FEEL: BIRDSONGS

Chapter 1 of my novel FEEL. Read the full novel for free on WattPad.

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Birdsongs started softly, then quickly grew loud enough to wake the unenthusiastic. Noonie lay on a naked sweat-stained mattress pushed into the corner, her one blanket bunched up on the floor, neglected, unneeded. She closed one eye then the other, navigating the family lineage of cracks in the failing plaster ceiling directly over her head. That’s gonna kill me one of these days. She breathed deeply, reluctantly inhaling the stagnant heat of early morning which was already elbowing its way past her pull-down vinyl blind, curled at the edges, fraying at the bottom. The underqualified sun shade let in way too much light and sometimes sprang upward and fwap-wrapped itself open for no reason at all, the sound now received with disappointment rather than by the surprise it once extorted. She should replace it with something, but it was too valuable to throw out. And it wasn’t hers. And she didn’t have the energy to care enough to do anything about it. 

She reached for her phone to turn off the alarm, but decided to let the birds sing just a little bit longer. She missed that sound. She was old enough to remember when nights cooled down and mornings eased us into our days. Those days were gone. Evaporated. Like the rivers. Like the lakes. Like the clouds. Like our dreams. That was nearly a decade earlier. Around the time she switched gears in medical school, again, much to her advisor’s chagrin. “You’re a people person, Reyes. You’ll hate lab work.” 

But her mind had been made up. She'd seen the future, such as it was. And as much as her always-on smile made her come across as a people person, she found them exhausting. And sick people—she found too much to bear. Besides, she enjoyed nothing more than a quiet night alone. Why not pursue a career that would offer the same solitude 24/7? She’d gotten an easy A in an elective genetics course, cementing her academic path while stumping and impressing the instructor who had reluctantly allowed her to join the class in week three, after she’d dropped out of a neurology course that would’ve required her to pith an unwilling frog. Something she refused to do, no matter the academic consequences. 

The room was small and sparse. The walls, white and bare. Small piles of clean, worn clothes were neatly stacked in three piles on a shelf in the tiny closet that held no door on its painted-over hinge leafs, still screwed into the frame. The hinges’ married partners left long ago with the door—reused as a desktop and laid upon stacked cinder blocks. Upon the desk sat a short stack of thick books, mostly medical books—neuroanatomy, biology, a faded and well-used Physician’s Desk Reference of medications and interactions, Plants as Medicine. One book stood away from the others, a large green hardcover, browned chewed-up paper showing through its threadbare cloth corners. The worn gold lettering on the spine read, Stories for the Heart. It was the only thing she’d saved from the fires. A gift she’d received as a child. The only thing left of her mother.

Nights were still dark, of course—even darker when the twinkling city below disappeared during the planned and unplanned rolling blackouts. But the days flipped back on like a switch. Bam! Hot. Noonie wiped the sweat from her eyes and lightly bapped the phone to let the birds sleep. Silence. The world felt so much more lonely since the birds had stopped singing. Since they’d stopped coming.

She left it up to the window blind to decide whether or not to open on its own. For now, she left it pulled down. 

She pinch-pulled her damp kinda-still-white t-shirt from her body in a fanning motion trying to make the perspiration work for her, and scratched her sweaty ass on the way to the bathroom down the hall. Her housemates would be fast asleep for hours yet, trying to sleep away as much of the day as possible. She was the only one in the house who had regular work days, like people used to. But even if she met one of them on the way to the bathroom, she’d lost all body shyness in medical school, and all ability to care about what she looked like long before that.

Everything felt a little off in the house. The hanging out and laughing was becoming more rare. The weed, more for escape than for camaraderie—medication over entertainment. She missed her friends. She missed the world.

The cramped bathroom upstairs was shared by three other people. Just off the hall, Aurora and Mable shared a room. Aurora, barely out of her teens, quiet as a mouse. Broken from the end of hope, the end of legacy, the end of family. She was lost in the world. Christmas met her a few years earlier when he was out birding, looking for beauty he just could not find. Aurora was listening for the same—birds, beauty. Nothing. So they found nothing together. And out of nothing came grandfatherly protection, and a family already waiting for her.

Mable, brash and funny, kept her curly blonde locks cut short above the ears and liked wearing cutoff bib overalls without a shirt. She called herself Mable because she thought it sounded old-timey quaint. Noonie wasn’t sure what Mable’s real name was. Never asked. She’d arrived at the Christmas house after the death of her baby daughter, her only child. She had woken up. Her baby hadn’t. A distraught Mable, cradling her cold baby girl, was one of Noonie’s first patients when she’d opened the free clinic—all by herself. After learning that Mable had been living in her car with cardboard replacing two windows, Noonie just couldn’t throw her back. Mable chose the room close to Noonie, close to Christmas. And close to the bathroom. Now—not much older than Aurora and younger than anyone else in the house—Mable was the mom of the family. The no-nonsense, get-it-done, ‘I love ya, kid’ kind of mom everyone needs sometimes. The mom she wanted to be.

Real names were less needed, unwanted, not spoken or not known ever since nearly everyone created their anonymous online identities and carried that misery and mystery with them into the real world. Maybe names were dropped as families splintered over the growing divides in political ideologies. Maybe they were dropped as a way to start over, to atone for past mistakes. Maybe they were dropped when everyone realized there was no such thing as legacy, not anymore, not for them. Maybe they were dropped as a way to disconnect from oneself or from the pain of reality. Certainly, for a while, names were dropped or changed as a way to protect oneself from the growing craziness. If you so much as looked at someone sideways online, they would seek you out, eager to make it clear who was superior. Although, doxxing had become less of a problem, or rather harder to do, after the collapse when people scattered and home addresses became relatively obsolete. Addresses weren't really needed by the police or by first responders anymore. Once the public servants had been reduced in numbers and militarized—reassigned by puppet politicians obeying their corporate masters—resources were prioritized then relegated to protecting those who still lived in and worked within the System at known and verified GPS coordinates.

At the far end of the hall, in the master bedroom, lived Christmas. Christmas was in his sixties. Wouldn’t bet against seventy. He owned this two-story brick house his grandparents had bought and moved into back in the middle of the last century. Theirs was the first of ten duplicates built on the now dead-end paved street which, at that time, had been a gravel driveway leading up to an orchard farmhouse. Building and selling houses turned out to be more profitable than growing and selling apples. So, one by one, another brick house popped up, then another, until the orchards were someone else’s memory. A few rows of blossoming and fruiting trees were left behind several of the new homes near the stone wall that had surrounded and protected the orchards for nearly a century from eager, friendly families of wet-nosed, fuzzy-eared mule deer.

The orchards had once produced seasonal truckloads of gleaming, crate-packed apples that would be driven down the hill into the burgeoning city where busy city slickers and their families would pay for the convenience of buying one or two or an entire crate at their favorite neighborhood markets. The route out from the city to the orchards, once a scenic Sunday excursion for families of city dwellers, quickly lined with homogenous homes and shops and schools. Stonewall was simply the seed around which a sprawling suburbia grew, then blossomed, then fell, then rotted.

The brick houses of Stonewall had been considered stately long ago, back when those things seemed to matter. They each appeared nearly identical to the other nine houses on the block except for their color of brick: coffee-brown, yellowy-tan, or classic-red. Christmas’ classic-red brick house lay at the dead end of the dead-end street, closest to where the orchard house once stood. The orchard house had been torn down long before Christmas had been born. Its large empty lot first became a neighborhood gathering place, a pocket park. As the adults got busier and life shifted, the lot became a play area for the neighborhood kids. Later, it offered gardening space when backyard gardens started going out of style. Now, the empty lot was an unsightly patch of brush and tall weeds which proved excellent for trapping a never ending stream of trash blown in from who knows where—whipping and winding up the little street to its final resting place. 

Stonewall Street was not quite a cul-de-sac. If you drive in, you’re backing out. Unless you use someone’s driveway. But in this day and age, driving down a dead-end street was not a good idea. Turning into someone’s driveway? Russian roulette. Regardless, this once family-friendly street had been closed to traffic years ago, and the curtains were drawn, like hearts and minds that couldn't take it anymore.

Between parlor guitar serenades and unembellished tales of everything under the sun, Christmas had often regaled residents and guests with stories of when he was a kid living in this very house. He was a story keeper. 

Story keepers are the human songbirds in a world growing silent. Like the thrush with its hundred voices or the mockingbird with its borrowed melodies, they translate the complex symphonies of human experience into something we can hear, something we can feel. 

Before there were records or books or digital archives, there were people who remembered—who carried melodies and tales in the neural pathways of their minds, passing them forward through generations like a torch in darkness.

Christmas often pointed to where, unappreciated and taken-for-granted, giant swaying cottonwood trees once danced their dappled shade over a lush, dewy green lawn. The hardpack dirt yard had, once upon a time, been dutifully watered then mowed then watered then mowed by his sod-obsessed father, always keeping one step ahead of the Joneses. 

His mother and her mother kept the rear garden coiffed into a thing of beauty and decadence. Flowers and vegetables, newer fruiting trees of plums and peaches competing for the attention so long given to the aging apple trees. Late spring to autumn, some variety or another of fresh produce was always ripe for the picking. As a little boy, Christmas would pull and peel a thick-skinned kohlrabi with his pocket knife, wiping the dirt off with his hands. He’d fill his pockets with sweet golden ground cherries. He'd spend hours tossing fallen green apples at the multi-colored rocks in the hand-built stone wall at the rear of the property. He tried to remember the taste of those apples. He tried to remember the treasures he had hidden in the chinks of stone. Some memories can’t be recovered. 

Noonie stared back at her nude foamy-mouthed reflection in the ancient bathroom mirror which, losing its silver backing, now riddled any self-admirer with vacant holes. Her hair was wet, in fact all of her was still wet, from the “one-gallon shower” she had created using an old watering can no longer needed in the garden. She didn’t bother to dry off. The coolness drew up welcomed goosebumps as she closed her eyes and ran free-form gratitudes through her mind, a habit she had formed in order to start her days right. 

She was grateful for water. She was grateful she had a job she mostly enjoyed—even if she hated the corporate money behind it, even though she knew the violence behind it, even if in the long-term it wouldn't matter. She was grateful that she had a job at all—when nearly everybody was struggling. She was grateful that the points she earned allowed her to give so much to others in need, to help however she could. 

She was grateful for a home. She was grateful for Christmas. 

She was grateful for her health. For food. For shelter. For safety.

She was grateful for the kitties who adopted her when she’d moved in. 

She smiled. And opened her eyes.

She imagined all the hope-filled faces that had once stared back from the glass in this little room. The self-encouragements, the self-doubts. Even herself years ago. Even little Christmas. 

Noonie’s heart jumped when she heard a clatter against the side wooden fence running into the backyard. She quickly climbed up onto the toilet seat to get a better look out the window. That little monster.

She would usually see Tommy in the early evenings from the side kitchen window as he methodically filled his pockets with gravel from the driveway that ran along the other side of the fence. 

But the racket was just that of a couple of her family of cats tightrope racing up and across the top of the fence. She felt her heart pounding—part lingering fear for the cats’ safety, part exasperated anger. 

Holly Morten, who lived in the house next door, had taken in her sister’s kid, Tommy, a few weeks earlier. Tommy was a freckle-faced nine-year-old with the temper of a drunk old man with a lifetime of grudges to settle. 

Noonie didn’t know the story with Tommy’s dad. She didn’t have the time or patience for more stories, she’d told herself. But really, she just didn’t want to accept the burden of pain that climate refugee stories always carried. She did learn from Christmas, who loved stories unconditionally and who kept his finger on the pulse of the neighborhood, that Tommy’s family home near the coast had gotten wiped out for the second time. Now insurance companies worked more as shell games, fighting to turn a profit by sucking money out of the pockets of poor suckers who still held unholy faith in the resurrection of a rotting industry's corpse. This time, Tommy and his mom would have nowhere to go. No home to rebuild or return to. Ever.

He’d be gone soon, Noonie consoled herself. Back from whence ye came, kid. Noonie didn’t like to give in to the idea that some people were just bad. But that kid, Tommy—he was just bad. Everyone had it tough. Losing a home to climate chaos, again. Losing a dad to whatever. Mom away trying to get them back into the System. Yeah, life is hard. But it just didn’t excuse his being an absolute twat. 

Whatever anger issues Tommy had, he took out on the cats, scooping up grubby little handfuls of gravel and pelting them at the fence as hard as he could to scatter the cats who used to like to use the top of the fence as a kitty highway, travelling back and forth from the rear stone wall to the front of the house where normally-friendly humans magically appeared with scritchies, snacks and catnip. 

The first time Noonie caught Tommy throwing gravel at the cats, she'd tried to reason with him. "They're living beings," she'd explained, crouching to meet his eye level. "They feel pain just like you do." Tommy had responded by lobbing an already-loaded handful of rocks at her fence, the clatter of stones against wood punctuating his departure.

That was three weeks ago, just after he'd moved in with his Aunt Holly. Holly had tried to explain—single mother, new job, loss of their home, Tommy's struggles with the move. "He's actually a sweet kid," Holly had insisted, though her tired eyes suggested otherwise. "He's just… adjusting."

But Tommy's "adjusting" had evolved into a daily ritual of torment. The neighborhood cats had learned to scatter at his approach. Those too slow caught the sting of gravel against their flanks, accompanied by Tommy's barking laugh.

“Haaaa! Die, PUSSIES!”

Noonie had documented every incident, first in frustrated texts to Holly, then in increasingly terse conversations with Tommy—over the fence, through the fence—unable to connect with his perpetually absent mother. She'd even thought of installing a motion-activated sprinkler, but the water. Tommy, the little shit. He was just bad.

Noonie felt her scientific detachment crumbling. At work, she could dissociate—treat emotion as just another variable to control for. But here, watching this child deliberately choose cruelty, her scientific remove felt like a betrayal. More betrayal. The data couldn't capture the way her stomach clenched every time she heard gravel hitting wood, couldn't measure the way her hands shook as she documented each incident in her notebook, the same precise observations she used in the lab now bearing witness to casual cruelty.

"I know you're smarter than this," she'd told him just a day earlier, after finding one of the cats limping. Tommy had just stared back, his face a mask of practiced indifference. But something in his diverted eyes—a flicker of... what? Recognition? Anger? Retribution?—had given her pause. How strange to be afraid of a little kid. Gone were the days of “it takes a village to raise a child.” Now, an angry child could grab a gun out a kitchen drawer or, perhaps worse, alert the militarized police to a “suspected anti-corporatist” living next door. Her position in the System would knock down that accusation, but she didn’t need the hassle. Nor did she want the attention.

At Noonie's pleas, Tommy had huffed and turned away, muttering something about her being just another old lady know-it-all, with a colorful sprinkling of fuckin’ bitch thrown in for good measure, topped off with another percussive volley of stones blasted against the wooden fence.

She calmed herself and climbed back down off the toilet. Tacked to the wall above the tank, below the window, was a handwritten sign that read, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, fluSH IT down.” The S, H, I and T were all capitalized and scribbled more heavily so the subtlety would not be lost. 

She was letting it mellow, but the stale meld of a hot night’s collection of warm neighborly urine caused her to lean closer to the door for a chance at some other kind of air. She almost wished she had to shit just so she wouldn’t feel guilty flushing. 

She wiped the tooth cleanser foam from the corners of her mouth with the back of her hand, rinsed her frayed toothbrush with water from a crinkly plastic bottle and sucked the brush dry, placing it back above the medicine cabinet where she imagined it was less visible and accessible to any drunk or stoned resident or guest who might fancy an impromptu teeth cleaning… or worse.

The water had not been turned off recently, but the privatized prices were astronomical. And the purity, hit or miss. Christmas had no patience for waste. Noonie, and the vetted residents, respected that. If they or their guests didn’t, Christmas wasn’t shy about showing them the door—on at least one occasion, with shotgun in hand. 

Eight years earlier, unstoppable wildfires had wiped out much of suburbia and roared into the city, melting the utility infrastructure, and leaving the “Stonewall” area completely without running water for five years. The electricity had never been restored. And it never would be. Now, the Stonewall neighborhood relied on solar panels and good neighbors. 

The flames died down only blocks away when the high winds shifted, and pushed the fire back on itself. Much of the area, tens of thousands of homes over tens of thousands of acres, had been reduced to ashes. And there their remains remained. 

Stonewall stood strong and pulled together as a neighborhood. Adopting refugees, tightening their belts, making room in their hearts and homes. Many of the neighbors had lived there for generations. And most of the homes on the block were still owned by “old timers”—original owners, or their family members who opened their doors to the needy when all hell broke loose. As political winds shifted, violence up-ticked, and many people scattered. But Stonewall, with its high stone walls now topped with razor wire, and with its generations of neighbors taking care of neighbors, had stayed relatively secluded, relatively safe. It became a model for other cooperative communities into and across the city.

Immediately after the obliterating fires died down, Noonie had left the evacuation center to survey the damage. To see if she still had a home. She did not. 

The basement apartment she had rented was now filled with the ashes and rubble from the two floors above. She wondered about Mrs. Lyss who lived upstairs. She never saw or heard from her again. She preferred to imagine that Mrs. Lyss and her little dog Toto were living happily ever after somewhere. Anywhere. 

She'd stared at the ashes and the smoldering miles of nothing. The heat took every tree, every blade of grass, every living thing. She’d still held her ID she’d had to show at the neighborhood checkpoint, arms slack at her side. Disbelieving. Time stood still. 

“You okay?” A muffled deep voice asked from behind. Noonie didn't hear him at first. The voice didn't register. The shuffle of his feet is what caught her attention and she turned her head to acknowledge her questioner.

“You okay?” the man repeated, raising his voice in volume and pitch to be heard through his N95 mask. The vocal adjustment wasn't necessary in the dead silence; Noonie’s brain was just registering slowly for the moment.

She nodded without looking directly at him. She rifled through her feelings. Was she feeling embarrassed that her home had burned? What was that about? Was she sad? Was she afraid? She just felt numb. She felt just fine.

She saw the man start to approach her and snapped to the present using triage and safety skills she hadn't remembered learning in medical school. 

From behind the mask, the man appeared to be in his late 50s, early 60s. He pulled another mask from a plastic-wrapped stack he was carrying with him in a canvas bag adorned with the logo of the grocery co-op located just a few blocks away. Noonie instinctively looked in the direction where it had stood just one long week earlier.

She turned back to the man who offered the new mask to her, arm outstretched, leaning toward her, with one foot back, trying to keep a respectful distance. 

“Christmas,” he said, eyes smiling. “My name is Christmas.”

#

All these years later, only a few shrubs and scraggly trees fought their way back against the brutal landscape to reclaim what was once theirs. A few homes were rebuilt. But with the crash of insurance companies, the end of municipal water and with intermittent or no power, most were forced to relocate instead. Water was now supplied by rumbling trucks that delivered water from the inner city to distribution tanks that served their designated neighborhoods through a series of above-ground pipes and pumps. The landscape beyond, rolling away from the neighborhood, once dappled with rooftops peeking through the trees, was now a flattened hellscape where the fires, once raging, had nothing left to burn. The ashes of homes, of memories and regrets, the ashes of hopes and dreams still get swirled up and twisted into blinding dirt devils driven by the unromantic winds now free to howl, unhindered by humans, and their stick-built shelters, and their tree-lined streets.

Noonie slipped a clean t-shirt over her head and pulled on a pair of shorts. She would grab a granola bar or some nuts from the breakroom at work. Another perk for which she was so grateful. She wished she could bring more “work food” home to her housemates, but the cameras were everywhere. Occasionally she would pull an almost-fresh piece of fruit or a rare piece of candy from her pack and hand it to Christmas at home, a wordless and forever thank you.  

She kept her work clothes in her locker at work where she would later change into attire approved by the corporation. There wasn’t a shower at work, at least not one she was welcome to use, but she did revel in the hot water and automatic flushing toilets. The bathrooms offered the luxury of locking so she often “bathed” in the opulence of a sink with running hot and cold. She tried to restrict her shits to work shits, to conserve water at home. 

Downstairs a new stranger slept sprawled out on the living room floor with a couple housemates snoring nearby—one poured into a shabby recliner, the other spread-eagle on the couch, foot dangling to the floor. A giant dirty water bong sat on the coffee table. Coffee table. Not even the kitchen at work carried coffee anymore. That luxury was kept behind electronic lock and key in the executive lounge. This coffee table was now a weed table. Anything to take the edge off. Not many people wanted the jitter of coffee anymore anyway. Nobody wanted to be awakened, let alone alert. And if they did, they’d have to sell a kidney to afford a cup. Still, Noonie missed the smell and the surge.

She grabbed her backpack she always left hanging on a hook behind the front door. Most of her work stuff was at the office, as required. She was not allowed to carry with her any research secrets, besides those percolating in her head. The backpack was mostly just for water and her phone, some chapstick, cat food, and a first aid kit, just in case. Christmas had offered her a snub-nosed revolver to carry for protection, but she graciously declined to carry it, placing it instead on the top shelf of her closet where she would forget about it if she could. It wouldn’t be allowed into the secured facility where she worked. And she didn’t want to risk a stop and search. Even though she was considered a “valuable worker” as defined by the corporation’s military police, and was granted more freedoms than most, she kept her head down. She had work to do.

Her “freedom” and benefits were part of what Christmas had anticipated when he first invited Noonie to Stonewall. At that time, the stone walls were not yet covered with razor wire and the lockable, movable bollards didn’t block off the street. It was just a community of working neighbors. Everyone minded their own business, but also kept a watchful eye. The old timers remembered the block parties, the bouncy houses, and kids riding their bikes and playing together in the streets until the streetlights came on signaling that it was time to return to their respective homes and families. 

#

“Christmas. I love that,” Noonie had said, accepting the filtered face mask, stretch-snapping the elastic bands over her head and pinching the nose band to fit her face. Like she had done it a thousand times before. “Thank you.”

She hadn’t noticed she had been crying until she put the mask to her face and felt the damp. It surprised her. She looked up at Christmas who held out a small pack of travel tissues. Again she accepted the gift and wiped her eyes, pulled down her mask to blow her nose, then replaced her mask, and stuffed the gray snotty mess into her pocket.

“I’m okay, yeah. Thanks. I lived here,” she thumbed and glanced over her shoulder. 

“I remember this place,” Christmas nodded. “The plum trees.” He gestured to where they once stood, and shook his head. 

The two spoke for a while, reminisced and pointed at the ghosts of memories. Then suddenly, they were walking together through the neighborhood. Noonie helped hand out masks and gave hugs that might have been turned away if they’d come from her 6-foot companion alone. Her 6-foot companion, a stranger, yet somehow her only friend. Once her hug was accepted by suffering strangers, Christmas offered his strong arms as well. Almost everyone fell into them. 

At the end of their walk, Noonie turned to go home. Then stopped. Then the tears came again.

“C’mon,” Christmas comforted. “Come over for a cup of tea.” Again, Noonie accepted.

She had never been down the dead end street of Stonewall. The neighborhood was only blocks from where she had lived and then had lost her home. She always wanted to walk into the secluded enclave, but felt like she would be intruding walking past the stone walls at the entrance, even though it was a public street. Now it felt like stepping into a different world. Established trees still hung on despite the unending drought. Although most of the grass had vanished or had been replaced with xeric plants and decorative rocks, the yards were clean and clung to their histories. Abandoned bird feeders and birdbaths stayed out, a moonshot of hope, a refusal to surrender. A few kids’ bikes leaned against houses here and there, collecting dust. Garden tools left like the toys abandoned in time by children who no longer found them fun or useful.

At his front door, Christmas stomped the ashes from his shoes and brushed himself off. Noonie followed suit. He opened the front door, stepped inside, and removed his shoes and mask. Again Noonie followed his lead. Later she would think of how she should have been more careful, following a strange man into a strange house. For now, she was just going through the motions of living, unsure of where or how she would land. 

At that time, she still had a year left of medical school, and was already being recruited for her heralded medical work in genetic research and for her PhD thesis on theoretical Quantum Empathy. She expected a future for herself, something most were finding harder to imagine. So she had usually weighed her decisions carefully. Maybe it was the shock. Maybe she just didn't know where else to turn. But she felt safe in this house. It felt like home. Lost in time. No TV. No AV device blathering ads and assurances in the background. Just home.

She walked around the huge oak table in the front dining room across the entryway from the living room, and just off the kitchen and looked around the room. A few photos hung on the wall, mostly old, mostly faded, some in black and white. She smiled at a fading, yellowing photo of a little boy standing next to an older woman wearing a flour sack dress and a big straw hat. They were standing in an orchard, a harvest of apples overflowing a half bushel basket at their feet. The little boy held up an apple to the camera, grinning past his missing two front teeth. 

A portrait of a young mother and father with their two young boys, six or seven years old. Twins. They were all dressed in their Sunday best. The boys’ hair slicked to the side with visible comb lines exactly like their father’s. One of the boys was laughing with a gap-toothed grin. No other smiles to be seen except in the eyes of the mother who looked quietly proud. 

A young chiseled youth, Christmas, steely eyes in his Marine Dress Blues. Not the hint of a smile. But she could see a twinkle in those eyes.

And an aerial photo of a huge white farmhouse with a wrap-around porch in the shadow of its orchard windpump. Noonie recognized the stone wall from the end of the street just outside. Dozens of rows of fruit trees were divided by a long white gravel driveway that led all the way up to the house and ended in a circle. The entire property was surrounded by the same huge stone wall. And a round-framed photo of three bluebirds vibrantly contrasted against, what appeared to be, that same calico stone wall.

“Would you like any help?” Noonie asked politely, raising her voice just a little to be heard by Christmas who was in the kitchen, just being the good neighbor he had always been. He held the stainless steel tea kettle under the tap, flipped its lid with his thumb and turned on the handle to a clunk. Nothing. 

“No water.”

“That’s okay,” Noonie offered meekly. 

“No, no. We’ve got bottled water.” He hoisted a five-gallon water jug off the floor of the pantry, wrestled it across the kitchen, and grunted it upside down into its new home atop a ceramic water dispenser standing on what looked like an old wooden plant stand, hand-stenciled with winding green vines and purple grapes. No way that’s going to hold, Noonie thought to herself. He patted the top of the jug as if acknowledging a grandchild with a loving pat on the head. It burped its hello. She chose the chair closest to the front door, rubbed the big wood table with her hand. She could see Christmas through the kitchen archway.

Having filled the kettle, he crossed the kitchen to the stove out of Noonie’s view. She heard the click-click-click-click of the ignition, the woof of the gas lighting, the ticking of the heating kettle. As the water heated, Christmas rummaged through a rack of tea tins to offer his favorites for her choosing. 

“My wife grew these teas right here in the backyard,” he said, setting six cylindrical tins in front of her along with a clean tea infuser, a little screened ball that opened and closed with the squeeze of its springed wire handle was well-loved but clean. 

Noonie relaxed her shoulders a bit at the mention of his wife. Behind her, the front door was wide open except for a security screen door which kept out the ash, but not the stale smolder of the disappeared neighborhoods nearby. Or maybe that smell was her, she wasn’t sure. Still Noonie was grateful that he had left the door open. Even though he seemed harmless. Neighbors being neighbors was a lost art, and something not experienced by many in the younger generations, including Noonie’s.

The tins had labels with meticulously hand-printed names: Dandelion. Lemon Grass. Chocolate Mint. Lavender. Pineapple Sage. Catnip.

“Catnip?” Noonie read the label aloud.

“Ha! Yep.” Christmas turned to retrieve the mugs. “It’s pretty good. Kind of minty. Renae had to bring the plant inside though—the neighborhood cats ate it down to the nub.” He nodded to the large potted catnip plant flowing from a white glazed pot on the dining room window sill.

Noonie instinctively looked toward and out the window to see the cats.

“Oh, they scattered with the fires,” Christmas caught her glance. “But they come back every morning waiting for breakfast. Everyone seems okay. Except Zipper. I haven’t seen him yet.”

“That’s sweet.” Noonie chose Chocolate Mint, mostly because it had the word chocolate in it. Another food item quickly becoming an unaffordable luxury. 

Raising her voice a bit to be heard in the kitchen, Noonie asked, “Renae? That’s your wife? Would she like to join us?”

“Oh, sorry, Noonie. She passed last year.”

“I’m so sorry.” Noonie actually felt it; she didn’t just say it as she was instructed in medical school. Her empathy was another reason she’d chosen a career path that would keep her in a lab, away from others. She simply couldn’t bear the thought of working with sick and suffering people all day long. Especially the kids. Selfish, she knew, or thought. But she also knew herself and her limitations. 

She had burned out on caring too deeply long ago. Now she actively tried to think of anything else. The numbers, the experiments, the tracking of data, the planning stages and the reports and the internal confidential publications all kept her mind busy when she didn’t want to think about the pain going on all around her, around everyone.

“It’s okay,” blinked Christmas. “She was ready to go. We sure miss her though.” 

Noonie wasn’t sure what to say. Or who “we” was. So she had said nothing. Christmas looked out the kitchen window to the backyard, his back to Noonie. He stood there, still and quiet, until the silence was interrupted by the scream of the kettle. He quickly sprang back to life, clicked off the stove and brought the kettle to the table. Water poured and tea steeping, he sat on a chair at the far end of the table closest to the kitchen. 

For the first time she really looked at him. His kind face was etched with calm determination. He had lived, she thought to herself. The murky orange light through the kitchen window behind him mixed with the tears in her eyes, created a shimmering aura. She couldn’t help but smile. 

“Thank you, Christm—” 

“Zipper!” Christmas sprang to his feet, almost knocking over his chair, startling Noonie. She grabbed her tea protectively. He moved quickly to the front door and opened it to a plaintive meow that sounded more like a squeaky drawer scraping open. “Oh, Zipper.” Christmas opened the heavy screen door and scooped up the dirty brown cat, his fur matted with gray and black ash. They hugged each other close. Zipper's whiskers were singed and twisted. His eyes, drippy and tired. But Noonie could hear and almost feel his purr from where she sat, turned in her chair to watch the reunion.

“Mehhhhhhhh,” a grateful Zipper purred into Christmas’ neck. He stared over his human’s shoulder at Noonie through the screen door. Eyes unsure but too exhausted to care. He was home. 

“He won’t come inside,” Christmas offered unsolicited to Noonie. Then back to Zipper, with baby talk, “You want some breakfast? Huh? Bekkfast? Oh, who’s the best kitty? Who’s hungy?” Christmas disappeared down the front stoop and around the side of the house, seemingly forgetting that Noonie was there. She stayed seated and looked about the empty room. She kinda had to pee. 

#

“Mehhhhhhhh.”

“Good morning, Zipper! Who’s the goodest boy? Time for breakfast? Yeah? Bekkfast?” Noonie looked through the same screen security door, now reinforced with a little rebar, like those now added to all the downstairs windows. Zipper was older, of course, a little skinnier, but he looked almost exactly the same. Except now he was clean and fluffy. And he now sported a tipped ear thanks to Noonie and her efforts to spay-neuter-release the cat colonies running rampant after the fires, multiplying after the collapse. 

With more people in survival mode, caring about anything other than one’s immediate family meant using scarce energy on something other than survival. Animal protection had taken a hit everywhere. Of course, nonhuman animals never did stand much of a chance in a world controlled by human animals. But the collapse had unrelentingly moved animals even further away from the hope, further away from the lives and the love they deserved. Humans struggled to buy their own food, to find clothes, to pay for anything and everything. They struggled for a place to live. A place to stay ahead of the ongoing disasters. People had no more time for caring. It was just too much.

Animal shelters, along with most publicly-funded charitable organizations, had closed. Shuttered for good. Advocates and activists still worked at the grassroots level, to help people and animals in need, but the efforts were scattered and gasping, a drop of compassion in a sea of suffering. Those who cared shuttered up their hearts and averted their gazes, and joined the uncaring, the walking dead—numb to life, but still living. Sort of.

Zipper jumped into Noonie’s lap as she sat on the front stoop. His purr filled her soul. He was always first to the door in the morning. His inner alarm clock, set to hers. 

“Meep.” 

“Good morning, Oso.” A little black and white cat with a tipped ear poked her head out from around the corner of the house, backlit by the hot morning sun. She was cowering, ears back, stealing glances at the six-foot rickety cedar privacy fence that divided the property from the house next door. “What’s the matter? Is that boy out there? I don’t think he’s up yet. Don’t worry. I’m coming. Should we go feed your sister, Zipper?” 

“Mehhhhhhhhh.”

Zipper hopped down to lead the way. Usually Noonie would be greeted and led by a happy herd of six or more of the cats. Not today. She glanced over the fence as she came down the stoop. Fucking Tommy. 

She followed the raised tails of Zipper and Oso prancing and leading her past the massive backyard greenhouse to the potting shed where breakfast was still served daily—thanks to points she’d earned working and had exchanged at the corporate food and supply depot, ironically named Plenty. As she reached the potting shed, one then two then seven or eight other cats came out from under the shed, over the shed, on top of the wall and places unknown to her—running and meowing, hissing and pushing for position. The colony had grown to over twenty cats and kittens shortly after the fires. She didn’t want to imagine those who didn’t make it out. Most of the new-comers after the fire were very tame, probably orphaned by fleeing humans. With a lot of effort and her contagious smile, Noonie was able to find homes for all of the new-comers. The original feral colony who had lived in Christmas’s backyard before the fires had long since adopted Noonie—always a little afraid of everyone and everything, except for Christmas, and now her. 

She hated to think of anyone taking away what little they had, especially their sense of safety. They were her family of fraidy cats. And she loved them all. Somehow she had to protect them from that little monster next door.

#

Not wanting to stay in the house by herself or to appear rude, Noonie had decided to leave her tea on the table to steep and followed Christmas to the backyard. He was still cradling and loving on weary little Zipper, the prodigal son. 

By the time she reached the backyard, Christmas was sitting on the ground, surrounded by and covered by cats. The furry swarm of felines moved and shifted according to hierarchy—chomping, purring, hissing, rubbing and loving.

“These two are new,” he said, pointing to the only calicos. “I’m amazed the others aren’t fighting them off. Maybe they know. I think they know.” Christmas looked up like he had forgotten who he was talking to. “Crazy. They never stick around for strangers. They like you. You must be a cat person like us.” Then he quietly corrected, “Like me.” 

“I’m an every-animal person,” Noonie beamed, almost forgetting the world and her problems. She sat on the ground and blinked her eyes softly at the cats who were brave enough to come to her, rub against her, sniffing her. But their focus was the old bowls and tea saucers filled with kibble. 

“Would you grab a couple more bowls,” Christmas motioned with his chin toward several bowls turned upside down at the side of the shed, leaning against the high stone wall. “Might have to spread this out a little this morning so our visitors can get some.”

Noonie took over the feeding and caring for the neighborhood cats when she moved into the upstairs front room at the suggestion of Christmas. That was eight years ago. 

“Just for a while,” he’d said. “Just till you get on your feet.” 

Noonie had explained her research projects, medical school…

“Oh, a doctor!” Christmas seemed almost proud, having only met her an hour or two earlier.

“Well, yes, but research only. I do genetics research. And I’m not a doctor, yet. One more year” she offered, playfully knocking on her head lightly as if for good luck. 

“Would be wonderful to have a doctor in the house,” Christmas put it plainly.

Noonie looked at Christmas. She noticed he looked her in the eye, even when she wasn’t looking. She was not used to that. It made her squirm, a stranger in her own skin. And then she remembered, this is how it used to be. As everything started to crumble, and social norms fell away, so did trust. So did basic human connection. Even walking down the street, she was no longer sure what is in the hearts of others. Of course, she never really knew. But she’d worked from the assumption that we had a shared social contract to take care of one another, or at least not harm one another. Anyone who strayed from that agreed upon contract was punished. Now, those who breached the social contract were being rewarded with money, with fame, and with political power.

“The kitties like you. I like you. Renae would’ve loved you. Big house. If you need a place to stay. For a while. Just think about it.” 

“I will. I really will,” Noonie said softly, not breaking eye contact. She was pretty sure she was crying again.