One Second After

CHAPTER TWO

Flipping the four burgers on the grill, two for himself, one each for Jennifer and Pat, he looked over his shoulder and watched as the girls played tag with the dogs in the upper field behind his house. It was a beautiful sight, late afternoon sun, the eight apple trees in full blossom, the girls laughing as they dodged back and forth. Ginger, the younger and crazier of the two goldens, knocked Jennifer over with a flying leap as she tried to hold a Frisbee out of her reach, and there were more squeals as the two dogs and two girls piled on each other.

Months ago he had stopped wearing a wristwatch; the cell phone was now his timepiece. He looked through the kitchen window to the grandfather clock; it was just about six. The other kids should have been here by now; the agreement was they could come over for a brief party, but as it was a school night, the party would be over by 7:30. No one had shown yet. For that matter, he thought Jen would have been back long ago.

He lit a cigarette, puffing quickly—it was amazing how annoying a twelve-year-old could be when it came to a “quit smoking, Dad” campaign—and tossed the half-smoked Camel over the patio railing.

Burgers done, he set them on the patio table, went in, opened the fridge, pulled out the cake, and set it on the table, sticking twelve candles in.

Back out again to the deck.

“Dinner!”

The dogs responded long before the girls, racing out of the field, circled

the table, and then sat at their usual begging positions. Pat and Jennifer came out of the field.

“Hey, Dad, something strange.”

“Yeah?”

“Listen.”

He stood there silent for a moment. It was a quiet spring evening, silent except for a few birds chirping, the distant bark of a dog… rather nice, actually.

“I don’t hear anything.”

“That’s it, Dad. There’s no traffic noise from the interstate.”

He turned and faced towards the road. It was concealed by the trees… but she was right; there was absolute silence. When he had first purchased the house, that had been one disappointment he had not thought of while inspecting it but was aware of the first night in, the rumble of traffic from the interstate a half mile away. The only time it fell silent was in the winter during a snowstorm or an accident.

“An accident must of shut it down,” he replied.

It was common enough, the long winding climb up from Old Fort; every month or two a truck would lose its brakes and roll or old folks in a forty-foot-long land yacht would lose it on the twisting turns as the highway zigzagged out of the mountains and down to the Piedmont. One such accident, a hazmat spill with a truck rolling over, had shut down traffic in both directions for over a day.

“Mr. Matherson. That’s what we thought, but it’s weird down there. No traffic jam, just cars stopped all over the place. You can see it from atop the hill.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that, Daddy. A bunch of cars, a lot on the side of the road, some in the middle, but no jam up, just everyone stopped.”

He half-listened, while shoveling the burgers onto buns and putting them on the girls’ plates.

“Most likely the accident’s further on and people were told to pull over and wait,” he said.

The girls nodded and dug in. He ate his first burger in silence, saying nothing, just listening. It was almost eerie. You figure you’d hear something, a police siren if there was indeed an accident, cars down on old Highway 70 should still be passing by. Usually if the interstate was closed, emergency vehicles would use 70 to access the highway and it would be jammed with people trying to bypass the interstate. At the very least this was the time of night the darn Jefferson kids, up at the top of the hill, would start tearing around into the forest with their damn four-wheelers.

And then he looked up. He felt a bit of a chill.

This time of day any high-flying jets would be pulling contrails, and directly overhead was an approach corridor to Atlanta for most flights coming out of the northeast. At any given time there’d be two or three planes visible. Now the sky was sparkling blue, not a trace of a contrail.

The chill… it reminded him of 9/11. How quiet it was that afternoon, everyone home, watching their televisions, and the sky overhead empty of planes.

He stood up, walked to the edge of the railing, shaded his eyes against the late afternoon sun. Up towards Craggy Dome there was a fire burning, smoke rising vertical, half a dozen acres from the look of it. Another fire raged much farther out on the distant ridge of the Smokies.

In the village of Black Mountain, nothing seemed to be moving. Usually, before the trees filled in completely, he could see the red and green of the traffic light at the intersection of State and Main. It was off, not even blinking.

He looked back at the grandfather clock. It was usually this time of day that the “million-dollar train” came through, so named because it hauled over a million dollars’ worth of coal, mined out of Kentucky for the power plants down near Charlotte. When the girls were younger, an after-dinner ritual was to drive down to the tracks and wave to the engineer as the five heavy diesel-electric locomotives, thundering with power, pulled their load and crawled towards the Swannanoa Gap tunnel.

The silence was interrupted by a throaty growl as Grandma Jen came up l he driveway in her monster, the Edsel.

She pulled in beside his Talon, got out, and walked up.

“Damnedest thing,” she announced. “Power’s out up at the nursing home. And you should see the interstate, cars just sitting all over the place, not moving.”

“The power at the nursing home?” John asked. “What about the backup generator? That’s supposed to automatically kick in.”

“Well, the lights went out in the nursing home. I mean completely out.”

“They’re supposed to have emergency generation. That’s required,” John said.

“Never kicked on. Someone said there must be a broken relay and they’d get an electrician in. But still, it’s a worry. They had to shift patients on oxygen to bottled air, since the pumps in each room shut off. Tyler’s feeding tube pump shut off as well.”

“Is he all right?”

“He was nearly done with the feeding anyhow, so no bother. They said he’d be ok. So I go out to the parking lot and all the five o’clock shift of nurses and staff were out there, all of them turning keys, and nothing starting… but that old baby, the one you call the monster, just purred to life. Had to be here for my little girl, and that monster, as you call it, worked as it always has.”

She nodded back proudly to her Edsel.

“Can we go for a ride and see everything, Grandma?” Jennifer asked.

“What about your party?” John asked.

“No one else showed up,” Jennifer said sadly.

Grandma Jen leaned over and kissed her on the top of the head.

“Lord’s sake, child, you’re a mess.”

“They were up playing in the field.”

“And wearing your necklace when doing that?” Jen asked, horrified.

John grimaced and realized he should have made sure Jennifer had taken it off before running around with the dogs. If she had lost it or it got broken in the roughhousing with the dogs, there’d have been hell to pay.

“A burger, Jen?” he asked quickly to distract her.

She shook her head.

“Not hungry.”

“At least some cake.”

“Ok.”

He went back into the kitchen and lit the twelve candles on the cake, a special one of course, no sugar, and brought it out singing “Happy Birthday,” Pat and Jen joining in.

The other gifts were now opened, a card from Bob and Barbara Scales with a gift certificate for a hundred bucks for Amazon, the Beanies he had carried over from the wall and lined up on the table. Jennifer tucked Patriot Bear under her arm and opened the huge envelope, half as big as herself, that John had made up the night before, a collage of photos of Disney

World with a fake “Ticket for Jennifer, Daddy, and, oh yeah, Elizabeth” printed in the middle.

It was indeed a hit and now it was his turn to say, “Hey, don’t squeeze so hard; you’ll break my neck.”

Finally it was over, past seven, and Pat started down the hill. Jennifer and the dogs walked her home.

“Guess there’s no Roundtable meeting tonight,” John said, looking back towards town, as Jen helped him load up the dishwasher, even though they couldn’t turn it on.

“What do you think is going on?” Jen asked, and he could hear a touch of nervousness in her voice.

“What do you mean?”

“John, it kind of reminds me of nine-eleven. The silence. But we still had electricity then; we could see the news. All those cars stalled.”

He didn’t say anything. There was a thought, but it was too disturbing to contemplate right now. He wanted to believe that it was just a weird combination of coincidences, a power failure that might be regional, and would ground most flights due to air traffic control. Maybe it was some sort of severe solar storm, potent enough to trigger a massive short circuit; a similar event had happened up in Canada several years ago.

A thought hit him.

“Your monster, let’s go turn it on.”

“Why?”

“You’ll see.”

They went out to the car, John slid into the passenger seat, and she turned the key over, and the car instantly roared to life. The sound, even after but a couple of hours of silence, was reassuring.

He turned on the radio. It really was one of the old ones. With dials to turn, no buttons to push, the slightly yellowed face even had the two small triangles on them marking the frequency of the old Civil Defense broadcast frequencies.

Static, nothing but static from one end of the dial to the other. It was getting towards twilight, usually the time the FCC had most AM stations power down, but the big ones, the ones with enough bucks to pay for the license, should be powering up now to fifty thousand watts, and reaching halfway across the country if the atmospherics were right.

He could remember as a kid making the long drive from Jersey down to

Duke in his old battered 1969 Bug, killing the time by slowly turning the dial, picking up WGN in Chicago—that strange country and western station out of Wheeling, so alien sounding with its laments about pickup trucks and women—and throughout the night, if the atmospherics were just right, WOR out of New York, catching his favorite, Jean Shepherd, in the middle of the night.

Now it was just silence.

“You look worried, Colonel.”

He looked over at her. The way she said “Colonel.”

“Could be nothing. Might be one helluva solar storm, that’s all.”

That seemed to scare her and she looked to the western horizon to where the sun was now low, hanging over the Smokies.

“It isn’t blowing up or something, is it?”

He laughed.

“My dear mother-in-law. If it had blown up, would we still be seeing it?”

A bit embarrassed, she shook her head.

“Major storm on the sun’s surface will send out heavy bursts of various radiations. That’s what triggers the northern lights.”

“Never seen them.”

“Well, you’re not a Yankee, that’s why. Sometimes the storm is so intense it sets off an electrical discharge in the atmosphere that short-circuits electronic equipment.”

“But the cars?”

“Most cars today are loaded with computers. It might explain why yours keeps running and others stopped.”

“People should have kept those old Fords,” she said with a nervous smile.

“Let’s do this, though,” he said quietly. “I’m worried about Elizabeth; let’s drive downtown, see if we can spot her.”

“Fine with me.”

She shifted the car into gear. At the bottom of the driveway he caught sight of Jennifer, shouted for her to pile in, and she ran over, delighted, climbing over her father and sitting between the two of them. That’s the way it used to be forty years ago, he realized. Mom and Dad out for a drive, the kid between them, no bucket seats yet, except in sports cars, Junior not locked up in the back and, of course, belted in.

John just hoped Tom Barker, the town’s chief of police, didn’t spot them. Although John was now a well-confirmed local, Barker might just lay a ticket on them if in a foul mood.

They arrived to the bottom of the hill and Old 70 was empty except for a couple of abandoned cars by the side of the road. But out on the interstate there was indeed a “bunch of cars” as Jennifer had described it. Vehicles on the shoulders, some stalled right in the lanes. Not a traffic jam though, just as if everyone had shut their engines off at the same time and drifted to a stop. Nearly all the passengers were out, some looking over towards them as the Edsel pulled out onto 70 and headed towards town, driving parallel to the interstate.

“There’s Elizabeth!” Jennifer cried, pointing down the road.

Sure enough, it was her, walking with that damn Johnson kid, his arm around her waist… not actually her waist but down lower, nearly resting on her backside. At the sight of the approaching Edsel, Ben quickly jerked his hand away. Jen pulled over to the side of the road and John got out.

“Where in hell have you two been?” John shouted.

“Hey, Dad, isn’t this weird?” Elizabeth said with a smile, pointing towards the interstate.

She already had on her best con artist smile. Her head was tilted slightly, a bit of an “ah, Daddy, chill out,” look in her blue eyes, playing every angle. She was, of course, a sixteen-year-old spitting image of her mother and she knew that would melt him. At this moment it also was triggering one helluva protective surge.

He turned his gaze on Ben. The boy had been a member of the scout troop that John had helped out as an assistant scoutmaster for several years. From that angle, Ben was a good kid, smart, made it to Life before dropping out because by ninth grade scouting wasn’t cool anymore. A nice kid, his dad a member of the Roundtable.

But at this moment, Ben was a young man who had damn near been resting his hand on John’s daughter’s butt and lord knows where else over the last four hours.

“Mr. Matherson, it’s my fault, sir,” Ben said, stepping forward slightly. “Elizabeth and I went into the mall in Asheville after school; we wanted to get something special for Jennifer.”

“Whatya get me?” Jennifer asked excitedly.

“We left it in the car,” Elizabeth replied. “Dad, it was weird; the car just died a couple of miles west of town, near our church. It was weird, so we’ve been walking home.”

John glared coldly at Ben and the boy returned his gaze, not lowering his eyes.

The kid was ok, John realized, didn’t lower his gaze or try to act like a wiseass. He knew he had been seen and was willing to face an angry father. Elizabeth and Ben had been friends when in middle school, both were in the band together, and now, well, now it was obvious over the last several months he had turned into “something different.”

It was just that as John gazed at Ben he remembered how he thought at seventeen and what the prime motivator in life was. Jen was looking over at John with just a touch of a sly grin.

“Ben, how’s your grandpa?”

“Fine, ma’am. We was out fishing together on Saturday on Flat Creek and you should have seen the brookie he reeled in, sixteen inches. Made his day.”

Jen laughed.

“I remember going fishing with him on that same creek. He’d always bait my hook,” and she shuddered. “Lord, how I hated doing that. Tell him I said hi.”

“Yes, ma’am, I will.”

“You need a ride home?” John asked, finally relenting.

“No, sir. It isn’t far,” and he nodded to the other side of the interstate. “I can cross right over from here.”

“All right then, Ben, your folks are most likely worried; get home now.”

“Yes, sir, sorry, sir. Hey, shortie, Happy Birthday.”

“Thanks, Ben.” Like most kid sisters, she had a bit of a crush on her big sister’s boyfriend. And Ben, being a smart kid but also, John grudgingly realized, a good kid, had a liking for Jennifer.

“Night, Elizabeth.”

There was an awkward moment, the two of them gazing at each other. She blushed slightly. Ben turned away, walked over to the fence bordering the interstate, and in seconds had scrambled up and over it.

John watched him cross. Several people standing around their cars went up to Ben, and John didn’t move, just watching. Ben pointed towards the direction of the exit into Black Mountain and then moved on. John breathed a sigh of relief.

“Excuse me. Excuse me!”

John looked over again to the fence that Ben had just scaled. A woman, well dressed, dark gray business suit, with shiny shoulder-length blond hair, was coming up the grassy slope, walking a bit awkwardly in her high heels.

“Ma’am?”

“Can you tell me what’s going on?”

As she approached John, half a dozen more got out of their stalled cars and started towards the fence as well.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, I think I know just about as much as you do.”

“I was just driving along,” and she pointed back to the stalled BMW 330 on the westbound side, “and the engine just went off, the same with everyone else out here.”

“I don’t know for sure,” John said, now choosing his words carefully as he watched more people approaching, four of them men in their late twenties, maybe early thirties, big guys, looked like construction workers. Some sort of instinct began to kick in as he watched them come up behind the woman.

“Hey, buddy, how come your car’s running?” one of them asked. The man speaking was nearly as tall as John, stocky and well built. “Don’t know why it’s running; it just is.”

“Well, it seems strange, don’t you think? All these cars out here dead and that old junker still running.”

“Yeah, guess it does seem strange.”

“What did you do to make it run?”

“It just turned on, that’s all,” John said quietly, fixing the man with his gaze and not letting it drop.

“Sir, can you give me a lift into town?” the woman asked.

He looked at the fence that Ben had scaled with such ease. John caught a glimpse of Ben going over the chain-link fence on the far side of the highway and then trotting up the road towards his house.

More and yet more people were approaching, an elderly couple, a woman leading a child of about six, a couple of teenagers, an overweight man in an expensive business suit, collar open and tie pulled down. A trucker over in the eastbound lane was out of his rig, slowly walking towards John.

“Ma’am, I don’t see how you’ll get over that fence,” John said, nodding to the chain-link fence that separated them. “It’s just over a mile to Exit 64,” and he pointed west. “Don’t get off at Exit 65; there’s just a convenience store there.”

He pointed to the lane for Exit 65 just a couple of hundred yards away that arced off the interstate just before the road curved up over a bridge spanning the railroad tracks.

“Go to Exit 64. You can walk it in twenty minutes. There’s two motels there, one of them a Holiday Inn with a good restaurant as well. You should be able to still get a room till this thing clears up.”

“John?” It was Jen, standing behind him, whispering. “Help her.”

He let his hand drift behind his back and put his hand out forcefully, extended, a signal for Jen to shut up.

In many ways, eight years here had indeed changed him. Women were addressed as “ma’am” and doors were held open for them, no matter what their age. If a man spoke inappropriately to a woman in public and another man was nearby, there would be a fight brewing. The woman in the business suit looked at him appealingly. To refuse her went against a lifetime of thinking and conditioning.

Hell, there was even a touch of something going on here that he never would have dreamed of but ten minutes ago. Since Mary had died, there had been a few brief flirtations, even one brief affair with a professor at the state university, but down deep his heart was never in it; Mary was still too close. The woman on the other side of the fence was attractive, professional looking, early to mid-thirties; a quick glance to her left hand showed no ring. An earlier incarnation of himself, before Mary… he’d have cut the fence down to get to this woman and act as the rescuer. John was almost tempted now to do so.

But there was that “something else” now. A gut instinct that ran deeper. Something had gone wrong, what, he still wasn’t sure, but there were too many anomalies, with the power off, the cars stalled, except for the Edsel, no planes… . Something was wrong. And at this moment, for the first time in a long while, his “city survival senses” were kicking in.

Growing up in a working-class suburb of Newark in the sixties and seventies he had learned survival. He was only seven when the big riots hit Newark in ’67, dividing off for a generation any thought of what some called diversity. Italians stuck to their neighborhoods, Poles and the Irish to theirs, Hispanics to theirs, blacks to theirs, and God save you if you got caught in the wrong neighborhood after dark, and usually in daylight as well.

The interstate, at this instant, had become the wrong neighborhood. The way the four construction workers stood and gazed at him and the car—the one car with a motor still running—was triggering a warning. One of them was obviously drunk, the type that struck John as a belligerent drunk.

Something was changing, had changed, in just the last few hours. If alone, John might have chanced it, and chances were nothing at all would go wrong, but he was a father; his two girls and his mother-in-law would be in that car.

“Come on, buddy,” the one worker said, his voice now edged with a taunting edge. “Help the lady. We’ll push her over for you; then we’ll climb over and you can give us a lift as well.”

She looked back at the four.

“I don’t need your help,” she said coldly.

The drunk laughed softly.

John felt trapped, especially as he spared a quick glance back to Jennifer. Suppose the car was taken right now; it would be a long haul back for her.

At that moment he caught a glance from the truck driver. There was a slight nod and ever so casually he let his right hand, which had been concealed behind his back, drift into view. He was holding a light-caliber pistol. There was a moment of gut tightening for John, but the exchange of glances said it all. “It’s ok, buddy; I’m watching things here.”

John looked back to the woman.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry, I’ve got to get my kids home. You just walk a little less than a mile to the west and you’ll find food and shelter.”

“Rotten shit,” the drunk growled, and moved to start climbing the fence.

“Girls, into the car,” John snapped, and there was no hesitation. The doors slammed behind them. John backed up to the car, the drunk had a hard time negotiating his footing. John slipped into the driver’s seat, slammed into reverse, and floored it.

“Son of a bitch, all we want is a lift,” and as the drunk half-dangled from the fence he flipped John off.

Flooring the gas, John continued to back up all the way to the turnoff to their road, threw the gear into forward, and roared up the dirt road.

“John Matherson, I can’t believe you left that lady like that. Especially with those men around her.”

“I have a family,” John said coldly, looking into the rearview mirror to where Elizabeth and Jennifer were in the backseat, both of them silent. He could sense their accusation, that Dad had chickened out. He shook his head and said nothing.

He pulled into the driveway, the dogs started to bound around him but then, sensing his mood, shifted their attention to Jennifer and Elizabeth.

“Girls, it’s getting dark. Remember the hurricane last year when we all piled into my bedroom? It’ll be like that tonight. Elizabeth, get out the Coleman lantern; you know how to light it. Jennifer, you help her.”

“Come on, Dad; I think you’re being a little uptight.”

“Just do it, Elizabeth,” he said slowly and forcefully.

“All right.”

The two headed to the door, Jennifer pestered Elizabeth as to what her birthday present was.

“And Elizabeth, after you get the lantern lit, help Jennifer with her injection. Don’t keep the medication out of the fridge any longer than you have to.”

“Ok, Dad.”

“Then feed the dogs.”

“Sure, Dad.”

The girls went in. John fished in his pocket for a cigarette, pulled it out, and lit it.

“Are you going back to help that woman?”

“No.”

Jen was silent for a moment. “I’m surprised at you, John.”

“I know I’m right. I go down to that highway and those bastards might take this car.”

“But what about her? The woman? Does it bother you?” He looked at Jen sharply. “What the hell do you mean?”

“That woman. And there was another one with a small child. They could be raped.” He shook his head.

“No, not yet. Those guys weren’t all that bad. The drunk was out of hand; the loudmouth one was just trying to show off in front of his buddies and the woman. Sure, it’s strange, our car running, the others not, and if I went back down they’d be tempted to take it. Or worse yet, I’d be stuck all night running a shuttle service for everyone stalled on the highway, and running into yet more drunks with a bad attitude.

“But rape? No, too many others down there are ok. Everyone else is sober; the truck driver down there had a gun in his hand, though you might not of seen it. He’ll keep order. That woman and the others will be ok. I wouldn’t worry about that yet.”

“Yet?”

He sighed, shook his head, let his finished cigarette fall, then fished out another one and began to smoke it.

“I’d like you to stay here tonight, Jen. The girls would love it.”

“You worried about me?”

“Frankly, yes. I don’t like the idea of you driving around alone at night in this monster,” and as he spoke he slapped the hood of the Edsel. “I’ll stay.”

He looked down at her, surprised there was no argument, about the cat needing to be put out or some other excuse. It was dark enough now he couldn’t see her face, but he could sense her voice. She was afraid.

“It’s so dark,” she whispered.

He looked around. It teas dark. There wasn’t a single light down in the town, except for what appeared to be the flicker of a Coleman lamp, some candles. All the houses rimming the valley were dark as well. No reflected lights from the highway, none of the annoying high-intensity lithium glare from the service stations at the exit, not a light showing from the skyline of Asheville. There was a dull red glow, what looked to be the fire up on the side of the mountain towards Craggy Dome.

The stars arced the heavens with a magnificent splendor. He hadn’t seen stars like this since being out in the desert in Saudi Arabia… before the oil wells started to burn. There was absolutely no ambient light to drown the stars out. It was magnificent and, he found, calming as well.

“Head on in, Jen. I’ll be along in a minute.”

She left his side, moving slowly. From inside the house he could now see the glare of the Coleman and, a moment later, heard laughter, which was reassuring.

He finished the second cigarette and let it drop, watching as it glowed on the concrete pavement of the driveway. It slowly winked out.

Opening the door of his Talon, he slipped in and turned the switch. Nothing, not even a stutter from the starter motor, no dashboard lights… nothing.

He reached under the seat, pulled out a heavy six D-cell flashlight, and flicked the switch. It came on.

When he went into the house the girls were already making a game out of camping out.

“Dad, Jennifer’s new tester doesn’t work,” Elizabeth said.

“What?”

“The new blood tester. I found the old one, though, and we used that. She’s ok.”

“Fine, honey.”

Somehow, that little fact now did set off more alarm bells within. The new testing kit was a high-tech marvel with a built-in computer that kept a downloadable record of her blood levels. In another week she was supposed to be fitted out with one of the new implanted insulin pumps… and something told him he should be glad they had not yet done so.

“Ok.”

Elizabeth started to turn away. He took a deep breath.

“Elizabeth?”

“Yeah, Dad?”

“Ah, you and Ben,” he felt embarrassed suddenly, “you know, is there anything we should talk about?”

“Come on, Dad. Now?”

“Yeah, you’re right. Get your sister settled in and let’s call it a night.”

“Dad, it’s not even eight yet.”

“Like the hurricane, kid. We went four days then and by the end of it we were asleep when it got dark and up at dawn.”

“Ok.”

He looked into his bedroom and Jennifer was, to his delight, lining up her new Beanies along what she had already claimed was her side of the king-size water bed. Clutched under her arm was her beloved Rabs, the stuffed rabbit that Bob and Barbara gave to her the day she was born and which had been Jennifer’s steadfast companion for twelve years.

Once a fuzzy white, old Rabs was now a sort of permanent dingy gray. Rabs had survived much, upset stomachs, once being left behind at a restaurant and the family drove nearly a hundred miles back to retrieve him while Jennifer cried every mile of the way, a kidnapping by a neighbor’s dog, with Dad then spending two days prowling the woods looking for him. He was patched, worn smooth in places, and though she was twelve today, Rabs was still her buddy and John suspected always would be… until finally there might be a day when, left behind as a young lady went off to college, Rabs would then rest on her father’s desk to remind him of the precious times before.

The dogs had finished up chomping down their dinner and he let them out for their evening run. Ginger was a bit nervous going out, since usually he’d throw on the spotlights for them. At this time of year bears with their newborn cubs were wandering about, raccoons were out, and the sight of either would nearly trigger a heart attack. She did her business quickly and darted back in, settling down at Jennifer’s feet.

“No school tomorrow?” Jennifer asked hopefully.

“Well, if the lights come on during the night, you’ll know there’s school. If not, no school.”

“Hope it stays pitch-black all night.”

“You want me in the guest room?” Jen asked, carrying the Coleman lantern.

“In with us, Grandma,” Jennifer announced.

“That puts me in the middle,” Elizabeth complained, “and Brat here kicks when she’s asleep.”

“All right, ladies, I’ll be out in my office. Now get to sleep.” Jen smiled and went into the bathroom, carrying the lantern.

“Night, girls.”

“Love you, Daddy.”

“Love you, too.”

He closed the door and went into his office. He sat down for a moment at his desk, setting the flashlight on end so that the beam pointed to the ceiling, filling the room with a reflected glow.

The office had always driven Mary crazy. She expected “better” of a military man to which his retort always was that she had also married a professor. Stacks of paper were piled up on either side of his desk, filed, he used to say, by “geological strata.” A floor-to-ceiling bookshelf to his left held books two rows deep, the references for whatever he was working on at the moment, or what interested him, on the nearest shelf. The other walls were lined with photos, his framed degrees, Mary’s degree, pictures of the kids.

He stood gazing at the bookshelf for a moment, pulled several books from the outer layer aside, found what he wanted, and fished the volume out. He had not opened it in years, not since leaving the war college.

Sitting down and propping the book on his knees, he held the flashlight with one hand, checked the chapter headings of the work, a mid-1990s dot-matrix computer printout, then sat back and read for half an hour. He finally put the report down on his desk.

Behind him was a locked cabinet, and opening his desk, he pulled out a single key, unlocked the cabinet, and swung the door open. He reached in, hesitated for a second, deciding which one, then pulled out his pump 20-gauge bird gun. From the ammunition rack he opened up a box of bird shot, and slipped three rounds in. The bird shot was not a killing load, except at very close range, but definitely a deterrent.

Next was the pistol. It was, he knew, an eccentric touch. A cap-and-ball Colt Dragoon. A big, heavy mother of a gun, the sight of it enough to scare the crap out of most drunks.

John had actually been forced to use it once for real, back in his undergraduate days, before he met Mary. He was living off campus, in a farmhouse shared with half a dozen other guys, all of them rather hippieish that year, long haired, the year he definitely smoked a little too much dope… something that Mary had made clear would stop on day one if they were to date.

Some local good old boys had taken a distinct dislike to “long-haired faggots” living nearby and one night did a “drive-by,” blowing out the kitchen door with a load of buckshot, yelling for the faggots to come out and get what they deserved.

His roommates were freaked, one of them cried that they were in the middle of Deliverance. But their attackers had not counted on one of the “faggots” being from New Jersey, already into Civil War reenacting, and someone who knew guns. He had come out, Dragoon revolver in hand, leveled it, and fired off two rounds of his cannon. Not aiming to kill, just to make them duck a bit. After pumping out the two rounds, he lowered his aim straight at the chest of the redneck with the shotgun.

“Next shot’s for real,” John said calmly.

The rednecks piled into their truck and disappeared in one helluva hurry, his buddies standing on the porch, in awe as he walked back, feeling more than a little like Gary Cooper in High Noon.

“Peace through superior firepower,” he said calmly, then went inside and poured himself one helluva vodka to calm down while his roommates chattered away, reenacting the drama for half the night.

What had truly scared him? The realization that he was ready to kill one of the bastards if they had tried to venture another shot. Reflecting on it later, he didn’t like that feeling at all, and hoped he’d never have it again… though he would, years later in Iraq, but at least then he was not pulling the trigger just ordering others to do so.

The following morning, a Saturday, the landlord had come over with a case of beer, asked to see this now-legendary gun, and said that “you boys got some respect now.”

A month later, stopping in a roadside bar with a couple of friends to get a beer, John had run into one of the four who had been his harassers. John recognized him, there was a tense moment, and the redneck broke out laughing, brought John a beer, and told everyone the story, concluding with “this Yankee boy’s ok,” and they shook hands.

Damn, even then he did love the South.

The revolver was already loaded, and he put it on his desk.

He suddenly realized someone was in the room and looked up. It was Jen in the doorway.

“This is serious, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Go to sleep.” He hesitated. “Mom.”

She stood silent for a moment, nodded, then disappeared.

Without taking his shoes off, John stretched out on the sofa in his office, laying the shotgun down on the floor by his side.

It was a long couple of hours before he finally drifted to sleep. As he began to fall asleep, Zach disengaged himself from Jennifer’s embrace, came out to the office, and with a sigh settled down by John’s side.