So that’s where I went. By the time I arrived at the proper office, night had fallen and it was closed, and I fell asleep on the cold marble steps in front of the building. When they opened in the morning, I was the first one to the counter, where they offered to take the letter off of my hands. I refused, though. After all that way, thousands of miles with the letter in my possession, I had to see it delivered. That was one responsibility I would fulfill, and I wanted to see the look on the face of the person for whom I had endured it all.
Three whole days I stayed there waiting, sleeping nights on the front steps and standing days in the lobby. The postal clerks were understanding and accommodating, and they provided me with food and water while I waited, though I didn’t eat much. I spoke with many in line, none of whom knew Rebekah, and I was beginning to question whether she had moved elsewhere without notifying the service. Perhaps she had died, even. The thought wasn’t so farfetched. In a world without a thorough census and in which every citizen was undocumented, one person could easily go unnoticed.
It was on that third day, shortly before closing time, that I began to doze off with dwindling hope. A hand on my shoulder roused me, and I opened my eyes to find an elderly woman with radiant white hair standing in front of me.
“They said at the desk that you were looking for me.”
I leaped from my seat, startling her more than mildly.
“Rebekah?”
“Yes?”
“Rebekah Prophet?”
“Yes?” she replied reluctantly.
“I have a letter for you,” I said, handing her the envelope. She took it, gazing at her name and that of the city written on the front as if she was in shock. Her eyes widened, and I heard her gasp. Then I had to catch her before she hit the floor when she collapsed.
“She’s alive!” Rebekah screamed. “She’s OK!”
She tore the envelope open and read frantically, sobbing with joy, and then she grabbed me and squeezed until I had lost my breath.
“Thank you,” she whispered into my ear. “I don’t know who you are, but you’re a godsend.”
When Rebekah calmed down, I learned that the woman who had given me the letter outside of the Big Apple was her daughter. They had not spoken since the collapse, and Rebekah had known nothing of her daughter’s safety during all of those months. Suddenly, on that otherwise ordinary day, she was graced with news that brought her as much joy as she had ever known. Her daughter and family on the opposite coast were alive and as healthy as ever.
To express her appreciation, Rebekah invited me to dinner at her home that evening. We talked about our families as we walked, and after some time we came upon a pair of great iron gates standing wide open and inviting us off the road. Across the yard stood an extravagant Spanish-style mansion glowing in the sun falling toward the water behind it.
“Some home,” I said, flashing back to my night in the Hearst Castle.
“I’m just staying here a little while,” she replied.
We went in the front door, and it was as if we had entered a casual and boisterous gathering of a large multicultural family. In a way, that’s exactly what it was. There were people of all ages and all races coexisting under the same roof. A trio of children ran across the hall in front of us, laughing and playing as the voices of their parents called to them from a large front living room. The potent aroma of a hot meal made my empty stomach grumble.
“Smells like they’ve started dinner without me,” Rebekah said, and she led me toward the kitchen. It was hot and noisy in the room, and there were pots and vats of food cooking everywhere like a caterer’s kitchen before a wedding.
“Didn’t want to wait for me, huh?” said Rebekah to the other chefs.
“Sorry, we got hungry,” said one woman. “Who’s your friend?”
“This is Joe. Joe, this is Anna. She owns the house.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Joe,” said Anna. “Will you be staying for dinner?”
“If it’s all right.”
“Of course! The more the merrier.”
Dinner was a delicious smorgasbord of seafood and fruits and vegetables that they put on the table. Their fusion cuisine came in great variety, clearly influenced by the numerous cultures represented within that household. We filled the dining room with people who hailed from all over the world like some royal dinner party, and they took me in as one of their own. It was apparent that any kind of social exclusion was the only thing unwelcome in that house, and I felt guilty over my presumptions about the city. The mansion was grand and opulent, to be certain, but it also provided a home to many families, who I learned had lost their homes to rioting during the collapse. Anna had always owned the place. She had been some kind of media executive, I figured, based on the décor of the house. When everything had happened, she had refused to leave and had rather gone to the streets to collect families made homeless and given them shelter. “I stayed because this place is my home,” she said, “but it’s a lot less lonely now that I have family.”
When she learned of my journey, I immediately became the newest member of the family, which meant I had a place to call home as well for as long as I stayed. That would only be the few days Nomad and I needed to rest before getting back on the road, but I imagined future visits with my wife under different circumstances. The two of us could watch the sun set over the ocean each night from the terrace off the back of the house and share breakfast each morning with our new extended family, whom I grew to love during my short first stay with them.
I got to sleep early that night in a comfortable bed that they had made up for me, but first I sat reading Maria’s letter awhile.
“I’ll always wait for you,” she said. She shouldn’t have to, I thought. I could hardly wait to be with her, but soon I would be back on the road, finally heading toward home. My final delivery would be made on the way.
While the focus of life there fell unquestionably on family and the freedom to spend time with them, still I witnessed no sloth. Able-bodied adults worked, not because they were forced to, but because a person cannot fully appreciate the gifts given them without providing some of their own. During the day I joined a few of them to offer my own labor. As we walked the streets toward the new industrial part of town, I watched the people passing. I noticed how naturally beautiful they were, just like people back home. Cosmetics were a thing of the past. Our lifestyles kept us healthy and fit, and beyond that, people accepted themselves for who God had made them to be. Accepting ourselves had been the hard part in the past. Our greatest critics had come from within.
The job I was given was assisting in operating a printing press. It was a surprisingly simple mechanical apparatus. Pages were fed into a track where a cylinder with interchangeable letters pressed ink onto the paper and ejected it from the other side, all powered by a hand crank. I was printing history schoolbooks alongside a whole room full of people printing on those machines. Elsewhere, the machines themselves were manufactured by hand on an assembly line. Even parts of the process to manufacture paper were done by hand. It was the beginning of a new industrial revolution that utilized the power of the human body in addition to renewable energy.
“I like this revolution from the old world of industry and commerce,” said Anna. “We threw out the rulebook—the hierarchy and bureaucracy—and it gave us all a fresh perspective. Nobody works for anyone. We work together. Before the collapse, there was an increasing disconnection between those at the top and those at the bottom, and the majority was not adequately provided for. They were overworked, undercompensated, and underappreciated. From the sheep to the dogs to the pigs, the human factor was lost. Everyone was just a number, not just looking down from above, but also looking up from below.
“Most of us have feelings of entitlement, whether we realize it or not,” she continued. “Rich because they’re rich, poor because they’re poor. We don’t want to hear about someone else’s problems when we have enough of our own. It’s hard n
ot to be more concerned with oneself than the whole. We are, by nature, selfish creatures, and it takes a lot to overcome that, but the result is worth the struggle. After all, rich and poor—‘haves’ and ‘have nots’—are just products of the marketplace. The trick is having enough available work for every person willing and able to do it. Where is the sense in overworking part of the population while the other part searches for a way to contribute? And, of course, each member of the workforce must understand and embrace his or her value. In the end, we uncover the cyclical fact that the welfare of the individual is dependent on the harmony of the whole, and vice versa.”
Their system eliminated most of the positions of middlemen, putting those workers to better use, and we knew exactly where our products came from because the producers themselves were the sources of acquisition. Wheat came directly from the farmer who sowed and harvested it, clothes from the clothier who knitted them, tools from the blacksmith who forged them, and so on. Without any generally accepted currency, many places I visited operated on a barter system so simple and honest that it didn’t require oversight from some governing entity. We employed the old farmers’ market ideology for nearly every type of product, and it worked splendidly. As it turned out, people liked to know where the items in their homes came from. It brought the community together and bred a greater respect for every trade.
That harmony was reflected everywhere and particularly in the home of my family there. They openly discussed their diversity, struggles, and triumphs, and I witnessed the realization of Dr. King’s dream as their children ran throughout the house playing together after dinner.
“We learn from one another, as do our children,” said one father in his calming West African accent. “Do you have children, Joe?”
“Not yet.”
“Someday?” he smiled.
“Someday.”
“Good. They give us purpose,” he said, looking at his wife next to him and rubbing her pregnant belly. She smiled back at him as he continued, “My children made me understand my own capacity to love. And through them I understand the way God looks upon us, with unconditional love greater than we can imagine. He has given us a gift here. A gift of rebirth. We must not waste it.”
The morning of the next day, as I was preparing to head out and most of the other members of the family had already left for the day’s work, I heard a muffled scream through the door to my room. I paused to listen for a moment, hoping that perhaps the voice I’d heard had simply been that of one of the many children at play. Then it came again, that time undoubtedly the sound of a woman in distress. I threw on my shabby pants and darted from the room barefoot and shirtless, passing the open doors of vacant bedrooms down the long hall toward the loft overlooking the entry hall. I wound down the staircase, the screams growing louder as they echoed from the walls.
Entering the great room, I saw a cluster of children huddled together in silence, watching from a distance as Anna knelt over the pregnant mother whom I had last seen with a serene smile on her face the prior evening.
“Push!” Anna demanded.
“Where is my husband?” the woman screamed.
Anna turned and saw me.
“Joe! Go find him!”
Without a word, I dashed out into the yard and mounted my horse. We galloped down the driveway and out the gate and then hit the streets, headed toward the printer where I had worked with the father the previous day. Pedestrians jumped from our path as I yelled ahead to warn of our fast approach.
“Look out!” I bellowed. “The baby’s coming!”
We arrived at the building miles away, bystanders diving to avoid the barefoot and shirtless lunatic leaping from his horse and dashing through the doors. I cleared my way through the building to the room of printing presses.
“Abidan!” I called through the mass of workers. “Your wife is in labor!”
Everyone froze and turned to look at me, and then back toward the man just as crazy as I who was hurtling clumsily through them to reach me.
“Now?” he yelled.
“Now! We have to go!”
I heard cheers from behind as the two of us sped out through the doors still swinging from my hasty entry and Abidan hopped onto Nomad’s back.
“Come on!” he said as I stopped short.
“You go!”
Without hesitation, he was off, and I was left to walk back on my bare feet.
I must have looked like the proudest bum on earth waddling through the streets with my head high and most of the skin on my body bared to the sun. By the time I returned, the house was quiet again. I came in to find the cheerful mother and father on the sofa swooning over their newborn daughter, who was asleep and wrapped comfortably in their arms. They looked up to smile at me and then back down to the product of their love. In another room, I could hear the other children playing. Anna was in the kitchen preparing lunch for everyone.
“How about that?” she said when I came in and pulled up a chair at the breakfast table.
“How about it,” I sighed.
“Makes me want children of my own.”
“Does it?”
She laughed. “Not the labor, but what comes after. Speaking of which, aren’t you getting ready to head back on the road?”
“I am.”
“Well, have something to eat before you go. I’ll make extra to take with you.”
The City of Angels was already operating a complete communication network throughout the southwest, which meant I could skip the trip to the city that had been Phoenix, where I had originally planned to make a stop. The network was growing at a rate faster than I could ride, and new carriers were beating me to my destinations. I was sure that they had already reached every city I had planned to pass through on my way back.
It was then I realized that the mission to establish the New World Mail Network had been accomplished. It had happened so gradually as I traveled that it had lacked the climactic, triumphant moment I’d hoped for, but I guess that sort of thing only happens in movies. I was glad, though. That meant a shorter trip northeast from there toward the Rockies, and I would be passing through the city that had been Las Vegas instead.
I sent a letter home, the last that I would send on the journey, letting them know that I was finally on my way back. Any more correspondence mailed from then on would likely not arrive more than a few days ahead of me, and I saw no use in that. I thanked Anna, Rebekah, and the rest of my family there for their hospitality. As I packed to leave them, home was finally a real place, not some fantasy I dreamed about but would never see. I had less than two months left, I figured. Perhaps half that if Nomad and I could maintain the pace. I told Maria that I loved her and that we would be together soon.
In all my excitement, I had neglected to consider the dangers of the winter and the wilderness over the distance of nearly two thousand miles between there and home.
14
IN BLOOM
Traveling the barren desert between those two cities was like two weeks in purgatory. We covered less ground each day. Nights were cold, and though the days weren’t unbearably hot, the sun was blinding. Decent shade was almost nowhere to be found, so when we did come across it, Nomad and I always took the opportunity for rest, whether it was under the occasional Joshua tree or the north side of a rock formation. It was bittersweet that my shelter had been taken up to the heavens, as we would not see rain for a while, but my water skins ran dry quickly.
Cactus fruit and the gel of aloe leaves served as nearly our only sources of both food and water, and Nomad relied on me to prepare them so that they would be safe to eat. The latex from the aloe leaf, I quickly learned, was to be avoided. The body is designed to let us know when we’ve eaten something harmful, so I made adjustments as necessary. Likewise, the prickly pears had to be peeled before ingestion, and after enough raw Opuntia, I began cooking it to lower the acidity.
Still, sustenance of any kind was not abundant enough to keep either of us healthy
. As thirsty as I was, I could only imagine Nomad’s suffering. The long, narrow road behind us looked identical to the road ahead, and I began to question our progress. It sometimes seemed as though we weren’t moving at all but just walking in place, day after day. Between the highway signs, which were few and far between, I often watched the sun to be sure that we were still headed in the right direction. Not far north of the road we traveled was the place they called Death Valley. I prayed for our deliverance, wondering if there was anyone out there to hear me.
Even through the agonizing hunger and thirst and the loneliness that accompanied them, the beauty of the desert was undeniable. There was something divine about its untouched landscape and the cloudless blue sky above that shone with millions of sparkling diamonds upon the fall of night and blood red in between. It was strange how the farther I moved from civilization, the closer the heavens seemed. I marveled at the fact that any kind of vegetation and animal life still managed to thrive out there despite the dry, harsh conditions. Life, I realized, adapts to whatever environment with which it is presented in order to go on. In the eloquent words of Ian Malcolm, “life finds a way.”
Then the half-buried skeleton of another traveler gone astray reminded me that the same is true of death.
A sign reading “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada” had been knocked down and was lying sideways on the grassy median separating inbound and outbound traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard. I imagined smiling faces in cars on one side of the road and frowning on the other. That town, I figured, had been one of the first to come down when disposable income had gone the way of the dinosaur—with a sudden and fateful blast. I find it ironic that the terms “America’s Playground” and “Sin City” once referred to the same place.
I decided that as long as I was there, I might as well stay on the strip. Why not try to enjoy my visit? Not that I was a gambler, really. Not in the Vegas sense, anyway. Besides, I figured that wouldn’t be much of a thing anymore. Even with the redevelopment of so many industries, I still had not seen a dollar change hands since the collapse. I was more interested in the city itself—the people, the lights, the colors, and the architecture.
The World as We Know It Page 19
