The treasure. nutsvolt.com
We left him alone to organize his gear. Jaime and I spent the rest of the afternoon filling gas cans for the generator, siphoning it from the useless cars. We went through the camper next door, finding two more empty gas cans and a battery charger. Charlie then directed us to bring him the batteries of all the cars no longer in service, five in all. He said he would finish his inverter and use them to power the radio day and night, needing to run the generator only an hour a day to recharge the batteries.
The girls spent their time, under Lucille’s direction, running back and forth between the houses brewing up large pots of food on the Abbotts stove, filling as many jars as they could find. The meat had to be cooked right away and salted so it wouldn’t rot. We had another meal in the Abbott’s dining room, all candlelit, every one of us, though Charlie was reluctant to come as he had his earphones on and had been at the set for an hour. It was operating great, he told us. He could tell by the static as he moved the dials and heard faint hints of signals. But he was getting nothing clear and we dragged him to our neighbors for an hour. He could resume his post for an infinity of time. We told him that in the future we might even bring him his meals. This did the trick. At that half-formal dinner, perhaps the only one he’d ever known in his life, he acquitted himself honorably, giving the table a few Gulf War stories and keeping the profanity to a minimum.
That night, as we traipsed back to our house through the broken wall, stepping over the rubble in darkness and eerie silence, I noticed along with Naomi that poor Scout was in a very sad way, the loss of her mother starting to sink in with all its dire implications. While the others went their ways, we took her to the bedroom she liked the best, the children’s room, the turret. There she snuggled into the single bed beside Naomi, who promised to spend the night with her. They lit a candle by the bedside while I went to the library and brought back the Hans Christian Andersen volume and read to the both of them one of the longer stories, ‘The Marsh King’s Daughter’. It was a tale full of pathos and love, abduction and return, and long enough to put them very close to sleep by its end.
I found Jaime with Charlie in the basement, scouring the airwaves for any sign of news, still without a signal.
“It’s the antenna” Charlie said, “it’s not positioned right, not high enough. There’s no science to it. You just have to keep trying different configurations till you find a good one. We’re on a hillside facing the Pacific Ocean. This is a dream spot for shortwave. I can fix it in the morning.”
We left him to his den. Up the back stairs and into the kitchen we found Claire and Lucille sitting together. Lucille was about to head upstairs to bed. I asked Claire to join us in the library.
“Things have gone well today for all of us” I began, “and tomorrow, when the wafers have fully deployed the situation might seem even rosier. But I can tell you this, the rest of the world out there is fraying rapidly and our position, by association, is going down the tubes just as fast as theirs. It’s going to be a rough ride. Let’s just stick together and work together, with all our hearts.”
I took Claire by the hand, and we bid Jaime ‘goodnight’.
The next morning the chips had indeed kicked in again, full force.
Naomi and Scout were lying in bed together, conversing, bonding. Scout was in a calmer mood while Naomi promised with all her heart to do everything she could in place of her mom, though she could never replace her.
Claire and I had certainly bonded, holding one another tight, feeling each other’s hearts beat and the blood pulsing through our arteries. We took each breath in perfect unison as if our minds were in sync. Our senses merged and our consciousness’ felt like they were swimming and melting and blending on so many levels that we seemed to be, at moments, the other.
When I went to the basement, I saw that Charlie had bonded too, with his radio.
“That tab was fantastic” he said excitedly, ripping off his headset and turning to me. “I haven’t felt this good in twenty years, and my knee is better. I was climbing up your extension ladder and stringing the antenna up before dawn, between the garage and the house, all by myself. I could never have done that yesterday. I don’t think I’m gonna need my pills anymore.”
“Glad you feel so good. How about the signal strength, any better?”
“Yes way better. There’s a lad in Seattle I’ve been talking to, the same boat as we’re in, everything dead and he’s got a generator and an old set just like me. He did pick up a brief signal from Hawaii, but he couldn’t get through, says he’ll keep trying and stay in touch. Oh ya, I got through to someone else speaking Spanish, but I don’t know Spanish. All I could say was ‘Buenos Dias’.
By now Scout and Naomi were standing by my side.
“Look I have some quick and easy grammar books upstairs for Spanish, French and a bunch of other languages” I said. “I could bring them down for you. We need all the info we can get.”
“Sure thing” he replied. “I feel like I can learn anything. I’m drawing circuit boards in my head right now.”
“I’d like to learn Spanish too” Scout said timidly, still holding onto Naomi’s arm, holding it in front of her as if she could hide behind it. On the one hand was her fear of this shaggy bear of a man and his deep voice, on the other, her bustling, almost bursting curiosity.
“Well aren’t you a cutie pie” Charlie said in his loud voice, leaning towards her. “You can pull up a chair and sit beside me anytime you want, day or night, and we can learn Spanish together. I’ll even show you how to operate this little rig, manage the earphones and adjust the dials. Hell, you might even find some friends out there. Lots of youngsters have handles.”
“I’d like to try” she replied with more confidence in her voice.
“Lucille has just brought over breakfast from Abbott’s stove” Jaime said from the stairs. “Let’s eat.”
Lucille was in a glowing mood. Like Charlie, she had risen early, surprised at how great she felt and how much energy she had. So she immediately went next door, where the back door had been left open for us and resumed cooking, in as many pots as there were burners, singing as she stirred.
While eating, we made plans for the day. Claire joined us. She’d been lying in bed wide awake, sifting through her head and analyzing everything she remembered from the last wafer. She wanted to be sure that the old beast was dead, that all the data she could dredge up was her own, part of her own recollection. She needed to make sure she was no longer a giant clearinghouse of other people’s inventory, other people’s words and ideas and pictures, doomed like some lonely librarian to be forever arranging and putting them in their proper contexts, their pigeon holes, as they flooded into her consciousness by the hundreds, uncalled for and unwanted.
The glance she gave me as she sat at my side was coy.
Then I heard in my head: “Roland, the background chatter is gone. I feel a wonderful tranquility reigning inside of me along with the powers and privileges of a queen. I can’t thank you enough for this entitlement. But I will try to pay it back to you with love.”
This message puzzled me for a moment, but I decided to put it on a back burner.
On a more external note, I posed the question: “What do we need?” Then I asked all around the table for their input.
“We’ll all need showers” Naomi said. “But let me handle that. A great idea came to me this morning, Claire and Scout can help. I want it to be a surprise.”
‘Laundry’ was Lucille’s concern.
“Now that we have a water supply we could hook the generator up to the washing machine, the dryer too. My only concern is noise. We either don’t want the neighbors to know we have power, or we take them into the fold, just as we have the Abbotts. That move paid off richly. But I don’t know about other households. They might be more of a burden than a help. We should sleep on this one for a few days and see what develops. Surely there are enough clean clothes between these two houses to last us that long.”
“I go for weeks without changing my clothes” Charlie offered.
“And I can be like Charlie too” Scout added.
“I like you better and better.” Charlie responded, patting her on the head. “I think we’re gonna be friends.”
I turned to Jaime. “Any concerns or ideas” I asked.
“Security” was his brief reply.
“I’m afraid on that subject I have no good answers. This isn’t a castle. Don’t let the stone facade and the two turrets fool you. We can lock the front gates, but the stone walls are only six feet high. An old man could get over them with a stepladder or a young man with a running start. If a swarm of looters came up this street, we’d be doomed. We might shoot a few, or they could shoot us. Either way, we couldn’t hold out long. Only the panic room might save us.”
As I uttered this remark, I noticed a look of surprise and confusion on almost everyone’s faces. Scout and Naomi were the only ones present with any knowledge of it. I hadn’t opened it in six days and now with the power out, it was shut tight. We might hook up that circuit and get it open but it would have to be on all the time to serve as a haven, and that was out of the question.
But this did put a mission in my head. We had to get it open.
“What’s this?” Jaime was the one to ask what was on everyone’s mind.
“It’s a safe room behind steel doors. I’ll show it to all of you when and if we ever get it open. But it’s not a priority right now. Charlie and I can have a look at it this afternoon.”
“And Charlie, what about you and that inverter? How close are we? I don’t want to make another trip in the car to loot some electronics stores. I doubt it’s safe out there.”
“Well” he said, “I’m making progress, but I will need a few more parts. The thing is any old pieces you have in the house might help. There’s always parts we can salvage. Some transistors will be fried, but others might not be. Let’s sweep through both houses and collect everything there is.”
The three of us set to work while the women ran off into Abbott’s backyard. We brought my computer downstairs, a clock radio and the microwave from the kitchen, not much, but a start. Then we went next door and asked what they might have, emphasizing that the more ancient the device was, the better. Mr. Abbott seemed to have a hard time understanding the question, looking at us with the strangest, far away eyes so Mrs. Abbott answered for him.
“Just go through the rooms and take anything you want. But if it’s older things you’re looking for take a look in the loft above the garage. My father lived with us here some twenty years ago until he passed and we stored all his possessions away up there, in boxes. They’ll be covered in dust, but they’re yours if you want them. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
While Charlie and Jaime headed for the garage, Lucille gently pulled me aside.
“Roland” she began, “it might be improper of me even to ask, but Mr. Abbott is in the first stages of dementia, and Mrs. Abbott has to deal with that and also terrible arthritis. I could see it in her wrists last night, the way her fork quivered as she held it. Do you think you could spare them the slightest bit of your medicine? My arthritis has completely vanished. I know it would help them and they’ve been so nice to us.”
“Sure Lucille” I replied. “I’ll get a piece right now.”
I brought back the remaining quarter of a wafer. I didn’t want the dose to be too strong, as they were so old I had no idea how it might affect them. So I cut it neatly in half and gave the two pieces to Lucille to administer, in whatever way she thought best. I was getting tired of being a salesman.
“Eureka!”
This was the next thing I heard, through the Abbott’s back door. It was Charlie’s stentorian voice, all the way from the garage. I went out back and saw him coming down the stairs to the loft, holding a large wooden box over his head, shaking it like a trophy he’d just won in some Trojan war.
“It’s a tube radio” he yelled as soon as he saw me. “It’s pure gold. I can make anything out of this.”
Jaime also had a box of items in his arms, an old reel to reel tape recorder and the guts of an ancient television. They ran to my basement like excited children. I took a stroll to the back of Abbott’s yard, wondering what the girls were up to.
