What Comes After | ✔️

Chapter 9

July 17

First day of gathering kindling, and it turns out that we weren't the only ones who thought about that.

Dad took me, Mira, and May out to the woods. May wheeled a small wagon, so it'd be easier for us to bring all the wood that we needed back. Dad brought a small hatchet that we bought a couple years back for a camping trip. The blade was a bit rusted, but it was usable. "Okay, kids," Dad said when we arrived there. "Start gathering wood. Make sure to avoid poison ivy. Also, don't get any green stuff. It's not good for fires."

"What about poison oak?" I asked.

"Just don't get anything poisonous," Dad said.

"How are we supposed to know what's poisonous and what isn't?" May grumbled.

"Look at other people," Dad said. "Next time we can bring a plant guide."

Mira and I partnered with each other while Dad and May did so too. We took the plastic bags while they took the hatchet and wagon. There were lots of people wandering the woods, gathering small branches and twigs. I saw a group of men and women working together to saw down a large sycamore tree.

"Should I feel bad that we're causing climate change?" I asked.

"No," Mira said. "All the volcanoes erupting are some crude geoengineering."

There was an awkward pause, and then, I remembered about our little library detour.

"So..." I said. "Did you hear back from the letters?"

"I, I haven't really checked," Mira said.

"Oh, yeah," I said. "I thought the mail people might have delivered it to our house."

"No," Mira said. "With no gasoline, no mail delivery."

"Isn't mail an essential service?"

"Not according to our mayor."

"Maybe we can go to the post office," I suggested.

"I don't know if I want to," Mira said.

"Why not?" I asked.

"What if he never responded?" she asked. "Like the letter got sent, but he just never bothered to respond."

"Look," I said. "I know you care about him, even though I've never met him before, and he must also care a lot about you, so people who, you know, care for each other that much wouldn't not respond."

"I hope you're right," she said.

"I know I'm right."

We talked about other stuff and picked up branches from the ground. The leaves on the trees were browning like it was autumn, and some of the young kids were playing with the leaves, kicking up clouds of ash. We had our air masks on, but some others didn't, and they coughed loudly enough to scare the birds away.

"Head's up!" someone shouted, and we watched as a tree fell down. They took a chainsaw and divided up the trunk into small chunks for everyone who helped, leaving the branches behind for everyone else.

"You want to try breaking it," Mira asked as we tried to snap a thick branch in half.

"I'll hold one end in place, and then you should stomp on the other end."

We tried that, and it did not work out. I nearly got smacked in the face with the branch. Luckily, Dad and May had found us, and Dad's hatchet quickly dismembered the branch into smaller parts that would fit in our bag. We had worked for a solid two hours before heading back. Dad's whole rotating shifts plan did not work out.