Ashfall

Chapter 55

The air mattress was comfortable, but still I slept poorly. I woke sometime in the wee hours of the morning, my mind roiling with images of people: Darla, Target, Mrs. Nance, Colonel Levitov, Darren and Joe, my mother.. . .

I thrashed around in the bed for a while before giving up on further sleep. The clothing I’d worn at di

Darla was in the living room adding a log to the fire. “Want a glass of water?” I asked.

“Sure. You couldn’t sleep?”

“No.”

“Me, either.”

I fetched a glass of water from the kitchen to share. When we finished, I slouched into the corner of the couch, where the back met the arm. Darla leaned against me, and I wrapped an arm around her. We’d sat together comfortably for only a few minutes when I heard her breathing slow down and felt her body relax in my arms. Soon after, I followed her into sleep.

* * *

I woke to Darla shaking me. “I heard footsteps upstairs. You’d better get back to Max’s room.”

I stood up and stretched. “Okay, love you.”

“Love you, too.” She gave me a kiss. I kept my lips firmly sealed together; I was pretty sure I had vile morning breath. She didn’t seem to notice, or maybe she didn’t care.

I stole up the stairs to Max’s bedroom as quietly as I could. He was still asleep. I slid on my boots and left the room again, this time stomping all the way.

Breakfast was corn pone and kale fried in duck fat. When Darla finally got to the kitchen, she made a big show of rubbing sleep from her eyes and a

After breakfast, Aunt Caroline retrieved two crude mortars and pestles from the pantry. They were only slightly concave stones with a round rock for each to serve as the pestle. “Who’s going to grind corn this morning?”

“I will, I guess,” Rebecca said.

“Why do you grind it that way?” Darla asked.

Everyone looked at her a little fu

“I’ve been thinking about trying something like that,” Paul said. “But there hasn’t been time.”

“It didn’t really work all that well,” Darla said. “I made the grindstones out of concrete, so they threw a lot of dust and grit into the meal.”

“Bet it saved a lot of time, though,” Rebecca said wistfully.

“I think I could make a better one. I’d like to try making grindstones out of granite—that wouldn’t throw grit the way concrete does. I’d need some decent-sized chunks of granite.”

“I know where you can get some,” Max said. “Most of the gravestones at the cemetery are granite.”

“Max!” Aunt Caroline exclaimed. “That’s terribly disrespectful.”

“It’s a good idea,” Uncle Paul said. “I don’t think the dead will mind. I know I wouldn’t if it were my gravestone.” Aunt Caroline glared at him, and he said, “We can make rubbings and replace the stones when things get better.”

“It’d be a lot easier to cut gravestones than river rocks,” Darla added. “All I’d have to do is cut the flour cha

“It’s disrespectful,” Aunt Caroline repeated. “What would the neighbors think if they saw us robbing gravestones?”

“They’d probably forgive us in return for grinding their corn,” Uncle Paul said. “If we could build a gristmill, maybe we could charge to use it. Ten or twenty percent of the grain we grind? What else would you need to build it?”

“Tools for working stone,” Darla replied. “Cold-forged chisels, that sort of thing. A couple of bicycles. Parts off an old truck or car. A welding rig would help, but I can probably manage without it.”

“Our closest neighbor, Bill Jacobs, used to moonlight as a mason. I’ll ask if we can borrow his tools. A welding setup would be tougher to come by—try to make do. As for parts, there are four bikes in the garage. Use whatever you need. Car parts can come from the minivan—”

“The minivan?” Aunt Caroline protested. “It’s almost brand new.”

“It’s not like we have any gas. And if we get some, we’ll probably want to use it in the truck for hauling stuff.”

“But the kids can’t all ride in the truck.”

“I don’t think we’ll be driving them anywhere soon, honey.”

Aunt Caroline didn’t look happy, but she quit objecting.

“Okay, Max,” Uncle Paul said, “show Alex and Darla how to do your morning chores. After you’ve finished, take them down to the creek with the toboggan and a couple of pry-bars. If you can find any rocks in the creek bed that will work, great. Otherwise, take them to the cemetery and borrow two gravestones. If anyone’s around, come home and get me before you take the gravestones.”

“Okay, Dad.”

“I want to go, too,” Rebecca said.

“Get your morning chores done, and then you can help me build the third greenhouse,” Uncle Paul told Rebecca. Then he looked at Darla. “Work on your gristmill in the mornings. Let’s reserve the afternoon for other projects. There aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything that’s got to be done.”

Darla nodded.

“Oh, and while you’re at the creek, think about what it would take to build a scaled-up version of the mill. Maybe we could dam the creek and run it on water power.”

“Will there be enough demand to justify it?” Darla said. “Eventually the buried corn will spoil. It might be years before we can plant more. Will we still need a big mill then?”

“I don’t know. Think about it, anyway.”

* * *

The rocks at the creek were hopeless. Either they were too small, the wrong shape, or stuck so thoroughly that all three of us straining on our pry bars couldn’t budge them.

The cemetery was deserted. It turned out to be ridiculously easy, compared to our failed effort in the creek bed, to find two suitable gravestones and topple them onto the waiting toboggan. Darla rigged up a pair of wooden crosses. She carved the dead people’s initials on each cross and pounded them into the ground where we’d taken the granite markers.

Dragging the loaded toboggan back to the farm was not so easy. It took all three of us straining at the rope to move the sled. Those gravestones were heavy.

By the time we got back, it was noon. After lunch, Uncle Paul sent me and Max back to the creek with the toboggan, this time to cut wood. They needed a lot of it. The only source of heat was the living room fireplace, which meant most of the house was freezing. Plus, they were doing all the cooking on a wood fire outside the kitchen door.

Uncle Paul assigned Darla to help him build the new greenhouse in the afternoon. They were building the frame out of leftover two-by-fours and tree branches. When they finished the frame, they would cover it in plastic and prepare the inside for planting. They only had enough plastic for one more greenhouse, although Uncle Paul said he was going to try to trade for more.

It all seemed a bit futile. There were hundreds of acres of fields surrounding their farm. All of it had been planted in corn and soybeans before the volcano erupted. No matter how much plastic we got, most of those fields would go fallow. A lot of people were going to starve. I hoped we wouldn’t be among the victims.

Chapter 56

The next few weeks passed in much the same way. The first week or so was tough; I was weak from my starvation diet at the FEMA camp. But once I recovered my strength, I worked harder than I ever had before.