Librarian’s note: I hadn’t seen Mrs. Steinmetz since the outbreak hit, but I’d been hearing rumors that she’d organized her immediate neighbors into an enclave and ruled it with an iron fist. I confess that I didn’t believe it. When I met her a year ago at a Friends of the Library board meeting, my impression was “prissy.” I think the first thing she ever said to me was “Excuse me, but ‘shoot’ in that context is clearly a euphemism for excretion, and I would prefer we avoid wooden swearing from those who interact with our children.” The sentence was punctuated, as I later realized nearly all of her sentences were punctuated, with a little sniff.
Anyway, during that meeting, she had long hair, an immaculate pantsuit, and chunky accessories. Now, she was still rocking the pantsuit…if by pantsuit, you understand I mean camo-patterned cargo pants and a matching jacket…and what was nearly a crewcut. I almost didn’t let her in.
“You’ve, uh, changed,” I finally said.
“My hair? Fuck that shit. Can’t give the skinbags anything to grab in a fight,” she said. Then she sniffed. Then she held her kbar knife with her teeth while she rummaged in her leg pockets. She thrust a bunch of torn pieces of paper bag at me, all of it covered on both sides with her cramped handwriting.
“Here, take it. Tactical info. For the archives.”
She was gone before I could react. Here’s what she brought me.
Hanukkah Planning
Phase one: Light
We used too many candles. Jake and I thought the power would be back on soon, so we used dozens of the big waxy tapers that first week. As bright as it would have been with lamps. Fucking meshugganeh. Then we started using two or three. Then just one. Then birthday candles, and then that awful “Midnight Serenade” jar candle, and finally the one shaped like a cat that Mama gave me.
We’ve been out of candles ever since. However, that awful shop that smelled like a hippie’s armpit down on Main? “Angelika’s Fire,” what a name. The bitch that ran the place made candles, and yes, they were all looted long ago, but I found spools of wicking cotton in her basement. I also found Angelika staggering around trying to find the exit, and hand to god, I didn’t kill her immediately because getting trapped in her own basement is exactly the kind of thing that simpleminded navka would do. But as soon as she lurched toward my flashlight, I realized she didn’t have half a face anymore.
I took a case of spools, but there’s plenty more under Angelika.
I siphoned off maybe a gallon of the rancid oil still in the Swine and Bovine’s fryer. A little wicking cotton on a paper clip hanging on the side of a baby food jar full of that oil, and boom, light. Nine of those jars, and you’ve got a miracle.
Phase two: Latkes
Who listens to me? I told everyone a thousand times, we should never have let that big agribusiness group consolidate the four farms outside town. Those gorgeous old farmhouses, all gone. Now there’s no fucking cover between the potato field and the road. There’s also no feral in that potato field anymore.
You’re welcome.
So, believe it or not, there are still potatoes in the ground, but if we don’t get them out before the frost, they’re going to rot. I couldn’t carry all I wanted and still run as fast as I wanted, but I’ve got enough to cook for the holiday and enough to plant next spring. We should be so lucky to have potato plants in our yards.
Phase three: Gelt
In my head, I told my kids I had their Hanukkah money, and then they told me there’s nowhere to spend it. That’s when I decided I’ll get the chocolate coins I got them when they were babies.
I remember my mother calling my father a schlemiel for exactly that kind of sentimental garbage.
It was a crazy idea. The grocery stores have been down to bare shelves for so long. As I was leaving Angelika’s, though, I passed the party supply store. I’d never been in there. Why should I with a name like “Party Animals”? I guess “Cheap schlock you could make better with pipe cleaners and Pinterest” didn’t fit on the sign.
I crowbared my way in. Only a party supply shop could look like it’d been looted without having been touched. I almost decided it was more trouble than it was worth, but then I thought the pirate party theme aisle might have coins.
Between a loud crinkly search — why did everything have fucking cellophane? Did this cheap import shit have such value it needed protection that should survive the actual apocalypse? — and the crowbar forced entry, I drew an audience. Three of them. Crowbar did the job on two of them.
The last one stared at me, making those grunting noises they only make right after they turn. Almost talking. Not really talking; we learned that the hard way, didn’t we all? So there he was grunting and clicking and reaching for me like my own boy asking for a hug. I grabbed the first thing that came to hand and shoved it toward him. It was one of those little plush dogs that plays the birthday song when you squeeze it. He was still staring at it when I brained him with a miniature helium tank.
Anyway. Party Animals still has the chocolate coins, if anyone needs them.
Phase four: Presents
Credit for the presents goes to the former hoodlum across the street from my house.
You know, I think he’s enjoying this? He’s been daydreaming about how great he’d be in the apocalypse ever since that video game came out, the one with the disgusting title. Something about rotting. Whatever it was, he’s got tons of ideas, and not enough people listening to him.
You know what else? This festering glory hole of a town has never been good about appreciating people with good ideas. Everyone gets all wound up about surface shit like manners and tics, or whether you’ve lived here for a thousand years as opposed to oh, I don’t know, getting trapped here because you married someone with enough imagination to attend college somewhere else, but not enough to stay gone.
Well, I know from good ideas, no matter their packaging. The hoodlum was the one that wrapped pallets with barbed wire and blocked off our cul de sac until we could build a real fence. He showed me how to make great stuff for my kids, enough for all eight fucking nights. Slings, blow darts, spears. Then he broke my heart and gave me his old Nerf guns and all the foam bullets he could find. “Hey, it’s how I got my start as a sniper,” he said, “that and video games.” I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
He wouldn’t take anything in trade. “Kids should have kid stuff for the holidays,” he said. I looked at his face, with that little bit of peach fuzz coming in, and told him to wait. I went and got the fancy old fashioned straight razor set I gave my husband for his birthday.
“Merry Christmas, Horace,” I told him.
Now, in return for all this information, I have a request to make. If something happens to me before the first night of Hanukkah…well, with Jake turned and his parents missing, I’m the last Jew in the valley. Tell my kids to light the candle, and say this:
Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech Ha’olam, shehekheyanu, v’kiyamanu vehegianu lazman hazeh.