All We Have by Sean Little

Author:Sean Little [Little, Sean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Spilled Inc. Press
Published: 2018-11-13T00:00:00+00:00

Sounds at the door woke me. I sat up in bed and glanced out the window. It was just after dawn. A front had moved in sometime during the night. The clouds were dark and gray, oppressively low in the sky, and the winds had kicked up a fair amount. The trees I could see from my window were being moved considerably by the winds.

When the door opened, Lucy was there with a plate of fried eggs and some sausage. “It’s not much. We have a few pigs and chickens. That’s about it.”

“It’s great. Thank you.” I took the plate from her.

She stood in the doorway and watched me eat it. “Enrique went down the road and inspected your cart. He says you weren’t gathering survival supplies. He says you were gathering housing supplies.”

He had me there. I lied to her. “I was gathering things so I could settle down and stop roaming. The future is going to be in farming. I was going to find a decent place and fix it up. Plant some crops.”

Lucy glanced down the hallway. She translated what I said into Spanish. After a moment, Enrique’s face peeked around the frame of the door. He spoke. Lucy said, “He says you already have a place. The cart is not stuff you would normally get when first starting out. He also says you have a baby, because of the diapers.”

“Just preparing for any emergency, I said.”

Enrique’s face flared at the translation, and he spat out something harsh in Spanish. I didn’t need Lucy’s translation to know he’d just called me a liar.

I decided to change my angle and asked him to sit down. Through Lucy, I spent twenty minutes telling Enrique my story. I told him about Wisconsin, about burying my parents and girlfriend, about surviving the winter and bringing the RV south to find a new life. I left out Ren. I felt a need to protect her from this, if I could, which I don’t understand. Ren was half-Venezuelan. I think she spoke Spanish. I probably should have told them about her.

When I had Enrique buying into my story, I changed just enough of my tale to throw him off, should he and his people come looking for us. I told him that I found a small commune of ten people about forty or fifty miles northwest of Houston. I figured fifty miles was a daunting enough slog to prevent them from casually wandering out that direction, but it was believable that a man on horseback could ride that distance in less than a day.

Enrique watched my face carefully and listened to my words. Eventually, he nodded, scratching at his chin. He shrugged and talked to Lucy. They exchanged a few sentences each. Finally Lucy said, “Enrique says he believes you. He wishes you had just told him the truth to start, though.”

“We all have to do what we can to protect our people, don’t we?”

Lucy translated. Enrique said something in return. Lucy said,

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