299 Days: The Community (5 page)

Chip came up to him with a cup of coffee. Grant reached for it, assuming it was for him. Chip shook his head. “Not for you. For me.” That seemed strange.

“OK, but how can you sleep when you’re drinking coffee at night?” Grant asked.

“I’m not going to sleep,” Chip said. “I’m going to pull guard duty. You need to settle your family in.” Chip smiled. He knew that Grant’s real family had arrived. Chip would be part of this family, too; just an extended member of it.

Grant started to tear up. Why? It was nice and everything for Chip to take his guard shift, but why tear up? Everything was just so emotional at that moment. Grant collected his composure and said, “Thanks, man. I mean, really, thanks.”

Chip just smiled wider and nodded. He grabbed his AR and did a press check of his 1911. “Gotta go.” He walked a few steps and then turned to Grant, “I’m proud of you, man. You left your family when you had to. You weren’t some pussy just crying in the corner of your suburban home when the shit hit the fan. You were a man. And it’s working out well for you.” Chip turned and kept walking to the guard shack.

Grant got choked up. He had to admit it: he was proud of the stand he’d taken. but his mind shifted to thinking of all they had to do out there to make sure they made it.

Where to start? Grant thought. He needed to get people settled in. He started, of course, with his own family. He found Lisa and said, “I’m thinking that you and I get the downstairs bedroom that has a door.” It had a comfy queen size bed. Grant had got it at a garage sale for $100 and it was like new. He remembered when he got it thinking that he might need to sleep on this for several years out there so he better get a good one.

Grant continued, “The kids can share a bed in the loft.” Lisa nodded. “Then I’m thinking your parents could share the other bed in the loft. It will be comforting to the kids to have grandma and grandpa around.”

Lisa thought about how weird it was to have kids sleeping together and the grandparents also sleeping in the same room. She started to say something, but realized that this one cabin was all they had. There was no big house with separate bedrooms and no second house where the grandparents lived. This was how people slept in the past. It would have to do. It might actually be a good thing to have everyone under one roof. Family was a good thing, especially in a crisis.

“I guess so,” Lisa said. “I mean it’s just for a few days until this thing blows over.”

Grant nodded. A few days? He was playing along, knowing this could go on forever. “Yeah, just a few days,” he said, a little ashamed of himself for misleading her, although she had to be eased gently into the new reality, as did the kids and grandparents. Grant remembered that he’d spent the last few years mentally preparing for a Collapse. It was fair for it to take a while for everyone else to catch up with him.

“We have a full bathroom, a shower and everything, so that’s taken care of,” Grant said. “The only thing we don’t have out here is a washer and dryer, but I talked to the Morrells yesterday and they said we can use theirs.” Lisa smiled. Grant had thought of everything. She had to admit it.

Grant motioned for her to follow him upstairs to the loft. He pointed to the big dresser. “This will hold a lot of people’s clothes. Besides, they only brought enough for a week or two so there’s not much to put away.” Grant purchased the dresser when he got the bed at the garage sale. They matched. Only $50. Kind of a 70’s look to them, but they were solid, like furniture used to be built when things were still built in America. Way back then.

He opened a drawer and there were some of Manda’s clothes in there. “I had her bring some of her old stuff out a few months ago. We brought out some of Cole’s clothes, too. I saw this …” he stopped. He was about to say he saw this coming, but he was determined not to gloat, so he pretended to switch topics. “I saw this dresser at a garage sale when I got the bed. Just $50.”

Lisa made a mental note. They would have far fewer changes of clothes out there. But, then again, that meant doing fewer loads of laundry. That would be one of the big changes to living out at the cabin that she and everyone else would have to adapt to: wearing the same clothes all the time. Tee shirts and shorts or jeans, at least in the summer. No dress up clothes; those seemed like a waste. Besides, no one brought dress up clothes. Dress up for what? Work in an office? No one was going to work anymore, at least not out there. Dress up for a fancy dinner at a restaurant? Not happening. Lisa realized that she dressed up for other people, to fit in with them when they were similarly dressed up, but there was no one around now who was dressing up. She could live in tee shirts and shorts, or sweat pants when it got cooler. It would take some getting used to, but it would be fine.

Lisa realized the same would be true for makeup. She didn’t bring any. At first she felt naked without it. Then she thought about it. She put on makeup to go to work or the mall. That wouldn’t be a problem anymore. At least, until things got back to normal. She wasn’t around her girlfriends who all wore makeup. She didn’t need to impress anyone out there. So, after her first impulse, which was to feel naked without makeup, she actually got comfortable with the idea. She didn’t have to spend all that time on makeup. What a relief. Maybe this vacation out at the cabin wouldn’t be so bad after all. “Vacation” was what she was calling it in her head. She was viewing this as a vacation.

On every vacation they had ever been on, Grant would bring in the heavy luggage and Lisa would put it in the dressers and closets of whatever hotel they were in. She wanted to organize the stuff. Grant would get one dresser drawer for his stuff and she and the kids would get the rest of them. Grant and Lisa smoothly transitioned into their vacation roles. “I’ll bring in all the stuff,” Grant said. “It’s all in your Tahoe, right?”

“Yep,” Lisa said. “Thanks.”

Things were feeling a little “normal.”

While Grant was out at her Tahoe, he saw Drew and Eileen who were chatting with John and Mary Anne. They were about the same ages. It was nice to see them making friends so quickly. Not that he was surprised; it was just nice.

When Grant came up to them, Mary Anne and Eileen were talking about canning. “Oh, I haven’t canned in years,” Eileen said. “But I’d love to get back into it.” Grant remembered that Eileen and Drew grew up in little tiny farm towns in Eastern Washington. They would get snowed in for weeks at a time. They had some skills to dust off and use out there.

Grant said, “Excuse me.” He motioned to Drew and Eileen. “When you’re ready, I can show you where you will be staying and where to put your stuff.” They broke off the conversation and followed Grant back into the cabin.

As they were walking toward the cabin Grant said, “It’ll be a little cozy, but…”

“We’ll probably be up in the loft,” Drew said. “Fine with me. I snore a little, but not too bad.”

“I think it will be great to be so close to the kids,” Eileen said.

When they got upstairs to the loft and saw their bed, a nice queen size, next to the kids’ bed, Eileen said, “This is how we did it back on the farm. A few kids per bed and grandma. Six kids, but not six bedrooms like everyone has now.” Grant nodded.

That’s right, Grant thought, things were getting back to what was historically normal. It was not “normal” anywhere else in the world or throughout history for everyone to have their own room and several bathrooms in each house. It was nice, but not normal by world standards. People didn’t burst into flames back in the day when kids shared beds and grandparents lived in the same house. In fact, it made most families closer. It would take a little adjustment, but Grant thought this coziness just might be a good thing. Hey, he thought, they had free babysitting built right in with the grandparents there. And they had people with skills, like canning, right there, too.

Grant showed them their dresser drawers. “I’ll go out to your car and get your things,” he said to Eileen, knowing that she would account for about 75% of the luggage. Sure enough. Drew packed light. He was happy to bring just casual clothes. He had worn a suit for years and couldn’t stand them. This would be like a fishing resort vacation, except with the family instead of his business buddies.

Drew still had his pistol on him although it was concealed. Out in his car, he had a shotgun and a few boxes of ammo. He also had a .357/.38 Marlin lever action carbine and a few boxes of ammo, which would be nice for him to have. He had a Ruger 10/22 carbine and an old Browning Buckmark .22 pistol. Perfect. He had one suitcase of clothes. That was it.

Eileen had filled the car with her suitcases. That was fine. She had brought some dress up clothes. She was looking at the cabin as a more “normal” vacation where she might have people over and want to dress up, or maybe go out to a nice dinner. She could think that if she wanted. There was no harm in having those things as long as she didn’t get upset when she had no occasion to wear them. She brought a lot of makeup. That was fine. Maybe Lisa could borrow it if she really wanted to have some.

Lisa came up to Grant and whispered, “Uh, I don’t have any feminine supplies. How long do you think we’ll be out here?”

“Long enough to need them, maybe,” Grant said. That was an understatement. But he didn’t want to say that he assumed they could be out here for a few years.

Grant had meant to go to Costco and get several hundred…feminine supplies. He didn’t even like saying “tampon.” He almost got some of…those things one time, when he and Manda were at Costco. He was about to give her a bunch of cash and have her go in and get several hundred for her and her mom, but he chickened out. He just couldn’t acknowledge that she and her mom…needed those. It was totally irrational, but he was raised that men just didn’t talk about that topic. At all. Ever.

Grant felt like an idiot. Mr. Prepper didn’t have a very important and totally foreseeable item. He was kicking himself for not just manning up and buying several cases of…those things.

“In the morning I need to go to the store and get some,” Lisa said.

What? She thought she would just waltz into town and get some like this was some item on her shopping list? Did she have any idea how dangerous things were out there?

Normally, Grant would volunteer to go on an armed escort run into the looting city and get the supplies, but not these supplies. There was something about a guy buying feminine supplies that was, well, impossible. He thought about it: he was really willing to risk his wife dying on a trip into town just so he didn’t have to buy tampons? What was wrong with him? Talk about “normalcy bias”—he was suffering from it. Not for long.

“I’ll go into town with some of the guys for back up,” Grant said. “We’ll make a big list of things like this and hit the store in the morning.”

Lisa smiled. She remembered how, just a few years ago, Grant would joke that the most humiliating thing that could happen to a man was buying tampons. But, now Grant was being a good husband and doing it. He wasn’t so bad, Lisa thought.

“Thanks, dear,” she said. “Are you sure you can handle this?” she said with a wink. “I mean you’re walking around with a machine gun, but I’m not sure you can handle buying tampons.” It felt good to be joking around again. So good.

Grant started laughing so hard that it turned to tears. Happy tears. He quickly got control of his emotions. He was having a lot of these emotional spells lately. But so much had happened. He hugged Lisa again.

“You will be well taken care of,” he whispered to her. He wasn’t gloating, but he wanted her to remember that he had promised to take care of her months ago. She kept hugging him, too. She appreciated that her husband had gone to all this trouble to take care of them, even if it meant her being mad at him if she caught him And she appreciated that he wasn’t gloating.

After a while, he let her go and said, “I gotta get the Team all set up in their cabin.”

She said sternly, “There is something you need to do first.” She smiled and said, “Cole needs to be tucked.”

More of the happy tears. Oh, God, how Grant had wanted to tuck that boy in. For days.

“Hey, Cole,” Grant called out. “Time for tucking.” Grant climbed up to the loft and went over to the bed where the kids would be sleeping.

“Oh, yes, Dad,” Cole said with a huge smile.

Grant tucked in Cole. The lights were still on and people were moving around the loft putting their things away, so Cole wouldn’t be sleeping for a while, but that wasn’t the point. Tucking was about Dad being there. Grant hugged Cole so hard that he was afraid he would squish him.

“Good night, lil’ buddy,” Grant said.

“Good night, Dad,” Cole said with a big smile.

This is what you are supposed to be doing. I put you and them here. You’re safe, but you all have jobs to do.

Grant hadn’t heard the outside thought in a long time. But it was crystal clear. Grant said out loud, “Thank you.”

Chapter 78

The Third Amendment

(May 7)

Grant was so happy that he was tearing up again. He needed to stop that, especially in front of the Team. He was the oldest one and couldn’t have them thinking he was a sobbing old man, so he got back into his persona as Grant, the member of the Team.

He walked over to the yellow cabin. It was fully dark now. There was some moonlight, but it was still hard to see. He didn’t want to twist his ankle when he had so much to do. He got out his Surefire E1B flashlight from his 5.11 pants and noticed his pistol. There it was on his belt in the holster. It had been on the whole time he was talking to Lisa and the grandparents. No one had said anything like, “Get that dangerous thing away from me.” It was now perfectly appropriate to wear a side arm, when just a few days ago, he hid his guns from them.

“Things have changed,” Grant said out loud to himself as he walked down the gravel road to the yellow cabin. He listened to his Romeos, that he called “hillbilly slippers,” softly crunch on the gravel. He would never forget the sound of car wheels on a gravel road. Never. It was the sweetest sound of his life.