Post-Apocalypse Dead Letter Office (20 page)

It used to be that, when I worked at the Free Library, patrons would rarely ever come to me to find out about really current events or news, other than questions like, “Hey, where do you guys keep the New York Times?” I can count them on one hand. One was a little old Volga German lady who wanted to know what was happening in Berlin – this was just after the Wall fell. Well, she sat down with me and by the time we’d found out the relevant newspaper articles and gone through them – she was not a native speaker/reader, nor had the best eyesight, so it was plodding work – she was in tears. It was the oddest thing – I couldn’t tell if she was happy that the Soviet Union was falling or saddened by the violence and turmoil, and you can’t really ask that sort of thing or even offer any solace. “Professionalism” guidelines, best practices and all that rot. Of course, I can name this instance where those guidelines were an abomination, but the hundreds of times where they were the right way to go remain anonymous.

Now – well, after everything went to shit and then up until a couple weeks ago – at the Am. Phil., patrons would come in all the time saying, “I heard alien mushroom people were spotted in Yonkers. Are they just in Yonkers, or have they infiltrated the entire metropolitan area?” And I could say, “I have heard no reliable reports of alien mushroom people sightings in Yonkers or anywhere else, you fucking loon. Get out.” But a lot of other folks would come in and ask, “My family lives in Yonkers, and I heard there’s been almost a full year of rioting and anarchy in New York and I wonder if it’s spread somehow to spread out there. Do you have a paper or any word from there?” And then all I could do is look at them and tear up because I just couldn’t say, didn’t know, and that we weren’t really the kind of library that could help with questions like that. But I guess at least I could tell them that much and show them some empathy.

The entire seaboard – hell, the entire world – outside this meagerly gray city has become completely unknowable to me and pretty much everyone else in every city, and I can’t speak for others, but that fact makes me feel smaller than I can even fully relate. May as well be a hydrogen atom in the sun for all I can see going around me.

And now even Philly has fully masked itself, putting on its own death shroud. Or maybe the blinders have been ripped off my eyes. In any case, the clincher came two weeks and one day ago. I left the apartment a little early to get to work on time, as there’s been a bit of snow lately. We haven’t had much at all this year, but it has been bitter cold, one of the worst I can remember since moving here. Well, I was halfway over the Benjamin Franklin bridge when I started hearing a commotion. It’s phenomenal how the sound carries without the noise of cars and other machinery, even inside the library. So I kept on and when I took a left on 5th street I could see that something really rotten was happening. By the time I got within a block of the library, the first few of the looters were walking off with their bounty. Cartloads, baskets full of books, papers, old loose leaf stuff. There was no point in even trying to stop them.

I just fail to comprehend what got into all of them, and why they targeted our library of all places. Was it just easier to break into? Does older paper burn better or something?... actually, I don’t even want to think about that. Now, that stuff wasn’t Proust, or Bulwer-Lytton (HA!) – nah. Just Franklin’s, Darwin’s, Boas’s personal papers, among thousands of other absolutely unique things that some of the best minds ever found special and wanted to keep safe. And now it’s a couple cold nights’ worth of hibachi fodder for a bunch of Philly chuckleheads. After watching the objects of my work – oh, they didn’t take all of it, but you can bet they’ll be back as soon as the Charles Peirce is in ashes – get trucked out the doors, I meandered around a bit. No reason to go inside that place, no real reason to go home. Took a walk through Independence park, right across the street. Sat on a bench and watched a drunk pissing on another, who was passed out in the overturned Liberty Bell. Yeah. I haven’t been sleeping much since then.

So now that there’s nowhere that I know, understand or have a real feel for, I find it’s time to leave and maybe search out some place where that’s possible. I’ve got a light tent, a warm sleeping bag, a sharp knife, a decent enough bike, a better bike lock and a will to leave this deathly place.

It might be nice to ride out to San Francisco. See the country on the way, pretend for a while that I can still grasp it. But be at peace; I won’t trouble you on the way out west.

Yes, San Francisco sounds like a good bet to me. Ride up that hill overlooking the Golden Gate bridge from the north, leave the keys in the bike lock, take in the view, taste that clean rock salt air and leave this unknowable world behind.

-Bert G.

To: Gary Eldridge, Lawrence, KS

From: Dave Thibodeaux, Camdenton, MO (Bagnell Dam)

September 23, 20+1

Gary,

Hey, it’s Dave Thibodeaux. Hope you remember me: Pi Tau Sigma, yeah? Donut Dave? I’ve attached a photo to help jog your memory. Hah, well, it might be a bit different from my picture in the Rollamo – if you still have a copy handy – but twenty years or so of barbecuing at Lakeside, the attendant beer consumption, a fried pastry habit and a slow metabolism are gonna do that. Although, in the last year, I’ve come to resemble that Rollamo picture a bit more.

The other year someone mentioned that you were in Lawrence, Kansas. They didn’t know exactly what you were up to, just that you’d moved over to Lawrence from KC and were maybe working on something related to a Lawrence hydroplant...? Just thought about you the other day, figured I’d shoot you a note, see how you’re doing, what you’ve been up to, catch you up on happenings down here, etc.

How is Lawrence? I only remember heading there once, to catch a Tigers - Jayhawks game. We won, big. Seemed like a nice enough town. Maybe a little low, most of it, nestled right up against the Kansas. Have you found some lady lovin’ there? They used to run screaming from us... well, me anyway. I bet now women are just throwing themselves at a guy who can make stuff work. (If you’re not using this to your advantage, man, you better start.)

I’ve been well, as has my family. My wife Ellen just turned 40 two months ago. Don’t know if you ever met her. She wasn’t in a Greek house at all. I met her just before graduating – she was still a sophomore at the time. It’s pretty hard to believe we’ve been married almost fifteen years. (The last has been a bit of a bear, but that’s the norm here and, I’m guessing, everywhere else.) Most of her family is in the area. This has turned out to be a real blessing the past year or so. Hard to believe I used to loath them being around (then again, they did used to mooch my beer). Our eldest, Jake, is twelve and a half. John, the second and youngest, is ten. Life was busy enough with two boys running around being boys and asking silly questions. It’s even harder now that they ask questions I can’t really answer. Like, why does dad have to ride my bike to work every day? When are the lights coming back on? Why do I have to chop wood again? Fish, again? Damn, man, it’s impossible to respond.

Other things down here in Camdenton are so-so. I’m still working at the dam. We’re maintaining our staff best we can, but money is tight and it doesn’t seem to buy much, anyway, with all the damned price gouging going on. The Lake was really quiet this summer. Hard to believe, I mean just a year or so ago thousands upon thousands of people came down here. Just to drink and make asses of themselves and record other people making asses of themselves. (It was almost a part-time job for some of our staff, too, to tell the truth.) Anyway, slow times, but that’s not all bad. We’re still actively trying to figure out what knocked out the turbines here last year, and how. We had a couple engineering profs come up from UMR to take a look at it. Took them a full week to travel up here, and that was after the week or so it took to get our message to them. I think they were happy to have something to do. Anyway, they checked everything out from top to bottom. One of the professors even strapped on some SCUBA gear and checked out the intake – not that it had been off, because we don’t have any power with which to shut the damned thing off. They gave it a clean bill of health, but no reason why it’s not pumping out juice. It’s just as we found before. The entire mechanism is completely sound, the turbines turn smoothly, everything runs as it ought to – it just doesn’t put out any electricity. It’s my understanding things are this way all over the country. Hell, all over the world, for that matter.

Heard what happened up in South Dakota. Don’t know if you’ve gotten word or not. A buddy of mine who works at – well, who used to be employed by the MO dept of transportation in Lee’s Summit sent me the news just a couple days ago. Oahe Dam flooded, and the the whole thing failed. Washed out completely. No warning – really, how could there be, nowadays? I guess they got a ton of rain, but you’d really expect a dam like that to hold. Then Gavins Point failed, too. Upshot was that Pierre and Sioux City got taken out, as did a whole lot of Omaha. I don’t know who did the estimating, or how, but almost 12,000 Pierrans, 80,000 Omahans and 50,000 Sioux City folks got killed. With the food and medicine shortages after last year’s tragedies, Sioux City’s virtually wiped out. Omaha’s now got to be way less than half its population as it was this time two years ago. I don’t even think the people in the podunk towns all along the Missouri before Sioux City and between it and Omaha were even counted in the death toll, and to be honest, I don’t even want an estimate regarding those. Apparently, things were a little hairy down towards St. Joe and Kansas City, too, but the river never crested over the banks.

I haven’t heard about any other dams failing. Of course, my view, like everyone else’s, is pretty limited right now. Maybe they weren’t maintaining the dam as they should have, maybe it was just a poor design. Still, it’s just not right for a dam to fail so completely and rapidly as that. I just... I’m terrified that the dam here is going to just up and blow. It keeps a hell of a lot of the Lake of the Ozarks penned up. My family’s place is up on a hill – we’ll be able to weather a failure. The towns downstream from the lake, though. Well, I’ve sent word as far as Freeburg to watch for a sign that the dam has failed. I’ve got in a heap of trouble for it, making people more antsy that they are already, but I’m not going to have thousands of peoples’ deaths on my head. And we’re halfway organized now – far better off than before. Just for your information, we’ve got a couple big torches set up on top of one of the local mountains, right near Lakeland. Actually, they’re on a ridge with a bald face to the east. The torches are big, and both covered from the weather, they’re always loaded up with a mix of old phone books, pine and oak (it’ll light fast and keep burning bright) and we’ve got mirrors set up behind them to beam what light they put off as far as possible. Everybody on staff – hell everybody in town, now – knows that if the dam fails they’re to high tail it up to the ridge and light both fires. We figured that folks downstream might see one – or one nearby – and think it was a mistake. But two should get the message across. I don’t know, it’s really the best we could come up with. I hope it’ll save some folks, if it ever comes to that.

Also, I’m also nervous for everyone else I knew who works near a river. I wanted to mail you and let you know that I considered you a really good friend in Rolla, and that I’m sorry we, rather I never kept in regular contact with you and that I think you should move the hell out of that floodplain. At least get up near the campus at the top of the hill there, whatever it’s called. Or, barring that, at least figure out some kind of warning system. I’m sorry if I’m being a bit of a prick about this – I just want to maybe help save some lives.

Hope all is well for you and yours in Lawrence. If you ever get some mobility and want a vacation or something more permanent, look us up. We’ve got plenty of room in the guest house. Plenty of room. Plenty of food to go around. Another set of eyes on the dam would be more than welcome. You were always a hell of a good student, if I remember correctly – maybe you can pinpoint the problem. And hey, without the jackasses on the lake, the fishing’s been great here – best year ever for it. Hard to believe.

Dave T.

P.S. - This is really the first time I’ve used one of these couriers. Hopefully it’ll get up to you within a month or so...?