Tales of Downfall and Rebirth (51 page)

I kept shoveling it in, and said, with my mouth full because she hated that, “It's started.”

“
What
has started?” Dad demanded. “You got something to work?”

“Duh.” I gulped a big bite because no one could say the next name intelligibly through a mouth of cereal. “Morton Orczegowski was right. Something's happened, something big. No light on the clouds, the whole Front Range is down, and the batteries and Mr. Burke's alternator and digital watches and
nothing
works. So I'm going over to Mattie's and then him and me and his family will go over to Orry's and then to the shelter. You should come along and see if he'll still take you.”

I picked up the bowl and chugged the rest, letting a little of it run down my face.

“Claire, that is so vulgar—” Mom began.

Dad said, “I am not going to go beg a crazy survivalist libertarian gun nut to save me from what's probably just a big solar flare.”

I opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle of water, and used a handful of it to wash my face.

“Claire, that's Evian, it's expensive—”

“There won't be any water in the sink,” I said. “The pumps are electric.”

Dad angrily yanked at the faucet to show me I was wrong; it guttered and burped as the very last of the city water ran backward down the pipe.

I was already heading out of the kitchen to go change my shoes. Dad grabbed my arm. “You are not going off into some fallout shelter with some gun nut libertardian—”

I shoved him in the chest; no time for this bullshit, I'd been taller than he was since I was twelve, and he was scrawny anyway. To make sure they stayed out of my way, I dropped the bomb: “I bet Richard would have gone, and he'd have taken Mom along so he'd have something to fuck.”

See, a couple of years before, Mom and Dad tried this thing called being poly, and Mom had a big romantic thing with a big muscular construction dude named Richard. Meanwhile Dad couldn't get a date. They ended up spending twice as long in counseling as they did being poly, just to get back to being their same old whiny miserable selves.

It worked like always. Mom ran into the bedroom wailing and slammed the door; Dad followed her, pathetically mewling, “Abby, she just said that to—”

I dashed to my room, ditched my little strappy silver sandals, and pulled on heavy socks and the butt-ugly hiking boots they'd given me for Christmas. From their bedroom, her sobbing and his apologizing blended into familiar meaninglessness.

My big thick knee-length down coat had pockets all over it; it had been my favorite coat for shoplifting last year. (I gave that up; if you're good there's no excitement and if you're not there's too much.) I put the coat on, dumped everything out of my school backpack onto the floor, and loaded the pack and coat pockets with everything from the cabinet where Mom kept all her bags and boxes of cookies and candy, plus all the bottled water I could fit in.

I could hear Mom subsiding into talking mean shit about how disappointed she was in Dad, punctuated with wracking angry sobs, and Dad pleading in between.

I tied the top of my pack loosely over a bag of tortilla chips and fit a jar of Cheez Whiz into my last pocket. Time to go.

Dad ran out of the bedroom and down the stairs, realized he couldn't see, came back, and got a candle, shielding it with his hand, before going down.

I sighed. One more time, I'd try.

Down in the basement, by the light of the candle, Dad was taking the front panel off the washing machine. “Your mother was just thinking she'd feel better if she could get caught up on laundry, and we didn't always have to take it out, so—”

“Dad, the washing machine hasn't worked since before Christmas. You will never need to fix it now. There is no electricity. Not from main power, not from a battery, not from nothing. Cars don't run either.
Nothing's
working.”

“Your mom just gets so frustrated, Claire—”

“I'm going now,” I said.

“Over to Mattie's house, you said? Tell Ravikumar I could sure use help on this washing machine.”

“'Kay, Dad. Gotta run.”

Back upstairs, Mom was on their bed, eyes closed, blanket wrapped against her face. “I just want . . . I just want . . . I just want . . .” Classic Mom. Her breakdowns seemed real enough but her timing was always suspect.

“Mom, I hope you feel better soon.”

“Be careful, baby.” All of a sudden, she lunged out of the covers and hugged me.

I pushed her arms apart. I didn't like either of them touching me. It always felt like they wanted something.

*   *   *

Mattie was either my best friend or the closest thing I had ever had to a friend. His real name was Mahtab Kaushik and he was one of those scrawny all-feet-and-head kids, with a beaky nose and huge horn-rim glasses, dark enough to be mistaken for black or Mexican; his folks had a little Indian lilt in their accents but Mattie was Colorado born and raised, and sounded like it.

He constantly fact-spouted. That was what the counselors and special ed people at the alternate school called pouring out all the random trivia that a guy who reads too much and remembers all of it accumulates. He also couldn't seem to shut the fuck up even when he wanted to.

Much of his fact-spouting was about games and computers and sci-fi TV shows, but he also spouted a lot about school stuff, which helped me get by with less reading.

We fit together real good at crazy-weird school. His fact-spouting was fine with me; I liked to hear Mattie talk, and so did he. Mattie drew bullies like shit draws flies, so he was safer standing next to that scary giant psycho Korean bitch. And teachers always put us together in groups and committees; they categorized us both as All Other Non-White. Probably they thought Busan and Jaipur were both in All Other Non-White Land.

Anyway, Mattie was for sure my friend, probably my best friend, maybe my only real friend.

When I pushed the doorbell button (out of habit) it didn't ring, probably the first time, ever. Normally if anything had malfunctioned at Mattie's house, Ravikumar, being a repair contractor, would've died of shame.

I knocked, loud.

Ravikumar yanked the door open. “Claire! Good to see you! Are your parents coming?”

“Couldn't get them to.”

Mattie had way better folks than mine; all Ravikumar's comment was one little wince, and then a change of subject. “We are trying to sort things out here; it is so dark without power I don't see how we can get to the shelter safely in the dark. We may be better off if we stay put till it is light.”

I nodded. “If you think so—”

“Also, can you help us understand something? Mattie tried an experiment—”

Mattie was holding up a plastic yogurt container that reeked of vinegar.

“Mattie,” I said, “if it's science stuff, you'd be better off talking to Orry—”

“Just look,” he said. “Alligator clips to Mom's wedding ring and an aluminum can pull tab. Both in straight white vinegar. Okay? Should be a simple battery. But none of Dad's multimeters budge. And a multimeter is basically a magnetic needle inside a coil, so I also wrapped my Boy Scout compass in bell wire and hooked that up, and the needle never budged from north.”

Feeling stupid and helpless, I reached for the phrase I'd heard from him and Orry many times. “Electromagnetic pulse?”

“See, I told you you'd get it!”

“Get what?”

“That that's what it can't be! I mean what it isn't! I mean . . . look, an electromagnetic pulse might destroy electrical things, maybe even fry the multimeters, destroy car wiring and even wreck batteries if it was big enough, but I put the compass and wire together after the whatever. So it's not that all the electrical stuff got destroyed. It's that electricity doesn't work anymore. See?”

I didn't really, then, but I nodded.

Kanti said, “You see? She's smart like Mahtab. And she says so too. Electricity does not work anymore. We have to get away before people realize you can't fix things.”

Ravikumar looked miserable. “What if electricity starts working again in five minutes? Or a year? So many years into this business—”

A window broke upstairs and someone yelled “Ragheads!” out front. Then another window broke. I charged out and found Danny and Zach Davis, ten-year-old twin spawn of Tammy Davis, the neighborhood trash-drama queen, winding up with more stones.

“Hey!”

They ran. With my heavy pack, coat, and hiking boots, no way I could catch them right now. Next time I did, though, they were going to hurt real bad.

Mattie trotted down from upstairs. “Some broken glass on the floor. My bass tipped over, but it's a block of wood, and electric anyway.”

“There will be more of this,” Kanti said, quietly.

“Right,” Ravikumar said. “As always.” He closed the door. “All right, we'll finish packing and go.”

Five minutes later, Kanti's pack held a couple of photo albums, some jewelry, and mostly clothes. Mattie had clothes, a big bag of rice, and the Boy Scout
Fieldbook
. Ravikumar had less clothing and as many hand tools as he could manage. They all had water bottles in the side pockets and sleeping bags tied on. “That was fast,” I observed.

“One of those things Morton insisted on,” Ravikumar said, smiling. “We had to have packs handy with lists in them. Let's go.” He opened the door and we walked through.

As we hurried up the street, Ravikumar said, “During Partition, one day my grandfather had walked over to the next village for some work, and when he was coming back, he saw the smoke rising and decided to go to his aunt's house instead of home. So he lived. Three sisters, his eldest brother, their mother, all of his nephews and nieces, and his fiancée, they all were killed, every one, after they had spent three days talking about whether they had to go. Grandfather didn't even stay to bury them; he started for Jaipur with just the money in his pocket. Mattie, I hope you will always remember you are descended from people who knew when to run away.”

“It's sad, though,” Kanti added. “We've been happy here.”

“We can be happy again. Somewhere else. But we have to be alive for that.”

We headed for Orry's house. I guess Orry was the logical name for a kid whose real name was Marcus Aurelius Orczegowski, especially because he hated “Mark.” Only teachers called him that.

About a block from the Orczegowski house, we heard the crowd shouting.

“Morton's place?” Kanti asked, quietly.

“Could be,” Ravikumar said.

“I know a back way in.” I told the truth because it was simpler. “Morton lets Orry smoke weed, but not at his house because he's paranoid about cops. Sometimes I smoke with Orry, out and around the neighborhood. Sometimes we have to run. There's a way into the house through the back.”

Ravikumar didn't waste time judging. “Mattie, go with Claire. We will take a discreet look from the front. If everything's okay, we all meet up at Morton's, if not, we meet back here. Go!”

*   *   *

Those burbs were a maze of fences and dogs, but the house behind Orry's place had three big distinctive evergreen bushes trimmed into cube shapes. Strangely, the car in the driveway had a glow coming from under its upraised hood. As we ran past, I caught a glimpse of candles all around the engine, an open manual on top of the air cleaner, and a man with white hair and a lined face bent over it reading, hands resting in prayer position, so that it looked as if he were trying to follow the Sacred Book of Chilton's invocation to the Mighty God Horsepower. Even having forgotten so much, that momentary picture has stayed with me all these years.

We heard him shout behind us but I was already yanking open the emergency gate in the high back privacy fence.

Flickering orange light glared over the top of Orry's garage. I heard shouts interrupting shouts, and Morton's voice cutting through, sounding like calm reason.
A little late for him to start now,
I thought.

The long-dead electric meter on the garage wall swung on its hinge. Morton had realized Orry might not want to turn a light on while evading cops, so the release was concealed but easy to work in the dark. I grabbed the house key and opened the garage and kitchen door.

Orry's voice from upstairs was soft. “Who's there?”

“Claire and Mattie.” I tried to speak as soft as Orry.

“I'm in my room. Crawl when you come through the door.”

We rushed up the stairs and down the hall, bending forward awkwardly in our heavy coats with our backpacks, crawling across the dark floor, sliding on books, papers, CDs and DVDs and games. Orry crouched by the corner of the curtain, sighting a rifle whose muzzle rested on the sill. A pale redhead, he looked like Mattie's pigmentless twin.

“No one's noticed me,” Orry breathed.

The flickering light in the front yard was from candles, burning sticks and boards, and a couple of Coleman lanterns held aloft. Morton stood in the driveway, in front of a row of five wheelbarrows loaded with stuff. He faced a crowd of about thirty neighbors, who stood along the concrete gutter that separated the street from the narrow sidewalk, held for the moment by suburban property rights habits.

The argument was about whether the supplies in Morton's wheelbarrows meant that he had been hoarding, and whether everybody should be allowed to share it.

“Dad knew you and your family would come, Mattie,” Orry whispered. “So we loaded five wheelbarrows. If we'd been sure that you'd make it, Claire, we'd have one for—”

The shout from up the street froze
my
blood. I can't imagine what it must have done to Mattie.

You know the kind of asshole guys that always have three cars out front of their house, and stand out there pretending to fix them so they can drink beer and yell things at girls? Four of those, and of course Ms. Tammy “Speak English, Don't Wear Cloth On Your Head, and Don't Be Brown” Davis, were pushing Ravikumar and Kanti by the arms up to the crowd. “They'as sneakin' up to join their Jew buddy,” Tammy shouted. “Jews and ragheads!”