Saturday, August 6, 8:12 PM. Brewer.

A lot has happened and I probably won’t have time to write it all down in one sitting. I think it’s important that I write this down. I need to process through it, first of all. And if it’s some kind of bizarre personal event—like we’ve all gone crazy—it will be helpful to be able to remember what we thought and felt at the time. But if it really is the end of the world, then what we are experiencing is history, and recording it is something like a duty.

Right now it’s Saturday night. Yesterday we were in Sawtooth and it was strangely empty. After that we left and drove back home. I need to tell you about last night, coming back from Colorado.

The drive back to Texas was glorious. That’s the only word for it. The kids slept, played games. Claire’s ankle hurt but the swelling was getting better and I became more and more convinced it was just a sprain and would be fine.

Amy and I, well it might’ve been the best time we’ve ever had together.

We talked. We talked and talked, like we haven’t since we first dated. Hours, late into the night. We listened, we shared, we laughed. We’ve never laughed so much. We giggled, we guffawed at jokes that in hindsight were really not that funny. Couldn’t catch our breath. I could barely drive. We traded ideas, about our next vacation, about remodeling before the baby comes. Usually these things turn into a fight somehow, but not this time. I know in part it was the oxygen high from dropping down from the mountains so quickly. But chemical high or not, I won’t look that gift horse in the mouth.

It wasn’t only the oxygen. I’ve been praying this week would make a difference, and it did.

It came in the nick of time. Because after everything that’s happened since yesterday, we’re going to need all the strength we can muster.

We stopped for gas in a little town in west Texas. I didn’t see anyone, but the pumps were working so I guess there was some kind of electricity. We checked our phones then and they had a bar or two but we couldn’t reach the Internet and there were no messages for us. That was odd, but I figured the connection was bad, barely there.

At some point we started to notice that there was nobody else on the road. West Texas in the middle of the night is pretty sparse at the best of times, but you will see headlights flash by once in a while or you’ll need to pass an old pickup. Not last night. There were cars on the side of the highway sometimes—again, not unheard of—but nothing moving, nobody driving anywhere.

We talked about it briefly. Amy said she thought she remembered a car flashing past, coming the opposite way, back in the panhandle. But she wasn’t sure.

But that’s all we said. We started talking about something else. I guess we were too giddy, enjoying ourselves too much, to pay much attention to the traffic, or lack thereof. Maybe it was something psychological: denial, not being able to take in what we were seeing.

We hit Fort Worth about 3 AM. It was a ghost town. But then it would be, that time of night, right? The kids were asleep and didn’t wake. I felt very uneasy, and Amy felt uneasy.

We reached home about 4 AM. Everybody was loopy but excited. Coolidge was in the backyard. That surprised me: Jonathan was supposed to let him in at night. He wiggled like anything when he saw us, and barked and yipped, and I shushed him and let him in so he wouldn’t wake the neighbors. Then I saw he was out of food and water and looked famished and dehydrated. I was too tired to be mad.

Louis, likewise, was out of food and had filled up his litter box. He was otherwise fine and as happy to see us as a cat can be. (Not very.)

The power was off. I checked the circuit breaker but it didn’t make any difference. I was too tired to worry about it, so we got the things in, washed up a little and got to bed.

That brings us up to this morning. I need to stop, but I’ll try to tell about the rest of today later tonight.