There is a theory that only the young and old will die. A few feel they arhave lost two of their four children, but Ab is far from giving up. He is at the radio at least eighteen hours a day. By relay he has found people alive as far east as Nebraska.
Ab has disremote are
April 11. Scott died yesterday at 1:30 PM.
The three of us dug a deep hole in the backyard near the browning rose bushes. The cemetery is unspeakable. Mr. Jansen came and prayed with us. Mostly, he and the Catholic priest are conducting mass burials. About seven hundred so far.
Ironically, I think Mr. Jansen took as much comfort from us as we did from him. We became close when Tom’s parents were killed in the car crash,and then again during my depression before Scottie was born. He is a good man.
ApApopulation. Beale’s Contracting picks up the bodies in one of their large dump trucks and bulldozes communal graves on the east edge of town. That’s since the cemetery can’t handle it any more.
Brad and Mary Liz fall into petty bickering at times and I want to scream: “We are dying. Can’t you for God’s sake, love each other a few mitogether quietly, at peace.
After Scottie died, Brad kept proposing projects, games, brainteasers. But it didn’t work. Nor can I find comfort in my garden. My plants are dead,and the only fragrance in the air is a stench — the smell of death from San Francisco, from Canada, from China, for all I know.
Then Brad had another idea. It happened after Larry’s parents died and he moved in with us. Maybe to keep his friend busy, Brad suggested we organize a work detail for our street. He proposed that the four of us — he and Larry, Mary Liz and I — working by teams, make a morning check at each house in the neighborhood.
Whthought I couldn’t go through with it. She and I had fought over a supposedly stolen ball — claimed by each family of youngsters. We’d not spoken in ten years. Larry and I carried a jar of soup to her porch, waited down her hostile stare, then followed her inside.
She led me back to a bedroom where her daughter, once Mary Liz’s playmate, lay in a stupor. For a terrible, timeless moment we forgot the past,in which we had been stupid, and the future, when we would be dead. It was the prgrinhaling the girl’s cloying breath.
I asked Larry to finish rounds without me. At the end of our road, I fell to the dry grass of a vacant lot. I tore the earth. Retched. Screamed. I have no idea the length of time. I was demented. But I knew enough not to let the children see me.
April 14. We three need to be near, and Larry’s presence doesn’t intrude. Sometimes when we’re resting one will tell a family story, recall a tri“Remember Monopoly?” “Remember Daddy?”
We’re all getting slower now, and wondered about the rounds. Mary Liz pointed out, “Their eyes light up so when we go in.” We voted to continue. Because of the deaths we have fewer houses to call at but it takes us longer. We have brought two young children to Scottie’s old room. They will not be with us long, I’m afraid.
April 15. This used to be Income Tax Dayfrom bulldozing to burning. It takes less strength to torch the bodies than it does to drive the big cat that opened the graves.
April 24. Larry died suddenly a day or two ago. He had gone in the morning on rounds and that afternoon crawled into his bunk and died. I regret not noticing how quiet he had become. His mother was my friend and our boys have been close for years. I wish I had told her I’d take care of Larry, but she died too soon.
Wcorner for pickup and I remember