Behind the Ruins (Stories of the Fall) (11 page)

“It’s
medicinal. Also, now, probably legal, no?” he asked.

“I
guess so. Easier to grow than tobacco, too,” Grey said.

Ramirez
finished the joint, handed it to Grey and began rolling another. Jerry and
Trigger did likewise.

“Jerry
grows it. He figured it would be a cash crop, but everyone grows weed now.”
Tomas lit his smoke with one of the candles that lit the table. Grey followed
suit.

“That
stuff is stinky,” Bobby offered with an exaggerated grimace of disgust. “Can I
go out and check on the calfs? I think the little one is sickly.” He picked his
nose unselfconsciously as he spoke, and wiped his finger on his shirtsleeve.

“Sure
Bobby, you just stay around the barn, okay?” Ramirez watched him leave and
sighed. “He’s a good guy, works like an ox. He’s just not much for social
graces.”

 “He’s
nicer than lots I’ve met,” Grey offered.

Wendy
and Maria, both wearing identical white cotton dresses, had spent the dinner
whispering to each other. Maria, the youngest, piped up in a shrill voice.

“Are
you an outlaw, Mister?”

Ramirez
rolled his eyes, while Kirsten blushed. “Maria, that’s not polite,” Mrs.
Ramirez said in a mom-tone. Tomas snorted. “She’s eight, Kirsten.”

Grey
rubbed his nose. “It’s a fair question. I look kind of like an outlaw. I’m just
a regular person, Maria.”

“Why
do you have so many guns?” Wendy asked.

“It’s
dangerous in places in the world nowadays. Also, I hunt a lot.”

“What
do you hunt?” Maria tag-teamed.

“Deer,
sometimes birds like pheasant or grouse.”

“Daddy
says bullets are like gold any more, how do you get any so you can hunt?” Wendy
asked.

“Girls,
let Grey have his after-dinner smoke in peace. You can pester him all day
tomorrow,” Tomas said. Kirsten ushered the two, protesting, from the dining
room to their bedroom. Grey took a deep drag and felt the THC beginning to
work, unknotting tension in his back, in his mind.

“Thanks,
those two would make great lawyers,” he said. The men smoked in silence for a
minute or two.

Kirsten
returned, dropping into the seat opposite. “They’re supposed to be going to
bed, but I imagine they’ll be up for an hour. They don’t meet new people very
often.”

“Not
much chance to, any more,” Tomas offered with a wry grin. “Not since the Orion
belt.”

“The
what?” Grey asked.

“That’s
what they ended up calling it. All these meteors. Before the last radio went
dead, they were talking about it - said it was a belt of crap the solar system
had wandered into.”

“I
never heard,” Grey said. “Everyone I talk to just calls it the Fall.”

“There
wasn’t much to hear,” Tomas replied, shrugging. “It was mostly people blaming
each other for not being ready for something like this. The government was
trying to get old technology in place, fifties stuff, and then the second wave
of rocks hit and fried everything again.”

“We
needed old USSR shit,” Jerry said. “Like their old MiGs in the seventies, the
ones with vacuum tubes that would fly after a nuke went off. All we had was
chips and solid state. Pfft. Instantly fried.”

“I
miss the internet,” Trigger mumbled.

“You
just miss the porn,” Jerry said with a smirk.

“I
miss electricity,” Kirsten said. “Being able to turn stuff on when I need it.”

Grey
felt a foot slide along his calf when Kirsten spoke, and he saw her eyes on
him, bright and amused. Slightly stoned, he wondered if he was imagining
things.

“It’s
like the old west, now,” Tomas said. “With hand-pumps, people taking up
blacksmithing, making candles, like that. Dumb people robbed banks when it
happened; smart ones robbed museums.” His bushy eyebrows rose and he sighed. “I
hope you’ll forgive me if I ask a few impolite questions?”

Grey
nodded.

“You’re
here with my wife, with my daughters. So I have to ask. Are you on the run? Are
you bringing trouble here? If you are, well, you got a good dinner but you need
to move on. If you lie and trouble finds you, I’ll hold you responsible for
it.”

Grey
shook his head. “Nothing’s following me.”

Ramirez
nodded. “Good. Are you following anything that’ll bring trouble?”

“No,
not for a long time. My trouble got away from me.”

“If
you go after it again, will it come back on me?” Ramirez asked.

“No.
It’ll sort itself out.”

“That’s
good,” Ramirez said, standing up. Kirsten stood as well, moving to his side.
“It’s an early start tomorrow, you three get some rest. And see that Bobby
doesn’t sleep in the barn, again, okay?”

Grey
started out feeding and shoveling. Cows, he discovered, can make a ton of shit
from a quarter-ton of hay. Wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow, Grey built huge manure
piles that local farmers would use on their fields. They bartered some fodder
for the manure, he discovered, and vegetables for milk and cheese.

It
turned out that there were thirty or forty households within ten miles that had
survived the initial chaos intact. They’d survived the long winters that
followed the Fall, and they traded amongst themselves and a few trade caravans,
watched the area and formed a tightknit group dedicated to survival. They were
friendly but cautious and could defend themselves violently if need be. Grey
noted the line of six graves, unmarked, that lay in a line behind the Ramirez
barn. The freshest had perhaps three months of grass growing on it.

It
was hot work, and by the end of his first week Grey had passed through sunburnt
to tan. His wool travelling clothes were washed and stored and he wore a pair
of off-white raw linen trousers and matching shirt that Trigger had traded him
for a pocketknife. He wore a straw hat in the sun, and felt like Tom Sawyer. He
discovered he liked the work, and he liked the Ramirez family. Trusting people
was a luxury he had missed.

Grey
was forking hay into the barn’s cavernous loft when Kirsten came in. It was
during his second month at the farm. He’d see her in passing on most days, but
she was kept busy with the girls. He leaned on the pitchfork, breathing
heavily, and wiped sweat from his face with a hand.

She
was dressed in jeans and a loose blue t-shirt, and carried two bottles with red
and white labels.

“Is
that Coke, Mrs. Ramirez?” Grey asked. “Holy shit, where’d you find that?”

“I
have a stash,” she said. “Call me Kirsten, Grey.” She smiled and offered a
bottle. “They’re cold. I had them in the spring box.”

“Thank
you,” Grey said. He was painfully aware of the way her breasts tented the
fabric of the oversized shirt, of how full her lips looked, and her long hair.
He sat down on the loft steps, hiding the sudden stir and swell he felt at his
groin.

“The
girls are having a nap. Trigger and Jerry took Tomas and the wagon to
Hurley’s,” she said. “And Bobby’s down on the lower pasture.”

Grey
felt blood hammering in his ears and his face felt strange. Maybe he hadn’t
been as stoned as he thought.

“So
you’re on your own this afternoon?” It sounded inane but he couldn’t think of
anything clever. He told himself he should get up, leave, make some excuse and
stop this now.

“Grey,
I love my husband dearly, don’t get that wrong. But he’s not always able to do
what I want. And the only other men I see aren’t what I’d call attractive.” She
took a long swallow of pop, and he watched her breasts rise as she tilted her
head back.

“So,
if you don’t make a thing of it,” she raised an eyebrow. Grey stood and Kirsten
glanced down. “Well, that’s a good sign,” she grinned. Her hand squeezed him
through the thin cloth.

It
was a mistake, and he knew it was a bad one, but he didn’t stop, then or the
times that followed.

It
was good sex. Animal and hard and sweaty, and with nothing emotional attached,
at least at first. If there had been time, it might have grown into something.
And as bad as it ended, it would have been worse if it had happened later.

Of
course Trigger saw them. Someone was bound to. They didn’t know it, but he’d
come back from whatever he’d been doing early one day and had gone into the
woodlot behind the farm looking after his weed. He’d heard them, followed the
noise, and had watched from the brush.

Trigger
shared his information with Jerry, and the two confronted Grey one evening not
long after. They’d tried to act hard. Grey had wanted to smile, even as his gut
knotted.

“Yeah,
I got an eyeful,” Trigger said, leering. “When you had her bent over, holding
that tree? Oh man, hells yeah. I thought you were going to knock her brains
out, you were pumping so hard. Not that I blame you,” he’d continued cheerily.
“Those big tits of hers bouncing like that? That sweet ass grinding on you?
Shit, I had to rub one out while I was watching.” Jerry had the grace to look
embarrassed, Grey noted, but he was Trigger’s buddy and stayed quiet.

In
the end they said they wanted Grey’s guns for their silence, or the money his
guns would bring. Grey had said he’d think about it, and had simply packed up
and moved on that night. They’d tried to stay awake and keep an eye on him, but
after their usual evening smoke, they’d both nodded off. He liked Tomas, and he
could spare him pain this way. He’d just assume Grey had drifted on. A cowardly
part of him was glad. It was a way out without having to face either Kirsten or
Tomas.

Grey
rode north that night, taking his time, and camped one day out on a flat bench
thickly wooded with birch. He searched for a while, and found a little spring
that he dug out until a gallon or two of clear water collected. He shot a
whitetail doe that evening in a cottonwood grove; he’d left without taking any
food but what he could scavenge in the bunkhouse.

He
whittled two points on a heavy, straight piece of branch, punched each end
through the deer’s hocks just behind the big tendon, and hoisted her to hang
head-down from a forked tree. He skinned the doe, peeling the hide with
occasional help from his knife, and then set about removing the meat in thin
strips. He festooned the limbs of a red alder with the meat, watching it go
black as it dried. The flies weren’t bad, the weather was too dry, but he built
a smoky fire that kept them from laying eggs while the meat desiccated. He cut
out the liver and heart. Grey took a cast iron skillet from his gear and melted
a chunk of deer fat in it over one of the smoke-fires. He fried a slice of
liver and then laid slices of the tough heart in the fat to cook while he ate
it. He kept the fire burning all night, and packed the meat the next day in the
afternoon. He rolled the raw hide after scraping it down, and was tying it with
rawhide strips when Tomas walked out of the trees.

The
dairyman was holding an old lever-action rifle and it was aimed at the center
of Grey’s chest. His own guns were yards away, leaning against a tree.

“You
killed her. Why?” Tomas asked. His voice wavered, but the gun never did.

“What
happened?” Grey asked.

“You
know. I want to know why. She was a good girl.”

Grey
felt a floating, dreamy unreality settle over him.

“I
don’t know. I left because Trigger and Jerry decided to see if they could
blackmail me. Everyone was fine when I left.”

“You’re
a fucking liar,” Tomas said in a dead voice. ”I let you into my house and you
killed my girl.”

“Oh
my fuck,” Grey felt dizzy. “Maria’s dead? Wendy?”

“Kirsten,
you sick fuck. You killed my wife.” Tomas’s voice hitched.

“No
I didn’t,” Grey said. “But I want to know who did.”

“Sit
down where you are.”

Grey
did, with a thump. His knees were weak with shock and adrenaline. Tomas circled
the clearing and took Grey’s guns.

“Blackmail?
What the hell are you talking about?” Tomas was behind Grey. “Tell me, and if
you move, I’ll put a bullet in you.”

“I
was having sex with your wife,” Grey said, very slowly and clearly. He could
feel the spot on his spine where the bullet would hit. “Trigger saw me and told
Jerry. They wanted my gear or they’d tell you, so I left.”

Grey
waited. His mouth was dry. Tomas took a long time to respond. Grey finally
broke the silence.

“I’m
not a good man, but I liked you and Kirsten, and I figured I should just leave
because I’d done enough harm. If I’d killed anyone, I wouldn’t have stopped
here to jerk venison.”