Minnesota Cold

By Cynthia Kraack

"Readers who have loved 1984, Brave New World, Soylent Green, Fahrenheit 451, or the The Handmaid's Tale will devour this book, too. Rigorously plotted and carefully written, the author brings Minnesota into a frightening fictional future with no holds barred and no politically correct nods to outmoded decorums." –Ian Graham Leask, author, publisher, and host of KFAI's "Write On! Radio"

• Language: English
• Publisher: North Star Press of St. Cloud
• Release date: Sep 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9780878395095

Cynthia Kraack

CYNTHIA KRAACK holds a B.A. in journalism and history from Marquette University, a master’s degree from the University of Minnesota, and an M.F.A. from the University of Southern Maine. She is the author of five novels, including the award-winning The High Cost of Flowers.

Book preview

Darrell.

1

The dog barked at a squirrel racing across the bare yard. Someone searched for a misplaced glove. Overall quite an ordinary November morning, with children and adults rushing to start their day until my youngest granddaughter whispered in my ear, Can you stay until we open our Christmas presents or will you have to pass earlier than that?

I backed away. My hand slipped while wrapping a scarf around her head of curly hair. She stood still, innocent deep-green eyes not moving from my face.

What are you asking, Mercedes?

You’re old, Sallie, and you had to go to clinic. Will you be here tonight? I want you to be here tonight.

Before I knew how to answer, she turned and moved as graceful as a butterfly through the energy passage, not even looking back for our daily goodbye wave. I stayed on the floor, my hand settling protectively over my heart.

Perhaps she didn’t want a response. I knew she was repeating what she had overheard the adults discuss. I tilted my head back, left my beating heart assure me that, this minute, I lived. I looked out a window at the empty street then got up slowly, knees and back stiff. In the hallway mirror I looked into the eyes of a frightened old woman.

Minnesota territory no longer used the word die. We’d moved through the horrors of twenty years earlier with bodies stacked in mass graves to finding the gentler pass more acceptable. The only passing I had known was the gradual crawling of days and nights into weeks then months without the warmth of the person who died. Time might pass. People died.

As a judge’s wife, I was somewhat of a pro at the territory’s death rituals. Neighbors often came to me when loved ones died during the extended nuclear winter of 2015/2016. With the clout of Doug’s federal judicial office, I could make connections to have their loved ones’ remains cremated instead of falling into the burial ditches. I studied grief up close in the faces of those who lived and learned its language well.

Mercedes’s news came the morning after a frightening off-cycle clinic appointment. Instead of the regular snappy notice reminding adults of our privilege and responsibility to stay healthy, I got a simple monitor recheck notice. Dark rumors swirled from time to time on the murky underground about these rechecks. My son, Justin, acknowledged the speculation, but saw nothing happening in his physician practice to raise alarm about my notice. All the same, I approached the appointment with anxiety.

At the clinic, I strapped on a wrist monitor and waited for a technician to read the results. Beyond medically controlled diabetes, I was in perfect health for a woman in her seventies. Seventy might sound old in many parts of the world, but in the Minnesota Territory we benefited from tremendous health innovations, allowing people my age to maintain nearly the same work load as an adult in her thirties or forties. Retirement was a concept of the past in our productivity-oriented society.

There was little to distract me at the clinic as I waited. I missed the days when people could still read beyond screen language, and doctors kept magazines scattered around the waiting room. We all valued our anonymity so I no longer called attention by carrying a book, but found the info board’s frequently repeated story about a wanted man by the name of Weaver annoying. I glanced at the wrist monitor every few minutes, confused by its continued blank screen. Shaking my arm didn’t bring results. I tried tapping at the screen.

Sallie Dodge.

I stood, tapping at the monitor one more time as I joined the technician. I must have another of those malfunctioning units, I said as I showed the blank monitor to him. Dreadful we can’t build some quality into our manufacturing. It’s so hard to feel confident about the things we produce in the territory.

He glanced my way briefly but continued reviewing my file on his headband screen as we walked. We moved through a scrub unit, and then the exam area doors swung open.

Take off your shoes and step on the scale.

I remember hesitating as my feet touched the cold plastic-coated floor. Still I moved forward, a cooperative patient.

You’ve done a nice job of staying fit. Data looks like you’re eating right and maintaining bone and muscle mass. Is this a standard monitoring visit or were you experiencing problems?

I told him I had received a clinic exam notice.

How are you feeling now?

I would guess my physical inventory at that time might include an achy back from clearing the greenhouse gardens. I remembered my eyes were sandy, probably needing laser retouch.

I’m fine.

Sit here.

The technician offered a chair. I held out my arm for the monitor’s attachment to the testing equipment. I asked if there was anything wrong. Monitor exams usually took less than two or three minutes. The technician’s headgear blocked visual connection, but I thought I saw tension around his lips.

He answered something like, Well that’s what we’re here to find out, isn’t it? He held the monitor steady as I eased down into the exam chair.

Can you lift your sweater? We need to attach the port.

I knew my hands shook as I responded. I hated the tiny plug port under my arm. He offered a relaxant as I tried to look into his face and was surprised to find his headset pushed back. He had kind eyes.

I used my strongest matriarchal voice to ask what was wrong, the voice my daughter Elizabeth called demanding. Something cold swabbed my arm before the room darkened. The technician’s warm hand stayed with me as I slid to a reclining position.

Don’t use relaxant, I tried to say in the moment before quiet wrapped my consciousness. I was sure a few involuntary tears escaped.

The practice of delivering care to semi-conscious patients gained popularity as government healthcare matured. I was suspicious of the whole idea and signed an opt out of relaxant treatment. To say I felt betrayed as my body began sinking into the relaxant’s hold implied that trust of some sort existed. I had long given up trusting even in God, much less anything associated with government.

Justin had tried to explain what happened to the body when relaxant took hold. At the dose I was given, I lost awareness of my body while my mind was set free and traveled to memories, creating a virtual replay of some point in my life. This first time under the drug, I returned to a day of almost perfect contentment when the girls were quite young, maybe 1997.

With thousands of days and millions of memories buried in my brain’s synapses, I returned to an ordinary day. The details of that drug-induced memory were frighteningly fresh. I could almost feel warm summer air running over my arm. I saw my wine-colored Jeep Cherokee and heard my favorite salsa music playing.

God, how I enjoyed feeling like queen of the road. I would tap time on the steering wheel with my thumbs while watching the world rush past. I made a sudden decision to stop at one of the city lakes, which upset Elizabeth, who might have been about five years old with curly blonde hair, green eyes and beginnings of a worry line cross her forehead. The complexity of my oldest daughter had fascinated me from the first time I held her to my breast. Life was much easier for my younger daughter, Megan.

All the childish chatter that I’m sure took place in any car ride of that time remained submerged except for one of Elizabeth’s questions, Will you go back to work when Meggie’s potty-trained?

In my relaxant-induced memory, I remember looking back at Elizabeth in the rear-view mirror, annoyed with the anxiety under her words. And I saw two curly-haired, golden-skinned children who somehow uniquely needed me. I still marveled at the speed with which the mind made decisions—one second the question hung in the air that has been dwelling inside for months and suddenly the answer formed. I decided to stay home with my girls, a decision that quite changed the direction of my entire life.

I could never quite remember the rest of the story. The details disappeared. Probably the next level of relaxant taking hold. Like soft baby hair slipping from a toddler’s barrette, everything slid away. When I searched for the feel of Elizabeth’s hand, the weight of Megan’s body, the reality of hot summer weather, I was an old woman again who had lost those memories in the midst of the story banks of my life.

I remembered nothing more of that clinic visit. I had no memory of how I returned home. I came back to reality in my own bed. What I remembered after the technician’s eyes was Elizabeth’s beautifully manicured plum-colored nails resting on my arm. I felt her strong hands, then trusted the familiarity of her voice to bring me back from the place where memories chased memories. She asked simple questions, and I tried to answer. We were home, although I didn’t remember how we got there. A child played piano, a sonata dancing through space.

Sitting up required serious effort, and I felt nauseated. Some issue had developed between Elizabeth and me, and I didn’t know what to call it.

Mercedes named the issue during our morning routine. Death. I remember staring out my window, where early snow covered our rock-and- evergreen garden. For once I didn’t notice the shrubs’ greenery but focused on the cold, dark rocks. As the residence cooled, I made myself move, believing that returning to my routine would be easier than staying present with my death notice.

Before Doug left me widowed in 2032, the doctors spoke with me about timing his death as if we were scheduling elective surgery. Territory protocol dictated which family member held such decision responsibility. Not that a lot was left to individuals. No one discussed alternative treatment or ways to prolong my husband’s life. They named the diagnosis, gave me paperwork and asked me to watch a video about the territory passing process. Elizabeth now held responsibility for the paperwork, and my life.

Grateful that it was one of my shower days, I twisted the water to hot and turned toward my medication dispenser. A yellow ringed container stood in place of my familiar blue-circled daily dispenser. Mercedes spoke the truth. My death was in the works.

Stepping into the steamy shower slowed my shaking. Vulnerability was a state I had learned to survive, but maybe not this time. I stopped washing with that thought, realizing it really didn’t matter if I cared for this old body. My heart seemed to race as I let the realization go deeper. I visualized dying at that exact moment, my body lying on the floor of the shower absorbing however many gallons of water the storage system would release. Heated water steaming the bathroom then colder water further chilling what would be left of Sallie Dodge.

But, of course, death didn’t come. So, I let the regulator turn off, dried myself and examined my face in the bathroom mirror as I brushed my teeth. I wasn’t around to see how my parents aged, but I felt good about how I had maintained myself. With so many medical advances, I’d hoped to live to be one hundred.

When horrible things happened before in my life, I knew I would still wake up the next morning to face another day then another. News of others planning my death changed everything. Because Elizabeth and I were close, I could only guess at her stress. I dressed quickly and left a message on her com asking for time to talk.

A decade earlier, I thought Doug overly paranoid about our government possibly scrubbing individual’s information devices and monitoring conversations. Over my objections, he had Elizabeth’s husband, Tyler, design and install an elaborate European-built audio recording system within our rooms as well as in the basement exercise room. Under the complex muscles of our shoulders, we both carried recording chips capable of capturing thousands of days of conversation that could be downloaded into a system based in Canada. I humored his peculiar suspicion, but when he died, I shut the whole system down.

Perhaps I had a premonition that all was not above board with my death notice when I re-activated Doug’s system that day. Or maybe I thought the recordings could someday return to my children and be of comfort. Whatever inspired my action, the most difficult recordings for me were of the rapid, painful deterioration of my relationship with Elizabeth.

Mother. Elizabeth stood in the door, so thin and athletic, like Doug. She looked tired. Are you enjoying a day off? You look better than last night.

I thought I knew how the conversation would develop. I would be blunt, one of my less than admirable personality traits. Elizabeth would listen then take care in responding. Her words in difficult conversations were generally rational, safe, cautious. I asked her to sit with me.

What happened yesterday brought back memories of your father’s final days. Do you remember how he and I came home from the clinic that day? He went to bed, and I had to tell you that his time was limited. Until then, losing Marcus in the earthquakes was the most painful loss of my life.

Elizabeth cried easily, plenty of tears but little sound. Mention of Doug’s death touched her fragile hold on self-control. Her voice wobbled a bit when she spoke. Why are you talking about that now? You had a bit of a spell at the clinic.

Little people have big ears everywhere. Mercedes heard you talking with the others last night about my death. Having said those two words out loud, I found my own self-control ebbing.

She didn’t look at me as I spoke, but lowered her head. There was a pause on the recording, and I wondered what we did during that lull.

My voice broke the silence. If that’s what you were told during my clinic visit, I know there are decisions to be made.

You can’t believe what a child thinks she heard about something that serious. The kids were all upset yesterday when the clinic transport brought us home.

Elizabeth, I didn’t take my meds this morning. They’ve been altered. I know the clinic adds relaxant to daily supplements when death is anticipated. Your father went along with that approach, but I intend to remain in control of my mind and body.

She stiffened, straightening away from me on the bench. You took a risk when you stopped teaching. I warned you that you could move into an unproductive status. You played right into the system.

I’m over seventy. I’ve certainly earned enough productivity and resource allocations over the years. I still manage a residence housing almost two dozen people, provide care for fifteen children and tutor at the school. We have the money to buy additional biomedical resources if there’s an issue.

Mom, I can’t believe you’re sitting there arguing. You took a risk and lost. You’ve preached accountability to us since we could walk, but seem to be missing the connection between your decisions and where we are today.

When you reach sixty, see if you can stand annually justifying your existence, Elizabeth. It makes no sense that we have the medical means to stay alive but have to prove to some bureaucracy that we’re worth another year of food and care. Death is a natural process that happens in its own time, not based on some unnatural resource-allocation calculation.

She crumbled and reached out to hold me. She smelled of natural soap, very clean and unassuming. As a child, she’d loved raspberry or strawberry shower gels and shampoos. As an adult she blended with the air, creating almost no presence.

We have things to do, Bethy. Did they give us a seven-day period in which to declare the expected day of death? I didn’t give her a chance to respond. We’ll need to discuss this with the others.

I’m not ready for discussion.

What are you not ready to discuss? Talking with me or talking with the others? She was silent. Elizabeth could be very silent for very long, her way of controlling discussions or situations.

I’m not afraid to die if my body is ready, but I don’t want to die before my time, Bethy. I’ve been through this process when it was your father’s turn. Please, listen to my experience. If we can work together and be cautious, I know you and I can make this easier on the others.

The decision isn’t simple on any level. There are other factors. Her voice was flat. Residence space is awful tight. Dylan and his partner finish at the university before Christmas and need to have a permanent housing assignment. If they can’t move in here, they’ll probably be assigned to Duluth or Wausau.

Our residence could accommodate twenty-five individuals, and I paid an annual luxury fee for the privilege of leaving Doug’s former housing allocation vacant. Minnesota processed death very efficiently. Both my housing allocation, and Doug’s, would be open for re-assignment within twenty-four hours of my death. I tried to be diplomatic with Elizabeth. We did not agree on much when the subject was my oldest grandson.

I know Dylan wants to return here. Would it be possible to get visitor status for Deng for a few months? That worked when they were interns.

Their boxes can only be shipped to a permanent address. Dylan won’t move anywhere without Deng. She paused. You know how important it is to me that Dylan returns to the metro area. If not now, he may have to work many job assignments before he’s able to get back.

Timing has never been on Dylan’s side, I said. Do you ever wonder if being born prematurely in all the chaos of 2015 marked his destiny?

You’re the only one who asks that questions, Mother. Old superstitions are just that, old superstitions.

I’m not in the least bit comfortable with Dylan’s permanent job assignment somehow being linked to this decision. Isn’t that extreme? Do you want my hasty passing to make his life happier?

There was a silence on the recording that stretched twenty or thirty seconds.

Don’t go there, Elizabeth. There are always options. We just need to think who might help us, but I can’t be helpful on those zombie drugs I took last night. Please give me back my old supply.

I can’t. Dylan’s my son, and this is my problem, so let me take the lead. Maybe the relaxant will make this easier.

You don’t want to take this on alone. They’ll contact you every day for timing. I have the right to make decisions about my own life.

And so my relationship with Elizabeth turned into a battle about life and death. I remember how in the bright midday sun, Elizabeth’s face appeared flat with each tiny imperfection highlighted. The worry lines of her child face were deep across her middle-aged forehead. Her hands lay on her lap. I was surprised to see they were no longer smooth but beginning to show that she was well past forty. Her beautiful golden hair was translucent against the window’s light, an eerie brilliance. The sun made it difficult to see her eyes. I knew her well enough to know she had positioned herself with the light behind her for that very reason.

Did you agree to a date already? Is that why you’re reluctant to talk?

Don’t begin accusing. It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since I was called to the clinic, and you want to think I have your passing day named and a memorial planned. Did you ever just spend time thinking about a decision before jumping into action? I don’t know how Dad dealt with your need for control.

"We’re talking about my life here. Your mother’s life, Elizabeth, if you’ve lost track of how this discussion began. I won’t lay down my life so a twenty-year-old mama’s boy can sleep in his childhood bedroom with his adult lover."

Well, that’s certainly my understanding, long-suffering mother speaking. You don’t approve of Dylan’s homosexuality, so you’d like to see him assigned to one of those beastly agricultural communities to suffer.

"How ghastly of you, Elizabeth. I carried that boy, my first grandchild, next to my own chest for weeks when he was a baby and you were too sick to care for him. His sexuality has never bothered me. Your total absorption in managing all the details of his life and his willingness to let you be in control is what sickens me. You have to let him grow up."

You may control this residence, Sallie, but you don’t control my relationships with my children. I think I’m the one behaving like a normal mother, a woman who wants the best for her children and will take steps to make the right things happen.

Elizabeth spent the first months of her life in a pouch on my chest, me needing her next to me even when she slept. I created a cocoon where just she and I lived. From the day she was born, I feared she might disappear. Maybe my irrational fear drove her to be so independent. As adults, there was always something in our relationship that evoked shadows, perhaps even hinting at a sort of dark hostility. She was like a favorite pair of shoes that never quite fit.

Elizabeth, don’t confuse me with the society we live in. Everything was different when you were Dylan’s age, and we did what we could to make the right things happen for you. We’ve worked together to make this residence a safe place for our family. We can work this out together as well.

Well, not now. Give me time to think. Right now I have other things to get done. Elizabeth rose to leave. She turned to the door without a personal touch.

Let me have my meds. We can all talk later.

You have meds. Don’t make this so difficult, Mother. Just do one thing without creating a struggle. Please. The door closed.

When Elizabeth left, I felt the need to place distance between her emotions and myself, so I moved to our large gathering room. I sat with a cup of tea in one of the two big chairs that faced what was left of the open space behind our residence. Each time I replayed our conversation, the more I saw of Elizabeth’s confusion and my own vulnerability.

Hope I’m not bothering you? Elizabeth’s husband, Tyler, sat down with a mug of health brew.

Certainly not. I’m a bit shaky and can use company. Just don’t ask me to drink that nasty stuff.

I hate it almost as much as you, but it frees real food for the kids. He settled back, crossing one long leg across the top of the other. I just spoke with Elizabeth. How are you dealing with what happened yesterday?

I wish my therapist had outlived me. The thought of two old folks working through the complex issues of 2035 was almost funny, but not enough to keep tears from forming. I can’t understand how Dylan’s assignment enters into the whole picture. But beyond that, how does anyone feel about facing death? I never really grasped why Doug was so accepting. I know this is natural, and I’m ready on one level. But it’s also natural to fight death.

Dylan’s my son also, Sallie. Elizabeth has her heart set on him returning here. I’m not sure what he wants. I want to think he’d be upset if your longevity were threatened. He and I and Elizabeth need to talk. He was silent and I stayed with my own thoughts. You were so strong when Doug passed. We all leaned on you for support.

It was the family’s first close experience with death. Elizabeth was very close to her father.

I wanted to share what I learned about death. How the slow steps toward the actual end offered time to come to peace with a person’s death. That they would find healing actually started while caring for a loved one through the last weeks. That they might cry every day as the end approached. But I wasn’t in the mood to nurture others that morning.

I want to know more about why I’m going to die. Elizabeth said nothing. I feel perfectly healthy. So what’s worn out or broken and why can’t it be fixed?

He spoke gently. Tyler was as logical as programming code but with a soft heart. You’ve got the bad luck of being over seventy and needing a medical resource investment toward the end of a bi-annual budget year. Another four months and resources might have been available for your age group.

I remember when doctors took an oath to save lives. Then I stopped, remembering also that heroic efforts to save lives resulted in many costly wrong decisions, like people in suspended comas, babies born with little capacity to actually grow, cloning, and a score of other medical misadventures. Money had been sucked into healthcare experimentation and expensive treatments for very limited results.

My voice sounded gravely as I spoke again. I know this world is a small planet and there’s only so much of anything to go around. Even if we wanted to live forever, we have to be realistic. We were both silent. I stared out the window, no taste for my tea or the rest of this day.

Remember in 2016 when Elizabeth and I realized we couldn’t return to our home, and you took us in. I’m sure having all your kids and a baby coming back home wasn’t what you wanted at that point in your life.

I couldn’t connect to his reminiscence as a cloudy sensation began taking hold of my mind. Tyler, I’ve been without my meds for over a day. Please help me convince Elizabeth that the new meds aren’t to be trusted. Don’t let them make me into a relaxant zombie.

He was without words. A man caught between two women.

The drivers took your supply. Elizabeth thought the old meds and new ones shouldn’t get mixed up. He stood up to leave. You rest. I’ll call Justin. Good to have a doctor in the house.

Tyler kissed me on the cheek and left. I stared out of the window for a while, struggling with the knowledge that I had to take medication and swallowed my fear. At the moment, I had no choice. Diabetic coma wasn’t an attractive alternative.

There are parts of this story I remember with more clarity than what I ate for breakfast. Other parts I struggle to accept as the truth even though I have listened to audio wafers or watched security videos and know them to be true.

I’m not very comfortable staying with the painful moments and there have been plenty. Reading the innocuous words from the first day of the ending of my regular life, I decided the story must be told as remembered, a blend of facts and my memory. Historical revisionism began at home, I suppose. We tell our children the stories of their early years, imprinting their reality with our memories. They watch the news spinners and listen to our recollection of events long past. Family pictures show only the happy days, standing shoulder to shoulder with prompted smiles, creating adult stories to create children’s beliefs.

2

I am pragmatic yet an optimist. When life was normal, reading books about the Armageddon or some other post-apocalyptic nonsense generally felt like a waste of time. I can’t remember one thing from all those books that would have made 2015 easier to bear.

Before the global crisis I lived each day assuming my life had meaning and people around the world wanted to live together in peace. After the crisis, my life became focused on survival, and I tumbled down Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to the basics of food, water, warmth, and safety.

Life pulled a giant joke on those of us living unassuming lifestyles twenty years ago. When the men who played with power ordered those who played with destruction to send out their weapons, billions of people suffered.

I never fed into the hostilities of the Middle East, never supported sending our troops into Iraq, never contributed to the organizations that kept unreasonable hate alive. I was a liberal Democrat who taught English to immigrants and followed world events through careful reading. In spite of all our innocence, we suffered terribly. Our family lived underground for a year, not knowing if friends ten miles away lived or had died, never having enough to eat, nearly losing the ability to dream about the future.

That was the price we paid for living ignorantly in a careless global society. One group acted in anger half way around the world, and the lives of mothers, fathers, children everywhere tumbled into chaos.

I want to believe I’ll finish writing this book, yet there are immense hurdles to be crossed. Someone else might put my writings together after I die, come to their own conclusions about what’s left behind and present their story as mine. As the old sports enthusiasts liked to say, It ain’t over, till its over.

Words and images are funny half-stories in this society. One of my favorite photographic images of Doug and the kids was taken around the turn of the century when Marcus, my oldest son, was about sixteen, and Justin was still a gawky young boy. The group worked on the driveway of our house washing the cars, a rare activity for our household. The real activity of the afternoon was playing together with soap bubbles and wet sponges. I captured them just as Megan lifted the garden hose above her head, bringing a shower of cold water on the entire group.

Under the surprise of the icy droplets, there was simple joy in