Jacqueline Druga-Marchetti - Dust

“Yeah?” he looked up from his food.

“I want you to know, I really believe now, that there’s a better tomorrow. I really believe that.”

“I do too, Jo.” Tanner smiled at me. “I do too.”

My ‘I’ll be there notebook’. The wear and tear of its cover showed how much I opened that notebook in just over a month’s time. There were spills on it, some of the pages were bent, and the cover contained doodles.

It was my last entry.

Twenty-six AB. Dear Mona: Today I leave for the cabin. The rescue station is closed, and now we play a waiting game to see if the government rises from the ashes. I’m beginning to think at this point in time, all that is gone, will remain gone. You’re in my prayers, always. Jo.

It was my last entry for more than just one reason. That final entry to Mona was written on the final page of that notebook. How ironic. I didn’t plan it that way, it just happened.

I was back in my house. My house. In my dining room, seated at the dusty table, I stared at my notebook. I knew what I had to, and I knew what that notebook stood for. It had gotten me through so much. Many of my heartaches graced the pages of that book. But those heartaches, like my house, were things I had to put behind me. The future was what I had to face.

I made the decision to leave the notebook behind. Taking it was an option, but would I ever read it? Would I want to read it? Perhaps leaving it would be a symbol, or maybe someone down the road will find it, and learn. I knew it had to stay. There really was no reason to bring it. The entire intention of that notebook was to be a resolution of my friends. Closure to their fate. But did I do that? Had I felt that? Yes, I completed my notebook, but I hadn’t completed the list. The ‘I’ll be there list’ was not finished.

I reviewed the list of names. Every single one of them had either been circled, or scratched out. A date or comment was next it. Every name but Mona’s. Hers stood alone, untouched.

It was time to go, but I still stared at that list. I was moving on, moving forward, and I was putting to rest my way of life before the bombs. I would never be able to freely do so without putting to rest everything. It was time to do that task.

Pen in hand, heart breaking, in defeat I did something I never thought I’d do—I placed a single thin line through Mona’s name. I forced my own closure, and then I closed the cover to the notebook.

“Jo?” Tanner called out softly. “Ready?”

Slowly I stood from the chair, and pushed it into the table. “Yeah.” I took one last look at the notebook. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

The road to Burke’s cabin was always hard to find, but that day we found it with ease. Gone were the visions of crumbled buildings, scattered cars and decaying bodies. I was awakened with a renewed hope when I saw the trees that lined the gravel road to Burke’s property.

A summertime spring blossomed with the buds that sprouted on the branches of the trees. I could smell them; the scents of nature pelted me. The air was warm, but fresh. I wanted to stand in the moving jeep and raise my arms with an enthused scream. But I kept my excitement in check. I wanted to see my kids, the cabin; I wanted to see it all before I shouted to the heavens a humongous ‘thank you!’

My eyes stayed ahead, and I ignored Tanner’s continuous questioning of whether or not we took the wrong road.

“It’s only a mile or so. Only a mile.” I repeated.

Then, I saw it. No, I heard. The sound of laughter, Burke disciplining for them to ‘leave the water pump alone’. I beckoned Tanner to hurry, and he obliged without argument.

“Mommy!” a sopping wet Matty screamed my name when we stopped the jeep.

Davy delivered one more pump of water over Simon’s head, and then he spotted us as well. “Mom! Burke! Mom’s here!”

Simon finally joined my children in racing to greet me. My arms extended to them, wet or not, I needed to give them a hug. And I did.

The squeak of the screen porch door, caught my attention, and I looked up to see Burke stepping out.

“I’ll be damned.” Burked walked off the porch. “Look at you. GI Jo.” He reached out and embraced me, and extended a hand to Tanner as he did. “You guys look great.”

“I’ve been showering,” I said.

Burke sniffed loudly. “Yeah, you smell it.”

Laughing, I gave a playful smack to Burke’s chest. “Thank you for taking care of them.”

“Jo, it’s been a blast.” Burke explained. “You should have seen them when we got here. The first thing they did, no, the first thing we all did was enjoy the well water. Then when Craig tested the stream and said it was clean, man we all went swimming. Before we even unpacked.”

Davy interjected, “We got the seeds planted. We don’t know if they’ll take, not yet. But we did.”

Matty added, “And we only had to remove ten inches of dirt.”

I stepped back to take a look at all it. The cabin was still as I remembered it. The old fashion water pump perched right before it. Burke added a glider on the porch; I didn’t recall that. But the property was wide, huge, tree lined and evidently starting to grow all over again.

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

“You just missed them.” Burke answered. “Rod, Craig, Nicky and Dan, decided to walk to Redman. You know, see what’s left of the town. They’ll be back. Shortly.”

I nodded and turned to Tanner. He looked stunned, his eyes shifted about as if he were studying something he had never seen before. “Tanner? What do you think?”

“I think…” he breathed out. “I think if you ever needed a confirmation that life goes on, life prevails. This is it.” He smiled. “This is it.”

The small farming town of Redman laid six miles north of Burke’s cabin. Its pre-bomb population of 2,841 had dwindled down to 305. But it was still 305 people alive and well. They accredited their survival to picking up broken radio signals about the impending nuclear cloud. They stockpiled, they bunked down, they survived.

They were reorganizing nicely, and planned to do their best to grow some food for a late harvest. Burke entered into a barter arrangement with them around Thirty days AB.

News traveled fast, and word that Tanner was a doctor hit Redman, and then Redman hit us. Not even three days after our arrival, Tanner was fixing injuries. He delivered the first post-nuclear war baby on day forty-one AB. A healthy, happy, baby girl. We were all ecstatic.

Dan moved to Redman almost immediately. It made sense. After all, why would he want to stay in a three-bedroom cabin with us, when he had his pick of the litter in Redman? Rod followed suit about a week later. But Rod’s never far away. He works everyday at our cabin, plus vowed to rekindle the newspaper, even if he had to create his own news to make it entertaining.

For us, Davy had become the official record keeper. What day things happened and so forth. Adjustment was not a problem for the kids.

Nicky and Craig had the biggest adjustment. I thought for a while they were not going to continue to be a couple until Tanner delivered the news to them on Day fifty-eight AB, that they were going to have a baby. Nicky was pregnant. Davy immediately became grossed out in the revelation that they had sex while we were all in the same cabin.

Nicky’s pregnancy made Tanner think. He brought up the subject to me, that perhaps one day he and I would have a child. It never dawned on me to do so, to move on in such a capacity. But I told him eventually we would—one step at a time.

It seemed, for the longest duration, civilization had started all over again. Gone with the old, in with the new. The daily checks to the mobile Army radio bred nothing.