#17 - United States color-coded war plans

Saturdays were usually the day Christy slept-in while Daryl fed Jimmy and Jake cereal and watched cartoons. But this morning he had a hand on her shoulder, whispering, “Christy, I need to go to that seminar-thing I was telling you about. The kids are watching TV. I should be back in a couple hours.” 

Christy moaned, stretched, and then mumbled, “OK.”

“I gave them breakfast.” He said.

“OK.”

“So, I’ll see you guys in a bit.”

“OK.” Christy lifted her head from her pillow, her hair a puffed-static-frizz. “Wait, where are you going?” She said. Her eyes were still closed.

“That seminar I told you about. Preparing for disasters and stuff.” He said. He stepped toward the bedroom doorway.

“Wait, you’re going to that?” She asked. She was awake now, rubbing her eyes.

“I told you about it.” He said.

“I didn’t think you’d really go.”

“I was kind of planning on it. That’s why I told you about it.” He said. He tapped rhythmically on the doorframe.  

“Whatever. Go ahead.” She said, pushing the bedclothes off.

“You don’t have to get up.” He said. “The kids are just watching TV.”

“I’m up.” She said. “Just go. It’s OK.”

Daryl had seen a poster advertising the free Disaster Preparedness Seminar a week earlier when he had stopped in at the Commerce Street Army Surplus to see if they sold tent stakes for a used tent that Christy had picked up at a garage sale. They did, and as Daryl stood in line to pay at the register, he noticed the poster hanging on the wall behind the clerk. In bold letters it asked the question: ARE YOU READY? This was followed by an alphabetical list of horrors. Apocalypse. Economic Collapse. Famine. Natural Disasters. Terror Attacks. War. The seminar promised to provide attendees with the know-how to survive and protect their families from the worst conditions imaginable. At the bottom of the poster was a statement that had lingered with Daryl in the week since: NOT IF, BUT WHEN.

Daryl arrived at the Army Surplus five minutes before the seminar was scheduled to begin. The parking lot was filled with pickups and SUVs; his was the only minivan. He waited in the van until two minutes after nine o’clock, hoping to sneak in relatively unnoticed. As he entered, a woman at the register asked, “Are you here for the seminar, sir?”

“Yes.” He said, smiling.

She pointed to the rear of the store. He headed that way, down an aisle containing massive backpacks in a variety of camouflage patterns. The seminar was being held in a small room usually used for employee breaks. Rows of chairs had been arranged facing the front of the room, where a tall man wearing a tan shirt and a tie designed to look like a rainbow trout stood behind a folding table. He noticed Daryl in the doorway.

“Come on in. There’re a couple seats still open.” He said, pointing to an empty spot on the back row.

A man wearing a St. Louis Cardinals hat shifted seats to the right, leaving the nearest chair open for Daryl. Sitting down, Daryl whispered, “Thanks.” The Leader walked the short distance to the back row and handed a few sheets of paper to Daryl.

“Just a worksheet and some other useful info we’ll be covering this morning. I’m Mike, by the way.” He said.

Daryl nodded and quickly scanned the papers. A general supplies list, a food list, a bug-out packing list, some fill in the blanks, a bibliography of useful books and websites.

“As I said, this class is an introduction, really. We don’t have enough time to cover everything, but what I hope to do is give you a starting place. When you leave today you’ll have a pretty good idea of how to start your own emergency plan, what sort of gear you need, some strategic information, and of course, a bunch of resources to continue learning about this important topic.” Mike said from the front of the room. “Does that sound OK to you-all?”

From around the room came nods and affirmative mumbling.

“Let me ask you-all a question. Why’d you come here today? What’s your motivation?” Mike asked.

A man on the front row said, “Just wanna be ready. I got a wife, a daughter. If - God-forbid - something bad happens, I wanna know what to do. Know what I’m saying?”

Mike nodded.

From the left of the room, a bearded man said, “That stuff on the poster - war, terrorism, and whatnot? That’s scary shit. But it’s real, so we need to be ready.”

The Leader smiled. “It is, very real. I think that’s why we’re all here. Listen, these are not hypothetical situations. This is stuff that has happened before and will happen again. It’s fine to hope for peace and, you know, sunny skies, and all that. Nobody wants a natural disaster or another September-the-eleventh. But like the Boy Scout motto says, always be prepared, right? That’s what we’re here for today.”

For close to ninety minutes, Mike presented a range of worst-case scenarios; flash flooding, nation-wide power outages, collapse of the digital banking system, a global pandemic, World War III, terrorism, governmental oppression.

“You can call it the ‘Apocalypse’ or whatever you want to call it, but for many, many people, if one of these events hits, it’s the end for them. They aren’t going to make it. They won’t be ready.” He said.

Daryl listened closely, taking notes on the worksheet provided. After each new crisis was presented, Mike would give what he called “Preparedness Steps” and then give a few moments for the attendees to ask questions. Daryl remained quiet, his arms crossed, nodding in affirmation as men took turns telling anecdotal stories, giving their opinions, or sharing advice. He was astounded at how much thought most of them had 

put into preparedness. Before seeing the poster advertising the seminar, he’d barely even considered it.

The man in the St. Louis Cardinals hat had made a few comments during the seminar, usually reiterating a point Mike had already made, but with his own personal story to support it. As Mike turned the class’ attention to the Bug Out bag packing list, the Cardinals fan began to fidget, as if he wanted to say something. Finally he raised his hand.

“I’m just wondering if any of you here have ever asked yourself why all this stuff is happening? I sure don’t believe it’s just a coincidence that we’re getting all these hurricanes, big tornadoes, the drought we had this past summer, and all the rest of it. I don’t know. I’ve just been thinking about this global warming thing.” The Cardinals fan said.

Someone in the room groaned loudly in disbelief. The bearded man chuckled and said. “No offense buddy, but that global warming bullshit is nonsense. Hell, it was hotter when I was a little kid than it is now. I remember goin’ swimming in early May before school let-out. I’m sorry, but in my opinion, it’s all baloney.”

The Cardinals fan said, “I’m not saying it’s scientific fact or anything, I’m just saying it’s one possibility to explain all this weird weather we’ve had over the past few years.”

“It definitely ain’t fact.” The bearded man said.

Daryl felt a bit embarrassed for the Cardinals fan, but he remained quiet. From the front of the room, Mike said, “Now, personally I can’t say I put much stock in the global warming conspiracy. But I do think you have a good question, sir.” He make eye contact with the Cardinals fan and smiled. “It’s a good transition into something I’d like to speak to you all about here briefly before we dismiss.”

Mike paused and looked down at some notes on the table in front of him. He put his hand to his chin and then looked up at the class.

“We’ve been talking a lot about preparedness today. We’ve looked at all sorts of very real, very dangerous threats to our lives and the lives of our families. But there’s one type of preparedness that we haven’t discussed, and it is – in my opinion – the most important. I don’t mean to offend anyone here today, but I hope you’ll lend me your ear for a moment as I talk with you about spiritual preparedness.”

Daryl shifted in his seat. The room became especially quiet.

“How many of you would call yourself a Christian?” Mike asked.

Four of the men raised their hands immediately. A few more joined in slowly. Daryl felt sweat forming at the hairline across his forehead. He reached up and wiped it away and then kept his hand raised briefly before dropping it again to his lap.

“That’s good.” Mike said. “Some of you-all are going to know what I’m about to say. See, the Bible teaches us that what’s most important isn’t what happens in this life, but what happens in the next life. Like I’ve said again and again today, it’s vital that we get prepared for natural disasters and so on, but the Bible teaches us there’s only one way to get prepared for what’s coming.”

Daryl coughed into his hand and wiped his palm across his pant leg. He focused on Mike’s tie, watching the giant rainbow trout dangle upside down from the man’s neck.

“It’s obvious that things are getting worse and worse. Would you agree?” Mike asked.

A few of the attendees agreed audibly. Some nodded silently.

“Well, there’s a reason for that.” Mike continued. “The Bible tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Sins a real thing – I don’t probably need to convince you on that point. This world is full of liars, thieves, cheats, adulterers, and worse. Just pick up a newspaper. Just take a look around and you’ll see that the Bible is proven to be true when it comes to the sinfulness of the human heart.”

The bearded man said, “That’s right.”

“It wouldn’t be right for sin to go un-judged. Somebody’s gotta pay for it, and the Bible tells us that judgment will come. It will. It’s only a matter of time.” Mike said. He glanced around the room, above the heads of the attendees.

Daryl was staring thoughtlessly at the eye of the rainbow trout. He suddenly realized he’d been tapping his foot on the finished cement floor. The tapping was the only sound in the room besides the hum of a snack vending machine in the corner.

Mike said, “I don’t know what judgment will look like. But I think we can gather from what the Bible says that it’s not going to be pleasant. Not something anyone here would want to endure.” He looked to the clock hanging just above the exit.

“I’ve kept you over two hours, but I just have to say one more thing. If you want to be prepared for the worst – truly prepared – you need to look into Jesus. Read the Bible. It’s full of answers. If you have questions about how to become a Christian, you can always ask. Come here to the store and ask me if you want. I’ll be happy to talk to you.”

Mike smiled. “Thank you all for coming. Before you go, please take a look at the variety of preparedness starter packs we have for sale. Thanks for your patience and for listening to my little sermon. Just for today, we have a special deal - if you buy a starter pack in the store before you leave, we’ll throw in a Bible for free. We have some here with camouflage covers. Not sure what the use of that is, but it looks neat.”

Daryl left the Army Surplus without browsing the preparedness starter packs. At home, Christy was busy doing laundry. The kids were still sitting in front of the TV, bowls of soggy, half-eaten cereal in their laps.

“How was it?” She asked, turning the timer knob on the dryer.

“It was OK.” He said, shrugging.

“Do you think we’ll manage to survive the end of the world?” She asked.

“I hope so.” Daryl said. He walked into the TV room and plopped down on the couch. The kids were watching a cartoon set in a zoo. There were two pandas teaching a giraffe how to fly a kite.

“Are you two going to watch TV all day?” He asked. Neither of them responded. They stared unblinking at the screen. 

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To learn more about the United States' color-coded war plans, read the original Wikipedia article HERE. 

#18 - Wedge (border)

“The girl who works here, when’s the next time she’ll be in?” He said. His eyes looked elsewhere, away from the woman’s face.

“What girl?”

“She has brown hair. About this tall.” He held his hand out flat, palm down, level with his shoulder. “She was here last week.” He said.

“Lots of girls work here, sir.” The woman said. She opened up the register. Her hands moved busily. “Is there something I can help with? We’re ‘bout to close.”

“No. Thank you.” He said.

In the B & P parking lot he sat in his truck, unready to leave town. He watched cars cruise Old Missouri 37. After half an hour he drove to Dairy Freeze and bought an ice cream cone and ate it on the way back to the property. He drove with the windows down and the radio off. After the turn at 112, he slowed the truck and took his time on the narrow lane leading up to the trailer. In the trees, the headlights caught on the eyes of deer and other creatures, effulgent in the darkness.

He parked the truck at the end of the trailer and raised the windows and turned off the engine. The woods were loud at night in a way never heard during sunlight hours; layers of sound that started up high in the leaves and moved in close through the tall grass of the yard. Cicadas, crickets, katydids, all contributing to a resonant thrum encircling him. He stopped and listened. In the noise, there was also a baby’s laughter, just behind him. He turned sharply as a twig snapped in the darkness where the clearing gave way to forest. He went ridged. He strained to make sense of the aphotic space at the edge of his vision.

There’s nothing there, he thought. And then, if there is something, don’t confront it. Don’t speak. Don’t even breathe and be heard over the insects.

He went to the door of the trailer and entered quietly, locking it behind him. He turned on the lights, and left them on till morning.

For days, he stayed close to the property, not going into the forest.  He started a project to reinforce the wooden steps and platform leading to the door of the trailer, working steadily in the morning and napping during the peak heat of the afternoon. In the evenings, after the sun had set, he stayed inside. He thought of the B & P girl sometimes, always with shame. He decided he wouldn’t try to see her again. The gift he’d thought of giving to her – the old medicine bottle he’d found – seemed foolish now. What use would she have with it?

After a week without leaving the property, he’d had enough. He decided to hike the trail he’d taken before, back to the abandoned settlement site where he’d discovered the crumbled stone foundation. The trail was familiar. Along the way he noted landmarks. Downed trees, undergrowth, deer paths, ditches. He walked for an hour and found the place without trouble. He dropped down on a pile of stones to rest on what had been the northeast corner of the structure. The foliage above provided shade and he sat and looked around. He wondered if there were more trinkets to be found like the medicine bottle. Without rising he used the toe of his boot to kick at the dead leaves and dirt, watching the overturned earth for a glint from glass or metal.

“We must be neighbors.”

He looked up in the direction of the voice. Twenty yards off, further down the trail, a man stood looking back at him. The man wore a rimmed raffia hat pulled low; an A-bolt rifle resting over his shoulder. The man nodded.

“We’re not unfriendly, but I need to let you know that you’re on private property. Where you’re sitting’s a historical spot, so we don’t let folks come back here.” The man said.

Still seated on the foundation, he said, “My dad and mom own a lot of this land. Or mom does. Dad’s dead. You sure this spot belongs to you?”

The man with the gun said, “Yes, we’re certain of that.”

He stood up and said, “Okay. I’ll go.”

The man with the gun watched him walk down the hill, away from the site. At the bottom, he looked back up at him. The man called, “It’d be best if you don’t come over here again.”

He didn’t respond. He turned and followed the trail he’d come in on. Walked for ten minutes before stopping to look back for the man. The trail was empty.

Back at the property, he sat on the trailer’s new wooden steps and smoked. He thought about calling to ask about the official acreage and survey information, but began to consider the complications of making a phone call and decided against it. It would be easier to stay away. It didn’t matter. His mother had said the property was a lonely place. It wasn’t as lonely as she’d thought. If you walked long enough, you would meet someone, friendly or not.

He sat for a long time, and then went inside and retrieved the medicine bottle. He got into the pickup and started it up and left the property. Late in the afternoon he was at B & P.

Against his best judgment, he wanted to see the girl again. He didn’t think he could talk to her, let alone give her the medicine bottle. But seeing her would be good. It was wrong for her to go unnoticed; that’s the way he felt. If he kept his distance, there was no harm. He wouldn’t cross the line. 

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To learn more about the real Wedge (border), read the original Wikipedia article HERE. 

#19 - Mojave Phone Booth

We got a deal where we can add our daughter on our plan for ten bucks a month or something and she’d get her own phone with all that text messaging and facebook stuff. We did it for her birthday, surprised her with it. I picked her up after school that day and we drove over to the shop and she spent an hour looking at all the different phones they got there. Course, she wanted the Apple phone – with the camera and games and whatnot. She begged and begged. I tried to play tough, but you know how it is, and in the end I caved. It was lots more than my wife and I agreed on, but it was her sixteenth birthday. That only happens once. Plus, I figured we’d never make it out of that place unless I gave in.

After that, she was glued to it. That thing was always in her hand, her two eyes staring at the screen. She’d be texting her friends, playing some game, never looking up. We made a rule about no phones at the dinner table. That lasted about two minutes.

Couple months after we gave it to her, she came home one night about an hour late. We’d been calling her, sending messages, but hadn’t heard a peep back. Anyway, she comes in and says her friend just broke up with her boyfriend and she’d been talkin’ her through it. That’s all fine and good, but you know, we’d been sick worrying and all she had to do was send a text saying what she was up to. We sorta laid into her. I don’t like to lecture, but she had that sixteen-year-old attitude, like we don’t know nothin’. So, I took the phone away. I planned on keeping it for one week. She acted like the world was ending, crumpled into a ball on the couch like somebody’d died.

I thought it’d be good enough to keep the phone on the dresser in my room that week, but turns out she snuck into our room and took the phone to school the next morning. I caught her sneaking ‘round trying to put it back that afternoon. She lied and said she’d just needed to check a homework assignment on the phone, or something like that, but it was clear she was lying to us. So, the next day, I took the phone with me and kept it in the glove box of my truck.

At lunch I was sitting there listening to the radio, eating something, and I decided to take the phone out and play with it a bit. I hadn’t really had a chance to look at it much since we bought it ‘cause she wouldn’t put the thing down normally. I’m looking at it, messing with a game on there, when a text pops up and says something like, ‘what you doing?’ It came from someone named ‘Mojave guy’. I didn’t know what that meant, but you know, a father’s curiosity got the best of me. I wanted to find out. I figured out how to write back a message and I wrote, ‘Having lunch. How about you?’

Well, this guy starts asking me questions. Course, he’s thinking it’s my daughter he’s talking with. I just respond with real simple answers – only a couple words, but he’s flirtin’ and telling me how he wants to see me again. I have no idea who this guy is, and I’m just getting more curious. That’s when I have this idea. I tell the guy that I want to see him again too, and how it’s been too long and whatever. I was trying to sound like a girl, I guess you could say. Felt a little strange. Anyway, I ask him where we should meet and he says ‘at the phone booth’.

Honest, I didn’t even know there was any phone booths around these days. I didn’t know what to tell him. For a minute I just sat there in my truck thinking about what I should do next. I considered telling this guy the truth - that I wasn’t Brit and that I’d been messin’ with him. But then I sent him a message and asked him to meet me at Hellman Park near the tennis court. See, Hellman Park is close to where I work, so it was real convenient for me to drive over there and see if I could see this guy. He said he could meet me there in twenty minutes.

As I was driving over there, I started putting some things together. First, if this guy wants to meet up with my daughter at some phone booth, that means he’s probably not from her school. Could mean he’s at a different school, but more likely, he’s older or a dropout. Second, I started wondering why she’d never mentioned him. She talked about guys at school sometimes, but she hadn’t been talkin’ about nobody lately. In other words, I wasn’t havin’ good thoughts about what sort of person this ‘Mojave guy’ was.

I parked in the street on the west side of the park at a place I could see the tennis court from. Really, all I was hoping for was a look at this guy. There wasn’t no reason to suspect Brit was up to something fishy, but I just had this sick feeling. Maybe it was just that father’s instinct to protect his daughter. Whatever the case, I just wanted a look at him. Sort of a peek into Brit’s world.

I sat there for a long time, trying to look like I wasn’t lookin’. I watched the clock a bit, too. My lunch break had passed and I knew I’d be getting’ back late, which meant I needed a story for why. Time was runnin’ real slow, the way it does, and whoever this guy was, he never showed up. At least not while I was sitting there. He said twenty minutes, but I waited thirty-five and never saw him.

That night, I’d decided to give the phone back to Brit and try and get her to say something about the Mojave guy. At first she was real happy to have the phone back, but then I mentioned the message from Mr. Mojave, and she got real dodgy all the sudden. Finally, I had to fess up about my adventure at the park, and Brit looked on the phone to see all the messages I’d sent back and forth with the guy earlier that day. She rolled her eyes at me, which I’m used to, and she said I was a weirdo stalker. That’s what you get for caring ‘bout your kids, I suppose. 

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To learn more about the real Mojave Phone Booth, read the Wikipedia article HERE.