And when it was approved, by the Council and the population, to restart civilization outside their town, Sayler Beach was one of five spots they picked. And the person they chose to be in charge was –
“No. No. that’s a bad idea. I’m too young. I have no political experience, zilch. I wouldn’t even know how to run a town. I’m bipolar! You really want people to have to follow the dictates of a manic depressive? I barely run me! Nuh-uh, you need someone else for this job.”
Dr. Bayo sighed and waited her out. The half-Senegalese half-Irish “mayor” of Santa Cruz was nothing if not patient. “So who do you suggest?”
“What? Anyone. Anyone but me.”
“Who knows the town better than you?”
“Well …”
“Who knows where people can live? Where they can work? Which land they can farm? Who has food for all of them? Who has dealt with the local animals?”
“Okay, I get that, but I’m talking about people skills. I’m not all that sociable, and I need pills just to make it through the day.”
“So you can organize the cleanup of three hundred bodies, you can organize the food supply of an entire town, the fuel supply, the farm, but if people are added to the mix you fall to pieces.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“And yet you’ve dealt with people around here quite well, as you did when you were running the grocery store. And managed your medications without any problems that I’ve heard about. Ever read about John F. Kennedy? He was taking a lot of meds too – not even as good as the ones you take.”
“But Kennedy had help. And I had help at the store – Ganj and LaSheba, and Mr. Ashcroft if things got really hairy. I’ve had help here – Sandra and Rufus and Pat and Eileen and Whatserface and – and you!”
“So you won’t have help there? Even though we’re planning to send over a hundred people with you.”
“You know what I mean!”
“Yes. I do. But you don’t know what you mean.”
“I … what?”
“You don’t lack the skills for the position, Ms. Sweeney. You lack the confidence. And I am telling you that you shouldn’t. You are as capable of being in charge of your town, and its new citizens, as you were of chasing off a puma.”
Egad, they loved the mountain lion story around here! “But I didn’t know I was until it happened!”
“Precisely.”
She got it then. She wouldn’t know what she was capable of until she tried it and succeeded. “You really think I can do this.”
“I really do. But don’t worry – if you can’t, you can have me come up and fire you. Though I suspect your fellow citizens would beat me to it.” They both laughed, and Eric continued. “You already knew how to do this. And you’ve learned more since you came here. You can take this role. I know you can do it well. You just have to show yourself you can.”
Against that kind of logic, she had no defense. Especially when she was also hearing it from Eileen, and Sandra, and Whatserface (whose real name was Ntxawm Fang and who’d given up on teaching white people to pronounce it correctly, so she went by the nickname). And of course Pat – Pat most of all. She really had no defense against Pat’s logic – or anything else about Pat, frankly.
When the Council asked to see the ledger, she confessed she didn’t have it with her and explained why. They understood and asked how long it would take her to get it, because they were impressed with her story (Eileen must have really laid it on) and wanted to see her work. “Two days, maybe three if the fires in S.F. have spread,” she told them. “Unless you have someone with a motorboat to get me there and back.”
As it turned out, they had someone with a motorboat – Patrick Dobbs, who before the near-end of the world had run a marine repair shop in Carmel. He was forty, lost his wife and two kids to the plague, and was trying to keep as busy as he could to prevent himself from thinking about them. Most of his time was spent ferrying scavengers and their scavengings to Santa Cruz from the other towns around Monterey Bay.
But he had no qualms with using his smaller vessel, a Bayliner Element E16 powerboat, to run taxi service up to Sayler Beach for a day. She left with Pat early in the morning, ran up to Sayler Beach, showed him around a little, fed the doggos, and got back to Santa Cruz with her records by dinnertime. That night at the wharf, he cried on her shoulder (much to his embarrassment), mourning the family he’d lost. Within a week, they were good friends.
By Thanksgiving, they were dating. That was a revelation for her – she hadn’t quite given up on relationships, but she hadn’t been looking much, even before everything took the handbasket to the hot place. Serving as a placeholder for Pablo Amendola was fine. But she and Pat seemed to … fit. He jacked up her confidence and pointed out her successes. She showed him how to beat his despair and gave him someone to talk to. She told him male-pattern baldness wasn’t a deal-breaker, and he told her a daily dose of lithium wasn’t either.
He also kept taking her up to Sayler Beach when she wanted to check on the old homestead and get something from her house. That turned out to be a
