Chaco

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2

Most white Americans in the town of Green Lake knew Chaco as “The Walkers’ Mexican Gardener.” But, before he’d fled his country to escape execution, and entered the U.S. to hide under cover as a simple handyman and gardener, he’d been known in El Salvador as Professor Rodriquez. Students and faculty at Universidad Tecnológica de El Salvador liked the young professor, although sometimes he got under the skin of the Administration, who urged him to be more scholarly and authoritarian, and less congenial with his students.

Chaco earned his PhD with the highest honors from the prestigious International Graduate School of Mathematics, Physics, and Astronomy, in Bonn, Germany, the hometown of his maternal grandfather, Rolf Erhard. When he returned home, he secured a position as the youngest professor ever hired in the history of the Salvadoran university.

Besides Spanish, Chaco spoke a smattering of Nawat, the Pipin language, fluent German and flawless English except for pronouncing his “Y” as “J,” and his “J” as “Y.” In this moment, Chaco only cared to speak in one language to one person. “I’m calling Javier. I have to know what’s going on.”

Chaco pushed the buttons on his cell.

Javier answered on the first ring. “Thought you might call.”

“Sorry, it’s so late.”

“No problem. We’re all awake.”

“I’ve seen some big storms through my SolarMax over the last few mornings, and the heliophysics sites are busy. What’s going on?”

“Massive events in active regions all over the solar surface. We’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Which regions?”

“NASA Space Radiation Analysis Group reports Class-X storms on 12324, 12364, and others. These will make Carrington look like a picnic.”

“They’re going to slam right into us, aren’t they?” Chaco’s heart fluttered against his ribs. “What about our early warning system, ‘The Buoy’?

Javier paused. “We’ve lost contact with The Buoy, and the other satellites monitoring the Sun.”

“What?”

“We think a flare took them out.”

“And now?”

“Light a candle to the mother of Jesus, mi amigo. If God is with us, the storms will miss.”

***

The next day proved uneventful, and the Sun’s activity had calmed. The storms had to have missed. Everyone overacted, that’s all. He’d planned to use his SolarMax to revisit the Sun’s activity, but by the time he finished his daily chores, evening had fallen, and hunger set in. Chaco used a metal spatula to scrape crisp, fried platanos from a cast iron skillet onto a plate half-filled with steamed basmati rice. From his childhood in Soyapango, El Salvador, even over Abuela Erhard’s pupusas, his favorite meal had always been platanos fritos con arroz. Back home, his family employed two maids, but his grandmother loved to cook and spent hours in the kitchen. Her doe-eyed grandson perched on a stool and watched her every move as she made tamales de elote, sopa de pata, yuca frita, and other fine delicacies. Before his tenth birthday, Chaco created traditional Salvadoran and Pipil dishes like a pro.

Right when he lifted his fork to take his first bite of the starchy fried fruit, the electricity cut out. “Damn. Where’s that pinche flashlight?” He felt along the cool backsplash. When his hand made contact with the handle of the plastic light, he grabbed it, switched it on, and stepped out of his cottage into the summer night air.

Electrical outages were a common event. Chaco stretched and yawned. “Probably just another overload to the circuit.” Although charming, the guest house he’d called home for over four years was almost a century old, and the electrical system had not been upgraded in many decades. The circuit breaker tripped occasionally, usually at the most inconvenient moment. He’d lost electricity several times when frying platanos on the old electric stove that sucked so much energy that sometimes all he need do is turn up the heat and, bam, no power.

Chaco went to the shed and flipped the circuit breaker switches. Nothing. The lights at the main house where his employers lived were also off, as were the lights of Green Lake’s commercial district nestled in the valley below. He pressed the power button on his cell phone. Dead. “Please let it be a spent battery.”

The southern California summer blessed the hills with balmy gardenia-scented breezes. Nevertheless, the hair stood on his arms and the nape of his neck, and his shoulder muscles seized. Chaco looked to the sky. A solitary shooting star arced beneath the Big Dipper and disappeared behind the San Padrino Mountains.

He swallowed a lump of panic, plaited his long black hair into a thick braid securing the end with a rubber band he kept on his wrist for that purpose and slogged through the wet lawn blanketing the acre between the cottage and main house. Chaco could not be certain if his reason for going to the Walkers was to see if they were all right, or because he simply needed to be around other people just now.

He found Abigail Walker in a dove-colored chenille robe, hair wrapped in a towel, padding barefoot over the flagstone patio. She carried a lit oil lamp in one hand. The flame cast a luminous glow over the wet stones. Two Waterford crystal champagne flutes and a half empty bottle of high-end Prosecco perched on a low table adjacent to the built-in hot tub. The Friday night ritual for the Walkers, going back to the beginning of their marriage thirty-eight years earlier, was to relax in their hot tub listening to Mozart or Sibelius, sharing a bottle of imported sparkling wine. Chaco never appeared unannounced at the Walkers, but his since cell phone had cut out, he had no choice. The presence of the older woman gave him comfort, and the tightness in his shoulders eased.

“Hello, Chaco. Looks like a town-wide blackout. Russ went to check the circuit breaker, and he’s going to see if Rocky and Margo’s power is off, too. This is all rather romantic, don’t you think?”

“I came by in case you need anything, Mrs. Walker.” He snapped off his flashlight and set it on a patio table.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve invited you to call me Abby, but you still call me ‘Mrs. Walker.’ Why?” She put her hands on her hips and tilted her head to one side. “C’mon Chaco, you’ve lived here so long you’re practically family.”

“My mother taught me to be respectful. If I call you Abby her ghost will haunt me for the rest of my life.”

“Okay, do whatever makes you comfortable. I don’t require you to be so formal with me, though.”

Chaco glanced skyward again. “If you and Mr. Walker need me, call out. I’m headed back to the cottage, but I’ll hear you.”

“We’re fine, thanks. Personally, I find with the power off, the world is more magical, soft and mysterious. It’s so quiet now, too, lovely. I imagine a hundred years ago the world was much like this at night, silent, and dark. Look at that magnificent sky.”

Abigail set the oil lamp on a table and gazed into the moonless expanse. “Usually, there’s so much light pollution you can’t see even a fraction of those stars. Beautiful.”

Chaco liked Abigail Walker. She treated him with respect, seeking his advice on gardening, demonstrating an authentic interest in Salvadoran culture, and she never pried into his past. He even taught her to make pupusas the way his grandmother made them with corn meal dough called masa, stuffed with shredded pork, cheese, and beans, fried and topped with Salvadoran style cabbage salad. Abuela Erhard would have been impressed by the ease in which this white American woman, this chele, took to pupusa-making. Abigail also made the effort to pick up a few phrases in passable Spanish, but what made Chaco like her the most is she talked to him as though he were her trusted friend rather than her handyman.

Pretty in an unexpected way, Abigail’s russet colored hair streaked with silver hung below her shoulders. With eyes so blue they were nearly purple, and her pale, translucent skin, she could have been the subject of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. Chaco had seen photos of her when in her late-twenties, newly married to Russell, and others taken later when their daughter and son were toddlers. No surprise she’d been a beautiful woman back then. She carried maybe another twenty-five pounds on her frame than before giving birth to Fiona and Jude. She forever dieted, but Chaco thought she looked fine, particularly for a woman in her sixties. He liked women with soft, plump hips, thighs and breasts. Mirabella, his girlfriend back home, may her precious soul rest in peace, had been gorgeous. She could have starred in the telenovelas, the Latino soap operas, starring voluptuous women. But by U.S. standards, she would be considered overweight and unappealing. He never understood why American men preferred angular, bony flacas to fuller women.

Chaco picked up his light and switched it on for the walk back to his cabin. As he stepped off the patio and onto the lawn, Russell Walker, wearing a pair of leather slip-ons and a heavy dark blue robe, rounded the corner of the house bearing a flashlight. A man who had to stoop to get through most doors, with a lion’s mane of white hair, Russell cut an imposing figure. To those who did not know him, he seemed tough, humorless, but like his wife, Chaco knew the older man as a kind and decent human being.

Although not as affable and warm as Abigail, Russell treated Chaco with respect too, and not only provided a furnished guest house and a nicely restored 1965 Ford pickup, he paid a good salary. In less than two years, Chaco saved enough to purchase top-of-the-line telescopes, a Takahashi Mewlong for night sky viewing, and the SolarMax Double Stack for observing solar activity. Chaco stepped back onto the patio. “Good evening, Mr. Walker.”

“Good evening, Chaco. Some blackout we’re having.”

“Well?” Abigail asked her husband. “What did you find out?”

“Not the circuit breaker, that’s for sure. Some drunken jerk probably ran into a major power pole.” Russell pulled out a deck chair and plopped into it. “Rocky will be here in a bit. We’re going to crank up the generators.”

“Mr. Walker?”

“Yes, Chaco.”

“I’d go easy on the generators.”

“Why is that?”

“Depending on how long the electricity is out…. you won’t be able to pump gas, that’s all.”

“I’ll syphon from the cars if I need to.”

“You might…well…I think the newer cars are full.”

“What did Margo and Rocky have to say?” Abigail asked.

Chaco was grateful Russell had not asked him to go to their neighbors’ home. Abigail had once told Chaco she felt sorry for Margo because severe endometriosis had left her uterus such a scarred mass of tissue that at age twenty-four she had to undergo a hysterectomy. Chaco didn’t say so out of fear that Abigail would think him lacking in compassion, but he thought Margo’s infertility a good thing. People like that should not breed. Tonight, right now especially, Chaco was in no mood to deal with the Pennymons.

Abigail lit a row of citronella Tiki torches and placed additional oil lamps on the glass top patio tables. “You still haven’t told me, Russ. Did Rocky and Margo have any news on the blackout?” She picked up the bottle of now tepid Prosecco, poured a glass and handed it to her husband.

“They don’t know anything.” Russell took a sip of his drink, screwed up his face, and set the flute back on the table. “This stuff is vile when it’s warm. Once the power is back on, we’ll open a chilled bottle. Let’s dump this one.” He picked up the container and spilled the remaining contents onto a patch of grass. “Rocky said he’d planned to head down the hill to check things out, but when he turned the key in the ignition, the car wouldn’t start so decided to have a beer instead, I guess.”

“Sounds like Rocky. Did anyone think to call the power company?” Abigail asked.

“Sure did. While at their place, we tried several times to phone them. Odd thing, cell phones don’t work either, not mine, not the Pennymons’. I tried yours, too, Abby. What about your phone, Chaco?”

Chaco shook his head—and that’s all he could manage because his throat had clenched tight and he couldn’t speak.

Russell stood, yawned, and carrying his flashlight, strolled to the edge of the patio. He flicked on the light and aimed the beam at the town beneath. “I only see lights in the supermarket and hospital. Probably running backup generators. Rocky did mention he’d heard an explosion down the hill seconds before the blackout. I’m thinking rather than someone hitting a pole, maybe because of all the air conditioners running full blast an overloaded transformer blew. I have no idea about what might have happened to the cell towers, though.”

The Salvadoran blanched and dropped his flashlight. It clattered against the flagstones like rocks tumbling in a cement mixer.

“Are you okay, Chaco?”

“I’m fine Mrs. Walker. I must have…. I don’t know why the flashlight slipped from my hand. Sorry.” He bent to retrieve the flashlight from the stones, his mouth dry as a tender box, his chest constricted. As he stood, he had to staunch an urge to vomit.

Days before he’d called Javier, Chaco observed through his SolarMax a frightening disturbance on the Sun, a colossal geomagnetic storm. The Sun’s surface resembled a blazing wonderland covered with massive glowing plasma hoops that stretched out like gelatinous octopi tentacles looping back on themselves, enthralling and mesmerizing. The maelstrom released a series CMEs, each one, Chaco calculated to be larger by far than the 1859 Carrington Event that knocked out telegraph service for months over Alaska-sized swaths of North America and Europe. Chaco had hoped for the best, that the solar storm would bypass Earth, but after what he’d seen on the forums, and following his talk with Javier, he feared the worst.

Now, Chaco knew for certain what had happened. No. It wasn’t a drunk jerk who had hit a power pole. No. Air conditioners had not caused a transformer to blow. Earth had taken direct CME hits, possibly the most powerful in recorded history. Life on Earth, as the Walkers, the Pennymons, and many others on the planet had known it, could be over.