Tuesday's Child

Tuesday morning was a bright spot in Carlos Normandy's week. He got up at seven and put the kettle on and then ate a bowl of cereal beneath the picture of Helen Mercer that hung above the table in the kitchen. It was an odd place to hang a picture but he liked to be close to her and the living room was too crowded.
He put his bowl in the sink when he had finished and, at the door, he blew Helen a kiss and left. The morning sun was getting stronger but the wind that so often came down out of the mountains at this time of year was cold and he wished he had put on his parka.
He walked the two miles into town. He could have driven but he was sure the gas would run out sooner or later and he was in no hurry anyway.
The fields were quiet and there were no birds or groundhogs, no crickets or frogs to disturb the idyllic setting. His eyes followed the stone wall that separated Haley's fields from Sonny Wistrom's straight back from the road to the massive oak tree that was reputed to have touched off the three day war they had in 1976. Carlos doubted that the tree was at the root of the argument and thought it more likely that it was Sonny's drinking and shooting up the hay wagon that had pissed off Haley so much.
The tree looked bleak now; it would be another month before the warmer weather would bring the leaves. It didn't snow much as it used to anymore and people had wondered what that meant, for a time, but Carlos was happy to do without it.

As he walked along he thought about the Tuesday morning, two years ago, he had driven into town and found the place deserted. It had been a very strange morning. Helen's cafe, where he usually had his once a week treat of her blueberry pancakes with two cups of coffee, was empty. There were signs that someone had been there, a coffee cup filled to the brim, bacon burning to ash on the grill and an overturned plate of scrambled eggs beside the counter, but no signs that anyone was there anymore. He went to Mac's, after that, to pick up a paper but he couldn't find anyone to give the quarter to, so he set it on the counter and sat outside while he read it, cover to cover. Nothing moved anywhere and for another two hours he looked into the bakery, the hardware store and finally worked up the courage to push open the front door of his friend Mark's house. It was empty too.
He worked his way up and down the aisles of the supermarket, the real reason for his Tuesday morning trips and left the money on the conveyor belt, hoping someone would find it, but packed them into bags by himself and loaded them into the truck.
When he got home he sat down to call his daughter who lived in Topeka and then tried his son in California and after that he tried random numbers but found that no one, in the whole wide world, was at home. The television still worked but when the programming ended the stations went blank, one by one, and never did resume their regularly scheduled broadcasts. Everyone, it seemed, was gone.

Carlos had wondered about what might have happened to all those people for a long time but with nothing to account for the mass disappearance he eventually just went back to doing what needed doing. He planted his crops that spring but when it came time to harvest them, later on in the year, he realized that there was no one to sell it to because there was no one to eat it. After that he just grew what he could eat, himself. The supermarket had plenty of canned and dried goods to last him, for now, but the fresh foods had long since rotted to pulp.

It was then that he had begun to collect the pictures of his friends and relatives and to hang them in the house until there wasn't room for one more. He talked to them occasionally but mostly he just looked at them, trying to remember the sound of their voices.

Tuesday was still his day to go into town. It wasn't the fun it used to be but other than the quiet in the world, things were as normal as could be expected, given the circumstances.