Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre(24)

She stretches an arm to the map, touching a collection of small, black pins I hadn’t noticed before.

That’s the first discovery, Day One.

She touches the next pin.

Day Two.

Again.

Day Three. My team.

She continues to move her fingers down the pins, drawing a clear, straight path toward Greenloop.

The “Massoud Moment,” connecting the dots.





* On November 13, 1985, the eruption of Nevado del Ruiz in Colombia caused the deaths of approximately 23,000 of the 29,000 people living in the nearby town of Armero.





    A lie will gallop halfway round the world before the truth has time to pull its breeches on.

—CORDELL HULL, secretary of state to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt





JOURNAL ENTRY #6


October 4

Ash. Falling from the sky. Big, lazy flakes. On the houses, the driveway, the windshield of my car. That’s where I am now, writing all this down, listening to the radio.

I should be sleeping. That’s what Mostar’s doing. The garden’s done. Dirt and compost from Mostar’s bin, all mixed together. Dan even came up with an irrigation system. He’s connected both our garden hoses to the garage sink, snaked it in curly waves across the entire garden, poked holes every few inches, and tied off the end with packing tape. He calls it a “drip line.” All on his own, no prompting.

And he’s moved on, again, to his new job of figuring out how the house works. “One thing at a time.” He’s asleep now, I think, but after finishing the garden he got right to work syncing his iPad to every system of the house’s CPU, learning how everything operates, losing himself in kilowatts and British thermal units. No prodding from us, no rest. More work in a few hours than I’ve seen him do in years. Who is this man?

Mostar’s moved on too. She plans to pick, slice, and dry all the fruit from our trees. Plums, pears, apples. Even the sour little crabapples on her tree that I never would have touched before this. “Every calorie counts.” She would have started this morning but it has to be, in her words, “after dark, so no one sees me.”

And my new job. I’m the gardener. I’m supposed to care for and keep an eye on all the seeds we planted. Not that we planted that many.

I picked through every item in both our houses and all I could come up with were some Chinese peas and a couple of sweet potatoes. I’m not sure if those have the same nutritional value as “the real thing”—Mostar-speak for conventional potatoes. “Better than nothing.” So sure, despite her utter lack of knowledge on how to plant any of it. Cut up the yams to plant the eyes, which Dan seems to remember from a sci-fi book he read recently, or plant them whole? Which we did. And what about the peas? Soak them first? Wrap them in a wet paper towel, which I vaguely remember from kindergarten, or just stick them in well-watered ground, which we did.

Mostar had no idea. She even said so. “No idea.” She confessed that she’s a “lifelong city girl” and that the only plant she’d ever taken care of was a tomato vine on her windowsill, which she managed to kill, by the way. And none of that seemed to bother her. Confidence, clarity. “We need to try.” She said this as I poked the last pea in mud. So satisfied, chubby hands on her broad hips. “We need to try.”

And now I’m with her. The needle’s moved again. I’ve been listening to the radio. A lot.

I just wanted to learn more about what’s going on, get a better picture. Especially when I saw that Tony’s car was missing today. Maybe he pulled it into their garage but I’m pretty sure that’s their gym. He couldn’t have been gone long. When I came out of our garage/garden this morning, his Tesla was still there. He must have driven off when I was showering. He must have tried to go for help. But if a lahar really has covered the valley, how far can he get?

But what if the road’s clear? Vincent only thought he heard that story. Maybe Tony just wants to see it with his own eyes. Go Tony!

And yes, I admit, I feel kind of adrift, vulnerable now that he’s gone. I was hoping to ask him about the news before going to Yvette’s class. I could really use his grounding voice. Yvette must be so worried about him. I could hear the edge in her voice today, the slight rush in her timing. I guess that’s also a kind of courage, staying here to keep us all happy while Tony risks his life out there. That’s another reason I started listening to the radio, to maybe hear some good news I could tell Yvette to make her feel better.

Okay, that’s not true. I started listening just for me.

And wow, do I regret it.

It’s been about an hour and I’m more frazzled than ever.

If our valley isn’t covered, a lot of others are. They act like funnels, channeling the mudslides. My nightmare scenario, picturing people trapped in their cars. That’s exactly what happened. They don’t know how many people were buried. And not just in their cars. I was also right about people being killed at home, either in their beds, or else up and awake without ever being warned. That’s a huge problem now, getting the word out in time. They did this whole story on how most people get emergency messages from their cellphones instead of landlines the way they used to. A lot of people turn off their phones when they go to bed, or forget to charge them, or else ignore unknown callers because they think they’re telemarketers.