Katherine Hanna - Breakdown

At last they were down the bus’s steps. Ian pushed through the crowd to claim their rucksacks as the driver pulled them from the luggage compartment. He brought both packs to where Brian stood.

“Ta.” Brian hefted his pack onto his back while Ian held the eggs. They set off with the others from the bus toward the open market.

The first stall they stopped at was busy, and they had to wait while two women haggled over dried beans, flour, and cornmeal. When it was their turn, the owner greeted them by name and began to lift the eggs carefully out of the carton. Assured that none were cracked, he handed over the usual paper sack of sugar. Brian gave it and the egg carton to Ian, who put them both in his rucksack.

They spent a good part of the morning in the busy market, trading for the things on Fiona’s list or paying cash if they had to. Brian let Ian barter for some lined writing paper, standing behind him with an eye on the stall’s proprietor.

The list finished, they took an alley through to the next street and got in the queue at the grocery store. It was half an hour before they made it inside. Ian disliked the place and always scowled as Brian shopped, but to spend the ration coupons, they had to visit the grocery. Brian handed over the coupons and counted out the money exactly.

“I’d heard there might be coffee?” he asked the clerk.

“Nar, not ’ere.” She said it as if she’d heard it many times. “Bristol, maybe, but I doubt it.”

Brian thanked her, then packed the groceries into the rucksacks, leaving out the small bag containing the lunch his wife had sent along for them.

“Shall we eat in the Parade Gardens?”

They walked up Pierrepont Street, past boarded-up hotels and coffee shops. The window boxes that used to overflow colorful flowers late into the fall now held scraggly weeds. Paint flakes and crumbling mortar littered the sidewalk; larger junk and rusting cars sat in the street. They settled themselves on the stone steps leading down to the overgrown gardens. Before the Bad Winter, meticulously manicured flower beds had bordered the open green, and on fine days striped lawn chairs invited you to be lazy for a while. Now tall grass hid the stones marking three long trenches and dozens of smaller graves.

Fiona had packed sandwiches, apples, and a biscuit each. They drank water from a plastic bottle they had brought along and relieved themselves against the stone wall at the bottom of the stairs. Then they climbed back up to street level and set off for the Distribution Center, where the old covered market used to be.

Brian had noticed how much of Ian’s socks showed between his trouser cuffs and shoe tops. Ian admitted that, yes, his shoes had got too tight again, so they started with the racks of used shoes. Ian found a pair of sturdy leather work boots with the soles hardly worn and near-perfect wellies. Brian nodded his approval.

They visited the clothing racks next, checking for jeans and cords in good condition, finding two pairs of each. Brian added three flannel shirts. He chewed his lip as he counted out the coupons, but smiled when he saw Ian watching him.

“You’re growing too fast, old boy,” he said. “We’ll have to wait ’til next month to get you a jacket. C’mon, let’s go do the books.”

The used-book shop was located in a small side street near the abbey, still run by an old man with a fuzz of white hair whom Brian had always known only as Flynn. He had somehow managed to carry on through the worst of times, hardly leaving his flat above the store, or spending his days in the narrow aisles between shelves, sorting and cataloguing, or wrapped in a blanket in an armchair by the door, reading to escape the harshness of the changed world. The place was more of a library now, with no tourists to spend their holiday money on quaint old volumes. Brian visited nearly every week. He had brought two books back to trade in. Ian picked out an adventure about a young American cowboy and Brian got a mystery novel. He gave Flynn a tin of meat, a squash from the garden, and a selection of leftover ration coupons.

“Oh, I say, Brian,” Flynn said as they were about to leave. “Your old mate Chris was looking for you earlier this week.”

Brian stopped dead in the doorway. The name jolted him. He stared at Flynn, who sat reading the fine print on the tin’s label, apparently unaware that he had said anything unusual.

Brian gulped, thinking Flynn had to be mistaken. “Um, are you sure?”

Flynn looked up. “What? Of course I’m sure. Hardly knew him at first, it’s been so long. But yeah, he asked after you, said he’d been round to your house, but you’d gone and did I know where to. I told him you live out in Hurleigh now.”

“Chris Price, was it? You’re sure, Flynn?”

“I’m not dotty yet, Brian. He looked different, you know, but it were him, I tell you. He stayed a good few hours, asking about folks what used to live here. He’d brought some lovely muffins and jam, and we had a bit o’ tea. I told him you were out Hurleigh way.”

Good memories battled with bad ones in Brian’s head. The long childhood friendship had ended with hard feelings and harder words. He remembered the last horrible thing he’d uttered with such contempt, nearly ten years ago, and felt his face grow warm with shame.

Ian was watching him, clutching his bundle of clothing.

“Uh, thanks, Flynn,” Brian said and went out. He headed down York Street. It couldn’t be Chris. It was impossible. Chris had been in New York. By all accounts, New York had been hit hard.

“Dad?”

Brian stopped and turned around. “Sorry.”

“Did he mean Uncle Jon’s brother? Chris, from the band?”

Ian didn’t know how the partnership had ended. All he knew was that his dad and Chris Price had been famous rock stars before he was born. He had seen and heard the CDs kept stored in a cabinet in the sitting room.

“Yes.”

“Wow.”

Brian shook his head. “I think Flynn must be mistaken. How could he have got here?” Even if he survived. “He lived in New York, remember? There aren’t many ships, and hardly any planes.”

“But Flynn said it was him, for sure. Maybe he got on a ship.”

“I doubt it.” Brian stood looking into the distance, his eyebrows drawn together. “C’mon, let’s go.”

“Where?”

“We’ll go to the Government Center. He’ll have to register there if he wants to get his coupons.”

They queued for half an hour at the information desk, then watched as a pale girl searched through a box of cards. Not too many years ago, she would have punched the information into a computer and had their answer in seconds. But despite all the public assurances six years ago that the cyberattacks were causing only temporary shutdowns, nearly all the computers were junk now.

The girl finally told them she did not have a card for a Chris Price. She suggested they try the Health Center, two floors up.

“Sometimes the cards don’t get filed right. But he’ll have to have a blood test to relocate here, and they’ll have the record of that.”

The queue for the Health Center was even longer. The man on the end said he didn’t know if he would get in before the place closed at six.

“Well, that’s out then,” Brian said to Ian. “It’s nearly time for the bus.”

They walked back toward the bus station.

“Uncle Jon never talks about him,” Ian said.

Brian sighed. “No. I don’t talk much about Uncle Colin, either, do I?” In the beginning it had hurt too much to even think about his dead brother, Colin, and how Colin’s stubbornness had doomed him and his family. Now, Brian thought maybe he should make the effort at some point, so his sons would know about their uncle, aunt, and cousins.