Sunday, August 7, 9:15 PM. Brewer.

Tonight we did a family devotional after supper. It’s not a habit we’ve been consistent about in the past. It felt a little awkward. But it was good to do. It seemed wrong to not go to church—not to have a church to go to—and end up doing nothing.

We sat in the living room, on the sofa or the floor, and sang a couple of songs. Garrett played his guitar. We read a few verses from the book of John and talked about them. Trevor wants to do Revelation. We prayed. I thought the kids would be bored but they kept praying and praying.

Since my last entry I’ve been setting things up around here. I got the generator going. It’s strong enough to run the AC unit along with the water heater and fridge. We’re keeping it 85° by day. That’s hotter inside than we’d like but it’s a lot better than 98°. We tried plugging in the freezer but that overloaded the generator. If you run the cooktop or the microwave you have to turn off the water heater. You can’t have too many light bulbs on. I’ve got to keep putting in gas every few hours. But it’s wonderful to have electricity again. For a moment, when Amy is cooking and the AC is blowing and the kids are heads-down in their video games, you can almost believe everything is back to normal.

I spent some time driving around the neighborhood, turning off any running water I found. I had the idea that if I could shut off all the leaky taps, we could use the water from the city water tower for who knows how many weeks. There must be a hundred thousand gallons up there.

The problem is there are too many houses. I can’t check the whole town. Many houses are locked and might have water running inside. There’s bound to be water flowing somewhere, no matter what I do. The tower will eventually run out.

There is one thing we won’t be running out of anytime soon. Cars. With so many neighborhood vehicles parked outside their houses, I could pretty easily find the keys to almost any number of cars and pickups.

I spent a couple of hours teaching Garrett how to drive. He’s fourteen but plenty tall enough. As we did that I got him to help me move four or five useful vehicles to just outside our house.

I’m telling things out of order, but this morning I went back over to my brother’s house. I needed to kind of—I don’t know—investigate? remember? worry? grieve?

It was kind of a mess, but no more so than usual. The beds looked slept in, but then I’m not sure they were in the habit of making them. The master bedroom light switch was up, presumably on. The kids’ bedroom light switch was down. The kitchen switches were up and down. I don’t know what any of that tells us, necessarily, about what they were doing when…whatever it was happened. There were clothes and blankets and toys everywhere, and stacks of Amazon boxes. Does that mean they were packing? I don’t think so—I think that’s how Bryan keeps house. Dirty plates on the table and in the sink. The house looks like it would if they’d run to the grocery store.

I’ve spent the evening resting, easing my mind and muscles. I added some chlorine to the neighbor’s pool and we had a good time splashing around. After the kids went inside, I bathed myself properly for the first time in over a week. I’m feeling good these days, physically. Whatever it was that was making me feel bad before seems to be better. I’d say that’s an answer to prayer I could use right now.

So now Amy and I are lying scrubbed and clean on fresh sheets with the reading lamps on and the air conditioner blowing 75°. There is no TV, no Internet, no Netflix, no Facebook, no texting. Amy is reading a real live book beside me. I am writing this. It’s hard to believe that ours may be the only lit-up house within seven hundred miles or more.