Memory Boy Read online

  EXTRAS

  MEMORY BOY

  A Q&A with Will Weaver

  Miles’s Guide to Survival

  An exclusive look of the sequel, The Survivors

  A Q&A with Will Weaver

  You live in Northern Minnesota and are an avid outdoorsman. What survival skills have you developed from living in the country?

  Having grown up on a farm and as an outdoors kid, a lot of lessons from my father and grandfather have rubbed off on me. For example, how to make a fire, identify animal tracks, and catch a fish. It’s reassuring in a primitive sort of way to know that I could survive—and provide food for my family—if there was some huge calamity like Miles and his family endure.

  As a former teacher, do you have a memory as sharp as Miles? What are your tips for retaining all of that information we learn in class?

  No way do I have a Miles Newell kind of memory! But like most of us, my brain holds the important things and lets the trivial stuff slip through the cracks. In terms of retaining information from class, I like the term “take away.” As in, okay, what were the key points that I should take away from that class or that meeting? If we write down the “take away” in note form, all the better.

  Miles is skeptical about the “Adopt a Geezer” project, but he ends up learning a lot—and it helps save him and his family when they need it most. Who have you learned something vital from? How did it help you in a particular situation?

  I’ve learned the most from observing and keeping quiet, at least to start with. They say we seldom learn much when we’re talking. But vital stuff? Hmmmm, good question. I think I’ve learned as much from reading as from real people. Reading lets us try on other people’s lives and learn from their mistakes without actually making those mistakes. Is that a good deal or what?!

  Which book or character affected you the most as a teen and made you think about or act on something differently?

  We all have books that strike us like meteors, that come out of nowhere and rock our world. Mine was an unlikely one called The Honey Badger, an adult novel by Robert Ruark. The story was about a playboy-type fellow, a big game hunter but also smooth with women and at home in the bars of New York City and other worldly watering holes. The novel struck me because its story was so very far from my life on a small farm in northern Minnesota. It was like, “Whoa—people actually live like that?” The lifestyle of the main character seemed unimaginably sophisticated and cool.

  A lot of natural disasters have happened since Memory Boy was first published—Hurricane Katrina and many others, tsunamis, and major earthquakes. Did a real disaster inspire this story?

  Memory Boy came from two sources: a family trip to Yellowstone National Park in Montana when I was small, and the Mount Saint Helens eruption in Washington State in 1980 when I was an adult. As a boy at Yellowstone, I was fascinated by its geothermal activity—the enormous power just below the surface. (And by the way, Yellowstone could eventually be the volcano that makes Memory Boy and The Survivors seem very real.) But Mount Saint Helens and its eruption was equally fascinating. A fiction writer by then, I asked myself a short question: “What if?” What if Mount Saint Helens had been ten times as big? Or a hundred times as big? What would the effect be on our climate? On us? The answer, it was clear to me, would make a great novel.

  Miles and his family are forced to flee their house in Minneapolis in the wake of the volcanic eruption, on the Ali Princess. Where would you go if you had to evacuate? And how would you get there?

  Evacuations take many forms, but most often people simply have to walk—in some cases for many, many miles. And few people are prepared. I’m not some kind of survivalist fanatic, but I do think we could all benefit from at least thinking about a “worst-case” scenario. In fact, let’s hear some survival ideas from Miles!

  Miles’s Guide to Survival

  Learn how to get through the toughest situations—

  straight from Miles

  You don’t think it’s going to happen to you. A disaster, I mean. One day you’re rolling along down the highway of life, and then out of nowhere looms the texting driver. Or the tornado. Or, in my family’s case, the volcanoes. Old Man Kurz warned me about “hard times.” He said they’d come again and he was right. Luckily I was mostly paying attention. My family got through it, but some people didn’t. They just freaked. Well let me tell you, that’s not the way to survive. And if I had to go through it again, I’d be way better prepared.

  There’s one thing for sure I’d have on hand: a “Go Bag.” That is, a backpack or duffel bag stashed somewhere, like under your bed, which you can grab and go if you have to leave. Here’s what I’d have in it:

  • A multipurpose, heavy-duty, camping-type pocketknife. You know, the kind with ten different blades, including a sharp one to defend yourself or skin a rabbit, along with a can-opener blade, a screwdriver, etc. A good pocketknife can save your life in many ways.

  • A change of clothes, including a poncho for wet weather. You need to stay dry and warm (disasters seldom include perfect summer weather).

  • A pair of good hiking boots and some wool socks (you’re going to be walking, trust me)

  • Some light rope or cord (there are a million uses for rope, including stringing up a tarp to make a shelter or for snaring a squirrel to eat)

  • Matches in a sealed plastic bag (you don’t want wet matches)

  • Some kind of mini-flashlight, and an extra battery for your cell phone

  • A compass to tell you what direction you need to go (the idea is to get away from the disaster)

  This leads me to another sad fact. Most people don’t know their cardinal directions. I’m talking about north, south, east, and west. Believe me, you need to know these things. Can you give directions to other people? Follow a map? Most people depend on global position satellites (GPS) and some annoying voice that tells them where to turn. But when the grid goes down, all these people will be screwed. They’ll be wandering around like zombies.

  And one last general survival tip: Let’s say you belong to some club or group, and you’re going on a summer canoe or camping trip. You have a parent or a guide who’s the leader, and off you go down the river or into the bush. Well, let me tell you, adults know way less than you think they do. So why trust them with your life? You should have your own map, your own compass, your own information, your own survival gear. Because what if your great adult leader suddenly tips over with a heart attack, or gets struck by lightning (which happens all the time in Minnesota where I live). Then what do you do? You save the day, of course, by being the cool one. The Prepared One.

  Want to know what happens next?

  Here’s a sneak peek at the sequel:

  THE SURVIVORS

  SARAH

  THE SKY IS NOT FALLING. At least not today. No yellow haze, no volcano dust—it’s a hot, late August afternoon with a mostly blue sky. Life feels almost normal, which means that Sarah and her brother, Miles, are arguing.

  “—just saying, how many kids would go to school if they didn’t have to?” Miles asks. He stops sawing to look at her.

  “Lots,” Sarah replies. She’s watching him work, which always annoys him.

  “Not me, that’s for sure!” Miles says. He touches a finger to the bright handsaw blade. Tests its sharpness.

  “You’re still in school.”

  “Alternative school—which means I don’t have to go there,” Miles replies, turning to grab another board. “I can do my class work at home. You should try it.”

  “And why would I want to stay home?” Sarah says sarcastically as she glances at their cabin in the woods.

  Miles doesn’t answer. He gets all adult-like when he has a tool in his hand. Sarah kicks a pinecone, which skips across the ground in little explosions of fine gray ash—or tephra, as scientists call the stuff. “Maybe I like regular school,” she says.

  “You never did before,” Miles says, bending again to his work. The shiny han
dsaw blade goes RASS!—RASS! back and forth against the wood. His tanned arms glisten with sweat, and the piney sawdust odor is strong but does not cover his stinky smell. “Back home—” RASS!—“hated—” RASS!—“skipped—”RASS!—“the time.”

  “Not all the time. And we weren’t homeless then,” Sarah says.

  Miles quickly stops sawing. He points the shiny blade toward their cabin. “We are not homeless.”

  Her gaze follows his to the little shack tucked into the pines. The trees behind are shaggy gray with the volcano dust that coats everything, and that has totally screwed up her life. Less than two months ago she lived in Wayzata, a western suburb of Minneapolis. Her family’s big house in the cul-de-sac, her life of hanging out with her seventh-grade friends at school and at the Cinnabon in Southdale and the Mall of America and Valley Fair—all of that now feels like a dream. Either a dream or else she is stuck inside a cheesy disaster movie about a suburban family trying to survive an environmental disaster.

  “Yeah. Some home,” Sarah says. “It looks like it was built for trolls.”

  “Hey, think what it looked like when we first arrived,” Miles says.

  Sarah is silent.

  “Trashed,” Miles continues. “Now we’ve got gaslights, a front porch—Mr. Kurz would be proud.”

  “He’s dead,” she says sarcastically. Miles pauses to give her a glare but doesn’t go off on her.

  “Well, we’re not dead,” he says, “and thanks to him we at least have a safe place to stay.”

  Mr. Kurz—another character from the bad movie she’s stuck in. He was an old guy whom Miles had met at a nursing home in Minneapolis during his ninth-grade oral-history project, or “interview a geezer,” as Miles called it then. The old man had a crazy story about living in a cabin hidden in the north woods all his life; Miles was crazy enough to believe him; and their parents, Art and Natalie, were crazy enough to let Miles bring them all here. Then again, it wasn’t as if they had much choice.

  “It’s great living in the woods by the river,” Miles says. “Why would anyone want to leave?”

  “Let’s see,” Sarah says, “a real school might actually have kids my age? Plus my cell phone won’t work here. I can’t call any of my friends back home.”

  “What friends?” Mile says. “And anyway, all those suburban fake-Goth losers you hung around with are going to be hunting rats or looking for roadkill to eat.”

  “Shut up, Miles!” she says quickly.

  Miles does, which is his small way of apologizing.

  “Plus a school has things like flush toilets,” Sarah continues, “and hot water that comes out of faucets?”

  “Our outhouse works fine,” Miles says, not bothering to look up. “No pipes, no electricity—we’re totally green. And what’s wrong with cooking on a woodstove and washing in the river?”

  “You tell me.”

  He stops to stare.

  She pinches her nose. “I hate to say it, but you stink. Really bad.”

  Miles hoists his right arm and smells his pit. “I don’t smell nothing.”

  “‘Anything,’” she says. Since they’d arrived at the cabin, Miles’s grammar and hygiene had slipped big-time. He hardly ever washes—never brushes his teeth. His hair has gotten longer, and now that he’s getting older, his skinny chest is growing furry with dark hair. Every day he looks more like a wild animal.

  Miles straightens up. “I stink? Really?” he says, now faking genuine concern; he sniffs first one armpit, then the other. He steps closer. “Are you sure?”

  “Miles, no,” Sarah says, edging away.

  He fakes a growl and leaps forward to grab her. Sarah shrieks. He’s so sweaty and slick from his carpentry work that she twists out of his grasp and races off toward the river. He waves his arms like a crazy man, and his hairy armpits chase her like two owls. Laughing, she runs down the path toward the river. Behind her, Emily, their goat, begins to “Baaack!” in alarm.

  “Don’t worry, Emily—I’ll be back!” Sarah shouts over her shoulder. She makes a running jump into the water, hoping that Miles will leap in after her. It would be a service to the family.

  But Miles skids to a stop at the riverbank. “Sorry,” he says, “I got to keep working. Winter is coming, and anyway, you smell, too—like a goat.”

  “I do not!” she shouts.

  “Goat Girl!” Miles teases.

  She punches water toward him but it falls short, then swears at him for real.

  “Sarah? Miles?” their mom calls from back on the front porch. “Everything all right?”

  “You’re in trouble now,” Sarah says, emerging from the river.

  “No I’m not.” Miles quickly heads back to the yard.

  As Sarah trudges, sopping wet, up the short trail and into the yard, her mother waits on the front porch, arms crossed. “Okay, what’s going on?”

  “Miles did it. He chased me,” Sarah says, pointing to him.

  Miles looks around innocently. “She’s obsessing on toilets and showers again,” he says, and shrugs.

  “That’s enough, Miles,” Nat says. “I don’t care who did what—just stop!” Their mother is small and with dark-blue eyes; and a red do-rag covers her curly dark brown hair. Art appears in the doorway and takes out one earbud.

  “What’s going on?” he asks. He’s only a little taller than Nat, and has wispy curls turning gray over his ears; he shades his eyes against the hazy sunlight—he’s an indoor kind of man, a musician, drummer for a jazz band, and a totally urban guy.

  “Nothing,” Sarah says.

  “I’m so sick of these two bickering and fighting,” Nat says to him.

  “Listen to your mother,” their father says.

  “So what? Are you going to ground me?” Sarah asks her parents. “Take away my cell phone and credit card? No trips to the mall for a week?”

  “Very funny,” her mother says.

  They are all silent for a moment.

  “We just need … to pull together,” her mother says. “Okay?”

  “All right, all right!” Sarah says with annoyance. She isn’t used to this new family teamwork motto. She used to have essentially no parents. Her dad was on the road all the time with his group, and her mother was busy with her literary clients—and it was just fine that way. Now they’re like the Little House on the Prairie family—or more like Little House in the Big Woods: Everybody’s home all the time. “Just tell me again why we’re living here?” Sarah says.

  Everyone knows it’s a rhetorical question, but Miles isn’t done pushing her buttons. “Where to start?” he says sarcastically. “Do you sorta remember when the volcanoes didn’t stop erupting, how we had to wait longer and longer in line at gas stations? How fights would break out if somebody took more than five gallons? And how after about a year of volcanic dust in the air, the plants barely grew anymore, and all the grocery store shelves had big bare spots? All the ‘temporarily out of stock’ signs?”

  “That the best you can do, Memory Boy?”

  “Or how about the family down the road that was tied up and beaten by looters looking for food?” Miles continues.

  “What family?” Sarah asks.

  “Exactly,” Miles answers. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you—not that you were paying attention anyway—because it might have scared you. The looters did some really bad things to the mother and daughter, too.”

  “Shut up!” Sarah says.

  “Stop! Right now!” Nat calls to both of them.

  There’s a long silence.

  “Did you really have to do that?” Nat asks Miles.

  Miles doesn’t answer, which makes Nat let out a long breath. “Oh, Miles,” she begins.

  “Forget about that,” Miles says abruptly. “We’re here now. And I thought—finally—we were all on the same page.”

  “And what page is that?” Sarah asks. She tries to sound sarcastic.

  “We get out of the city and stay out until it’s safe to go home,”
Miles answers. “Here at least we have enough to eat.” There is no hesitation in his voice.

  Sarah and her parents are silent.

  “We voted, remember?!” Miles asks, trying to keep anger from his voice.

  Sarah is silent.

  “Okay. Then let’s get with the program, people!” Miles says. He heads back to his work.

  Sarah’s father disappears back inside the cabin. Emily continues to hop and fidget, so Sarah goes over and gives her a handful of grass. Emily nuzzles her long nose, wide-set eyes, and bumpy head through two slats in the wooden corral fence, and Sarah scratches her head.

  “It’s all right. Things are fine,” she lies.

  When Emily calms down, Sarah heads back to the river for a real swim; the river is the place she goes to get away from her family.

  Among some trees on the riverbank, she takes her damp bathing suit from a tree limb and changes out of her wet clothes. Falls back into the cool, flowing water. Just when she’s starting to relax, her mother appears and sits down on the bank like a lifeguard.

  Sarah ignores her. Rolls over on her back and floats.

  “I know this is tough,” her mother begins.

  Sarah says nothing.

  “None of your friends are around. And we spend way more time together as a family than we used to,” her mother adds. “We’re all adjusting to that.”

  Sarah blurts, “Since when did Miles become the boss of our family?”

  “He’s not the boss,” Nat says.

  “Well he acts like it.”

  Nat is silent.

  “Is it true—about that family?” Sarah asks.

  “Yes. Miles just wants to keep us safe and get us through this—these times.”