Everything Has Changed

by Darrell Maloney

  But they’d seen how hard Sid worked for them. Everybody had. They knew how much of his personal life he sacrificed for them.

  And it was only a couple of days.

  “Of course. Count us in,” she said resolutely. “It would be our pleasure.”

  “Thank you both,” Brenda said. “Your bundle will arrive at the eight o’clock hour on Monday night.

  “Are you going to the party?”

  “Yes, we’d planned to go as soon as our inventory was done. Now I guess we can go earlier.”

  “And you know where his cabin is, at lot 4863?”

  “Yes,” John proudly said. “I was one of the volunteers who helped build it. I laid the pavestones and helped mortar the interior walls.”

  The following Friday, the plan went off without a hitch.

  Sid had been all over the lake catching drops and doing inventories all day. After his four o’clock inventory was done, the next drop on his clipboard was for the Montgomery family at Lot 4868: five lots from his own.

  He jumped in his pickup and made a bee-line to the drop site, and was amazed to see his own lot in the daytime for the first time since his cabin was completed.

  He was stunned. He didn’t know what to say.

  He cried.

  Now, there had been parties at Etlunka Lake before. Practically every family threw one when their own cabins were finally finished.

  But this one was the biggest one yet.

  They hadn’t forgotten his birthday after all.

  Chapter 44

  Julie Hamlin didn’t give in very often.

  In all the years she and Wayne had been married she’d always worn the pants in the family.

  That was by mutual agreement.

  In fact, Wayne had insisted on it from the very beginning.

  “Look,” he’d told her on their wedding night. “I’m a typical scientist. I tend to get focused on certain things and ignore the obvious. I get scatterbrained sometimes. I lack the common sense that comes natural to you.

  “I know these things and accept them. And I want you to know that my feelings aren’t hurt when I rely on you to steer our ship and keep us heading in the right direction.

  “I will trust you to keep us on course and my pride won’t be hurt when you occasionally tell me I’m a dumbass and to go back to my crayons and let an adult do her job.”

  He’d said the last part in jest, and it worked, for she’d laughed out loud.

  But the truth was, he was absolutely right. About all of it.

  It was Julie who took control of the checkbook and the investment accounts.

  It was Julie who got the cars registered each year and renewed the insurance policies and made sure all the bills got paid.

  Julie planned vacations. She bought or leased their cars. She picked out the houses they moved into and got rid of Wayne’s junk when it outwore its usefulness.

  It wasn’t that Wayne wasn’t capable of doing all those things, but rather that he just never got around to them. If it was up to Wayne they’d be living in a homeless camp not because they had no money to make their mortgage payments. But rather because he simply forgot.

  And, to be honest, Julie did indeed call her husband a dumbass from time to time. And he never took offense because he always deserved it.

  It became a habit, over the years, for Julie to make key decisions without consulting Wayne. And for him to follow along, like an old family dog, simply because he knew her decision-making skills were much better than his.

  It was Julie who, when the Yellowstone eruption became imminent, made the decision for the pair to move to Germany.

  They’d always wanted to retire in the Rheinland. Ever since they honeymooned there and fell in love with it all those years before.

  This was the perfect time to do so, she reasoned. He’d worked for almost thirty years in his chosen field of study. His early predictions of the eruption sparked early evacuation orders and saved countless lives.

  He’d done his part for the common good. He’d earned the right to retire; to step away from the whole Yellowstone situation. To pass the baton to someone else and go into a well-deserved retirement.

  Julie made that decision for him.

  They’d move to Wittlich and start a new life there.

  And yes, she’d let him work part time as a guest lecturer at the local university. She knew he had to do something to stay sane, even if but for three hours a day.

  But officially he’d be retired, as she finally was. Instead of worrying about deadly eruptions and magma pools and pressure readings he’d warm a bar stool at the bier hall or tend to his tomato garden or nap every afternoon.

  She knew as she made such plans he wouldn’t buck her. For he’d know instinctively her decisions were sound.

  They always were.

  They’d made the adjustment well.

  Now, several months into post-eruption life they were settled into their townhouse off the city centrum.

  They had the life many others dreamed of.

  They could, if they chose to, walk everywhere they went. They had a car, sure. But it could stay in its garage for weeks at a time.

  Each morning they could walk to the centrum to do their shopping, buying only what they needed and carrying it back home in canvas bags.

  If they had a mind to they could forego the shopping and have breakfast or lunch at a gasthaus, enjoying a good meal and the good company of an ever-growing circle of friends.

  The locals were getting to know them and were seeking them out. They weren’t aloof as many Americans were. Many Americans, when moving to Germany, avoid being submerged in the culture. Learning a new language is difficult. Learning the traditional ways of the German people even more so.

  Many Americans, there on military or state department business, stick to their own kind. They seldom leave their posts and get to know the Deutschlanders. And that’s a dirty shame because their hosts are a dynamic and interesting people.

  Wayne and Julie, on the other hand, embraced the culture.

  And the culture was beginning to welcome them as its own.

  It so happened this was the first day of the Säubrennerkirmes. The Pig Fest. It’s an annual city-wide party of carnival rides, wine tasting, beer drinking and general revelry among Wittlichers and their guests from far and wide.

  As the legend goes, many hundreds of years ago an invading army was on its way to attack the town. The gatekeeper charged with preventing their entry could not find a suitable pin with which to lock the city’s gate.

  He used a carrot instead.

  Along came a sow which ate the carrot. Invading forces walked through the now-unsecured gate, then pillaged and burned the town.

  The guilty sow couldn’t be identified, so every sow in town was gathered up and roasted over open spits. The legend generated the carnival, which is now an annual event in Wittlich.

  The modern-day city of Wittlich has been around for a very long time. Early stone settlements date back four thousand years. It’s a city which still clings to its legends and traditions.

  It was under these conditions, the joyous auspices of a city-wide barbeque and festival, that Julie and Wayne met with their friends to share wine and pork sandwiches.

  And to tell them of their plans to return, post haste, to the United States.

  Chapter 45

  “Julie, you’re kidding,” their good friend Kris said. “Wayne, please tell me she’s kidding.”

  Julie wasn’t kidding, and spoke for herself.

  “No. All this time I’ve been selfish. I thought there was no real reason for Wayne to go back and help assess the Yellowstone Caldera and its current state. I wanted someone else to do it instead. I wanted to keep him all to myself and make him stay here with me.”

  “But… what changed your mind?”

  “A man from FEMA came to see us. His name was Robert Taylor. He’s the lead volcanologist in FEMA’s Risk Assessment Division.”

&n
bsp; “Wasn’t that the position they offered Wayne?”

  “Yes. He turned it down when we decided to move here instead.

  “Dr. Taylor convinced me that he’s over his head. That FEMA gave him the job because he was the next best option when Wayne passed on the offer. But he admits he doesn’t have the experience and the talents that my Wayne has.”

  Wayne, sitting silently at the same table, flushed with embarrassment. He’d never been one who enjoyed it when others heaped praise upon him.

  Julie continued, “Dr. Taylor said no one else in the scientific community can read a volcano like Wayne. That he has an uncanny sense in interpreting data and determining what a volcano is going to do. That’s why he read the early numbers on Yellowstone and convinced the federal government to issue evacuation orders. He’s the one who helped them establish the inner and outer evacuation zones.

  “I didn’t know this, because he never told me, he’s too shy and it embarrasses him. But apparently everyone else in the volcanologist community calls Wayne the volcano whisperer. Because of his uncanny ability to read and understand them.

  “The new data clearly shows there will be a secondary eruption. Dr. Taylor says the pool of magma is still too great, its upward pressure is still too strong. There’s more misery to come.

  “He says they still need Wayne’s help to decide when the secondary eruption is likely to occur. And whether the magma pool shifted. Whether the evacuation zones need to be enlarged or shifted as well.

  “In short, he convinced me that my selfishness and my desire to keep Wayne all to myself could cost lives. If they try to do their assessment without him, and they get it wrong, people could die.

  “We’ve decided to go back. So he can oversee the assessment and make sure they get it right.”

  “Are you coming back when he’s done?” Kris asked.

  “I hope so, Kris. But I honestly don’t know.”

  Epilogue

  Wayne and Julie stepped off a Lufthansa flight in New York City later that week. Julie rented an apartment on the lower east side and Wayne made his way back to what remained of Wyoming, to a camp of volcanologists and other scientists who welcomed him with open arms.

  Four months later the team presented their top secret assessment to Congress.

  Congress kept some key details to themselves, not so much because they were sensitive, but rather to make themselves feel more important because they knew a few things the general public wasn’t privy to.

  But they did release the gist of the report in un-redacted form.

  It said that a secondary eruption was indeed imminent, though it couldn’t be accurately predicted. Sometime between forty and two hundred years, was the best guess of Wayne’s team of scientists.

  When she blew, the team said, they expected the states of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho to be obliterated completely.

  The surrounding states: North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, would also lose land mass, as the crater created by the eruption would encroach into each of those states.

  The Canadian territories of British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan would be similarly affected.

  The Congress of the United States overwhelmingly passed “The Yellowstone Life and Property Protection Act,” which pretty much placed the risk of homeowners in those states upon their own shoulders.

  That was agreeable to the vast majority of ranchers and farmers of what were to become known as the “big three.”

  The “big three” were Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, whose residents were an independent and hardy bunch.

  The bill prohibited insurance companies from insuring the lives, land or property of anyone residing in what they called the “danger zone.”

  The government strongly recommended that residents of the zone evacuate. Construction of new structures within the zone was strictly prohibited to discourage its continued occupation.

  However, because most current residents had no intention of going anywhere, it was legal to “maintain and provide upkeep” on existing structures.

  The general consensus among residents in the danger zone was that they were staying put. They’d continue to work their land and enjoy what they considered to be “God’s country,” with its wide open spaces and skies which seemed to go on forever.

  If their children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren got spooked enough to leave the land later, then that was up to them. In the meantime, they’d press on just as their ancestors did.

  Before the first eruption most Americans were naysayers, believing no such thing would happen in their lifetimes.

  Now the naysayers were all gone, replaced with people who knew a second eruption was inevitable. And who hoped and prayed it wouldn’t happen while they or their children were around to see it.

  For the first time, more families sought not to have children than to have them. It was an effort not to expose their children to a miserable life or horrific death.

  Americans began to look to other places to live, and families left the states by the tens of thousands. For the first time in a very long time, the United States population began to shrink rather than grow.

  Most Americans remained Americans, establishing new roots in Canada or Mexico.

  Many others went to Europe or to Australia. Some settled in the Asian countries until they wore out their welcome there.

  Sydney began a campaign to announce to the world that all comers were welcome with open arms, and over a hundred thousand families of Yellowstone refugees became Australian citizens.

  No, they didn’t instantly start talking funny. That would come much later, as they adopted Australian accents. Until then, to the locals, they already sounded funny.

  Within a year, most of the people who planned to relocate to other countries had done so.

  For those who remained, Yellowstone would be a constant source of wonder and dread.

  For the first time all Americans would live in the same way many in California, along the San Andreas fault, had lived for generations.

  They knew the big one would come someday and bring death and misery on the grandest of scales.

  They knew that when it did happen they’d be at ground zero.

  They just didn’t know when.

  From now on every American, from coast to coast, would have their own version of the San Andreas fault; their own dreadful monster, watching them in the background. Deciding but never telling when it would strike.

  In the Mojave Desert of southern California, in a resettlement village called Hulaville, Jenn and her children settled in for the long haul.

  Sam, of course, fell in love with the place immediately.

  He’d spend many of his days hiking in the desert, adding creepy crawly critters to his collection of vinegaroons, scorpions, centipedes and beetles. To his mother’s chagrin he’d develop a hobby of hunting and skinning rattlesnakes. He’d fry up the meat and eat it, but could never get his mom or sisters to try it.

  That was fine with him; it just meant he never had to share it.

  He and Vince became the best of buddies and spent many a night camping on the shores of the Mojave River with mom Jenn.

  The girls: Meadow and Autumn, eventually fell in love with the desert for different reasons. For Autumn it was the desert fauna, for flowers of a thousand colors bloom in the high desert which exist nowhere else in the world.

  For Meadow, whose window faced to the west, it was the most spectacular sunsets which won her heart; a dozen shades of brilliant oranges and reds set behind thousand year-old Joshua trees.

  Rocki and Darrell would retire from the road and live not far away until their deaths a few years later. Their ashes would be scattered along a favorite spot on the Mojave River, next to a small water fall where they retook their vows.

  For Hannah and Tony and Gwen and Melvyn, Alaska became their “forever place.”

  They’d grow old together and live out their lives the very
best of friends. Melvyn and Tony would spend their days fishing from a boat in the middle of Etlunka Lake while talking of old times and their women.

  Their women, on the other hand, would bake goodies for the neighborhood children and talk about their men.

  Samson, the baby who’d survived a kidnapping and a wild ride around the country, would remember absolutely none of it.

  He’d grow up to be a park ranger at Katmai National Park in southern Alaska, though he only accepted the post after being assured there was no volcano there.

  In Wittlich, Germany, Wayne Hamlin died ten years to the day after Yellowstone blew. Julie died of a broken heart a bit more than a year later.

  A study undertaken by the American Medical Association thirty years after Yellowstone’s first eruption determined that every American’s lifespan would be shorter due to the ash and other stressors associated with the eruption.

  Not just by a little bit, either, but by an average of almost four years per person.

  No one knew, of course, how bad the second explosion would be.

  After a couple of dozen years most Americans were able to put the first eruption out of their minds occasionally.

  But never for long.

  For it… Yellowstone… was always out there, spewing hot geysers and heated pots of bubbling mud. Biding its time and patiently waiting until it could cause even more pain, more turmoil, than ever before…

  Thank you for reading

  THE YELLOWSTONE EVENT

  It was a fun story to write, and I hope you’ve enjoyed it.

  *************************

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  THE YELLOWSTONE EVENT

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