All of them were probably dead by now, which was something that I’d been trying hard to avoid thinking about. Now it was starting to creep back in, because thinking about their likely deaths was better than thinking about what I’d just seen outside.
I got out a box of wooden matches and lit the kerosene heater. Its soft glow filled the room. I cracked the window just a hair—enough to let out the fumes, but not to let in the rain. Then I put the tin kettle on top of the heater and set the water to boiling, so I could have my instant coffee, which also was running low. My hands were trembling, partly from the arthritis and partly from the craving for some Skoal, but mostly from fear.
Although I didn’t want to, I thought about what I’d just witnessed.
The bird. It—
Rose had died of pneumonia three winters ago, quietly fading away in her hospital room in Beckley while I was down in the commissary getting a cup of coffee. Although I’d loved her with all my heart, for some time after she died, I was angry with her. Angered that she hadn’t said good-bye. That she went before me, leaving me here to fend for myself without her by my side. Rose had always done the cooking and cleaning and laundry, not because I’m some kind of male chauvinist, but because she’d truly enjoyed it. I was clueless—helpless—after her death. I didn’t clean the house for over a month. Tried to fry up some bacon and set off every smoke alarm in the house. The first time I tried to do laundry, I poured in half a bottle of detergent and flooded the basement with bubbles. Then I leaned against the dryer and cried for a good twenty minutes while the bubbles disintegrated all around me.
After that, Tracy and Scott pleaded with me to move up to Pennsylvania and live with them. Their own kids had moved out by then, leaving enough room for an old man like me. Darla was going to Penn State, studying pharmaceuticals. Timothy had moved to Rochester, New York, and was working with computers. And Boyd—well, he had joined the Air Force, just like his grandpa.
Just like me. Boy, that made me proud. He wanted to fly.
The bird. It tried to fly, and then—
The teakettle whistled, startling me. I poured hot water into my mug and spooned in some coffee crystals. I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking.
What in the world was that thing? It looked like a—
Instinctively, I knew my family was dead. I can’t explain it to you, other than to say that if you’ve ever felt that too, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. I just knew they were gone—a horrible, gutwrenching feeling. With Boyd, it was more than just intuition, though. Early on, before the storms hit America, I saw the coverage of the tidal waves that took out Japan. He was based there.
Now he was stationed at the bottom of the newly enlarged Pacific Ocean, and there’d be no more Japanese radios or cars or televisions or cartoon programs for a long while.
With the other members of my family, it was just a sense of knowing, a knot of tense certainty that settled in my stomach and refused to let go. It was like having a peach pit get stuck in your throat.
It’s a terrible thing to outlive your spouse. But it’s even more horrible to outlive your children and your grandchildren. A parent should never live longer than their child. The pain is indescribable. As I said earlier, I tried not to think about it. And yet, on the morning of Day Forty-one, I kept it fresh in my mind, picking off the scabs and letting the wounds bleed. I had to.
It was the only way I could stop thinking about what happened to the robin…
And the other thing. The thing that ate the bird. It had looked like a worm, except that no worm could ever grow that big. That was impossible.
Of course, so was the weather we were having. And I was too old not to suspend disbelief, especially when I’d seen it with my own eyes.
Could I trust those eyes? I wondered about that. What if the worm wasn’t real, that I’d hallucinated it? Maybe my mind was slipping. That scared me. For someone my age, dementia is much more terrifying than giant worms.
I sat there in the dim light, sipping instant coffee from a dirty mug and craving a dip. Cool air blew in through the slip of open window. Outside, the rain continued to fall. The fog rolled in and then lifted, then drifted back in again.
I stayed there all morning. Most of my days went like that, actually. There wasn’t much else to do. Occasionally, I tried the battery-operated radio, but the empty static always made me uneasy, so I’d snap it off again. Never had good radio reception back here in the mountains. The weather just made it worse, like in the truck on my ill-fated trip to Renick. The AM station in Roanoke had stayed on the air until about the fourth week. Mark Berlitz, the station’s resident conspiracy theorist and far-right talk radio host, had kept a lone vigil next to his microphone. I’ll admit that I listened in a sort of dreadful fascination as Berlitz’s sanity slowly crumbled from cabin fever. His final broadcast ended with a gunshot in the middle of “Big Balls In Cow-Town,” an old bluegrass song by the Texas Playboys (a shame, as I’d always enjoyed their music). The song ended two minutes later, then there was silence. As far as I knew, I was the only listener to hear the disc jockey’s suicide, except for maybe crazy Earl Harper, who listened to the show on a regular basis and called in to it about every night.
I’d considered suicide as an option myself after that, but soon ruled it out. Not only was it a sin, but I also doubted I’d actually have the courage to go through with it. Certainly, there was no way on earth I could put one of the deer rifles in my mouth and pull the trigger. And I was afraid if I tried to overdose on painkillers, I’d end up paralyzed or something—paralyzed but very much alive. The thought of lying there, unable to move, and just listening to the rain was enough to convince me not to try it. But I thought about it again that morning, before dismissing the idea once more.
The morning went on and the rain continued to fall. I fooled around with one of the crossword puzzle books the kids got me last Christmas. When you get to be my age, your kin are clueless as to what to buy you for Christmas and your birthday. Since I liked crossword puzzles, that’s what they decided on. I was fine with that. It sure beat another sweater or a pair of socks.
I gummed the eraser on my pencil for half an hour, then put my teeth back in and gnawed on it, all the while trying to think of a three-letter word for peccadillo. I knew from four across, that it had an “i” as the middle letter, but I was damned if I could figure out what it was.
The coffee was bitter, and I wished for some green tea instead. Then, I sat up so suddenly that the crossword puzzle book fell to the floor.
Tea. Teaberry leaves! I’d known folks who’d quit dipping by chewing on teaberry leaves instead. It grew all over West Virginia, and I’d often picked the red teaberries growing in the woods behind my home, down in the hollow.
Cursing myself for not thinking about it sooner, I got into my rain gear and stepped out onto the back porch. The kitchen had two doors—one that led outside to the carport, and the other, which went out to the back porch. Since the back porch was closer to the edge of the forest, I went out that way.
Maybe if I had chosen the other door, and seen what was on the carport, things might have turned out differently later. Maybe I wouldn’t be writing this.
But I doubt it. I’d forgotten all about the robin at that point. The only thing my mind was focused on was the thought of finding some teaberry leaves to chew on.