Ashen Winter (Ashfall)

was introduced. Some people believe the can openers were named after the aircraft that share the same designation, but that is a coincidence. The can openers were named for their size; the P-38 was 38 millimeters in length, and the P-51 was 51 millimeters in length.”
    We’d found a suitable board—a broken two-by-eight. It was fourteen or fifteen feet long. Ben pried scraps of roof decking off it while he talked. He made it seem effortless—clearly, he was as strong as his size suggested.
    Alyssa huffed up and more or less pushed her way between us. “What’s wrong with him?” I whispered.
    “Nothing!” she hissed back.
    “Why’s he going on and on about levers?” He’d continued talking—now he was giving a long dissertation on the importance of levers to the landing gear and ailerons on F-14 fighter jets. I was pretty much tuning him out.
    “It’s his special interest. Not levers, I mean. Anything to do with the military.”
    “So he’s one of those, what do you call them? Idiot savants?”
    “He’s not an idiot,” she whispered. “He’s smarter than you are. Or me. And he’s the kindest, most gentle—the best big brother anyone could have. Don’t hurt. . . . Just get us somewhere safe. . . . Please?”
    “I’ve got to get to Anamosa. But I’ll give you the truck and all the supplies I can spare. You didn’t answer my question, though—what’s he got?”
    “Dad called it Autism Spectrum Disorder,” she whispered. “Mom said it was his special blessing, not a disorder. I used to think she was crazy. Before. When Mom and Dad were still alive.”
    We had the two-by-eight stripped of all the excess chunks of wood now. There were still about a zillion nails in it, but I didn’t think they’d get in our way. I picked up one end of the rafter and Ben grabbed the other. He was still talking—now it was something about the use of levers in airplane launch-and-retrieval systems aboard aircraft carriers. We trudged back toward the truck. Alyssa walked beside me.
    “He wasn’t this bad before the volcano,” she whispered. “Stress makes it harder for him to cope. And there’s been tons.”
    “Yeah.” I was quiet for a minute, paying attention to where I placed my feet as we crossed the snow berm. “How did you survive? With the Peckerwoods?”
    Alyssa looked away. “I did what I had to. To keep us both safe.”
    How could this slight girl protect her overgrown big brother? It should have been the other way around. I didn’t want to think too hard about it.
    When we got back to the truck, Alyssa left me to get into the driver’s seat. Ben fed one end of the rafter under the front bumper of the truck and joined me at the other. It would’ve been easier if we could have used the snow berm as a fulcrum, but it was too tall. Ben kept talking about aircraft carriers. He didn’t seem to care or even realize that I wasn’t listening.
    Alyssa fired up the truck. The wheels spun in reverse. Ben and I pushed up on the rafter, trying to use the lever to force the truck up and off the snow berm.
    We moved the truck an inch . . . then two. The board bowed as we heaved upward on it. Suddenly the rafter snapped. The truck rocked back into place and Ben and I fell, sliding down the snow berm and coming to rest against the front bumper.
    The rafter was broken in a jagged line right where it had pushed against the bumper. “I should have placed the lever vertically,” Ben said.
    “Yeah,” I replied. “It probably would have been stronger that way.”
    We tried using the longer of the two remaining pieces of rafter, but we couldn’t get enough leverage to budge the truck at all. So we all trudged back to the wrecked barn.
    We’d taken the easiest rafter the first time. It took twenty or thirty minutes to free another one of the right length and size from the tangled wreckage. I was starting to worry about how long we’d been there. Clevis had long since disappeared over the horizon.
    Ben placed the rafter under the bumper—oriented correctly this time, and Alyssa got back in place behind the wheel. As soon as we pushed up on the rafter, we could feel the truck rolling backward. We started rocking it rhythmically. I slid up so my shoulder was jammed under the rafter, and I could use my legs to lift it. Ben and I heaved upward, Alyssa gunned the engine, and suddenly the truck was free. Ben and I fell forward, sliding down the snow berm again. The truck shot across the road, struck the