Rock Fall Revisited
Copyright© 2021 by Gina Marie Wylie
Chapter 4: Rock Fall Minus Seven
Monday was another strange day at work. With less than two weeks before Rock Fall, people were getting more and more nervous, and as I noticed earlier, some were dealing with the tension well and others weren’t. People were slowly growing aware that there was something they weren’t being told, but there wasn’t a groundswell of concern — just a current.
There were a few leaks from the scientific community as well; scientists who weren’t nearly as confident as the government was about happy outcomes.
Business at the warehouse was as strange as our customers had become. Books, DVDs, and music sold well, although the sales volume declined steadily. All of our batteries and flashlights were gone, and while there had been some rush to buy clothes, not as much as I might have expected.
Big-ticket items like computers, TVs, sound systems, appliances, and the like had all but stopped selling. Tools were gone, as were any sort of container that could be used for storage.
But there was something on Monday that was the harbinger of things to come — we had more people working the registers than we had wanting to check out, even after our first staff cutbacks. At one p.m. in the afternoon, Ed asked for volunteers to go home — but they would still be paid.
That was a mistake because everyone promptly volunteered. Most of the managers worked either quick lotteries or picked and chose. Personally, I was a lottery guy, and by one thirty, we still had more staff than customers.
At four, there were three floor managers working the registers; I was at the door checking carts, and the warehouse was dark. We hadn’t had an inbound shipment in days, and we had nothing to transship to another store.
At seven, it was Ed, myself, and the day store manager. Ed shrugged and said he’d see us Tuesday, and we closed early, not having had a customer after five p.m.
I arrived home to find Sarah and her two five-year-olds, Abigail and Martha, visiting Herb, Emma, Amy, and Roger, Herb’s boy, Virginia Baker, and Josh Marlowe. And, a minor surprise was to see Lynn standing with the others.
It was mildly amusing because the three younger children formed a group while Lynn stood with the adults.
Introductions were made, and I asked everyone to sit in the living room, even the young people. “First, I want you to understand that we’re in this together. This is my house, a lot of my supplies, and a lot of my other things. I’m not God, I’m not Joe Stalin — I’m going to try to run this like an Athenian democracy, where everyone gets to have their say.
“You young people have to recognize that while we want to hear your opinions and we want to know how you feel about things, that doesn’t mean we’re going to do things that you’ll like. Sarah, Emma, and Amy are going to be here a lot. There will be both school and chores, whether you like it or not.
“My house has nine bedrooms. Can everyone here count to nine?”
Both of the five-year-olds assured me that they could.
“If you count the people sitting in this room, there are two couples, four young people, and three single adults. Two couples mean two bedrooms are for them. Three single adults mean that at least for now, we get our own rooms. That leaves four young people and four bedrooms.
“While that sounds like everyone gets their own room, for now, that’s not going to be the case. It’s not going to be fair, but I understand you twins sleep in the same room.”
Again, they nodded.
“So, for right now, you two will share with Lynn, and Roger can have a room to himself. I know that’s uneven, but if we get any more boys, they’ll be put in with Roger. I wish I could put you in a room to yourself, Lynn, but not just yet.
“And now I’m speaking to everyone. It is important that you do not talk about anything you see here with anyone from outside. The exception to that, Sarah, is you, and I’m going to have to rely on your good judgment not to tell Mark things he doesn’t need to know.
“And, Sarah, as I’ve made it clear, you are welcome. Mark is welcome if he comes here — for that matter, Jim, Nita, and their three boys are welcome. For right now, though, this is it.
“In a bit, I’m going to talk to Virginia and Josh, and while I’m doing that, Herb, Emma, Amy, Sarah, Lynn, Roger, the twins, should get to know each other.
“It is my intention to share what I’ve got with only a few strings attached. Those strings are that everyone has to pull their own weight. No one gets any special preferences unless there’s a reason for it.
“Are there any questions?”
Josh waved his hand. “Amy says we’re screwed, that the government isn’t giving us the straight shit.”
“Josh, I’m not a language Nazi, but I’ve heard Sarah reminding Mark about his. Please, we have young children, and we should watch our language. Not only should we not use our usual obscenities, but I don’t think we need to argue about things in front of the young people either.
“And yes, Josh, I do think things aren’t nearly as rosy as they say. Now, with less than two weeks to go, they’re talking about ‘possible temperature anomalies of from a half degree to as much as a degree and a half.’ I’m sorry, but they didn’t attach a sign to those numbers — the temperature isn’t going to warm up in the winter time. It’s going to get colder. We live relatively far north, and we can expect snow as well as rain. It’s anybody’s guess how long it will rain and snow.
“However, if it stays cold and wet much past May, it means no food crops are going to be planted this year around here. We are going to have to go slowly and carefully and see how things turn out.”
“Do you think they’d lie to us?” Virginia asked.
“You know the answer to that yourself. For two weeks, there has been only minimal concern from the government, and no speculation about effects has appeared. Now, less than two weeks away from the impact, they are starting to talk about some effects.
“It is my considered opinion that the bureaucrats are starting to lose their nerve, realizing that if they don’t prepare people, they’ll very probably and very literally end their lives as lamppost decorations.
“I expect that there will be growing rumbles in the next few days, until finally, one of the news outlets breaks the story that things really aren’t going to be that rosy.”
I went on with a few more of my expectations, keeping them mild. There weren’t any other questions just then, so I went downstairs and talked with Virginia Baker and Josh Marlowe.
Virginia was blonde, very pretty, and dressed conservatively. Josh had light brown hair and piercing blue eyes.
We talked about what they did — Virginia repeated that she taught biology at the high school, and Josh said he was a freshman at the University of Washington at Vancouver. I explained a little of my history. On short acquaintance, they seemed like nice people.
Josh finally had to ask the question. “Is our age a problem?”
“No,” I told him.
“Josh has never been my student,” Virginia said defensively.
“It’s not a problem. You’re Amy’s half-sister, right?”
She looked at me warily but nodded.
“As I told your sister the other night — there are traditional ways that you could be half-sisters — lord knows, there are enough divorces and remarriages these days, and there are non-traditional routes. I don’t have a problem with either, and it’s none of my business one way or the other. I don’t care who is married — or living with — who. I’m not concerned about ages — that’s for the people involved. If you’re comfortable with it, so am I.”
“If I’m right, we are going to face a very difficult time starting in six or eight weeks, at the most. The only way to get through it is if we work together and judge people on who they are and what they do — not secondary issues like who they go to bed with. Or, in my case, who I don’t sleep with. I’m not in the market.”
Virginia regarded me coolly. “So, you’re in it for the sheer altruism?”
I laughed. “I’m a believer in enlightened self-interest. Contemplate how much chance I would have of getting through this sitting on enough food to feed this many people for a couple of years, or a hundred people for a couple of months? Not very long, I should think.”
Virginia nodded grudgingly. “So, you’re the captain of the lifeboat and we’re the crew.”
“I’m the captain and you can be all that you can be,” I corrected her. “I don’t get off telling people what to do. I was a manager in the army and I’m a manager today. The reason I manage is that I don’t have trouble telling people what to do, and on top of that, I can talk people around to doing it.
“I had problems in the army because I did my job too well. I didn’t steal, I didn’t take kickbacks and I didn’t let people around me do those things either. My fellow supply officers recommended me for discharge.
“On the other hand, my civilian employer — and my employees — really like me, because I run things fairly and smoothly. It’s something I can do well. Herb can tell you about that.
“That said, I don’t mind that you can’t expect confidence in someone’s leadership on trust — I’ll do like I’ve done all my life. I’ll earn it. Ask Sarah, she’s known me for longer than the rest of you have — even Herb — put together. Mark, Sarah’s husband, has known me even longer. Do you think he sent his wife and kids here because he’s sure I’m a screw-up, and that everything is going to be fine?”
Virginia sighed. “It’s just that there’s Josh, Herb, you, and Roger ... and seven females. I’m not quite as paranoid as Amy, but I have some of the same genes. Some of the men in religions similar to mine have delusions of potency and how women should show their loyalty. You sound like one of them, at times.”
“Well, I’m like none of them at any time. I’m not looking to build a harem. And, of the women you talk about, four are underage ... so it’s really three adult men and four adult women — not such a huge disparity.”
“You’re making an ass out of yourself, Ginny,” Josh told her. “He’s right. We need to see how things turn out. No matter what, this is a better place to weather the storm than anything else we’ve seen or heard of.”
Virginia laughed sourly. “I suppose. For your information, Logan, for two years as an undergraduate, I worked with Dean Connell as a research assistant. He was the go-to guy on Near Earth Asteroids. I talked to him a few days ago, and he was furious. None of the news organizations will take his calls; none of them will take calls from anyone in the field.”
“Again,” I spoke with emphasis, “what we need to do is get past secondary issues like ‘why is the government doing this’ to the objective realities of what’s going to happen and what we can do to prepare for it.”
“Amen,” Josh said, bringing giggles from Virginia. We rejoined the others and talked about other things for about an hour, then I crashed.
Tuesday at work was an eye-opener. Ed spent the morning on a conference call with the top management of the company, while the rest of us did what we could to keep busy. There was a burst of business around eleven a.m., but that was in relative terms, not in the absolute sense. At noon, Ed appeared and gathered the managers in our own conference room.
“The company wants to be known as a company who was there through thick and thin. But the fact is that what business we have left isn’t paying the electric bill, much less the rest of the overhead — particularly salaries.”
“Still, we have a little business, and we want to keep the flag raised. So, we’re going to furlough, with pay, everyone who isn’t needed for the next twenty days, until Monday, December 13th. Logan, inbound shipments?”
“We have no appointments at all in the book. It will take only an hour before we can start receiving again, and another hour after that before we can start restocking the shelves.” I bit my tongue and didn’t add that it would be a little longer if the power had been out and we had to cool the reefer and cooler sections of the warehouse. Ed knew that and didn’t need to hear it from me.
Ed nodded. “So, what we’re going to do is go mostly dormant except for a dozen or so employees for the next three weeks. We’ll reserve the right to recall anyone at any time, but like Logan said, we have no inbound loads due in. It’s going to take our vendors a while to ramp up their business afterwards, and we’re just going to have to see what happens. I hope things will be back to nearly normal by Christmas.
“I want you to reassure your people that this is a furlough with pay — it will be like everyone works a forty-hour week. Employees who don’t have direct deposit of their paychecks into their bank account will need to come in on Mondays or get with payroll and change to direct deposit.
“These are not layoffs. Repeat that early and often. We are not planning any layoffs. We have sufficient operating capital left to keep everyone on furlough through the end of February. We don’t envision the emergency lasting that long.
“Corporate does have a request that we identify items that we can donate to local emergency relief operations, and I’ll be doing that in the next few days. We might need some of the warehousemen to come back for that, Logan. I’ll be in contact with you in that case.
“Other than that, I want you to tell your people that if anyone wants to continue working, it has to be full time, no matter what. We will be closed Saturday and Sunday the third and fourth of December, as well as for the Thursday of Thanksgiving. Ask for volunteers. We should start calling people back on the fifth of December.”
Ed went over a list, wanting two warehousemen, and as he said, only a few others.
When the meeting broke up, I called everyone in and explained things to them. There were five people who wanted to keep working, and I simply picked the two best and sent them to talk to Ed. The rest of my crew, I simply told them, “You’re on furlough. Go home, take care of your families. And, as a personal early Christmas present from me to you — don’t believe a word of the government’s sugar-coated platitudes. Prepare for the worst.”
By three, I was at the community center. Sarah told me that Mark, Jim, their deputies, and the emergency coordinator were meeting. About four, they came out, and Roland Lake, the emergency coordinator, simply walked out the front door and never came back.
Mark was blunt. “Roland hasn’t been happy with any of the preparations we’ve been making. He’s sure we’re overreacting, and he’s going to speak up at the town meeting tonight against our efforts. He says we’re creating unnecessary anxiety.”
Sarah snorted in derision. “Aside from a few volunteers helping to fill the database and prepare lists, all we’ve done is make sure that the first responders are ready and done a little training with them.” She sniffed again. “Very little training.”
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