Rebecca J. Carlson: Advocating Great Books

Earthcrosser Draft 9 - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

"The ‘frigerator's broken!" my little sister Elie hollered as I came toward the shed. I stopped and let the half-empty milk bucket thump against the leg of my overalls. Elie jumped off the shed's front step and ran to the house, her short legs dusty under her tattered sun dress, her bare feet patting over the dirt.

I sighed, but I wasn't worried yet. Grandpa had fixed the refrigerator before. Worst we'd have to do is move everything into the ice house for a while. As I got closer to the shed I could hear the clank of tools—Grandpa was in there working already. I hoped he would let me help, especially if that meant I could skip the rest of my morning chores.

"What's wrong with it?" I stepped into the twilight of the shed. There was a socket in the ceiling for a lightbulb, but it was empty. The last one had burned out before I was born. Grandpa had talked about figuring out how to make a new one, but Grandma said it was easier to dip candles.

"Well, Nathan..." Grandpa stepped back from the refrigerator, which was pulled out of its usual place and turned nearly sideways. He wiped one hand down over his long face. "I think it's a leak in the coolant system."

That's when I got worried. "Can't you fix it?"

"Oh, I could fix the leak all right, but where to get the coolant?"

The light in the shed dimmed. I glanced back to see Grandma's plump form blocking the doorway. Behind her, out in the sunlight, Dad squinted in over her shoulder.

"Did you say it was a leak?" Grandma asked as she rubbed her hands on her apron.

"Motor runs fine, but it isn't keeping cold at all," Grandpa said. "All the coolant's gone. Probably a crack someplace."

"We'll just have to dig a bigger ice house." Grandma hauled herself up onto the raised wooden floor and stumped across it, making the floorboards shake. "Let me get my penicillin moved outta there." She opened the refrigerator door and pulled out the big clay jar.

"Save the magic mold pot." Grandpa grinned at her.

Grandma gave him a smirk and a snort. I smiled. That was Grandpa's way, to talk light about serious things. That mold pot had saved a life or two here in La Valle.

Dad stepped aside for Grandma as she went down the steps. Then he came in the shed, frowning at the old refrigerator. "We might be able to find some coolant out in Espanola. You can still find old cars out there, and there might be some coolant left in the air conditioning systems. Or even an old canister somewhere, if we're lucky."

"It would have to be the right kind of coolant," Grandpa said.

"Easier to dig a bigger ice house!" Grandma called from out in the yard.

Grandpa patted the old refrigerator. "I guess we should be grateful it lasted as long as it did." He gave me a sad smile. The refrigerator was over forty years old, one of the things he and Great-grandpa Koski had salvaged after the war. It had been one of the two things that still ran on the electricity from our water-turbine generator—the old refrigerator and the radio transmitter. I had distant memories of an electric stove, and an old electric sewing machine, but those were long gone to the trash heap behind the pig shed. Now all we had left was the radio.

"Let's get the rest of this moved," Dad pulled the freezer door open. I hung back, not wanting to help. It seemed so final, to move everything out of the old refrigerator. It was almost like cleaning out Mama's chest of drawers after she died. We had waited a long time to do that, almost a year. I knew we couldn't wait on this, though. The food wouldn't keep.

My dad took a package of lamb's meat wrapped in rough, thick, home-made paper and held it out to me. When I hesitated, sulking, his eyebrows went up. I took the package reluctantly with my free hand, still dangling the milk pail with my other. I balanced the icy package against my chest, which was bare under my woolen overalls. Dad stacked another package on top of the first one, and then another. When I had as much as I could handle I shambled out into the sunlight with my chin steadying the top of the pile and my eyes down.

I scowled at the dirt. There was no way to replace things that had been made before the war. If we couldn't fix them, that was it. The end. Pretty soon there wouldn't be anything left.

"The lamb!" Grandma exclaimed as she passed me in the yard. "That will never keep in the ice house. We'll have to hand it round to the neighbors."

"We're not giving it all away," I protested.

Grandma looked surprised at me, then put her fists on her hips and gave an amused grunt, "Forgot we had a thirteen-year-old boy in the house. You could probably eat it all up yourself. No, we won't give it all away. Get that load down into the ice house."

The thick wooden door to our ice house stood half-way above ground and half-way below. Down at the bottom of the stone steps I pulled on the handle and stepped into the cold darkness. Ice we had cut from the pond last winter lay under a pile of straw, keeping the place chilly year-round. I set down my pail of milk and laid the meat on one of the wooden shelves, then went back for more.

By noon time Grandma had a lamb stew cooked up, and she was talking about lamb pie for dinner. At least there was one good thing about the refrigerator going out—we'd eat well for the next few days.

We were all up to the table for lunch when Dad came in with a grim, "Guess what." I could see from the look in his eyes that it wasn't anything good.

"What is it, Jacob?" Grandma asked.

"The repeater's out."

"Oh no!" Grandma dropped her hands into her lap.

"Not the repeater too!" Elie banged her spoon on the table in indignation. I frowned at her. What did she know about it? She was too little to use the radio. We could make do without the refrigerator. There were other ways to keep food. But the radio repeater—thinking of losing that made me feel like I'd been doused with cold water. I had more friends on the radio than I'd ever had in our settlement, like my cousins out in Ramah, and Dr. Horne at Lowell Observatory in Arizona who always had answers for my astronomy questions. Without the radio repeater, I wouldn't be able to talk to them anymore.

And what if we had some kind of emergency? If we had a bad fire, or an epidemic, we could all be burned out or dead before anyone knew the difference.

Grandpa leaned back in his chair, laughing silently, as if our misfortunes were some great joke.

Dad explained with a shrug, "I thought I'd get on the radio to see if anyone knew where we could get some refrigerator coolant, and—nothing."

"Well, we'd better get up there and see what's wrong with it." Grandpa gave me a smile, then turned to Dad. "You think you can do without Nathan and me for the rest of the day, Jacob?"

An hour later, Grandpa and I struck out across the valley with our blankets and our packs full of tools. It was late in the day to start a trip up Redondo Peak, so Grandpa and I planned to camp out on the mountain overnight. Grandma had made me put on a long-sleeved shirt and my big straw hat to keep off the sun, and I had a sweater in my pack for after dark. Set free from my afternoon chores, and tomorrow morning's too, I felt as light as the hawks circling in the blue sky overhead.

That was until I remembered why we were going.

A nagging knot of worry settled into my stomach as we hiked along the old, overgrown road. I kept my eye on the slim repeater tower with its windmill flashing in the breeze high on top of the peak ahead of us. What if we couldn't fix it? People for a hundred miles around relied on our repeater for long-distance communication, to pick up the signals from their radio stations and send them out again at higher power. I owed my very existence to that repeater—my parents had met over the radio.

A terrible thought made me stop and turn around. "Grandpa! What'll we do if it's scrappers?"

Grandpa chuckled as he caught up to me. "Maybe they'll come along and try and sell it back to us."

"They wouldn't be that stupid."

"How do they know who runs the repeater?"

Grandpa's teasing did not cheer me up. Even way out in La Valle we had problems with scrappers. Most of the time they salvaged things from the ruins, but sometimes they'd help themselves to whatever they could pick up whether someone else was using it or not. A lot of things had gone missing already that spring—food, tools, metal pipe, wire, and even our old voltmeter. The repeater seemed an easy mark, way up on the mountain away from the settlement. If the repeater was down because scrappers had taken equipment off the tower, they'd be long gone by now and there would be nothing we could do.

Grandpa must have seen my sour expression. He thumped his hand on my shoulder. "Don't worry, Nathan. We can rebuild the repeater from scratch if we have to. That's what your Great-grandpa Koski did."

Yes, but it had taken him years to do it. And he'd done it right after the war, back when it was easier to find parts. Back then, things weren't so picked over.

The road took us across the broad valley, then climbed into the pine woods that covered the side of Redondo Peak. In the shade from the trees I pulled my hat off and let the breeze cool my damp forehead. It was June, the hottest month of the year. The monsoon would come in July, rain every afternoon to cool the weather and water the dry grass. For now, the whole valley seemed asleep in the heat—grass dry and brown, trees still, even the insects quiet—everything waiting for the rain to come.

Near the top of the mountain we stopped on a ridge to catch our breath and enjoy the view. "Do you see that?" Grandpa pointed to the ring of mountains that surrounded Redondo peak in a near-perfect circle. "That used to be the base of a gigantic volcano, three times as high as Redondo. We're standing right in the middle of it here. One day it just blew up, threw rock and ash for miles around. Do you know those mesas down by where Los Alamos used to be? They're made of volcanic ash, thirty feet deep. It all fell in one day."

"All in one day," I echoed, imagining flaming rock and ash pelting the peaceful valley below us. I'd known that we lived in the caldera of an ancient volcano. Mr. Lacapa had told me so the first time I went with him and Grandpa out to the hot springs to help them collect sulfur. But I'd never imagined that the mesas on the other side of the mountains had been made in a single day.

And in a single second, some forty years ago, Los Alamos National Lab had been turned into a crater, carved neatly out of those mesas by a nuclear bomb.

Afternoon had nearly turned to evening by the time we hiked the last rise to the top of Redondo Peak. I stopped when I noticed the big rusty satellite dish that sprouted up like a mushroom from the cement pad beside the repeater tower. Something was wrong. The dish had always pointed straight up, as long as I could remember. But now it tipped slightly to the side.

I glanced back at Grandpa. He trudged up behind me, staring at the satellite dish, his mouth slightly open and his eyes squinted. "Someone's been messing with that dish." He sounded worried.

We hurried up to the top of the peak. As we reached the line of metal posts that used to hold up a wire fence I searched the repeater tower for signs that anything had been taken. The big electrical box at the base was still there, along with the great big barrel that was our home-made storage battery. Grandpa unlocked the electrical box and jerked the door open. I exhaled with relief to see all the wires, parts, and fuses untouched.

Grandpa frowned at the satellite dish. "Huh," he said. "Maybe it's just rusted out."

"Maybe," I said. Rusted out and breaking down, like everything else from before the war. I tipped my head back to see the windmill blades turning way at the top of the tower. The tower itself looked just as it had the last time we were up here, except for a big, twiggy tangle of a bird nest near the top.

"Looks like someone moved in," Grandpa remarked as he followed my gaze. "Do you think you could climb up there and evict ‘em, Nathan?"

I stared at grandpa in disbelief. "Sure," I said, with a surprised laugh. I'd never climbed the tower before, but I'd always wanted to. I tipped my head back to stare at the top of the tower and got prickles at the back of my knees.

"Get on up there, then," Grandpa opened the electrical box and threw the switch that cut off the power.

I swung myself onto the ladder and clambered upwards, watching the metal struts of the tower go by and the mountain top slowly fall beneath me. The metal ladder felt gritty in my hands and the whole tower rang like a bell every time my boots hit a rung. It was a long climb, and I was gasping by the time I reached the bird's nest, both from the thin air and the excitement of being up so high.

Up close the nest was huge, from some kind of big hawk or eagle. It had empty, broken egg shells in it, and a lot of bird mess and feathers. I felt a little sorry to disturb it, but I knew that once the rains came, a soggy pile of twigs could damage the metal struts of the tower, and if those struts were ruined there would be no replacing them. I tucked a long black feather in my pocket before I sent the rest tumbling to the ground on the side away from where Grandpa was working. Watching the nest fall made my stomach feel like I was falling with it. I gripped the ladder tight and swallowed hard, closing my eyes so I couldn't see how far away the ground was.

For a while I hung there, listening to the wind whistle through the metal struts and the creak of the windmill blades above me. I decided not to look directly down again. Instead I gazed off to the south, waiting for my nerves to settle so I could start climbing down. A small valley lay in that direction, and as I peered down into it I noticed something on the valley floor—a tiny white rectangle with a black spot at the center. It reminded me of a pale, staring eye. I squinted at it long time, wondering what it could be. It didn't look natural. It had to be man-made, and it had to be big for me to see it from so far away.

I knew that valley. We went through it to get to the sulphur springs on the other side of Redondo Peak. I couldn't remember ever seeing any ruins there.

Grandpa's voice came drifting up from below. "You all right?"

"Coming down!" I shouted back.

I concentrated on the part of the ladder right in front of my nose and let my hands and feet take me back down. When I finally jumped the last several feet to the ground I felt mighty proud of myself. I'd been a little scared at the top, but I couldn't wait to get up there again, maybe even go as high as the windmill next time.

Grandpa was locking up the electrical box with a mournful look on his face. "Sorry to have to tell you this, Nathan, but..."

I slouched against the side of the tower. He was going to tell me the repeater couldn't be fixed.

"I'm already done with the repair. I knew you wanted to help."

I couldn't decide whether to laugh or moan, so I sort of did both at once. Grandpa laughed and tried to put his arm around my shoulder but I pushed him away. Then I told him, "I saw something down in that little valley just to the south. It looked like some kind of building, but I didn't think there were any ruins down there."

Grandpa frowned, "No, there certainly aren't."

"Can we go see what it is?"

"We'll take a look on our way back down. We should be able to see it when we get over on the south side of the mountain."

By the time we hiked to the place where we could see the little valley the sun had gone behind the western rim of the mountains. We left the path and walked right up to a drop that gave us a clear view down to the valley floor. The thing was still there, visible even in the twilight.

"Well what do you suppose that could be?" Grandpa used his hands to shade his eyes and stared down into the valley.

"I don't know," I said. "Some kind of building?"

Grandpa nodded. "Maybe it's an old mine shaft that caved in." He slowed down at the end of the sentence, as if he didn't think much of his own idea. "We'll swing down that way tomorrow before we go home." He sounded just as curious about it as I was.

We found a good camping spot and built a fire to keep ourselves warm. We hadn't brought anything to cook or any gear to cook it with—just made do with dried apples, cold biscuit, and jerky. I could have eaten what we'd brought for breakfast too, but I left it alone, knowing I'd be even hungrier in the morning.

Night fell, and the forest and mountains disappeared in the darkness. The stars spread out overhead, and we sat up a long time watching for meteors. I felt like I could stay up all night, just drinking in the starlight.

"They took the whole world away, but they gave us back the sky," Grandpa said.

"How's that?" I asked.

"I remember when there were so many electric lights you couldn't see most of the stars at night. After the war, even though we didn't have things we were used to having, we could see the stars."

"They're starting to have electric lights again up in the northwest," I said. Dad had heard it on the radio.

"Yep, and one of these days we're going to see a gasoline automobile come rolling down the highway." We both laughed. The old asphalt highway was so broken up with icy winters and hot summers, we could hardly get a horse-cart over it. Besides, the only people who had cars were government officials and unbelievably rich private citizens. People like that never had any business in La Valle.

Bright yellow Jupiter shone steadily over the blackness of the pine tops. It looked almost close enough to touch. "They really sent space probes to Jupiter." I said.

"They certainly did. And people walked on the moon. Don't you ever forget it, and tell your children and your children's children. We walked on the moon."

I sighed, a dull ache in my heart for an old dream long dead. I used to want to explore the planets and walk on the moon, back before I learned that rockets had been banned in the armistice that ended the war. It had been over a hundred years since anyone had gone to the moon, and no one would be going back, at least not in my lifetime.

I fell asleep thinking about the strange eye I had seen in the valley below us, wondering if it was still staring up at the stars.