“So whose idea is it?”
“Mostly my brother-in-law’s. We always had a lot of food stored up, but it didn’t turn into a bunker until Candy married him. My dad thought it was perfectly reasonable.”
“Uh-huh.”
“The longer you’re here, the more sense it’ll make. Which is why we’re only staying for the summer. Hang around much longer and it starts to eat your brain.”
“Well, we could set up our bedroom down here, in the meantime,” I said. “Wouldn’t have to worry about noise coming through the walls, that’s for sure.”
He laughed wickedly and slapped me on the backside, and we hurried back up the stairs, the can of beans rattling all the way like a children’s toy.
* * *
The whole family was already assembled around the dinner table when Cade and I walked in. Leela, sitting at the opposite end of the table from Cade’s father, threw me a shy smile, and the family fell silent as Cade and I took our places. Cade bowed his head for the prayer, and I followed suit. The man who was evidently Candy’s husband, a tall and sturdily built man I had immediately pegged as a PSN like the ones I trained at camp, intoned a singsong blessing. This was Dodge, the King Jackass of the Universe who had caused me to spend Christmas fending off Drew Fielder’s slimy attempts at flirtation. The mere memory gave me a shiver.
“Tell your father about what you learned today, Matthew,” said Candy, breaking the awkward silence that followed the blessing.
Dodge loaded his plate with chicken casserole and passed the dish across the table to Cade, who looked at him with thinly veiled contempt. Matthew’s reedy little voice replied, “The Declaration of Independence.”
“What about it?”
Matthew squeezed his fork between both hands as he rolled his eyes upward in thought, crushing noodles and sauce through his fingers like Play-Doh. “Um…that it was wrote by President Thomas Jefferson to tell the world that we had gotten independent from all our enemies.”
“That’s right,” said Dodge. He forked in a mouthful of chicken. “Enemies like who?”
“Tyrants. Like the British and judges and foreigners, and the merciless Indian savages, and the Muslims.”
“Very good.” He nodded to Candy. “Nice work there, Momma.”
Candy beamed.
Cade took a long drink of his iced tea. Then he said, “I don’t think the Muslims were a big threat to the colonies at that time.”
“There were Muslims back then,” Dodge said.
“There certainly were,” agreed Candy. “The Muslims have been around since the time of the Jews. Ask Elias—he was just over there fighting them.”
“You want to straighten her out on that one?” Cade prompted his brother. Elias looked up, and Cade tipped his head imploringly. “Who are we fighting over there? The Muslims, or al Qaeda, or what?”
“The Taliban,” Elias answered. He picked around in his dinner with his fork and added, “And ignorance.”
“Ignorance?”
“People not knowing any better way.”
“See,” said Cade, “now, that makes sense. Let’s hope we’re making progress on that one.”
“We aren’t,” said Elias.
“You want to talk about enemies,” Dodge said, and jabbed his fork in the direction of the front window. “Drove down to the rental property today to fix the dishwasher, and they wouldn’t even let me in. Gonna put those people out on their ass, first of the month.”
“You can’t do that,” Cade told him. “There’s a process. They’ve got a lease.”
“Lease that says I’m the landlord. I can go in whenever I feel like.”
Cade nodded toward his father. “Dad’s the landlord.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Legally, it does.”
Cade’s mother stood up and lifted the iced tea pitcher from the center of the table. “Stop your arguing. Let’s not turn a nice supper into one of those TV programs where everybody bickers at each other.”
“So as I was saying,” Dodge continued, “they wouldn’t let me in. Girl there said her father told her a man has to be home before she can let me in. Don’t think I don’t know what that’s all about.”
Leela’s brow creased. “Nothing wrong with that, really. They’re religious, remember. Don’t they belong to that church down the road apiece? The nondenominational one?”
“Uh-huh. Randy’s church.”
I looked from Cade to his father and back again. Randy was the uncle they never spoke to because of some old argument about a gun club. But Cade only said, “What does that have to do with anything?”
“I’m betting Randy’s been saying things. They never had any issue with me coming in before, and now all of a sudden they need the father home. Sounds to me like there’s been some trash-talking and murmuring going on. I don’t take well to that at all.”
Elias mumbled something, and Dodge looked over at him sharply. “What’d you say?”
“I said that’s goofy.”
Taking on an exaggerated posture of shock, Dodge leaned back and shot Elias a squinty glare. “Beg your pardon?”
“Chill out. It isn’t all that.” Elias chopped his fork around in his casserole, looking up just enough to catch Dodge’s eye with his own placating gaze. “That’s not Randy’s style, is all I’m saying. He wouldn’t go around gossiping about people. You don’t need to worry about it.”
Dodge shook his head. “You picked a strange place to stand up and defend that individual. But it’s a free country, right, Matthew?” His son nodded adamantly. “You can defend that cockwad if you like.”
“Dodge,” Leela scolded. “For goodness’ sake, stop it. First time we ever have Cade’s wife at our table, and what’s she going to think of us, with you speaking like that at supper? I’m sorry, Jill.”
“She’s not his wife,” Dodge pointed out. He didn’t bother to look at me when he said it. I glanced at Cade and he lifted his eyebrows in a silent I told you so. I might have felt irritated by the look had it not been so obvious that he was right about the guy. I could handle him, but Cade’s embarrassment made all the sense in the world now.
“She’s his wife in the biblical sense and that’s good enough for me,” Leela said. She caught my eye and wagged her head up and down. “You hear me, Jill? It’s good enough for me.”
I smiled. “Thanks.”
“Well, far be it from me to argue with the Bible,” said Dodge. “Pass the green beans over here, will you?”
The bowl sat in front of me, but he hadn’t addressed me directly, so I made no motion to pass it to him. For several moments he sat in expectant silence; the family continued to eat, and at last he stood and reached down the table to retrieve it himself. When I glanced up to see the shadow of Cade’s smile I felt Elias watching me, but when I looked at him he turned back to his dinner and said nothing at all.
Chapter 6
Jill
The baby didn’t like the casserole. In the middle of the night I awoke with a raging case of heartburn—not the first of my pregnancy, but by far the worst. I tossed and turned for a while but eventually gave up and ventured down the stairs, hoping the Olmsteads kept antacids somewhere in their Armageddon pantry.
As I entered the addition I heard the television in the den turned down low and saw a column of cigarette smoke rising from the easy chair. I knew it had to be Elias, and when he caught my eye I offered him a polite wave. Other than the television, the kitchen’s only illumination came from Candy’s incubator on the back porch, a glass-and-wire box holding twenty parchment-colored eggs under the warmth of a sixty-watt bulb. It threw a shadowed light across the kitchen, and as I opened a cabinet and began poking around, Elias asked, “Whatcha looking for?”
“Tums or something.”
“I’ve got ’em over here.”
I padded over to the easy chair, and he pulled open the side-table drawer. “I’ve got a whole little field hospital over here. Tums, Tylenol, nail clippers, allergy pi
lls, you name it. Keeps everything handy.”
“Is that a gun in there?”
He handed me the Tums and slid the drawer shut. “Hey, if I’m gonna be up at night, at least I can provide a little security.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed your family’s pretty big on emergency preparedness.”
He chuckled. “Yep, we’re ready for World War Three over here. You see that cabinet there?” He pointed to one above the refrigerator. “It’s got potassium iodide pills in it, in the event of a nuclear explosion. If anybody drops a dirty bomb on Lake Winnipesaukee, your thyroid is safe and sound.”
“Are you serious?”
“Dead serious. Did you get a good look around the cellar? They’ve got enough water stored up to float the house to Canada.”
I chewed two of the antacid tablets, then asked, “What do you think of all that?”
“I think it’s not a bad idea.” He dragged on his cigarette, held the smoke in his lungs for a moment and exhaled out his nose. “If we learned anything from 9/11, it’s that when the shit goes down, you’re on your own. And that goes for normal stuff, too. Out here, if it snows real bad, good luck getting out of the house for a week. If somebody breaks into your house, by the time the cops get here, all your stuff’ll be in a truck en route to Canada.”
“You guys ever get break-ins all the way out here?”
“It’s not unheard of. And there’s a lot of people still got grudges against my dad, even now. Pissed-off renters especially. Dodge usually deals with them these days.”
I replied with a rude little laugh. “Yeah, that must calm them down.”
“Seriously, right? He’s got a special kind of charm. So what’d you think of that dinner party?” He flicked ash from his cigarette into the beer can beside him. “Dodge is lucky one of us didn’t come across the table and choke him.”
“Seemed like most of the family agreed with him about your uncle Randy.”
“They do. People around here need a hobby. Scrap with somebody one time and then you can milk ten years of conversation out of it. God forbid you just let it go.”
I handed him the Tums bottle and he dropped it back into the drawer. The three empty beer cans lined up on the side table rattled as he pushed it shut. I asked, “What happened ten years ago?”
Elias leaned forward a little and, with his cigarette still wedged between his fingers, cupped his hands as if to explain that this story was a whole little world. “You have two extremists. One wants to create a citizen militia with five hundred guns and a whole army of trained-up guys ready to turn Maine into its own republic if they get pissed enough. The other one wants to drink beer, shoot guns, grill burgers and fuck your daughter. There’s only room for one of them at the supper table.”
I raised an eyebrow. “So which one is Dodge?”
“The second one, obviously. He couldn’t organize a sock drawer, let alone a militia. You haven’t done the math on him and Candy?”
I shook my head.
“He’s forty-one. She’s twenty-six. Their oldest kid is nine.”
I thought about that for a moment, then wrinkled my nose. “Ew.”
“Dad had to sign off on the marriage license, she was so young.”
“I’m surprised he agreed to that. If some creep wanted to marry my teenage daughter, I sure wouldn’t.”
“If the creep is one of your friends, you would. But it’s a stupid squabble if you ask me. Randy’s not so bad. He just had a different goal for the group. It’s nothing to start a blood feud over, but people have to go and take things personally. You gotta let stuff like that go or you’ll drive yourself over the edge.”
I sat on the arm of the chair beside his. “Cade’s like that about this guy named Drew who’s been competing with him for the same job. At some point he stopped being a rival and turned into the enemy. Except that guy really is a jerk, and I gave him the benefit of the doubt, too. Over Christmas, when I was stuck at school, I got take-out Chinese with him and he tried to get in my pants.”
Elias stopped in mid-drag and, laughing silently, coughed out smoke. “Weren’t you already pregnant then?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know it yet. Don’t say anything to Cade about that. He’d kill the guy.”
“Scout’s honor. Pretty funny that anyone would try to cock-block Cade, though.” In an ominous voice he quoted, “‘Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station.’”
I laughed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Kudos to that guy for thinking he stood a chance. With my brother—just make the son of a bitch work for it, that’s all. Make him buy you a big honkin’ diamond, at least. You look like you’ve earned it.”
I laughed and stood up. “Thanks, Elias.”
“My pleasure.”
I reached in to hug him, and at the first touch of my hands against his upper arms he stiffened so violently that I nearly jumped back. But I hugged him anyway, my hands light and the pressure soft, and patted him on the shoulder.
He nodded and scratched above his ear, and I trudged back up the stairs to bed.
* * *
By the following Sunday Cade had found a job as a shift manager at a hotel seventeen miles down the road, in Liberty Gorge, the first real town south of us. The pay was menial and the job a joke compared to what he was capable of, but work was scarce in the area and it was the best he could do. On Monday, after his morning chores, he donned the cheerful blue-green uniform shirt and headed off to field complaints about broken showerheads, unpalatable food and groups of noisy teenagers.
I wished for an escape as pleasantly menial. It hadn’t taken long for me to realize that “the Powell house”—the peach-painted cinder-block cottage tucked in the side yard of the main house—was little more than a formality, a place Dodge and Candy could claim as their own without ever spending any waking time there. Candy homeschooled her sons from the dining-room table of the main house, beginning with the Pledge of Allegiance each morning at 8:00 a.m., followed by prayer, followed by unqualified chaos. It amazed me that Elias managed to spend every day around her and remain so preternaturally calm all the time. Seven days and I felt ready to snap.
Late one morning, when I couldn’t handle listening to one more minute of Candy’s creationist science lesson, I gathered up the heap of garden peas from the kitchen island and took them out to the front porch. As soon as the screen door slammed, two deer bolted away from the vegetable garden on the house’s eastern side. I clucked my tongue in annoyance and sat down to shell the enormous pile, already feeling better just to be out in the fresh spring air, away from the cloud of smoke that blanketed the house’s interior. Out front, the Olmsteads’ rooster, Ben Franklin, strutted in a slow circle around the yard like a one-bird security detail. He was a strikingly beautiful creature. His comb and wattles were bright fuchsia, and from the top of his head down to his saddle feathers his coloring shifted from orange to pale yellow to deep red. The luxuriant tail was peacock-green and shimmered in the light. I admired him from a distance, knowing he was probably territorial. I’d spent the whole previous summer as Dave’s chicken-class teacher, teaching others how to feed and raise such birds, castrate the males so they could be raised for meat, and at the end of it all, slaughter them humanely. I knew how to manage birds like Ben, but I wasn’t foolhardy enough to walk into his space right away.
A green Jeep slowed in front of the house and abruptly pulled into the driveway, driving all the way up to where Cade normally parked. The door opened with a metal-on-metal screech. The kid who stepped out of it looked to be about eighteen, with spiky auburn hair and wire-rimmed glasses. I knew right away—based on his resemblance to a certain Muppets character—that this must be Scooter. I’d heard Elias mention the guy who rented a room from the Vogel family one farm over and helped out Dodge with the self-storage place. He nodded a greeting and smiled at me.
“Good morning, ma’am,” he called. “Is Elias awake?”
“I don’t think so. He usually sleeps till about one.”
The guy nodded again. His earnestly good-natured face looked comical above the rest of his body, clad as it was in baggy woodland camo pants, a white crew-neck undershirt and black combat boots crusted with mud. He held out his car keys and, a little bewildered, I accepted them. “Just tell him his stuff’s on the front seat, along with his change.”
“Okay. Don’t you need your keys?”
“They’re his. It’s his Jeep.”
He raised a hand to say goodbye and began hiking back up the road toward the Vogel farm. I started to walk back into the house to put away the keys, but then considered that I should probably bring his loose change inside, too. It hadn’t taken long for me to determine I didn’t trust Candy’s Matthew. Among the end-of-the-world rations in the Olmsteads’ basement were cans of something called “carbohydrate supplement,” which appeared no different from cellophane-wrapped hard candy. It seemed as if every time I sat down those cellophane wrappers crinkled between the sofa cushions, and I was 90 percent sure Matthew was the one doing the sneaking. Any kid who would brave the basement bunker for a piece of hard candy would have no problem palming someone else’s car keys to intercept their spare change.
I opened the side door of the Jeep and retrieved the coins and bills, grabbing the plastic shopping bag while I was at it. Inside was a crisp white pharmacy bag. Curiosity got the better of me, and I peeked at the label. Beneath Elias’s name was the word Prozac.
I turned and looked up at Elias’s bedroom window, almost guiltily, as if I’d been nosing around on purpose. It was dark, the shades drawn, but it always looked that way. For a few moments I debated with myself whether to leave or take it, but in the end I tied together the handles of the plastic bag and carried it inside. Quietly I hung it on his bedroom doorknob. And an hour or so later when he awoke, the bag disappeared without a word. For the rest of the day he stayed in his chair in front of the TV, watching Rachael Ray and smoking cigarettes one after the other, as if they were a natural part of breathing.
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