The arm went off at five am on the morning when I was set to depart. I groaned and pushed Vicki aside. She’d sneaked into my room st night to see me off, and it wasn’t something I was going to be forgetting anytime soon.

  We weren’t too worried about getting her pregnant. I couldn’t marry Vicki, but the community needed kids, so even if I had a few bastards I didn’t need to worry about them getting taken care of.

  She sat up and looked at me as I got dressed.

  “I wish you didn’t have to go,” she said.

  “I’ll be back,” I reminded her.

  “In six months.” She sighed. “I might have moved on to another boy by then.”

  “Yeah, well, tough shit,” I muttered as I pulled my shirt on. “It’s not like we were ever exclusive to begin with.”

  She looked at me, probably wondering if I knew about the times she’d cheated on me. I’d never cheated on her, but then again I was sort of engaged, so yeah.

  She started getting dressed just as I finished and went downstairs for breakfast. Ma was already frying the eggs. “You know I don’t approve of Vicki,” she said as I cut off a slice of bread.

  “Who asked you anyway?” I asked.

  She sighed. “I miss the days when you were my sweet little boy.”

  “Yeah. Well, tough shit,” I muttered, and I went outside to pump the water. I came back inside with a five gallon bucket just as Vicki was sneaking out the side door. She looked at me with a sad smile and then took off at a jog to get back home.

  Mom had mixed a bit of switchel for breakfast, and together with the toast and eggs it was enough to get me going. The old timers compined that there was no coffee to drink these days, just moonshine and switchel, but whatever. It’s just the way things are.

  I made my way to the old gas station. The tanks there were long empty, of course, except for the one that we filled up each year with biodiesel. About a third of our harvest was in that tank.

  It was the only reason that the caravan stopped at the Bends to begin with. The old refinery was only spun up once a year, but it’s literally the reason that everyone knew the name Ashford Bends.

  Without us, trade would probably continue. Probably.

  I waited in the old gas station, bullshitting with the oldtimers who knew how to run the pumps.

  Around noon, the caravan came cruising in on the old cracked highway. They drove at a steady forty miles per hour to avoid putting too much pressure on the old trucks. It’s not like there was that much of a rush anyway, this caravan made one circuit going from Texas to Kansas and then up to Minnesota and back again per year.

  That was it. They said that in the old days, caravans like this were running on the highways night and days.

  But there were cities to feed in those days. Now, most pces are self-sufficient, and the scale of trade is a decimal of what it used to be.

  The truckers got out of their rigs and began going through the process of refueling their tanks. I stood nearby until my grandfather showed up. One of the truckers saw him and went over to begin the negotiations, and I went over to listen. Grandfather spotted me and waved me over.

  “Niel, this is Glen, my grandson. He’s the one I asked to come with for a ride-along,” Grandfather said.

  “Right. Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Glen,” Neil said. He was a middle aged man with a bit of muscle and a bit of a pot-belly. He ate well, I could tell, which said something about his prosperity these days. “Now get your ass over to the red one and help with the unloading.”

  “Yes sir,” I said, noting that he had his own pistol on his hip.

  I went over to the red truck and took my pce in the line in back as we began unloading the goods that had been ordered for our little community in exchange for our fuel. Cloth mostly. We were self-sufficient in terms of food, but we didn’t grow cotton, and the factories which made high-quality cloth weren’t nearby.

  I worked up a good sweat helping the men carrying the goods out into the old parking lot while the guards with rifles stood nearby, watching the locals with the same suspicious gres that our own guards were giving them.

  At about four o’clock, the work was done, and Niel came to find me. “You’re going to be riding in that rig with Miguel,” he said. “Any questions?”

  “No sir,” I said, and I went over to the rusted old blue truck. Miguel showed up a few minutes ter and unlocked the door. He was expecting me and told me to get my ass up into the cab with him, and then a few minutes ter we were under way.

  Miguel had some Latin blood in him, I think. If he was cursed, I couldn’t see the signs on his exposed skin, but that doesn’t mean shit. Regardless, I thought as we drove away, the rules of the road were different from the rules of Ashford Bends, so I figured it would take me some time to figure out the pecking order.

  But I was pretty sure I was already right about one thing. I was close to the bottom of it.