We Are Unprepared (13 page)

“What
is
this?” I heard myself ask.

“It's where I go when The Storm comes,” Crow bragged. “C'mon, man, let me show you what it can really do.”

He waved me into the space, which could barely hold the three of us. I squeezed in behind Crow as he reached up to a latch behind the living room chair and pulled down a small bed that had been folded into the wall. It was wrapped neatly in sheets and an army blanket and had the faint smell of mothballs. I inspected the makeshift Murphy bed and its expert hinges with great admiration. It was a pretty clever use of space.

“And that's nothing!” Crow was getting excited.

He stepped into the kitchen area and pulled something from the wall facing the bucket sink. With a few quick motions, the object unfolded into a small table that fit neatly in the space. Next, Crow reached past me to pull out a small bench that was tucked beside the sink and provided seating to accompany the table.

“Did you make all this?” I asked. I had forgotten entirely about my fears and the purpose of our visit.

“Most of it I made, and some of it I found online. It's not rocket science, but I've been workin' on it for a while and I'm damn proud of it. It's insulated, flood-proof and fully stocked. If The Storm came tomorrow, I would have everything I need in here.”

Peg had been silent since we entered the bunker and seemed to be waiting for the right moment to revisit the topic at hand.

“Crow, this is very impressive,” she started, “and it's very smart. You're a man of great foresight, no doubt. So what do you care if we dig a little hole in your backyard while you're living in here?”

“Well,
hopefully
,” Crow said, annoyed, “I won't have to live in this thing. This is an emergency option. I'm not looking forward to a catastrophe.”

I wasn't so sure about his last point.

He went on, “This is about principles, Peg. It's easy to abandon your principles in moments of crisis, but that's when we need them the most. I'm not going to surrender all my rights to the state because you think this
might
save some land.”

“No one's surrendering any rights here,” she replied. “We're simply asking you to consider the consequences of not digging extra drainage. Even if you don't give a hoot about the rest of this town, it could drown your entire property. Do it for yourself.”

“That's a risk I'm willing to take.”

“Crow, this is selfish!” Peg was losing her composure. “Lots of people could suffer because of your goddamn principles. If we can't redirect the flooding, the entire downtown of Isole could be destroyed. How will you be able to live with yourself if that happens?”

“I doubt I'm the only person in Isole who is putting my foot down,” he said.

“You might be!”

“Not likely.” He shook his head. “Anyhow, I think I'd do greater harm to our society by giving in to this. Now is the time to stand up for our rights.”

I felt awkward, standing between the two of them as they argued in the small space, and I wished we could go back to exploring Crow's secret hideout. But I was there on behalf of the Subcommittee and I needed to say something.

“This affects my property, too, Crow, and I think this plan is in all of our best interests,” I said weakly.

Crow turned to me. “That's for me to decide.”

We stood there silently for a minute until Crow said, “You two should go.”

He seemed hurt that the unveiling of his creation had been overshadowed by conflict. I felt it, too, somehow. I liked Crow. He was thoughtful and smart, even funny in his own way. And maybe he wasn't as crazy as I had originally thought.

Peg gave me a stern nod and I swept my eyes over the secret hideout, taking it all in for what would likely be the last time. I noticed that there were plastic storage containers suspended from the ceiling above the couch. They had drawers that pulled out and could have held a small wardrobe for one person. Brilliant. I was also curious about the bathroom, but now was not the time to explore it. A generator-powered refrigerator sat across from the tiny toilet and I wondered what foods might be in there.

Peg and I walked silently across the dark property, using our cell phones to light the way. When we arrived at the car, she let out a deep sigh and sank into the driver's seat.

“This isn't going to be easy,” she said. “I like Crow, but he's a damn fool.”

I nodded. “I like him, too. He's kind of a surprise, you know?”

“And yet, he's also just the angry recluse you'd expect.” Peg shook her head in frustration. “We have to keep trying. I'm going to wear him down.”

I felt bad that I couldn't help Peg, or Isole, and vowed then to commit myself more to the business of convincing doubters that they needed to get on board with the runoff plan. But what would convince someone who had no concern for their town or neighbors, I wondered. I remembered that Pia had no idea we were a part of the drainage plan. Our own backyard would be changed by it. I guessed that she would put up a symbolic fight, on the grounds of personal freedom or whatever talking points she had been fed by the preppers, and then go along with it because ultimately she'd lose interest in the banal matters of home and property maintenance. No matter what, she could never know that I had gone to Crow's house or, worse, that the guy impressed me. For some reason, I needed to keep that to myself.

Peg and I didn't speak on the long drive back to my car. It was nine o'clock and there was hardly anyone else on the road. She turned the radio on and we heard the tail end of a weather report about another snowstorm that was expected to start the following afternoon. I wasn't listening closely.

As Peg pulled into the courthouse lot, an alarming thought occurred to me and I turned to her, “Do you think other people in Isole are building bunkers like Crow's?”

“I don't think so,” she said, “but I guess it's not the craziest idea in the world.”

“It's not, no... Do you think we should all be doing things like that?” I asked. Seeing Crow in a new, rational light was confusing.

Peg put the car in Park and turned toward me.

“No, Ash. Once you go there, you're already living in a state of emergency. You're praying for the reckoning just to make all your efforts worthwhile. It's a fine line between being prepared and letting the fear run your life, but you have to respect the line.”

“Even if it means being unprepared when something bad really does happen?” I asked.

“Yes, most definitely.”

I nodded and thanked her for the ride, closing the car door gently behind me. Seeing Crow's bunker and hearing his utterly rational explanation for his actions had rattled my understanding of what we were all supposed to be doing then...of what sane behavior looked like. It had been easier to dismiss Crow as a laughable, rural caricature. Considering that he was right was more complicated.

THIRTEEN

OUR LIVING ROOM
smelled like old gym clothes by the second Saturday in January because of the worms. Pia checked on them regularly to make sure their movement was lively and the soil temperature within the appropriate range. Her care for the worms looked almost parental at times, though she could forget to check them for days on end. Sometimes when I was home alone, I would pull the top off and watch them writhe around in their moist box. They were fascinating, but I hated them intensely. Once, I even carried a single worm out the front door and dropped it in the snow. It moved around for a minute and then just stopped. Murdering that worm was a quiet, disturbing act of protest that I kept to myself. The violence of it surprised me. They were like roommates by then—roommates I resented but never wished any real harm upon.

“I'm going to a meeting,” Pia said, keys in hand. It had started to snow.

I looked up from my computer at the kitchen table. “Wait, we really need to talk about August.”

She sighed. We hadn't had a chance to discuss August's near-disappearance into the woods, but Bev The Social Worker would be calling any day now to announce that time was up: he would need to be placed in a home.

“Pia, I really want this and I think it could be good for us,” I pleaded. “I don't know what else to say. I really want this.”

The expression on her face was soft and sympathetic, but I could see that she wasn't going to change her mind. “I'm sorry, Ash. I love you and I would like to make you happy, but this is bigger than us. It's another life. Maybe you can handle this, but I'm telling you that I can't.”

She pulled on her coat and walked out the door.

I watched Pia drive off into the first stage of a snowstorm. The roads were unpredictable then, as we oscillated between blizzards and warm fronts. Accumulation from the previous snow had finally melted, but the temperature was dropping fast again. There was already eight new inches on our front lawn and the sky had turned to a dark charcoal gray even though it was two o'clock. I sat at the kitchen table in front of a drafty window. My laptop was open in front of me in an attempt to catch up on work, but nothing had materialized. I watched the falling snow for a long time. It was hypnotic: the wall of white puffs falling against a gray sky—more like a spooky digital loop that I could have programmed than anything I'd ever seen in nature. The sound, or lack thereof, was strange, too. Maybe I'd lived in the city for too long and forgotten what snow sounded like, but it seemed as if the low hum of life that was always outside had been turned down.

“The entire Northeast and parts of the Mid-Atlantic will get snow. Everyone from western New York to the coast of Maine and down to Pennsylvania should be prepared,” the radio voice explained. “Northern New England can expect eighteen to thirty inches, with less as you move south. The southeastern part of the country can expect damaging rains. The heaviest snow will hit the Northeast in about thirty-six hours. At the same time, we have a tropical storm forming off the Gulf Coast. As long as that dissipates before it makes landfall, this snowstorm will simply be a nor'easter—a big, snowy nor'easter, but not a superstorm as many fear. But if that tropical storm speeds up and they collide, we will be faced with a challenge.”

I looked back at my computer, trying to think about anything other than the conversation I'd just had with Pia. That was it; August would be taken away. And I'd be left there, with my panicked wife, as the deadly weather approached.

An email appeared on the screen before me. It was from Salty:

There's no way to know if this is going to be The Storm, so we have to keep moving forward with the runoff plan. It's possible that we will get a reprieve after this snow and still have some time to get into the ground and start digging. I made great progress yesterday with a portion of our affected landowners. Heard you guys hit a wall, but we can't get discouraged. We have to press forward with this. Good luck riding out this storm. Hope for the best.

I tried to focus on the words in front of me but couldn't stop thinking about August. When would he leave and where would he go?

I got up from the table to look at the snow outside, which was piling up shockingly fast. I knew that I needed to clear the driveway for when Pia got home with the car. If I didn't do it soon, it would be too late and she'd have to park it on the road, where it would be buried under a pile of snow after the town plow went by. I didn't feel like doing this for her, plowing obstacles out of Pia's way. I considered leaving the driveway untouched as a gesture of selfishness to match her own. But eventually, I did what I knew I would do all along and I pulled on all my outdoor gear and stepped outside into the cold. The work would be good for me, I decided, maybe hard and exerting enough to keep down the rising tide of sadness in my stomach.

I hadn't used a snowblower in years—not since my dad taught me as a kid—and it took a while to figure out how to turn it on. It was one of those massive push snowblowers, just like my dad's, but rusting in several places. The previous owners of our house sold it to us for two hundred dollars, and it hadn't occurred to me at the time to make sure it was operational. Mercifully, it turned on after a few attempts and I awkwardly worked to steer it from the shed to the driveway. I was grateful no one could see me for this project. My plan was to drive a straight line out to the road and back again, three, maybe four times, until there was a wide enough lane for our car to drive through. Our driveway was long, so it wouldn't be easy, but it wouldn't be impossible either.

At first, things seemed to work pretty well. I loved the razor-sharp cut that the machine made through the snow, revealing distinct layers from each storm we'd had, like a sliced geode. The problem was traction. I had big, warm snow boots on that kept slipping out from under me as I worked to push the heavy rig forward. I wished I'd thought to buy crampons or even just dig up some old soccer cleats. To compensate for my lack of torque, I had to rock the machine back and forth when it stopped to propel it forward again. This worked until I'd nearly reached the road, the section where our driveway tilted up at a slight angle. In the car, it was just a little bump, but it was too much for me to push the snowblower over. I stood there, gripping the handles of the roaring blower while I looked around for a solution. Snow was falling in a dense curtain before my eyes, leaving flakes to melt on my lashes and cheeks. Finally, I saw a small log, nearly covered in snow, just to my right. I left the blower in place while I retrieved the log and pressed it into the ground at my feet. I was going to use the log to press my boot against it while I pushed the blower up and over the hump. After a few stomps, the log was secure and I prepared to heave the machine forward. With a forceful thrust, the snowblower took a satisfying leap and it seemed for a moment that we might crest the bump. But just as the snowblower neared the top, I ran out of strength. My muscles quivered in overexertion. The machine stopped moving and then began rolling back toward me. There was no time to think. I stepped back, hoping to find the log with my toe, but it wasn't there. Before I could pull my body entirely out of the way, the blower was rolling into my chest. It jammed one long handle into a lung, knocked the wind out of me and ran directly over my left foot.

I fell onto my back, stunned at first, and then overwhelmed by a hot, rushing pain in my foot. It hurt too much to move, so I craned my neck around to see that the blower had rolled past me and tipped over into the snowbank. The whirring and clanking of its ancient motor was trailing off as the stalled beast went back to its dormant state. I was safe from it, but in excruciating pain. I moaned and then gasped as it occurred to me that not only was my foot likely broken, but my cell was inside and there was no one around to help me. I could die there in my driveway, so close to my warm, glowing house. I let my head fall back into the snow and watched the cold flakes rush toward me.

For a fleeting instant, it seemed more comfortable to just let death wash over me. But as my thoughts came into focus, I realized that I wasn't likely going to die from a broken foot—not immediately anyhow—and I needed a plan. I rolled onto my stomach and began to crawl along my neatly sheared path toward the house. The flat walls of snow on either side kept me hidden from the rest of the world; I was an animal burrowing back to my cave. At the rate I was going, it would have taken about ten painful minutes to crawl back to the house. My foot was throbbing, but pain was now also coming from my wet, freezing knees that were doing all the work.

I hadn't gotten very far when I saw car lights reflecting against the trees ahead. Instinctively, I pulled myself up onto my working right foot, spun around and waved my hands wildly like someone stranded on a desert island. A red pickup whizzed down the hill and then stopped just past my driveway. The scruffy young man behind the wheel rolled down his window and lifted his chin, as if that alone asked the question.

“I'm hurt,” I yelled, which sounded pathetic, but it was all I could summon. “Can you take me to the hospital?”

“Hop in,” the man said.

I hobbled a few steps down the driveway, pushing through the portion of snow that the blower never reached and wincing all the way. The guy in the truck watched for a while and finally jumped out of the driver's seat to reluctantly help me in. He was matter-of-fact about the operation, and so I did my best not to seem too wimpy, but Jesus Christ, it hurt. Once we were moving again, I nervously told him the story of what had happened, vaguely sensing that later, when the pain subsided, I would feel deep embarrassment at my inability to execute a small snow-removal task. But I had no energy for embarrassment then.

The man, who must have been in his early twenties, didn't seem terribly interested in my injury. He explained that he'd been working on a big second-home construction up the hill when the contractor finally let them go for the day. Now he needed to get back to his girlfriend's house in time to get snowed in with her instead of his own parents.

“This snow's too deep for that old piece of shit, you know,” he said. Apparently, he had taken notice of the snowblower I left on its side. “You gotta get a bigger rig or find someone with a truck plow for your driveway. I'm surprised that thing's even running still. I haven't seen one of those in years.”

This information made me feel slightly less incompetent. I asked him what kind of snowblower I should buy and nodded my head as he gave me incredibly specific advice about motors and tire gauge options. He was just killing time, in a hurry to get rid of this weird injured guy before getting trapped inside with his girlfriend. I imagined that this girlfriend was new to him, based on his urgency. She was probably pretty enough, but also tough in the way country girls can be. My foot was throbbing and, over the course of the ten-minute drive, I thought I might pass out. I wanted this guy to keep talking, to tell me about snowplows and girlfriends and whatever else he was saying while I tried to focus on his words and ignore the pain.

Finally, he pulled up to the very small medical facility that served as a hospital for people who couldn't or wouldn't drive to the closest real hospital ninety minutes away. It looked like a giant cinder block and, on that night, the cinder block appeared to be closed.

“Okay, man, good luck,” my driver said.

I sat there for a moment, confused about what to do. There was still no sign of life from inside the hospital and this guy wanted to leave me on the doorstep. It was dark now and snow was falling even faster than before. I don't know what I was envisioning for the drop-off, but I had at least hoped that he would help me wobble inside. Instead of freezing to death in my driveway, it appeared that I would freeze to death on the sad front steps of this building. Maybe this guy
knew
that the hospital was closed, I considered, and he just wanted to dump me somewhere as part of a cruel trick. I sat silently in the cab of the truck for another moment.

Finally, a middle-aged woman in an old-fashioned nurse's cap peered out one of the windows and turned on a light. I let out a sigh of relief and opened the car door, now eager to flee the truck. I slammed the door behind me and mumbled a thank-you after it was too late for him to hear. The front door of the hospital swung open and the nurse and an older man came to meet me. They were wearing scrubs on top, with jeans and snow boots below. As they helped me inside and into a wheelchair, I felt an overwhelming wave of gratitude wash over me. Lights flicked on around us as we wheeled down a hall toward an examination room that could just as well have been for farm animals.

I don't remember most of what happened in that room until the moment at which the pain medication kicked in and my head cleared. Both people (doctors? nurses? I didn't know) were down near my bare foot with a glaring light above them. They murmured and nodded to one another until finally standing up straight and looking at me. By this point, I was sure amputation was inevitable.

“You're looking at several stress fractures in your forefoot and toes,” the man said casually.

“Stress fractures?” I asked, disappointed by the mild sound of the term. “There's nothing broken? It really hurts.”

“Breaks, fractures—same thing in this case,” he said. “These small foot breaks can hurt like hell, but there isn't much we can do. You will get some swelling and probably bruising...definitely more pain.”

The woman put her hand on my arm. “We're going to give you a walking boot, one that you can take on and off, and we'll tape some of your toes together. Can you stay off your feet for a couple weeks?”

I shrugged.

“Good,” the man said. “And we'll give you two days' worth of the painkillers, but that will suffice.”

“Um, okay,” I said. “So it will stop hurting soon?”