Mike Mullin - Ashfall

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.

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.

I’d spent most of my time was spent digging corn, chopping wood, or carrying water. Some mornings I helped Darla build the gristmill, but usually she was carving the grindstones and couldn’t use my help. She ruined one of the stones, cracking it as she tried to drill a hole through it, and we had to raid the cemetery for another grave marker.

Digging corn got tougher and tougher. It snowed twice more, so more than four feet covered the ground. The ash layer here was only a few inches thick, but getting through all that snow to the ash and the corn beneath it was a ton of work.

Sometimes I helped my uncle with the greenhouses. I learned that one of the tricks for a winter greenhouse was building a heat sink: an array of dark stones designed to soak up the sun’s rays during the day and release the heat at night. It didn’t seem to me that it would work since the sun was hidden, blocked by ash and sulfur high in the atmosphere. But my uncle thought enough UV light was getting through for the heat sink to be worth the effort.

He fiddled incessantly with the greenhouses: moving stones, watering the plants, and weeding. He was testing a plot of turnips and another of potatoes. He’d traded for the seeds and potato eyes in Warren, buying them with duck eggs and goat meat. So far, everything had failed to grow except for the kale.

Rebecca, Max, and Anna took care of the goats and ducks. After we’d been there a few days, the kids taught me and Darla how to do it so we could take turns. We fed the ducks corn and a little kale. The goats got mostly hay, although the hayloft was nearly empty. We also fed the goats everything else that humans wouldn’t want to eat: cornstalks, weeds, failed plants from the greenhouses, pine needles, even green twigs-they ate it all. Still, they steadily lost weight and gave less milk.

So Uncle Paul decided to slaughter one duck and one goat, a kid. He offered to teach Darla and me how to butcher them and seemed surprised when we agreed. He patiently explained each step to us, but except for plucking the feathers off the duck, it didn’t seem that much different from what Darla had done with her rabbits. And it was way easier than butchering a pig. Uncle Paul seemed amazed at how fast we caught on.

I was surprised that Max and Anna didn’t protest when Uncle Paul decided to slaughter two of their animals. The kids had evidently put a lot of effort into caring for them, so I assumed losing a goat and a duck would be a big deal. Even Rebecca seemed attached to the ducks. I asked my uncle about it while we were butchering the goat. He didn’t answer at first.

“I think we got through that with the dogs,” he said finally.

“The dogs?”

“You remember them? Denver and Gypsy?”

“Yeah.”

“We ran out of dog food. We could have fed them meat, but we didn’t… don’t have enough. They were starving, suffering. I had to… I thought it was more humane to kill them than let them starve to death. The kids were pretty upset. We all were.”

“Did you eat them?” Darla asked. I glanced at her, thinking maybe she was telling some kind of sick joke, but she was serious.

“No. We should have. I should have lied and told the kids it was goat meat. But I couldn’t make myself do it. They’re buried at the edge of the farmyard. You can ask the kids to show you, if you want. I avoid that spot… It was horrible; I didn’t want to waste a shotgun shell… I used a knife. I don’t want to think about it.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. The corners of his mouth and eyes drooped. Sorry didn’t seem to cover it. I put my hand on his arm and squeezed.

Uncle Paul blinked and turned back to the goat carcass hanging in front of us.

It took Darla two weeks to finish her gristmill. It worked so much faster than the mortars and pestles that it freed up a lot of time. Since it took two people to operate-one to feed grain into it and one to pedal the bike-I got nominated to help her run it. Not that I minded. It meant we got to spend more time together.

We ground the farm’s entire stockpile of corn in one afternoon. The next day, Bill Jacobs, the guy my uncle had borrowed the stone-working tools from, brought six bags of corn to us. We ground it all as payment for the use of his tools.

The other time Darla and I saw each other was in the middle of the night. Most nights, like the first, I’d wake up, slip downstairs to the living room, and find Darla there napping on the couch. We’d sleep through the wee hours curled up together. Darla was a light sleeper, so she’d wake me when everyone else in the house started to stir, and we’d return to our separate rooms.

Before the volcano, I would have thought a secret rendezvous to make out with my girlfriend in the middle of the night would be thrilling. But most of the time it wasn’t like that. Well, some nights it was, and yeah, that was fun, but usually we’d talk for a few minutes, snuggle up together, and drift back to sleep. For one thing, we were both tired; we worked crazy hours during the day-grueling physical labor that left us exhausted.

For another thing, the most important part of seeing Darla every night wasn’t the fooling around. It was the few minutes we talked while holding each other, the feeling of security I got with her, the feeling of being understood and loved. Before the eruption, I wouldn’t have believed that I could cuddle up every night with the girl who starred in my dreams and not be totally preoccupied with sex. But the trek across Iowa had changed something. I wanted, needed to see her so badly that it woke me up at night. But making out was incidental to my need- nice when it happened, but secondary to the simple pleasure of sleeping beside her.

We’d been in Warren a little more than a month when Uncle Paul discovered what was going on. I woke on the couch one morning, not to Darla shaking me but to my uncle clearing his throat. I was on my back with Darla halfway on top of me, also on her back. My right arm lay across her shoulder, and my hand cupped her left breast through her shirt. I snatched my hand away, waking her.