The Big Dark

  King Man’s special crystal radio that connected us to the outside world? It sat there on display, shiny and black as an ancient insect, in a wire cabinet over his desk. No microphone or speakers, just an old-fashioned headset and an antique-looking telegraph key wired up to a shortwave radio antenna.

  Lucky for us, King Man knew Morse code. Learned it when he was a Boy Scout and still had the merit badge to prove it.

  A bunch of people were waiting to see him, mostly to complain about the firewood tax. King Man had imposed a tax, amounting to half a cord per household, to provide for those who didn’t have enough, and to keep the fire burning for the geezers he had installed in Moulton House.

  From what I could tell, everybody in line thought it was a great idea, making sure nobody froze to death, but they all had a good excuse for why they shouldn’t have to give up quite so much firewood. And it seemed like most of them were still grumbling when they left. Or complaining how it wasn’t fair that Webster Bragg refused to contribute when everyone knew he had more wood pellets than anyone else.

  Being the king didn’t look like much fun, that’s for sure.

  “Charlie Cobb,” he said when I finally got in the door. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  The smile faded from his eyes as he heard that Mom might run out of medicine.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I wish there was something I could do. Truly, I do.”

  “What about your radio thing? Telegraph a signal code to the emergency people. This is an emergency, right?”

  King Man looked a little sick to his stomach. “Charlie, I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work like that. The, um, connection is more of a general information thing, and operation is restricted. They’re not running a delivery service.”

  The little office was cool enough so we could see our breath, but for some reason those two words, delivery and service? They made my face hot, and my brain, too. “Can’t you at least try? Ask and see what they say.”

  He hesitated, fiddling with one of his earflaps, and for a moment he looked more like Barf Man the custodian than King Man the ruler of Harmony. “Sure, sure. I’ll ask, Charlie, but I know what the response will be. There must be hundreds, maybe thousands, of people in the north country who are low on medication.”

  “They could at least tell us where to find some!”

  “Um, yeah. Um, possibly.”

  “ ‘Um, yeah’! This is my mom’s life at stake, and all you can say is ‘um, yeah’? What kind of king are you if you won’t help!”

  “Huh?” He looked startled. “In the first place, I’m not any kind of king, believe me. I am a facilitator of food and firewood. And I didn’t say I wouldn’t help. I’m just suggesting that what you request may be impossible.”

  “You’re not even going to try!” I started to stomp out of that cold little room.

  “Charlie, don’t go away mad. I’ll transmit the request, okay? See what happens. But maybe we’re worried about nothing. Maybe the power will be restored soon, and the roads will get plowed, and your mother can drive down to Concord and fill her own prescription. Nineteen days, why not? Plenty of time. There’s always hope.”

  That hit me like a shock, for some reason. A shock of hope. “Is that what it says on the emergency radio? That it’ll be over soon?”

  He hesitated, glancing away from me. “Um, no. Not exactly. The situation, well, there’s an ongoing evaluation of the situation, and, ah, bottom line, no one can say when power will be restored. We’ve, ah, been advised to get through the winter as best we can, on our own for the time being. One day at a time, Charlie.”

  One day at a time. Which wasn’t very many if all you had was nineteen of them.

  Night was so very dark. Not the kind of night we were used to before the lights went out. Back when streetlights touched the sky, and houses and buildings were alive with artificial illumination, and the world seemed to breathe with a warm glow that we didn’t even notice because it was always there.

  This was a much darker place.

  There were patches of stars visible that particular evening, the night I found out King Man was lying. But the light from the stars didn’t seem to get all the way to the ground. I could feel my feet inside my boots, attached to my legs, but I couldn’t see them; they were part of the dark.

  Don’t fall, I told myself. If you fall, the dark of night will swallow you up and never let you go.

  The side door to the old firehouse groaned as I pushed it open, letting in a gust of frozen air.

  Black dark. Couldn’t see a thing.

  Out of my pocket came a nub of candle and a small box of wooden matches. Matches were precious, nearly as valuable as candles or kerosene lanterns. My fingers were as numb as Popsicles, but I managed to light the candle, and the darkness backed up a step or two. The dull gleam of the useless fire truck reflected the flicker of the candle flame, and me holding it.

  I knew exactly where to go. The candle wasn’t the only thing in my pockets. There was a big brawny screwdriver in case King Man had padlocked his office door. But when I got there, the door was open, and the potbelly stove glowed faintly.

  King Man cleared his throat. “Have a seat, Charlie. Take a load off.”

  My heart pounded like the high striker at the Lancaster Fair.

  “Thought you might drop by,” he said. “You had that look in your eye.”

  Too dim to see his expression, but his voice was smiling. A chair creaked as he leaned back, waiting for me to respond.

  “I came for the radio,” I blurted.

  “Got it right here on my desk,” he said softly. “I’ve been listening for the last hour or so, like I do most every night. That’s when reception is supposed to be the best.”

  My eyes had adjusted enough so I could just make out the radio gear on his desk and the old headphones hanging around his neck.

  “You going to let them know my mom needs medicine?”

  “Sorry, Charlie. I can’t.”

  Disgusted, I blurted out, “If you won’t try, I will!”

  “Charlie, please.”

  “I don’t know Morse code but I know SOS. Three dots, three dashes, three dots. Maybe they’ll hear it. Maybe they’ll come.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said slowly. “Let me share something with you, Charlie, about this radio. It’s an old crystal set I built long ago, when I was about your age. You know anything about crystal sets? No reason you would. Thing about a crystal set, it doesn’t require power to detect radio waves. See this part? Wire coiled around a cardboard toilet paper tube. One end attached to the antenna, here, the other to this little bit of crystal mineral. This? They call it a cat’s whisker. A tiny sliver of metal that just barely tickles the piece of mineral. And that’s all there is to it. It works because the radio waves themselves create just enough power to make themselves heard.”

  I didn’t know what to say, or why he was telling me stuff about his old radio. It’s not as if I was going to build one of my own.

  “Have a listen, Charlie. Tell me what you hear.”

  He handed me the headphones. Unlike the headphones I had at home, there was no cushiony foam, and I had to hold them close to my ears to make them fit.

  “I can’t hear anything,” I told him.

  “Keep listening. You have young ears. I’m going to very slowly move this piece along the coil, which is the same as going up and down a radio dial. If you hear a signal, let me know, and I’ll hold that position.”

  After a while my ears sort of adjusted, and I could just make out a low, distant static. Sounded very small and a million miles away.

  In the flicker of the candlelight, King Man studied me intently as his hand deftly adjusted the old crystal set, searching for a signal.

  Nothing but static.

  We went up and down that coil.

  Nothing.

  Nothing.

  Nothing.

  Finally I took the headphones off and dropped them on his desk. “Nobody there
,” I admitted. “Why did you say there was? Why did you lie?”

  King Man sighed. “I keep hoping I’ll hear something, or someone, but I suspect if there are others out there—and I firmly believe there are—they have the same problem I do.”

  “What problem? Making stuff up?”

  “A crystal set is passive, Charlie. We can listen, but we can’t broadcast. Even the simplest and most primitive method of producing a signal—a spark-gap generator, which is what I have right here, this old telegraph key—it requires power. Enough electrical current to jump a gap. And that we don’t have. I suspect no one else has it, either. Hence the radio silence.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why you lied.”

  He shrugged. “Because I wanted it to be true? To believe that someone out there was taking charge, fixing whatever broke, urging us to take care of each other? It’s about hope, Charlie. That’s one thing we need more than firewood or food. Without it, the Braggs of the world will take over. The haters will win.”

  “Or you made it up so you could be king!” I said, tears of anger hot in my eyes.

  “Maybe,” he admitted. “I’m not a perfect man. Far from it.”

  “What about Mr. Mangano? Does he know?”

  “We haven’t discussed it, but I’m sure he does. Can’t fool Joe, not about something like this.”

  “And now you want me to lie, too. To keep your secret.”

  Before answering he opened the stove door with a pair of tongs and added a small chunk of wood. In the brighter light he looked old, with hooded eyes like some ancient bald eagle, and he sounded old, too, his voice as creaky as the chair he was sitting in.

  “This has been a long, hard winter even before the power failed,” he said. “People get desperate, Charlie. They do desperate things. I was desperate enough to make up a story to make people feel a little better. Webster Bragg and his boys are so desperate for the world to end that they burned down the Superette, and they’ll do worse, given the chance. It’s not fair, Charlie, but you’re going to have to choose. Me or Bragg? What will it be?”

  I stood up, tightening the hood on my parka.

  “Charlie?”

  I left without saying another word.

  * * *

  Okay, I’ll admit it, I didn’t know what to do about King Man. It was so messed up. Should I tell everybody he was a fake? That he lied about his special crystal radio? Did I really have to choose between him and the awful Mr. Bragg?

  But the thing that really freaked me was this: How were we ever going to find the medicine Mom needed?

  All of it whirled around inside my head so much that I didn’t know what to think. Except that I couldn’t tell Mom. King Man was right about one thing: people needed hope. And I needed a plan.

  If only I knew what to do.

  Eventually I fell asleep.

  The King Man situation got worse the very next day, and this time Becca was there to see it. She was helping out the geezers at Moulton House, preparing food and melting snow for water, when Webster Bragg strolled into the place with a tight little smile showing through his chin beard.

  Like the Big Bad Wolf, Becca told me and Gronk later.

  Didn’t bother to say hello, or why he was there, just plopped onto a stool by an open fireplace and warmed his hands. As if he owned the place, Becca said. She asked what he wanted and he said, “I want people to wake up and smell the coffee.” When Becca asked if that meant he would like a cup of coffee, he looked at her with his weird pale eyes and shook his head. “Are you a retard, child? Brain damaged? No? Then why are you wasting your time in this dump?”

  Take it from me, my sister isn’t usually at a loss for words, but apparently she was still processing retard, a word she never uses, and the best she could come up with was “I’m lending a hand.”

  “You want to lend a hand? Move into my compound, work in the kitchen with the rest of the females, under my protection. Plenty of heat, and three squares a day. You’ll be safe, and you won’t have to worry about the world beyond the gate, because that’s my job. Think about it. Meanwhile, I’m requisitioning this firewood.”

  “You can’t do that!”

  “Watch me,” he said, and began loading chunks of wood into his arms.

  Later Mom said Becca should have come straight home, but my sister has a mind of her own, and she decided to alert King Man to what was going on.

  It wasn’t until she was outside that she realized the Moulton place was surrounded by Bragg’s sons, who had toboggans ready to load with the firewood they were intending to steal.

  Reggie Kingman responded right away. Put on his cop hat, marched over from the fire station, and ordered Bragg to cease and desist or he would be arrested for unlawful taking.

  Bragg sneered at him. “Unlawful? You attempt to put an unlawful tax on my firewood, and I respond by seizing yours. That’s my law.”

  King Man appeared flustered, or maybe it was embarrassment on behalf of the old geezers, who were too weak and out of it to defend themselves. “That tax was to help those who couldn’t help themselves,” he said. “To get us all through the winter. It was the right thing to do.”

  Bragg scoffed. “Seemed right to you because you’re almost as noodle-brained as these takers,” he said, gesturing at the elderly residents.

  “Takers?”

  “Can’t fend for themselves so they take, take, take. Trying to bring us all down to their level. Times like these, the strong have to shed the weak. Those confined to wheelchairs, deaf and demented, pooping in diapers, what good are they? What use? It would be a kindness to put these folks outside, let nature take its course.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!”

  Bragg chuckled, looking down his long nose at Reggie Kingman. “Won’t be me, wheeling them out. No, I’ll leave that up to you. Changing dirty nappies is about all you’re good for. I’m betting you won’t draw that sidearm and risk these useless takers getting shot in the cross fire.”

  “You’d do that? Open fire on innocent, helpless people?”

  “I’ll do whatever it takes to accomplish my mission.”

  “Robbing the weak, is that your mission?” Kingman asked, as if he really wanted to know.

  Bragg smiled, satisfied. He’d been waiting all along to have the last word. “Truth? I don’t really care about the firewood, although it will come in handy. This isn’t about firewood or the feebleminded. My mission is to show the so-called citizens of Harmony exactly what you really are. A jumped-up janitor. A toilet-swabbing loser. A maker of empty promises and false hopes. A lawman who can’t enforce the law.”

  At a signal from Bragg, his sons swarmed into Moulton House and took every stick of firewood. Some of the old geezers understood what was happening and cried out. Becca tried her best, but they couldn’t be comforted. And faced with heavily armed thugs, what did King Man do?

  He did nothing.

  * * *

  I was expecting Mom to be as disgusted as me when she heard the story, which was all over town, and the cause of a lot of speculation about whether or not King Man’s day was done. But instead of being disgusted, she took his side, more or less. And she didn’t like it when I snorted in disagreement, not one bit.

  “Don’t you dare judge him, Charlie Cobb! Reggie’s doing the best he can in a terrible situation. His job is to protect those who can’t protect themselves, and that’s what he did, at the expense of his own pride.”

  “He backed down, Mom! He let Bragg get away with it!”

  Mom opened her mouth to respond—something sharp, no doubt—and then thought better of it. After a deep breath she resumed in her listen-to-teacher voice. “Sometimes backing down is the best thing to do, like it or not. Your sister was right there when it happened! What if they’d opened fire? She might have been killed!”

  I hadn’t thought about that, which only made me madder. I wanted to tell her about the useless radio and the fake messages of hope, and how King Man wasn’t doing any
thing to help find her medicine. But I couldn’t do it, not and look Mom in the eye.

  Besides, I wasn’t doing anything about it, either. Which meant I wasn’t any braver or smarter than a jumped-up janitor, right?

  Right?

  Seventeen days and counting.

  Not everybody agreed with Mom, not by a long shot. I overheard Gronk’s mother yakking with Mrs. Adler, and they were saying if Kingman couldn’t or wouldn’t stand up to Bragg, then maybe the town needed to find a new leader. And there were even those who thought maybe it was a mistake not to have voted for Bragg when they had the chance—not so much because they agreed with his conspiracy and racial theories, but because if elected he might be inclined to share his stockpile of supplies.

  “Reggie is a good man, but he’s out of his depth,” someone said. “If he wants to handle a bully like Webster Bragg, he’s going to have to do more than recite the Pledge of Allegiance.”

  When Kingman posted the latest message from his fake radio, a lot of folks shook their heads.

  New Hampshire’s Special Emergency Response Team suggests that for the duration of the power outage, citizens band together to assist those who can’t help themselves.

  “Like we didn’t know that?” Mrs. Adler said, sounding disgusted. “We need help, not homilies!”

  Even when it became known that Reggie had moved the geezers from Moulton House into his own home, some took it as a sign of weakness.

  “That won’t work, not in the long run. He’ll run out of firewood that much sooner, and then they’ll all freeze to death. What’s he trying to prove? That he’s better than us?”