Hearts and Hands

The war ended 10 years prior, corporations are long gone. We survive by the Buddhist deeds: chop wood, carry water. When you take care of basics, everything else falls into place, or so they say.

Sometimes we look back and reminisce about central air and heat, lightbulbs, a record player, or digital music, but mostly we find growing and making good food on the wood burning stove to be purposeful, and don’t miss too much else, until The Raiders come. My roommates in the compound are my dearest friends. We are a new family, most of us lost ours when the bombings happened. We try not to think about that too much.

Layla, Mannie, and me share a small old bungalow on the edge of the compound. It’s near the back wall. The walls are meant to keep out The Raiders. Our bungalow has two bedrooms, a tidy kitchen with a round breakfast table by the window, a small sofa and chair, a coffee table in the sitting room. There’s a swing rocker on one end of the porch.

Layla and Mannie still have each other from before, they are all they have left. They took me in. Layla and Mannie are in their forties, they treat me like a daughter, though I’m only about 10 years younger than they are. I think they lost their daughter. Maybe more, we all did.

I think that’s what the locket around Layla’s neck holds. I lost my whole family. We don’t talk about our losses. We have work to do now, it keeps us busy, we can’t dwell in the past when there’s so little future. We have to create it. If we create it, it will exist. We can’t stop. I was twenty-three when the shit hit the fan. I’ve been here with these two since; once I was corralled here by exploring do-gooders. Josh and Caroline convinced me to trust them when I was starving and hiding in a bush. They brought me here.

“Good morning, Kiki, coffee?” Layla asks, as I’m still rubbing my eyes in the predawn kitchen. Mannie is flipping bacon in a cast iron pan. I was vegetarian before, but it’s hard to sustain after the soy crops and factories were all burned away. Pigs survived the fallout better.

“Yes, please. Smells good as always, Mannie.”

“Nothing but the best for my niñas.”

Mannie ran the kitchen of a restaurant before. I got lucky when I got housed with them when I came to the compound. Most of us here have been here since the beginning. I can trust everyone within the galvanized, corrugated steel walls.

We finish the scrambled eggs, biscuits, and coffee, Layla and I lean back, a beam of sunrise flashes on the heart-shaped locket. Dare I ask, after all this time? Mannie shoves his plate forward, “ah, mija, a good breakfast to start the day!” He gulps down the last of his coffee, “ahh! Hit the spot.” as I start clearing and washing the dishes.

We do have running water here. One of the few remaining conveniences from before. We are grateful for it, and the beautiful Cape Fear River that still runs clear to the ocean. If anything, the bombings made the water better. Cleared out the bad GenX chemicals from last century. We are nothing without clean water. That’s how we manage to grow our crops.

Layla is a lanky blonde hippie type, or maybe her parents were hippies, and that’s why she’s named Layla. Mannie plays guitar in the evenings sometimes, and when he plays Layla, his eyes are only for her. She gets a sad, faraway look and generally goes to bed after that, after giving Mannie’s arm a tender squeeze. She’s strong, muscular, solid as the earth, but maybe she was more carefree before. That’s what I sense anyway. Her hands make my heart ache for what was that I don’t know. When she goes for the night, Mannie puts his guitar back in its case, and even though he smiles at me and says, “bedtime, chica,” I can see the water forming in his eyes.

Mannie is shorter than Layla, stocky, and one of the kindest people I met before or after. He always makes sure everyone around him is fed well, and happy. He spends much of his days in the compound wandering from fields to houses, and checking in on people. He’s the spirit of our little community, the glue. His copper face, framed in thick, salt and pepper hair, lights up with his smile every time he comes across someone in his rounds. It’s a light that flicks on from within him, he carries a darkness in his features when he thinks no one is looking, but he’s ready to shine for everyone else who may need it. And we all do. So does he. I think that, and Layla, are what keep him going, connection.

I don’t know what I bring. I help, give me a task, and I’ll do it. I like feeding the chickens, and ducks, and picking vegetables, even hoeing the rows by hand in the spring. But sometimes I disappear up into one of the few remaining old Live Oaks, and drift in clouds beyond its shade, thinking about my parents and sisters and college, and why it all had to go away. I want to ask Layla about the locket she caresses when a shadow crosses her expression, but I can see it’s too painful to broach.

Sometimes, when I’m high enough in the old Oaks, I watch the horizon for The Raiders. We’ve been incredibly fortunate so far. The most I see moving through the flat coastal plains is deer, the occasional bobcat, and packs of wild dogs, some still have collars and harnesses, but they have dragged their leashes clean off after 10 years of roaming.

I hope to never see The Raiders, but sometimes a wanderer stops by, refreshes their supplies, and tells us they’re getting closer. Sometimes, far on the horizon, beyond the proliferate river dolphins dancing in the waves, I see black smoke and flames, but they keep a wide enough berth from us. So far.

I can’t ruminate this long. It doesn’t do anyone any good. We need firewood. I pick up an ax, and stand a round log to split next to where Layla has already begun for the day. In the early light, a hint of a smile warms her face, and the heart-shaped locket swings with each stroke of her ax.