A Land of Ash

ONE LAST DINNER PARTY by David Dalglish

“Try and hurry back,” Wilma told Oren as he climbed into his rusted blue Ford. “If you’re out too long I’ll get worried, and it’s a devil to put blush on when my face gets red like it does.”

“Don’t you worry,” said her husband. “Ring the Pankratz while I’m gone. Maybe they’ll change their minds.”

“I don’t think they will,” she said. “They have family down in Texas, though god knows what the roads look like since the…”

“Just try.”

He drove into town, dirt billowing behind his truck. The Dollar Store would have been cheaper, but he turned down Main instead for Hank’s Groceries. Hank waited outside, his ankles crossed, his arms calmly folded over his belly, and a loaded shotgun tilted upward by his feet. Oren pulled up, shoved it into park, and shut off the ignition.

“Morning,” Hank shouted as the roaring engine died. “I was wondering if you’d show.”

“Yeah,” Oren said. While climbing out, he made a grunting noise and gestured to the shotgun. “Hope you haven’t had to use that.”

“I’ve let people take what they want,” Hank said. His voice sounded tired, and the puffy darkness below his eyes signified tears, drink, or both. “The first couple families cleared me out. The rest wander around like stunned mules. I let ‘em see everything’s gone, and then they go, usually holding something weird. You know those filters for the big window air conditioners? Had a guy walk out holding ten, all I had. What in Jesus’s name he think he’s going to do with them?”

“I’m sorry,” Oren said, as if the whole mess were his fault. He certainly sounded like he thought it was his fault.

“Think nothing of it,” Hank said. “Though I’m glad to be talking to someone who’s not waving a gun in my face. You hear about the Dollar Store?”

Oren turned to the side, spat, and then shook his head.

“Glenda lock it up tight, I take it?” he asked.

“Not like it did any good. There’s a reason my door is wide open, Oren, because if it weren’t, I doubt you and Wilma would ever see my ugly face again. Besides, not like money means anything, not anymore.”

Oren glanced inside. Every wall and shelf was stripped bare. He caught a puddle of what looked like milk spilled across the floor of one aisle, apple sauce in another. He felt a bit of pity for old Hank, and he clapped the guy once on the shoulder.

“Looks like me and Wilma will make do with what we have at the house,” he said. “You’re welcome to come with.”

“Nah,” Hank said. He glanced back at his store, and he looked uncomfortable and embarrassed. “I planned on climbing up to the roof, drag up one of my lawn chairs, and sit up there. And wait, you know? When did they say the whole shitstorm would start?”

“About four-thirty,” Oren said. “Though you never know. Weathermen are hardly better than the farmer’s almanac. Hell, a coin flip does better than them, I heard once.”

“Yeah?” said Hank. “I think they’re right about this one, though. They wouldn’t dare fuck this up. I take it your radio’s out, too?”

“Every station. I checked on the drive here.”

A bit of awkward silence followed, and at last Oren turned to his truck. When he waved, a bit of the hardness in Hank’s face broke.

“You know,” Hank said. “I stashed a few things when I heard. Not much, not like the hoarders with their water and flour and god knows what else. But enough for a good meal. I’ll come by in a bit, once I say goodbye to the old place. Thirty years. Thirty goddamn years, mopping the floor with my sweat and paying bills with my blood. And for what, Oren? For what?”

He looked ready to cry. Oren frowned, not accustomed to such easy emotions from another man. Unsure of what to do, he hopped into his truck and slammed the door.

“Come say hello to Wilma,” he said. “She’d like that.”

“She’s a sweet gal,” said Hank. “Anyone else going to be there?”

Oren started the truck. As the engine banged, he continued talking, the satisfying rumble easing the nerves he had felt building during his conversation.

“Wilma’s trying the Pankratz,” he half-shouted. “Don’t think they’ll be coming. The Williams will be there. Kids were living in California, so Thelma’s pretty shook up, and Roy isn’t taking it much better. They needed the company, so…”

His voice trailed off. Hank resumed leaning against the front of his store and braced the shotgun across his lap.

“Go straight home,” he shouted. “Stay away from the highway; the roads are hell right now.”

Oren had a thought to tell him that the whole world would soon be hell, not just the highway, but kept his mouth shut. He drove home to his wife.

Wilma had done well applying her blush, along with the rest of her makeup. She had on a modest white dress and her finest jewelry. Oren felt a tug of memory at the forty Easter services he had attended with his wife. They’d had two kids, and through fevers, snot, tantrums, and teenage rebellion, they’d dragged them into their small community church year after year. Their eldest, Julie, had married a German man at college and moved to New York. They’d managed to talk with her about two minutes before the cell phones went dead. Julie had sounded scared but holding together well.

“I wish I was home, daddy,” she said only moments before the static. “That’s all I want right now, I want to be…”

Oren wiped a tear from his cheek. A part of him was glad that his son Jerry was not alive to see everyone so afraid. He’d been born slow in the head. He could wipe his ass, but that was the most complex set of actions he could manage by himself. A seizure had claimed him in his thirties. He might have lived, Oren had told the lawyers that, but the home had been too full of difficult patients and poorly-trained attendees. His son had died thrashing and shitting himself, unable to call for help, and by the time someone noticed, he’d nearly chewed off his own tongue.

Poor Jerry, he thought. Never could watch nothing but Disney shows. Hospitals are crowded so bad they’re worthless; that’s what the television said before it went blank, anyway. God, what would it be like at a rest home? Would the nurses even stay?

He doubted it. He felt pity for all the elderly and retarded, but he clamped that emotion down. Pity was a dangerous thing, for there were too many, just too many, and a man could become overwhelmed. There were the elderly, the sick, the pregnant, the nursing, the little babes, the orphans, the poor…they’d die. All of them. Just like the rest of North America.

Hell, if he was going to pity anyone, he’d pity Wilma and himself.

“Did they have any?” Wilma asked as Oren got out of his truck.

He shook his head.

“Cleaned out. He didn’t have a lick of spit left to sell.”

The wrinkles on his wife’s face pulled back tight across her jaw.

“Not even the zucchini? Cripes, no one liked it before, but I can’t make my lasagna without it, Oren. I thought, surely, it’s just zucchini, they’ll take the water and the flour and the meat, but not the zucchini…”

She wasn’t crying; she more appeared to be leaking out the corners of her eyes. Her voice never wavered. Oren wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. He felt her quivering against his chest, and he had a strange image of himself as a child holding a scared rabbit.

“You’ll make do,” he said. “We raised two kids on water and hope. You can manage your lasagna without zucchini.”

Wilma sniffed. When she pulled back, she reminded him less of a rabbit and more like an old tree, its bark peeling and its leaves fallen, but the roots still firm in the ground. He kissed her cheek, and she smiled at him.

“You’re right,” she said. “Not often, but when you are, you are.”

Oren was not much for baking, and even with the end of the world approaching, he felt awkward in the kitchen. After a few clumsy attempts at separating pasta and chopping tomatoes, his little bat of a wife ushered him out the door.

“Go get a fire going,” she said. “Thelma will be fine with my lasagna, but you know Roy. If it wasn’t mooing, he don’t want it.”

Three squirts of lighter fluid were enough to get the charcoal going. He’d known others that’d drown the coals with fluid for an easy light, but that felt wasteful to Oren. It seemed a silly thing to worry about, but some habits are hard to break after sixty-five years, and that was one.

They’d kept a giant freezer full of meat on their porch ever since they bought their first pig thirty years ago. A few of their neighbors had swung by since morning, right after the news first hit the air. They all had a desperate, embarrassed look on their faces, as if they were ashamed to steal but knowing they would anyway. Sighing, Oren gently nudged the coals about with a poker, trying to forget that he was building his last fire.

What the hell, he thought. He grabbed the lighter fluid and gave it a healthy squeeze. With a satisfying roar, it flared high above the grill. Oren jumped backward, letting out a ‘whoa’ before laughing. It felt good to laugh.

The first of the steaks was on the grill when Thelma and Roy pulled up in a brown Chevy that was ten years passed its date with a junkyard. Oren continued plopping down and flipping steaks, preferring to let his wife handle the initial greeting. From the corner of his eye, he saw them climb out of the car. Thelma wore a black dress and an old hat that reminded him of Jackie Kennedy. Roy, meanwhile, wore a tux that had served him reliably for the past ten years.

Absurd, thought Oren as his wife wrapped them both in a hug. My wife’s going to Easter, Roy a wedding, and Thelma a funeral. What’s so wrong with jeans? If I’m going to die, I’ll die comfortable, not like a stuffed Barbie doll.

His wife led Thelma into the den while Roy wandered over to check on the fire. It was a habit of his; quite possibly a habit of every man. All roaring fires needed communal assessment.

“Looking good,” Roy said, sounding as if Oren should be pleased by his seal of approval. “Hotter than normal for you, though. In a hurry?”

“We’ve got an hour,” Oren said. “And I’ll be damned if I don’t get to eat my steak first.”

He stole a glance at Roy. The man had a haggard look to his face, and his bloodshot eyes made him look damned, steak or not.

“Thelma baked up a pie,” Roy said. “Well, cobbler really. Peach. It was Randy’s favorite, you know? His…” His words drifted off, and Oren kept his eyes fixed on the fire so he didn’t have to see the tears.

“We had no word from there,” Roy said after composing himself. “News said the satellites and radios were knocked out immediately. But the winds coming from the ocean, they might push it away, right? Randy and Susan are south of Yellowstone, maybe it’s far enough, and the winds will just push it our way. You think there’s a chance of that, Oren? Do you?”

Oren flipped a steak.

“No,” he said. He could imagine the tiny thread of hope that his friend clung to, and while a part of him thought to let him hang on, another couldn’t bear to lie. “I don’t think so, Roy. Not from what I was hearing. Not from what the TV was showing.”

Roy nodded. More tears ran down his cheeks, but he wasn’t sobbing, and his voice was firm when he talked.

“I can keep hoping though, right? Who knows, I may walk up to Jesus and ask for my little boy and girl, and he’ll look at me like I’m a simple-minded fool and say, ‘You beat them here, Roy, but don’t you worry, time flies up here, it’ll fly, and before you know you’ll be seeing them again.’ You don’t know everything, Oren, and that damn TV knows even less.”

“I reckon you’re right,” Oren said, though he didn’t think he was.

Hank arrived when they were pulling the steaks off the grill. The two women had joined them outside, iced drinks in hand. When Hank stepped out of his Ford, he held a giant 24-pack of Bud like it was a basket of gold.

“Nothing I had could match your cooking,” Hank said to Wilma. “But this here’s something.”

Wilma accepted a can, but Thelma refused. Her makeup had run from a recent crying fit. Her wig was askew, revealing a bit of the gray underneath. She looked much like a deer staring at a pair of oncoming headlights, baffled and unable to move. They were all like that, Oren realized. Soon they’d see headlights in the western sky, and they’d stare in wonder. Like the deer, they’d stayed put, unmoving, unblinking, waiting for its approach.

Oren hoped it’d be quick, like a speeding car, and hurt for even less.

The steaks finished before the lasagna. Oren slapped a few hot dogs on the fire, doubting anyone would eat them but seeing no point in keeping them. As they cooked, he listened as Thelma told stories about their children to Wilma while Roy quietly sipped a beer nearby. The tales of diaper changes and midnight scares and faulty pregnancy tests brought Oren’s mind back to Julie in New York, and he wished that Thelma would talk about something else. Their life was soon to end; did they have to sulk about it?

Shame they cancelled the baseball games, he thought. Could use a good distraction.

The two women went inside, and after a moment, Roy followed.

“He looks like hell,” Hank said, crunching up an empty can in his fist.

“We all do,” Oren said.

Hank chuckled, still holding the can. A queer smile crossed his face, and looking like a naughty schoolchild, he tossed it to the ground.

“Might make an Indian cry,” he said, “but I think they got bigger things to shed tears for lately.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Oren said. “God, I just want to watch one more ball game. Cardinals had a shot this year, you know? Seems silly, but I always knew I’d go one day, and Wilma probably soon after, but the Cardinals…they’re supposed to go on forever. No more seasons, now. No more records. No more playoffs. It’s a goddamn shame.”

Oren piled the hot dogs onto a large plate, directly atop the steaks. When he glanced up, he saw Wilma at the door wearing a look he knew well.

“Supper’s ready,” he told Hank. “Let’s get to it.”

They ate outside. The weather had already grown chillier, but none of them could bear the idea of being cooped up indoors. They piled their plates atop a circular white patio table, devouring lasagna and steaks and beer with ravenous appetites. Even Wilma, a notorious light eater, devoured two helpings of lasagna plus a third of a dog.

Conversation remained light until Thelma said what had obviously been on her mind the whole day.

“Today’s the Rapture,” she announced. “It has to be. God wouldn’t let our good Christian nation be wiped out unless he’s preparing for the end.”

“I don’t know,” Hank said. “The local stations lasted a bit longer than the cable, and they had on a little spitfire in a suit shouting about how this was our punishment. We’ve gotten too sinful, you know? We’re like a modern day Sodom, and hallelujah, we’re all about to become pillars of salt.”

He chuckled, but Oren saw no humor in it. He didn’t think either of them was right, but he sure wasn’t going to say so. Thelma flushed a deep red, as if insulted that someone might disagree.

“If the Rapture’s come,” Hank continued, “then why are you still here?”

Shut your mouth, Oren thought. Just shut your damn mouth.

“Because,” Thelma said, “the angels are in the clouds. They’ll get us when it hits, just like they got Randy and Susan.”

“There ain’t no angels in that fucking cloud!” Hank was shouting but didn’t appear to know it. “If Randy and Susan are in heaven, they got there the old fashioned way; by coughing until their lungs bled and their eyeballs…”

“Enough!” Oren shouted. His abrupt stand knocked his little plastic chair sprawling. He glared at Hank, who stared back with tears in his eyes.

“You got ten minutes,” Oren said. “Maybe you should go back to your store. You can take my chair.”

“I reckon I’d rather stay,” Hank said. He glanced over to Thelma. “I’m sorry, really I am. Just scared is all. I hope you’re right. Never considered myself a good Christian man, but I think today I’m terrified enough to try. Think the angels will grab me?”

Thelma was too busy wiping at her tears, but Wilma piped in with her usual perfect timing.

“Bible says god refuses no man who asks humbly enough,” she said. “Humble ain’t your nature, Hank. Try it for today, and we might all make it through just fine. Right, Oren?”

“Right,” he said.

Everyone pushed away their food. Wilma brought out the peach cobbler and spooned out massive servings for everyone. Oren could only pick at it. Cobbler might have been Randy’s favorite, but it sure wasn’t his. When he looked around, he noticed no one else was eating, either. It was his fault, he realized.

Ten minutes, I shouted. What is wrong with me? Why’d I have to remind everyone?

But now it was only eight minutes. Oren felt almost angry at the clock. It had crawled by all day, but once he was with friends, it burst into a frantic sprint. All around were sad smiles and faces wet with tears. What a way to end the world: together at one last dinner party, sobbing like children and snarling at each other like dogs.

“Let’s get the chairs over to the front lawn,” Oren said. “We’re all thinking it, so let’s stop pretending. We’ll get a good look at the western sky from there.”

“Are you sure?” Wilma asked. “We’ve still got some time before…”

“I’m sure,” Oren said, and that ended the discussion.

Wilma and Oren sat next to each other on their lawn chairs. Hank sat opposite them and the Williams. Oren thanked god for small favors. Once positioned, they took their beers (even Thelma had one) and toasted the sky. The clouds were soft and gray, but looming behind them seemed to be a storm thick with a substance more solid than rain and more frightening than thunder. Oren checked his watch. Five minutes at the most, assuming the weathermen knew what they were doing.

“Breathe in deep,” Hank said to no one in particular. “I heard that makes it quickest. Coughing only drags it out.”

The left side of Thelma’s face twitched, but she held her tongue.

A breeze picked up from the west, so sudden in its strength that Thelma had no time to grab her hat before it sailed across the lawn. For a moment, she looked ready to chase after, and then decided otherwise. The clouds rolled across the sky, pushed on by an unseen wave. Another gust of wind hit them, and it was surprisingly warm. Oren felt Wilma grab his hand and squeeze it tight. He squeezed back.

The clouds broke, and the sun shone down on them from a beautiful blue sky. The wind seemed to pause for a moment, as if respectful of the momentary calm. Oren heard a little ‘oh’ from his wife, and even Hank grunted in surprise. When the wind returned, and clouds shadowed their faces, Oren felt like the last remnant of peace in the world had died.

“Will it hurt?” Thelma asked.

“Just a cough,” Hank replied. “Just like a bad cough.”

Rolling toward them, an eager minute early, was the ash cloud from the Yellowstone Caldera’s eruption. It grumbled dark and thick, and within it they saw lightning. A soft white, like the foam of a wave, rushed ahead. With a blast of hot air, they felt it hit. Like a desert wind, it burned the back of their throats and nostrils. Roy shouted something, but Oren could not hear him. Then the air slowed, although the heat remained. The light of the sun faded. The roar left their ears.

“Look,” Oren said, his mouth dropping open in surprise. Falling in thick, twirling pieces was what looked like snow. It fell upon their hands, their hair, their faces. It was warm to the touch. When they brushed it across their skin, it left a gray smear.

“Sweet Jesus,” said Wilma.

The rest of the ash cloud covered the sky, ramming away the white. It was so thick, so monstrous, that night fell. Oren felt his wife’s hand tremble in his, and he clutched it tight. High above, thunder roared.

In the darkness, Thelma was the first to cough.