I climbed out of bed, doing my best to not wake Sara, and I found my way downstairs. From the darkness in the sky it felt like a long ways ’til morning… I knew that for me sleep was not going to be happening again any time soon.
I debated brewing myself some coffee, since I was dog tired but nowhere near wanting to go back to bed, but my mouth was dry so I decided to steal one of Graham’s cans of cherry cola instead.
I sat down at the living room table, trying to calm myself by watching the lake, but the wind had picked up overnight and the water seemed more violent than usual, and all it brought me was more anxiety.
I took out my tablet and started trying to write out some more thoughts about what had happened yesterday, but for whatever reason it wasn’t enough to beat back the stress.
I was breathing hard, and I could feel my heart pounding. I felt more adrenaline than I’d had in my system at the height of the attack.
It didn’t make any goddamn sense.
It was like my own body wanted to kill me, like it wanted my shitty heart to explode like a block of C4.
I couldn’t hold it off… I couldn’t calm down… I couldn’t keep going like this.
I went down to the basement, gripping the handrail more firmly than normal because I felt like the whole cottage was shaking.
I bent down to the bottom of the pantry shelves and pulled out the red milk crate. I picked up the Dora the Explorer lunch box and opened it.
The ecstasy was what I wanted. At that moment I didn’t care if it killed me.
I took one maple-leaf tablet and I swallowed it.
I went back upstairs and sat down at the table. And I waited.
It took almost thirty minutes before I felt anything, my heart still pounding and my mind racing. But slowly I started to calm down a little, and for a while I felt like everything was okay, like everything was happening for a reason, that I didn’t understand why, but that I could accept it… and I could accept me.
It’s hard to describe exactly what it felt like, especially now that the feeling’s gone and I’m back to the same old Baptiste, always a little uneasy about the world around me. But for a few hours I was okay.
Really okay.
It wasn’t the SSRI and beta blocker kind of okay, like I can barely function but at least I’m functioning… it was something more… something that I definitely need to feel again.
Sara and I took over the dining room table after breakfast, sending everyone else out so we’d have a chance to talk. It wasn’t that we were trying to keep any secrets; we just didn’t need people asking stupid questions or trying to add their own uneducated opinion about how much rice we consume in a month. Sara knows better than anyone else; she keeps the counts, and she has the stats from a year and a half, broken down by person. It’s a little creepy at first, when you realize that she actually has a different estimate for each one of us when it comes to how much toilet paper we use to wipe our individual asses. Matt uses the least, apparently, and Sara’s marked herself down as the one who wipes her ass the most… I’m old enough to know that women wipe other places, too.
I think I’ll attach some of her charts to this journal someday.
“We’re running low on flour,” Sara said as she stared at her tablet. “We’ll be out by August 12th of next year.”
“Is that just us, or the Porters and Tremblays?” I asked.
“All of us… assuming their counts are accurate.”
I sighed. “You know they aren’t.”
“Everything’s a guess,” she said. “I just assume the Tremblays have less than they tell us and the Porters have more… so it all evens out in the end.”
“August… that’s a problem. A few weeks ago you were talking about eighteen months of supplies.”
“I know… a few days ago we thought we’d be trading eggs and milk for some of the Walkers’ grain.”
“And I’ll bet no one else has any grain or flour to trade.”
She shook her head. “We can cut back on consumption,” she said.
“Or we can eat the Tremblays.”
She laughed. “But that’s a good point, actually. We don’t do much fishing… we could eat more meat and cut back on carbs. Probably not a bad thing.”
“But either way… we’re going to run out before next winter’s over.”
“Looks like.”
“Goddamn,” I said. “I really wanted one year to work on getting it right.”
She reached out for my hand. “I know,” she said softly. She gave me a smile that was almost relaxed; I knew that it wasn’t, really.
“We don’t even have the equipment yet… and we certainly don’t have the fuel. Honestly, Sara, I don’t know how you didn’t see this coming.”
She pulled her hand away. “Are you kidding me? I told you about this.”
“No you didn’t… I’d remember if you’d said ‘Hey, Baptiste, we’re all going to starve’.”
“There was nothing stopping you from taking a look at the numbers. Everybody has just as much access to the data as I do. Don’t try to blame me for the Walkers dropping out.” She furrowed her brow. “Maybe you should blame yourself for shooting out Dave Walker’s tire?”
“You heard.”
“Yeah… we’ve all heard, Baptiste. I don’t think anyone was all that surprised, to be honest.”
“You weren’t there… those assholes were walking all over us.”
“It was stupid. What you did was stupid. So now instead of blaming me for knowing how to count maybe you should focus on some kind of plan to get some crops planted in the spring.”
“Yeah… I know.”
She smiled again. I didn’t deserve it, but it was nice to see. “So… a plan?”
“We’ll have to start searching. Graham thinks that we should be able to find electric motors in just about everything we need.”
“Just about?”
“It might be tough finding an electric combine. We don’t have enough diesel to run one.”
“But that’s for harvesting,” Sara said.
“Yeah.”
“So we don’t need it to get started. And if we can’t harvest with a machine, we’ll have to harvest by hand. We may need help from New Post, but trading away half the crop is better than letting it rot.”
“This is all assuming we find everything else we need.”
“I know… and assuming you guys don’t run into any marauders. I think you and Graham should start bringing someone else along with you.”
“I want Lisa to stay back… in case there’s trouble at the cottage.” And she was the only one who knew what the plan was if things went worst-case.
“I don’t mean Lisa,” Sara said.
“I’m not taking Matt. He’d end up shooting one of us before he hit a marauder.” Or he’d end up spending the whole time blubbering about how I don’t love him like a long lost idiot son.
“I don’t mean him, either. Maybe Justin… or Alain…”
“I don’t know about that,” I said.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know… I trust Graham… I know what he’ll do… I can’t rely on those guys the same way.”
I’d once thought I could rely on Justin.
“Well you’re going to need to get used to them,” Sara said. “We’re stuck together for the foreseeable future.”
“I know what you’re saying… so does that mean that we’re no longer considering that first idea?”
“Which one?”
“Eating the Tremblays.”
“Let’s try our hand at fishing first.”
I leaned over for a kiss. She didn’t seem at all interested, but she still let me.
I like that about her.
So I have a theory about Will Ferrell… the actor from the Zoolander and Anchorman trilogies, not the guy in Nevada who opened fire on a busload of migrant workers. Ferrell’s better in an ensemble cast, rather than as a leading man; the stronger the other characters, the better Ferrell does. That’s why he’s remembered for movies where he isn’t the only star.