yards past the city limits—it’s a dry town, or it used to be. I don’t ’spose anybody there much cares about the potential for moral turpitude from ol’ debbil whiskey anymore.”
“What happened here?” Cooper took his hat off and set it on a nearby café table.
The old feller scratched his scalp nervously. “I can’t rightly say. We sort of had our own Hurricane Katrina blow into town and set for a spell, and things ain’t been right since.”
He looked at me. “You folks come through the hole in the sky, or did you take a wrong turn on the highway?”
Rudy said “highway” the way cancer patients say the word “cure.”
“We dropped down onto that big pile of hay out in the field,” I replied. “I don’t suppose you know what that’s about?”
He looked profoundly uncomfortable. “I can’t say. Don’t really understand it myself, but … well, the sky’s how most folk end up here these days. I keep praying the highways will open back up so we can get some help, but I guess the good Lord’s up to his old mysterious ways again.”
“How are the highways closed?” the Warlock asked. “Roadblocks, or the National Guard, or what?”
Rudy shook his head. “There ain’t no roadblock, none you can see, anyway. Like, for instance, say you got on the highway out here and tried to drive toward Lometa. After a mile or two you’d find yourself thinking you want to stop the car and go back where you came from, and after another mile your heart would be poundin’ and your hands would be shakin’ and you’d be so scairt you wouldn’t be able to keep going. And if somehow you could keep your hands on the wheel and your foot on the pedal … you’d find yourself turned around on the road driving back this way and not know how it happened.”
Rudy paused to scratch the gray stubble on his chin. “But you probably wouldn’t find any of that out, not unless you had a ’lectric car, because you can’t so much as light a match round here anymore. Never mind gettin’ a gasoline engine or a generator started.”
I looked up at the fluorescent lights. “Do you get your power from the electric company?”
“No, miss, I ain’t been on the city grid for years. And the electric company went under same time as everything else round here.”
“Then how are you running the lights and coolers and stuff?” I asked.
Rudy smiled, looking proud and profoundly sad all at the same time. “Come take a peek out back. I ain’t got no weirdo Texas chainsaw monkeyshines going on out here, I promise.”
We followed him through a door beside the cash register at the food counter. He led us down a hall past an employee restroom, the storeroom, and what looked to be his own living quarters and exited at a loading dock at the back of the building.
Before us was a solid acre of blue-gray solar panels shining in the afternoon sun.
“Ain’t it a beauty?” Rudy asked. “It was my daughter Sofia’s idea, going green like this. One thing we never lack out here is sunshine! The panels are real expensive if you buy ’em whole, but Sofia knew where to get the parts, and she and I spent six months building this out here with some help from some buddies of mine. My little gal’s smart like my daddy was; he helped engineer the Hoover Dam back in the day. She’s a physics professor at Cuchillo State. Was, anyway.”
His expression fell into misery. “Well, all this is how I got lights and cool air.”
I wanted to ask what happened to Sofia, but sensed that it wasn’t something he wanted to talk about. He silently led us back into the café section of the building.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a working phone or CB radio, would you?” Cooper asked Rudy.
The old man shook his head. “No, sir. I got a radio, but if you’re looking to talk to somebody who ain’t here in Cuchillo, it won’t work. The landline don’t work, and I haven’t been able to get a signal on my cell phone since this mess got started.”
“When did it happen?” I asked.
“ ’Bout a year ago, give or take a month or two. The days’ve been kinda running together in my head.”
Rudy glanced out the window toward the highway. Nervously, it seemed to me. “It’s a far piece into town, but somebody usually comes by to give new folk a