Page 1 of The Life of Chuck

1

The day Marty Anderson saw the billboard was just before the Internet finally went down for good. It had been wobbling for eight months since the first short interruptions. Everyone agreed it was only a matter of time, and everyone agreed they would muddle through somehow once the wired-in world finally went dark—after all, they had managed without it, hadn’t they? Besides, there were other problems, like whole species of birds and fish dying off, and now there was California to think about: going, going, possibly soon to be gone.

Marty was late leaving school, because it was that least favorite day for high school educators, the one set aside for parent-teacher conferences. As this one had played out, Marty had found few parents interested in discussing little Johnny and little Janey’s progress (or lack of it). Mostly they wanted to discuss the probable final failure of the Internet, which wouldsink their Facebook and Instagram accounts for good. None of them mentioned Pornhub, but Marty suspected many of the parents who showed up—female as well as male—were mourning that site’s impending extinction.

Ordinarily, Marty would have driven home by way of the turnpike bypass, zippity-zip, home in a jiff, but that wasn’t possible due to the collapse of the bridge over Otter Creek. That had happened four months ago, and there was no sign of repairs; just orange-striped wooden barriers that already looked dingy and were covered with taggers’ logos.

With the bypass closed, Marty was forced to drive directly through downtown to reach his house on Cedar Court along with everybody else who lived on the east side. Thanks to the conferences, he’d left at five instead of three, at the height of rush hour, and a drive that would have taken twenty minutes in the old days would take at least an hour, probably longer because some of the traffic lights were out, as well. It was stop-and-go all the way, with plenty of horns, screeching brakes, bumper-kisses, and waved middle fingers. He was stopped for ten minutes atthe intersection of Main and Market, so had plenty of time to notice the billboard on top of the Midwest Trust building.

Until today, it had advertised one of the airlines, Delta or Southwest, Marty couldn’t remember which. This afternoon the happy crew of arm-in-arm flight attendants had been replaced by a photograph of a moon-faced man with black-framed glasses that matched his black, neatly combed hair. He was sitting at a desk with a pen in his hand, jacketless but with his tie carefully knotted at the collar of his white shirt. On the hand holding the pen there was a crescent-shaped scar that had for some reason not been airbrushed out. To Marty he looked like an accountant. He was smiling cheerfully down at the snarled twilight traffic from his perch high atop the bank building. Above his head, in blue, was CHARLES KRANTZ. Below his desk, in red, was 39 GREAT YEARS! THANKS, CHUCK!

Marty had never heard of Charles “Chuck” Krantz, but supposed he must have been a pretty big bug at Midwest Trust to rate a retirement photo on a spotlit billboard that had to be at least fifteen feet high andfifty feet across. And the photo must be an old one, if he’d put in almost forty years, or his hair would have been white.

“Or gone,” Marty said, and brushed at his own thinning thatch. He took a chance at downtown’s main intersection five minutes later, when a momentary hole opened up. He squirted his Prius through it, tensing for a collision and ignoring the shaken fist of a man who squelched to a stop only inches from t-boning him.

There was another tie-up at the top of Main Street, and another close call. By the time he got home he had forgotten all about the billboard. He drove into the garage, pushed the button that lowered the door, and then just sat for a full minute, breathing deeply and trying not to think about having to run the same gauntlet tomorrow morning. With the bypass closed, there was just no other choice. If he wanted to go to work at all, that was, and right then taking a sick day (he had plenty of them stacked up) seemed like a more attractive option.

“I wouldn’t be the only one,” he told the empty garage. He knew this to be true. According to theNew York Times(which he read on his tablet every morning if the Internet was working), absenteeism was at a worldwide high.

He grabbed his stack of books with one hand and his battered old briefcase with the other. It was heavy with papers that would need correcting. Thus burdened, he struggled out of the car and closed the door with his butt. The sight of his shadow on the wall doing something that looked like a funky dance move made him laugh. The sound startled him; laughter in these difficult days was hard to come by. Then he dropped half of his books on the garage floor, which put an end to any nascent good humor.

He gathered upIntroduction to American LiteratureandFour Short Novels(he was currently teachingThe Red Badge of Courageto his sophomores) and went inside. He had barely managed to get everything on the kitchen counter before the phone rang. The landline, of course; there was hardly any cell coverage these days. He sometimes congratulated himself on keeping his landline when so many of his colleagues had given theirs up. Those folks were truly hung,because getting one put in this last year or so… forget about it. You’d be more likely to be using the turnpike bypass again before you got to the top of the waiting list, and even the landlines now had frequent outages.

Caller ID no longer worked, but he was sure enough about who was on the other end to simply pick up the phone and say, “Yo, Felicia.”

“Where have you been?” his ex-wife asked him. “I’ve been trying to reach you for an hour!”

Marty explained about the parent-teacher conferences, and the long trip home.

“Are you okay?”

“I will be, as soon as I get something to eat. How are you, Fel?”

“I’m getting along, but we had six more today.”

Marty didn’t have to ask her six more of what. Felicia was a nurse at City General, where the nursing staff now called itself the Suicide Squad.

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Sign of the times.” He could hear the shrug in her voice, and thought that two years ago—when they’d still been married—six suicides in one day would haveleft her shaken, heartbroken, and sleepless. But you could get used to anything, it seemed.

“Are you still taking your ulcer medication, Marty?” Before he could reply, she hurried on. “It’s not nagging, just concern. Divorce doesn’t mean I still don’t care about you, y’know?”

“I know, and I am.” This was half a lie, because the doctor-prescribed Carafate was now impossible to get, and he was relying on Prilosec. He told the half-lie because he still cared about her, too. They actually got along better now that they weren’t married anymore. There was even sex, and although it was infrequent, it was pretty damn good. “I appreciate you asking.”

“Really?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He opened the fridge. Pickings were slim, but there were hotdogs, a few eggs, and a can of blueberry yogurt he would save for a pre-bedtime snack. Also three cans of Hamm’s.

“Good. How many parents actually showed up?”

“More than I expected, far less than a full house. Mostly they wanted to talk about the Internet. They seemed to think I should know why it keeps shittingthe bed. I had to keep telling them I’m an English teacher, not an IT guy.”

“You know about California, right?” Lowering her voice, as if imparting a great secret.

“Yes.” That morning a gigantic earthquake, the third in the last month and by far the worst, had sent another large chunk of the Golden State into the Pacific Ocean. The good news was that most of that part of the state had been evacuated. The bad news was that now hundreds of thousands of refugees were trekking east, turning Nevada into one of the most populous states in the union. Gasoline in Nevada currently cost twenty bucks a gallon. Cash only, and if the station wasn’t tapped out.

Marty grabbed a half-empty quart of milk, sniffed, and drank from the bottle in spite of the faintly suspicious aroma. He needed a real drink, but knew from bitter experience (and sleepless nights) that he had to insulate his stomach first.

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