Chapter 3 Chicken Fried Sam
1.
Sam fumbled through the kitchen drawers. His hand finally falling upon a soft towel. He ripped the thing into uneven strips and set them on the counter. Even though he’d been in the dark room now for the better part of an hour he was still unable to see anything well. No moon that night and the windows he’d bordered up that were broken earlier that day to keep the wild things out. Something had not worked or he supposed that cat had crept in while he was out at the grave sight. Either way he needed to find some kind of oil to protect his arms from the bandages that would no doubt dry out once the wounds began to clot.
Problem was that no one had had any oil or anything like it for a long time and even though he hadn’t been back to the farm house in five years he was pretty sure his family hadn’t been any better off than the rest of the world that way. The cupboards were bare. Occasionally he knocked over a plate or cup or an empty salt shaker. And then snap! A mouse trap closed down on his ring and middle fingers.
He didn’t have much time. He would have to bandage soon with out anything and hope for the best or find something, anything. He fumbled through the kitchen and then felt the oven.
It was an old thing. Black, made of boiler plate and cast iron. A real wood stove. Grandpa used to fire it with coal when the mine was still open. He opened the door. He felt around. His hand sunk into a cold thick goo. “Grandma’s Grease!” He had no idea how old it was, or from what animal it had been collected. But at his increasing fuzzy feeling in his head from the blood loss he simply was thankful.
He lathered it on to his forearms and then shuffled over to the towel strips. He laid them loosely around the arm, keeping them so as not to be constrictive when the inevitable swelling and infection sat in. He’d get a better look in the morning. But where to sleep?
He couldn’t risk staying on the couch. Not with fresh food on the floor of the living room. There’s no way he could make it to the guest house. The windows were still broken anyway. The barn was wide open. The truck. If he could make it to the truck.
2.
“Morning Sam.”
Sam felt electric shock. Eyes open. Ears searching. His arms numb with pain. His legs were still asleep. He had them scrunched up like two hills with his feet by the steering wheel of the Chevy pick up. His head was upon his bible for something of a pillow. And his gaze was upside down into the smile of a stranger. Stranger still it was a woman and the sun was well high and shinning.
“How do you know my name?” He asked through the desert that was his mouth. “Who are you?”
“Your name is Sam and its on your jacket. Unless you’re a thief and have plied your trade for his coat?”
He remembered his blue collared coat with its white name patch with red embroidery. It had served him well all these years since his days at the gas station. “Man, a gas station,” he thought. They were roadside oddities now. Like museums to a lost civilization. But he still didn’t get an answer to his question.
“Oh. Who are you?”
“Sam. But I guess if we’re going to keep things straight, I won’t make you go by Samantha.” She laughed. She was brighter than the rays of sun shooting through the windshield.
It was no small feet to get upright. His arms were almost useless and the cramps in his legs didn’t subside for minutes. But with the mysterious guest’s help he righted himself in the passenger side of the bench seat.
“You’re pretty messed up. What happened?” She asked once they got the door unlocked and his feet outside the truck.
“I think I killed a lion last night. It didn’t go to well. But at least I’m still living to tell you about it. Where did you come from? Don’t want to be rude, but I haven’t been back to my grandparent’s house in five years or more. Did you know them?”
“Yeah. I am your cousin of sorts. Twice removed or something like that. I am Gretchen’s sister Clair’s daughter’s daughter,” Samantha said.
“You know who I am?” Sam asked, still working out the relations and the family tree. There must be a branch or a limb that he didn’t quite get. But whatever, it was a weird world and anything like family was a precious commodity these days.
“Yeah. You are Gretchen’s son, Douglas’s son. His only son if my know-it-all mom had the tale told right.”
“Yes, Doug is my dad. He’s still doing all right. Really, better than ‘all right’ considering all the plight I’ve seen since I made my way back here from our place in the Northern Woods. We’re not quite up in the Boundary Waters but we were some many days from the western most Great Lake. Our place had its problems, cold winters, wild things, the occasional rogue band of Hill Men and their pillaging ways. But dad always has a way of dealing with them that makes for a working relationship.”
“News is hard to come by down this way. Its good land but the wild things have moved in as you’ve come to see. There was a pretty terrible plague last year. Took most of us who had moved back after we finally came back from the caves.” Samantha did a weird full body shiver when she said, ‘Caves.’
“Yeah, I heard you all were up in them for years. The coal and salt mines right?”
“Yes.” Samantha reached back into a place from her childhood. “We went there after the various groups came out of the cities just after the Flash. The farms weren’t defensible and folks weren’t trust worthy. They were pretty gaunt and ugly from weeks of waiting things out hoping for someone from the government to bring in food and water. It never came. Can’t imagine.” She shuddered again.
“So we packed up what we could, followed the mountain roads up to some of the more remote mines and made things as best we could. Like I said, it was not great to live in a coal mine. Lots of people didn’t do well. Claustrophobia, a collapse every now and then from a earth tremor, and then some long stand offs with some of the various groups that had come into the farms out of the cities. Turns out they mostly died off due to a lack of knowledge on how to farm. They got stuff into the ground all right. But when to put it in and when to take it in and how to fix what equipment that still worked with some of the animals; it was probably as bad or worse than what went on in the city. Worse cause’ they could probably imagine from stories or TV shows what farming was, but come right down to it, it was like having a kitchen full of food and no one knowing how to cook.”
“Yeah, we saw a bit of that up our way. Lot less because of the population being immigrants from places with less modern convenience. All the long line families had relations in the country. They got out early after the Flash. But like you said, there was only so much food and so much clean water. The City is under the control of the Greenies and is their Western most point of control. The Plains Men from the south have kept it that way for 10 years or more.” Sam was starting fade again. His arms were throbbing.
“Let’s get you cleaned up and taken care of Sam. If you can put up with the incessant gossip of a woman who in some ways has never accepted reality, then we would love to see you get well at our place.”
Sam thought he heard her say something else. But it was all nausea and sparkling stars and then black.
