sealed, labeled, and stored away in a root cellar Dad had dug out in the
field. The entrance was concealed by a hillock; Dad said I should never
tell anybody where it was.
One afternoon, Dad climbed into the excavator and dug a pit next to
the old barn. Then, using the loader, he lowered a thousand-gallon
tank into the pit and buried it with a shovel, carefully planting nettles
and sow thistle in the freshly tossed dirt so they would grow and
conceal the tank. He whistled “I Feel Pretty” from West Side Story
while he shoveled. His hat was tipped back on his head, and he wore a
brilliant smile. “We’ll be the only ones with fuel when The End comes,”
he said. “We’ll be driving when everyone else is hotfooting it. We’ll
even make a run down to Utah, to fetch Tyler.”
—I HAD REHEARSALS MOST NIGHTS at the Worm Creek Opera House, a
dilapidated theater near the only stoplight in town. The play was
another world. Nobody talked about Y2K.
The interactions between people at Worm Creek were not at all what
I was used to in my family. Of course I’d spent time with people
outside my family, but they were like us: women who’d hired Mother
to midwife their babies, or who came to her for herbs because they
didn’t believe in the Medical Establishment. I had a single friend,
named Jessica. A few years before, Dad had convinced her parents,
Rob and Diane, that public schools were little more than Government
propaganda programs, and since then they had kept her at home.
Before her parents had pulled Jessica from school, she was one of
them, and I never tried to talk to her; but after, she was one of us. The
normal kids stopped including her, and she was left with me.
I’d never learned how to talk to people who weren’t like us—people
who went to school and visited the doctor. Who weren’t preparing,
every day, for the End of the World. Worm Creek was full of these
people, people whose words seemed ripped from another reality. That
was how it felt the first time the director spoke to me, like he was
speaking from another dimension. All he said was, “Go find FDR.” I
didn’t move.
He tried again. “President Roosevelt. FDR.”
“Is that like a JCB?” I said. “You need a forklift?”