A breeze picked up, ruffling the oak branches overhead, startling Svenja. She looked around, spotted Tabby and Kit further down the scraggly grasses and weeds that counted as a lawn, digging a hole, and stared down at the socks she’d forgotten in her lap. A small tear near the big toe puckered outward, and the brief thought of mending the sock flashed to her mind. She smiled gently to herself, and wondered at how, before the war and everything between, she eschewed “menial work” like this; her grandmother had darned socks, and she’d learned from her mother how easy it was to just walk into a local Kohl’s and buy a new set, tossing the old out.
Now, every scrap saved was precious. She’d had to trade for the thread, had had to figure out long hours by a weak electric light in their makeshift shack, along with all the other families, how to fix what they had when a new one was unlikely to come by anytime soon.
Tabitha ran up, with Kit trailing behind her. He was getting bigger than his companion, a fact Tabby disliked and staunchly denied in their bickerings. He’d have to be going home soon, and she’d need to go and pick up Tony from Mrs. Etting’s homeschool. The wind stirred the parched grasses, and the ripple spread out over the small patch of earth and the surrounding farmland that was not their own, undulating outward in feathered waves. She’d seen such a thing once as a child, when her parents had taken a disastrous road trip across part of Ohio and Indiana for a conference or something. Afterward, her parents had decided that it wasn’t worth the trouble of two-lane tiny highways, whining children, and semi-tractor-trailers when if they just budgeted a bit more, they could take the airlines. With hours long waits and the indignity of stripping down to their underwear for the increased security and zero-tolerance for any possible threat. It used to be you only had to take off your shoes. But those were the early years, before the war. Before all of it.
Svenja scratched absently at her face and felt the deep line around her mouth. Her children had never known her without it.
“Do we have snackies?” Tabby asked in her little voice. She was seven now, still using her toddler jargon. Kit’s eyes glimmered and perked up.
“Yes, we do,” she said sweetly to them, smiling at the simpleness of their want and need. Her fingers closed around some dried apples and the pecans she’d bartered for, with repairs to the farmer’s overalls and shirts. It was worth it, for the taste of pecans—something she’d not had since she and Will had married and the rations began soon after.
Ahead on the road, the wind picked up the dust but—there was more to the cloud stirring than that. An old flatbed farm truck—with the wooden fencing along the sides to keep things in, was rolling past. She’d been distracted in her thoughts and hadn’t noticed it coming up the road. From the distance, she could see it was full of men, faces drawn, tired lines etched with dust, faded clothes and khakis covering makeshift bandages. Svenja frowned, searching for a brief moment if she saw his face. Behind the truck lumbered another, and there was a small troupe of men following along. Spotting the truck, the children ran eagerly to meet it, hearts thumping wild grins as they waved, running toward the fence to shout cries of “Hullo!” and giggling.
“Come away from there,” she called after them. They might be returning, but she didn’t want someone sniffing around if they found she was on her own. The nearest neighbor was a quarter mile down the road; hardly the reliable type either. Her eyes watched the men sharply for any sign of threat. The children continued to wave, and some of the men waved and smiled back, mustering what they could for the two. Others just stared through them like so much air and distance and time, that nothing could make the children real in their eyes. They could have been mannequins and the men would have still seen through to nothing. She wondered at that, those long, haunted, empty stares, and shuddered at what they were really seeing.
Tabitha’s small feet brought her back. She turned to watch as the troupe of men behind the convoys trailing behind were now reaching the corner of the property. “Daddy isn’t there.” There was no forlorn longing, just an observation.
Watching the dirt under her feet, she sighed softly, tiredly, mostly to herself. “Not yet.” Ah, there it was.
Gold flecks in small brown eyes turned up, squinting through the sunlight. “When is he coming back?”
Svenja frowned. Questions, always questions. Ones she wished she could answer.
Inhaling, she felt her abdomen expand along with her lungs, stroking the girl’s soft, lightly greasy hair. There were bits of dirt from the earlier excavation.
“Where do you think he is today?” she asked softly, keeping it even, playful, as the game always was and had to be.
“I don’t know,” she said ruefully, picking a pebble up between her toes and dropping it. “Is he going to look like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like those men that have been coming by. Will he be a mummy?”
Svenja stifled a small laugh, and it caught in her throat and her eyes. There was a wetness there.
“Perhaps. Even if he were to look a little like a mummy, would he still be your daddy?”
Tabby paused and thought about this a moment, but not too long.
“I don’t know. Yeah. He would be very tired and very dirty, so we should help give him a bath. Does daddy like baths?”
At this she could not help but laugh at Tabby, both a sad and joyful sound. “Yes. We shall. He’s been away for so long, he may have forgotten what a bath is. Do you think he’s all stinky?” Reaching out she tickled at Tabby. “Are you stinky?”
Her little nose wrinkled, tiny teeth off-white, pulling her shoulders up to her ears as she wriggled into and away from her mother, giggling.
“No, no!” she cried, running away, waving her arms, then twirling round and round, like the wind had caught her. The plastic beads of her necklace glittered in the rays, and Svenja recalled the Fat Tuesday she and Will had gone to that year. She was pregnant with Tabby, refraining from drinks, but God, she wanted one. She wanted one now.
The party had been wild and raucous, and the two had left after an hour or so. It had finally gotten under way when they’d arrived, as it was more wild than parties she’d been to in college. The punch had been spiked with a hallucinogen, and everyone had been cutting loose. In the shadows, she’d seen undulating couples, unheard over the pounding club music. In those days, the approach of war had seemed imminent, and after half a decade of market rollercoasters, given the impending doom of foreign forces invading, the friend of a friend had decided to throw an end-of-the-world party. Neither of them had drunk the punch, or ate the edibles strewn about on coffee tables. Will’s sense of safety had kicked in hard, especially given her state.
They had thought that was the worst of it, with the announcement of a Pacific Invasion, and coalition of southern countries heading north. Much of Will’s family had attempted the Canadian border. Whether they had made it, she and Will had never learned.
Svenja returned to the present and stood, the familiar tension of fullness and ache twisting around her heart and her stomach, round and round, different from her little girl. How simple everything seemed, and yet so very complicated too. Did Will even like baths? Svenja struggled to recall. To haul water from the pump was an effort, and so too was to heat it. Had they ever had one together, before the children?
She felt the rough linen skirt, repurposed from an old tablecloth. Mrs. Etting had taught her how to sew on this piece, painstaking stitch by stitch, and though she was an intermediate at this point, she was teaching Tabby and the other women too, now.
It was what she had to do, to keep the candle burning. For him.
There he was, in her memory, laying on their old couch, reading by the lamplight, in easy reclining posture, finger scanning along the text of whatever book he’d been on this time. Lean, muscular hands and arms bare in the summer heat, outstretched and relaxed. Tabby had been a baby then. She’d been five when he left, six when imprisoned. He’d had to go when called by the governor to the militia. During the Battle of Reading, PA, he’d ultimately been taken and thrown into one of the labor camps.
News had travelled via word of a courier, hitching through part of the Appalachian Trail as a guide south to report news. It had taken him two months on foot, hiding for days at a time, covertly giving messages to his handlers to pass back to the towns. Word had reached her that a group loyal to the Pan Pacific Enclave had found him and scattered him across field and stream.
It was only by the briefest shred she was still holding it together. For them. For him.
For herself. That he was going to come home.
There had been no further news of the Reading Battle or labor camp, except a few weeks ago, that some men had been released from the surrounding camps along the Maryland and Delaware borders. For the past two weeks, they’d been seeing groups passing through this old dusty highway.
If he’d been in a labor camp, and the conditions were, like whispers hinted at, as bad as Andersonville, would she even recognize Will?
Would the ghost of whom he’d been even still be there?
“Keep the candle burning,” he’d asked, “In the window, like in that old film. The one with the dragon.”
So she had.
Mrs. Etting and Jay Rojak had taught her many things, even how to make candles.
What was he returning to, though?
The world had changed. There no longer were supply chains, or factories. Everything they had they’d had to meagerly grow, or trade for for things someone else had been successful at. Svenja had good luck with tomatoes. Mrs. Etting still had running water and a generator; they’d be getting together in a few days for a putting up party, and can their bounty with heated water from her well. Bless her for the generator. Van, her husband, had found a way to make a cheap, easy ethanol with the corn from a local farmer with some ingenuity and his chemistry degree. It wasn’t perfect but it did help them out. It helped a lot of people out.
Chandler Buzak would be coming by in a few days to repair her generator. She wasn’t out permanently, but being one of the few with the repair skills in this heat, he was often in demand. They’d made do through blackouts before.
She turned and looked at her reflection in the glass of the window. Would Will even recognize her? He’d probably be half-starved and emaciated, if he’d survived. Her own cheeks were hollow, the face thinner for sure, her frame more lean, more muscled, than when he’d left.
The late afternoon sun was drawing closer to embrace the earth, and she’d need to get Tony soon. There was still enough fuel for the drive there and back, but she’d need more for the next few weeks. Bartering and pennies. It was a good thing they had Mrs. Etting.
The first few years had been hard, but as the infrastructure died and the war raged on … they’d needed to learn to do more with less. Winters were especially brutal. A pang of fear punched into her stomach. She needed Chandler to make sure that generator was working.
Looking at the window again, she was reminded of the candle, yellowed beeswax sitting in a brass carrier, perched on the side table. Svenja could see its outline through the gauze curtain.
After washing up and their supper, right before bed, they’d place their candle on the windowsill and pray, asking that Will would come back. She imagined him as he had been as he’d left, strong and grim, but still a smile at his lips as he’d kissed her goodbye and hitched a ride on the departing convoy to head out for training. The look in his eyes had haunted her long after the truck had disappeared in a dusty cloud: fear, longing, sadness.
Every night, even if she forgot, the children did not, blowing out the remnants of the flame in the first morning light, saving the wax for another batch.
She did not waver like the flame in a draft, however.
Not for him, but above all, not for them.
This was my recent submission to
for their upcoming chapbook. It wasn’t selected, regardless, I enjoyed the challenge.Before you go, tap that heart button to show you liked it, share, subscribe, or re-stack this piece! Every little bit helps.
Rachael Varca
is a writer of more than fifteen years experience. She writes at Inking Out Loud, a collection of essays, poems, short stories, and home of the serialized novel, Heart of Stone.
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