While the power was out during the day at the Rusty Bucket Ranch, Marty used no flashlights or candles, to preserve them for the long, dark evenings. He sat by his window next to the turgid creek, or under the big skylight in the main room, and sketched whatever came to mind. When he got tired of drawing he read the books he got for Christmas, including Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, and Ellison’s collected works. The ambient light inside the house faded around 4:00, when he couldn’t draw or read anymore without a candle. That was how Vincent had to study and draw, he reminded himself. A great many creative men and women throughout history had not the benefit of electricity, but did some of their best work by candlelight.
Marge and Mike had to go to work, and Susie was stranded, unless she got a ride with one of them over the hill to meet her friends. The weather made that an unpleasant prospect, so she stayed home on several occasions, lamenting all the things she could have been doing with electricity. At least the phone worked, and she dragged it into her room frequently – all the way underneath her down sleeping bag; with plenty of snacks. She only came out to use the bathroom, and carried the big red phone all over the house, while the extra-long gray cord trailed her like a trained tapeworm. During meals, and the rare times when she had nobody else to talk to, she came and sat next to Marty on the couch, launching into some random conversation about her life, as if picking up where she last left off. Except that her brother usually had no idea what she was talking about.
“Tillie told me that slut Stacy has been calling Rick,” she announced testily, as she plopped down on the couch with a bowl of popcorn.
“Huh?” Marty looked up from his drawing of a space battle.
“She’d better not be telling him what I think she’s telling him!” Susie complained around handfuls of popcorn, “I told Tillie if she’s been telling anybody then I’d have to go over there and tell her a thing or two myself.” She was at that exasperating age where she was equal parts a little girl and a young woman, and the two personalities clashed like a radio tuning in classical and rock stations at the same time. She chattered non-stop, and argued with anything anybody said.
“Hey, you spilled popcorn on my drawing! Marty reached over and brushed off the kernels.
“So what, it’s just fluffy popcorn, it’s not going to hurt your precious masterpiece,” she rolled her eyes gratuitously to indicate it was a waste of a good facial expression.
“Look at the oil!” he scolded her, rubbing the tiny grease spots on the paper.
“Who cares, you’re just doodling anyway.” She was right, which made her all the more annoying. Suddenly the phone rang in her room, and Susie, the popcorn, and the drawings all exploded off the couch as if she’d sat on a landmine. She scrambled into her room, sliding sideways on the hardwood floor in her fluffy slippers, and slamming the door behind her. Marty shook his head and nibbled on the popcorn kernels he could reach, while he finished his drawing. Keno was getting the ones that fell on the floor, while Flopsy, Susie’s new rabbit, boldly competed. She was a lop-eared doe with half of her left ear missing from an unknown accident. Marge said she arrived at the pet store that way, and nobody wanted her for Christmas, so she lived in Susie’s room now. Marty had long ago come to the conclusion their house was a sanitarium for misfit pets. Flopsy was very bold, and quite unaware she was a rabbit. She hopped in and out of her cage, using it like a litter box, so she was essentially housebroken and just hung out with the family. Keno knew she was a pet, and didn’t eat her; but treated her as an equal. She got only a few bits of popcorn because she was smaller, but she tried.
Susie stomped back out of her room, looking very disappointed that it wasn’t one of her friends on the phone. “Mom wants to talk to you. Pat died. Hurry up in case Tillie calls back.”
Shocked, Marty suppressed the impulse to scold Susie for being so callous, and spoke into the receiver, “What? Pat died?” He could hear Marge sniffling on the other end.
“She finally gave up, I guess. She died at home alone, sometime last night.” Marge sounded pretty grief-stricken, which was a little surprising because she always complained about Pat, and how little she got paid. Bob would be running the store, she said, because nobody knew where Patty was. For now, it was only her holding down the fort.
Marty told her to give his condolences to Bob when she saw him, and hung up softly so Susie wouldn’t return to take the phone away. He wondered if he should call Bob, but realized he didn’t know his home number. Instead he sat on the couch, as the rain tapped on the plastic dome skylight, and wistfully recalled Pat’s dedicated grumpiness. She had been likable in a completely unlovable way. He hoped she was finally in a place where she could be happy, but was probably giving the devil a hard time at the moment. Oh, well – another one bites the dust…
Mike came home and thanked him for the use of his truck, and when Marty told him about Pat he just shrugged because he’d never met her. Marty hopped on one leg into the kitchen to start some more popcorn, which was their staple snack now, since Marge ordered a 20 lb. sack of kernels really cheap through the pet store. Then he hopped back into the main room to offer his rebuttal to the argument being presented by his little sister about how he and Mike always teased her, in order to make sure the official record showed that she deserved it. A heated argument broke out, and then Mike shouted and pointed into the kitchen, from which an orange light blazed. The popcorn! Marty hopped quickly to the stove ahead of everyone else, and the oil was on fire! The flames leapt up from the pot, joining with the gas from the camping stove, so the entire pot was engulfed in a blaze that was licking the underside of the wooden shelves, and threatening to blow up at any second! Instinctively, Marty grabbed the oven mitt and opened the back door. He grabbed the pan’s handle, and – with Mike shouting and Susie screaming – he flung the whole conflagration into the rushing creek… pot and all! He executed this bold maneuver in a smooth, sweeping motion to keep from spilling any burning oil, and it worked miraculously well. The flaming pot hit the brown water with a sharp hiss, and disappeared instantly.
He turned and laughed nervously at the twin O shapes made by Mike and Susie’s mouths, as they just watched their brother nearly burn the house down, and then avert disaster at the last second. I guess we really miss having TV around here, Marty thought cynically. When was the stupid power going to come back on? To amuse themselves, they called PG & E and tormented the operators.
“My mother has to use an iron lung,” Mike lied to the solicitous voice on the other end, “And if she dies I’m going to sue… wait! Hold on, mom! Oh no, she’s turning blue! Oh my god!!” Susie and Marty were cracking up so loud she probably heard them. There must have been a very high turnover of operators at the power company that winter.
Then it was Susie’s turn. “I’m a dentist, and I must have power in my office to treat my patients,” she complained in her best imitation of Mary Poppins. “They won’t hold still when I use my hand drill!” She held her hand over the giggles and passed the phone to Marty. They were playing a game to see who could lodge the most outrageous complaint.
He dialed the number again. “Hey man, all my plants are dying,” he moaned in his Cheech & Chong voice, “I’m not gonna have any good buds this summer, and I’ll have to go work with my cousin at the slaughterhouse.”
“I’m sorry sir,” the tinny voice replied with detached decorum, “If you’ll provide your address I’ll mail you a claim form.”
“I can’t work at the slaughterhouse, man, because the blood makes me break out in ulcers all over my butt! Save me from the blood! A-a-a-a-a-h!” Those poor operators didn’t get paid enough to endure the occupational hazards of bored teenagers. Still, they couldn’t feel sorry for them when PG & E basically stood for Power, Greed, and Extortion.
When he was alone, Marty sometimes lounged around, lost in reverie about his love life… or lack thereof. At one point he recalled all the girls for whom he’d ever cultivated a fancy in his youth, all the way up through his junior year of high school, when he first became aware of Michelle as more than just a golden goddess to worship from afar. She had amazing depth of feeling, and a personality, and a fascinating intelligence about her! What was unusually astonishing to Marty, however, was that she connected with him. During the countless hours of field research he’d spent observing her behavior at school, he’d seen no interaction with other boys beyond mere flirtation. It appeared as though he was the only male with whom she had deep conversations. And what conversations! They nattered like life-long colleagues – as long as they didn’t have to speak about how one felt about the other. They had plumbed the unfathomable depths of human art, literature and science, and now Marty would have to explore Christianity as a new subject, and one about which she was obviously passionate. He recalled her hot cheeks flushed red in anger when he was joking about Christmas, and looked around for the family Bible given by his grandmother. She was really sexy when she was angry, he pictured… I mean Michelle, not my grandmother, sheesh! After much hopping around and burrowing into piles of junk he found the “good book” – dusty with disuse – behind a stack of old National Geographic magazines. It seemed the salvation his grandmother had bestowed upon the entire family had been postponed due to unusually heavy indifference.
Marty began reading the New Testament, and was immediately transported back in time to Sunday school as a young boy, when he’d cut out paper sheep to paste on the wall in a corny manger mural. He read Luke’s account of the first Christmas, with all the familiar passages, and could hear the voice of Linus on A Charlie Brown Christmas, narrating the events of that night so long ago in Bethlehem. With all the science fiction and fantasy books he’d read, he could finally make sense of the mystical truths behind the sanctimony that cemented the foundation of Western civilization. He was so fascinated by unexpectedly having the key to unlock the secrets of the Bible that he stayed up until nearly midnight, when his candle burned down to a nub. Long after that, he lay in his bed in the dark with the chanting of the creek just outside his window, and reflected on what it all meant for his soul.
All his life he’d had a sense that there was a deep and profound love inside him, and that it was imperative to find someone with whom he could share it. He recognized that his needs were a misplaced love for God, and that he had been searching since infancy for a way to express it. All in a moment, he felt himself lying helplessly as a baby, unable to move his legs because of the casts, and crying because he wanted to be loved but feeling so unnaturally isolated after his time in the womb. At long last, he was blanketed by the earnest embrace of a great and powerful affection, and he relaxed completely for the first time he could remember. The last thing he noticed before he fell asleep was that his cheeks were wet.
The next day clamped down upon the canyon with the oppressive pressure of a drastically falling barometer. The grayness of the atmosphere smothered their little cabin, but Marty’s spirits were lifted from reading the Bible and finally realizing how he could connect with Michelle on an even deeper level – if she let him. I just need to relax, he chastised himself. He was always so anxious, as if he had to complete each task as efficiently as possible, in order to quickly begin the next one. It didn’t matter if he was brushing his teeth or splitting firewood, cleaning out a rabbit’s cage or filling a fish tank – everything had to be done with the utmost accuracy and alacrity. That habit extended to the moments when he was with Michelle, when he felt as if he had to be precisely aware of every nuance; all the time. Maybe if he could just slow down the clock in her presence, and really be there for her… it was a notion to consider.
The newspapers and radio confirmed another big storm was coming, and their power was still out from the last one. Marge brought home more batteries and cheap candles, and refreshed the ice blocks in the plastic coolers because the fridge was basically useless. School would be starting again the day after the storm, and Susie brushed her hair with a worried frown, asking no one in particular, “What about my blow drier?” That was entirely the wrong question to ask in the presence of older brothers! Mike and Marty mocked her soundly for a good fifteen minutes, jeering and lobbing sarcastic suggestions like rotten tomatoes.
“I could rig a generator so you can pedal on a bicycle to style your hair,” Marty offered solicitously. Mike suggested a blow torch would help. Susie threw cigarette butts and empty beer cans at them, but stayed in front of the fireplace because retreating to her room was not an option at night – it was like a walk-in freezer!
It was New Year’s Eve, but nobody felt much like partying. It started raining again, with fierce howls of wind that caused them to glance upward in worried anticipation of a huge branch crashing through the ceiling. The weather report on the radio said there were actually two storms converging on California: a cold one from the Arctic, and a huge monsoon system from the warmer south, which would collide off the coast and explode on them like a massive water bomb. Marty worried about the four dams upstream holding back millions of tons of water, and shuddered involuntarily. At least the creek had subsided somewhat, but it was still too high. If he could have driven his truck, he might have dared to stay with G.O.D. in his apartment, where there was actually electricity. But no, if there was a storm to be weathered, the entire crew would stay with the Rusty Bucket Ranch, and not abandon ship so easily. They retired to their beds right after midnight, but nobody slept very much, as the rain devils danced with malevolent glee on their roof. Marty lay awake in the dark, wondering how he could rescue his floundering relationship with Michelle from the rising storms of teenage angst.