Kitabı oxu: «The Wasteland Saga: The Old Man and the Wasteland, Savage Boy and The Road is a River»
NICK COLE
THE
WASTELAND
SAGA
THE OLD MAN AND
THE WASTELAND, THE SAVAGE BOY
AND THE ROAD IS A RIVER
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Part One: The Old Man and the Wasteland
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Chapter Twenty Eight
Epilogue
Intermezzo
Part Two: The Savage Boy
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty One
Chapter Thirty Two
Chapter Thirty Three
Chapter Thirty Four
Chapter Thirty Five
Chapter Thirty Six
Chapter Thirty Seven
Chapter Thirty Eight
Chapter Thirty Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty One
Chapter Forty Two
Chapter Forty Three
Chapter Forty Four
Chapter Forty Five
Chapter Forty Six
Chapter Forty Seven
Chapter Forty Eight
Chapter Forty Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty One
Chapter Fifty Two
Chapter Fifty Three
Epilogue
Part Three: The Road Is a River
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty One
Chapter Thirty Two
Chapter Thirty Three
Chapter Thirty Four
Chapter Thirty Five
Chapter Thirty Six
Chapter Thirty Seven
Chapter Thirty Eight
Chapter Thirty Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty One
Chapter Forty Two
Chapter Forty Three
Chapter Forty Four
Chapter Forty Five
Chapter Forty Six
Chapter Forty Seven
Chapter Forty Eight
Chapter Forty Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty One
Chapter Fifty Two
Chapter Fifty Three
Chapter Fifty Four
Epilogue
Author’s Note
About the Author
By Nick Cole
Copyright
About the Publisher
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
It was dark when he stepped outside into the cool air. Overhead the last crystals of night faded into a soft blue blanket that would precede the dawn. Through the thick pads of his calloused feet he could feel the rocky, cracked, cold earth. He would wear his huaraches after he left and was away from the sleeping village.
He had not slept for much of the night. Had not been sleeping for longer than he could remember. Had not slept as he did when he was young. The bones within ached, but he was old and that was to be expected.
He began to work long bony fingers into the area above his chest. The area that had made him feel old since he first felt the soreness that was there. The area where his satchel would push down as he walked.
He thought about tea, but the smoke from the mesquite would betray him as would the clatter of his old blue percolator and he decided against it.
He stepped back inside the shed, looked around once, taking in the cot, patched and sagging, the desk and the stove. He went to the desk and considered its drawers. There was nothing there that should go in his satchel. He would need only his tools. His crowbar, his worn rawhide gloves, his rope, the can of pitch, the tin of grease and his pliers. Not the book.
But if I die. If I go too far or fall into a hole. If my leg is broken then I might want the book.
He dismissed those thoughts.
If you die then you can’t read. If you are dying then you should try to live. And if it is too much, that is what the gun is for. Besides, you’ve read the book already. Many times in fact.
He put the book back in its place.
He went to the shelf and opened the cigar box that contained the pistol. He loved the box more than the gun inside. The picture of the sea, the city, and the waving palms on the front reminded him of places in the book. Inside the box, the gun, dull and waiting along with five loose shells, an evil number, rattled as his stiff fingers chased them across the bottom.
Moving quickly now he took the old blue percolator and rolled it into the thin blanket that lay on the cot. He stuffed them both inside the worn satchel, reminding him of the book’s description of the furled sail. “Patched with flour sacks … it looked the flag of permanent defeat.” He shouldered the bag quickly and chased the line away telling himself he was thinking too much of the book and not the things he should be. He looked around the shed once more.
Come back with something. And if not, then goodbye.
He passed silently along the trail that led through the village. To the west, the field of broken glass began to glitter like fallen stars in the hard-packed red dirt as it always did in this time before the sun.
At the pantry he took cooked beans, tortillas, and a little bit of rice from the night before. The village would not miss these things. Still they would be angry with him. Angry he had gone. Even though they wished he would because he was unlucky.
Salao. In the book unlucky is Salao. The worst kind.
The villagers say you are “curst.”
He filled his water bottle from the spring, drank a bit and filled it again. The water was cold and tasted of iron. He drank again and filled it once more. Soon the day would be very hot.
At the top of the small rise east of the village he looked back.
Forty years maybe. If my count has been right.
It was an old processing plant by the side of the highway east of what was once Yuma. It was rusting in the desert before the bombs fell, now it was the market and pantry of the village. Its outlying sheds the houses of the villagers, his friends and family. He tried to see if smoke was rising yet from his son’s house. But his daughter-in-law would be tired from the new baby.
So maybe she is still sleeping.
If his granddaughter came running out, seeing him at the top of the rise against the dawn, he would have to send her back. He was going too deep into the wasteland today.
Too dangerous for her.
Even though she knows every trick of salvage?
I might need her. What if I find something big?
“I may not be as strong as I think, but I know many tricks and I have resolution.”
My friend in the book would say that, yes.
He would send her back. It was too dangerous. He adjusted the strap wider on his shoulder to protect the area above his heart where the satchel always bit, then turned and walked down the slope away from the village and into the wasteland.
CHAPTER TWO
He sang bits of a song he knew from Before. Years hid most of the lyrics and now he wanted to remember when he first heard the song. As if the memory would bring back the lost words he’d skipped over.
Time keeps its secrets. Not like this desert. Not like the wasteland.
In the rising sun, his muscles began to loosen as his stride began to lengthen, and soon the ache was gone from his bones. His course was set between two peaks none of the village had ever bothered to name after the cataclysm. Maybe once someone had a name for them. Probably on charts and rail survey maps of the area once known as the Sonoran Desert. But such things had since crumbled or burned up.
And what are names? He once had a name. Now the villagers simply called him the Old Man. It seemed appropriate. Often he responded.
At noon he stopped for the cool water in the bottle kept beneath the blanket in his satchel. Still mumbling the words of the song among the silent broken rocks, he drank slowly. He had reached the saddle between the two low hills.
Where had he first heard the song? he wondered.
Below, the bowl of the wasteland lay open and shimmering. On the far horizon, jagged peaks; beyond those, the bones of cities.
For seventy-eight days the Old Man had gone west with the other salvagers, heading out at dawn with hot tea con leche and sweet fry bread. Walking and pulling their sleds and pallets. In teams and sometimes alone. For seventy-eight days the Old Man had gone out and brought back nothing.
My friend in the book went eighty-six days. Then he caught the big fish. So I have a few days to go. I am only seventy-eight days unlucky. Not eighty-six. That would be worse.
Every canyon silent, every shed searched, every wreck empty. It was just bad luck the others said. It would turn. But in the days that followed he found himself alone for most of the day. If he went down a road, keeping sight of the other teams, they would soon be lost from view. At noon he would eat alone in the shade of a large rock and smell on a sudden breeze their cookfires. He missed those times, after the shared lunch, the talk and short nap before they would start anew at what one had found, pulling it from the earth, extracting it from a wreck, hauling it back to the village. Returning after nightfall as the women and children came out to see this great new thing they could have back. This thing that had been rescued from the time Before and would be theirs in the time of Now. Forty years of that, morning, noon, and night of salvage. It was good work. It was the only work.
Until he found the hot radio.
His first years of salvage were of the things that had built the village. On early nights when the salvagers returned and light still hung in the sky, he could walk through the village and see the things he had hauled from the desert. The door on his son’s house that had once been part of a refrigerator from a trailer he and Big Pedro had found south of the Great Wreck. The trailer someone had been living in after the bombs. There were opened cans, beer, and food inside the trailer. Cigarette butts in piles. That had been fifteen years after the war. But when they opened the door it was silent and still. An afternoon wind had picked up and the trailer rocked in the brief gusts that seem to come and go as if by their own choosing. Big Pedro did not like such places. The Old Man never asked the why of how someone salvaged. He accepted this of Pedro and together they’d worked for a time.
Outside he heard Pedro asking if there was anything. The Old Man knew he would find a dead body. There were always dead bodies. Salvage and dead bodies go hand in hand.
The trailer rocked for a moment, and as the Old Man adjusted his eyes to the dim light within, he waited for salvage to be revealed. This was how one salvaged. Just waiting and watching a thing. A wreck, someone’s home, or a railway shed. In the desert it paid to wait. A quick choice owned you. A wrench, a hammer, and one might not see the saw. Too often the wealth of the past could distract one from what was really there. He had seen piles of money, gold, jewelry, pornography. What good were such things now?
But in the trailer there was a story. There was always a story of salvage. In a wreck, one could see the skeletons crushed under the weight of their possessions as the vehicle left the highway. Rolling over and over in the dirt and down a culvert. To lie trapped for years. Waiting for ambulances that would not come. Rescue that could not rescue itself while mushroom clouds broke the unbroken horizon. On that day when everything changed.
On that long ago hot afternoon when Big Pedro waited outside in the sighing wind, all was quiet inside. He stepped in, closing the door behind him. There was no life here. Just dry dust and the shed skins of the rattlers that seemed everywhere at times and then at others could not be found.
All the cans were crushed, all the cigarettes that lay in neat piles had been smoked down to the filter. Whoever had lived here had brought these cans and cigarettes from the cities. Beer and cigarettes, possibly a gun. Cans of food. But it had been too little. Whatever one brought for the destruction was always too little. The Old Man had seen it, would see it a thousand different ways. In the wrecks and the sheds and the boxcars and the fortified gas stations how long can any supplies last? Could anyone during those two weeks, when a new bomb fell on a new city each new day, could anyone have known that the terror would never end? That life as one knew it would never return.
No, even I did not know it.
Next week the government will come, things will return to normal. Next year. In two years’ time. One day you stop waiting and you begin to salvage.
What your crowbar can bring up from the desert is the only thing you can expect.
Whoever once lived in that trailer had refused to believe things would never be the same. It was a tale of smoked cigarettes near a smashed radio in the corner. Alcohol through the long night as angry winds struck at the sides of the trailer like some giant moving in the outer dark. Tomorrow became next year and next year became too much to bear. Eventually, whoever it was left, and that was all the story that remained and could be told truthfully of the trailer. What happened after, a gunshot at the end of a broken leg, sunstroke, exposure, insanity; those also were stories the Old Man had seen in the desert. But who could connect one to the other? One learned after the bombs to stop needing answers or the ends of stories.
There was little salvage in the trailer. What remained was obvious. The refrigerator. Who could take that where they were going? Unless there was power of a sort where the journey, or the flight as it felt, ended. But in the Old Man’s village there was power, sometimes.
Soon he and Big Pedro, sweating, had the refrigerator out on the cracked and broken highway, east of the Great Wreck. It took the better part of three days to get it back to the village. Word spread among the villagers that something big had been found. The Old Man and Pedro were bringing something back. On the last day, two hours after dawn the villagers began to arrive in pairs and groups along the broken highway, their curiosity unrestrained, uncontainable. The haul back became a carnival. By nightfall, remembered the Old Man, a pig had been killed; precious few of them then. All through the night Jason the Fixer worked, cursing coils and elements. At midnight the thing began to hum and two hours later there was ice.
In the hours leading up to dawn, in the main hall of the old factory, the Old Man was the first to stand in front of the open door and feel the cold. How many years had it been since he stood in front of an open refrigerator door in the middle of the night, feeling that precious cold caress the dust-caked lines of his face? He didn’t remember, he didn’t care. The cold was enough.
“We would have that for all of our lives.”
That’s what my friend in the book said when he and the boy talked of taking the great baseball player fishing. He understood.
“We would have that for all of our lives.”
Now the Old Man took another drink from his water bottle. That night of the refrigerator, the days ending in a carnivale of roast pig meat and ice seemed long ago. Something that happened to a hero who was not him, did not look like the old face in the pieces of mirror on the few days he chose to shave each week.
He looked at the bowl of the wasteland. It seemed empty and void. A place of nothing.
I must go into it. I am cursed by that hot radio.
They never said you could not salvage with them again.
They didn’t need to.
From the Great Wreck to the village and as far east as the Gas Station he would no longer salvage, though no one salvaged in the East anyway as it was considered evil. Even the Gas Station, which lay on the far side of a small town that burned to the ground for no reason anyone could remember in the days of the bombs, held little salvage. Further east the bombs had fallen. Anything from there was as bad as the hot radio. The village would allow no salvage from there.
So he could not go east, and west and south was for the village. He must go north. North lay the wasteland.
He rolled his water bottle back into his thin blanket, placing it back in the patched leather satchel. He placed the wide-brimmed hat he always wore back atop the stubble of his scalp. There was nothing in the wasteland. No salvage ever came of it. Treks into it returned with nothing or never returned.
The sun was high above now. Adjusting the strap, he set off down the rocky slope, dodging lone black volcanic rocks that had dotted the landscape long before the bombs, before the Spanish, before the Anasazi.
CHAPTER THREE
In the desert, alone, I must look far and near at once. Things that are far seem very near and I must remember that.
Jagged pink peaks to the east seemed a day’s walk. But the Old Man knew they were well beyond that.
Maybe there is another reason for my curse and not the hot radio. Maybe I have become lazy. Too used to finding easy salvage on the ground at my feet. Or others finding it for me.
Heading down the slope into the white sandy bowl of the wasteland, the thought of his failure as a salvager gave the Old Man a new comfort. Maybe it was not a curse. He needed better technique; he had grown lazy. He would return to everything he knew about salvage; he would forget to be lazy and instead remind himself to be vigilant. To leave no stone unturned. This was better than being cursed.
On a far ridgeline, he saw movement and wondered if it were goats moving among the clipped rocks. For a long time he kept checking the ridge, hoping to see them again, but in time he gave up and cursed himself for not sticking to his new promise. Later, after the sun’s heat had reached its apex then sank to the horizon behind him, the details of the landscape ahead came into focus.
The heavy sunlight and the sandstorms that seemed to come and go throughout the day had revealed nothing more than a hazy diffusion across his vision. Now as the last light of day shone directly into the heart of the wasteland, he could make out details. Purple scrub and gentle orange hills rising up along the edge he would make by tomorrow. Off to the east he saw a vehicle.
He’d heard of this vehicle. The few who had tried the wasteland had never gone more than a day or two into its depths. All told of the vehicle. It lay to the east and it was always bad to head east. The villagers would often mutter, What good could come from the east?
Stopping for a sip of water, he considered the vehicle, a splotch of red rust in the afternoon haze.
It seems harmless and there may be something to salvage. But it is east.
This is why you are here. Do you believe in the curse or in your own laziness? If it is the curse, then anything east can only make the curse worse. But if it is because you have lost the gift you once had for salvage because you look for what is obvious and easy, then there is no curse and the vehicle is the first rule of salvage. Some always leads to more.
The Old Man replaced the water bottle and shouldered his satchel. Thinking of when he might rest, he turned toward the east and the rusty car.
Night fell, but the sky remained blue for a long time. He lost sight of the car as he descended in and out of dry streambeds. For the last hour he hunted for it in the dark and just when he had begun to curse himself that he was indeed useless and had lost it altogether, he found it.
It was a sedan, half sunk in the dirt that became mud every monsoon season and frozen clay in the winter that followed. Forty cycles of monsoon, chill, and withering summer.
The Old Man dropped his satchel and gathered brush and mesquite. It was early fall and the nights would be cold. It was important to get a fire going.
Once the fire was in bloom with sparks rising into the night, the Old Man retrieved his crowbar and the tin of grease. He searched the wreck, finding a pile of bones on the floor beneath the steering column. The seats had turned to springs and nothing remained of the foam or material that had once covered them. The backseat held nothing, and in the trunk someone had once lit a fire, probably camping under the roof of the car. The fire in the trunk had kept them warm.
The Old Man returned to the fire and removed the cold beans from his satchel. Unrolling his blanket, he found the tortillas but decided to save them for morning. He placed the tin of beans in the fire and waited.
Above, dashing comets and stars restlessly winked at one another. Was there some sort of communication among them? How far away were they? Once the Old Man had seen, on a night far from the village, a satellite moving up there. Long after the bombs. It crossed the sky steadily, almost slowly, still flashing its lights. Its power still on. The Old Man looked for it again tonight.
The beans tasted good.
That was how hungry I was. A hard day’s work and food tastes good.
Putting the beans down the Old Man returned to the car once more.
Why here?
He looked at the front of the car.
The driver either crashed into something or ran out of fuel. But for some reason the driver stopped here. Were you dying?
In the days of the bombs, the Old Man who had been a young man remembered the chaos and disorder. Remembered the authorities shooting people. Fleeing Los Angeles, he had been stopped at a checkpoint just south of San Clemente. For hours he had been stopped as military helicopters crossed the sky above the reactor close to the ocean. It had made him nervous being that close to a primary target, the big reactors. A man arguing with the guards in a car ahead of him began to scream. Then the man left his car and began running for the mountains on the far side of the road. The guards shot him. His family, his wife screaming, a wide-eyed child in the back of the car watching.
I have not thought of that for years.
Why would you?
The fire popped noisily for a moment and then the deep silence of the wasteland at night settled back upon him.
But you stopped the car here. Why?
The windshield still held most of its dirty glass. It had spider-webbed into a blanket of crystals. But on the passenger side the windshield held a hole.
Something was on the passenger seat and when you hit the rock that stopped you, whatever it was came out and left the hole.
It was impossible to see what was underneath the car, but the Old Man suspected a big rock, low and jagged, had snagged the axle and stopped the vehicle dead.
The Old Man returned to his satchel and retrieved the can of pitch. Taking a stick, he covered the end with pitch and lit it in the fire. He returned to the front of the car that lay at the top of a small hill. He turned away from the car and faced outward into the dark.
There is always a story. To find it I need to know what happened. You are wounded. You are fleeing the cities and have become wounded. You have no plan, few supplies, and as the day progresses, as you flee burning Phoenix or forbidden Tucson, you drive off the road. The roads are a mess, refugees and Army fleeing to Yuma, which will be nuked in a day or two because of its base and refugee camps. You drive off the road. You are not thinking clearly; driving too fast you are wounded and sick or hungry and you have begun to believe you will find something out here. Something that will save you. But the vehicle is running out of gas, so you keep driving to the top of ridges and small hills, racing up the sandy shale to avoid getting stuck, then looking to see if there is any refuge in sight. On this hill you race up fast. The ground on the far side was soft. Yes I felt that as I walked up. Suddenly as you gun the accelerator, you slam into the rock and out goes the one thing you managed to grab before the destruction. The car is hopelessly stuck and soon you die. Maybe you kill yourself with a pistol. But one of the countless salvagers who has wandered here has found that since, along with whatever supplies were in the trunk or backseat. Ah, a pistol and blankets and food, thinks my fellow salvager, what luck I have found good things. And he ignores the hole in the windshield. He has ignored the second rule of salvage. Be still and understand the story of what happened in this place. Quick action blinds.
How fast were you going when you hit the rock? Fast enough that it came upon you and took you by surprise? But not so fast, since you were nearing the top. Maybe you blacked out?
The Old Man walked outward from the front of the car. He thought of the size of the hole and the weight of the object as he walked down the other side of the hill scanning the ground.
Someone may have found it?
That does not matter. You are thinking as you once thought. Telling the story first. If you find the resting place of the thing and it is gone then you have won because you thought the way you are supposed to think. Some will always lead to more. That is the first rule.
I could wait until morning?
Why? You will sleep badly and all night think about where to look in the morning.
At the bottom of the hill was a dry riverbed. Holding his torch down near the ground he checked the bed for ash.
In the years after the destruction, flash floods of ash had filled the old stream beds as the snowpack of that long winter had finally come to an end.
If the thing had fallen into the streambed then it is lost. Carried off by rivers of ash in the years since. Also most travelers use streambeds to move. They are shady, there might be water, and the rains may have collected salvage.
So if it landed in the stream then it is as good as gone.
Looking back to align himself with the car, he climbed up the rocky slope to the far side of the dry streambed. A few feet away he found a battered aluminum ice chest, half sunk in the mud and hidden by a mesquite tree that had grown up around its base. It was empty. Someone else had found it. Had followed the clues and found the thing in the dried mud with the broken cover.
The chest was too light to have made the journey from passenger seat through the window down the hill and across the streambed to land where it did. Whatever had once been inside had been heavy enough to propel it that far.
In front of the fire, the Old Man sat cross-legged and treated himself to one of the tortillas. He congratulated himself on finding the ice chest and thought little that it contained nothing. Instead he was happy that he had found it. Maybe the curse was a lie. It was he who had been lazy, easily accepting the blame of the curse. He was to blame. If so, then things were changing.
He finished the tortilla, put more mesquite on the fire, and took only a small drink of water so he did not have to pee in the night. He rolled himself in his thin blanket and was soon deep asleep. In the night when the fire was low, he awoke thinking, ‘I am sleeping really well tonight,’ as though he had accomplished a great thing that had eluded him for some time. Pleased, he fell asleep once more.
CHAPTER FOUR
The next day he crossed into the dunes of the wasteland. The scrub and hard rock gave way to smooth sand pink with the rising sun. By noon the landscape faded and the pink of morning turned a blinding white.
It was still early fall. It wasn’t as hot as it had been earlier in the year. The Old Man sipped the bottle of water, only half full now, and felt the heat more than he had expected to.
I need to look for water. Soon I will go too far and if I don’t find anything, then even making it back to the village might be impossible.
Maybe they are looking for me.
In the night, toward dawn, he had dreamed of the child in the backseat of the car of the screaming man the guards had shot. She was the same age of forty years ago but the Old Man was still old, even though he had been younger that long-ago day than her father.
In the dream he was back in the village. The child, who was a girl most surely, had knocked on his door. After letting her in the Old Man gave her cold water and she sat down at his desk, looking out the one window he had salvaged from an overturned semi.
Have you been walking all night to get here? he remembered asking her. As if a night’s journey accounted for all the years in between that day and the dream.
But the child remained staring out the window, lost in thought and when she turned back to the Old Man she looked at him smiling. Then she said, It never happened, y’know. In the way a child who is young can affect a certain seriousness.
But the Old Man wasn’t sure if she meant her father being shot by the side of the freeway under the shadow of the reactors. Or something else.
He woke with a start, and already a desert breeze was blowing across the soft blue of first morning. He rose quickly, promised himself some breakfast later and was soon away from the wreck. The dream had bothered him. And he wondered if the dream of the child and the wreck of the car weren’t the cause of it.
Later, he felt better as he walked through a line of dunes. He was away from what was known to him of wrecks and the worst kind of luck. The wasteland was new. It was unknown. In a few hours, by nightfall, he would be farther than anyone had tell of in the depths of the wasteland. If anything, that was something.
So why did the dream bother you? It’s noon, so speak it now and be done with it so the child does not return tonight.
Ahead, the wasteland fell deeper into a series of white dunes, and the Old Man entered them, weaving about the floor of them rather than climbing to the top of each.
I’ll do my best to keep a rough bearing north and maybe a little east. I’ll need water soon.
East is cursed.
Then my curse and the curse of the east will cancel each other out.
He couldn’t remember what that was called; it was a law or something, something he had once learned in school.
How strange, he thought in the silence between the dunes. School. To think, once I attended a school. An elementary school, a school after that, and then even a high school. College. I couldn’t even begin to explain school to the young of the village.
I am thinking too much. That is why I had the dream of the child. Too many things are coming up from the past and it is making my mind race. The silence of the wasteland is good for thinking.
You must think about water and salvage. You can’t just think about the past. If you don’t find water you won’t be able to find something out here and bring it back to the village.
The shadows began to lengthen and soon the shade of the dunes became cool. Gathering stray brush he set up his camp in the lee of a long dune and soon had a fire going.
There had not been the least sign of any salvage, anything man had made, or even the presence of man. The Old Man sat chewing a tortilla and thinking about this. Usually back near the village, even though it was the desert, there seemed to be nothing but the things of man’s past. All the collected salvage. The wrecks, the dead towns and settlements. Bones.
But how long since anyone had been through the wasteland? It had been forty years since the bombs. The years since, reasoned the Old Man, had been too hard. Too close to the bone for anything that didn’t yield enough profit to allow survival to the next day.
Maybe that was why there was no salvage in the wasteland.
Staring into the fire, he thought of the child.
Did she survive that day?
Not if she remained on the West Coast, especially from Los Angeles to San Diego.
But if she had survived would her life have been good?
She would have less memories of what was lost. That is a kind of “good.”
Those who survived those weeks of bombing, each one struggled with a question that determined whether they would keep salvaging or give up and die.
What was the question?
Can you let go of what is gone?
I think at first I felt that I could not go on. The things I lost were too painful and I could not imagine a life without them. I remember feeling awful. All the time. But I cannot remember when I changed. When I thought of salvage. When I thought of what was today and not of what had been or what was lost.
For a long time he sat hugging his knees, watching the crystal of the sky turn and revolve, and when the fire had burned down to red ash, he moved his blanket close to it and sat for a little while more, listening to it pop. Soon the sky began to grow dark. ‘In a few nights,’ he thought, his last thought before sleeping, ‘we’ll have the moon.’ Funny saying “we” he wondered, sleeping.
CHAPTER FIVE
There were no dreams that night and when he awoke, the sun was already well up and the heat a part of the day that could not be separated from it.
His face was heavy from the night as though the sleep had been more fight than rest. Instantly he wanted water and knew that any drink would be his last.
Then it will be my last.
Draining the bottle he decided he would find the water he would need to continue the journey or that would be the end of it.
I have in me what remains. So I have to be smart. If I dig and find no water, I will have sweated for nothing. I must find water.
He continued on now, bearing more east than north.
East is evil and that is why things are not going well. You should have continued north. Why are you going east?
The dunes continued in their sandy smothering brilliance and before long he began to think of the ocean and the book.
How would it be to have such a skiff as that in the book? To have ropes and a hand-forged hook. To catch the tuna and eat it raw with a bit of salt and lime.
He did not have salt and limes in the book. He wanted them but he did not have them. He ate the tuna raw.
He caught himself, sweating, almost sleeping as he walked, thinking that this was just a day at the beach, as if, in any experience that was his, he’d ever had a day at the beach.
But I did. I remember the sting of saltwater on burned skin. I remember hot dogs and mustard and blown sand in the buns.
It was the thought of the watermelon that jerked him back to the present. Sweet, cool watermelon on a windy afternoon at the beach. School buses idling to take the children back to school during the last week of the school year. No more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks. He saw his father’s handwriting as he thought of those words. Summer would never end.
“Everything ends,” he croaked to the dry silence between two monolithic dunes, as he trudged upslope through the clutching sand.
It is so hot that even the scorpions won’t come out.
In the distance, the sun sank lower in the sunburned sky, as dunes began to grow long cool shadows pointing thin fingers to the east.
Without making camp he lay down in the cradle of a shady dune and fell to snoring.
When he awoke, the sun had fallen behind the highest dune and a stiff breeze lifted sand, sending it skirting across the smooth surfaces of the dunes. The body of a dead bee lay in the foreground of his skewed vision. His head pounded and he knew he was beyond any point of thirst he had ever experienced. Already his hand was half buried.
I have been asleep but a few minutes. The sand doesn’t waste time.
Not ready to move his aching head, he remained staring at the dead bee in the canted landscape. He wasn’t sure, but the sun seemed in the wrong position. If that was the case then it was not a few minutes but maybe the next day, and if that was the case then things were even worse than he had first thought. A new day of heat among the dunes.
There is little hope.
So at least, you have some hope.
It’s just a saying. I actually have no hope.
No, you said you have little hope. Why?
Why what?
Why a little? A little hope would have gone a long way for that dead bee. But for you maybe it is too little.
The bee.
The Old Man shook himself upright. His face sandy, he stared wildly about, then closed his eyes as his head began to throb.
Bees always fly straight to water. Big Pedro had taught him that. And he had seen it. Many times.
The bee is dead. How can a dead bee lead you to water?
He was an ambitious bee. Like me.
Or he was cursed. Like you also.
Then this brother is a bee to me, he declared in confusion. I will find more bees. His brothers are my brothers. Some always leads to more and where there are more bees they will lead me to water.
It is morning so it will be cool for a while, but not long. Bees like the heat.
Bending low he gently picked up the dead bee.
I will find us some water, my brother.
He placed the bee in the tin of grease and snapped the ancient lid shut.
That way seems familiar but dunes are all alike.
Heading into the sun now he climbed the first dune, and far to the east he saw blue ridges shadowed in the rising sun.
East is evil and cursed.
Ah but there are two of us now. I have my brother the bee and he has his brothers.
Soon the sun was hot, as first he climbed a dune, then descended only to start the process once more. It is the only way, he told the bee. It is the only way I can be sure I am heading to the ridge.
At the top of each sandy dune he scanned for swarms or movement of any kind. His eyes were still good and yet he saw no bees.
Maybe in the rocks, brother. Maybe that is where we will find your home.
At the full blaze of noon the Old Man descended the last dune into a short sandy scrub of low bushes. A few miles away lay the now red rock ridge.
For a moment the Old Man considered digging among the scrub for water but the plants were papery and did little to convince him of the chance of appreciable water.
Opening the tin of grease he looked at the dead bee.
I can only go so far, bee. So which way, huh? He held the bee up hoping to catch a breeze and saw himself from afar.
This is insane. Look at yourself. An Old Man holding a dead bee in the desert. If he comes back to life you are really crazy. The Old Man realized it was his young self talking to him. The self he had once been and had been thinking of too much since the dream of the child.
Be quiet. This is not so crazy. One of his brothers might smell him and come for a look. Then maybe I can follow him back to water.
The Old Man lurched forward into the scrub holding out the bee for any passing stray bee to smell. I can’t trust my ears he said. They have been buzzing. So I will look for a black shape moving, hopping between the bushes of low scrub. That will be a bee.
When he had reached the limit of the little strength he had left, the ridge was still far off and on fire with the red of a late afternoon sun in decline.
The Old Man sat down knowing he would not rise, the wings of the bee still held gently between thumb and forefinger.
Well, we tried.
He could no longer swallow. His mouth felt coarse and thick. His throat a ragged burning trench and his body ached. Mostly in his throbbing head.
If I can lie here until dark, then the light won’t hurt my eyes so much and then maybe I can make it to the ridge.
But it was a lie as soon as he told it. By nightfall he would be beyond standing.
Then I must stand a little more and maybe a few steps will take me to the rocks of the ridge. And that also is a lie.
Standing, a dull bomb went off with a solid crack in the back of his skull as stars raced forward toward the rocks.
But it is my lie.
He continued forward. Moments later he saw a bee that came diving at him and then quickly tore away off toward the rocks. The Old Man shambled forward, trailing the bee, which hopped from shrub to shrub, sometimes methodical, at other times racing off toward the horizon. Just when the Old Man thought he had lost the bee forever, again the bee would leap up and head off along the same bearing.
Ahead, the Old Man could see a spur jutting out from the ridge, and following the spur back to the crook it left in the ridge, he saw a splotch of green.
But it is too far.
He continued after the bee, still holding the dead bee between his thumb and forefinger. The line from where he had met the bee and the splotch of green was true and straight.
Falling forward, he tripped on an exposed root and fell into the sandy chalk that rose up in plumes around him.
I have never been so comfortable in all my life.
If you don’t get up, the bee who is flying will be gone and you will never find the water, never find salvage, and you will die cursed.
I am cursed. I don’t care. I want to sleep now.
He closed his eyes and when he did, he thought of his granddaughter who was just thirteen. It was she who had stayed faithful to him after the other villagers had cursed him and refused to salvage with him. She had begun to salvage with him. He had enjoyed that. The salvage had become more enjoyable and less desperate on those long mornings he spent with her as they walked and talked. Talked of all manner of things from the way the world had been to the way it is and sometimes of the way it might be. That had been enjoyable.
I am sorry, my brother bee.
Arms of sleep beckoned him a little further down the well of darkness.
I must use your help for a moment, little bee. I am sorry. I have to wake up for a while. Long enough to see what lies in the crook of the ridge.
He squeezed his palm hard shut and felt the stinger of the dead bee enter the flesh of his palm. An electric jolt coursed through his body and instantly the palm was alive with fire.
The Old Man kept his fist shut as he pushed away from the sand and began once more to the ridge.
Desert scrub, sandy and brown, gave way to large sunburned rocks. Reaching the crook in the ridge, he entered a stand of palo verdes. The Green Sticks the villagers called them. Back among the rocks a quiet stream, barely more than a trickle, came out of the rocks feeding the little stand of palo verdes. The Old Man dropped his satchel and lay down to drink. The water was cool.
CHAPTER SIX
Noon turned to afternoon and soon a stiff breeze picked up among the feathery branches of the palo verdes. For a long time the Old Man returned to the stream to drink and drink again. All the while he gathered dead branches, piling them high for the night’s fire.
There were just a few beans and one tortilla left. He had not felt hungry during the thirsty hours of torment amid the dunes, but now as his body began to soak up the water, his appetite returned. The few beans and tortilla were a coming feast to his hungry mind.
He went out beyond the perimeter of the palo verdes once more, into the scrub that bordered the wasteland. The dunes through which he had passed were now falling to pink and orange. Thin ribbons of snake-like shade slithered onto the desert floor while the graceful arcs of the dunes told the lie that he did not exist, had never existed among them.
He returned to his camp and started a small fire. In the twilight he finished the remaining beans and reluctantly saved the tortilla for morning. Tomorrow he would look for animal tracks and make the appropriate traps. Once he had enough food and water he could either return across the wasteland to the village or he might continue on.
He had failed to find salvage in the wasteland. The known parts of the wasteland were behind him and he could only guess where he might be now. If he had to say, he would say west of what was once Phoenix and north of what was Tucson.
In the days of the bombs, he thought while the first stars began to peak through the drifting branches of the palo verde, there had been a large town in that area. The name was lost to him, but the memory of once having known it was not.
If he could find the town he might find salvage. Might find others too and that would present a whole different set of problems.
There is the gun. “Yes,” he mumbled his throat still raw. “There is that.”
He was glad his granddaughter was not with him. People, strangers who came to the village, made him think of this. After the bombs these people had not found villages, had not banded together to survive. They had wandered, and in their eyes he saw that they had done things. Things they found it hard to live with, but things they had done nonetheless. Too many years of “done” things, too many years of desert. Too many years in the cold and heat and condemnation. They didn’t seem human anymore. So, if he had to meet strangers, then it was good he didn’t have his granddaughter.
It is good then, he laughed, that I am cursed.
But what if you stay out here too long? What if you do too many “done” things?
Too long out there is what the villagers would say whenever those strangers who had no village of their own would show up to trade, to beg, to die. Too long out there.
Now the sky was speckled with the stars above, as the blue light of the west seemed to draw away. He returned his eyes to the fire and tried to think about traps.
He thought of the traps he had been taught by Big Pedro in the days after the bombs when the village was not a village but just a small refugee camp. Traps for varmints, as Pedro had called them. Traps for serpiente. Snake would be good. He had enjoyed snake.
I’ll go as far as the town whose name I cannot remember. If there is no salvage then I’ll come back. Then the other villagers will know that I am cursed and it won’t be expected of me to go out. I can help the women. Watch the children if they’ll let me. Make things. I have always wanted to make a guitar.
You don’t even know how to play.
Yes, but that has never stopped me from wanting to.
The fire burned the logs to ash among the orange and black glow of its heart. The stars above. The gently moving palo verdes in the night’s breeze. The Old Man wrapped himself within his blanket and slept.
CHAPTER SEVEN
He returned to the stream at first light. He had been lying wrapped in his blanket, and for the first time the morning was not so bitterly cold.
At the stream he waited, watching as the light came up. He was thirsty, had been thirsty through the night. But he did not drink from the stream and would not until the light was good enough to see the tracks. Then he would know what made a home of these palo verdes beneath the rocky slope.
At first light he saw the tracks. Different pairs, one behind the other, four toes and a claw. Near the water’s edge in the wet mud he could see the impression left by the fur. “It made sense,” muttered the Old Man and he knelt to drink the cool water of the stream.
Finished, he looked up to survey the rocky hill that rose above the little oasis of palo verdes. The hill was more a small mountain. Like other small mountains it was more a collection of boulders: large, broken, shattered rock turning a soft hue in the rising sun of the morning.
He looked at the tracks once more. They had definitely come down from the rocks for a drink, and to hunt. The single-file nature of the prints told him they were foxes. He knew these animals. Oftentimes they would come near the village, but never to scavenge at garbage. Once he had seen one pass him on the highway as he returned from salvage. He was in the southbound lanes walking back to the village; the fox, in the northbound lanes, carried a large dead rattlesnake in its mouth. The fox barely regarded him and continued its bouncing little trot toward the west. His son, then a little boy, had loved that story when he had told it, often asking him to tell it again.
He returned to his camp, hung his blanket in a tree, and began to search for an area under the palo verdes; an area of clearing but near enough to the trees. When he spotted a den of mice he knew he had a good area.
In the center of the clearing he dug a small two-foot hole. The bottom was deep and wide while the top was narrow. He dug two more exactly like it and then began to gather deadfall back at the camp. He thought he might like a nice fire that night even though there would be no food. When the firewood was gathered he selected six sticks and returned to the clearing. He placed two sticks on two sides of each hole and then returned to the stream to drink.
From the bottom of the rocky slope he retrieved three flat stones. He placed these atop the sticks surrounding each of the holes. Now there was a nice roof. Also there was a tiny entrance on each side of the hole underneath the rocks
Feeling tired he returned to his camp and lay down for a while. His strength was fading and he began to sweat thick salty tears. He was starving and the thought of the foxes made him hungrier. He would prefer rattlesnake, but there probably were none. Foxes also liked snake and had most likely hunted the area clean.
They are good salvagers.
After some rest and another long drink at the stream he returned to the clearing. He watched the dens at the base of the palo verdes. He would need to catch the mice before the fox. He leaned against the thin green trunk of the tree he was standing near and closed his eyes. Then he opened them just enough.
Mice will think I am asleep. That will make them bold.
He waited. The sun turned to late afternoon.
Much longer and I won’t have enough time to build a trap for the fox.
The day isn’t done yet.
Moments later he was asleep.
As a young man, passing through Yuma on that last day, that last civilized day, he remembered thinking ‘I have just three hours to go. Three hours and I’ll make Tucson.’
Above, the sky was filled with fighter planes attempting to refuel from the big airborne tankers. People camped out along the road while the state police barred any entrance into Yuma. Surely, it was too small of a target for the bombs. They would hit the major cities first, as they had been doing. Each day another city exploded. First it had been New York. Everyone watched on the news. The next day Chicago. Had it been Chicago? the Old Man wondered in his dream. Had that been the next city?
The major cities were gone after two weeks. Internet and telecommunications were down. Who knew how many cities were left. When he finally fled Los Angeles, everyone hoped Yuma would survive.
His parents were in Tucson. Tucson was just as off the map as Yuma. Maybe Phoenix would get bombed. But not Tucson. He had been sitting in checkpoints since three o’clock that morning. First the one in Orange County. Then San Onofre. Then San Diego. The Top of the Laguna Seca Pass. El Centro, and finally the dunes outside Yuma.
Suddenly there were no more checkpoints. And no entrance into Yuma. The President had finally landed after being airborne for most of the two weeks.
Yuma had been the destination of flight for so many. Who cared what lay beyond it? Now he was looking at Yuma in his rearview mirror; he was twenty-seven years old. Above, fighter planes ripped across the sky. Tankers circled and the runway was off-limits. One of the guards at the last checkpoint told him the President, who had been airborne, dodging missile strikes for two weeks, had finally landed in Yuma. Maybe the other side was out of weapons. Maybe Yuma was the high water mark. Maybe we had beaten them by surviving long enough to be left with Yuma. In his rearview mirror, heading up the rocky pass that led east from Yuma, he knew they were doomed. He didn’t know why, only knew that they were.
He awoke with a jerk. He spotted the mouse instantly. He hadn’t even needed to let his eyes unfocus, see everything, and track for movement. Instead he spotted the little mouse at the instant the mouse noticed his jerk. Its eyes wide with terror, it froze.
The Old Man darted toward its den. The mouse twitched eyes wide with fear. Once the animal remained frozen the Old Man knew he’d cut off its retreat. He advanced with great stomping strides and instantly the mouse attempted an end run, hoping to dodge past him and into the burrow. The Old Man flailed wildly and yelled “Yaah,” feeling lightheaded and stiff in his legs all at once.
The mouse retreated, scrambling back toward the middle of the clearing. The Old Man pursued, shaking off the dizziness and yelling as he flailed wildly with his arms. The creature, now in full panic, darted back across his path, hoping to break out past the Old Man. A deft stomp barely missed the mouse and sent it scurrying back toward the center of the clearing.
My granddaughter would enjoy this game.
If you had been a moment too late, the mouse would have gotten past you and the game would be over.
The mouse in full flight, panic-stricken, ran heedlessly away from the Old Man and realized its luck the moment it saw the flat stone ahead. There was enough space to squeeze under. Once inside it would be safe. With purpose the mouse raced for the flat stone, and once underneath fell into the concave hole the Old Man had dug.
When it did not emerge immediately, the Old Man knew it had fallen into the trap. He bent over, sweating hard, and closed his eyes hoping not to pass out. He picked up the rock. The mouse, teeth bared, squeaked up at him. He placed the stone over the top of the hole and returned to the camp.
He retrieved the wire from his satchel and his knife, along with a little rope. At the stream, the tracks of the foxes had dried and could still be seen. Avoiding them altogether he followed them back into the brush. After a moment he lost their trail but he could guess at where they had made a straight line from the rocks to the water.
He looked left and right of the trail until he found a sapling. Maybe just a year old. He took the stake he had carved before sleeping and sank it firmly in the narrow trail. Looping his wire he connected the stake to a length of rope that he quickly turned into a noose. He laid the rope out some distance toward the small green palo verdes and bent the tree over until its top touched the ground. Then straddling it he tied off the rope around the sapling.
He returned to the hole. With a quick motion, he stabbed the mouse and waited for it to die. Then he set the dead body in front of the noose, which hung inches above the trail. He stepped away, resisting the urge to dress the trap. Leave it alone, he heard Big Pedro say. Washing his hands of the blood of the mouse and the dirt of the trail he took a long drink and returned to his camp.
The sun was low and he thought about food. He lit his fire and stared into it, thinking his own thoughts for a long time. The falling of the sun failed to rouse him as he continued to stare into the fire. He did not think about his aches. Or the village, which would remind him of food. He thought about Yuma. And the girl whose father had been shot. Had she and her mother made it to Yuma? If so, then they too had died forty years ago.
I might hear the trap spring. But probably not. In the morning maybe there will be a fox. If not, then who knows?
He didn’t like to think about that and so, piling a few more sticks onto the fire, he wrapped himself within his blanket.
Why can’t I dream about the lions on the beaches of Africa like my friend in the book? At sunset they came down to the water to play like cats.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When he awoke there was a fox. It twisted in the morning breeze, its tongue lolling purple and its eyes wide in terror. It was beautiful. The Old Man admired its healthy coat as he skinned the little fox.
By late morning, strips of fox meat were skewered and roasting over ashy orange coals of smoking mesquite. The Old Man, calm and weak, walked among the palo verdes, drinking from the stream and looking for the honeycomb of the dead bee. Standing near the roasting strips of flesh was too much, so it was better to wander among the quiet trees.
By noon the meat was ready and at first he went slowly. He didn’t want to become sick from too much too fast. For the rest of the day he ate slowly and continued to roast more and more of the fox. It would keep for a few days.
As night fell, he looked out into the great desert he had come across.
I survived. I can return and accept the curse. It isn’t much of a curse. They will feed and take care of me. I will play my part. But as a salvager I am finished.
Maybe it is time to let that go.
Or I can continue on and try to find the town.
The dunes seemed nothing more than gentle curves and soft colors.
You tried to kill me. There was nothing in you. Nothing to take away. So what good are you? If I go across you again what could I find this time? Nothing. But if I find the town then maybe that is something, and if not I can pick up the Old Highway to the south and that will lead me back to the village.
But you will come from the east.
There is that.
He ate more fox and thought it might be nice with some tortillas. He set the rest of the meat to smoke in the coals throughout the night so that it would last for a few days more. Then he slept.
At dawn he was up. He felt better. He drank from the stream and chewed a little bit of the dried fox meat.
I think I might go on a bit.
He spent the morning climbing up out of the stand of green palo verdes and onto the broken rocks of the mountain. When he gained the summit he looked east. The landscape sank away into a bowl deeper than the one he had crossed.
It will be hotter.
At the extent of his vision he could see mountains, jagged and gray.
Almost at the center of the bowl, halfway between himself and the mountains, he could see a collection of buildings. Too small to be the town he once knew.
There might be a map or a sign that might lead to the town.
By late afternoon the small mountain was far behind him. The going was mostly smooth and downhill. The heat reminded him of the bread oven back in the village.
CHAPTER NINE
After the bombs there had been dreams. Dreams everything lost had come back. The dead might walk through the barroom door two years after the global car wreck. The survivors, drinking to forget, would put down their cups. All would be as it once was. The dreams after the bombs were like that.
The neon sign came stuttering to life in the twilight of the desert. The Old Man stopped in the smooth blown sand.
There is power here.
The sign showed a sleepy little boy, in nightgown and night cap drifting toward a bed. In rockets bursting script the words “Dreamtime Motel” loomed large, then recessed toward a universe of smiling faced stars. Vacancy, air-conditioning, and color TV were all available.
The cluster of buildings were merely an L-shaped motel complete with swimming pool and the blackened remains of a nearby gas station, its metal twisted in telltale strands away from where the pumps had once been.
The lights of the hotel came softly to life here and there where bulbs still burned.
The east is cursed.
He moved forward cautiously, remembering the pistol within his satchel.
The parking lot was gritty with the windblown sand of the years. Still, the cracks in it were nowhere near the rents and buckles of the main highway back near the village.
From the office, a man emerged wearing a Hawaiian shirt, his eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses.
“Room for the night, mister?” His voice the desiccated husk of a reptile. Used. Spent.
The Old Man remained staring.
If I am dreaming then this does not exist. Maybe the oasis of palo verdes did not exist. Maybe I am dying in the dunes still clutching the dead bee.
“Got room if yer lookin’.” Then the man with the mirrored sunglasses began to wheeze and laugh. After a second he said, “Have ever since before the bombs.”
The Old Man still standing in the twilight, his face illuminated by the flickering glare of the last wisps of neon, remembered the gun. His fingers, bony and old, adjusted the strap of his satchel.
“I got snake.” Mirrored Sunglasses moved forward. His body was long, though he wasn’t tall; the only roundness a potbelly that seemed more pregnant than fat. “You want snake for dinner?”
“What is this place?” croaked the Old Man.
Mirrored Sunglasses whirled, taking in the motel against the dying light in the west.
“This my hotel. Even before the bombs, I swear.” He seemed all out of breath and ragged at once.
“You got power.”
“Just a little ever’ night. Went solar before the bombs, but the panels ain’t doin so good these last few years. Got a well for water. Power ever’ night. No air-condition though. And snake. Lotsa snakes east of here.”
East is cursed.
“Where ya headed?”
“Into the town I thought used to be near here.”
“The town? Why ya wanna go there fer? Burnt down during the bombs.”
The Old Man was silent.
Still.
“Nothing left that way. All of it’s gone. Seen two clouds that week. First Phoenix then Tucson. Nothing there but death. Won’t be for another hundred years. Say where you come from?”
“West.”
“Really?”
“Three days to the other side of the dunes. On the Old Highway a couple days this side of the Great Wreck.”
“Never heard of no ‘Great Wreck.’”
They remained standing in the parking lot, the Old Man considering what was his and his alone.
“I’ll get the snake reheated. Et myself earlier, but I can get you some going.”
“That would be nice of you. Thank you.”
Mirrored Sunglasses turned and headed back into the darkened office mumbling, “Maybe afterwards you’d like to see the pool.”
The Old Man lowered his satchel to the ground.
How had this place remained? There was no sign of a town, other than the remains of the gas station. The road leading away from the motel seemed in better condition than the Old Highway near the village. It must have been new at the time of the bombs.
The Old Man looked again at the neon coursing through the tubes. The design of architecture had once meant something to him. He remembered living in a time when architecture was at war with itself. The old being swept away for the new. You could tell, he remembered, when you walked into someone’s house, a restaurant, even a gas station, what the architect’s idea of the future was. Glass blocks seemed so outdated to him at the time. That was all he could remember.
The snake was good. The two men stood in the parking lot as the Old Man ate it out of a bowl using a bent spoon. All this had survived the apocalypse under neon tubes humming and buzzing, manufactured before the world was the way it would be.
“Built it the year before the war. I did. I built it.” Mirrored Sunglasses never looked straight on at the Old Man. Always to the side or over his shoulder.
The moon would be full tonight. The last curled bits of snake were scooped up in a red sauce that might have been either peppers or ketchup, as the Old Man remembered ketchup to taste. Finally, the bent spoon clanged loudly against the silence that stood between them.
“Finished?” Mirrored Sunglasses held out a gnarled hand to take the bowl and spoon. The Old Man moved the bowl toward the hand noticing it didn’t move farther than initially extended. Another hand would always reach to meet what was offered. This one didn’t. When the bowl touched the fingertips of Mirrored Sunglasses, the tips curled instantly and the bowl was jerked away.
“Good huh? Made it myself.”
It was, nodded the Old Man.
Mirrored Sunglasses didn’t say anything and for a brief moment confusion crossed the craggy face beneath the sunglasses.
Mirrored Sunglasses is blind.
“Sure is. The best. Always got lots of snake. Always snake. Not much else but there is always snake.”
Blind, thought the Old Man. Blind for how long? Alone. No village. How had he survived? Who knew.
“Like a dip in the pool now? Then we can get you fixed up for the night. A real hotel room. Betcha never thought you’d have that again. I’ve kept ready since the bombs. Sometimes folk stay awhile. Like to stay for awhile?”
The Old Man considered the moon and the desert. It would be a good night for putting some distance toward the old town. But the chance of finding salvage after the moon went down was poor. He needed good light.
But wasn’t this place salvage? Was a motel beyond the wasteland with power salvage?
“That would be kind of you to put me up for the night.”
“A dip in the pool first? A good swim and you’ll sleep like a dead sailor.”
“Maybe in the morning. I think I need to lie down. It’s been a long few days.”
Mirrored Sunglasses turned to the office, muttering that the Old Man should follow along. Moments later he handed the Old Man a card.
“Room five. Card unlocks it like one of them fancy hotels before the war, ’member ’em?”
The Old Man looked at it. Had he ever stayed in a hotel with a card as a key? He had a vague memory of once having done so. A laughing girl at his shoulder as he ran the card through a slot and red became green and there was some meaning to him at that moment. Young. It must have meant something to a young man. The meaning of it now was lost among the blown sand and dying heat of a world where cards did not open locks. That was the work of crowbars.
“I’ll knock on your door before dawn. Then you can have a swim while the water’s still cold.”
The Old Man said that would be fine and left the office. Five was on the bottom floor, halfway down the long end of the capital L that was the shape of the place.
Inside the room it was quiet. It was not his shed where light came through at all angles and where the wind brought the unwanted gift of sand. Or where the business of the village could always be listened to. Comforted by. This room was too quiet. A quiet he had not experienced for many years.
He flicked a switch on the wall and one lamp cast a thin cone of light against the gloom. He lay on the bedspread. It was thick and stiff. It smelled of heavy dust.
Already his eyes were closing. For a moment he awoke and realized he had been sleeping. He needed to turn off the light. But he was too tired. More tired than he had ever been.
I feel as if I am made of grease. I must turn off the light. I would be a bad guest if I didn’t turn off the light and used up all the power. He flailed and heard the lamp fall.
He was asleep.
CHAPTER TEN
In the dream he was awake in the hotel room, knowing he must turn off the light or he’d run down the power of the motel. Cars were pulling up in the parking lot as the bombs went off. Lots of bombs.
And then he was awake. There were no bombs. No sound. No cars.
HE WILL KILL U!!!
A jolt of blue fire raced across muscles and arms. Above him the letters of the words were written in glowing yellow light on the ceiling. They seemed to grow larger as he stared at them. The room was dark.
‘I must be hallucinating,’ he thought. He closed his eyes and tried to rub them, but his arm would barely move.
I am so tired.
When he opened his eyes again he saw the words.
HE WILL KILL U!!!
I must be going crazy.
Sweating, he pushed himself up and realized he was breathing heavy. Too heavy. With more effort than it should have taken, he got the lamp upright and switched it on again. Nothing happened.
I must have broken the bulb.
He looked upward, and again the glowing warning remained above his head. The letters were made up of little stars and moons. Planets with rings. He knew those things, those glow-in-the-dark shapes. A girl he once knew. He remembered her to be sad. Or maybe he was the one who was sad. But she had put glow-in-the-dark planets and stars on her ceiling. He remembered lying next to her in the dark as music played nearby. He remembered the sadness though he could not say whether it had been his or hers.
Someone had written those words on the ceiling with glow-in-the-dark planets and stars. Standing with more effort than it should have taken, he stood on the bed to examine them. They were real. He peeled off a star. Held it between his thumb and forefinger.
He moved to the window and parted the curtains. The moon had fallen to the other side of the sky.
Dawn in a few hours.
He looked once more at the warning.
Taking his satchel, he opened the door and stepped out into the night. He crossed the walkway heading into the parking lot. His huaraches scraped quietly. He kept his eyes on the dark office door.
“No swim, my friend?” Mirrored Sunglasses stood in the doorway of the room next to him, his arm cradling a double-barreled shotgun.
“You’re not thinking of running off without paying your bill?”
Was he truly blind?
Ahead the moon sank into the black horizon turning the silver nightscape a dark blue.
“How’d you know?” asked Mirrored Sunglasses.
The Old Man swallowed thickly.
When did I last have some water? I am thirstier than I should be.
“Tell me. It won’t do you no good not to.”
“Some words written on the ceiling.”
Mirrored Sunglasses moved the shotgun to the other arm. He seemed to stare off, considering a different matter altogether.
“Shoulda knowed it,” he mumbled. “How ’bout that swim?”
“I don’t know what the problem is,” began the Old Man. “But I mean you no harm. Just headed to the old town east of here. Just going to look for salvage. That’s all. I won’t steal from you.”
“Right, you won’t. Can’t have people knowing I’m here. You’d tell. They’d come for my stuff. Come for me. I wouldn’t be king anymore.”
“That’s not true. Why don’t I just move on? No harm, friend.”
After a moment’s silence in which the Old Man thought he might just walk into the desert and be free of this nightmare, Mirrored Sunglasses raised the shotgun. It wasn’t dead on straight in his face, but it was close enough.
Two barrels with the right shot and he doesn’t need to see me move. Just squeeze at the sound of me. I’ll be nothing but shredded flesh and bones.
He thought of his own pistol hidden in his satchel. Getting it out? He’d know.
But he’s only got one chance to shoot you. Then he’s got to break the barrel and reload. Then fire again. Takes time.
“Think it’s time for that swim, mister,” said Mirrored Sunglasses in a voice that was both mean and low. “Start walking.”
The pool lay beyond a gate at the far end of the complex. The Old Man began to shuffle and by the time he reached the gate, the double-barreled shotgun hovered a foot behind his kidneys. The rusty gate swung open and landed with a clank.
“Move.”
The Old Man walked to the edge of the pool.
It was drained.
Along its cracked concrete bottom, hundreds of snakes lay sleeping and lethargic in the cool predawn. Occasionally one moved. A corpse lay on the far side near the steps, what would have been the shallow end of a filled pool. Beneath the snakes lay more humps that might be corpses.
As he neared the edge of the deep end, he heard Mirrored Sunglasses suck in air.
Barely thinking, the Old Man twisted and stepped back as he saw Mirrored Sunglasses raise the shotgun into both hands across his chest and rush at him as if pushing a plow.
Recoiling in horror sent the Old Man off the lip of the edge and saved his life. He fell and felt his hands grasping for the edge. A familiar childlike feeling as he found it. Then he swung hard into the concrete wall of the empty pool to hang just a few feet from the snakes.
Above, Mirrored Sunglasses’s feral swear turned to a scream as the expected resistance remained unmet and he sailed outward above a snake-filled concrete pool.
Hanging from the edge the Old Man heard the snapping crunch of a bone-breaking headfirst dive twelve feet below.
The snakes, hissing, snapped on the attacker in the cool dark shadow of the deep end. Rattles raged in unison as the Old Man, head swimming, heaved himself over the side of the pool and onto the deck.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The morning sun found the Old Man in the office. Locked, he had broken it open with his crowbar.
First he laid out his bedroll and removed the pistol. He checked the rounds within and then went back to the edge of the pool. Mirrored Sunglasses stared skyward, his neck twisting to meet his body. The snakes were already covering him, seeking his fading heat in the predawn chill of the desert.
The double-barreled shotgun lay nearby.
Salvage. But at the bottom with the snakes it is as good as gone unless …
I could burn them.
And damage the gun no doubt.
He returned to his satchel and considered rerolling the bedroll with the pistol inside.
There might be others here. Maybe if I am going farther into the wasteland I need to keep the pistol within reach.
Once the office door was broken, the Old Man found a dirty kitchen at the back of it. It smelled greasy and old and like the snake he had eaten. Though the sink was dirty its faucet gave up a cool stream of clear water.
Well water.
He drank and drank again. He was still thirsty so he continued to drink. His head was clearing from the fogginess. Beside the sink, at eye level as he bent to drink, he noticed an old steak knife. A half-cut pill lay nearby.
He drugged me.
The rising sun turned the tiny office golden. Magazines littered the racks and the front of the office.
Was Mirrored Sunglasses truly blind?
What did it matter?
For the rest of the morning he searched the office, which contained little in the way of salvage. Boxes of coins and paper money. A few tools, but the village had these tools and often in great supply.
He took the cards that unlocked the rooms and went to the first room. A motel room like the one he had slept in. It was too bright to see if another message had been written on the ceiling. The other rooms for the most part were the same, except for the rust-stained bedspreads sometimes shredded and torn. One room seemed to be permanently lived in. The room Mirrored Sunglasses had come out of. He found an old toothbrush too disgusting to be used again. An abundance of clothing, crossing a spectrum of styles. Drawers full of medication from the year of the bombs. Prescriptions for people named Harriet Binchly. Or Kevin Adams. Or Phillip Nuygen. Take once a day with water.
Sitting on the bed for a moment the Old Man considered returning to the office for more water. But then he felt he must finish the rooms first. Make sure the place was clear.
This place is evil.
East is cursed.
Yes, and I too am cursed.
What was its story?
If he knew its story then maybe he might find salvage. If there was salvage to be found.
But the rooms and the office told of a hermit. “Loners” the village called them in the years after the bombs. People who had run so deep into the desert, they didn’t know of villages. Didn’t know others survived. Hermits didn’t last long. Seven years was the longest he’d ever guessed of one making it on his own.
This man had a hotel. Some power. The road nearby.
He thought of the power system. A salvage of that was beyond him. He could return and tell of this place. Then the villagers could come and get the power.
And the water. It might be good to have a place with water if the village ever wanted to come this far.
They would not come this far. “East” was enough to prevent them from ever considering it. So the solar power was no salvage.
Finished resting, he continued to search the rest of the rooms. In the last two he found the story. But he wished he hadn’t.
The first room held the desiccated corpse of a woman. Her long blond hair framed the rictus grin of a skeleton laughing or screaming.
Probably screaming.
The handcuffs at each end of the bedpost said screaming. Arms still connected to bony wrists thin enough to slip through as the victim must have once wished to. One leg lay on the floor. There were no clothes.
Was she the one who tried to warn me?
In the next room at the end of the balcony, the last room of the Dreamtime Motel he found the bags. Bags upon bags full of the last remaining possessions of lost wanderers. Wanderers who had come in from the wind and fire of the bombs. The long winter that followed. The years of sun afterward. Empty rotting bags from uncountable travelers.
He burned it. He stood watching in the charred remains of the gas station across the road that had once been something more than twisted and blackened metal. Even the ash that must have once covered the station, covered the entire world, had long since gone.
He leaned against a blackened cement pylon. He took pains to avoid the black blooming flower of metal that the pumps had become on that long-ago day when they had gushed forth jets of fuel on fire and burning hot.
Now the motel burned in the late afternoon heat. The Old Man started the fire in the room he had slept in. Started it with some paint thinner and a few other solvents. It consumed the bedspread, and by the time the Old Man had backed away from the motel door, the drapes were aflame and belching black smoke. Forty years of sun and the parched wood and lathe were more than ready to burn.
By the time he crossed the road to watch it all burn to the ground the fire was already visible behind fluttering curtains in the second-story windows.
CHAPTER TWELVE
He ate some of the fox he’d dried, drank a little cold water, and counted the extra bottles and canteens he’d salvaged from the motel, now tied in a loose bandolier. Before setting the fire he’d filled them all with the cold water from the faucet in the office.
That faucet had almost been enough reason not to burn it all down. He could have put a sign on the road or painted the word “WATER” in big red letters across the sides of the motel. A modern oasis for travelers.
But there had been too much evil. Too much wrong had happened within the gold curtained rooms. Too many lives ended in a drugged stupor as Mirrored Sunglasses brained or bashed or shot, by the look of some beds, those who had wandered out of the destruction and found the Dreamtime Motel.
The Old Man guessed the shotgun, buried under the rattlesnakes, was empty. Emptied long ago into the back of another victim. He found a box of shotgun shells. It was empty. Along with the shot-shredded rust-stained bedspreads, the empty box told the story of the shotgun beneath a pile of snakes.
The handcuffs themselves could have been salvage. But when the Old Man went to inspect them, he found no key.
Maybe that’s why they were locked? The key had been lost by a blind man.
Would he have let her go if he could have found the key? How long had she lived on that bed?
The grooves and scratches in the frame were numerous. Too numerous for just one victim.
That could have been enough to burn it down. But there was more. In the dying light of the embers he ate the dried strips of fox.
The woman justified burning it all down.
But the water from the faucet was another thing. An oasis was not easily come by.
An early evening desert wind picked up embers, scattering sparks across the road. The fire was finished. Only gray smoke from a few hot spots came up through the charred remains. Where the motel had once been seemed lost and altogether a lie.
It was the marks that made you burn it.
Sí. The marks.
In the room of bags, on the wood paneling near the door and just above the lightswitch, had been the marks. Little sticks grooved into the wood. Four uprights and finally a horizontal slash. Five. Sets of five. Too many sets. Other stray marks along the border, half the size of the sets of five, told him of the children.
Children had been special to Mirrored Sunglasses.
So it had to burn?
Sí.
Yes.
It had to burn.
One day we might not be, and the people who come next don’t need to take this with them. My granddaughter.
Tired, he rose to his feet. The moon was large and it would be a cool night for walking. He drank a little more water and adjusted his satchel. He tucked the gun that had lain on the ground next to him into his waistband. He tightened the electrical cord he used for a belt. The gun fit nicely.
From now on I must keep the gun ready.
But I hope I do not need it.
He set off down the blacktop leading away from the Dreamtime Motel.
The ground on the side of the road was smoother than the blacktop that eventually proved itself unsafe in the night as tears and eruptions lay shadowed beneath his feet. Occasionally he would stumble, and finally he kept to the side of the road.
If I twist my leg then I will wish I had not burned that place down.
Don’t say such a thing.
So he moved to the shoulder and continued following the white dirt along the moonlit road. North.
North is not as bad as east.
Once the moon was overhead, he stopped for water and a bite of fox meat though he didn’t feel hungry. The only road sign he passed had been one of the large ones that spanned the entire road. It had fallen facedown and what was written upon it was beyond the strength of his arms to know.
He continued on, and when the moon was waning far to the west, he saw that the road began a long curve toward the east. A mountain ridge to the north blocked further progress. To the east, the remains of four large overpasses that had once connected the highways lay in ruins. Only the pillars and sections of the road like the capitals of columns remained.
I could find shelter there for the day. Maybe some vehicles. Maybe salvage. It will be dawn in a few hours.
He picked up his satchel and slung it once more across his chest.
If it is occupied it might be best to come upon it before dawn. If I smell cook fires then I will know.
The moon went down and soon it was dark.
I was spoiled walking by the light of the moon.
He picked his way along the broken concrete of the highway thinking of nothing more than where his next footstep should be.
Arriving just as the eastern sky began to show the first hints of blue, he crouched in a debris-cluttered culvert. He heard nothing, even as the sun began to cast a steady soft orange light across the desert behind him. His nose smelled nothing on the wind, and once the sun was two hands above the horizon, he left the culvert and continued into the wreckage of the overpasses.
He chose the fallen road sections that had collapsed onto the highway beneath.
If there is anyone here, maybe they are lazy. Then at least I will be above them. They might not even see me.
The fallen sections were made of clean white concrete, grooved as if combed by a brush. He took off his huaraches and continued along the road as it climbed quickly. A break in the road caused him to stop, and he lowered himself onto the section that had fallen on the other side of the break. He climbed this section and another one like it, and soon he was beneath one of the large pillars where part of the highway remained above him.
How long would that last?
He marveled at what man had once built. What he had once driven over. What was once so common seemed a thing of lost giants.
At the end of the broken road he could see the intersection of the four roads. The ground beneath was barren. An old Winnebago lay on its side off in the weeds. He watched for a moment, wondering if it might be someone’s home. But the weeds around it and growing out the back window told the story of salvage.
There is no one here.
He climbed back down the broken sections and thought better of the Winnebago.
If it has been here for so long then it has already been salvaged.
On the other side of the ruins, two roads led away. One headed northeast, the other southeast.
What about the Winnebago? Fleeing the bombs, many such RVs had often been loaded beyond safety with such things as might be salvaged.
If that is the case then I would have seen some lying on the ground nearby. It has been searched.
He continued looking north, wondering if that is the east he should pick.
Something, a knife, a tool perhaps, could be lying in the weeds or the dirt.
Unlikely. I would need to go into the wreck and a Winnebago out here by itself would be a place for rattlesnakes or even the brown spider.
Then you expect salvage to be laying in the middle of the road for you to happen along and pick up. Neatly untouched these forty years. A bottle of aspirin or medical tools for the village. Maybe even an entire set of encyclopedias. The village is right. You are cursed. It is your laziness that is the curse. You are the curse of yourself.
Be quiet.
To the north must be Phoenix.
Low hills of red dirt climbed toward Phoenix.
Phoenix was destroyed. I know that. In L.A., just before I left, that had been part of the decision. The bombs were falling each day on a new city. First New York and then Washington, D.C., then Pittsburgh, then Chicago … was that right? Or had Chicago been first?
I chose Tucson. Tucson was too small to be hit. The terrorists were choosing bigger cities.
And your parents lived there. On a golf course.
Yuma was smaller than Tucson. Later, on the day the President landed, the Old Man had seen the cloud over Yuma in his rearview mirror as he picked his way through the beginning of the Great Wreck. He had seen it about 2:00 in the afternoon. 2:06 he remembered by the digital clock of his car’s instrument panel. The cloud rising from the valley behind him. Ninety miles away. The United States of America had lost its last president.
His car had stopped. The EMP had finished it. In the days that followed, walking the highway, moving away from Yuma, he headed east. Survivors told him they’d seen the cloud over Tucson. L.A. was gone also. They had gone for two that day. That last known day. After that, there was no news. No radio. If the bombs continued to fall, who knew? Had we retaliated against the Middle East like we’d threatened? Was there still a world beyond the United States? A Europe? Africa?
I will never see those lions at sunset. Playing on the beach. Unless I dream them. And my dreams are past stories that cannot be finished.
He thought of the little girl.
I will never know.
I know Phoenix is gone. It went after Miami. I know that Phoenix is gone. That I know.
Those are problems solved long ago. Salvage is your business and if you cannot search the wreck of the Winnebago, then what salvage will you find?
Be quiet.
He turned south along the highway once more.
There will be nothing toward Phoenix. In the days of the bombs, everyone took to the road. Everything they could grab. Headed away, much like myself back then, from the bombs. Phoenix was destroyed. Everyone had known that, so no one went there to escape.
But you heard Tucson was hit also.
“Sí,” he whispered softly in the late morning air.
But I saw Phoenix destroyed on the TV.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was later he realized he had not stopped to rest in the shadows of the ruined overpasses. He wanted to put as much distance as possible between himself and the Dreamtime Motel. He was afraid of the dreams he might have.
How much longer until the monsoons?
He stopped to drink in the thin shade provided by a small bridge.
An orange sun hung low off to the west. Afternoon dust storms rolled across the broken red horizon. He wondered how far west, if he started from this bridge, he would need to walk to find the village.
If the monsoons came soon, there might be trouble with the flash floods.
The torrents of ash would be dangerous.
Where does the ash come from after all these years?
Does it matter?
Maybe it’s the answer to what’s left of the world. So much ash, so little world.
There is still the village.
Too tired to go much farther, he camped under the bridge, and just before nightfall made a small fire of mesquite.
In the blue twilight, he thought it might be nice to have a guitar. That being alone wouldn’t be so bad if he had a guitar. With a guitar he might just continue to wander and never return to the village.
But what about your granddaughter?
The village must think I am dead.
I hope no one came looking for me. They might have gotten hurt.
That is the love of not wanting someone to come and look for you when you have gone.
He tried the phrase out against the wall under the bridge. Letting his shadow speak the words in the light of the fire.
It felt like a phrase one says and doesn’t mean. But the words were true.
Maybe it’s not enough for something to just be true?
Truth is enough.
The Alpha picked up the Old Man’s scent near the wreck of the Winnebago below the mountains. He hunted here at the end of most nights, and the scent had come only faintly to him. He’d pulled down five men in his life. Alone, when the pack had scattered, he pulled them down.
He had been the leader of the wolf pack for seven rains now. He felt tired most nights. The thrill he experienced in pulling down the wild mule deer to the north didn’t cause him to go rigid with electricity at the thought of their meat as it once did. When he had first killed, he had eaten most of the kill before letting his mate at the remains. Lately he made the kill, took his favorite part near the spine at the top of the back, then wandered away to chew with the good side of his teeth.
The smell he tasted in the dawn air was not mule deer. Nor was it the coyote or other prey of the valley. This was man. He remembered the man they caught the spring before. He’d smelled terror in the dark forest moments before the pack crashed through the wall of trees and into the meadow. He’d been halfway across the high meadow, running, when the pack of thirty wolves, his wolves, spotted the man.
In a moment they were on him. The Alpha had fought hard to keep the two killers from the best parts of the man. He wondered how much longer he would be able to keep them at bay. Soon enough they would come for him. As he had, they would.
When the pack passed through the meadow at the end of spring, the shattered bits of white bone were still there.
He had enjoyed the taste of man.
At the two roads the large wolf padded back and forth scenting the air. Even the wolf knew what was north. He had seen the ruins of Phoenix with his own eyes. He knew it was lifeless, and what remained there long was soon poisoned. The deer they killed there always had that taste of death. Often the pack would leave after a few torn strips had been tested. In those times the kill had been enough.
Satisfied the man had gone south, the wolf turned, heading back toward the mountain above the ruined overpasses. He picked his way up through the broken rocks in the early morning light.
How long could he keep his two killers at bay?
At the top of the pass, not far from the den, he turned to look at the valley floor. Where would the man be? Turning toward the den where the pack lay sleeping, exhausted from the night, the wolf trotted into the darkness.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
At dawn the Old Man was up. The cool morning air wouldn’t last long. He hadn’t had coffee in years. Hadn’t missed it in years. But now in the cold air beneath the broken road, he wished for it.
He stretched slowly and began to pack his things while taking cautious sips of water.
Where are you going?
South. I am going south today.
Really more east than south.
Just for this morning, let us say it is south.
He had a momentary memory of fog. Fog outside the windows of the house he’d grown up in. The first foggy days of school in autumn. Arguing with someone.
It is because you are arguing with yourself. That is why you remember fog.
For the next few hours he stayed to the side of the great bent and warped highway. The road headed south, mostly. Looking ahead, it seemed the road must eventually turn to the east.
If I can find salvage before it goes east, then I’ll head straight west. At some point I will find the Old Highway and from there I will find my way home.
Crossing another fallen bridge, he stopped in the late morning shade of the broken sections. Rebar sprang from the chunks like wild strands of hair. When he resumed his climb out of the tall ditch of red earth, he was sweating.
Let’s be clear my friend.
All right.
You say that if you find salvage you will head west and return to the village. Your curse will be lifted?
If you say so but I do not care.
Then why are you out here?
Be quiet.
On top of the dirt embankment, the gentle slope of the road fell away. In the distance a small mountain rose up, broken and dusty brown.
I know that mountain. There was once a large A on its side.
That was common in Arizona in those days. To put a large A on the side of every small mountain near a town or city.
Then it means there must be one nearby. I think it is the one whose name I cannot remember. It seems familiar.
He crossed the flat landscape toward the mountain. To the side of the road, lone stands of scrub grew up in solitary dark patches, as if too hurt to ever grow near another living thing.
Further along the highway, he passed the remains of a burnt fueling station off to one side. It was little more than a concrete pad and blackened cement. In the lone shade of a mesquite tree he ate the last of the fox and drank some water.
Now you have two problems.
Now I have no food and no salvage. If I could walk straight to the village day and night for three days I might make it. But not without food. The effort would be too great and I might make a mistake if I were so hungry I couldn’t focus. Then a broken leg would be the end of me.
Tonight I will stop early and make some traps.
A gas station like this once had a tin awning that made a singsong noise in a strong wind.
Another thought that has no place in the present.
Maybe just another memory trying not to be forgotten.
I might know that because I once stopped here for fuel.
You always came to visit your parents on the Eight. Not the Ten.
Amazed, he stopped chewing. He hadn’t referred to the Old Highway as the Eight in a long time. Since the days just after the bombs. The names of places had been forgotten. Or were too painful to remember.
The Eight.
He tried to remember the name of the town he was looking for. Something “Big” he remembered. But it wouldn’t come and the air seemed to be getting hotter with the noonday heat.
He began to move again, south along the highway.
In the afternoon, brilliant white sails of cloud began to form to the east. Climbing upward, each full-blown sail exploding beneath an eruption of white foam. The armada of clouds came no closer than a dark ridge of jagged mountains to the east that embodied everything he felt about that direction.
The monsoons were coming.
The Alpha led the thirty wolves of his pack off the mountain and passed the Winnebago on its side. At the road, he smelled the night wind coming out of the south. He didn’t smell the man. But he knew men. He had watched them. Men always moved in one direction, as if always on the hunt of just one animal.
The two killers challenged him briefly as he started off down the highway but his mate snarled back at them. For a moment, it looked as though the pack might split. The two killers wanted to circle to the north and for a while they yelped about it, making the noises that indicated mule deer.
But the females went with the Alpha, and soon the entire pack lay strung out behind him as he scented the sides of the road for the man.
Near the bridge where the Old Man made camp the night before, the wolf picked up the scent of urine. The Old Man had urinated just before sleeping.
Slowly the Alpha crept down along a path and followed the trail directly into the camp under the bridge. He smelled the gray ash of the night’s fire. Some paper the Old Man had wrapped the dried fox in. The rest of the pack milled about above the camp on the main road. Dawn wasn’t far off and they’d nothing to eat so far.
One of the killers howled in warning and the entire pack turned toward the sound of it.
A family of havalina had come up the dry riverbed under the bridge from the east and the wolves fell upon the wild pigs, easily snatching the babies as the male and the females stubbornly stood their ground hoping to minimize losses.
But the wolves were too good for the wild pigs. Had hunted too long under the Alpha. Soon, the last sow’s eyes rolled back in her head. She’d watched the killers tearing out the entrails of the male that had presided over the brood for as long as she could remember. Seconds later, a warm softness came over her as the Alpha sunk its teeth deeper into her jugular vein, forcing her to release.
Swinging her to the side, the Alpha looked at the two killers. They should have known the females were the most dangerous. She could have killed them or made the victim wish for death. That might have solved his problems right there. But treachery was not in the Alpha.
The snarling pack devoured flesh and blood. The Alpha settled down to the dead sow. He had lost the pack for the night. There would be no going any farther after this meal. Dawn would soon be upon them. They would sleep in the shade under the bridge in the man’s camp from the night before. And tomorrow they would hunt him again.
Tearing at the haunch of the desert pig, he thought it might be good for them to sleep in the man’s camp. They would have the smell of him. That way he wouldn’t have to do all the work.
Pulsuz fraqment bitdi.
