If Darkness Takes Us Read online

  TWENTY-NINE

  THE FAMILY SANK INTO A DEEP, dark funk. Keno stayed glued to the couch for two and a half days. He was so distraught, not to mention injured, that he seriously needed rest.

  When I checked on him before bed that night, he said, “Why did she do it, Nana?”

  “You think she blew the house up on purpose?” I said, startled at the very idea.

  “Yeah. But why?”

  “She was very sad, Keno, and lonely without her family.”

  “But I was there. I was trying to help her.”

  “I know, honey. Sometimes people can’t be helped, though. Sometimes they’re just too sad.” Did Darla commit suicide? What a horrid thought.

  “I shouldn’t’ve kissed her in front of Tasha. I didn’t know it would start that fight.”

  “Sugar, she’ll have your sweet kiss to keep her company for all of eternity. Think of that.”

  “She will? Is there an eternity, Nana, do you think?”

  “Oh, Keno. . . . No one knows. But don’t you find it comforting to think of your loved ones still being out there, even though we can’t see them?”

  “Like Mom and Grandpa?” he said.

  “I don’t know. I like thinking they’re still alive, and that they’ll come back to us someday. It makes me too sad to think otherwise.”

  He sighed and stared past me, lost in despair.

  I debated whether to show him Darla’s poem, but I decided to wait until he was less raw. I sincerely hoped that Darla had found the eternity she longed for.

  The next morning, Jack brought over a chicken and some eggs. I made omelets, then chicken soup with rice. Tasha set up a solar oven and baked three different kinds of winter squash, which she shared with our neighbors.

  Milo and Mazie were thrilled to have Keno inside with them, a captive audience. They played games with him, moving his game pieces for him. Milo read him comic books. Mazie read him Winnie the Pooh, and he helped her with the words. I had to practically force them to give Keno time alone to rest.

  When Keno’s burn had to be cleaned and his dressing changed, I got Tasha to help me until she learned to do it herself. I was proud of her and made sure she knew it. She’d been scared sober, I thought, and was trying to quit whining and grow up. Not all the way up though, unfortunately.

  Four times in two days I saw Chas lean over our back fence to talk to Tasha, but she didn’t say much to him. She turned away and worked on the garden or cooking. If he persisted, she came inside.

  But once, I stepped out to the patio to see Tasha talking to Chas at the fence.

  “How’d you get so pretty?” Chas asked. “No one else in your family is pretty.”

  Rude.

  Tasha started giggling. She was buying this bull crap? She threw her shoulders back and swayed her hips. She knew she was alluring. When Chas eyed her up and down, she grinned. Damn it. What could I do with her? Dress her in a nun’s habit?

  On the third day, Keno got up, but I made him promise to only work half a day, and that included time spent doing household chores. He had more color in his cheeks, and his burn looked better, but he was still weepy, too skinny, and weak. That day I served him several meals. I told him he couldn’t resume his regular schedule until he put on some weight. He didn’t want to eat so much, but he didn’t have the heart to argue with me.

  Jack came by to tell me that a group of men had buried Darla by the train tracks with her family. I was relieved.

  “This thing has cast a pall over the whole neighborhood,” I said.

  “Lots of things casting a pall around here. People are still gossiping about Darla and the explosion. Some of them think Keno’s more at fault than he’s letting on.”

  This pissed me off. I felt like punishing the gossipers by cutting off their rations. But, besides being a massive overreaction, it would have invited mutiny. I asked what the basis was for this ridiculous speculation.

  “Well, they say Darla looked pregnant, if you really want to know.”

  “Pregnant? She didn’t look pregnant!”

  “She’d gained weight since she moved in with you.”

  “Because I was feeding her. If her parents were into meth, maybe they didn’t cook much.”

  “Silas saw Darla sneak off behind her house with Chas several times.”

  “Are you serious? I thought Chas liked Tasha.”

  “I think he likes it however he can get it,” Jack said. “Look, besides the exploded barrels of chemicals, there were all kinds of vials and flasks and tubes in that house. It had to be a meth lab.”

  “How did I not smell a meth lab in the middle of our neighborhood?”

  “Everyone missed it, Bea. Not just you. Chas must be using meth or some kind of drug. He’s always so hyper. Maybe he was wooing Darla so she’d give him dope.”

  “I know people don’t have TVs or internet to entertain themselves, but are they really going to turn into a bunch of small-minded gossips?”

  “Don’t shoot the messenger. I just thought you should know this was going on.”

  “I don’t want Chas anywhere near my kids, but what can I do about him? Run him off with a gun? Turn his parents against me, when they’re some of my best allies? If I make an enemy of that kid, it will start a war.”

  “I don’t know, but I’ll think on it. Maybe you can find a way to befriend him.”

  “I have no intention of befriending that boy. Why don’t you talk to him about the meth? Ask him about Darla, too.”

  Jack winced, his eyes glued to my face.

  “Maybe the meth’s gone now,” I muttered. “Maybe he’ll be done with it and settle down.”

  “Maybe.” Jack continued to watch me, as though he had something else to say, until I told him I had to make dinner and shooed him out the door.

  After supper, I asked Tasha to sit down and look at me. She did so with reluctance.

  “I’ve been told that Chas was seen several times sneaking behind Darla’s house with her. Did you know about this?”

  “What?” Tasha looked shocked.

  “I’ve been told—”

  “I heard you, but. . . . Oh, that explains everything. That’s why Darla told you about the stuff with Chas. She wanted him for herself. She thought you’d keep me away from him. . . . I know she’s dead, but I still hate her.”

  “There’s no point in hating her. She was a very sad girl, so sad that it killed her. The person you should be mad at is Chas.”

  “I am mad at him. But it’s hard to stay mad when he says all these cute, funny things. I love him, Nana.” Tasha fell against me and sighed.

  “Then you’re being brave to resist him. We don’t know if Chas was cheating on you with Darla, but he was sneaking around, and he couldn’t have been up to anything good. You can’t trust a man like that, and you deserve so much better.”

  “But there’s not anyone better around here,” she whined.

  “Honey, you’re better off with no man than with the wrong man. And, it won’t be long before people figure out more ways to get around town. We have empty houses in our neighborhood. If we’re successful with our farming, other folks will want to move here to join us, or they’ll want us to teach them how to do the same thing. There’ll be lots of opportunities to meet young men. There’s no hurry. Hurrying gets you into trouble. We’ve had enough trouble to last us a while, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah,” Tasha said, “but it sucks.”

  “I know. It sucks big fat ones.”

  “Nana!” Tasha started laughing, smiling for the first time in days.

  “Please don’t tell Keno about Darla and Chas sneaking around. Someone ought to keep a good memory of her. Besides, he’s been traumatized enough. The only reason I told you is so you’d see that Chas can’t be trusted.”

  Tasha’s smile disappeared. I had given it to her then snatched it away, or so I thought. Much later, I came to understand that Tasha was mad at me for shielding Keno’s feelings but not hers.


  When Keno got back to full capacity, he found a set of weights and started pumping them every morning and night, except when he went on water missions. He was working off his grief, but I worried he was obsessed. He should’ve been eating more if he wanted to build muscle, but if anything, he was eating less.

  I needed to do something to cheer these kids up. The weather was warmer. Maybe we could collect pecans at a secret spot Jack had mentioned. The big obstacle to this idea would be getting me there. No way I could walk or ride a bike very far. I got winded going halfway down the block.

  “Keno,” I said one day at lunch, “do you think you could rig me up a way to get around, you know, to leave the neighborhood either under my own power or with you guys pushing or pulling me?”

  “What about those wheelchairs at the Mint? I haven’t checked the one with the battery to see if it still works, though.”

  “Well, will you check? Although . . . those electrical chairs are heavy and clunky. If the battery dies, they’re very hard to push. But the other chair might be too flimsy to go over rough terrain.”

  “Where are you trying to go?” Tasha asked.

  “I don’t know. I just think we should take an excursion. Get out of here, and away from our troubles for a day.”

  “Yes!” said Milo, thrusting his arm in the air.

  “Can I go? I wanna go!” Mazie jumped up from the table to dance around the room. It was so nice to see her happy.

  “If we can figure it out, we’ll all go. The hard thing will be to keep those pesky neighborhood dogs from following us.” They weren’t bad dogs, but they might cause trouble in another neighborhood.

  “We’ll scare them away,” Milo said.

  “Okay, Milo, you work on a way to scare off the dogs, and Keno, can you fix me up with a ride? Maybe you could put the heavy wheels from the electric wheelchair on the other chair, or maybe you can think of something else, like a cart to pull me behind a bicycle.”

  “Yeah, a cart. That’s a great idea. I know I can figure it out.”

  Now the kids were excited to have something new to focus on. I didn’t expect it to cure their despair, but I hoped it would ease it. Even if we never got to go anywhere, the effort alone should cheer us up.

  THIRTY

  MID-DECEMBER, two and a half months since the EMP, and still no miraculous arrival from Waco.

  That morning, while Keno worked in the garage on the bicycle cart, his new ropy muscles starting to show, Jack came to the door with a box of chirping baby chicks.

  “Aww,” we all said.

  “Please Nana, can I hold one?” Mazie cooed, bouncing on her tiptoes in her tattered tutu.

  Jack cautioned Mazie against holding the chicks, saying it would make them sick. He gave us an impromptu lesson on them: what to feed them and how often, how long it should take them to grow up, and when we could expect to get eggs. He came back later to build a coop complete with a chicken run covered with wire netting, to keep away hawks.

  Mazie was over the moon. She watched the chicks for hours on end, and I’m sure when no one was looking, she picked them up. She told me she had names for each of them.

  “How can you tell them apart? They look the same yellow and fluffy to me.”

  “I can tell, Nana. Believe me, I can tell.” I wanted to believe her, but I didn’t really.

  That same afternoon, the Zizzos brought us a dressed rabbit. They’d been keeping their rabbits a secret, but now they had enough bred to set up more hutches, and to start feeding rabbits to neighbors once in a while.

  Kathy Zizzo took my hand. “I want you to know how much we appreciate what you’re doing for us. We might’ve died by now if not for you. Very generous and very brave, raising all these kids by yourself and still sharing.”

  “Why, thank you, Kathy.” No one else had complimented me so. “You have any special tips for cooking this rabbit?”

  She spent another quarter-hour telling me different ways to cook rabbit. I thought this first time I would keep things simple, so I roasted it on a spit over the barbecue flame.

  At our yummy rabbit dinner, Keno told us he was ready for a test run of the bike cart. He wanted to give the kids rides in it tomorrow so he could get it running smoothly before giving me a ride.

  “Nana, you’re gonna like it. I put a car seat in it, and I made a step and handrail so you can get in and out real easy.”

  “Did you?” I said, a little choked up. “That was considerate of you.” Keno blushed beneath his oily hair.

  “I wanna ride. Nana, can I ride?” Mazie asked.

  “If Keno says you can. But you ought to wear a helmet and pads in case something goes wrong.”

  “I don’t need a helmet or pads,” Milo said.

  “Yes, you do. What if the whole thing falls over? You would land on the concrete.”

  “I hate helmets and pads,” Milo said, poking out his plump lower lip.

  “Well, I hate head injuries. You either wear the helmet and pads, or you don’t ride in the cart. Got it?”

  “Got it,” he muttered. Darned little daredevil kid.

  Around seven p.m., I answered a knock at the door to find Sonja Carrera with her little son hanging on her, wiggling around.

  “Hi, Sonja. Is everything alright?”

  “Yes. Well, no. Can I talk to you?”

  “Uh . . . sure. Come on in.”

  The little boy wore blue pajamas with feet in them. He clutched a toy, a robot I think, and his black-brown hair hung in front of his big brown eyes. Sonja was so thin that she looked like she might snap in two from the weight of her dangling child.

  They followed me to the living room. “Can I get you some water?” I asked.

  Sonja looked at her son, who nodded. “Cesar would like some, please.”

  “Don’t you want some?”

  “No thank you, Mrs. Crenshaw.”

  “You can call me Bea. Have a seat.”

  She sat tentatively on the edge of the couch, with her back erect and her hands folded in her lap. Cesar stood next to her legs, rubbing his face into the couch cushion. I poured him some water in the dining room, where my grandkids were playing Monopoly. For some reason I couldn’t pinpoint, I had an ominous feeling about whatever Sonja was going to say.

  “Kids, please take your game upstairs and take Cesar with you. Let him play, too, or if he doesn’t want to play, find him some toys.”

  The grumbling kids carried their Monopoly game upstairs. Cesar didn’t say anything, but he followed willingly. Upstairs, Tasha yelled at Milo, accusing him of moving a Mediterranean hotel to Boardwalk. Keno, with a lowered voice, seemed to settle the dispute, and soon all was reasonably calm with the kids. Cesar kept peeking downstairs, probably to be sure that his mother hadn’t left.

  “So, what can I do for you?” I asked.

  Sonja closed her eyes and fanned at her face. Tears gathered in her long, dark eyelashes.

  “I cannot stay here. I cannot,” she said.

  “Well, where would you go, and how would you get there?”

  “I must go to Mexico. Cesar’s father is there. I—We need him. He will take care of us.” So that’s why her husband never helped carry water. He wasn’t even here, and I hadn’t noticed.

  “Don’t you think it would be better for your husband to make his way to you? A man can travel more quickly and safely than a woman with a small child.”

  “I have waited and waited, and he is not here. I must go to him.”

  “Oh, Sonja. I don’t know what part of Mexico Cesar’s father is in, but it could take him months to get here. And if he’s on his way here, you could pass each other without knowing it. How would you find him then?”

  Sonja’s erect bearing collapsed, and her face dissolved into a grimace of pain. Then she sat back up and gave me a dry, hard look.

  “My parents are doctors. We will be safer with them.”

  “But I don’t see how you can’t get down there.”

  “Thi
s is why I have come to you,” she said. “I would like to buy one of your wagons. I will pull Cesar to Mexico.”

  “Sonja, you can’t pull Cesar all the way to Mexico. You’re so thin. Would you have the strength for that? And you can’t go this time of year. It could snow and sleet on you. You could die of exposure.”

  “I’m going. I have decided.”

  “Can’t I convince you to wait?”

  She didn’t respond. She merely looked at me with a steely resolve. I sat back, my mind rushing through possible ways of stopping her from going on this suicide mission and taking her son with her. But the desperation in her eyes wrenched my heart.

  “Tell you what, Sonja. I can’t sell you a wagon. What would I do with money? And we need all the wagons we have. But maybe I could find another way to help you, if you’ll help me in return.”

  Sonja sat forward. “I’m listening.”

  “Okay.” I leaned toward her. “I need help around here. I’m wearing Tasha out doing so much cooking, cleaning, and gardening. As you can see, I’m old and in poor health. My grandson Keno is building a bicycle cart for me to ride in so that we can go to other parts of town. That’s the kind of vehicle you need for a trip to Mexico.

  “I won’t sell you the cart that Keno’s making for me. But if you’ll help me here while he works, he can finish my cart, then he can build one for you. In the meantime, we’ll put some meat on your bones to build up your strength.” I leaned back and added, “What do you think of that?”

  “Will it take very long?” Sonja asked.

  I hoped that building a cart for Sonja would give me time to convince her to change her mind. Maybe her husband would show up soon, and the problem would be solved.

  “Shouldn’t be too long,” I said.

  After Sonja left, I couldn’t reconcile my conscience to helping her do something so dangerous. I kept picturing her lying dead in the desert, Cesar crying beside her, buzzards circling overhead.

  When I talked to Keno about building her bike-cart, something came over me, and I said, “Take your time building it—at least a couple of months until the weather warms up.”