Rock Fall
Copyright© 2015 by Gina Marie Wylie
Chapter 15: Tales of the Survivors
Chris and his wives gathered as part of the send off party for the Kenyons, then they returned to the business of living after Rock Fall. They had tentatively agreed to the government plan for their future, Chris coming up with an argument that trumped Amy’s concerns. While they had agreed to it, what could the government do if they changed their minds at the last minute? They had never noticed any interference with Amy’s communication to her network of friends, and the interim president was sounding like someone after their own hearts.
The weather gradually warmed up and it seemed like the usual weather in late March, if a bit cooler. There were no further nasty storms, and while it wasn’t as warm as it had been some years, it wasn’t a particularly bad year. The rest of the country wasn’t as lucky, as pockets of bad weather would race across the nation, leaving much devastation in the wake of the storms.
Chris announced he had seed for sale to the local farmers, and was surprised how fast it was snapped up. Many of the suppliers were unable to provide seed in the same quantities as in years past, so the additional was welcome. Even though the economy had gone off the rails after Rock Fall, the actions of the interim president went a long ways towards returning things to normal. Inflation had been heavy at first, but it slowed down as more and more people regained confidence in the government. In March the first Social Security checks had gone out to about two-thirds of the people who had been drawing them before. The refugees had created a nightmare of address changes. People turned out to be surprising patient as long the government was attempting to resolve the problems.
Health care was a major issue and was a thousand times knottier than Social Security. For nearly two months after Rock Fall people hadn’t been charged when they went to the hospital. The insurance companies, were for the most part, bankrupt. The Affordable Care Act was voided, insurance companies were allowed to do business wherever they wanted, and the entire health insurance business was gradually coming under control, with the government essentially buying all the medical supplies and giving them to the hospitals for promises to pay when and what they could. The hospitals were frantically working with the insurance companies to establish the old lines of payment; because the government payments to hospitals had stopped ... they were getting the medical supplies, weren’t they?
There were some bright spots to go with all the bad news. There had been no offshore oil wells off the West Coast, and the refineries had been shutdown in advance of Rock Fall. Thus there were no major spills. The refineries were in decent shape although damaged by the tsunamis and the earthquakes. Then the interim president announced that the government would open oil leasing off both coasts and in Alaska and it came as no surprise that the large oil companies had squirreled away a lot of money, giving the central government a huge windfall, that helped to pay some of the extraordinary expenses of Rock Fall.
Further, the drilling and oil production, including fracking, was encouraged. The US overnight became the largest oil exporter in the world. The interim president announced that the regulations of the federal government, all of them, adopted after 1976 were either cancelled or subject to review ... and then most of them cancelled. All of the regulations. States were encouraged to do the same thing. Tar and feathers returned to state and local officials who wouldn’t go along. There had been a lot of animosity pent up in people, having suffered for years with small, incremental cuts and they were fed up with it. And were unwilling to wait until the next election cycle to vote the bums out.
Keith and a group of the miners petitioned Chris to name their little village North Pine Valley. Chris and his wives talked it over for about a minute and granted the petition. There was a christening party where a water was smashed on a gatepost over the road, just before it got to the mobiles.
After the celebration, Amy and Sydney came up to Chris. “Are we having too many parties, Chris?” Sydney asked.
Chris started to speak, then stopped and thought about it. “It seems callous to celebrate when a third of the world’s people are dead, and nearly two million Americans. I had to think about for a second and you need to think about it too.
“The people here, even those back in town are doing better than much of the world, and even better than many of our fellow countrymen. The storms are killing hundreds of people at a time ... and let’s face it: we have been lucky. Unbelievably lucky.”
“As well as provident,” Sydney declared gravely.
“All our providence didn’t stop the lightning storm at the outset. Planning affected the outcome, execution of the plan affected how we did ... and still it was just luck. Amy, you have to know when the banditos came, if they had delayed an hour you would have had a tough job just staying alive. And I’m as sure as I can be that the Air Force wouldn’t have come unless you had spotted them. That was neither planning nor execution ... it was all luck.
“We are keeping people safe, and that’s reason to party. What was Thanksgiving originally? A party celebrating the Plymouth colony’s good fortune. If you need something to celebrate — and people do — what better to celebrate than good fortune. If a significant number of the early settlers were dead, what would they have had to celebrate?”
Sydney leaned close and kissed Chris on the cheek. “Bless you and keep you, my husband ... for you are our light as well as our guardian and stay.”
Chris smiled at Sydney and Amy, but inwardly he quailed. Later he asked if Bishop Flake would walk with him and the bishop grinned. “My wives expect me to walk several times a day with them, and I’m given a long harangue on taking better care of myself. You wouldn’t do that to an old man, Brother Chris, I’m certain of it.”
There was a good view of Pine Valley a few hundred yards from the main house. Chris’ great grandfather had written about it in his journals. “I have turned my eyes from the town. It exists and I wish it no ill, but then again, I don’t want to look down on it. If I did that on a regular basis, I would come to take looking down on them for granted, but in truth they are like all men, even myself. There is the good, the bad and above all, the great indifference to another’s travails. And for most men, indifference to travails is a shield from having to think about the vicissitudes of life, leaving them free to contemplate the future with some equanimity.”
“Sydney and Amy asked if we were having too many parties here,” Chris said. “I said that they were useful for the morale of the people; I didn’t really answer their question.”
“When I was studying for the ministry the question also came up, although in a different context. The professor teaching the class laughed at the question. The Catholics, noted idolaters, have feast days every day of the year for one saint or another. They have had to move feast days around to accommodate them, and the truth be known, there are more than 800 official saints, so they could have two or three saints to celebrate. But, the professor asked, what was a church service? A celebration of Christ. And we usually have two or three a week.
“Yes, it is so routine that people don’t even think about it. It has become habit for some. Very, very few people understand the meaning and truly celebrate the day as it should. I, for one, had a habit of listing the place of the week’s service in the liturgy in the program.
“Brother Chris, celebrations are parties. The official stance of most churches is that we wish to celebrate every day, but fear it would come to be taken for granted and the meaning lost. Right now, no one is going to wonder what we are celebrating and there is no danger of the reason being forgotten.”
A girl of about six came running up to them.
Bishop Flake smiled gently and spoke to her. “I’m sure your mother knows where you are.”
“Father Flake, Donovan is on the steps of the house watching over me. He says to come quick. There was an announcement just now on the TV. Mother Kathleen, Brother Chris and his wives will be on TV shortly and you should some quick.”
She was off running again, back to where Donovan was standing on the steps. The bishop sighed. “You will find out in due course. Children are God’s greatest blessing, but they put their parents through private fears. It is human nature to pick favorites, and it is something you must learn not to show. After Kathleen left, little Sarah has been my favorite. She is my youngest wife’s first child.”
He sighed heavily again. “Brother Chris, I’ve been a hopeless tool of my daughters all my life. Joanna figured it out when she was six and started to use it to get her way in everything. Her mother was quicker to pick up on it than I was, and forbade me to show her any favor. That put Joanna’s back up. We thought she would grow out of it, but the truth was we grew into it instead. I was pig-headed and she was. I can’t believe we wasted all those years over a disagreement on a topic ... I might have come to understand much sooner if I hadn’t been as bound up in my personal pique as she was.”
Chris looked him in the eye. “We should go see what the statists have to say about us.”
The bishop barked a laugh. “There’s nothing greater to show the bankruptcy of the statists, that we don’t even trust them to do a puff piece.”
“Too much information, sir,” Chris replied.
“Brother Chris, it is the duty of my generation to try to show the younger generation where the pitfalls are. It seems as though the next generation finds new ways to fall into the old pitfalls. You’re right about what we should just now.” He turned and headed for the house, Chris at his side.
Amy greeted them at the door. “Donovan was watching the news as he usually does. Gosh he is the worst news junkie I’ve ever met! A few minutes ago they ran the same preview. The piece is entitled ‘American Bravery’ and is coming up in a half hour. In the preview, they showed still pictures of Sister Kathleen, Sister Sydney and Husband Chris. I was there too. I think the Kenyons might have been taking pictures while they were here.”
The word spread quickly and everyone who could crowd into the house came, while others gathered around TV sets in a few of the mobiles.
When it started, it showed the interim president sitting in the Oval Office. “My advisors tell me that we should celebrate our heroes. Like on 9-11, the first responders rushed to succor those in the Twin Towers.