Terry began to feel the embarrassment of a twenty year old sent back home with his tail between his legs and pulled himself up to his full six feet. “Sir, it’s my job to survey and report, and I intend to do just that.”
The man smiled a little, a tiny show of respect for the boy, and said, “Alright then. I don’t have any shells for this thing anyway. Why don’t you come up to the house, and I’ll show you around. My name is Bill, by the way.”
Terry relaxed and stuck his hand out. “Terry Shelton, sir.”
Bill gave his hand a single pump, and turned toward the houses. Terry shoved his bike across the ditch and followed across the grass. They walked into the shade of the first house, and Bill showed Terry where to park his bike. They kept going until Bill mounted the porch steps on the back of the middle house. The northern exposure kept it pleasantly shaded. Bill whistled and people appeared from three different doorways at once. Terry had another burst of nerves as he found himself surrounded by three more men, mostly in their forties, and four women, roughly the same age. The women looked older than the men on average, but Terry knew that was just how things worked these days. He definitely felt like a little kid among all these adults.
Bill set about introductions, “This is my wife, Aggie. Aggie, this is our local Reclamation Engineer, Terry…” Aggie was lean with long gray hair and deeply tanned skin. She wore the same jeans and cotton work shirt as everyone else. Terry shook her hand and looked her right in the eye. She looked back with considerably more force of presence, and Terry quickly looked away. Bill introduced everyone else in rapid fire sequence, but Terry couldn’t remember any of it. He did pick up on the fact that they were all related. The entire group was built around a set of siblings, he decided, but he failed to absorb the details.
Bill continued, “Our young friend here has been sent out to survey this land for reclamation.” This brought a chuckle from some members of the group. Terry blushed bright red as he realized that he was the butt of some kind of joke.
Bill slapped him lightly on the shoulder. “It’s ok, son. It’s just that every time we see some kind of ‘official’ out this way, it’s always trouble and never any help.”
Aggie saved him. “It looks like you had a hard trip, Terry. How about some sassafras tea?”
“That would be great, ma’am.”
Aggie stepped through the back door and the rest of the group went about their business, throwing light greetings over their shoulders as they dispersed. Bill smiled and waved toward an old aluminum chair with reeds where the nylon used to be. “Have a seat, Terry. Take a load off.”
Terry settled into the chair and couldn’t help but sigh as his legs relaxed.
“How was the Powers Bridge Road?”
“Well, sir. It’s pretty rough since the rain. Lots of mud.”
“I can see that,” Bill replied, looking Terry over with another smile.
“And the bridge has a big gap in it. No one told me.”
“Been that way for years. We keep it that way for a variety of reasons. I’m betting you are just out of school, right?”
“Yessir.” Terry looked at his hands.
“So, they’re messing with you, huh?”
“I reckon so, sir. I mean, the bridge is pretty close to town, and I’m sure somebody has been out here before now.”
“Yeah, they’ve been here. But those were tougher times. It’s been a while since we had any real problems out here. The bridge has been that way since ’22. Apparently there were two groups of real assholes on either side of the river. The ones on the other side were getting pounded, so they blew the bridge and scattered. They were still assholes and mostly ended up dead. The ones on this side were a real problem for our folks, but they were mopped up inside of a year. Once they were gone, the last of the other group set up shop on the other side. Still there as far as we know. We heard their place is a real cesspit.”
“Well, it did smell pretty bad when I came over the hill. I thought it was just pigs or something.”
“Long pig, maybe,” Bill said with a grim look in his eye.
Terry’s eyes got wide. “People still do that?”
“Unfortunately, they do. Do me a favor. Drop the plank in the river on your way back. They won’t make trouble in a stand up fight, but they have been known to sneak across the river at night in search of easy prey. Luckily, easy prey we are not.”
“I thought you said you didn’t have shells, sir.”
“We don’t, but we do have a good supply of rifle ammunition, among other things. We got a young fella who could hit you a half mile away. He’s been upstairs watching you since you passed the woods by the old school.”
Terry was surprised again. “Really? I never noticed anyone.”
“That’s the way we like it. We always keep watch, and if we see anyone, the whole place shuts down.”
Terry mulled it over as Aggie came out with a wooden tray, three cups, and a pitcher of tea. She leaned over and poured for them. Terry found her distracting. For one thing, she smelled clean. For another, her lean torso was less than a foot in front of his eyes. Not much else to look at for the moment. He realized in startled surprise that he had never thought of a woman his mother’s age as attractive before. As soon as the thought entered his mind, he looked down at his hands again and waited for her to finish.
Aggie sat in the chair opposite him, with Bill in the middle. She asked, “So, Terry, where are you from?”
“Well, ma’am, we have a few acres out in the scrubland near the old high school. It’s not much for farming, but it’s not bad for goats and chickens.”
“Why did you become a reclamation engineer?”
“My daddy is always talking about rebuilding. I’ve been hearing it my whole life. I figured this was a good way to help it along.”
Aggie paused for moment. “Yes, I guess you’re right. Rebuilding is important.”
“Yes, ma’am… My pappy was always talking about what it was like before the Breakdown, and it seems like they had it pretty good. He died when I was little, something about blood sugar. Granny was around until a few years back. She just got pneumonia and coughed herself to death one night.”
Aggie leaned across and put her hand on his knee. “I’m sorry, Terry. It’s always hard to lose family.”
Terry gathered his thoughts and said, “Yes ma’am. Thank you.”
“We don’t hear much out here. How is the rebuilding going?” Aggie asked casually, seemingly polite conversation with no substance.
“Well, it definitely better than it was. We can almost always find food now, and people seem to be getting along for the most part. In town, it’s mostly quiet. The sheriff and his boys do a pretty good job of keeping the troublemakers out.”
Bill chimed in. “How about fuel?”
“There is some for farm equipment, but it’s strictly rationed by the county. The trains get theirs from the state, but it’s still pretty rare to see one come through. The interstate is still too dangerous outside of town. We’re mostly on our own.”
“I see. Same old… Well, if you’re ready let me give you that tour I promised you.” Bill got up and walked to the door. “I’m going to make a big mistake by starting with the punchline.” He reached his hand inside and flipped his hand upwards. The entire kitchen filled with light - electric light.
“Holy sh… crap, sir! You have power!” Terry found his cup swinging on one finger and set it down quickly.
Bill laughed loudly. “That’s always good for a laugh, don’t you think, Aggie?”
Aggie snorted and said, “Drama queen.”
“What can I say? I like to be the center of attention.”
Aggie was still chuckling as she gathered up the cups on the tray and went back inside. “Have fun, boys.”
“Let’s go, Terry.” Bill walked to the fence line that was once the back of the sub-division. Terry hopped down the steps and followed him. They stopped at a big wooden gate and looked across another grass field behind the fence.
Bill started his tour by talking. “My folks were from Nashville. They were taking us to visit our family down in South Georgia when it hit the fan. They said that when it became clear that things were getting bad, they wanted us to go for a visit while we still could. My dad had an old station wagon from the 1970’s with a brand new GPS on the dashboard. He was an engineer and loved gadgets of all kinds, which didn’t make sense with the station wagon, an antique even then. That was 2012. When we asked him why we couldn’t have one of the cool SUVs that our friends had, he always said, ‘First rule of engineering, boys… If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ We always rolled our eyes at that. He probably said it ten times a day. Turns out, he was right.”
Terry didn’t know what to say, but he knew this was important to Bill.
Bill kept going. “My dad had been selling my mom on how great that GPS was, all the way from Nashville. She probably just thought of it as another one of Dad’s useless toys. My brother, Tom, and I were in the rumble seat way in the back, so we couldn’t see what was going on. We were too busy trying to get truckers to honk their air horns anyway. We were coming up the long hill from the Beech Grove exit when Dad started grumbling. The thing wasn’t working right. He pushed a bunch of buttons on the screen and gave it the old engineer slap. All it did was read, ‘Seeking satellites.’ Dad pulled off at the next exit, up here at Busy Corner, to do some trouble shooting and fill up the tank with twelve dollar gas while he was at it. Busy Corner was actually busy that day, and we weren’t the only ones with GPS troubles. By the time he finished putting gas in the car, it was clear that everyone with a GPS was trying to get it to work and everyone with a fancy cell phone was just as puzzled.
No one knew what was going on at that point, but I think Dad was getting the idea. He did something he hadn’t done in 10 years. He turned on the old CB radio under the dash, and listened to the chatter. It was full of truckers who had lost their GPS as well. Dad was torn, he told me later, about whether to keep going, but I guess he decided to go on since we piled back in the car and headed east. We made it all the way to the Tullahoma AEDC exit before we hit a road block of Air Force vehicles from the base. I remember thinking how cool it was to see all those camo Humvees with the big guns mounted on top. The traffic was light so we waited to see what they would say. The Air Force guys told us that there was a major blockage on the road ahead, and that we should go back to Manchester to wait until the highway was cleared. Dad took him at face value and headed back to the fast food and motel strip near the Wal-Mart. We pulled into the McDonald’s right off the exit, my dad handed her some cash and asked her to bring him something to the car. The rest of us went inside while dad stayed outside, trying to listen to the two radios at once.
We were waiting in line, except for my older brother, Kirk. He was in the restroom. Apparently, McDonald’s was the stop of choice for blockaded motorists since we were hearing a lot of chatter about roadblocks and GPS from the people in line with us. We were still behind some lady who seemed to be ordering for an entire office building when my dad rushed in and told us to forget it and to get back in the car. He had a wild look about him we had never seen before. As much as we loved McDonald’s, it never even occurred to us to argue. We left with a bunch of people watching us. Dad grabbed Kirk out of the restroom and practically dragged him to the car. He was probably just playing with the hot air hand dryer anyway.
Dad gave a quick look over his shoulder, maybe looking for traffic, maybe counting us kids… I was never sure, and he made a squealing turn out of the parking lot. Back in the rumble seat I remember people coming out of the McDonald’s as we left. Maybe they thought we knew what was going on. Dad floored it for the quarter mile trip to the Wal-Mart just across the overpass. He hung a hard right into the parking lot, found the first decent parking space, and jolted us to a stop.
Dad turned to mom and ordered, “Beth, you’re with me.” He looked back at us with a hard glare and said, “Nobody even think about getting out of this car. Lucy, you’re in charge until we get back.” Lucy is the oldest.
It seemed like they were in there for only about twenty minutes, but they came back with four full carts of stuff. We had no idea what was going on. We were pretty sure Dad had lost his mind. He threw a bunch of squishy cloth and bags in the back with Tom and me. He filled the backseat floorboard with cans of food and bottles of water, and more cloth stuff between - and on - Kirk and Lucy. He threw a few boxes at us in back and told us to hold on to them. Then we could hear him thumping around on the roof. He cracked open a blue plastic tarp and tied it to the roof too. Mom was saying something, but mostly it looked like she was upset and trying to stay out of the way.
They got back in the car and buckled up. My dad started the car and quickly got back on the interstate, heading west towards home. We made it back to Busy Corner before we shuddered to a squealing stop behind a line of cars and trucks. They were being held by another blockade of military vehicles, and as we sat there, it looked like everyone ahead wanted to have their own personal argument with the soldiers. All of the vehicles were being forced to exit the highway. We finally got to the front, and a young Hispanic soldier leaned towards my dad’s half-rolled-down window.
“Sir, please exit here.”
“Why?” Dad asked tightly.
“Sir, there has been a major accident ahead, and we are diverting traffic until the emergency crews can get it cleared.” The soldier’s eyes scanned our car while Tommy and I were peeking over the back seat. He seemed to make some kind of connection about the time my dad snapped.