hear Dad’s reply when I asked what the gun was for.
“Defense,” he said.
The next night I had a rehearsal at Worm Creek. I was perched on
my crate, listening to the monologue being performed onstage, when
Charles appeared and sat next to me.
“You don’t go to school,” he said.
It wasn’t a question.
“You should come to choir. You’d like choir.”
“Maybe,” I said, and he smiled. A few of his friends stepped into the
wing and called to him. He stood and said goodbye, and I watched him
join them, taking in the easy way they joked together and imagining an
alternate reality in which I was one of them. I imagined Charles
inviting me to his house, to play a game or watch a movie, and felt a
rush of pleasure. But when I pictured Charles visiting Buck’s Peak, I
felt something else, something like panic. What if he found the root
cellar? What if he discovered the fuel tank? Then I understood, finally,
what the rifle was for. That mighty barrel, with its special range that
could reach from the mountain to the valley, was a defensive perimeter
for the house, for our supplies, because Dad said we would be driving
when everyone else was hotfooting it. We would have food, too, when
everyone else was starving, looting. Again I imagined Charles climbing
the hill to our house. But in my imagination I was on the ridge, and I
was watching his approach through crosshairs.
—CHRISTMAS WAS SPARSE THAT YEAR. We weren’t poor—Mother’s business
was doing well and Dad was still scrapping—but we’d spent everything
on supplies.
Before Christmas, we continued our preparations as if every action,
every minor addition to our stores might make the difference between
surviving, and not; after Christmas, we waited. “When the hour of need
arises,” Dad said, “the time of preparation has passed.”
The days dragged on, and then it was December 31. Dad was calm at
breakfast but under his tranquillity I sensed excitement, and
something like longing. He’d been waiting for so many years, burying
guns and stockpiling food and warning others to do the same.