Joshua Gayou - Commune - Book One

Jake picked up the plastic case and handed it across to Otis with both hands. Realizing that it must be heavy, Otis laid the rifle across his lap and received the offering with two hands.

“That’s over four hundred rounds of .223 and two magazines,” said Jake. “When we get you fueled up tomorrow, you folks are going to take a side trip.”

“A side trip?” repeated a numb Otis.

“’Bout twenty miles south of here down the 15 is a building on the East side of the freeway standing by itself out in the middle of nowhere. It’ll have “Barnes” across the front in big, red letters. They were an ammunition manufacturer. We came from that way, and there was more in that place than we could reasonably carry on our own. There’s plenty still there. You’ll find more .223, 5.56, and even some more .30-06 for that hunting rifle.”

Otis sat dumbstruck for several seconds. He tried to speak once or twice, but the only sound that came was a slight grunt. Finally, he cleared his throat and said, “Uh…how much water do you think you need?” I was surprised to detect a quaver in his voice.

“Dude,” Ben said before any of us could reply, “I’m saying give it all to them.”

We burst out laughing uncontrollably, the kind of roaring, rib-cracking laughter that only comes on the tail of some tense, psychological trauma. The punchline doesn’t even need to be that funny in these situations—on some level your body realizes it needs that release desperately and seizes control whether you want it or not. I laughed until my stomach muscles hurt and I was gasping for breath. I saw Otis wipe tears from his eyes more than once and even Robert and timid Samantha were smiling despite themselves. The only one of us not laughing and in control was Jake, of course, but his face carried perhaps the most unfiltered smile I’d ever seen from him. I’m almost positive his eyes were moist as well.

When we all came back under control, Otis put his hand on Ben’s shoulder and said, “Let’s get them three flats of the water, son.” Ben jumped up and ran to the back of the minivan, pulling up the hatch. I heard him grunt and he backed away with a massive flat of bottled water. He carried it over to our truck where Billy was already waiting with the gate down.

“There’s thirty-six of those to a package,” Otis said. “Even if you have no water at all, that should get all of you to any point in Wyoming you want to be with some left over.”

Jake reached out across the center to rest a hand on Otis’s shoulder (an uncharacteristic familiarity that surprised me) and said, “Thank you. That’s going to make a big difference to us.”

“You folks are having dinner on me tonight as well,” he continued. “Won’t take no for an answer.”

“That’s much appreciated,” I said.

“You have any more of those guns?” Robert asked out of nowhere.

Without missing a beat or hesitating in any way Jake’s head rotated to him, any of the warmth his face held freezing over in that one fluid motion, and he said, “’Fraid not.” He offered no further explanation but also did not look away.

After a few moments, the perpetually sour look melted from Robert’s face and settled to an expression of uncertainty. He looked down at his lap and said, “Fine, then.”

“Cheer up, Squirt,” said Billy. “You can take the Remington, there. After tomorrow, you should be able to shoot it as well.”

“My god damned name isn’t Squirt,” growled Robert. He got up from his chair and walked off on his own toward the overpass to the north of us.

“I’m sorry…about him,” said Samantha. Listening to her speak, I thought I understood the true definition of a ‘mousey voice.’ “He’s been really angry since our parents…” she trailed off.

Jake nodded. “Lost them on the road?”

“We…yes.”

Jake nodded again and looked off at Robert’s retreating back. “Yeah,” he said to himself in a low voice.

As promised, dinner was provided that evening courtesy of Otis and what provisions his people had found on the road. Mostly this was canned food, some of it Chef Boyardee, some of it Campbell’s, but he did produce a profound delicacy in the form of a nearly two foot long dry salami that he had been saving either for when they were feeling very low or very high. He said that he insisted on sharing it on account of our “extravagance and generosity.” It was so delicious that I half wanted to offer him another rifle to see what other food he might have stashed away. We do a lot better these days with the subsistence farming and our hunting parties mean that meat is often available, if not plentiful. One tends to forget those early days before any of us had managed to establish a real toehold anywhere. All food was canned, dried goods, or MREs if you were really lucky to stumble across a cache—most of which tasted like “a wet bag of ass” (Gibs’s words, not mine), to tell the truth. A regular old piece of salami cut fresh from the package was heaven.

We managed to produce a fire, get the food warmed up, and put the fire out before the sun went down. We were in an exposed position out in the open located next to two major highways and decided it would be best to avoid a fire during the evening. I recall there was no moon during that time; however the starlight has been forever strong since the lights went out—we couldn’t rely on the night to obscure us from view, so part of the discussion during dinner involved arranging a watch schedule between us throughout the evening. The larger number of the group meant very short shifts even if we ran two people to a shift; one of the first of many benefits I would come to realize in living in greater numbers.

With the logistics of the evening out of the way, the conversation turned to the exchange of news between our two groups. Otis brought a good deal of information with him out of New Mexico.

“They started rounding us up and transporting us by vehicle to the tent cities outside of Albuquerque,” Otis said. “School buses, Greyhound buses, Army trucks…hell, we even saw people getting pulled behind trucks on flatbed trailers and big shipping semis with containers full of people. Sick or healthy, minor symptoms or nothing at all. Didn’t matter what your condition was; if they found you, they brought you.”

Billy got up as Otis spoke; made his way to the truck and the container marked “pantry.” Otis’s story halted as he moved and Billy said, “Please go on. Don’t mind me.” He came back to his chair with a very familiar brown bottle and some Dixie cups.

“Hey,” Otis said in appreciation. “Whatcha got, there, Billy?”

“Tellin’ stories is thirsty work,” Billy said as he offered a cup to Otis, who took it and nodded. He filled two other cups a third of the way full and passed them out to Jake and me. He looked to Robert (who had come back when the food came out) and Samantha to ask, “Will you share a drink with us?”

“Seems pretty stupid, honestly,” said Robert. “What good does it do to stand watch if we’re all going to do it drunk?”

Billy, who had just been getting ready to pour two more cups, betrayed a fleeting expression of hurt before he covered it up with a smile and said, “Well, no one’s planning on getting drunk, kid. It’s just to take the chill off, you know?”

“No, I don’t know,” Robert said. Samantha tried to lay a calming hand on his arm but he shrugged her off, and I could see that he was winding up for quite a tear. “Please explain to me how you take the chill off without drinking to a point of being numb. I mean, it seemed perfectly clear to me that the same thing is accomplished more easily by putting on a fucking sweater as opposed to intentionally thinning out your blood. Exactly what backwoods, shit-kicker, home remed…”