Looking Back Through Ash Page 5

  Dinners were always the largest meals at the Moore household. It was an effort to clear out what little food may have been placed inside the ‘cold hole’ during the past days. Daniel would much rather see the food eaten with a few complaints than to watch it spoil. The mood was light as the Moore’s sat laughing over an unusually diverse dinner of reheated and cold foods.

  After everyone had been fed, Daniel lit two lanterns, thankful that the new wicks had gotten enough time to soak in the oil. Thus allowing them to burn brightly while only giving off the thinnest tendrils of oily, black smoke, which muddled and smudged the interior of the lamp’s glass chimneys. Once he had started using the lanterns almost exclusively, it did not take long to realize that the longer you allowed the swirled soot to build-up, the dimmer the lamp became and the harder it was to clean off. It had taken him quite a while to find the perfect-sized flame that cut right between the line of conservation of oil and brightness of illumination. The lower the flame, the dirtier the lamp burned, especially when using improvised wicks. To clean the glass chimneys, Daniel used wadded newspaper in combination with a solution made up of 2 cups water, ¼ cup vinegar, and two shots of moonshine.

  He left one lantern by the sink for Corinne to have enough light to wash the shallow pot, frying pan, plastic bowls, and silverware that had been sullied by cooking the day’s meals. He carried the other lantern, along with Rebecca, into the pink bedroom. Daniel placed the comforting light source on the dresser, to the left of the door, so he could gently lay Rebecca down on her bed using both of his arms.

  “I want my blankie,” Rebecca demanded tiredly.

  “Where is it, Bugs?” Daniel groaned, as he spun the crank on a LED lantern that served as her nightlight.

  “I think downstairs,” she answered, very little confidence backing it up. As she scooted over onto her pillow, which had a yellow-haired maiden frozen in a toothy smile on it, she yawned while trying to ask, “Can you take my pants off?”

  “Sure can. It’s really getting hot in here, huh?” Daniel asked the obvious question with a goofy expression. Immediately wondering why he dumbed-down the way he spoke when talking to his own child. He reaffirmed his desire to start speaking plainly, for Rebecca’s benefit, before pulling on both legs of her faded-pink, cotton pants.

  Now free of the sweltering clothing, of which she would not have put on in the first place if anyone would have just listened to her, Rebecca smiled. “Are we going to sleep in the basement again, Daddy?” she speculated excitedly, her memory as sharp as ever.

  “I’ll ask your mom if we can move our beds down soon. How’s that sound?”

  “You will ask me what?” Corinne inquired cautiously, poking her head into the small room.

  “Daddy said we should move down to the basement again!” Rebecca answered brightly, and quite loudly.

  “Yeah, I guess we should,” Corrine relinquished. “I could barely sleep last night. Goodnight, Rebecca. I don’t want to be woken up tonight. You hear me?” She then moved past the door looking lost in thought. The lantern she carried danced light across the pale skin of her arm and face as she moved past, like a glowing, disembodied specter.

  “Good night, Mommy! Love you!” Rebecca called, just after the hallway had blinked dark again.

  Corinne had headed straight into the bathroom without uttering another word, shutting the door quietly behind her. Daniel could deduce this from the recognizable clicking noise the latch made as it sprung back out into the strike plate.

  Daniel and Rebecca gave each other funny smiles trying to not make the first sound. Rebecca broke first, starting to laugh in the fakest and truest of ways. Daniel tickled her sides as punishment, making her suck for gulps of air given the laughter’s long duration.

  “Okay, okay. Lay down for me and I’ll go get your blanket,” Daniel laughed out.

  “Alright…G’night Dad. I love you,” Rebecca’s response came while enduring the jaw-locking effects of another great yawn. She lazily rolled over and settled down, satisfying Daniel’s lone stipulation regarding her near-constant companion.

  “Night Rebecca. I love you too,” he said softly, tucking his daughter’s flaxen hair behind her ear. He turned on the hand-crank LED lantern, blinking at the sudden brightness. Turning away from the bed he retrieved his light and headed for the basement in search of her pink support system.

  Daniel found that he needed to replace the lids on the last of the precious paint jars and rinse out the fuzzy-topped, battered paint brushes before he could even start looking for her blanket. It amazed him how quickly the little girl had gone through almost an entire art classes’ worth of supplies. He eventually found Rebecca’s blanket tucked behind her table, only after he had searched everywhere else for it first.

  Daniel had collected the art supplies, the shelves of books in the front room and all of the other scavenged items in the garage and basement during the years he spent breaking into the local homes, businesses and schools. He could still remember thinking that he would never be able to use it all. Of course that was well before he had a wife and child. Nowadays, he found himself trying to stem the tide of when the stored goods would run out.

  Upstairs, blanket in hand Daniel crept back into Rebecca’s pink room, gently placing the fuzzy material over her legs. He snuck back out and continued down the hall to the master bedroom. Corinne was just setting down a wind-up alarm clock on her nightstand as he entered.

  “You getting up early?” Daniel asked, having completely forgotten that Corrine had been told to start working on Mondays again.

  “Seriously? I swear…You must not listen to anything I say…”

  In a flash, it all came back to him. Her mood today suddenly made all the sense in the world.

  “…Oh um. You sure you don’t want a ride in?” he added quickly, trying to get back on her side. “Rebecca would probably love to take a last ride in the truck. I mean, it only has a little…”

  “I can drive myself,” Corrine said flatly. “Besides, I was gonna get up early…get ready there…” she added.

  Daniel could tell that his wife was looking forward to pampering herself in the morning. Making the fact that she had completely ignored what he was trying to say about the truck hurt a little less. Why shouldn’t she look forward to a little time alone with electricity and a blow dryer?

  “You mind if I read a while?” he asked softly, a smile almost showing.

  “I can’t sleep with those candles…” Corinne replied, weariness filling in her voice.

  Daniel grabbed the book on mountaineering that he was currently struggling to finish from a side table. The book was a complete disappointment filled with dialogue and fluff, while hardly any useful information had been gleaned from it. Taking the only light source with him, Corrine had just snuffed her lantern, he left the room with a nonchalantly spoken, “Alright, Babe. I’ll be back in a little bit.”

  There was really no need to upset her about such a trivial thing, even though he felt somewhat annoyed about never being able to read in his own bed at night. Reading had become Daniel’s form of escape during the years he spent alone, and it usually mattered very little to him what the subject matter was about. Where learning about different knots and traps was amazingly fun and time consuming to him, the books about architecture and needlepoint held just as much allure. Knowledge was a standalone goal, especially to a socially-deprived adolescent.

  Knowing that Corinne had to get up early to leave for work was not helping to soothe him. Lying down on the adhesive leather couch, sweating more than reading, Daniel looked up longingly at the stagnant ceiling fan. The ashen dust would coat everything inside the house if he opened the doors in an effort to gain some semblance of relief from the accursed summer heat. The doors were his only choice as there was really no way for him to physically open the windows, they had all been sealed shut long ago.

  The worst of the dust storms had seemed to pass and the atmosphere looked clearer with each passi
ng year. As he thought of his trip to the Warehouse earlier in the day, Daniel realized that almost no one including him was wearing masks to guard against the choking particulates. This alone stood as testimony to the fact that the dusts were easing up. He thought of opening the sliding door and standing in front of it for a while just to catch a slight breeze. Corinne waking up to a fine layer of dust coating everything in the house would not be considered trivial, so Daniel endured the safe choice.

  When he was a child the sunlight would almost be completely blocked out by the dust on some days. The sun itself became nothing more than a hazy brightness in the sky, its true position could never be ascertained. The growing seasons were shortened significantly and had to be accomplished in sealed hot houses to keep the plants protected.

  It had only been a year since Daniel started making attempts at growing food in the backyard. This was made possible due to the fact that the ash had finally lessened to the point where the nearly-full power of the sun could be felt again. Additionally, Daniel could see the end of consumer goods coming down the pike. Refilling the numerous boxes of canning jars he had emptied over the years was really the only foreseeable option moving forward. To keep Rebecca in nourishing produce year round without his full-time pay was going to require a rather sizeable addition to the garden patches next year.

  Daniel struggled with the warmth and dim lighting for a while longer, retaining nothing of what he had read so far. His sagging eyelids eventually forced him to peel his back away from the soft leather couch and head back into the bedroom with Corinne.

  Chapter 3

  Monday

  Water was intensely metered to help pinpoint the location of leaks. The quantity that each household was permitted to pull from the tap was based on a mathematical ratio, mainly determined by how many people drew from the same line. This arrangement worked very well, as it was controlled by stiff fines.

  The Maintenance Department worked tirelessly for years to get sections of the water system operational. Before the Polynesian volcanoes polluted the world, the City of Warren had started updating portions of its 70 year-old water system. This meant that the old maintenance yards held pipe, valves and back hoes, along with precious replacement parts; almost all the materials needed to start water flowing again.

  The D.o.C. supplied all the missing pieces needed to get the pump and pressure houses operational. This crude yet effective technique pulled water from the Red Run drainage, southeast of the city buildings and kept it pressurized by means of closed-loop. Anything not being used was sealed off, minimizing the amount of new pipes that had to be replaced above and underground. To keep the water flowing at the Warehouse even when the system was turned off it was pumped by generator into the water tower that sat in the center of the General Motors Technical Center.

  The water that was supplied to the surrounding area removed most of the sediment and chemicals, but still needed to be boiled or filtered to be made potable. Given the power restraints, it was impossible to remove all the pathogenic bacteria. The city had no way to control what leeched into the flow, and it made little difference to the person drinking the water whether it was some flesh rotting upstream or if it was some vehicle dripping poison.

  Corinne took a brief shower every morning when the water was flowing. To her it was seen as absolutely necessary. When the water system lost pressure she would be reduced to hand washing with tepid water. This alone was enough to make her cry some days. Hefting the bucket of water to flush the toilet was despised, but washing dishes in buckets of filtered rain water was not quite as bad, Daniel filled and emptied those. Corinne only endured these menial tasks, so that her showers could be extended by a few minutes.

  Wanting to leave with enough time to finish blow drying her hair and affix her make-up before starting work, Corrine stuffed a bag and made for the door. After a childhood spent in a constant state of filth, hot showers and the ability to cover blemishes had become the things that sustained. She would not willingly return to a life without these requirements.

  Her addiction to beauty products began shortly after puberty and could be attributed to the force that her mother applied to ensure that it was so. This compulsion was enabled by every enthusiastic beau, right up to the point where Daniel presented an entire storage bin of salvaged products to her. The petite vials and containers had all been acquired from neighboring homes, as were loads of other things under the heading of ‘will find a use for later’. He never would have guessed that the contents of all those medicine cabinets would end up being the perfect engagement present.

  Corinne swiped away the fine dust that had settled around the edges of her car door using a small brush that she kept in her purse exclusively for this purpose. Only two tinny-sounding speakers worked in the car when she took over possession of it from her mother, but it was still better than nothing. Before pulling away from the house she changed the CD in the otherwise useless radio to something more soothing and melodious.

  Music did not really hold that large a part in her life beyond that of the odd celebration or live musician at the bar. Compact disks at least those not scratched beyond repair, could be purchased in bulk. Even though a few artists or bands names could still be read on the circular artwork Corinne had never paid that much attention to them, other than to use the colors as an easy way to remember which ones she liked. She knew that the compact disk with blue-gray swirls and four red carnations on it was one of her favorites, but she could care less about what the name of the band actually was.

  Corinne, who was one of the only two females on the top floor worked at the consolidated New Warren City Hall and Police/Fire hub. This meant unlike the first three floors where the majority of people worked or attended class, the small women’s bathroom on the fourth floor would only have her and Marisa Donner inside.

  Corrine’s bag held everything she needed to finish her hair and face, as well as a black pantsuit which probably had more replacement thread than original, and a white and black, horizontally-striped blouse. Only people who lived inside the Warehouse had access to around the clock juice and only a few of those actually worked at City Hall across the street. The rest of the workers lived somewhere close by and most used the supplied power inside to finish any needed primping, just in the larger washrooms downstairs.

  In a grand show of New Warren’s authority, City Hall which was a four-storied building twice as long as it was wide was supplied electricity during the weekdays. City Hall was usually a hive of activity on these days as it housed all of the social services on the first floor, bank on the second, school rooms for children under the age of twelve on the third and Council business on the fourth.

  Despite the early hour people walking, biking, pulling carts and even driving the occasional car or truck all slowed Corinne’s progress. It was beyond her to conceive that this daily migration was just people trying to avoid the brunt of a summer day’s pain. She paid no heed to their plights, or to the contempt showing in their eyes. The drifters had grown exponentially in numbers and should have been a major cause of concern to a lone female driving down the road, but it did not affect her in this way. They could not touch her in the world where she lived. The dirty drifters passed by almost unnoticed, like they hardly even existed at all; sub-humans the lot.

  Corinne was allowed to park inside the gated west lot. This required her to punch in a code to gain entrance, the raising of the plastic entry bar always made her feel special. This lot was usually reserved for the Council, Corinne’s bosses and the fire and police chiefs.

  She walked the short distance to the back entrance of the red utility brick and tinted glass monolith. Using this limestone-clad doorway always made Corinne happy that she didn’t have to go through the usual platitudes with the rank-and-file forced to funnel in through the main entrance on the other side of the building. Once inside the small glass-faced atrium, striding right past the interior door leading to the stairwell, she headed straight for the elevato
r. As far as Corrine was concerned this was a perk for being so invaluable.

  When the door dinged open on the fourth floor she turned away from the mirrored surround of the elevator car. Giving a cursory glance down the hallway to the right making sure that it was indeed empty, she turned and started walking to the left. The hall dead-ended at a water fountain which stood guard between the two self-closing doors that kept the sexes separate.

  Safely inside the women’s bathroom, and without anyone seeing her unprepared state, Corinne was surprised to find the resonate space empty. It seemed that she would, thankfully have some time alone. Marisa, her co-worker was married to Lieutenant Bob Donner of the New Warren Protective Police Force and his shift started at six a.m. Every weekday Bob would give Marisa an escort over from their Warehouse housing unit. Corrine only knew this because Marisa made sure to mention it all the time.

  Shortly after the greater Detroit area was thrown into turmoil, Bob Donner at the age of ten years old was informally adopted by Troy Campbell, the current Chief of Police. On that day Bob lost his mother and two older sisters. He’d followed Troy around like a compliant puppy ever since. When the Council appointed Troy as the Chief of the newly formed Police Force, one of his first proclamations was to name Bob, barely a teen-ager at the time as one of his lieutenants.