Richard Cox - House of the Rising Sun

Beyond the Lewis intersection, 71st Street was almost empty, but it was also the beginning of a long, uphill climb. The drink cart’s motor began to protest and they slowed down dramatically.

“Shit,” she said to Blake, to the awful world at large. “We’re not gonna make it.”

“Sure we will. Golf carts don’t go very fast, but they have plenty of torque.”

“For such a smart guy you can be pretty dumb about life.”

The cart continued to climb the hill steadily, as Blake had predicted. Despite his annoying comments, Natalie was glad he had come along. She was afraid the only reason some other man hadn’t approached her was because she wasn’t alone.

And once she secured her children, what then? How long would it take Seth to walk home from work? Hours, surely. Maybe he’d stay at the office, expecting the power to be restored sooner instead of later. Or maybe he would abandon his family the way Natalie had often feared.

Her mouth tasted like pennies. For a moment she thought she might faint. Blake seemed to notice and squeezed her shoulder.

“You okay?”

“No,” Natalie said, suddenly overcome with tears.

“Want me to drive?”

“Would you?”

They stopped and switched places, but afterward Natalie wished they hadn’t. Without the road and its obstacles to distract her, she retreated into her mind where there was nothing to do but worry. Her heart beat too fast. Her limbs felt heavy. Her thoughts degraded into static, audible static, the sound a radio made when it was tuned into nothing. It was a painful sound she endured all the way to the daycare, and even then it didn’t really end.

Blake waited with the drink cart while Natalie went inside to retrieve her sons. The daycare was housed in a newish brick building made to look on the outside like a residence. Even with plenty of windows, the entryway was uncomfortably dark. A frail woman of about sixty rounded a corner and intercepted Natalie on her way to the classroom.

“May I help you, ma’am?”

“I’m here to pick up my sons. Ben and Brandon Black. They’re in the second-grade drop-in class.”

“Of course,” the woman said. “And your name is…?”

“Natalie Black. I’ll just head back to the classroom and get them.”

But the frail woman, who couldn’t have weighed one hundred pounds, stepped into her path.

“Mrs. Black, may I ask you to wait a moment while I go talk to the teacher? It’s been quite a morning and we’re trying to be as careful as we can with the students.”

“I’m here to pick up my children. It has been quite a morning, and I’d like to take them home if you don’t mind.”

“Please,” the woman said. “Wait here just one moment. I’ll be back with Miss Lopez shortly.”

Natalie’s nerves were bare wires and she was close to faltering. But losing her cool now, when she was so close to seeing her sons, would only make things worse.

“Of course,” she said. Her teeth chattered and her hands shook so badly she was forced to knot them behind her back. “I’ll just wait here.”

The old woman disappeared around the corner. Natalie’s insides were gelatin and her toes tingled with electricity. Adrenaline had dominated her bloodstream since the new star appeared, and she was tired, irritable, vulnerable. She was not prepared to see Miss Lopez appear without Ben and Brandon at her side.

“Mrs. Black,” said the teacher, who was a little younger than Natalie and beautiful. She’d always been jealous of women with olive skin and brown hair, of their effortless sexuality. “I’m sure this is confusing, but—”

“Where are my sons?”

“Their father arrived about ten minutes ago to take them home.”

“That’s impossible. My husband works downtown. There’s no way he could have made it here so quickly.”

“With the power out, we don’t have access to the pickup list. But he presented proper I.D. He said he walked here to get them.”

“But his office is more than ten miles away.”

“In any case,” the teacher said, “they left only a few minutes ago. I’m sure you could catch them if you hurry. I bet they would be glad to see you’re okay. This has been quite a morning.”

“You can say that again.”

“Do you happen to know what’s going on, Mrs. Black? Only a few parents have come by to pick up their children and no one seems to know anything. But I saw that vehicle you drove here and wondered if maybe you might know something more?”

“I don’t know anything. I was working at a charity golf tournament when that thing appeared in the sky. I was driving a cart full of refreshments. When I realized no cars were working, I took the cart. For some reason it runs. It just doesn’t go very fast.”

“You’re very fortunate to have access to some kind of vehicle. I’m not sure what to do with all these children. A few of them have parents who both work downtown. It might take them all day to arrive, if at all.”

Natalie realized the teacher was as frightened as she was.

“I’m sorry if I was rude,” Natalie said. “I know you’re in a tough spot with all these children. I wish I could help you, but I have to get home. Please understand.”

Miss Lopez’s eyes sparkled with tears.

“I’m just so frightened. Nothing like this has ever happened before. At least not here.”

“I hope whatever it is gets fixed soon. Because if it doesn’t, I’m not sure what’s going to happen.”

“Nothing good,” said Miss Lopez as she wiped tears out of her eyes.

Blake was rooting through the storage compartment of the drink cart when Natalie approached. He found a couple of candy bars and offered her one.

“They aren’t here,” she said, ignoring him. “The school says Seth came to get them. My husband.”

“Well, that’s good, right? They’re safe?”

Natalie climbed behind the steering wheel and mashed on the accelerator. Blake jumped in as the cart lurched into gear.

“So it’s not a good thing?”

“I don’t see how the man who showed up could be my husband. She said he walked. How on earth could he have walked here from downtown faster than we drove from the golf course?”

“Yeah, that is strange.”

Natalie steered the cart onto Yale and turned left, headed toward her house. There was a large crowd gathered at another Quik Trip, half of them looking at the sky, the other half milling around and talking to each other. When she considered the same scene unfolding at every convenience store in Tulsa, in the entire country, she tasted pennies again. Heard static in her brain again. If she didn’t find her boys soon, Natalie was afraid she would break down completely.

The road here was only two lanes wide, and she was forced to carefully maneuver around numerous cars and trucks. Already it had become familiar for the roads to look this way, like vehicle graveyards, and she was beginning to wonder if that’s how they would always look.

“Someone came over from Quik Trip while you were inside,” Blake said.

“What did they want?”

“The golf cart.”

“Are you serious?”

“The guy offered me three hundred and twenty dollars cash, everything he had on him.”

“No shit. What did you say?”

“I told him it wasn’t mine to give.”

“Good answer,” Natalie said. “Although he probably figured out we borrowed it.”

“Is that what we did?”

The road turned left and then right as they climbed a steep hill. The engine groaned. But as soon as they started down the other side, she cried out. Her husband and two sons were now within sight, just ahead and descending the hill.