Sol Survivors 2

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Joel failed at not disturbing Debra when pulling the blinds back to peer at the early gray light. She must have been sleeping light.

“Anything wrong?” Debra asked.

Joel came back to sit on the bed. He put his hand on her arm. “No. Bad dreams.”

“About what?” she moaned.

“I’m sure it has something to do with seeing Jessie and Archer on the street yesterday evening.”

That woke her some. She propped her head up. “And how did that make you feel?”

“Not good. I wish they would leave this neighborhood, one way or another. I don’t need the turbulence.”

“Maybe struggling with the moral dilemma of having Red sleep inside can help you forget them.”

“Why would I have a moral dilemma about that?” Joel asked.

She lay her head back down. “The hypocrisy of only doing it to not look bad in front of your soldier friends.”

“That’s exactly why I did it. There is no moral dilemma.”

Joel left the bedroom to find Red making a pot of coffee in the kitchen, his jumble of hair uniquely matted on one side from the couch cushions. Jules paced back in forth in a disturbed fashion before the front door as if desperate to get outside. No other sounds could be heard inside the house yet.

“Red,” Joel said at a volume above a whisper. “We could sure use some extra eggs this morning. Why don’t you run down to the Maddock barn and take whatever you find?”

Red nodded. “I thought the same thing, and was about to go.”

Joel smiled and followed him and Jules out the door. Perhaps a working brain resided somewhere in there after all.

“So how was the couch?” Joel asked him on the porch, making an extra effort to be friendly. He wasn’t sure if his motivation was pure or the result of Debra’s chiding.

Before Red could answer, both their attention was drawn by a clanging sound from the shed. Jules barked. Joel’s eyes shot through the thick morning air to see the form of a thin man rushing out of the shed holding differently-shaped objects. Joel instinctively took one step backward towards the front door where his shotgun leaned against the wall just inside.

But then he recognized the Panama hat.

“Ricky!” Joel yelled.

Incredibly, he froze in place.

Jules seemed to recognize Ricky and calmed down.

“Ricky, wait!” Joel stepped off the porch.

Ricky turned and acted unsure of what he wanted to do as Joel took large strides towards him. Before he made up his mind, Joel was with him.

The objects in his hands turned out to be Joel’s favorite fishing rod and the blue tackle box.

Joel stood dumbfounded. Then the sound of Red entering the shed jolted him to life.

“Ricky what the hell are you doing, man?”

Ricky scowled, looked at both items in his hands, and replied, “We have a deal, right?”

Joel reached for the rod. “That’s what I was about to say to you. Damn! Of all the jackasses in that house you live in, I thought you might be the one hope.”

The sound of Joel’s front door opening didn’t even cause him to glance in that direction as he took the fishing rod from Ricky. He knew it would be the soldiers.

“Don’t call us that, Mr. McConnell. Maybe to us, you guys are the jackasses.”

“How do you figure that?” Joel said. “Only by a badly infected thought process could you draw such a conclusion. We produce everything needed for living, and when we go to sleep, you scoundrels come steal it. I have produce growing now.” Joel pointed to his fledging garden, a 200 square foot area surrounded by a mickey-mouse fence constructed of various scrounged materials including old car parts, and which featured a homemade greenhouse in one corner. “How are we ever going to eat any of it if you guys come steal it every night?”

“We need vegetables too,” Ricky immediately responded. “You know that. Would you have us die of malnutrition? You di’s and your holier-than-thou attitude! As if you are the only ones entitled to consume what the sun grows, just because you can stand to be out in it. If you thought for two seconds about the situation, you might understand that while you tend the crops in the daytime, we could—”

“Rob us blind at night!” Joel said.

“Any trouble?” Colonel Cowboy’s voice boomed from behind Joel. He was slightly behind schedule by Joel’s expected timing.

“Caught a thief in the act,” Joel said without taking his eyes off Ricky.

Ricky’s eyes moved to the colonel and hardened.

“You certain about that?” the colonel asked in a tone that Joel knew meant his next answer determined this neighbor kid’s fate.

Red spoke from the direction of the goat pen. “No eggs here this morning, Mr. McConnell.”

Joel turned to him. “Come put this fishing equipment back in the shed.”

Red came and took the rod from Joel, but stopped and reached his hand out toward Ricky for the tackle box. The two of them stared at each other. Ricky’s disdain for Red was even harder than for the colonel. No one in the Dunn house appeared to care for Red. Something must have happened during the brief time he was among them to cause the rift—or perhaps the leader of his former g**g, who’d gotten clean away, was responsible for it. The fact Red was now part of Joel’s household was probably just as ironic for them as it was for Joel.

Joel finally reached and grabbed the tackle box away from Ricky.

“We had a deal,” Ricky repeated in an emotionless tone. Joel had to admit, the kid was appealing to his most vulnerable spot. But any potential softening abruptly vanished when Joel opened the tackle box to find five fresh eggs, one of them broken with the yoke running all over the bobbers and remaining spool of line.

“Our deal was concluded last night, and you know as well as I do it only involved what was traded for then. It certainly didn’t include all our morning’s eggs.” Joel spun the open box around to Ricky. “See, this is what I’m talking about. Stealing food from the people who produce it, and leaving them hungry. You noctos aren’t contributing anything to the neighborhood. All you do is consume, by any means you can.”

Ricky looked into the tackle box and frowned, acting for a second as if the presence of the eggs was a surprise.

Joel finally turned to the colonel. His two soldiers stood behind him wearing only socks on their feet, having obviously hurried out when they heard the commotion.

“Colonel, I’m sorry to answer yes. We caught this nocturnal neighbor kid red-handed, stealing fishing tackle from my shed and eggs from our coop.”

“Even with our Humvee parked here?” the colonel asked Ricky. “That seems like an incredibly foolish notion, son.”

Ricky refused to acknowledge him and instead hardened his stare at Joel.

“All right,” the colonel said to his men. “Cuff him and put him in the back. Lower the window shades for him. We’ll have to get going earlier than I planned.”

As upset as Joel was, he still felt sorry for Ricky watching him go into custody, remembering his own such unpleasant episode. Joel, however, had been wrongly imprisoned.

Back inside the cabin, Joel scrambled up the four good eggs for the soldiers with some locally-foraged Jerusalem artichokes, which they wolfed down quickly with coffee and toast from a loaf of millet bread that showed up at the trading post a couple nights ago. Debra emerged in time to say goodbye to the colonel and his men. Joel didn’t think she knew anything about the incident in the front yard yet, though she doubtlessly heard the commotion. It wasn’t going to be an easy thing to tell her about.

Before the soldiers could get in the Humvee and drive off, Red came out of the shed holding a large fresh catfish on a stringer. This one wasn’t quite as big as the one they had last night; perhaps six pounds.

“He must have left this in his hurry to get away,” Red said.

Colonel Cowboy pushed his new hat back and commented, “Looks like another good fish dinner for you tonight, McConnell.”

Joel shook his head. “I don’t even want it. Can you use it, Colonel?”

The colonel thought for a moment. “I suppose it might make a savory treat for the officers’ club at Three Point. If only we could prepare it the way you did…”

“Wait here a second.” Joel went back in the house and shortly emerged with a container of goat’s milk and a baggie of peanut-pepper rub for the fish. This time Mick and Sammy followed him out, having just risen. There was no way Sammy didn’t hear the ruckus, and probably watched the scene play out through his bedroom window.

Before leaving, the jubilant colonel blessed Joel with another military gas voucher in appreciation for the fish and rub. After watching the Humvee drive down the street through the tree openings in the early-morning light, Joel turned to Sammy and Mick to discover them suddenly much more awake, and practically panting like dogs at the additional voucher.

“He gave you another one?” Sammy asked.

“Yes.” Joel smiled coyly and tucked it into a pocket. “Now I have one, too.”

* * *

Rob Danson stared back at Joel before answering, the facial expression under his perfectly-parted brown hair alternating between confusion, horror, and betrayal as if three acts of a play.

“Why would you, of all people, have my son thrown into that prison camp?” he finally stammered.

“I’m sorry, Rob. I really am. I like Ricky. It wasn’t me. The soldiers and I came outside early and there he was, sneaking out of my shed stealing our eggs and fishing equipment. It was just extremely bad timing. If the army boys hadn’t happened to have spent the night with me…”

“That colonel is your friend!” Rob replied. “They wouldn’t have taken him in if you told them not to!”

“It doesn’t work like that now,” Joel said. “You are thinking pre-Helios, when we all had civil rights. We are under a state of military justice. They don’t need a victim to press charges. If soldiers catch someone in a crime, they arrest them, period. There was nothing I could do about it. They don’t care whether I file a complaint or not.”

“I don’t believe you, Joel.”

Joel made an exaggerated shrugging motion. “That’s the way it happened, and the way it is.”

“You couldn’t just tell them Ricky had permission to access your shed and chicken coop? After all, you guys did strike a deal last night. I watched you shake hands.”

Joel took longer to answer this one.

“He didn’t have permission, Rob. So the thought never even occurred to me. The deal we made had nothing to do with what he got caught doing, other than the fact I disclosed I had some additional tackle he apparently decided he wanted. You should have seen the sheepish look on his face when we confronted him.”

Rob’s face turned to stone. “They took him to the same place you were?”

“Yes.”

“And the camp is at the Three Point Army Base?”

“Yes,” Joel answered. “Or very close by, is all I really know. The tribunals take place on the base.”

“How long before he gets one?”

“Probably about a week, from what I’ve been told. Not a month like when I was in. Conditions there are improving.”

Rob shook his head. “Just how the hell am I supposed to get there?”

Joel didn’t immediately answer. Despite the fact Rob’s son was a nocturnal, and had turned bad, this father clearly still cared for him from the depths of his heart. Joel was nearing the age where he would permanently surrender the option of having kids. Debra made no indication of harboring any such desire, and the thought of trying to bring up young children in the current societal conditions was less than appealing. The closest thing Joel knew to a parental type of relationship was the one he had with Sammy, which, admittedly, may be more like that of a big brother than the inseverable and unconditional love a father has for a son.

Joel didn’t want Sammy to leave. But he sympathized with the fact he had parents he had yet to communicate with and longed to visit. Mick was in the exact same position. The desire grew in them both daily. And they made a good team, despite—or perhaps because of—their differences. Those two would figure out a way to get to Idaho whether Joel helped them or not. Joel wanted to help, as inconvenient as it would be for him to lose them. At least neighborhood conditions had settled into something reasonably safe-feeling.

Mick and Sammy needed the other gas voucher, still in Joel’s pocket, in addition to the purple ticket proving to be legit. Even that wasn’t enough. The tanks in the trucks were low. It would take at least one can of fuel to launch their expedition.

At this moment another person who needed the voucher in Joel’s pocket stood before him. This man was in an even more agonizing position than Mick and Sammy, and Joel could not help but assume partial responsibility for it. As Rob’s eyes intensified in bitterness, Joel discovered his hand reaching for the voucher.

That’s when Rob’s shotgun came out from behind the door. He didn’t point it at Joel, but its appearance made a clear statement that Joel was no longer welcome here. Perhaps permanently.

Joel tilted his head. “We’re neighbors, Rob.”

“I’m not feeling very neighborly toward you, car salesman. Thank you for bringing me the information.”

Joel made one more apology before leaving, this one not as heartfelt as the first.

On the street, Joel came across Hal Bronson leaving the Maddock place. Joel stopped and waited for him at the head of the driveway. Hal was good about sharing the responsibility of co-managing the property of their deceased neighbor, and had arranged for two of the three present tenants—a married couple he knew from somewhere who remained reclusive so far. The third tenant Joel found himself just last week, an outdoorsy type named Bridger who showed up at the marketplace with fresh venison steaks looking for lodging. He’d been back to the market one time since, as a looky-loo with nothing further to trade. Joel figured it was only a matter of time before he bagged another deer.

Hal’s white beard was getting long enough to flap in the breeze as he joined Joel on the street.

“How’d it go?” Hal asked.

“Not good.” Joel found it hard to hide the despondency in his tone.

“Well,” Hal looked down the street and scrunched his face. “That was to be expected. Lord knows my oldest boy is in need of discipline every bit as much as his two friends, probably more so. But I sure wouldn’t take to having him locked up in that godawful place you described. Especially for something as misdemeanoring as stealing a little food.”

“Hal, it wasn’t just for—”

“I understand it was only the icing on the cake, Joel. Must have been a crime of convenience. Those boys know my outside nests are there specifically for them.” He pointed to the large fenced-in area on the side of the house as they came to Hal’s driveway. It enclosed his garden, goat pen, and chickens.

Joel never noticed before that his smaller coop did have a few nests with doors that opened to the driveway-side of the fence, available for anyone passing by to open and scrounge eggs from.

They parted ways. Joel walked slower and kicked the dirt as he continued home alone. What a day. Mick and Sammy were suddenly on the verge of leaving. Within a fifteen minute span this morning, Joel managed to go from being the most popular guy in the neighborhood to the least popular, all while he was the actual crime victim. And lying to Rob Danson about the incident in an attempt to paint himself in a more favorable light didn’t sit well either, for multiple reasons. For one thing, it should not have been necessary.

If only that damn Dunn compound didn’t include kids of the neighborhood diurnals. Why couldn’t families all be one way or the other? What was really happening in this stupid post-Helios world? Oh, to go back to the days of selling cars, where all you had to worry about was an occasional pissed-off customer because something broke down right away—and then you could blame it on them for not buying the full extended warranty.

It wasn’t the eggs. They weren’t the icing on the cake, as Hal presumed. Truthfully, it wasn’t even the tackle theft that irked Joel so much. Joel would prefer to deal with something like that in his own way. But Ricky absolutely got what was coming to him, and anything less would have been a perversion of justice. The kid committed one overriding condemnable offense that, as far as Joel was concerned, should bring automatic severe sentencing.

He broke an agreement after shaking Joel’s hand.