Chapter 3: Rock Fall Minus Fourteen

I was pleased with the progress of my preparations, and so the next day I went to the local community center in good spirits to offer my services.

Mark greeted me at the door, thanked me, and then turned me over to his wife, Sarah.

She led me to a computer and handed me a stack of information sheets. “What we’re doing first is putting the personal information of those who volunteered into the system first. This is nothing but scut work. Will you work on it?”

“Do scut work?” I asked. “Sarah, I told Mark I’d do anything. This is something, so I’m fine.”

That was at eight o’clock in the morning, and by noon, I was in desperate need of a break. I got up and stretched, and a girl of about sixteen appeared at my side. “There are sandwiches downstairs, sir.”

I thanked her and went downstairs. The Kim family were the Korean owners of our town market. Steve Kim was the husband’s name, and Elaine was his wife’s name. I was pretty sure those weren’t their real names, but they were determined to stick with them. Elaine had brought sandwich-making materials from the store, and a half dozen kids had helped her make sandwiches for the volunteers.

I took a ham and cheese, feeling guilty; some potato chips, a dill pickle, and a cold twelve-ounce can of Coke. It was Spartan, but I denied my stomach a second helping. The girl came and cleared off my things as I stood up. “We’re neighbors,” she said out of the blue.

I tried not to laugh. “I don’t have any. The Steeds are at the corner, but that corner is nearly a mile away, and you aren’t one of them — they all have flaming red hair.” The girl was thin and straw-blonde.

I went on. “The Taylors and Hills are out at the county road. You can’t be a Taylor — they run to boys, and the Hills didn’t like my father and wouldn’t speak to me if their lives depended on it.”

“Mom and Dad live on Deep Creek. Your house is two and a half miles east of our house. There’s nothing but forest between us.”

I blinked. A sixteen-year-old knew that? A girl?

“Have you crossed it?”

She made a face. “It’s hard. Twice, I’ve done it. My Uncle Brian says you can come up to someone’s house you find in the forest, but you have to stay out of easy eyeball range until you get to the front door. He was in the army, in Iraq. He’s back now.”

“Well, I’ll be honest. I’ve never had the fortitude to make it to Deep Creek — not since I was your age.”

“Anyway,” she repeated, “we’re neighbors.”

“I guess we are.” It was impulse; I had no idea what the result would be. I stuck out my hand. “Howdy, neighbor!”

She shook my hand, beaming, then ran off with my trash to take care of it. A while later, Emma sat down next to me.

“I saw you talking to Lynn Sweet.”

“The sixteen-year-old?” I asked, and she nodded.

“She’s bright and eager.”

“Her parents are scum of the earth, Logan. They came in earlier, saying they wanted to help. I offered each of them three different tasks, and they both said, ‘We couldn’t do that.’ Finally, they said that they hoped that we wouldn’t mind if Lynn made herself useful in their stead — and then they left. Instant baby-sitting service.”

I controlled my temper. “Well, she seems bright enough. She can have my job next time.”

“And you’d do what?”

“Fetch sandwiches.”

Sarah laughed at that and then handed me more information forms.

I entered those into the computer, knowing I was actually updating the server. At four, I told Sarah that I had a few chores at home. She was forthright.

“You and I, Logan. We were the only two adults to stick out the day. Only Lynn did as well, but that’s because her parents haven’t shown up yet.”

“Sarah, it will change. As things get closer, people are going to start to realize things aren’t all that they’re being told. People are going to start showing up, asking for things to do. You need to start thinking about tasks for them now, because you don’t want to tell them, ‘Thanks, but we’re covered.’”

“No,” she replied. “We can’t do that. You’re right, Logan. Speaking in Mark’s stead, thanks.”

“No problem. I’ll be back in a day or two.” I looked her in the eye. “I’m pretty sure that my day job is going to evaporate here in the next week.”

“Well, Mark has plenty of job security,” she jested.

I tried to smile, but we both knew that that kind of security could turn into a catastrophe in a second.

When I went out, Lynn was outside, watching the parking lot. “Thanks, sir,” she told me, as if she’d been organizing the volunteers.

“Thank you, Lynn. I’ll be back in a couple of days.”

She smiled slightly at hearing her name. “My parents were talking between themselves. I don’t know why, but they think I’m deaf. They’re going to leave me at the community center any day there’s no school. School is on half days for the ‘duration.’”

“Jock Harris was the principal when I was going to school,” I told her. “He only declared snow days when he looked out his office window and saw snow piled up window-high. I guess things must be bad.”

“Not to mention, Saturdays and Sundays,” she added. “My father works for a law firm in Portland. He says they are going to sue the government for scaring people.” She held my eyes, and I realized she didn’t think that the government was scaring people.

“Well, see you around,” I told her.

Work was, well, work. It occupied time but was growing to be less and less of an intellectual task. On Wednesday, we were called into the GM’s office again.

“Once again, you have to reassure our associates that we aren’t contemplating job cuts, except among the temporary employees we hired during the first days of the immediate crisis. The company has enough cash on hand to fund operations at current levels for ninety days, even if we don’t sell another bean or grain of rice.

“Our non-food sales peaked and have since stabilized. We’ve discounted further any number of consumer-electronic items, and sales show that this was a good decision. That said, we have a lot of our associates standing around, and frankly, that looks bad.

“So, what we are going to do is offer paid furloughs to some of our employees. This is not to be considered a layoff. Anyone furloughed will retain every bit of seniority, working or not, and will be paid as if they were here. At the current time, we will be furloughing non-essential associates, those that request it, at a hundred percent of pay and benefits. They simply no longer have to show up. You, their managers, are going to have to do those certifications, and I assume you understand that you can’t be arbitrary and that you have to be fair.”

There was lots and lots more, but it all boiled down to the same thing — about half of the employees no longer needed to show up for work. I went to Ed that afternoon.

“I’m not a rat, deserting the sinking ship,” I told him. “But the four shift supervisors can do my job as well as I can. What I’d like to propose is my showing up only three days a week instead of five.”

That was quite acceptable, and before the end of the day, I got the message to Herb.

The next day, I showed up at the community center, and Sarah was there, but not Mark. “I’m glad to see you, Logan,” she told me. “I’m going to do you a special favor.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“If you start now, I won’t put you on babysitter duty when school lets out. It’s dispiriting how many parents have decided that the emergency coordination center is the place to dump their kids after school.”

“Well, if you need someone to play Death Ball with them, let me know.”

“Death Ball?” she asked warily.

“Dodge ball, but we use a bomb instead of a ball. Hang on too long, and you lose, so to speak.”

She laughed nervously. “No, we’re not to that point yet. Be good, or you’ll be in charge of jump rope.”

Well, I’d been bluffing, but I was pretty sure Sarah knew that.

I sat down at the computer and started working on the stack of information sheets. This time, it was a bit more complicated, as Jim had been sending out deputies to “correct” information if he knew it wasn’t accurate. No matter how many times they told people that there was no intent to confiscate property, everyone thought that’s what it meant.

Lunch consisted of Mrs. Kim’s sandwiches again, and once again, the young woman, Lynn Sweet, was there. She touched me on the shoulder and asked what I wanted, and I told her roast beef. A few minutes later, I had a roast beef sandwich and an ice cream scoop of potato salad. I thanked Lynn and continued to work. It seemed as if Sarah brought more forms ten times faster than I could process them.

About three, I saw Lynn sitting next to me at a computer, doing I knew not what. Soon, though, I knew. She handed me a stack of papers. “The stuff in yellow, that’s changed,” she told me. “No yellow, no change.”

I was pleased and spot-checked as I went. I found no mistakes on her part, and an awful lot of people who’d filed new forms that had no changes.

At six, I was done for the day and got up and stretched. Lynn had finished another stack and put them in my “in-basket.”

“Mañana,” I told her.

“Or über-mañana,” she replied. I put that together. Those two words were correct German and correct Spanish. You just didn’t expect the two languages together.

Once again, as I left, Lynn’s parents were late picking her up, only this time I was treated to an involuntary harangue from Lynn’s mother about how Lynn was late and inconsiderate. Lynn stood, her head bowed. I was pretty sure the admonitions coming at her were like water running off a duck’s back.

I spent a while that night working on things in the barn, and was surprised that before I quit, Amy showed up to help. She said nothing about the task, she just helped move bags of flour and rice into plastics, then helped seal them. At nine, I broke for dinner and she joined me for baked chicken.

“You’re quiet,” I told her.

“This is none of my business, none of the stuff you’re packing is mine — you’re entitled to my lack of curiosity,” she told me.

“And, I swear, at Christmas, I’ll tell all. The best Christmas present you ever had.”

She laughed. “We didn’t do Christmas, so yeah, no sweat. Logan, I know I sounded like a queen bitch, but I’m not. I know what you know and I don’t think things are as rosy as we’re being told. That said, I don’t want to rock the boat or go as negative as I feel.”

“Steady on is my watchword,” I told her. “Are you here permanently?”

“Yes, I’ve set up an office in the bedroom under yours, downstairs. I’m hoping I’ll have that bathroom to myself — at least for a while.”

I didn’t want to mention that that bedroom always went to guests my father hated, as did the bathroom. The downstairs bedrooms sucked individually and in combination. Anyone who started to spend a night in that bedroom who didn’t know what “water hammer” meant, knew by morning.