What to tell the children? How to make them understand? How do you convey the enormity of it to a seven year old that has hardly ever known anything else? People looked so much older, especially women since they couldn't get chemicals to change their hair. The black or grey fissures spread open from the tops of heads down to ears and beyond. It was difficult to remember when men's facial hair was a novelty. People seemed hollow and reedlike the way that their clothes hung on them with billowing folds. People were however quite content, once you surrendered to it, once you accepted it.
Some wouldn't ever give up the past. The Memories we called them. People that would go on and on about how they lived and what they had and the way things were. We all laughed at Jacobsen when he ranted on about his car and how much better it was.
I like our car; it's just wide enough for all three of us to sleep side by side. Only one small window is broken and it's positioned at the perfect angle for the winter sun to warm us in the morning. Life is good on this hill, water flows almost year round from the pipe that placed into the rocks. The soil is deep and the foraging is good. I know this hill very well now. How many times had I driven by this hill and never noticed it? Sped by and failed to sees the lush grass and berry patches. What made the hill ideal was its relative isolation; marshland on all sides, the highway bridge burned, so there was only one way to approach along the road. Once a quick drive in a car, now a couple of hours walk the long way 'round and few ever made the journey.
Others sometimes came because we're so near to the city. We discourage them from staying unless they can feed themselves from the land.
I found the hill because the car ran out of gas right next to it on that last futile drive to find food. Passing car after car along the side of the road, people just sitting in them dumbfounded, others frantically trying to stop cars. The inevitable stumbling and dying of the engine came almost as a relief. I coasted to a stop struggling to pull onto the shoulder with no power steering, putting on the hazards automatically. The last sweet sentiment of a bygone age. People walking ahead along the shoulder had turned and run toward the car, lunging, racing-a real competition to get there first to see what I had. I fled the car and miraculously found a path through the undergrowth. Just twenty feet away I could hear over the sound of my heart but not see them pulling my car apart looking for food.
I found serenity on the hill; and food too. Berries, a plum tree ripe with fruit, how had it gotten here? Climbing the heights I could see the entire length of the road in both directions. This was a good place: convincing Patricia to bring our child to the hill was not difficult because of the chaos and fear in those days.
The first big rain of the year fell as we left the house. I wish I knew what ever happened to it, I've never been back--it's too dangerous to go that way. We used our last pint of lamp oil to burn the highway bridge after we crossed. The rain would swell the marsh and make it difficult for people to come that way.
For the last two winters the hill has been good to us but we have to leave. There must be something better out there. We can't stay here for the rest of our lives. We're going crazy from boredom. Charles cried when we left. He loved the hiding places that he had made in the brush, the rhythms that he had established with nature and the toys we made him from car parts; all this would be left behind.
"There's a whole new world out there, just waiting for us." I didn't sound very convincing. "But you said that it was gone forever-it was no good", he pleaded. "You must see what we left to be able to appreciate what we have lived".
I was terrified of what we would find. No one ever had a coherent answer of what lay beyond the marsh. We packed the essential and were ready to leave in short time. Carrying water was the most difficult thing. It was springtime and the streams would flow for a few more months in the open but once one got near the urban areas they would be gone or polluted.
The trip across the marsh was uneventful, the hidden raft was still there. We crossed the water. Charles grew more excited as we approached the hills that he had only seen from a distance. He remembered the world as it had been, he was too young to have remembered the panic and scarcity, things just were, and then it was gone, replaced by the our existence on the hill. He had enough of a memory to ask for certain foods, such as ice cream; he wanted some of that.
We found the first trash pile as soon as we stepped onto dry land. Charles eagerly snatched up the plastic bottles filled with moss and brackish water attempting to carry them all. "Leave them, they're cracked from the sun". I said quietly.
The trail soon became a dirt road and then asphalt carpeted with weeds. The first house was burned to the foundation, then the next and then a trailer stripped to the chassis. We continued walking and turned a corner and there they were. It was a cluster of motor homes, or what was left of them, just the shelter components.
A knot of people worked among them engaged in the activities of those who have nothing but time and survival and few possessions. We eyed each other for what seemed like eternity.
"We have our own food and water" I declared. There was an almost palpable relaxation. A woman stepped forward. "Hello, have you heard anything that's going on? My name's Laura"
-"No, we don't have any information".
A little guy with thick glasses and no front teeth volunteered -"We got batteries and a solar charger but there's nothing on the radio."
-"Nothing?"
-"Oh, there's shortwave stuff, but it's just people saying hello and asking what's going on"
_"what's goin' on...?", "what's goin' on...?" a recently young woman with white hair and too eager a manner sang the old Motown song..."how about those 'niners?! Hey,..who won the superbowl?" she leered at me..."Who won!?" Her face quickly grew pinched and she slowly turned and squatted on the ground lost in her own internal universe. We watched her fondle the pages of a tattered magazine.
Laura stepped forward. "Well, come sit down...tell me about yourselves." She led us to a home made bench. -"This is my wife Patricia and my son Charles." Patricia silently nodded. Charles gazed upon the novelty of everything. -"Have some dandelion wine...it's delicious" -"Wine?...Real wine?" I took the cup she handed to me, looked at the liquid, closed my eyes, smelled it, looked again, closed my eyes and sipped its glorious flavor. I gave the cup to Patricia, she took it and drank, watching Laura's every move.
-"What's that daddy?" Charles ran his finger over the writing on the mug. -"AM 78 in the A.M"...."advertising, ...it's a kind of hypnosis that people used to get other people to spend money--I told you about money, remember?" -"I have moneys" Charles pulled several wrinkled hundred dollar bills out and proudly lay them on the ground. -"Your money's no good here Charles" Laura said sweetly. -Everyone laughed except Charles and then a long silence. -"This was a recreational vehicle dealer's lot wasn't it? They're all the same...I pointed over my shoulder at the sleek hulks on their flat tires. -"Yeah", the dealer must have had a cash-flow problem or something" Laura indicated the radio man "that's him over there, Donald the guy with no teeth, my husband".