your mouth since we’ve arrived has been useful.
It would be good if you thought about that and maybe see if you might be able to contribute something meaningful the next time you open it.”
“Oh! Well, how abou…”
“Shut the fuck up, Robert.”
I had only known Jake a few days by that point but in that time, I don’t think I can recall him ever using the word “fuck” in conversation. I have since learned that he can curse with some of the best (you should see him when he gets going with Gibs sometime) but he tends to be very polite with people he doesn’t know well…at least until he gets a lock on them. You become attuned to his manner of speaking and assume that it’s the only way he communicates. In reality, he’s more of a vocal chameleon – changing expressions and speech patterns to suit his audience (another one of those behaviors that tends to draw people to him). Consequently, for those rare occasions when he does say “fuck” in strange company, the reaction in those around him is similar to what you see in animals when thunder cracks unexpectedly: they cringe and try to crawl under the nearest cover. Even with people who have only just met him, it’s as though they sense that he pulls that word out only for special events.
In Robert’s case, his mouth fell open and he seemed to shrink about three inches in his chair.
“I’m sure you’ve had a long and stressful day,” Jake continued as though nothing had happened. “Why don’t you turn in? I’ll take your watch for you so that you can be fully rested for tomorrow.”
Samantha rose from her chair, eyes downcast, and pulled at her brother’s hand. Inwardly, my heart ached for her embarrassment but there was nothing any of us could say that wouldn’t make it worse. He followed her, trying and failing to walk with some kind of dignity. They got into the minivan and were hidden behind the tinted windows.