A Town Called America

by Andrew Alexander

  Later in the afternoon, when he was able to find the willpower to get himself up, he used a chisel and carved an epitaph into the large stone at the head of the grave:

  FOREVER YOU AND I WILL REMAIN TOGETHER. YOU’LL ALWAYS BE MY SOUL MATE. HERE LIES MY BELOVED JAMIE, MY FRIEND, LOVER, AND WIFE.

  By evening, Robbie had lain down under the stars and fallen asleep next to Jamie for the last time.

  As he woke up from his dream about his lover, it took a moment for him to realize where he was. Still in the canoe, he awoke to a sound he hadn’t heard in a very long time. It was without a doubt the sound of horses. Robbie sat up, listening intently for a moment, then paddled toward the shore.

  Once he was on dry ground, he carefully made his way up to his little house through the darkness and sat down on the porch swing with his revolver drawn and on his lap. Robbie wasn’t going to take any chances.

  Not long after taking his seat, three horses came trotting up past the barn, stopping ten feet from the porch where Robbie sat. He looked at the riders carefully but didn’t recognize any of them. “Take what you want. I don’t need any of it anymore,” he said in a somber voice.

  “Well, boy, I’m Billy, and we aren’t here to take anything from you. As a matter of a fact, I’m a friend of your daddy’s. Is he around here?”

  “I don’t know you, and no, it’s just me here.”

  “Well, this here is Ricky and Chris. It’s been a few years since I’ve been around here, and the last time I was, you were about half the size you are now. You’re Robin, right?”

  “Yeah, I’m Robin, but folks call me Robbie. Now what is it you want?” he asked, seeming only to half care.

  “Billy, let me talk to him,” Chris said, as she dismounted her horse. “Your name is Robbie?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I said.”

  “We’ve been riding for a long time, and if it’s not too much to ask, we’d like to stay here and recoup for a day or two or until your daddy gets back. I’m sure he won’t mind, as Mr. Billy said he and your daddy are old friends.”

  “Do what you please,” he replied.

  “Robbie, where’s your daddy?” Billy asked.

  Robbie stood up, set his pistol on the porch railing, and walked past the three horses and their riders toward the lake without saying a word. The three watched as he walked to the water then climbed into the canoe and paddled far off into the lake.

  “That’s a very odd kid,” Rick told the others.

  Billy dismounted his horse first, followed by Rick. The three of them went inside the house and lit an oil lantern that was on the coffee table in the family room. A few minutes later, Billy came from the kitchen with coffee he had heated up and served it to his two friends. It was a wonderful treat none of them had expected. Hot coffee on a cold night was always a blessing.

  For a while the three of them sat playing Monopoly, which they’d found on a bookshelf. For the rest of the night, they forgot what the world had become; the only thing that mattered was that they were there and were alive and healthy. Other than Rick lightheartedly accusing Billy of cheating, the three had a great time.

  “Rick, can I ask you something?” Chris said.

  “Sure.”

  “If you could live forever, would you want to?”

  “Where’s that coming from? But I don’t think so, so no not really.”

  “But if you could live forever with me?”

  “Chris,” Rick said, “I think you’ve had too much coffee, but when you find the Fountain of Youth, let me know.”

  “I know where to find the Fountain of Youth,” Billy said.

  “Oh, yeah? Do tell. Where does a seventy-year-old man keep it?” Rick asked.

  The room was silent until Billy laughed and said, “I’m not seventy, you asshole.”

  For the rest of the night and into the next, they didn’t see Robbie. The three of them had walked to the lake twice but didn’t see any sign of him or his canoe.

  Chris, however, did find Jamie’s grave, and she knew by the date on the headstone that they’d either shown up at exactly at the right time or at the worst possible time, considering that she had died so recently. She showed the grave to the other two, and they all agreed they needed to find Robbie as soon as possible before he did something terrible. Chris volunteered to look for him at the lake. Rick would stay at the house, and Billy would ride along the roads.

  Chris packed her backpack with water and a change of clothes, pulled her hair out of her ponytail so that it fell freely over her shoulders. She put on her army jacket and boots and started walking. The idea was that she’d walk around the entire lake then come back to the house. The lake was big enough that, starting so late in the evening, she’d return just before morning.

  She set out on her trek around the lake. She walked by the shore but saw no sign of Robbie or anyone else. After a few hours, she eventually found the canoe tied to a tree near the far end of the lake. As she looked around, she saw nothing that showed where he might have gone.

  As Chris walked she thought about the lake near Rick’s cabin and how they’d spent so much time there together before they were forced to move. She hadn’t been much older than Robbie was when the world fell apart. How could everything have changed so fast? she wondered.

  Chris decided to take a chance and go straight from the canoe into the wood line and see whether she could find any trace of Robbie, anything at all that might help her. She pushed her way into the thick of the forest, stepping over broken branches, logs, and enormous mudholes. When she looked into the ravine below, she saw what appeared to be a body and prayed it wasn’t Robbie’s. The body lay under a log, curled up.

  “Robbie!” Chris yelled. “Answer me. It’s Chris.”

  She dropped her bag and shotgun and moved down the ravine as fast as she could through the thickets. She lost her footing more than once, causing her to slide down through mud and rocks. She made her way down the steep embankment twenty feet before she reached the bottom. As soon as she landed, she knew it wasn’t Robbie under the log. It was a dead animal that looked to have once been a wild pig; the smell was overwhelming and made her sick to her stomach.

  Angry and frustrated, Chris stood up, and—whoosh—in a flash she was gone. A millisecond later she was standing at the top of the ravine again, her entire body covered in mud. She pulled dirt and twigs from her hair and clothes before picking up the things she had left on the ground.

  “You know, if I was going to kill myself, I wouldn’t lie down under a log. I’ve lived here long enough and know this place well enough that I wouldn’t fall in a ravine either.”

  As soon as Chris heard Robbie’s voice, she turned in his direction. She ran straight through the bushes and branches until she was able to grab the young man and wrap her arms around him. She held him as tightly as she could and said, “Thank God.”

  Although it was awkward for Robbie, he didn’t resist. He stood there and let her hug him until she had her fill.

  Chris then followed him up an embankment to a narrow path, which they took until they reached a small house that looked very similar to Robbie’s house by the lake.

  “What is this place?” she asked.

  “It was built a while back for my grandparents,” Robbie told her. “My dad and I were going to clear the land around here and put in a road, but as you can see, that never happened.”

  Chris and Robbie went into the house. Robbie lit an oil lamp and put coffee on the wood stove, which he had lit before he’d left. After Chris went into the bathroom to clean herself up, Robbie stepped outside to attempt to start a small generator. It came to life with a sputtering sound that soon turned into a steady hum. Then he sat down on a log about fifteen feet from the house and lit a cigarette. He inhaled deeply, blowing the smoke through his nose and repeating the process.

  When he looked up, he saw through the large bay window into the bedroom where Chris was standing. She didn’t seem to notice him, so he sat an
d watched. Chris took off her army jacket after setting her bag and weapons against the wall. She undid her belt and pulled it from the loops on her waist. With her back to the window, Robbie watched as she pulled her shirt over her head to reveal her bare back just before she unsnapped her pants and let them drop to the floor. Chris was standing there in only her black panties. She had a remarkable body that Robbie had been unaware of until that moment.

  He saw the tattoos on her arms and the scars on her back and legs. Her brown hair flowed nearly to the middle of her back. To him she looked like she was straight out of a magazine. Chris turned her head slightly over her shoulder. Looking out the window, she smiled.

  Seeing this, Robbie fell backward off the slippery log. Oh, my God, did she see me? he asked himself.

  Quickly he threw his cigarette butt on the ground and ran to the front of the house. Trying to maintain his composure, he went into the kitchen to check on the coffee.

  Sometime later, after bathing, Chris returned, fully dressed, to the family room. She sensed a slight bit of tension from Robbie, which she found cute, as Robbie was nearly the age she’d been when she’d first met Rick.

  The two sat and drank coffee and talked for hours. It was well into the night when Chris said it would be better if they waited to return the next night after sleeping. Robbie found Chris friendly and easygoing, and because of that, he felt very comfortable speaking to her.

  He told her about his mother dying, the fact that his father hadn’t returned, and Jamie having taken her own life. The only reason he could see for her having done that was that she blamed herself for her parents’ deaths. Perhaps it was something else, but honestly Robbie didn’t know.

  As it was getting close to sunrise, and they were tired, Chris told Robbie it was time for bed. She would sleep on the couch, and he could have the bedroom. As they both stood up, Robbie looked at Chris and said, “Thank you.”

  With that Chris couldn’t contain herself any longer. She asked if he were thanking her for talking with him or the show he was privy to earlier. It took him a few moments to catch on to what she was saying, but when he did, his face turned bright red. He tried to speak, but no words came out. As Chris laughed, Robbie turned and went to his room for the night.

  The sun had been up for some time when Chris stood up from the couch with a blanket wrapped around her. She walked into the bedroom where Robbie was sleeping and lay in the bed next to him, putting his arm around her before she fell back asleep. In Chris’s mind it was nothing sexual, just her way of showing him he wasn’t alone. In Robbie’s mind, however, it was something else entirely.

  That night, after they woke up, they packed a few things in their bags, put out the lantern, and began the walk back to Robbie’s house.

  TWENTY SIX

  When Chris and Robbie walked into the house together, Billy and Rick were sitting in the family room, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.

  It was evening. The sun had set, and the four sat down and talked. Robbie told them that prior to Chris finding him, he really had wanted to kill himself. In fact he’d had a gun in his mouth on more than one occasion but just couldn’t do it. He told them of Jamie’s beauty and his asking her to marry him. He told them how she had lost her parents and how he had lost his. For all that she was worth, his life never would be the same.

  The three of them sat and listened to him speak. Then they shared stories late into the night. Billy and Rick spoke about “Hotel Jackie” and how they’d managed to escape, as well as how the entire building had burned to the ground in the aftermath.

  It was a good night for the four of them, and for a short while, even Robbie forgot about the world they lived in. They Rick and Chris talked about the RV fortress and, after swearing Robbie to secrecy, even shared the story of how they had met Billy.

  Before turning in for the night, Robbie shared one last story of how long ago he had a female guest in his house who was undressing in front of the bedroom window and how he had fallen off a log outside, burning his hand with his cigarette in the process. He never said it had been Chris in the window, but in his young mind, by telling the story, he never would have to worry about keeping it a secret, because it was already out.

  As he spoke, Chris looked at him with a slight grin. Rick didn’t notice the scar on Robbie’s left hand, but when Billy saw it, he just said, “Good for you, kid.”

  After that, Robbie stood up and walked out of the room.

  Not long after, they were all asleep in their beds. Rick was with Chris; Robbie was in his room; and Billy was on the couch. The small farmhouse was silent once more.

  Over the next two years, Rick, Billy, and Chris stayed on the farm and grew even closer. In time Robbie welcomed his guests not just a friends but as family.

  They all did their parts tending to the cows, horses, and chickens, and with the young man’s guidance, they became decent farmers. It had taken time, but between the four of them, they had managed to expand the barn for the horses. They made the frame for the walls first on the ground. Then, using a series of pulleys and ropes, they propped up the frames and nailed them in place. After that they closed in the walls and built the roof. They all were grateful that Billy had worked on construction sites for so many years; his knowledge and skills made the entire project possible.

  They hunted for fresh meat in the evening and prepared it for the upcoming winter. Life on the little farm was wonderful for a time, but eventually Billy decided he and Robbie would move into the second house on the eastern side of the lake. It just made sense to give Rick and Chris some space.

  They cut a path that led from the farmhouse directly to the house up in the woods. With the path the time it took to walk there was cut down to fifteen minutes. Billy and Robbie were no strangers after moving. They both spent time at the farmhouse, or everyone gathered at their house in the woods.

  That winter hit with ferocity. By mid-December all four of them were in the farmhouse, sitting around the fireplace. They’d been snowed in for four days and only left the comfort of the house to check on the animals. As the snowstorm picked up and the winds became stronger, the little house was taking a beating. That fall they had closed in the front porch to keep the firewood dry for the winter and boarded up the windows to protect the glass.

  Robbie was on the porch, sitting on a pile of chopped wood, picking at it with his finger. Every few seconds a piece would break off, and he’d twist it in his fingers until finally he tossed it onto the porch and started the process over again.

  Burning next to him was one of his last cigarettes. Its faint glow in the darkness of the porch seemed to draw his eyes to it, as if it were some kind of focal point. Robbie had lit it with the intention of smoking it but soon became lost in his thoughts. By the time Chris came out to the porch, the cigarette had burned nearly to the filter. She had a plaid blanket wrapped around her in an attempt to stay warm. She stopped and stood next to Robbie, looking out through the screen door at the snow, not saying anything.

  Over the past year, Chris and Robbie had become especially close, and he trusted her, as she did him. Then it came: the words Chris had known were coming from how reserved Robbie had been acting the previous weeks.

  “Chris, I’m leaving come spring,” he said. “I wanted you to know first so you wouldn’t think it’s something brash or out of the blue. This place—I know you’ll take care of it. It’s yours now.”

  “Why in the world would you go and do something like that?” Chris already knew what he was going to say, so she listened without speaking until he was finished.

  “Chris, Jamie is gone, and there’s nothing you or I can do about that. I don’t have anything left here. I don’t know where I’ll go or what will happen, but I do know this: if I stay here, I’ll always be alone.”

  Robbie then told Chris about the visions and dreams he’d been having—visions he first thought were the ghost of Jamie. He knew it sounded strange, but they were so real. He went on to tell C
hris he’d been seeing her everywhere lately. When he was on the water, he had seen her standing on the shore. When he was in his room, she was in the doorway. He had seen her body lying in the bed, just as she had been when she’d died. The visions were powerful and uncomfortable, as they’d caused him to break down emotionally on more than one occasion.

  Chris listened and watched as he told her all this. She then explained that although she wasn’t an expert, she thought he was doing too much and needed rest. She said she’d had a hard time sleeping as well because of nightmares she had from time to time. All the events she’d been through in her past crept up on her occasionally. Chris also told him she was able to cope because Rick and Billy had been so supportive toward her.

  “You don’t need to go,” she said. “Stay with us, and we can help you just as Rick helps me.”

  Robbie returned her smile and told her he’d think about it. “Chris,” he said, “please don’t tell the guys about this. I’ve kept your secret all this time, even when though you never asked me to. Now I need you to do the same for me. Please?”

  “What secret, Robbie?”

  “When we met near the ravine, I saw how you moved. I don’t know what kind of powers you have, but I do know normal people don’t do what you did. But I do trust you, and I hope you trust me too.”

  “Robbie, I know how much stress you were under back then, so I’m sure it’s not what you think you saw.”

  “When you’re ready to talk,” he said, “I’ll be ready to listen, but please don’t lie to me.”

  Robbie crushed out his cigarette and went inside the house, leaving Chris on the porch. Chris, lighting a cigarette of her own, sat there, dumbfounded that Robbie had seen her move up the ravine like she did. She wasn’t sure whether she was angry because she’d been so careless to let him see her or whether it was something else.

  As winter drew on, Robbie’s nightmares weren’t gone, but they did begin to ease up. Even in the dead of winter, the group had no desire to leave the farm, as they were happy there. Life was without killing and death, which didn’t bother any of them. The farm was their paradise, and Rick, Chris, and Billy would have stayed there forever. Rick and Chris hadn’t found a town called America, but as far as they were concerned they were home.