To: Richard Osgood, East Omaha, NE

From: Regina Osgood, Elgin, TX

August 3rd, 20+1

Hello from Austin. Haven’t heard from you since your last e-mail last year. Praying you’re still at this address and are well.

I’ve got bad news, and there’s no use putting it off anymore. It’s difficult for me to write this, but Carl and Billy are dead.

It happened about a month and a half ago. Carl went on a foray to pick up some water. All the local ponds and water holes dried up by mid-May and there’s now no way to pump water over from the reservoir, and no wells to speak of. We were hoping they’d somehow get that fixed earlier this year, but... there’s a small lake just south of Camp Swift, that old training grounds. There’s also Long Lake over on the eastern outskirts of Austin, but we head that that was getting a bit low, and we figured the one to the south (Bistrop) would be less used. So, Carl went down that way one morning to see if he could retrieve us some water. We never saw him alive again.

After a week, Billy up and decided to go down and find him and also, we think, to also try to get some water. We’d all been nervous wrecks after Carl never came back, wondering what had happened to him. It was only 15 miles or so one-way to the lake, and Carl was never ever good on two wheels, but we still expected him back by dark that evening. Whether he’d gotten lost, had a crash or a heart attack – he always took after your dad, you know – or something worse, we had no idea. Anyway, Billy left in the wee hours of the morning, is all I can figure. Went off half-cocked, damned hothead like all you Osgoods. Took that stupid little little bike, the dirt bike he always used to do tricks with, and his backpack, the shotgun and a plastic one-gallon water jug. So then Billy disappeared, and Carlene and Sera and myself were all alone in the house. And then we waited. I didn’t let the girls out of my sight for the better part of a week.

Five days later we had the local sheriff show up on a sad-looking Appaloose. Fat lot of good he was. They found Billy by the side of the road about halfway between here and the lake, half covered in dust and gravel. It appeared he was making his way back, because the jug was full. There were signs of a scuffle, some ripped clothing strewn about. Shotgun was still there at the scene. Apparently Billy either tried to scare them away with it or was fool enough to think it’d go off, as there were pin marks in the priming caps of the shotgun shells. That’s what the sheriff said, anyhow. Said he thought there were most likely half a dozen or more of them. They took Billy’s bike after murdering him, but nothing else. Used to be that getting killed over a bike was something you heard about in the city, not out here. How can a bike be so damned important to anyone that they’re willing to just up and kill a fellow man for it?

I don’t know what we’re going to do. I can’t imagine staying here after what happened to my husband and son. Can’t even think about going out too far from the house yet, it’s terrifying. My mother and father are still in Houston, but we haven’t heard from her in almost half a year. Don’t think we’d be able to swing a move down there regardless whether I get over my fear of venturing outside. Still haven’t sent them a letter, will do that after this one. Thinking about asking your mama to move in with us. I could use another hand around here – just can’t seem to get much done, lately – and she’s always been lonely in that big house since your papa died. She and all her friends have been so kind to us. Always have been, it’s true, but even moreso since word about Billy and Carl got around. At least a couple times a week they’re over to our house, bringing casseroles and firewood and cans of food and even a taste of water for the girls and me.

The girls have both taken things very differently. Sera just shuts herself in her room all day long, only comes out once a day to eat – if there is much of anything to eat. I listen from downstairs to hear whether she’s crying or pacing or anything else, but I think she just sits or lays in bed. Don’t know how she can stand it day after day up there with how hot it’s been. Might be reading, but what and why?

Bad as Sera seems to be, though, Carlene is worse. She’ll help out with the chores, help make food when we have it and clean up after herself and me. But... she disappears for hours on end. Talked with one of the gals down the block the other day. Jeanna Gilmore, you remember her? She asks about you. Said she was out foraging for firewood a week or so ago and saw Carlene saunter out of a thicket. Now this was halfway up to Taylor Rock, almost five miles out of town. I asked Carlene about it and she didn’t say much, just that she was visiting with friends there. I asked her who and she clamped her mouth shut and I sent her to her room without dinner. Course, I took dinner up a couple hours later – it’s just too cruel to do that to a child. And child she is, but all the same, I think she’s not mine anymore. She’s only fourteen and I think I might have lost her already.

I’m not sure this is the case, but if there is any upside, it’s that the sheriff’s deputies are patrolling out here a bit more. There’s even been talk about Austin sending a few rangers out. Rumor has it that some folks in high places are getting nervous about violence like this so close to the capital city, and that’s why the new patrols. I don’t know how much law enforcing they’ll actually be able to do without firearms, though. Most of them, the sherriffs anyway, are still so damned fat – despite the crop failures this year – that they look like they’d have trouble walking more than a quarter mile at a stretch, much less subduing an angry mob or fending off or getting rid of a determined pack of bandits. People have been saying that there’s a bunch of them hiding in some foothills just to the east southeast, and that there are some military deserters in the mix. Really hoping for some rangers, so that no one else around here has happen to them what happened to Carl and Billy. In any event, I’m still sleeping, but hardly, with all the doors – inside and out – locked, and a knife under my pillow.

Why did they have to die? What point was there in it? Why in God’s name don’t the guns work? Bad enough around here with no cars or lights or telephone or running water, but to have all the bullets turn into duds so law abiding folks can’t protect themselves?

We’ve been hearing rumors down here that all this bad business is the fault of the Chinese. That they were working on some device or weapon and it went off accidentally, or even on purpose, maybe. I can’t say how that could possibly be the case without it backfiring on them, too, but maybe they’re cleverer than we expected. Haven’t heard that they’ve invaded anywhere, though, so that’s probably a good sign that they’re in as bad a jam as we all are here. Not that I’d wish this on them, not on anybody.

The drought has been so horrible this year. Haven’t had a lick of rain since late February. No cotton, no wheat or corn in the fields, just cracked earth. The farmers may not have even bothered planting anything this year, it was so obvious it was going to be just terrible. Hardly even any weeds growing to hold the dirt together. So hot and windy, some days it’s just been an orange blur, just flames whipping by from dawn to dusk. I passed out in the kitchen two days ago while making supper. Dreamed I was in a furnace down in hell with a whole bunch of Chinamen, but they were all talking Spanish at me but I still couldn’t understand it. Woke up with Sera staring down at me and screaming, sweating and with tears in her eyes. Probably afraid she’d lost another...

Had fifty people turn out for Billy’s funeral, despite the heat and dust storms. So I heard, I couldn’t even make it out the front door. The sheriff and deputies still haven’t found Carl, but we can only assume the worst at this point.

I’m not sure it’ll help – hasn’t for the past year, anyhow – but please please pray for us down here, Richie. Pray to God for rain for us. And please pray for your departed brother and Godson.

With love,

Regina, Carlene and Sera