The Family

By Darrel Bird

Sneek Peek:

The Family

The cart clattered to a stop.
“Bobby...push and quit star gazing.”
“Why do we have to pull this old cart around for Dad? Why don’t we just leave it?”
Sean knew Bobby was not lazy; it was a typical question for a fourteen-year-old to ask.
“Because I’m telling you, that’s why.”
“We could go faster without it couldn’t we?”
“Yes we could, but it’s better to travel slow and careful than it is to rush. Look son, I’m trying to teach you, but if you won’t learn you won’t live long.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Darrel Bird
• Release date: Sep 16, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465708960

Darrel Bird

Darrel Bird has written and published 47 short stories. He attended Bakersfield college, and is an avid motorcyclist.

Book preview

The Family

by Darrel Bird

Copyright 2011 by Darrel Bird

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Part 1

The Family: The Beginning

We weren’t ready. That was the thought of everyone; we weren’t ready, but how does one get ready for the world economy to go to hell in a hand basket? It's like getting caught in a snow slide. The economy slid, and it slid hard and fast. Fuel prices got so high that truckers couldn’t make a living and walked off the job, leaving their expensive big rigs that got six miles per gallon if they were lucky. The government promised them relief that didn’t come, and they finally gave up, stopping their rigs at terminals, freeway off-ramps, and interchanges.

It had been a heavy winter, and folks in Maine who depended on fuel oil for heat didn’t get their shipments, and many tried to make home-made wood stoves to bust up the furniture for burning, and many of those home-made wood stoves caught houses on fire, burning them to the ground, thus throwing an additional load on their friends, family, or neighbors.

When the trucks quit running, the food, or what was left of it, never reached the stores. The oil had reached its peak in seventy-five or seventy-eight, depending on who was giving out the numbers. Maybe it was a government-created shortage. Nobody really knew, but like a snowball rolling down a hill, picking up more snow as it went, it affected everything.

Sean Bernard had been a machinist in the same machine shop in Bangor, Maine, since a year after high school, and he had been out of work for six months, as had his wife Carla. He was twenty-four years old that year when his son Bobby was born. The government gave him a few welfare checks, which affected him more than being out of work. They had a house out on Diximont Road that he had purchased three years after he went to work, and he could catch the 95 freeway into Bangor to work. They had an acre of land, and he had extended his vegetable garden when the job ended. Without a pay check for either one of them, there was no gas to get into Bangor if there had been any gas, which there wasn’t, so he and Carla holed up and hoped things would get better.

Sean owned a single-shot, single-barreled shotgun he had inherited from his dad, which he had stuck back in a closet and forgotten about, along with a box of shot shells whose brass ends were turning a slight green and the red on the wax paper was turning pink.

Sean wouldn’t hurt a flea if one got on him. He would pick it up and set it down to run for the dog. not that he had fleas. With the garden and the green house, they were able to feed themselves a little, and when the power went out, they both adjusted to living like people did a hundred years ago. That is, until the first of March, when five toughs from Bangor came into the yard, armed to the teeth. He was grunting against the push mower, which he kept sharp, oiled, and hanging neatly in the garage when it wasn’t in use.

Mister… Just put that mower down," one of the men said, pointing an automatic rifle at him. It looked like one of those military jobs with a long banana clip hanging out the bottom.

What’s going on, Sean? Carla called from the back door.

Go back in the house, Carla, he said without taking his eyes off the man who held the gun. What do you fellows want?

Everything…  Get your old lady and get out! Otherwise, I'll kill you where you stand!

I can give you something to eat if you’re hungry. He had heard about the riots, the looting, and the burnings going on in Bangor from a neighbor who lived about a mile away, but they had been pretty well isolated out here with the surrounding woods and timber lands.

You better do what he says; Cap is pretty bloody. Come down to it. Another of them spoke up. He grinned widely, showing tobacco-stained teeth, as he spat in front of him and raised his own rifle a tad. Another of them came over, whacked him upside the head with the barrel of his rifle, and he fell into a garden row. He looked up dazedly at the bright blue sky, and to his right he saw the turnips, and to his left he saw a tiny cucumber under a leaf of the vine that was growing huge leaves. The first one he had seen this year

He felt something begin to drip in his left eye. It was his own blood where the rifle sight had cut his head open. He got up, stood unsteadily, and began walking toward the back door. His eyes took