Desolated Page 6

  More and more grain was coming in, and instead of waiting for a big harvest as they usually did, they were harvesting daily, picking ripe heads. For the most part, they were eaten. The grain provided a quarter of their calories every day. Potatoes provided another quarter, and they’d gone around and around in discussions on how to preserve that food source if they were forced to move.

  For eating, there was no problem. They could bake, slice, and dehydrate the potatoes for eating. But for planting a new potato field, they’d need seed potatoes. And those were heavy.

  “There’s no way around it,” Pilar said over dinner one night. “We can’t possibly bring enough potatoes to feed ourselves. If we take only a few and are forced to leave permanently, the first harvest, we’d need to use it all to expand the output. It might take two years, planting as soon as we harvest, to get back to where we are now. And that whole time, we’d be eating no potatoes. We can only prepare for a temporary absence, not a permanent one.”

  “Maybe we can find other food,” Troy said.

  “We can hunt,” C.J. said. “My dad is a great hunter.”

  “We can all hunt, even me,” Sierra agreed, “but we’d have to be lucky to stumble upon enough game. Twenty people stomping through the forest? We’d drive off all game within a mile.”

  “We’d stop and the hunters would go out,” C.J. said. “Just like now.”

  “Your sister is good with the bow,” Sierra said. “And Dev is. Arch’s tremor has pretty much ended his hunting days. But the rest of us can all hunt with sling or blowgun. The problem remains, we can’t hunt if there is nothing to hunt. Your dad goes out all the time, C.J., and some days he comes home with nothing.”

  “I imagine higher up, there’s more game,” Pilar said. “Depends how the pines up there have fared. Pines and other flora.”

  “You think they’re any better than ours?” There weren’t two dozen living pines within sight of their back deck. The rest had all been killed from a combination of heat, drought, and bark beetles, who thrived when the trees were stressed from drought and heat.

  “I suspect that every thousand or fifteen hundred feet you climb in elevation, it’s basically what we were like ten years prior. Another thousand, subtract another ten years. So you get up to Flagstaff, and it’s going to look more like what we looked like at the start of this.”

  C.J. said, “What was that like?”

  “More rain. More trees. More green,” Pilar said. “More animals because there’s more green forage to live on.”

  C.J. said, “Then why doesn’t everybody move to the top of mountains?”

  “Maybe not the very top,” Pilar said. “That might not work, though the timberline has surely moved up as well. But for water, you need to be lower than that. Snow falls on the top of mountains, and when it melts, that provides people lower down with water.”

  Sierra said, “Maybe a lot of people moved north—I mean way north, like Montana.”

  “Maybe we can too,” C.J. said.

  She said, “You want to leave your home?”

  “Why not? It’s a lot of work to farm. If you can hunt instead, wouldn’t that be easier?”

  “Maybe so,” she said. “But if everyone left alive tried to hunt, all the animals would be gone. That happened here. There used to be a lot of deer. Between us, and Payson, and Wes’s group, and maybe some other group we never knew of, we eventually ate them all.”

  “That wasn’t smart,” he said. “You don’t kill the last deer.”

  Pilar said, “How would you know it’s the last deer?”

  C.J. didn’t have an answer to that. He had said twice what he usually said at meals.

  Sierra wanted to keep him talking. “What’s your dad doing today?”

  “Building stuff.”

  “Anything you can help with?”

  “He says not now. He’s still figuring it out.”

  Sierra nodded. Curt had to tinker first when he was in invention mode. But if C.J. didn’t witness that part of the process, would he ever be able to take over his father’s role? As far as she had seen, none of the orphans were naturals at mechanical matters. They could all do a little, but no one—including C.J.—had that creative spark that Curt had. He’d made pumping water and doing laundry much easier. He’d helped preserve the refrigerators and turbines for as long as possible. And he’d invented a simple grain harvesting tool, a curved blade of hammered down solar panel braces, honed to a sharp edge, that made short work of harvesting the amaranth.

  “I want to move in with Dad,” C.J. said.

  Sierra was surprised. And then after the initial shock, she wasn’t. “Have you talked to him about that?”

  He shrugged.

  “Is that a yes or a no?” she said. “You can’t just show up on his doorstep with a suitcase.”

  “What’s a suitcase?” he said.

  Pilar said, “A padded box for traveling with your clothes. But Sierra is right. You can’t invite yourself to move in somewhere. You have to be invited. And Curt loves his solitude.”

  C.J. got that rebellious look on his face Sierra knew so well. “I’ll talk to him tomorrow about it,” she said quickly, wanting to avoid a scene. “If he says yes, I have no objection.” In fact, she wouldn’t mind a break from the responsibility. C.J. was nearly grown, but not entirely. She had the feeling Curt would be less patient with his moods than she was. Maybe that’d be good for him.

  “You will?”

  “Sure. But I guess we’ll have to supplement Curt’s kitchen for a season. He’s not growing enough food for both of you. And when the eggs out in the woods hatch, the two of you could have those chickens.”

  C.J. was looking at her in shock. Maybe he’d expected a fight.

  “If he says yes. If not, you need to accept it, understand? And not complain to me, for it won’t be my decision.”

  He frowned, thinking about it, but finally he nodded.

  Sierra didn’t feel hurt by the request. Not much, at least. Tonight she’d think about how to make it sound most appealing to Curt. Even if it was just a month or two, or six months, she thought they might all be better off for it. Particularly C.J.

  “If you go, I’ll ask one of the others to take the couch. You guys in the barn can draw straws for it.”

  “Maybe Brandie,” Troy said. “Since she’s pregnant.”

  “Good idea,” Sierra said. “If you’re done eating, run out and get some water for the dishes, would you, C.J.?”

  He pushed back from the table and was gone.

  Her father said, “I’m surprised. You didn’t argue at all.”

  “He’ll be safer there. He may be out trapping or hunting with Curt, and if everything goes to hell when the military guys return, Curt will be able to get him to safety.”

  “Ah, I see.” He smiled. “I thought you caved pretty quickly.”

  THE NEXT MORNING, FIRST thing after checking on the hens, she walked to Curt’s. He was still sleepy and rumpled. He never looked better than in the mornings. She’d woken up next to him many times, and those were her favorite times back then—waking up and making love before starting the day. Part of her wished it had lasted. Part of her knew it could not have.

  “Morning,” she said.

  He grunted, letting her in the cabin.

  “I didn’t wake you?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Maybe I should come back in an hour?”

  “No, I’m okay. You know me. Can’t get going most days.”

  “You in pain?”

  He shook his head.

  “Misha has some willow bark if you are.”

  “I’m not.” He scrubbed his face. “So what do you want?”

  “Let’s sit and talk.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “No, nothing bad. Maybe something good.” She’d thought last night in bed about how to approach this. With Curt, direct was best. “Your son wants to move in with you.”

  “He’s here all the time
. Especially this last week.”

  “Do you like him?”

  “He’s my kid.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “So I love him,” Curt said. He seemed more awake now.

  “Good. So do I. And he says he’d be happier here, and I have no reason to disbelieve that.”

  “And you want this?”

  “I want what’s best for him. It seems to me, we’ve taught him what we can, my father and myself, and it wouldn’t hurt for him to see how you run your life a little more closely. There are probably a hundred little things you do that might be useful for him to learn. And I’m sort of hoping he gets better at fixing things while he’s here. That’d be good for everyone.”

  “Won’t you miss him?”

  “No more than you miss him now.”

  He frowned at her. “I feel like there’s more to this than you’re saying. Are you guys fighting again?”

  “No,” she said. “We’re getting along about the same—not great, not awful. He’s growing up, and Pilar says he tests me because of that. He certainly can do his share of the work in the garden and house, though I can’t promise you he won’t complain about it now and then.” She explained her idea of bringing over food and letting them have the hen and chicks that were hidden out in the woods when the new brooding hen was switched out for them. “You’ll need the extra eggs and meat.”

  “The pullets won’t lay for another six months. You want this to last six months?”

  “If it’s permanent, that’s fine by me. Isn’t it with you?”

  “I don’t know. I’m used to my privacy.”

  “He’s a quiet kid, a lot like you in some ways. And in the ways he isn’t like you, I wish he were. Maybe spending all his time with you will help him grow into a better C.J.”

  “I don’t know,” Curt said.

  “I’m worried for him. With Zoe, there’s nothing I can do to sway her to keep out of those military men’s way. And I know if there’s trouble, she’ll be right by Dev’s side. But if we’re overrun by these men, maybe you and C.J. will be gone. And if it goes really bad, you can take him away.”

  “I couldn’t abandon you. Nor the rest of my friends and neighbors.”

  “If it means saving C.J.’s life, I damn well hope you will. You know, there’s nothing much to this life but getting by. People used to want to leave their mark in the world, but we leave our mark with small innovations and inventions that help us survive and only a dozen people benefit from. Or maybe it’s not fair to call your inventions small. Sorry.”

  “There’s your library, all those books you wrote.” He meant how she’d filled all the empty notebooks she had found with all the knowledge she could cull from everyone, including a bit of medical know-how, their hen and garden knowledge, sewing, crocheting, macramé, and every other craft people had the least bit of knowledge of. Who knew what bit she’d recorded might help someone ten years after she was gone?

  “The main thing I’ve done, that I can leave the world, is give birth to two healthy children. I can’t bear the thought of either of them dying, but the thought of both of them dying freezes my heart. I know you can’t control what happens to us over the next weeks, but if something bad does happen, please, save C.J. If you ever loved me. If you love him, make sure he walks away and survives.”

  Curt thought about that for a while. “I guess I have to say yes. But I’d rather it was you walking away with him.” He scratched his beard. “I don’t know if I should say this.”

  “No, you can say whatever you’d like. I’d rather that you be honest.”

  “He’ll be hurt if I say ‘No, I don’t want you here.’”

  “Yes, he would be. But he’d get over it.”

  Curt sighed. “It isn’t that I don’t love him. It isn’t that I’m not willing to protect him. I just like living alone.”

  “You let me stay overnight quite a few times.”

  “I was rewarded for that.” He gave her a half smile, but there was no promise of anything in it, just a gentle nostalgia.

  “No more rewarded than I was,” she said.

  “Can I think about it?” he said.

  “Of course.” She stood to go. She hadn’t made it to the door when he called her name.

  He shook his head, as if at himself. “No,” he said. “It’s okay. Tell him it’s okay. It’s my turn, I suppose. You’ve had him all of his life. I should take him for the rest of his childhood.”

  “That won’t be long. He’s nearly grown. He might start a new life with a woman in five years. Or a man, whichever. You teach him enough building skills, he’ll be able to build his own home.”

  “It’ll be good to have someone to check my trap lines,” Curt said. “I was planning on hunting a bit more, going farther than I usually do. Just in case.”

  “In case?”

  “What if those armed guys don’t kill us but take all our hens? Or what if they come along and demand twenty-five percent of what we produce? They indicated that was their tax rate. Who is to say they won’t tax us and do nothing for us? We can’t live on seventy-five percent of what we eat now. We’d slowly starve. We’d soon be too weak to do our work.”

  “That’s so.”

  “If I can find one big animal, we can smoke it. Jerky is good for travel too, if that’s how things turn out, that we have to travel.”

  “Is there anything out there to be hunted?”

  “There has to be, somewhere. I saw javelina scat about a month ago but never did find them. More than one, by the scat.”

  “Be careful. You might be crossing into some other group’s hunting territory.”

  “Could be. I’ll risk it.”

  “Don’t get yourself shot.”

  “I’ll do my best not to,” he said. “Go on and send C.J. over about noon. I need to do some things first.”

  And it was that simple. She felt a twinge as she helped C.J. pack, and she shed a few tears as he went out the back door alone. She packed up a week’s worth of food to carry over right away. But her tears evaporated as she remembered that the soldiers hadn’t ever seen Curt’s cabin. They’d only spoken of three houses on the road. Her son was safer up there with the man who was not only his father but who had the most lethal weapon they still possessed.

  That night, feeling the absence of her son, she couldn’t get to sleep again. The quarter moon wasn’t up yet, but the stars were bright enough to cast dim shadows. The air smelled of dust and drought, as always. Her father joined her again on the deck.

  They sat in silence for a time, and Sierra looked up and noticed something different. “Look over there. From my angle, just beyond the left blade of the center turbine. Is that a cloud?” Sometimes little clouds became big ones and brought rain.

  “I need to move over there to see,” he said, and came and put his head close to hers. “Nope. That’s a galaxy. Not Andromeda. I think maybe it’s the Whirlpool Galaxy.”

  “How did you remember that?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s funny getting older. You forget where you set down the knife three minutes ago, but you can recall something you heard once forty years ago with perfect clarity.” He went to sit across from her again. “The stars are beautiful, aren’t they?”

  “They are.”

  “You miss him?”

  “I do. It’s like I can feel him not being there in the living room, asleep. But it’s better this way. And to tell you the truth, I can use a break from the little battles with him.”

  “Just being a kid. Testing you. Finding out who he is.”

  “I hope he has that chance to find that out.” With the new threat, that was no longer a certainty.

  Her father was silent for another few minutes. Then he said, “It’s a comfort, the stars. They were here before us, and they’ll be here after. No matter what happens to us—or to humanity overall—the earth will go on, and the stars will go on. I’ll die, and you’ll die, and C.J. will too, but I hope that’s seventy years fr
om today. But the stars? Their beauty won’t die for billions of years.”

  Chapter 10

  Nine days after C.J. moved to Curt’s place, the soldiers returned at mid-morning. Dev heard them coming from the time they turned onto their road.

  He gave the whistle signal they’d all worked out, and everyone flew into action. The day’s harvest was hidden. If Dev had his way, all the young woman would have hidden themselves, but they all balked at that suggestion. The only one who had agreed to that was Emily, who promised she would take her daughter into the woods at the signal. Nina was almost the same age that Emily had been when Payson’s invaders had assaulted her. Dev couldn’t begin to imagine the unique fear she must be feeling.

  Everyone had worked out their own temporary hiding places for food. Dev saw Zoe taking the basket of eggs to the root cellar entrance—not very well hidden if these men did a thorough search, but out of their sight, at least. His father had insisted on leaving the morning’s harvest in a basket every day, and Dev was glad he had, for it was easy to run inside the house and move that morning’s basket from the kitchen to the closet in his father’s room and cover it with a pile of towels. He passed his father, who was going for his rifle in the barn, for all the good that would do them.

  They’d disagreed over that too. Dev figured they may as well give up the posturing with empty guns. Had they had ammunition, they’d have fired last time when the hen was shot. The masquerade was over. But his father wanted his gun, and it wasn’t worth arguing over.

  The men were coming closer, and Dev could tell that there were more of them. And something out there was squeaking. A horse neighed. Troy came running around the side of the house and straight to Dev. “They have a big wagon,” he said.

  “How many men? Only men, or women too?”

  “All men, ten at least. All with rifles.”

  “You get into the woods with the bows.” The two best new students of the bow were supposed to get behind cover, and watch what happened.