They're Off To See Roops

 

He was literate. Jen made sure he could read by the time he was five years old, and that he learned cursive handwriting by the time he was eight or ten. He wrote in a boy’s hand, but it was serviceable. 

She also taught him basic math up to beginning Algebra.

He was familiar with Paul Johnson’s history of America and some world history also.

But as he rode his bike over the failing asphalt on his way to his cousin’s house, looking about he had a hard time realizing what the country had lost. He knew he lived among a type of ruins. Maybe something like when Rome left the English on their own. They were all amateurs then. In fact, there was no central government. After the country had been divided up into five large sections even the states seemed to fade away except for the names. In any case, P-Sec had also become largely toothless. There were still so few people that getting together on anything central just hadn’t happened. The population was growing but the post disaster children were still quite young.

Doug was a busy man. Being a sort of voted-in judge, he was the closest thing they had to some kind of law. He didn’t do lessons with his kids, but he did talk to them. He tried to familiarize them with recent history and something about the other parts of the world.

Gabe stopped his bike suddenly right in the road. In profile he looked almost like a man. Soon. He looked out across the quiet landscape. Most of what he saw were small gardens and isolated stands of trees, both broadleaf and evergreen. There were dairy cattle. There were some houses occupied, most were not. There were more horses than used to reside around Milltown. Everybody loved horses in Milltown.

The smoke of some kitchen fires rose straight up into the sky and then blew away to the west.

He took a deep breath and rode off again. Lucy Milligan was on his mind.

Gabe didn’t feel like a child or a man. He felt he was somewhere in the middle.



Lou and Elvin’s place where they lived with their two sons, Jeremy and Mike, was five blocks away from their little café. Jeremy was 10 and Mike was 8. Gabe was a hero to both of them.

It was a wood frame house of one story painted pale yellow sometime in the past and looked a little worn. Paint was hard to come by then. Maybe someday a way to paint a house would come again. Elvin’s family did not garden. They were busy in the café. They bought supplies for their rather plain menu. They mostly served a simple breakfast of eggs and pancakes and a chicken heavy lunch with lots of salads and potatoes. Meat was not much on the menu in those days.



When Gabe got to their house, he leaned his bike against the side of the porch and knocked on the door and then walked in.

“Hey, Jeremy,” Gabe yelled. “Let’s go! Where are you?”

Jeremy came tearing out of his room yelling “where are we going, Gabe?”

“Let’s go see Roops.” (He only referred to him as Mr. Jones with his parents.) “I want to be ready to take over his system when he can’t do it anymore, so we better go make sure it’s us that gets to do it.”

Gabriel knew that when OZ died their living hotspot had died with him.