Outside, somewhere far in the distance, coyotes howl. She looks out into the darkness, into the ancient and inscrutable face of the night, seeing nothing, knowing that doesn’t mean that nothing is out there. The light fades, the wind is brisk, the flow of the outside lights, small incandescent intervals of safety around the house, challenge anyone to come near.
Before first light in the morning, she would make one last trip down the mountain with her truck. It was a risk, but she had to load up this winter’s hay from her neighbor, exchanging it for a little cash, some bread, garden vegetables, and a bottle or two of her whisky. She doesn’t think anyone with ill intentions will be out at 4 a.m. and she knows the road well enough to drive it under full moonlight, with no headlights.
The Calis still swarming out of the Valley, trying to flee what is left of California are always a threat: raping, robbing and sometimes killing, desperate for food or supplies, if the stories she has heard through her neighbor are to be believed. She’s only seen Militia, not looters, but she can’t be too careful. But she has to keep her horse well fed. For if she must, she will attempt to ride through the thick forest to Nevada, hoping she is not spotted and shot on sight by the militia.
Her revolver on her hip and a rifle lying on the bench seat of her old truck, she idles down the long trail to the road. Stopping to assess if there was anyone in the area, she moves the brush away from the entrance to the road, which is really no more than a trail at that point, barely big enough for a vehicle to pass. Putting everything back in place she travels down the hill to the equally hidden entrance to John’s house, moving slowly and quietly, so she can quickly abandon the truck on foot if there is an oncoming vehicle.
Her heart is pounding as she looks ahead to the road and then to the sky, stars flying upwards between ancient trees in a black sky. She sees them as brilliant staccato points in the sky that change to a wet sheet. She doesn’t realize she is crying as she makes her way down the hill.
As she pulls off the road, replacing the decoy brush and debris that guards John’s trail, she hears the sound of a vehicle.
Turning off the engine, she crouches down, just enough light now to see the road, but not so much that she would be seen here deep in the trees. It’s a large flatbed truck. On the back are barricades, lots of them, headed east.
They glide by, thankfully not seeing her, probably half asleep themselves. But she realizes the reason for the barriers. They’re blocking the roads that lead eventually into Nevada, not just the main ones. That explains the lack of cars and the one bicyclist she thought she saw. You can’t really build a “Wall” in the mountains in what is left of California, but if you block the roads, 99% of the populace will not get through, the trek being too long over rough terrain for a hiker.
When all is quiet, she waits another fifteen minutes and the fires the truck up and heads up the hill to John’s barn. He greets her with a silent wave and draws her into the house.
“You need to stay here until dark,” he said. “I heard the vehicles, it won’t be safe to go back home until tonight after they have set things up and gone back to the Valley.”
She agrees, knowing Taxi is safe in the barn with enough food and water for a day or two. She doesn’t risk leaving him in the meadow when she is gone due to the dangers from mountain lions.
She enjoyed John’s company, if only for a few hours. She’s in her own little world right now, this limbo between the Calis to her west and the lure of freedom, or death if she heads to the east. She’s the swing of the hammer, the trajectory of the bullet, the frame of a window. Most days she works until long after dark, tossing the moon back like a shot of scotch, stopping only to get a small clean glass from the cupboard, last call.
Certainly, it’s easier to let others do the work, to just sit back and wait for help, wait for that handout, and wait for that check you did not work to earn. But she can look in the mirror and see the space and the solitude and its rewards, the broken nails and occasional scrape a sign of progress. It’s the only way she can live, the entitlement mindset, to her, being like that of an animal, drawn to a baited trap from a wide-open field, the instincts that would recognize a trap now dulled, not even comprehending it is doomed, and no longer afraid, for it was no longer free.
If you rely solely on others to feed you, to protect you and to sustain you, to prop you up and pat you on the back when you fail, you’ve not just made them your judge you’ve made them your jailer. Even worse, it’s a jail term without end, for it’s done with the sanction of your own conscious.
When darkness fell, her neighbor John insisted that he ride shotgun with her the mile home to her place. He said he could hike back. She didn’t ask him where he got the AR15 with the holographic scope, but with him being a former Marine, she knew he could use it.
They made it back without seeing anyone, and he helped her get the hay in the barn before she sent him home with some frozen venison stew and a hug. She was once again glad she had not bought a house on the main highway that crosses the hills to her north. It is likely the only reason she had not been discovered.
She runs her bath by candlelight, in the near darkness inside her home. Even though there is not an occupied house, other than John’s, for miles she doesn’t want the light of her place visible from any distance. Her well is still supplying water, as she prays for a good snowfall this winter to build up the water supply. Drought is what she fears most, not simply because of the supply of well water but because of the fire danger. She has lived here long enough to see flames from the forest licking the forest only 10 miles away. She fled as the C130’s began their runs overhead. Now, if there is a fire, there will be no planes. She’s not seen a plane of any kind fly over in months, though one night, in total darkness, she swore she heard the sound of a very small plane struggling in the thin air above heading east in the blackness, someone risking controlled flight in the darkness to escape the life in Cali as it exists today.
She opens the wrapper of one her few remaining bars of soap, the brand her mother used, and the smell is as she always remembered. It’s like the smell of Crayons. Not what she’d call a pretty smell, but such a familiar and a comforting one. That brand of soap was all they ever had as a child, that and the thick, gritty powdered soap for washing hands after shop and yard work. This plain white bar is what she had washed her face with for most of her life. But she can also well remember how it tastes, for once when she said a cuss word, her mom washed out her mouth with it. It did NOT taste good.
As she finishes her bath, carefully drying her hair and checking her robe for the small handgun that resided there in the pocket, she thought a lot about that world she grew up in, and the one outside of her window now. You can say all you want about what youth of her generation are exposed to, violent video games, bloodshed, sex and violence on TV. But she truly believed that as children, the moral imperatives that initially form in us are in response to parenting, not society or entertainment. That’s probably why her mom home-schooled her, back when it was still legal. That was why Lisa knew that there would be dire consequences if she tried to drop an anvil on her cousin’s head or blew up the garage with Acme Dynamite like Wile E. Coyote tried to do to the Roadrunner every Saturday morning.