Under the Dome

“Rose, we need to talk about tomorrow,” Barbie said.

“Fiddle-dee-dee, tomorrow’s another day. Let it go for now, Barbie. All in good time.” But she must have seen something on his face, because she sat back down. “All right, why the grim look?”

“When’s the last time you got propane?”

“Last week. We’re almost full. Is that all you’re worried about?”

It wasn’t, but it was where his worries started. Barbie calculated. Sweetbriar Rose had two tanks hooked together. Each tank had a capacity of either three hundred and twenty-five or three hundred and fifty gallons, he couldn’t remember which. He’d check in the morning, but if Rose was right, she had over six hundred gallons on hand. That was good. A bit of luck on a day that had been spectacularly unlucky for the town as a whole. But there was no way of knowing how much bad luck could still be ahead. And six hundred gallons of propane wouldn’t last forever.

“What’s the burn rate?” he asked her. “Any idea?”

“Why does that matter?”

“Because right now your generator is running this place. Lights, stoves, fridges, pumps. The furnace, too, if it gets cold enough to kick on tonight. And the gennie is eating propane to do it.”

They were quiet for a moment, listening to the steady roar of the almost-new Honda behind the restaurant.

Anson Wheeler came over and sat down. “The gennie sucks two gallons of propane an hour at sixty percent utilization,” he said.

“How do you know that?” Barbie asked.

“Read it on the tag. Running everything, like we have since around noon, when the power went out, it probably ate three an hour. Maybe a little more.”

Rose’s response was immediate. “Anse, kill all the lights but the ones in the kitchen. Right now. And turn the furnace thermostat down to fifty.” She considered. “No, turn it off.”

Barbie smiled and gave her a thumbs-up. She got it. Not everyone in The Mill would. Not everyone in The Mill would want to.

“Okay.” But Anson looked doubtful. “You don’t think by tomorrow morning… tomorrow afternoon at the latest…?”

“The President of the United States is going to make a TV speech,” Barbie said. “At midnight. What do you think, Anse?”

“I think I better turn off the lights,” he said.

“And the thermostat, don’t forget that,” Rose said. As he hurried away, she said to Barbie: “I’ll do the same in my place when I go up.” A widow for ten years or more, she lived over her restaurant.

Barbie nodded. He had turned over one of the paper placemats (“Have You Visited These 20 Maine Landmarks?”) and was figuring on the back. Twenty-seven to thirty gallons of propane burned since the barrier went up. That left five hundred and seventy. If Rose could cut her use back to twenty-five gallons a day, she could theoretically keep going for three weeks. Cut back to twenty gallons a day—which she could probably do by closing between breakfast and lunch and again between lunch and dinner—and she could press on for nearly a month.

Which is fine enough, he thought. Because if this town isn’t open again after a month, there won’t be anything here to cook, anyway.

“What are you thinking?” Rose asked. “And what’s up with those numbers? I have no idea what they mean.”

“Because you’re looking at them upside down,” Barbie said, and realized everyone in town was apt to do the same. These were figures no one would want to look at rightside up.

Rose turned Barbie’s makeshift scratchpad toward her. She ran the numbers for herself. Then she raised her head and looked at Barbie, shocked. At that moment Anson turned most of the lights out, and the two of them were staring at each other in a gloom that was—to Barbie, at least—horribly persuasive. They could be in real trouble here.

“Twenty-eight days?” she asked. “You think we need to plan for four weeks?”

“I don’t know if we do or not, but when I was in Iraq, someone gave me a copy of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book. I carried it around in my pocket, read it cover to cover. Most of it makes more sense than our politicians do on their sanest days. One thing that stuck with me was this: Wish for sunshine, but build dykes. I think that’s what we—you, I mean—”

“We,” she said, and touched his hand. He turned his over and clasped it.

“Okay, we. I think that’s what we have to plan for. Which means closing between meals, cutting back on the ovens—no cinnamon rolls, even though I love em as much as anybody—and no dishwasher. It’s old and energy inefficient. I know Dodee and Anson won’t love the idea of washing dishes by hand…”

“I don’t think we can count on Dodee coming back soon, maybe not at all. Not with her mother dead.” Rose sighed. “I almost hope she did go to the Auburn Mall. Although I suppose it’ll be in the papers tomorrow.”