Shaking with fear and cold by the time he reaches the jeep, he removes the cap from the tank on the left side and then pours the gas into it, the gurgling mixing with the patter of rain, water sliding down the jeep’s sides.
Thunder rumbles in the west.
He stares all around, searching for movement among the burned and parked cars. Why didn’t all of them catch fire if there was some kind of explosion?
He has to find Elaine and he has to know what happened.
Done with the gas, he unlatches the back of the jeep and sets the can inside with the loose spare bicycle-sized tire. Elaine’s pink laptop, next to the spare, catches his eye. He looks up at the rearview mirror, reflecting the top part of the driver’s seat, as if to see her beautiful face in it, smiling back at him—“Gotcha good this time!” He can almost hear her saying that. Then later to her friends, “And we laughed.”
She would tell it again and again, but Shelton doesn’t know what she would tell because he doesn’t know what has happened. Immediately he recognizes in himself that tendency to want to know in advance, just as he wants to see up a road before he gets there.
For all of his exposing of flaws and weaknesses, he feels desperate and lost and then a bolt of lightening sends stings of terror throughout his body. Dashing for the driver’s side of the jeep, he is struck by the thought that the battery is probably dead, remembering last night when he found the key in the ignition and the jeep left switched on.
Regardless he gets in and shuts the door, his jacket draining water to the seat and the floor. He dreads trying the key—had he switched it off last night? Yes, he had, he learns, as he slowly turns the key right, hoping that the battery has yet some fire.
The click and then the chugging of the engine. Don’t burn up the starter—he turns it off. Waits, tries again. Only a dying chu sound. Switch off and wait.
The only gas he has is in the jeep tank now and if the battery is dead he’s doomed. Will John let him have more gas? Can he afford it? Was Elaine’s pay for the week called in to the bank? What day is this? Saturday. Yesterday was Friday, payday. The woman in charge of payroll had to have called it in because they had only about fifteen Euros in the account before, and John wouldn’t have let him have the gas if there hadn’t been enough, according to the microchip’s information in his right hand, to cover it.
Maybe he could swap John something for the gas.
An angry burst of rain is followed by close lightening and thunder.
Another bright object glides into his field of vision; out of the corner of his left eye he recognizes the wet shiny blue of a highway patrol car.
He rolls the jeep window down and is staring through the open window of the patrol car at a black revolver leveled on him.
Shelton smiles. “Hey, officer! Boy am I glad to see you!”
“I bet.” The patrolman in his harness of straps and holster isn’t smiling. He has a tight, round face and slicked brown hair. He doesn’t even blink. “You better step on out to the rear of that vehicle, buddy.”
Two-way radio static crackles from inside the car.
Shelton eases open the door and steps out, sidling along the jeep to the rear. He can hear the door of the patrol car opening on the driver’s side and see the officer’s capped head as he steps out. He leans back inside to hang up the radio mike he was talking into.
Shelton is still smiling, so relieved that he is about to find out what happened and to get help.
The patrolman with short stocky legs in deeply creased blue pants with a dark stripe down the side strolls around the back of his car, rear red lights shining on his wet black shoes. The gun is thankfully back in its holster but still looks menacing.
“Turn around and place your hands on the roof.”
Shelton turns, placing both hands on the wet pebbled canvas. “Sir, I’m glad to see you. I’m Shelton Teasdale from down the road apiece and I’m looking for my wife. This is our jeep, mine and hers.”
“Don’t move.” The patrolman steps quick and scans Shelton’s right hand with an RDIF similar to John’s. Bluish white light and fizz. “Stay where you are while I run these codes.”
“Yes sir.” Lightening flashes in the cloud-darkened sky, followed by ripping thunder. Large raindrops pelt Shelton’s face.
He feels the urge to run overwhelming his urge to know what happened, but not over his urge to find Elaine.
In a few minutes, the patrol strolls back, slow as if it’s not even raining.
Bowing his head, almost crying now, Shelton says, “Just tell me what happened. Terrorists, a bomb?”
“Okay, spread your legs and put your hands behind your back.”
He kicks the inside of Shelton’s left calf and when he does Shelton doubles back and hooks his leg around the man’s and he goes down, rolling, dropping the cuffs and trying to twitch his pistol from his holster.
Shelton runs for the burned car on the shoulder across the road and then duck-walks around the front and runs for the woods, heading east into the wet branches slapping at him. He hears a shot and the patrolman calling for help on his radio, but he doesn’t look back.
Can he head south toward home or will they know where he lives if he couldn’t even verify that Shelton owns the jeep? How much information is really stored in the microchip he had implanted a year ago? The government should know where he lives and what he owns. But in light of the disorder from the disaster or whatever, maybe the whole World Government system is out of sync too.
Chapter 7
The last drops of rain are ticking on the leaves of the woods by early evening when Shelton arrives home. A terrible morning-like light in the clearing sky, a starting over and unbelievable newness, given the circumstances.
From the edge of the green-scented woods, across from the shabby frame house he and Elaine had called home-sweet-home with a chuckle, he watches for any motion, ducking out but still under cover of bushes, up and down the dirt road. His old pickup sits in mud, mud-spattered but blazing in sunshine. No other automobiles or even tracks of automobiles since the rain stopped. No trenches from bogged tires. He is wet and hungry and thirsty, which seems most important, even after all he’s been through since about this same time last evening.
Is it over? It seems so with the sun shining and the only sounds coming from the house—the dog trying to scratch through the back door, whining—and the goats blatting and shuffling behind the house. He can smell them from here and their wet stink is homey, welcoming.
He has almost convinced himself that Elaine is inside the house, even knowing if she were she would have let the dog out and be outside looking for Shelton or messing with the goats. What if she’s planning to surprise him? She would do that, that’s what she would do.
But if he steps out now he might be walking into a trap. If he steps out now, the dog might start barking and somebody might hear her. He has to take his chances and keep to his hideout, his watching place till dark.
Closing his eyes, he tells himself that Elaine isn’t there. Then he tries to wish her up in the jeep. And in the dark he tries to rest and gain strength. Piecing things together is as slippery as a dream. He opens his eyes to the same emptiness of the tilted house with its half coat of white paint. Elaine had started painting it but never had the time or money to finish.
The dog is clawing wood frantically; how Elaine loved—loves—that dog.
“Where are you, Elaine?” Shelton says low, then leans out from the bushes to look up and down the road.
He is so eager to see if Elaine is inside the house, waiting to surprise him, he starts to run across the road but worries that his tracks will be seen going up to the house. So he follows the road west through the edge of woods till he gets to his truck then crosses over by wading the water streaming through ruts to the south edge of woods leading to the back of his house.
If Elaine’s not home, tomorrow he will go back to John for more gas to put in the truck and let the jeep stay parked
where it is. Maybe by then the electricity will be on and he can charge his cell phone or call friends in Valdosta to find out what has happened. Maybe Elaine had caught a ride back into Valdosta when she couldn’t get through the wreckage between her and home.
That’s it!
Before going into the house, though his heart is leading in that direction, Shelton steps over the fence of the goat pen and ducks under the lean-to shelter to throw some hay out for them. They are standing in mud, hock-high, and their bellies are so round and tight that even the two billies look pregnant.
Shelton rests against a post without purpose, not attached to the fence, wondering if Elaine had started to run the fence from this point. He feels sad and guilty for not helping her more. Then, looking out over the woods, in the direction of a shrinking cypress swamp, it comes to him that something else he’d taken for granted is missing: the peeping of tree frogs after a spring rain. He’d heard them when he woke up from napping yesterday evening; before the rain but not after the rain.
He braces himself to go inside and not find Elaine. Still, he cannot help hoping. When he lets Dixie out the back door, she shoves past him to the bridge over the porch floor joists. First, she squats on the wet dirt, then heads toward the front to check whether Elaine is home.
In the kitchen, with the late orange sun shining through the window over the sink, Shelton listens for Elaine. He steps through the door to the living room, expecting her to pop up from behind the couch in the middle of the room. He waits, breathing in the vanilla candle burned down to smoky glass. Looking all about the empty room, checking shadows in the light from the windows.
He knows she’s not home. She would have opened the windows; she would have let the dog out; she would have leaped out from her hiding place. She couldn’t stand the wait anymore than he can.
He breathes her name, “Elaine.”
Back in the kitchen, he opens a bottle of water and slugs it down. He dreads looking in the refrigerator because he’ll surely be faced with spoiled leftovers to be cleaned up and thrown out. He’s too tired. Hope and disappointment have drained him.
A pack of cheese and peanut-butter crackers on the counter catches his eye. He rips them open and places one into his mouth, chewing and swallowing and downing another one.
Okay. He has to rethink his plan or he will wind up on the couch forever. He will wait till the electricity comes back on and charge his phone and call their friends in Valdosta. If the electricity doesn’t come on tonight, tomorrow he will hike into Valdosta through the woods. He can’t drive without risk of being stopped by the law.
He feels happier having a plan, something to hope for that makes sense.
Sleeping on the couch again, with the dog on the floor by his side, Shelton is woken by the way-off sound of a motor and thinks it’s the refrigerator coming to life, that the electricity is back on. But the quiet and darkness is broken by people hooting and laughing up the road, near where his truck is parked. He places a hand on the dog’s blunt head to silence her. Her ears twitch but otherwise she is amazingly still. Maybe like him she’s afraid to move.
If Shelton had a gun he would slip out through the woods and surprise them, maybe find out what kind of disaster has taken place.
Gunshots and more hooting and laughing, then glass breaking.
“Not the truck.”
They sound like drunks up to no good but to Shelton their laughing and hooting and shooting narrows the scope and range of possibilities concerning whatever has happened.
More gunshots. The dog’s head pops up with Shelton’s hand still on top. “Shh! It’s okay, Dixie. Tomorrow I’m going after Mama.”
***Shelton gets up at first light, puts on his hiking boots, feeds and waters the dog and goes out, leaving her whining and scratching at the skinned shut door.
It is a warm May morning and the air is loaded with scents of blooming trees and wild grapevines. And of course, skunky goat.
He steps over the rigged and sagging fence into the goat pen where they have settled into one corner, the nannie and her babies hidden in the midst of the billys. They shift and spring forward following him into the shed.
Again, he thinks it is good to have a plan, and when he gets back home he’ll be bringing with him some answers, if not Elaine.
First, he hikes down to the truck to check for damage from last night’s partying crew, thinking about his fear when he heard them. This was the first time since moving here that he’d felt fear, and in fact the first time he’d known of vandals in the area.
The back glass of the truck is shattered but not broken all the way through, but other than that nothing appears to be damaged. But when he opens the door he sees an empty space where the radio had been. Why the radio? It was an old seventy-model static-bearer that half the time didn’t work. “Welcome to it, fellows,” he says.
The key is in the ignition and just for the heck of it he switches it to On—a click, then silence.
He hadn’t intended to drive it anyway, even if he had gas and the battery had power. Though he has no idea why the highway patrol had tried to take him in, he feels like a criminal.
Just as he had planned he will hike out through the woods, north toward Valdosta, and stop at houses along the way to ask for information. Somebody, somewhere would have to know something. But his real destination is the home of Dan and Kim Meeks, his and Elaine’s best friends, in Valdosta. He isn’t crazy about Kim but her husband is so-so. They were okay before they had a baby. Now, the baby is all they talk about. Still, if Elaine had hiked back to Valdosta when the disaster happened, she would have gone to their house.
Chapter 8
The smoky woods are still wet from yesterday’s rain, and the mosquitoes seem to have been reconstituted from dry form. Even with the smoke-dulled sun at ten o’clock, shining through the wet sparkle bushes and wax-berry myrtles and pines with drops of water clinging to the tips of their needles, they flock to Shelton’s face and hands like birds after bread crumbs.
From the west, for the past few minutes, he has been hearing a flat drumming sound, moving closer. Gazing up through the smoke he sees a covey of helicopters—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. He quits counting and irons his back to a tree trunk to keep them from spotting him.
Next there are jets, streaking higher in the sky, from all directions. Shelton is scared but glad, because it is as if the everyday-normal has cranked up again. Yes, he will find Elaine at Kim and Dan’s, probably playing with their little boy.
Do you ever think about reconsidering our decision to not have children?
No.
Never?
Never. We have Dixie, she’s our baby.
Late evenings, sometimes, when the wind was coming out of the north, he and Elaine could hear the children out playing in the government minority subdivision he is headed for now. Laughter—happy sounds. But only at a distance; too much disorder and bother, having children.
Elaine’s reason for not having children was more unselfish. After reading about a young mother getting drunk and putting her baby in a microwave oven, she said it would be selfish to bring children into such an evil world.
Shelton wonders if the children from the subdivision are back in school after the disaster—his guess now is terrorists’ attack. But why would Islamic radicals strike this little nothing of a place in South Georgia? Maybe because of Moody Air Force Base—a major rescue training post—north of Valdosta. Makes sense to him.
He had happened up on this community of poor black families while out squirrel hunting a couple of years ago. Now he can make out one of the houses through the trees, a flash of white wall and a turquoise door—odd color for a door. About twenty houses in all, small frame, all white look-alikes, with messy yards sectioned off by neat blacktop convenient for playing basketball.
Those evenings when he and Elaine would hear the children laughing and playing they would also hear the phap phap phap of the balls being dribbled on asphalt.
&
nbsp; Homemade wooden backboards with red hoops and no nets have been nailed high-up on power poles with lines loosely strung to the houses, all-electric and used to be fine in a new mobile-home sort of way. Free housing for poor people for whom the smell of carpeting and sheet-paneling glue and new paint are a luxury till the carpet and the paneling start to separate and peel and pop up and the paint grows grimy and faded and there’s no free money for fixing-up.
Everywhere is litter and downtrodden dogs, fleas and broken glass hatching from dead grass. And usually there is radio music to enjoy it all by, or if not enjoy to bear up under the sight of their mansions going to squat. Always, before, people were sitting out in their folding K-Mart lawn chairs, cracking jokes and folding over laughing, eating, drinking, loving. Making more babies.
Now, all is quiet.
A few cars and trucks are parked in the driveways, but no one is outside. No children. And then it dawns on Shelton that this is Sunday and they wouldn’t be in school anyway. Then he isn’t sure what day it is, only that it doesn’t matter.
Still heading north toward Valdosta, Shelton slowly walks through the yards, catching his reflection in one of the front picture windows. Farther down, crossing another yard, he thinks he spies somebody behind a front window. He starts to go on, but stops, calling out, “Hello! Anybody home?”
He listens, staring at the window, at a rose-print curtain moving, ghostlike. “I’m Shelton Teasdale, from just south of here,” he shouts. “Looking for my wife. Trying to find out what happened over there on Friday evening.” He points west toward the highway beyond the woods.
He hears muffled footsteps inside.
“I just need some information, that’s all,” he shouts.
Then next door he hears something metal drop inside that house.
Okay, so people are home here but hiding out. Why?
A woman shouts out in a thick, strained voice from the house in the yard where he is standing. “I got a gun in here, mister. Ain’t ascared to use it.”
Shelton doubts she has a gun; he doesn’t know though. “Why don’t you come to the door and talk to me? I’ll stay right here. No gun either.”
“Now go on,” she says from behind the turquoise door. “We don’t want no more trouble.”