Jacqueline Druga-Marchetti - Dust

It was time to pull out the radio and get it hooked up. One of the things I urged my close friends to get—aside from the super sale Geiger counter—was a radio. Other than myself, only two followed my suggestion. Craig and Burke. I figured after I powered up and listened for a signal, it would tell me if one of them were out there, powered-up and alive. If I heard nothing I would just surf the empty airwaves hoping to find a ripple of life out there.

But the radio had to work, and in order to do that, it had to be powered by a battery. That was a problem, because Davy was in charge of putting the car battery in storage and he just couldn’t remember where he put it.

Under the stairs? Behind the washer? Our basement was big, but not that big. Davy searched. And then he remembered.

“I can’t believe you did this,” I told him while standing back in the cold cellar, watching Davy uncover the earth on the opposite side of our shelter.

“You said to bury the batteries,” he defended.

“It’s a car battery, Davy. Not a triple ‘A’. Big difference.”

“It’s still a battery.”

I believe I growled in frustration at that moment.

“What?” he asked innocently. “I’m almost there.”

“Davy, you went way too fuckin overboard.”

“Me? I wasn’t the one who made 153 packs of split pea soup.”

“It was easy to dehydrate, Davy.”

“But it’s split pea soup.”

“Well… yeah. So…” I shrugged. “Deal with it. And if you say one more thing about it, that’s all you’ll eat.” Folding my arms, instead of aggravating myself anymore, I walked into the basement. There were other things to do, things to finish.

We had started building a wall. The first of at least four from what we figured. Maybe even more. Using anything we could find in the basement. Whether the wall is solid or just a curtain material, our intention was to divide the open basement into rooms or sections. Truth was, yes, we could go topside, or even into the house, but for a long while, longer than two weeks, we had to worry about accumulative radiation. For safety sake, any prolonged periods should be spent underground. So privacy was essential or would be as time moved on.

The big joke prior to the bombs was that everyone would show up at my house following an attack. I was the one with the supplies, and the obnoxious amount of rations. More than likely, their joking was the reason I stockpiled so much. Having enough just in case. I expected and still do expect some to show up, only because—despite all I tried to teach them—some were pretty clueless. Either that or they chose to just rely on me. What I didn’t expect was for it to be just me, Davy and Simon.

Simon was doing better than I anticipated. I believed his subconscious understanding of all that was going on supported him. He asked what he could do to help, and I gave little jobs like separating the brown food from the green food. Big bandages from little bandages. He was content with helping in any way that he could. How long, remained to be seen. For all of us it was a matter of playing the ‘wait and restless’ game, and if we were keeping score, in my opinion, Simon was winning by a long shot.

To complete his entire mission of aiding to power up the radio, Davy took a good three hours from search to finish. He unearthed the brand new Sears car battery and tried his best to clean it up. I ceased picking on Davy about it, for two reasons. One, it just wasn’t worth getting mad about. And two, how boring the day would have been if Davy found that battery right away.

Unlike the Geiger counter I had learned about the radio beforehand. How to hook it up, tune in, send out. We were ready. Only problem, no one was there. It was dead silence. Static. A few times we thought we caught a peep of words, but it was a wishful thinking imagination. Somehow I thought the airwaves would be buzzing, but they weren’t. A good portion of the day was spent listening, waiting hoping. We veered way off the original plan of turning the radio on for a few minutes every half an hour. But it was the first day we had communications up and running. We allotted some hopeful listening time. After reluctantly admitting defeat, we turned it off to reserve battery power.

We made it through another day. That was so important, I also believed the radio would play a huge part in getting us through many more. In which capacity, I didn’t know. Perhaps an eventual information source or something to look forward to.

Everything was one step at a time. Everything. Even facing the ‘tomorrow’ was taken one step at a time. I faced it with a certain amount of dread. And in the quiet of the shelter—Davy and Simon asleep—I wondered would the next day be different or would it be the same. A repeat of another day without knowing, another day without Matty, another day… without.

Time is more than something that passes. It can be a gift, an enemy, but time is also an illusion. You see it as one thing, but it always is another. The peacefulness of a moment in time can mask the tragedy that builds behind the wall of the silence. Too much time on your hands is a killer, because it leaves you too much time to think.

I began to examine what ‘time’ meant to me, almost immediately in that shelter. H.G. Wells, and his often praised and sometimes mimicked novel, ‘The Time Machine’, drew forefront. Ironically, one of several novels I brought was that particular book. The story came to mind not because it gave an essence of the future, but because it made me wonder. What if I had a chance to go back? If I were allowed to tell myself one thing to help me prepare, what would it be? As odd as it sounded, I would forewarn myself about time.

Intelligently I gathered all the real ‘survival’ supplies. I did have that base covered. Although I was pretty certain, that as weeks and even months passed I would be kicking myself for forgetting some things. And yes, I packed books, notepads, pens, and so forth for activities, but I truly believe no amount of stored activities could pass the amount of time we had on our hands.

The first few days, by a long shot were the worst. Stuck somewhere between a stage of shock and fear, I was left with little ambition to do anything. Sure there were long-range things that could be put in motion, but if I did them too soon, then I’d have nothing left to do later on. It was a catch twenty-two situation.

Davy and Simon suffered less than I did in the ‘time’ department. Davy had completed the counting of rations early the third morning, and wanted to get on to menu planning. I gave him the go ahead. Of course he did tell me he was rationing the split pea soup sparingly. Explaining to me that he didn’t want us three to enjoy it all when a chance existed others would arrive. They, as Davy put it, deserved to be greeted with an abundance of a delicacy such as split pea soup.

How I envied Davy those first three days. His spirits were kept impeccably high, other than my griping, he had no complaints, and he kept busy. He was more grateful to be alive than despondent over what had occurred. So much was to be learned from Davy. Simon was a project Davy took under his wing and he used his three-year old cousin as a security blanket, a focus. The focus kept him sane, normal, despite the circumstances.

Drawing or sketching was something I contemplated doing. By no means was I a spectacular artist, but it was an occasional craft I was above average in performing. The artistic utensils were in the shelter—I thought to store them. However, art required some inspiration to create. Like Davy, I needed a focus. Then I found one.

I can’t take all the credit, because the idea was conceived while I eavesdropped on a Davy and Simon conversation. They said the word ‘list’ and it simply clicked in me.