The tremors pass. The dust settles. But over the next two days, random things in town will suddenly tip over and smash - the quake jarred them just barely loose enough for gravity to finish the job. People flinch and scatter every time, expecting a fresh disaster. You do it, too.
There were nine injuries. There'd be more if anyone lived here. The B&B got off pretty easy, and some people whose houses were hit hard move into the unused rooms during repairs.
In the first fifteen minutes of silence, the owner, a woman you'd spoken maybe twelve words to - though she'd said a lot more than that to you - grabbed you and started crying into your shirt. "What are we going to do?" she said, but you stared into the hazy red glare, the sun behind a cloud of dirt.
She got over it. She bounces back from things fast, she's always got eight or twelve new projects chambered and ready to go. You haven't asked, but you think she's mistaken you for a city boy, and one with answers.
But no trains have come in since the quake, and a canyon's opened up in the road west of town. So that's both your ideas shot.
This is probably the last cigarette you'll ever smoke. You roll it back and forth between your fingers in thought, and then you hold it up toward the darkening sky, so it looks like you've lit it from the sun itself. The orange glow like embers at its tip. Once you smoke this down you're gonna need to find a whole new nervous habit. Pain in the ass, is what that is.
Plants are picky about where they'll grow. Tobacco - you learned this from an old woman in Rimina who pronounced it "dabacka" - doesn't like to be wet. The floods have gotten way worse even in your lifetime, and there are fewer and fewer places a farmer can count on to stay dry. "Semi-arid conditions," this lady said, stabbing her finger emphatically into the table, "and well-drained soil." You're not sure what "semi-arid" is in practical terms, but you've seen the desert west of Anka and that's probably too far to the other extreme. Regular arid. Arid-arid.
Someone'll still find a way to grow it. But the supply won't be reliable, and it'll be expensive. It has to be grown, cut, packaged, shipped, it has to be stored and distributed, none of these things is ever certain. It'll take time to get going again, after the earthquake, and there could always be another one. So you might as well kick the habit now, be done with it while you still have the choice. Stop-starting at random and trying to parcel out each pack based on local availability sounds like hell.
And, when the shortages really kick in, there'll be money to be made. There are way better uses for rare commodities than keeping all the throat cancer to yourself.
You sigh, and light up for real. Idly you wonder: when smokes are a luxury good, will people still have lighters? You amble down Bukam Boro's main drag in the sunset glow and inhale, good and deep. It almost takes the edge off being in Bukam Boro.
You won't mind, probably. Quitting smoking. You're great at quitting.
You tap ash into the belly of somebody's rusted-out charcoal grill. They used to tailgate the caravan's arrival here, but that was already dying out before your time.
Your shadow is long and purple on the cracked sidewalk. You haul in another lungful of smoke and slowly breathe it back out, as overhead a skylight flickers on, shorts out, and explodes. You're realistic about your personal attractions - got a wonky jaw and you're built like a whippet that's never known human kindness - but you imagine you look pretty badass right now. Sunset, smoke, shower of sparks coming down. Shame no one sees it.
You smoke your last cigarette down to the filter and then it's over. And you're still here. And if the caravan doesn't come pick you up soon, you're liable to chew your own arm off.
The road is vibrating. You dart glances around at the construction workers, thinking you'll take cues from them on how freaked out to be, and in the meantime pretend your heart rate didn't just spike.
But it's not that, it's road traffic. You walk fast to the western edge of town, and you're not the only one.
But it's not the caravan. It's Rhea, alone.
As soon as she stops her truck she gets mobbed for news. They don't even let her get out. Over the press she sees you, does a double take, and then nods once. You touch your hat in acknowledgment and fade back into town. She'll find you.
There are still some last dregs of breakfast keeping warm in the kitchen. Grits, mostly. With paprika for the real renegades. Rhea sits across from you and hands you a flask, which you raise your eyebrows at - eleven in the morning, okay, we're doing this? - but turns out it's iced tea. Unsweetened, even. This preference of yours is pretty rare in this neck of the woods, and you're surprised she remembered it.
Well. No you're not. She's supposed to work people. Remembering is her job.
"I'm glad to see you," she says, and you want to kick yourself for being so cynical. She's your friend and fellow traveler, whatever else she is.
"Yeah, same."
You talk about the caravan (missing in action). You talk about the quake (bad everywhere). After a while she slumps forward over the table and says "Can we please talk about something else," and you... you feel bad for her. She's so good at everything all the time, but she's, like, what, twenty-two? She's carrying a lot. The average twenty-two-year-old is a dumbass.
For a diversion, you try to tell her about the train, but then you wish you hadn't started. It feels too personal. And for all you know there'll never be a train again. You change the subject, none too smoothly, and catch her up on all the people-watching you've been doing since you've been stuck here. Dull as friggin' dishwater, and maybe kinda mean-spirited, since any of the people you're talking about could walk in any time. But that's small towns for ya. So maybe you're a jerk, fine, nothing new there, better than seeing Rhea so out of sorts.
"I get it," she says finally, straightening with a wry laugh, "you're bored. You want a ride out of here? I can drop you off wherever you want on the way back."
"Where you headed?"
"North." She swallows. "I need to stock up on sheet metal and nonperishables."
Ah. And there's that sore you've been trying not to touch. "Oh yeah," you say, casual, very normal, "how is... uh, how's Bartow?"
You don't say: how's the roadhouse, how's that crappy mountain bike course, did anyone get hurt, is there still that hole in the ground that fills up into a frog pond in the spring, how's Masha's temper this year, are my snakes okay?
They aren't your snakes. Ages eight to sixteen, you had this salvaged glass tank and you decked it out with a light and a heating element and some nice sticks and rocks and you'd catch a snake and put it in your room, and they just - weren't having it. They'd hide and refuse to eat and you'd have to take them out back and let them go again, and try to build a better setup for next time. It never stuck. You feel a weird proprietary interest in them, and they would rather be alone. They were never yours. Your uncle's house was no place to live.
Rhea says, "The coffee shop roof fell in."
You push congealing grits around with the back of your spoon. "That explains the sheet metal." Belatedly you remember to say, "Your boyfriend. Elias."
"He's fine. We'll all be fine." Her jaw is set. They'll all be fine. She'll make it so.
"Well. I can promise no one's got anything to sell you here. So you should probably keep rolling." You hand back her flask.
She looks at you. If she offers again to take you along, you'll have to say something. You don't know what that something is, but you don't think either of you is gonna enjoy it. She doesn't need your help, and you don't want any from her, and you can't imagine anything worse than sitting in her passenger seat mile after mile with the ghost of Bartow hanging over the road.
"You're probably right," she says, in a moment, so you don't have to say it.
You walk her out to her truck. Her dog was waiting for her on the veranda, and he bounces along after you two, and there you go, here's something you can say: "I'd come along, but I can't deal with the dog smell." You pet him roughly and don't look in his big liquid eyes.
"How do you smell anything?" Rhea says. "You smoke."
Not anymore, but you don't feel like telling her that. You scowl at her.
"It's okay." She unlocks the truck and opens the side door for the dog to jump in. "If I find Nadine, I'll ask her to come rescue you."
"Thanks," you say, deflating. You don't really know if you want to wish her luck. Not like she'd even need it. You manage to give her a "Drive safe out there," but she looks like maybe she thinks you're being insincere.
A week passes. The caravan pulls into Bukam Boro.
They get swarmed, too, like Rhea did, but eventually you're able to fight your way through the press. You don't realize until you reach her that the person you were wading toward was Nadine - you would've picked a more sympathetic target if you could. She says, "Have you been here this whole time?"
You blurt out, "You gotta get me out of here. I'll make it worth your while, I promise. I'll pull my weight this time."
She cocks her head and squints at you behind her thick shades. You brace to get chewed out. You're unreliable. You're irresponsible. You're not entitled to the protection of the caravan if you won't stick with it. You know the drill.
She snaps, "Ramir, don't embarrass me. You don't have to beg." She turns aside to the kid helping her unload. "Rohit, see if you can find this weasel a berth with one of the others."
You don't understand. You always thought she hated you.
She says, "You heard me. Now get out of my way. I have an appointment with an extra-large matcha."
On the last leg of the journey, ninety miles to Bartow, you get a bad case of the shakes. From the driver's seat Lilja gives you the side-eye. "Are you sick?" she says. "Do you have a fever? If we have to quarantine cargo, you're paying me for any spoilage."
You mutter, "It's barbecue sauce, it's not gonna spoil."
"Oh, you think that, do you? Well, you weren't there in '56 -"
"And I'm not sick."
"If we need to pull over, the more advance warning you give me, the better."
"Okay, sure. Is five minutes good, or do you want half an hour? I'm not sick."
There used to be these things called radio stations - on long hauls with nothing worth talking about, you wonder how many homicides they prevented.
Lilja drives an uneasy mile. She says, "I don't carry sick bags."
"I didn't ask! Why are we talking about this? Everything is fine!"
You're not sick. You just... don't know what you're going to see.