Life Goes On, page 15
part #7 of The Yellowstone Event Series
Randy Brown pulled his Kenworth off of Interstate 15 and into a truck stop outside of Victorville. A rattlesnake was crossing the lot in front of him and he sped up a bit.
His right front tire squashed the snake flatter than a pancake.
But he didn’t feel bad.
He’d been bitten by a rattler when he was working his father’s ranch not far from San Diego. He was seventeen and the star running back on his high school football team.
He was dating the prettiest girl in school.
He had the world by the tail when that damned snake bit him right above the ankle.
In the height of his senior year he was hospitalized for five weeks.
It wasn’t just the pain of the snake bite. That was only the start of it. That was the genesis of a boatload of problems which changed his life.
It was October. Late for snakes. He wasn’t watching out for them as he should because one seldom saw rattlers above ground that time of year.
October is also football season in San Diego.
The five weeks he spent in the hospital meant he missed five games of the season.
He missed the last two games while he was at home recovering.
Because of his absence, his team couldn’t beat schools that were clearly beneath them. He averaged two hundred yards rushing and three touchdowns a game during his junior year.
Most of the games he missed his senior year were lost by ten points or less.
It was clear that Randy’s absence was the team’s downfall. They’d been favored to win the state championship for the second consecutive year.
Instead they didn’t even make the playoffs, falling by the wayside with a five win, five loss break even record.
The prettiest girl in the school met someone else.
Many of Randy’s friends deserted him as well, blaming him personally for the football team’s woes.
And it wasn’t just his girl and friends.
Several big name colleges had expressed an interest in him.
In the games he missed, they’d planned to send scouts to watch him play.
They wanted to recruit him. To convince him to take a free ride at their schools, where he’d become a college football star on his way to a lucrative pro career.
When word got out that Randy’s left leg suffered permanent nerve damage from the snake bite, the schools and the scouts and the recruiters all got cold feet.
They all went elsewhere.
To talk to players who hadn’t been bitten.
Randy’s back-up dream was to join the United States Air Force.
To become a fighter pilot, like his big brother Robert.
He wanted to fly the F-35 fighter over the skies of Afghanistan.
It turned out the Air Force didn’t want him either.
“But why?” he demanded.
The doctors told him, “Look, Randy. We know it’s not your fault. But you’ve suffered a lot of nerve and muscle damage.
“Flying at high Gs and high altitude causes a lot of stress to the human body. At the same time, you need to be at the top of your game, because you’re in a kill or be killed situation.
“You’ll be making life or death decisions, several times a second. One wrong move and your enemy will blow you out of the sky instead of the other way around.
“A split-second delayed response from your damaged muscles… a cramp at the wrong time, could quite literally kill you.
“So yes, we’d love for you to join us.
“Just not as a fighter pilot. You’ll have to do something else instead.”
Randy didn’t want to do anything else.
Other than playing professional football, flying a fighter and blowing Russkies out of the sky was the only other thing he’d ever dreamed of doing.
He finished high school and floated around for awhile. He bounced from one job to another, not quite sure what he wanted to do with his life.
He married and had two kids. Then he got divorced and became a weekend father.
His ex remarried and moved a thousand miles away with her new husband.
And Randy’s kids. Randy became a “two weeks in the summer, every other Christmas” father.
It sucked, it really did.
There was a stipulation in his divorce agreement: he could have his boys every other weekend if he came and got them and then took them back.
But he’d never be able to travel back and forth those thousand miles on a convenience store clerk’s salary.
On a lark he went to a driving school to get his commercial driver’s license.
He scored a “milk run,” a trucker’s term for a regularly scheduled round trip delivery to the same place.
He managed to make it a thousand miles to Reno, and to his sons, every other weekend.
That was his life for many years, until his boys grew up and had families of their own. Both of them lived close enough now to see their father on a regular basis, and the long-distance relationship they had while growing up seemed not to adversely affect them much.
In the meantime Randy Brown learned to love a career he got into merely for convenience sake.
Now, being a trucker for more than twenty years, he couldn’t see himself doing anything else.
Besides, he figured, what other profession would allow him to roll around in a forty-ton killing machine, squashing every despicable rattlesnake he happened across?
Chapter 47
The Yellowstone eruption did something to the GPS satellite system that everyone in the United States depended on getting them from Point A to Point B.
The layman couldn’t explain it.
Scientists tried, but their words were mostly mumbo-jumbo except to other scientists.
It had something to do with atmospheric conditions and an over-abundance of free-floating dust particles.
The bottom line was that GPS systems no longer worked. A trucker getting into his rig and programming his GPS for a trip to New York City was just as likely to wind up in Nashville instead.
There was a bit of good news, however.
Transponders no longer worked either.
Transponders were basically GPS systems that large trucking companies used to keep track of their drivers.
Drivers didn’t like them. They despised them, in fact. They felt spied upon. Like “big brother” was watching them too closely and gettin’ all up in their business.
When the transponders stopped working the truckers rejoiced. They no longer had to worry about their bosses calling them up to complain if they drove a few extra hours that day.
If they were ahead of schedule they could take a hundred mile detour to stop at their favorite strip club. And there was nothing the company could do because they wouldn’t know about it.
The trucking business took a giant step backwards, to what truckers considered a much better time. They had much more freedom. As long as their logbooks were kept up or falsified to look like they were, they didn’t have to answer to anybody.
Randy was enjoying the heck out of his job again.
Even on the days when he didn’t find a snake to squash.
Of course, with most great things come a downside. And that was true now that the GPS and transponder systems no longer worked.
Drivers had to start using maps again.
And most map distributors went out of business years ago.
This came at a time when the entire country seemed to be in a state of flux, remember. It seemed that everybody was trying to move all at the same time. Yellowstone refugees wanted to get as far away from ground zero as they possibly could.
People who didn’t live near Yellowstone but who fancied a move elsewhere were taking advantage of government programs to move on the government’s dime.
And in many cases Yellowstone brought a renewed sense of family and how important it was.
Most families lost someone or several someones. The survivors were hurting, and vowing to get closer to those family members they had left. In many cases they took it literally, and took steps to move closer to their relatives. Even if those relatives lived clear across the country.
So, to recap, it seemed everybody who survived the blast was in the process of moving somewhere. At the exact same time GPS stopped working and paper maps were no longer being made or distributed.
It was a mess.
To libraries in every city in the nation people flocked.
But not to check out books.
Rather, they made mad dashes to the reference sections and tried to check out atlases, maps and guidebooks.
Of course, they were refused.
“But why not?” they demanded. Most of them had never stepped foot in a library before. They didn’t know that libraries don’t check out reference material. They want to make sure it’s available for the masses, so they very tightly control it.
The best they could do was to pass out pencils and paper and let their patrons write down their directions, then leave the material behind.
But they didn’t have to do that for long… pass out pencils and paper, that is.
There’s always a certain element in every society who feels the rules don’t apply to them. They go out of their way to break whatever rules they don’t agree with. And they’re not above breaking laws, either.
Within days every map in every public library… every atlas and guidebook was well… had been stolen.
At least it was a little easier for truckers.
In recent years virtually all of them had been using cell phones in their rigs.
And a surprising number of them still used CB, or citizens band radios.
Since the eruption cell phone service was still hit and miss. In some places cell phone reception was nonexistent for hundreds of miles in every direction.
But CB radio reception was surprisingly clear.
If a trucker was lost or needed directions, he merely picked up his microphone and asked.
He’d be heard by a dozen other truckers.
At least one of them, and usually several, knew where the trucker’s destination was and could tell him how to get there.
In addition, every big trucking firm set up information centers and made themselves available to any trucker who had the phone number.
They had their own maps and atlases, you see, and would provide callers with turn-by-turn directions to get them where they wanted to be.
Eventually the information centers got wind that their phone numbers were getting out. They were being passed around to truckers’ friends and relatives and neighbors. More of those people who think the rules don’t apply to them.
More often than not, the trucking companies didn’t mind.
They considered it a good marketing tool.
As one CEO put it, “If we help out John Q. Public in his time of need, the next time Mr. Public needs to ship something by truck, hopefully he’ll remember us.”
Chapter 48
Randy Brown did have a little bit of trouble finding the turnoff to the Hulaville Relocation Project.
Oh, he was able to find Interstate 15 with no problem, and was able to follow the highway signs to Hesperia.
But he missed his turn, flying right past the temporary sign FEMA placed along the highway.
It was too small for one thing, and painted an odd color of brown which blended in with the desert background.
When Randy got twenty miles past Hesperia he knew he’d missed the turn and picked up his CB radio microphone to ask for help.
“This is Clifford the big red dog, looking for some assistance finding a bone. Any of you guys out there familiar with the Hulaville Project?”
After just a few seconds he got a response.
“Well, that’s a big ten-four, Red Dog. This is White Lightning. The bone you’re looking for is on the west side of the I-15, between mile markers 138 and 139. There’s a hand-painted sign that’s about as worthless as your Grandpa’s nipples. Real easy to miss.”
“Much obliged to you, White Lightning.”
“No problem, good buddy. Keep the hammer down and the rubber between the lines and good day to you.”
It was as though Randy took a nap and woke up in 1974.
When he finally pulled up to the Hulaville Project gate an hour later he might as well have been in a different world.
It was his very first delivery to a FEMA housing development.
There wasn’t much there.
A huge section of desert had been cordoned off and crude roads had been graded. They were in the process of being paved, but it was hit and miss.
Temporary street signs had been erected, but “erected” was a relative term. Some of the signs had fallen to the ground during a recent wind storm. Others had been twisted in the storm and were pointing in the wrong direction.
Apparently the people who worked there full time saw no need to straighten them.
After all, they knew their way around.
For visitors and truckers it was a bit more difficult.
The security guard at the gate gave Randy instructions.
“Go three blocks east to Chicago Avenue, then turn right. Twelve blocks to 25th Street. Turn left on 25th and watch for a guy in an all-terrain forklift. He’ll give you further instructions.”
Randy was in a certain mood. A mood which made him a little bit obstinate and a whole lot sarcastic. His mother used to call it his “orphan” mood because it made her want to pawn him off to another family.
“What if I can’t find the forklift driver?” he asked.
The security guard, without missing a beat, shot back, “Then you’ll be wandering around for the rest of your life. He’s the only one who can off-load you.”
“Oh. I guess I’d better find him then.”
“Good idea.”
The home sites were laid out and numbered with wooden stakes.
They were in varying stages of construction, and the whole area was as busy as a beehive.
Some crews were laying PVC pipe while cement mixers were pouring slabs a couple of lots down.
Framers were giving the new slabs just a couple of days to dry before starting to erect the walls upon them.
Once the framers were done with the skeleton of a house the roofers came along. Then interior work began.
FEMA was using the same assembly-line tactics modern construction companies learned from Henry Ford and his automobile factories a century before.
Instead of contracting out for services and being at the mercy of those contractors’ schedules they hired their own crews. That enabled them to fully utilize them and to keep them busy.
Such methods, and by forcing their workers to work for FEMA exclusively and not to moonlight on the side, meant they were averaging eight completed houses per week.
As Randy drove his rig down Chicago Avenue he saw moving vans delivering furniture and household belongings to no less than four newly completed homes.
It warmed his heart to see two little boys, ages about seven and eight, jumping up and down excitedly in their front yard as a hulk of a mover walked down the truck’s ramp with a bicycle under each arm.
Those could have been his sons, Ryan and Riley, twenty years before.
God, he missed them so.
He knew they were okay. They’d gotten word to him shortly after the eruption that they were all alive and well. They’d both settled with their families in California, Ryan five years before and Riley not long after. When Yellowstone blew Ryan was living in Marysville and Riley in L.A.
Both cities got through the eruption relatively unscathed, other than the dirty ash which covered everywhere else too.
Randy made himself a promise to head to both places soon for a visit.
Once on 25th Street he only went a couple of blocks before he saw an International split-middle all terrain 10K forklift.
Its operator sat in the shade of the big machine drinking from a water bottle and wiping sweat from his brow.
He looked up as Randy brought the big rig to a stop in front of him.
“Shit,” he muttered. “I never catch a break. You guys keep coming and coming.”
Randy pulled the knobs to set his air brakes and stepped down to the ground. He stretched and said, “Take your time, friend. I ain’t in no hurry.”
He sat in the shade next to the operator and held out his hand.
“Randy.”
The man shook his hand and said, “Mike. Where you from, Randy?”
“Oh, you know… like a lot of truckers I don’t really have a home. Girlfriends here and there in different cities. Family here and there in different cities.”
Mike suddenly lost his smile but didn’t say why.
Randy wondered but didn’t ask.
He didn’t know that Mike lost his entire family.
He had no one left to enjoy.
Chapter 49
A lot of people took every chance they could to tell anyone who’d listen about the loved ones they lost.
Mike didn’t. He considered such people whiners. Or thought they were just looking for pity for themselves.
In Mike’s view, complaining about lost loved ones wouldn’t bring them back. Why talk about them? They were gone, and would never return. Hopefully there really was a heaven up there somewhere, and his loved ones went there.
But even if they didn’t, what was the point in talking about them?
Mike had a different perspective from others who talked frequently about people they’d lost.
But that didn’t make either of them wrong. It just made them different.
Nearly everyone left in America knew someone who died.
Many were relatives or very close friends. People the survivors loved and who loved them.
They spoke of them not to get pity from others, but rather to honor the dead’s memory. And perhaps to hang on to them a little bit longer. For after we’re dead and buried it’s only the memories of our lives, living on in the ones we leave behind, that provide proof we were ever here.
A wise old man once said that we all die twice.
We die the first time when we draw our final breath and our heart beats for the very last time.
