“I don’t know what that means either.”
“That’s a good thing.”
The only animal I’d hunted was quail. A few times in high school, Johnny coming with us the second time just last winter, we’d driven out to a hunting lease in Hill Country, near Burnet. Martin and his real estate bud, Frank somebody. We’d go out in the blue dawn and drive many miles just to shoot quail. Sitting in the bed of a beater pickup, Frank’s brown Labrador, Bevo, would flush them out from the brush under mesquites, coming back with pear cactus quills on his muzzle, then go retrieve them once they plummeted from the sky. I’m not a bad shot, truth be known, but I took no pride in it. I wasn’t into hunting, not with Martin at least, not for, uh, sport. Starving to death? Totally could do it.
We decided to stay inside the fence wire for now and succeeded in finding enough wood in the immediate area to keep us warm for a while, thanks mostly to a keeled hackberry which I hacked at until noon. Nate got proficient with wheeling the wood to the porch though slowed by his need to look over his shoulders every few yards. When he dumped his loads at the entrance to the carport, he’d run back to be near me with that wheelbarrow swerving. I wondered how long his acute fear would last.
“This will do us for today, with some left for tomorrow, but we’ve got to make this a daily thing to keep up with so we can hopefully get ahead of the weather. Maybe tomorrow, we’ll take that Bobcat farther away.”
Nate nodded. We loaded the last of what I’d chopped into the wheelbarrow and made our way back to the house. Nate strode apace and close enough for us to bump. Halfway there, he hooked fingers into the pocket of my peacoat.
I know I looked like Rocky Balboa, hunched over, chasing those chickens. Nate laughing at me. I finally grabbed one and held it to my body as it squawked and flapped. I petted it and it calmed. “Just seeing if I could do it,” I said to the brown hen. “You keep laying eggs and it’ll just be for sport.”
Nate and I made our way around the coop, ducking under the corrugated roofs, filling our baskets with eggs.
We lined the eggs in rows on a towel on the kitchen counter. They needed to stay cool and I didn’t want to get in and out of the fridge too much for fear of losing what little cold remained. The immediate need for warmth solved, the need to keep food cool and fresh now presented itself. Coolers tied with bungee or rope outside would work, though raccoons would solve those riddles.
The carport storage room with all the torture implements could act as a large fridge. I’d inventory and transfer salvageable fridge food into the storage room, including the daily eggs.
Somehow the water still ran and the toilet flushed. I guess the water came from a well. No idea how long that would last or what was involved in making sure it did. What did I know of such things? How many different ways could I make things substantially worse by monkeying with it?
Would this be my life? Was it just a matter of time until I boxed myself into a deathly situation? Maybe, but I felt we had the winter and the dogs, enough of a buffer. Maybe I could make contact with others, if they were out there, and maybe, just maybe, the kids would change.
Look at Nate. My presence has had a major impact on him. Couldn’t the same be achieved with other kids? Occam’s Razor says: of course. True or False SAT answer: True.
Let a long cold winter chill us all out. I smiled at that thought as I watched my fire dance upon the wood I’d collected. All I needed to do was keep things fresh, keep water available, and feed the dogs and chickens. At some point we’d need to drive into Medina to get more food and feed. Inherent risks there.
What I needed to do was be resourceful and live for today. Maybe that’s all there is. This whole world of ours got too crowded and busy and mother nature just decided to hit the kill switch.
Did she use Jespers’s Gene to do it? Were those old guys nuts? As time goes by, it seems so farfetched. But, then, look what’s happened. Farfetched.
I don’t know. Philosophy is so old world.
It took three days for something resembling normality to set in. A rhythm, a beat structured the hours for the first time since the morning of. I sensed my shoulders relaxing from their residence near my ears in constant defensive mode. My hummings and whistlings flowed while I worked, and not just to quell fear. These songs I hum-whistled were original tunes from my subconscious which didn’t want to recall and revamp old-world melodies and arrangements. I collected these tunes in my mind like eggs, like firewood, put them on a shelf for later. Then, in the evening by candlelight, I wrote them down in a notebook[17] I found in the office.
Before the morning of, my life was prosaic. Now it started taking on the more elegant and exalted forms of poetry, of music. Three nights in a row I’ve gone out into the dusk to flesh out these things I’ve heard in my head all day. I use my lips and throat as a horn, missing my instrument terribly. When Nate and I go back to Austin in the spring, I thought, I’ll retrieve it, bursting with a notebook full of songs to blow through it. Hope springs eternal.
Cold came and leveled off in preparation for its full invasion. I couldn’t wait for more cold. I thought of them out there in it, how it had to change them, break them into something approachable.
What we did in those first three days, we did together. Nate never wanted to be alone, and the things we did were simple. We got our bearings and readied for this newest of seasons. The simplicity of the days gave them rhythm, and with that, comfort.
Setting the pieces up on a large stump, I got good at splitting wood. Nate would smile when I got on a roll. The rhythm, the breathing, the cadences. I drank it up through my pores. It nourished me. Whenever I took a breather, I’d ask him if he wanted to try and he always paused, then shook his head.
Maybe his head hurt. I didn’t ask him, but sometimes when leaning on his axe and staring off glassy-eyed into the sky I thought maybe it did. My earlier desire to know what he knew had evaporated. He didn’t know anything anyway, not that he could relate. He had been part of the hive, and the hive thinks as one. Now that he’d broken off from it, or been exiled, I don’t believe he had anything to tell me. He’s excommunicated and thus incommunicado. What he said to me in his somnambulism was it. There were no such moments thereafter. It all seemed moot. Tabula rasa.
On the third day, Nate told me he could do the egg-gathering by himself now. He wanted to do it next time, first thing in the morning. Busy with my chicken chasing while hearing the Rocky theme in my head—getting strong now!—I grunted sure, go for it, you know where the baskets are.
In the afternoons we scoped around the property’s perimeter, going a little farther down the road toward the nearest ranch each day. We could’ve taken the Bobcat but Nate bristled at the idea of getting on it. He always gave the vehicles a wide berth whenever we stacked wood in the carport. He clung to me when we got near them and he eyed them like they were sleeping creatures which would pounce if awakened.
That third afternoon, he didn’t want to keep going but I told him we were fine. He asked if we’d see dead people and I said we might but that I’d go in ahead of him and let him know.
He tugs on my sleeve, telling me he wants to turn back. As much I want to find this other ranch, can sense that it will come into view around the bend of this hill, I’m feeling it too. A fearsome pre-dusk density filled the air. I nod, I’m okay with turning back.
“Sorry,” he said, the shame in his voice a good thing. “Tomorrow we’ll go all the way.”
“Sure. No rush, though, okay? Baby steps. No shame in it.”
17
This notebook of songs is on view at Records. Songbook rehearsal copies are available for checkout from Custodian.