by Nick Cole
The whole thing felt wrong.
Maybe you just overreacted, my friend?
No. No, I don’t think I did. There was something wrong about the whole…
When you were young, you noticed that older people were always afraid. Afraid of kidnappers and telemarketers. Afraid of the new. Afraid of the unknown. Maybe you are old now and afraid of new things, my friend?
Maybe the old of my youth were just cautious. And I am old.
He walked back to their small fire, smelling the smoke and the food and the heavy scent of sagebrush thick in the first of the evening cool.
“Poppa, tell me all about elephants,” she said.
The Old Man looked at the Boy. The Boy watched him.
Is he nodding? Does he want to know about elephants also?
Remember he too is young. To the young the world is exciting and not frightening. The world is elephants and not… fools or clowns?
Psychopaths.
Evil.
“What do you want to know about them?” he asked as she handed him his plate. In the first bite he knew he was starving.
I am hungry like I was when I was young. So maybe I am not old.
You are old, my friend. Like me.
“Where’d they come from? What do they eat? Can they do other tricks? Was that the biggest one you’ve ever seen? You know, Poppa, tell us everything.”
Chewing quickly, shoveling another bite into his still-moving mouth, he looked at the Boy.
The Boy nodded.
And so the Old Man told them all about elephants. All about Africa. All about lions and things he’d read in books and been taught in school when he was young.
Later, when the fire was low and he could hear them both sleeping, he lay still and watched the stars above.
I did not think I knew so much about elephants.
Chapter 35
The road wound higher and higher into the forests that surrounded Flagstaff. For a while the going was slow as the tank maneuvered around lone eruptions of pine that shot through the lanes of the old highway.
In time, the crumbling remains of buildings poked through the unchecked growth, and when the Old Man went to consult the map as to how much farther they might go that day, he could not find it.
When did I…
When the Fool shook your hand.
The Old Man replayed the moment in the miles to come, as his granddaughter called out her intentions each time they needed to maneuver off-road.
“Okay, Poppa, we’re going around this crazy tree.”
I was pretty out of it yesterday. I could have dropped it in the dust perhaps.
“Poppa, we’ll go to the right of this collapsed bridge, okay?”
Or anyone in the circus or the town could have snatched it from me.
“Poppa, how do you think that truck managed to flip itself across all the lanes? What a bad driver he must’ve been!”
Or it is somewhere here with us and I have simply misplaced it.
They passed the fire-blackened remains of a vehicle, the likes of which the Old Man had never seen before. Three blackened skeletons lay next to its massive wheels, still twisting in agony.
Or laughing.
In the end, when we are all skeletons, who will be able to tell if we were crying or laughing at what has happened to us?
No one, my friend.
And…
It won’t be important anymore.
“What kind of car was that, Poppa?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen its like before and maybe the fire made it unrecognizable.”
“Why do you think they just sat there and let it burn, Poppa?”
He didn’t answer.
“Why, Poppa?”
“Because there was nothing they could do about it.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
No, it doesn’t.
THE STOCKADE AT Flagstaff was a collection of fallen pine logs that had once formed a wall for defense and since had been dragged away from a hotel that overlooked the old highway.
The Old Man let the tank idle outside in the parking lot of the hotel. They watched, waiting for somebody to come out and greet them.
The Boy’s strong hand rested against the tomahawk.
There are leaves and debris here. No one has been here in quite a while.
Yes. No one.
The Old Man turned off the tank and listened. He could hear a crow calling out stridently.
I have a very bad feeling about this place.
What kind of bad feeling?
The kind that says I do not want to know what I might find in there. That kind of feeling. The feeling of knowing that whatever you find, you won’t like it.
The Old Man dismounted and the Boy followed.
As his granddaughter began to climb out of the driver’s hatch, he motioned for her to stay. Her look of displeasure was instantaneous.
“It’s your turn to guard the tank,” he called back to her.
She sat down, dangling her feet over the side.
The Old Man heard the crunch of gravel beneath his boots as he and the Boy crossed the tired parking lot.
In the lobby they found nothing. No one.
The old furniture was gone. Instead there were desks.
As though someone had set up some kind of headquarters here.
And where are they now?
And where will we find fuel?
“What do you think happened here?” asked the Boy.
There is a story of salvage here. But what it is, I don’t know.
“I can’t tell. They had walls. They had shelter. If they were attacked, there should at least be bodies.”
The Boy limped through the dusty light to the back of the lobby.
He’s heading to the bar. There was always a bar back that way in these kinds of places. How does he know that?
Maybe he knows more of these places alongside the road than I do. Maybe he was born and raised in these places. Maybe they are as familiar to him as my shed would be to me.
You don’t live there anymore, my friend.
It’s hard to think that I live or lived in any other place, ever. My shed will always be home for me.
After a moment, when he could see only the dim outline of the Boy, he called out, “Did you find anything back there?”
The Boy returned, holding a coffee mug.
He held it out to the Old Man.
Inside, the remains of a punch-red syrup had dried into a shell at the bottom of the mug.
The Old Man smelled it. He smelled the heat and the straw and the sugar and the Fool.
The Circus had come to town.
THEY HAD DRIVEN through the remains of the town and now the heat faded as the summer day bled away. In the afternoon, a cool pine breeze came up and dried the sweat on the Old Man’s back.
North of town, a massive rock the size of a small mountain loomed high into the darkening sky. Flagstaff, falling into disrepair, surrendering to time, settled as night birds and small animals began their first forays into the early evening.
Above him, the pines that were reclaiming the town, growing up through roads and sidewalks and buildings, whispered together making a soft white noise.
They parked the tank underneath an overpass, and as they began to make the night’s meal, the Old Man wandered through the remains of a nearby gas station.
There is nothing left here.
How could there be after forty years?
All those years of living and salvaging in the village, I thought that much of the world was the same as Yuma, or Los Angeles or the cities I had seen on TV. Destroyed. I felt as though our little village was the only place in all the world that had survived.
Remained.
Then you found Tucson and all these places. The Dam. The outpost. All the other places that seemed to have had their own stories since the bombs.
Yes, they were not all “nuked” or touched by war as we had imagined.
But everything is touched by our downfall.
Yes.
Everyone in those days ran for cover. Into the hills. Into the wilderness. Wherever they could, thinking only of escape. Unprepared for what it takes to live in such places…
Of wilderness.
Of desert.
Of wasteland.
The Old Man found a cash box underneath the counter inside the gas station, hidden on a small ledge out of sight.
He pulled it out onto the countertop where once lottery tickets and quick snacks must have waited for purchase. Now there was nothing.
How did they miss this?
The Old Man opened it and found a stack of brittle paper money lying within.
When you are coming for food you take what you can find. You’ve been living in the wilderness and all you’ve brought is long gone. Days turn to months. Months turn to years. So you go into town. Hoping that somewhere in it is a bag of stale chips or even a can of soup or stew that might still be good. Your mouth waters at the thought of such once-common delicacies.
You no longer think of lobster.
Or even money. What good is it when you’re starving?
There was a kind of canned stew I loved in college. But I grew tired of it. I remember I didn’t even buy any of it that last year.
What was it called?
The Old Man thought about all the times he had shopped for it, prepared it, eaten it.
And now I can’t even remember its name.
He returned to the tank in the blue twilight of evening.
The Boy and his granddaughter had already eaten and when he approached through the darkness he could hear his granddaughter laughing.
The Boy must have said something, which is strange because he never talks unless he is spoken to.
He sat down to his plate of beans and rice. His granddaughter handed him a few fire-warmed tortillas.
This is like camping. When I was young we went camping a few times. It was like this.
You are thinking too much about the past and not about the present. You need fuel and to find a map so you know where you are going.
I remember the map mostly. All the way to Albuquerque, turn left, go north.
You cannot afford to make a mistake, my friend. Your fuel tanks won’t suffer a wrong turn.
“Have either of you seen my map?”
The fire popped.
His granddaughter and the Boy each shook their heads.
The Old Man sighed to himself.
“I think I may have lost it.”
Or the Fool took it, my friend.
I don’t want to say that. I don’t want to make him seem more frightening than he already is.
Why?
Because it will worry them.
No, why are you afraid of him?
Because there is reason to be afraid of him. Of that, I am very sure.
“Do you think it is lost for good?” asked the Boy.
The Old Man set his plate down, rubbing his fingers together because it had gotten hot as it lay next to the fire. He picked up the plate again. He sighed.
“Yes,” he confessed.
It is best to admit the truth, even when you don’t want to. Even if it makes you look old and foolish. We have too little fuel to afford my pride.
Yes.
The Boy stood up and disappeared into the darkness. The Old Man could hear him rustling through his pack. Then he was back by the fire, standing above them.
The Boy held out a folded map that glistened in the firelight.
The Old Man took it and began to unfold it.
It was larger than his map.
The entire United States.
Roads crossing the entire continent.
And…
Notes like “Plague” and “Destroyed” and “Gone.”
Has he been to all these places?
The Boy sat down and stared into the firelight.
He is somewhere else. Somewhere else with someone else.
On the back of the map were names and words and identifiers that hinted at the details of an untold story.
CPT DANFORTH, KIA CHINESE SNIPER IN SACRAMENTO
SFC HAN, KIA CHINESE SNIPER IN SACRAMENTO
CPL MALICK, KIA RENO
SPC TWOOMEY, KIA RENO
PFC UNGER, MIA RENO
PFC CHO, MIA RENO
PV2 WILLIAMS, KIA RENO
And…
Lola.
Lola.
And who was Lola?
When the Old Man looked up at the Boy again he’d meant to ask him how and why and even, where, but the Boy was staring at something high up. Something on the massive rock that loomed above Flagstaff. The Old Man followed the Boy’s gaze.
High up on the rock burned a small campfire, and above it the stars wheeled like broken glass moving in time to some unheard waltz.
Chapter 36
The Boy sat by the fire sharpening his tomahawk.
“What’re you going to do?” asked the Old Man.
“I will go up there. Near there, and see who it is. Maybe they know where we can find the fuel that’s supposed to be here.”
The Old Man started the tank and backed it out from under the overpass. When he came back to the fire he said, “We can watch you through the night vision. If you get in trouble maybe you can signal us from up there. We could try to come up and help you.”
The Boy nodded as he finished lacing up his old boots. He stood, stretching the weak part of himself, twisting back and forth. The Old Man watched his granddaughter watch the Boy.
What does she see?
What do you think she sees, my friend? She is young and so is he.
When the Boy was ready to go he turned and said, “I’ll try to be back before dawn.”
Then he was gone into the darkness. For a moment they heard his steps and then nothing. As if he had been swallowed by the night.
The Old Man sat down next to the fire.
His granddaughter watched the dark shape of the massive rock. It blocked out its section of the night like a piece of black velvet hung to blot out the stars. Or an empty place in the universe.
“Will he be okay, Poppa?”
The Old Man wanted to think about that question, but he knew he mustn’t. He knew he must give her an answer quickly. And when he responded, he knew he should’ve been faster. He knew when he saw the worry and doubt in her eyes.
“I think he will. He seems to know the ways one needs to survive. I think he has been alone for much of his life.”
“Na-ah, Poppa. He was raised by a soldier.”
How does she know that? When have they talked about it?
“He was?” asked the Old Man.
“Yes, Poppa. I had to ask him what a soldier was and he told me. Do you know what a soldier is, Poppa?”
I do.
But maybe his meaning is different from the one I know. I must listen more than I speak.
Yes.
“What did he say a soldier was?”
“He said it was someone who never gives up, Poppa.”
The Old Man thought of Sergeant Major Preston. The tank and all that the soldier had prepared for the Old Man’s village to come and find one day.
I think cancer got me…. God bless America.
Yes. That is what he wrote in the journal I found. I had not said that word “America” in a very long time before I read it in his journal.
And if I’m completely honest with myself, I had forgotten it.
What good was a word in the years of sun and sand and salvage that followed the winter that came after the day of the bombs? What good was “America” now?
It only reminded me of all that was gone.
The Old Man watched the fire.
But Sergeant Major Preston of the Black Horse Cavalry hadn’t forgotten about America.
And neither had the soldier who’d raised the Boy. Whoever he was.
They didn’t forget.
They didn’
t give up.
“Yes,” he said to his granddaughter. “That is what a soldier is.”
She was silent. She pressed her lips together, which was her way when she had more to say or was very excited about something she wanted to do but had to be patient until she could do it.
Young girls are hungry for all the good they think life holds. That is their innocence.
“Poppa?”
“Yes.”
“He also had a wife.”
“Oh.”
“She’s dead but he didn’t tell me how.”
“He seems young for that.”
She was silent. And then, “Does he, Poppa?”
“Maybe not to you, but to me he is very young.”
“Well, that’s because you’re old now, Poppa.” She laughed and snorted.
The Old Man nodded.
“It’s true. But it means I did something right, doesn’t it? It means I was good at living. That’s what getting old means. It means you’re successful at living.”
She laughed.
I love her laugh.
I wish I knew all the secret words that would make her laugh anytime I wanted to hear it. Anytime I needed to hear it. If there is anyone in control of this crazy life, that is my bargain I’ll make with you. You can have anything you want. Just give me her laugh. Let me take it wherever I have to go after this.
Deal?
Silence.
And…
Please?
“He was in battles, Poppa. And he’s crossed the whole country. The whole United States, Poppa.”
Her eyes shine when she talks about him.
Her eyes remind me of my wife’s, her grandmother. When she was young.
She is always young to me.
“He has done a lot for such a young man,” said the Old Man.
“What is that, Poppa?”
“What is what?”
“The United States?”
I guess we never talked about that. We talked of salvage and ice cream and jet airplanes like my dad once flew across the world. Many things. But not the United States.
“It was our country.”
She said nothing. Thinking.
Then…
“Is it still our country?”
IN THE NIGHT, when the moon was falling to the far horizon, long after the Old Man had tried to explain the concept of “States” and then tried to remember as many of their names as he could, which was not many, he flipped the switch on the optics. He scanned the giant rock. He could not see the Boy.
