Post-Apocalypse Dead Letter Office (14 page)

I’ve been toying with the idea of moving over to Council Grove this spring. Just a few miles. I’m getting to the point where it’s a little difficult to make it out to pump water several times a day. It’d just be so nice to have semi-running water again. They’ve set up or somehow re-fitted the windmills as pumps over there, and the reservoir and lake are still plenty full. Or so I’ve heard, anyway. Of course, a few of the more imaginative gossips in town (Meg Barnes, particularly) say that Kansas City has gaslights and trolleys now. But since Council Grove is pretty close I’m a bit more prone to believe about the windmills.

Woke up yesterday morning to the sound of the piano. It was the strangest thing. I bundled up and went downstairs and found one of the cats tramping all around the dining room. I’m not happy about them staying inside, but I guess it is winter and there’s been coyote and even some cougar sightings. Not surprising, I suppose, what with the huge deer population explosion a couple years ago. I wouldn’t want to be stuck outside, either. Of course, the tomcat disappears for days and even weeks on end. Haven’t seen him for almost half a month now. It was the mama cat on the piano.

I still remember working in the kitchen and listening to the plinking and plunking coming from the dining room as you practiced. You rarely seemed to get exasperated with it, even though you inherited such short fingers from us. Don’t think you ever went the entirety of your prescribed practice sessions, however. Either that, or the timer we used ran mighty fast.

Aside from the illness I had in December, I have been eating quite well. The summer harvest was fine – plenty of tomatoes, beans and zucchini. The fall harvest, though. Well, I’ve never really seen the like, even when we had sprays and fertilizers, irrigation, etc. The corn alone took the whole town two weeks of sunup to sundown days to harvest. It’s all drying, now – most of it will get ground up in the spring for meal. What’s left will go to hogs and the few cattle around here. Probably the cattle more than anything, as the hogs are pretty happy eating acorns. Vernon Mitchell broke a forearm falling out of one of the apple trees – a nearly-matured seedling – while harvesting in his orchard and had to get ridden into Council Grove to get patched up by Doc Saw. (I can’t say that the apples are all that tasty to eat out of hand, but there are a lot of them, and they make good juice and apple butter.) And, I’ve been eating on a half a hog since October! Nice as they are, I didn’t trust the Halsey boys to slaughter it right. They’re carpenters by trade. So, I had Art Muncy and his daughter Lill out to help slaughter, dress and cure it. They really did almost all the work. Art’s a... well, kind of a layabout now. Grows marijuana and some not-so-great squash and pumpkins, but he used to work in Emporia at a meatpacking plant and knows his way around a carcass. Never cared for him so much, but Lill’s nice. Still cute, too – sweetest smile – and unattached. Just saying.

I sent them home with almost half the pig. I know what you’d say to that, but look – just deal with it. Everyone – everyone in this town, at least – gets fed. Half a pig’s a lot for one old lady, anyway, especially when you add it to the abundance of everything else. Have you been eating half as well as us?

(And anyway, Art grows superb weed.)

I don’t know, maybe it’s just been so many years – how many? five or six now? – since we had such conveniences as pesticides and combines and the rail and satellite TV. I guess there was a lean year after everything went kaput, but we bounced back. We have so much here – decent food and plenty of it, a roof, a stove, water – that I can’t say that I miss very many things anymore. Maybe just pineapple for upside down cake from time to time, and your father.

Have you heard from Anne lately? Last I knew she was up in Junction City. I really don’t know what she’s been up to for the past couple years. Going on three now. I mail her from time to time, but I’m not sure the new delivery service really knows what they’re doing. They charge so much, too; it cost me two pounds of corn meal and a jar of crabapple jelly for just a 50 mile delivery, for one letter! Well, I guess the riders need it – they’re so skinny. (This is coming from Meg B of course, as the riders only hit the major junctions. But, after riding to and from town on that old Schwinn for these several years – it’s only a half a mile one-way – I really will take her word for it this time.)

If you hear from Anne, let me know please.

You know, I really do enjoy the quiet here, but it got to be a little too much last August and September, so I dug out the old RCA that belonged to your grandfather. Your father never listened to much music – the radio was always tuned to market and weather reports. But he always had a soft spot for the Beach Boys, so I put them on the player and wound it up good. Endless Summer. The record played back just a little bit slow – the spring or whatever makes it go is probably losing its shape, and it made Brian Wilson’s voice a little huskier than I remember – but it sounded fine to me.

All in all, though, I prefer piano.

With love, your mother Genny

P.S. - Depending on when this arrives – two weeks, three maybe? – happy 37th birthday!

To: Gerald and Regina Olliver, Fort Riley, KS

From: Donny and Fawn McCutcheon, Arkadelphia, AR

August 26th, 20+4

Gerald (and Gina)-

We received your letter a week ago today. Hope to hear better news from you soon. How is it possible that there was that big army post doesn’t have any docs on it? Why’d it take so damn long for the doc to get out to you from Junction City? Is Gina improved any? Is she conscious? Still delirious? Doesn’t seem at all fair to be sick like that in summertime.

Glad to hear your sundry supplies are still holding out. This year’s drought will be next year’s bounty, we’re praying for you. We looked at the map, and it shows that the base has a big old reservoir right north of it. Maybe you can make a trip to catch some fish out of it or a spillway when you fetch water, assuming you have someone to keep an eye on Gina while you’re out. Again, we’re hoping and praying for you that the water will be enough to last you and everyone out there the summer through.

It hasn’t been near what you been through, but life here has been up and down.

Firstly, we got ourselves a ghost train. Nobody’s sure how it started moving, but it came click-clacking right by our house into and out of town the week before last. Remember the sound that damn thing used to make on the way past? It was a hell of a shock to just see it rolling by without warning, almost completely quiet. Then, about a day later, it rolled right back through town and by our house. It made one last pass that evening and settled right in the middle of the bridge going over the Ouachita. Most folks think some kids must have found it and released the brakes on it as a prank, but Gina’s uncle Harold, who used to work for Amtrak before he got busted for moonshining oh so long ago, says that the brakes’ reservoirs depleted and then gravity took over and carried it downhill. A whole bunch of people clambered on top of it after it stopped and tried to scavenge food out of the dining car, but the folks who got stuck on the train must have raided it all before they ditched it. All the folks found the other day was wild yardbird nests.

You should see the flocks. Dozens, sometimes hundreds of them just covering hillsides. Scrawnier, more mean-spirited birds you have never laid eyes on. Course, it doesn’t prevent foxes and bobcats from culling them a bit. Some folks, Fawn included, swear they’ve seen mountain lions loping through the thickets after them, too. Guess it’s not outside the realm of possibility, but it seems a bit more work for a cougar to chase down a bony little feral chicken than a rangy but bigger, dumber, slower and meatier ranch cow back in the Texahoma or Kanorado areas.

Mad Tyson hens, most people call them. Heard a rumor that it was originally a small-time farmer what set a few flocks loose to feed on their own since there was no grain to be purchased. Of course, that puts the onus on a local boy and doesn’t have nearly the same ring to it as does saying that Tyson cut the birds loose when it was obvious they were going out of business, just to spite everyone.

Speaking of the poultry operations around here, you can’t even get within a quarter mile of the old processing plants without gagging on the odor. Once the power shut down, all them dead birds just sat there. Well, we heard they tried to get them into those big warehouse-sized freezers, in the dark, and maybe they did that. But those freezers only stay cold for so long without air conditioners pushing frigid air into them. An easy way to spot where a processing plant is/was is to look around for buzzards. They’re thick as flies around those plants, just can’t find a way to get inside. It’d be better for someone to actually let them in and clean the damn places out, but you can’t find someone dumb or crazy enough to go near one, and nobody knows whether the buzzards would even touch that stuff at this point.

The few birds we started keeping the other year have been well, and we’ve been able to keep the predators off them. Fawn has almost mastered the art of pickling eggs. Almost. When we cracked open the last batch to eat them, the sulfur smell almost made me run to the nearest processing plant to relieve my nose. We slept out on the porch that night, for certain. That batch got pitched out pretty damn quick, but the rest have been good. Can’t say I particularly care for the texture of the things, kind of like eating rubber erasers soaked in vinegar. But mash them up and add some hot mustard powder – we get it from Greenville, MS – and some bacon grease or oil and some chopped up dill pickles and they make a mean egg salad for sandwiches (when Fawn makes wheat bread). We’ll eat the birds when they stop laying... and sometimes even if they haven’t stopped. Roast them in the oven and eat them with cornbread.

I bartered a young nanny off one of our neighbors earlier this year. Evan McGroot – when Gina comes to her senses, tell her that. Bet she’ll laugh – she know’s Ev’s history with goats. But I got this nan early spring for a half a jar of pickled eggs. Just half a jar! Well, I ought to have picked up on that as the first indication that something wasn’t quite all even up with that animal. I brought it home and let it roam around the back half-acre. We’re pretty well fenced in – anything that can get through that fence is probably small enough to have trouble with a spiteful, full-grown nanny goat. So I let it roam, eat what it wanted, which was everything I didn’t want it to eat. Rope, bark off the apple trees we planted from seedlings a couple years prior, and probably every other damn thing that wasn’t any good for it. Well, I’d originally got it to milk it and maybe make a little cheese (or have Fawn do it). That goat ate so damn well it should have been producing at least a pint a day. Never got even a cup of milk, not one ounce. Finally I got so fed up we just slaughtered the damn thing and roasted it on a spit, had a little party and invited everyone around. We invited Ev, but he never showed.

We’re going to get a pig next year.

Sorry. Probably not real nice of me to go on about food right now, especially to you.

Things elsewhere in the state are about the same as last year, so we’ve heard. Little Rock has probably seen better days, but we don’t know firsthand as we’ve never had need to go up there. Heard there was a bad fever outbreak up there in early February. Fawn and I have made a few trips up to Hot Springs, try to go at least once every couple months. We bathe regularly down at home, but Hot Springs is a special surprise I like to spring on Fawn. It’s never busy as it used to be, but still gets plenty of visitors. So much nicer to sit in a hot bath without having to make a fire for it first.

Take care of Gina best you can, Gerald. We’re happy she has a man like you around. Again, hope to hear better new from you soon. Write quick as you can.

All the best.

Don (and Fawn)

P.S. - I’m writing this on a separate sheet of paper for a reason, Gerald. I want you to know that Tess – Gina’s mom you know – died just a couple months ago. She caught the pox or fever or whatever it is that’s wrecking Little Rock. Fawn and I supposed that it’s better that, when Gina recovers and is well enough to read our letter to you both, it might be better to not include that information right away. If you feel differently, go ahead and give her this note, too. Otherwise, maybe it finds its way into a fire or a creek. Again, we’re praying for Gina and you. Stay well. -D.