2022 Pt. I

The parking lot looked sterile, as the mid-morning sun bore down hard on it (for once). The asphalt would glitter as you walked past, as I did, crossing it and turning onto a sidewalk. The brown palm trees rustling in the wind overhead, grass still green from the summer, I made my way to the door on the side of a stucco-roofed church, and greeted by the warmth inside, I walked in.
	Stained windows gave the church a soft, blue glow. Still light reflected off of the pale-green floor. There was an absolute stillness to the place. I’d wanted to take my time, but I’d agreed to meet up with Marc in two hours or so over at his place. Quiet as possible, as to not disturb that stillness, I climbed a set of stairs that led up to a balcony.
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	I threw my olive coat on and walked briskly out to this crappy little maroon car I had parked across the street. I started it up, and throwing my stuff in the passenger seat, I put the AC on a low heat setting, and started down the street.
	The worn asphalt roads glittered again, as I made my way south. Traffic may as well have been nonexistent. I came to a stoplight that was blinking yellow, which struck me as odd, but I used the opportunity to turn on my portable radio (I’d forgotten to when I was leaving the church) and after checking that the coast was clear, I continued on. It was noonish now, it’d gotten warm enough that I didn’t need the heat anymore. I turned that off, and at one point, even considered rolling down the windows, until I remembered I had some junk papers somewhere in the back that I didn’t want to fly out. The ride was, overall, uneventful. I got to Marc’s house ahead of schedule.
	After a good hour of driving, I rolled through a lime forest of thin pines, down a gravel path to Marcus’ gate. I stopped my car, got out, and started to undid the locks. No problem. Downhill, into the driveway, past a half-carcass of a forest, and onto a low-lying plateau of some sorts, covered in browning palm shrubs. The vegetation was struggling; the only things that were doing well were the pine trees and the oaks. As I pulled in I saw Marcus in the back with his fishing pole. He waved.
	“Catch innything?”
	“Nah, ’stoo cold out. Ya mahnd helpin me out with that fence out front?” Marcus was talking about the cattle fence missing a board in some places about a 8 min walk away. He’d been asking about that fence for the last day or 2 now.
	“Lemme throw muh stuff inside, ok?”
	Throwing open the door to his garage, I put the radio & everything else onto my desk I had gotten from the church, and hastily ran out to the garage to meet Marc.
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	In a swamp, elevation can have extreme consequences. 3 feet is all it takes to go from a near-barren grassland, with gnarled oaks, palm shrubs with berries to suffocating forests of larger, healthier oaks, to a scummy, fertile pile of mud. Both were brutal in the heat still so common to the region, the “elevated” grasslands were brutal in the summertime, sun reflecting off of the sugar sand and scorching you doubly, with shade only provided by those gnarled oaks. The oak forests had shade, Marcus lived near one, & they were nice, but they were starting to decline in numbers, and many trees were dead. You couldn’t really walk around in the swamps in the summer, thats where the alligators, water moccasins, pythons were. Winter in a swamp was a bit easier, most of the kudzu had died off anyways, the reptiles sleepy, and whatever native twine and thorny tripwire was left over was mostly tolerable. Raising cattle in places like these can be a real challenge, but luckily the cattle we had were pretty low-maintenance, or at least Marcus said so. The biggest trouble was getting them clean water, which grew more difficult by the day - ashes can get into anything.
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	“LUKAS, GET THE NAILS FOR ME, I GOT THE WRONG KIND!”
	Marcus had 2 habits he’d never be able to break: his forgetfulness and yelling when he meant to talk. I went over to the garage, got the nails, and headed to the right of the house, away from the road in front of it, the lake behind it, and towards where the hazy, orange sun had just began to sink towards.
	Already Marcus had begun sizing up a plank of wood with the angle he had in mind. That’s another thing about Marcus, he was always doing something, no matter what. Pokemon cards, killing snakes with his pocketknife, he really didn’t care as long as it kept him active.
	“ARRIGHT NOW HOLD THIS PLANK WHILE I NAIL IT.”
	“Mhm.”
	I scratched a mosquito bite on the back of my arm and put my both my hands on the plank, while Marcus nailed it. I asked what he’d had for lunch.
	“Peanut Butter.”
	“Same for dinner?”
	“Probably.”
	“Is what it is.”
	When we finished up with the fence, Marcus checked his dad’s old watch and announced it’d be dark in, like, two hours.
	“Ohkay, I’ll get started on the fire and the radio thing, you got the cows?
	“YUP!”
	We both jogged up to the garage beside Marcus’ house together, I got to the radio and Marcus got to his ATV.
	“We still good on gas?”
	“Oughta be a week ’n a half’s worth left .”
	“Take it easy then.”
	Marcus chuckled and started it up, I waved him off.
	Marcus was off to bring the herd in for the nigh. He did most of the odd jobs he could do himself around because that’s what he he was good at, and he didn’t mind anyways because most of the manure could take care of itself. He had me in charge of all the general household stuff, and the radio, since thats where we’d hear things about the weather, police stuff, & anything else half-interesting. Signals, and life itself, was pretty rough everywhere, but Australia and South America still had had a signal to tune into occasionally, even though we couldn’t understand them half the time. There was some guy out in Alabama for a few months who did some weather stuff, but 2 weeks ago he must’ve gotten grabbed or something because we couldn’t get any kind of signal from him anymore. Before I’d used this ancient portable thing with analog dials and everything, but earlier that day, February 27th, I’d gone and picked up this miracle from inside the Church, a neat little digital Sony, batteries intact and all.	I was just about to turn it on when I heard a strange noise out of the side of my ear, a kind of low chp-chp-chp-chp-chp-chp-chp-chp-wrrrrrrrrrrr that threatened to turn into a roar. A wave of fear washed over me: that was a helicopter. I turned the little camp lantern lighting the garage off & thanked God with all my heart I hadn’t started that fire yet. I crawled further inside the garage, into a dark corner by the dark, forrest-green safe. The helicopter was getting closer, and I was starting to panic. I scrambled for the slip of paper we’d wrote the combination on.
	“9-5-6-7, 9-5-6-7”, I muttered under my breath, and quickly opened up the safe. I grabbed a gun from out the safe, I heard Marcus call it a Mossburg. I put the shells in just like how I’d seen Marcus do it once, when he showed me, and gripped it tight to my body. I’d never fired a gun before, but Marcus had shown me how. Marcus. I hoped he hadn’t been seen.
	The helicopter took ages to move far away enough to where it felt safe to move again. By then, the garage was like onyx; it took me another half an hour to scoot & snake across the floor, groping around blindly until I felt my hand grab a flashlight. Didn’t dare to turn it on, but I kept it, myself and my gun pointed at the open garage door, or at least, where I thought it was. It’s funny now, because they probably could’ve just strafed the whole place and that’ve been the end of it, but nobody showed up until Marcus pulled back up not a half hour later.
	“THE HELL’RE YA DOING?”
	I proceeded to stammer away and tell the story. Marcus tensed up.
	“Serious? Shoot, hand me my AR.”
	Out in the dark, the wind dusted ash off the dead palms, and they rustled softly.__
	Marcus yawned and spread some some creamy peanut butter over some stale white bread. I heated up a can of Bush’s SPICY™ Pork n Beans on a camp stove we’d been trying not to use so often (we were running out of butane), but after our ordeal I figured I had earned a treat. The beans were peppery. The flavor stayed with you for a long time, even if you weren’t sure you wanted it to. Thats how canned beans are.
	“T’morrow I’ll show you how to shoot that thing, m’kay?”
	“M’kay.”
 	“How’re the beans?”
	“OK. How’s that sandwich?”
	“Whaddya think?”
	“Yeah, yeah” I blew air out my nose a little and stood up.
	“I’m headed to bed.”
	“I here ya.”
	I walked over to the back of the garage and opened the door to the “hanger”, or at least thats what Marcus called it (I wasn’t sure a plane could get in there). Walking slowly past a shelf filled with junk beyond description, I found my sleeping bag and called it a night. I’d get to that radio tomorrow.