The Big Dark

  “I’m sure you’re right.”

  “All we can do, given the situation, is tend to our own. So I’ll mark you down as healthy, warm, and well-provisioned, shall I?”

  “We’ll be fine. And Reggie? That thing at the Superette, with that bully and his sons? Well done.”

  He put on his hat, ready to be on his way. “Thanks, Emma. It worked out. Next time it might not be so easy. Be nice if the lights come on soon. Until then, keep warm, stay hydrated.”

  I’m ashamed to say that’s the first time I gave a thought to Aunt Beth’s situation. Who, for all my mother knew, might have been in the air when the pulse hit. Might have crashed, might be dead or injured.

  Might, might, might.

  I was really sick of might.

  The next bad thing happened three days later, after we’d settled into our boring routine of keeping the house from freezing and ourselves from starving. And not just us—Mom started preparing food for some of the old geezers who couldn’t remain in their homes without heat. Reggie Kingman had arranged for them to stay at Moulton House. There’s no longer any Moulton family in Harmony, but after croaking or retiring or whatever, their original house got turned into a museum. Or that’s the story they tell when you take the tour. Anyhow, the Moulton place, a rickety old colonial, had a fireplace in every room. Insulation wasn’t so good, but with the fires blazing it kept the chill off, and was close enough to the center of town so folks could lend a hand, bringing in water and food and so on.

  Where Kingman got the wood to keep those fireplaces going I don’t know. Firewood had suddenly become more precious than food. A lot of the families had freezers full of venison, so no one was going hungry, but not many had enough wood to feel really safe if it meant getting through a long, hard winter. Everybody with an ax was out chopping down trees—me included—but the wood was green and frozen solid and hard to cut up with a handsaw. Probably used up more calories chopping and sawing than you got burning.

  Burning. Fire. You see where this is going. What happens when fire trucks don’t work, and pumpers can’t pump, and the only way to fight a fire is with your bare hands and a bucket of snow.

  * * *

  First we heard of it was Gronk pounding on the door and bellowing, “Superette’s on fire!”

  By the time we got there it was too late. Not that we could have done much. Nobody could. The fire consuming the Superette was so hot and bright it hurt to look. Inside the boiling inferno, rows of shelves twisted and curled as if alive, making screaming metal noises. The heat intensified, driving us back. Then a massive pair of flames whooshed up through the roof and joined like clasping hands. A moment later the building caved in on itself, roaring as if in pain.

  Poor Mrs. Adler, the manager, wandered around in her orange parka, tears streaming down her chubby red face. Not saying much of anything, just staring at the flames and shaking her head. When I came up behind her to say I was sorry about the Superette, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Adler.”

  “It’s only a building,” she said, her eyes searching the dark. “I got away, that’s what counts, right?”

  “Sure, Mrs. Adler.”

  She started to say something else, changed her mind, and then Kingman blew his famous whistle to get the crowd’s attention. “Listen up! See all those sparks? We have to suppress the sparks or the fire will spread. Boots and buckets, folks! Boots and buckets!”

  And sure enough, burning sparks floated through the winter night like little parachutes on fire. They kept smoldering even after they settled on the frozen ground. Some we could stamp out, but others had to be smothered under a bucket of snow. Must have been fifty of us running around and stamping out the sparks. Everything seemed strangely dim because the night sky was overcast—no moon or stars—and the only light was from the smoldering wreckage of the Superette. We kept bumping into one another as we ran to stomp the sparks. Kind of funny, really, and Gronk and me got to giggling as we pretended to be Godzilla staggering around in the dark, stomp stomp.

  Finally the sparks settled down, and we all stopped running around and warmed our hands at the glowing wreck of our only grocery store and pharmacy. Nobody said much, not even Reggie Kingman, who looked taller in the glow of the fire. When the fire was contained and things seemed pretty safe, he came around shaking mittens and thanking us.

  “I think we can handle it from here,” he said. “You folks go on home and get some sleep. Things will improve tomorrow.”

  It was a nice thing to say, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t really believe it. I was just a kid, but I understood that things would only improve when the power returned, and motors started, and cell phones worked. But in a weird, sick way it had almost been fun, fighting the fire together. Until your brain bumped up against the fact that this wasn’t a bonfire intended for our entertainment, it was the Superette, and now it was gone, maybe forever.

  When Kingman got to Mrs. Adler he gave her a big hug, and then in the middle of the hug he seemed to freeze.

  “What?” he said, stepping back and trying to see her expression in the faint glow of the smoldering ashes. “What did you say?”

  Mrs. Adler looked stricken, no surprise, but she also looked frightened. Not scared of the fire so much as just afraid. “They were after me, I think. I was lucky to get away.”

  “Who was after you?”

  “Whoever set the fire. It was the smell that saved me. Kerosene. I came out of my office to check on that smell, and then the hallway burst into flame. It was smoky but I caught a glimpse of him running away, on the other side of the flames.”

  “Who, Naomi?” Kingman asked. “Who did this?”

  “He was running away, you know? All I could tell was that he was young. And he was wearing camouflage.”

  By then most of those who had come out to help were gathered around, and as soon as they heard camouflage, someone in the crowd shouted, “Bragg! You saying Webster Bragg did this?”

  “Not him,” Mrs. Adler said, shaking her head. “Younger.”

  “One of his sons! Had to be! They didn’t get what they wanted so they burned down our only store, our only pharmacy! So what are we gonna do about it?”

  The idea caught fire almost as quick as the Superette. Several things seemed to happen at the same time. Angry talk about marching out to Bragg’s compound, maybe setting it on fire to teach him a lesson. My mother grabbed the back of my jacket and yanked me away from the crowd. And Reggie Kingman gave a toot on his whistle.

  “Whoa! Hold it right there! We need to calm down and think about this.”

  “Think about what? We know it was him, and you know it, too.”

  Kingman had both hands up like he was slowing traffic. “That may be, but we’re not going to do to him what he might have done to Mrs. Adler, based on suspicion. I’m calling a town meeting for tomorrow. We’ll meet in the light of day and we’ll decide together, as a town, not as a mob.”

  There were some mumbled protests, but that pretty much did it. The crowd broke up and we headed home.

  On the way Becca asked Mom why anyone would do such a terrible thing.

  “I wish I knew, chipmunk.” She linked her arms through ours. “I wish I knew.”

  I had a question, too. One I didn’t dare ask.

  Who was next?

  Kingman called a town meeting for the next afternoon, to discuss the fire, but the weather got in the way. The sky stayed hard and gray all morning, and then at noon the snow began to fall. The first few inches were fluffy, covering the remains of the Superette like a soft white blanket, and then something tightened in the frozen air and a blizzard was suddenly upon us.

  Stick your head outside and BB-sized pellets of snow would scratch your face with icy fingernails and snatch your breath away.

  Not that it made us forget what happened to the Superette. Everybody seemed to think it was Mr. Bragg, seeking revenge. Or one of his sons following orders. Had to be. But before the
town could figure out what to do about it, we had to survive the worst blizzard in years.

  If the power hadn’t already been out, the storm would have killed it for sure. The snow turned heavy, snapping branches and clotting up the windows, making it dark long before sundown. Not that we ever saw the sun that day. All we could see was the white of the storm punching us in the face, and the mad moaning of the wind, and the knuckle-crack of birch trees snapping, killed by the weight of the snow.

  Couldn’t get outside to fetch firewood, no way. Luckily Becca and I had stacked wood all around the house, including the basement, and we fed that stove like it was a baby bird screaming for worms. The dry heat made our eyeballs ache, but we didn’t care. Keeping out the cold, that’s all we cared about. The wind sucked at the chimney like it was a straw, making the woodstove glow, and Mom said it was a banshee of a blizzard, the way it screamed and moaned.

  “A banshee is an Irish ghost,” she explained. “I don’t believe in ghosts but I do wish the wind would stop. Only thing good about this storm, it’s hitting Webster Bragg as hard as it’s hitting us. Good luck setting a house afire in weather like this!”

  “Poor Mrs. Adler,” Becca said, her voice getting very small.

  Mom acted like she regretted bringing up the subject. “Mrs. Adler will be fine. We’ll all be fine. One day at a time, pumpkin. Hey. Hey. Nobody cries today, and that’s an order! Charlie? Find one of those old board games and keep busy, both of you.”

  Typical of Mom. Keep busy. No matter how rotten or sad you felt, busy would make you better. Anyhow, Becca sniffed back her tears and then beat the crumbs out of me in Scrabble. I bet she knows twice as many words as I do.

  “Muzjiks? Really? What does it mean?”

  Becca shrugged. “Something Russian, I think. Whatever, it’s allowed. You can look it up.”

  “No I can’t,” I pointed out. “You’re supposed to know what it means.”

  “It’s allowed,” she insisted.

  The storm rattled the window glass, and the whole house seemed to moan in response.

  Becca sighed. “It feels like the end, Charlie. First a fire, then ice. Like the poem.”

  “What poem?”

  “Robert Frost. We’re doing a class project on him, remember? Or we were. He wrote a famous poem about how the world ends in fire or ice. What if it’s both?”

  “The world isn’t ending, Becca. It’s only a storm, a really bad storm.”

  Becca pointed to the little flashlight on the cord around her neck. “What about this?”

  “Um. Hey. People lived without electricity for a zillion years, right?”

  “Yeah, but we didn’t. We can’t even put out a fire.”

  I wished lots of things. I wished my dad had never gone skiing that day two years ago. I wished the big dark had never happened. I wished Mr. Bragg would go away and leave us alone. I wished the banshee blizzard would stop.

  But mostly I wished I had an answer that would make my sister feel better.

  * * *

  At least one of my wishes came true, because by the time the sun came up the next day, the storm was over. The air was bitter cold, but the wind was gone. And the snow it left behind? That was the bad news, because the snow was now four feet deeper, for a total of about six feet, and the top layer was six inches of ice. So if you had firewood stored outside without cover, it might as well have been buried underground. All those birch trees that came down? Gone, smothered, covered up. As if the whole world had been smoothed out.

  It was late in the morning before the message finally got out, carried on foot—snowshoe, mostly—from door to door. Bean supper that afternoon at the town hall, everybody invited. Listen for the bell in the church tower. And, oh yeah, the hall would be heated, so come share the warmth with your neighbors.

  Heated? The town hall had an oil burner, and oil burners need electricity, so how was it going to be heated?

  Gronk had an answer for that. A joke, I hoped.

  “Need heat? Invite an arsonist.”

  Turns out they invited themselves.

  It was amazing how many people crawled out of their snowbound homes and made it to the old town hall that afternoon. Trudging through snowdrifts, fighting the tree-snapping cold as the bell rang in the church tower. Bundled up in parkas and snowmobile suits, faces covered with scarves and ski masks. Some, like us, didn’t have far to go. Others had to cover miles of that frozen landscape, but cover it they did, some of them pulling little kids and older folks on plastic sleds and snow tubes. Anything to get there.

  At first Mom didn’t think we should all go, that we didn’t dare leave the woodstove untended, but then she changed her mind. “This could be important. Tamp it down, Charlie. The heat in the house should hold until we get back.”

  So we tamped down the stove and joined the strange parade. Everybody muffled up like snow zombies, waving their mittens and gloves but not stopping to chat because the air was cold enough to freeze teeth.

  Inside the hall it was, as promised, warm and welcoming. Reggie Kingman had brought in a big pellet stove from his own basement. He’d had lots of help, because that stove was so heavy, and they’d run a stovepipe through a window, and stacked bags of wood pellets ready to feed the stove. Gronk and his parents had come early, lending a hand. Tables had been set up, and folding chairs, and stacks of paper bowls and plates and utensils. Like a big indoor picnic. Five or six huge pots of beans and venison chili bubbled on candle-powered warming trays and somehow there were fresh-baked rolls—oh did those smell good—and gallons of fresh-perked coffee and hot chocolate.

  Kingman was at the entrance, all duded up in his best uniform, and way more talkative than when he was our school custodian. “Take off your hats and coats and stay awhile,” he said, gesturing to the crowd inside. “Have something to eat. Relax. Don’t thank me, thank your neighbors. They prepared all this.” When asked what he intended to do about the Superette, he said, “We’ll take that up after the meal, don’t you worry. First things first.”

  And so we ate. Something about it, the whole town sharing food in the same room, made life feel almost normal. Like even if the power never came back on we would still be able to feed and warm ourselves, and gather as citizens to celebrate the fact that we were all okay.

  When everybody was full to groaning, Kingman climbed onto the stage and asked us all to rise and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, like he always did at the school assemblies.

  “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America …”

  That’s as far as we got before Webster Bragg and his sons burst into the town hall, armed to the teeth and looking for trouble.

  Warm as it was, everybody froze.

  Mr. Bragg grinned, pleased with the impression he’d made, his weird pale eyes gleaming with pleasure. It was so quiet he hardly had to raise his voice to be heard. “Think what you’re doing, people! Get it through your heads! America as you knew it no longer exists. This man wants you to pledge allegiance to him, that’s what this is all about.”

  Officer Kingman remained at attention, hand on his heart.

  “Look at him,” Bragg said, shaking his head in disgust. “Barely fit to wash floors, but he thinks he’s a cop just because he has a uniform. If he spent as much time thinking as he does polishing his shoes, maybe he’d have a clue. But he doesn’t, and that’s the problem.”

  From the back of the hall came a thin, shaky voice. “What about the fire, mister? Mrs. Adler said it was arson. Was it you?”

  It was an old man I didn’t know. Skinny and frail, his body shaking like his voice, not from fear but from one of those illnesses old people get. Doubt he weighed as much as a bowl of wet cornflakes, but there he was, asking the question we all had in our minds.

  If Mr. Bragg was troubled by the question he didn’t show it. “The fire? Glad you asked. That’s the reason we came by this afternoon, to make clear it had nothing to do with me or mine. No way! Anybody who says differen
t is lying. For all I know that Jew manager burned it down herself, to lay the blame on me.”

  The old man stared at Bragg with watery eyes. “Mrs. Adler said the arsonist was wearing camo. Like you and your sons.”

  Mr. Bragg snorted and then grinned. “Half the kids in Harmony wear camo-pattern pajamas. Might be one of them, for all I know.”

  Meanwhile, his boys had fanned out. Scrawnier and younger versions of their father, with similar Lincoln-style beards. Not raising their weapons but casually blocking the exits.

  Mom put her hands on our shoulders and whispered, “If I shove you under the table, you go there and stay there. Understood?”

  Kind of like a lockdown drill at school. “Shelter in place,” they call it. But Mom didn’t shove us under the table right away. Maybe because she didn’t want to call attention to us—nobody else in the crowd was moving—or maybe because she wasn’t sure that hiding under the table would do us much good if the bullets started flying. Maybe we’d be better off making a run for it, find a way through the doors or out a window.

  But it never came to that. Nobody opened fire that afternoon at the bean supper. Strangely enough, they barely raised their voices. It was like Webster Bragg and Reggie Kingman were in a contest to see who could be the most calm and reasonable sounding.

  Up on the stage, still facing the flag with his hand to his heart, Officer Kingman cleared his throat and continued where he’d left off. “And to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

  After a moment of silence, Bragg began to laugh, heh-heh-heh, like a muffled machine gun. “Seriously, Reggie? That’s the best you got? That’s what you’re offering for leadership? A pledge to a piece of faded cloth, to a nation that no longer exists?”

  “How do you know the nation no longer exists?” Kingman asked. “Based on what?”

  Bragg tapped his own forehead. “Based on this. On my ability to think and reason. On my ability to see the big picture. When I say the nation no longer exists, I don’t mean the population, I mean the federal government. Democracy is dead, flicked off like a switch. And I say good riddance! It was weak and deserved to die, and that’s the truth. We have to face the facts, folks. The enemies of reason won the first battle. They destroyed the power grid and pulled the plug on civilization and nothing will ever be the same again.”