by Nick Cole
Who am I now?
Dry wood turned to sparks floating off into the night above his fire.
What is left to do and where should I go?
And there was no answer other than his own.
Nothing and nowhere.
In the day all was hot and boiling, dry and raw. In the night tepid warmth refused to surrender until long after the bloated moon had descended into darkness.
The thin road straightened and carved its way into southern mountains.
In the road signs he spells Los Angeles.
He remembers Sergeant Presley calling it “Lost Angeles.”
I should burn the map.
What good is it now?
Mission, not complete.
But he didn’t and he continued on toward a crack where the road disappeared into the mountains.
At the last gas station in the foothills he spent the night.
There was nothing left to find here and there hadn’t been for forty years.
In the gas station’s emptiness he heard the grit of sand and glass beneath his feet. In times past, in all his wanderings with Sergeant Presley, he had wondered and even dreamed about the people of Before. What had they done in these places? There had been food and drink, beyond imagining, Sergeant Presley had explained bitterly, all on a hot day such as this, for people to stop and come in from the road.
He spelled I-C-E C-O-L-D S-O-D-A.
I was raised in places like this. It seems as though it should feel like home to me.
But it didn’t.
And . . .
I don’t care anymore.
That night, though he did not want to, he dreamed.
Dreams, who can stop them? Who can understand them?
He and Jin walked through the streets of a city. Up cobblestone streets where people live. Happy people. He turned to a fruit stand filled with green apples. It was a market day or a faire, and he selected an apple for Jin.
In that dreaming moment he understood the meaning of the name Jin. Her name meant “precious.” In the dream he was glad that he understood this now. It was as though he had found something rare and its ownership had caused his lifelong feeling of “want” to seem like a fading nightmare. As though he had recovered a lost treasure and it changed his future forever. As though his life, their life, would be only good now.
Now that he knew the meaning of her name, the dark times were behind them.
When he turned back to her, she was gone.
A happy villager, smiling, maybe the Weathered Man, told him she was over there, with the man’s wife, looking at silk dresses for their wedding. And the smiling farmer handed him the green bottle of Pee Gee Oh full of bubbles, and they drank and the farmer encouraged him to laugh and be happy.
“It’s all coming back,” said the Weathered Man in perfect English.
And the Boy knew he meant the world from Before. That the days of road and ruin are coming to an end and that there would be homes and families now. That he and Jin would have a place in this new world that everyone was so excited about.
A place together.
He was excited. He wanted to find Jin and tell her about all the good things that are soon going to happen to them.
But his mouth wouldn’t make the words to call out her name.
He searched the stalls.
He searched the roads.
It was getting dark in the dream and the market was closing.
“We’ll find her tomorrow,” said the Weathered Man. “Come home with us and stay the night.”
Though he didn’t want to be, the Boy was led home and the dream advanced in leaps and starts as the Boy watched throughout the night, looking out a small window, looking onto a dark street.
Waiting for Jin.
He could not wait to tell her that everything good was coming back again.
Soon.
In the dream he could not wait to hold her.
In the morning, the sun slammed into his weak eyes. Tears had dried on his dusty, crusted cheeks. His insides felt sore, as though they have been beaten with sticks.
He sat up and looked toward the road and the mountains.
It was real, he thought, of the dream.
The road cut its way onto a high plateau, passing stands of oak and wide expanses of rolling yellow-green grass. In a high pasture he found sheep and a man watching over them.
The man waved at him from the field and the Boy turned off the old highway and into the field.
The sheep, maybe a dozen of them, wandered and bleated absently through the tall yellow grass of mid spring. Beyond the pasture, oak trees clustered at the base of a steep range of hills that shielded any view of the east and whatever must lie that way.
“Stranger, come and have water,” called the man over the constant bleating of the sheep.
The man was rotund and dressed in a ragged collection of scraps sewn together. He carried a crooked staff and leaned on it heavily. His hair, gray, sprang from his head in every direction. His voice was a mere rumble of thunder and gravel.
“The road is hard,” he said, watching the Boy drink the cool water held in a tin cup. The water was clear and sweet.
“It’s a good spring here,” said the shepherd when the Boy did not respond.
The Boy handed the cup back.
“I have wild apples near my camp; come and have some.”
The Boy followed the man across the pasture and into a stand of wild fruit trees.
They sit in the shade, eating apples.
“Saint Maggie said that food leads to friendship.”
The Boy said nothing.
“Who might you be, now?”
The Boy opened his mouth to answer. But he couldn’t.
“Can you speak?”
The Boy shook his head.
“Then I’m sorry. The words of man are overrated. Saint Maggie again.”
The shepherd took a crunchy bite from an apple.
“I speak too much.”
Then, “That’s why I’m here. I spoke too much when I shouldn’t have. But I love to talk. Love to hear the sound of my own voice. And the sounds of others for that matter. I love talk.”
There was more silence for a while.
“Still, my words are overrated.”
“Will you stay, or are you determined to go on to the south?”
The Boy rose.
“You will find nothing worth having there!” the shepherd’s voice rose in pitched urgency.
“You will find the worst of this world and the worst that the world that died had done to itself.”
The Boy began to stumble toward the road.
“If you go west you will find life. Some. But in the south there is nothing but horror. Trust me, stranger!”
As an afterthought the shepherd said. “East. Don’t go east into the desert. That is death for sure.”
The Boy considered the high sun. Orienting himself.
He turned toward the east.
The shepherd looked at the Boy, eyes wide with amazement and then horror.
A high hill, speckled by a few gnarled oaks, rose up to the east.
The Boy began walking toward the hill.
The shepherd murmured, “No.”
The tall grass brushed against the legs of the Boy and he could hear the shepherd hobbling behind him, breathing heavily in the still air.
“Stranger, don’t go that way. I told you it was death.”
They neared the base of the steep hill as the shepherd pursued the Boy.
“There lies a desert, and it will consume you. A wasteland. You will be no more. Saint Maggie said, ‘We must do our best. We must live despite life. God will do the rest.’ Stranger, you will find no love that way. Turn west and live.”
The Boy fell to his knees and began to climb the hill.
The shepherd fell to his knees.
“I will pray for you, stranger. I will pray for you.”
The shepherd was still praying, hours la
ter, when the Boy reached the top of the steep hill and saw the line of hills beyond, descending into the vast bowl of the desert.
WHAT DO YOU find when there is nothing left, Boy?
The days were brutal and there was no water. The land fell into a furnace of burning hard-packed dirt and suffocating dunes.
You left me, Sergeant.
I had to, Boy. The world didn’t need me anymore.
I needed you.
And someone, Boy, someday will need you also.
She’s dead.
He fell to his knees and wept.
The flat desert stretched away in all directions.
Never give up, Boy. I told you. The world needs us.
You take everything with you.
It’s too much, too much to carry, you and the broken places and the evil of the world . . . and what . . . and Jin.
He stumbled.
Then he crawled.
How many days?
But to think of them was to think of the pain of all his days.
And still he crawled through the days, deeper and deeper into the burning wastes.
There can’t be anymore left of me. Tonight or tomorrow, and that would be the end of the whole mess that is the world, that is me.
In the night, the stars were cold and clear.
He watched them and thought of Jin.
I am done. There is nothing left in me with which to grieve.
He felt empty.
He felt hollow.
In the morning, the sun rose from a thin strip of light.
This is my last day.
You take everything with you.
He reached for the tomahawk.
It felt comforting. As though he had been loyal and faithful to it. As though it stood as a monument, a testament even, to all his loss and failure.
You take everything with you.
His left side would not move.
Curse you then, you never helped me in life and now you won’t go with me to my death. What good have you ever been?
Then . . .
I’ll drag you.
He watched the empty wasteland ahead and knew that he would die today somewhere within it.
Five days without water. That’s the most a man, a person, can go.
He dragged himself forward.
Sergeant Presley.
Horse.
The bearskin.
The pistol that was once a rifle.
Where did you lose that?
I cannot remember. Somewhere in the poisoned valley.
The Chinese colony at Auburn.
Escondido.
The Chinese at Sausalito.
Jin.
It was a lie.
What?
He had trouble remembering. He was crawling through chalky sand. He had been for some time.
It’s so hot now, but at least I’m not sweating.
I don’t think that is good.
It depends on what you want to accomplish.
What was a lie?
That you take everything with you. That was a lie.
Oh.
Where are they now?
Sergeant. Horse. Jin.
How can you take everything with you when it is all gone?
I was lied to.
In the end, I don’t even know who I am, where I came from. Who were my mother and father? What did it mean to be an American?
Sergeant Presley called me Boy.
The Chinese called me savage.
The savages called me Bear killer.
All of it seemed to be something that never happened or happened to someone else, long ago.
Who am I?
Jin called you . . .
“Don’t!” he croak-screamed into the dry expanse. “I can’t take it anymore.”
Hours later, crawling on his knee and pulling with his hand, dragging the side that would not work, he stopped.
He gasped, “Not much further now.”
You got to decide who you are, Boy. Not the world. Don’t let people ever tell you who you are. Some people tell nothing but lies. So why ask ’em anyways?
Yes. I remember when you said that.
I’m saying it now.
His hand felt the hard, burning surface of a road.
You’re dead.
I’m sorry about that, Boy. I never meant to leave you.
Tell me who I am.
I’m dead, Boy. Said so yourself.
Who am I?
Silence.
In the distance he heard a high-pitched whine and then a loud rumble beneath it.
He was alone in the middle of a desert plain, cracked and broken.
He laid his head down onto the hard dirt and felt it burn the side of his face as he closed his eyes.
My ears are buzzing. This must be death. It has been following me for some time. My whole life even. And now death is finally coming for me. What took you so long?
Who are you, Boy?
I don’t know. I never did.
The roar and whine consumed everything. It grew and grew, filling up the expanse of the desert and the sky. Everything was now shadow and heat.
Did you expect to find her in death?
He heard footsteps.
I was hoping to. But I think I will find only death. Who am I to think I might find Jin again? The world is made of stone. Who am I that it should be any different for me?
Death bent down and touched the Boy’s cheek.
Who am I? He mumbled to Death.
You should know who I am before you take me.
Or are you just a taker? A taker who doesn’t ask.
The Boy opened his eyes.
Death was an Old Man, thin and wiry, gray stubble. His eyes sharp and clear and blue.
“Who is he, Poppa?” A young girl’s voice from nearby.
“I don’t know. But he needs our help. He’s been out here for too long. He’s close to death.”
“I’ll get some water, Poppa,” said the girl, and the Boy heard the slap of shoes against the hot road.
The Boy began to cry.
Shaking, he convulsed.
Crying, he wheezed, begging the world not to be made of stone, begging the world to give back what it had taken from him.
“Who am I?” sobbed the Boy.
“I think he’s asking, who is he, Poppa!” said the girl as though it were all a game of guessing and she had just won.
The Old Man held the shaking, sobbing Boy and poured water onto cracked and sunburned lips in the shadow of the rumbling tank.
“He doesn’t know who he is, Poppa. Who is he?”
“He’s just a boy,” said the Old Man to his granddaughter, his voice trembling with worry and doubt.
“Who am I now?” sobbed the Boy.
The Old Man held the Boy close, willing life, precious life, back into the thin body.
“You’re just a boy, that’s all. Just a boy,” soothed the Old Man, almost in tears.
The Old Man held the Boy tightly.
“You’re just a boy,” he repeated.
“Just a boy.”
If you enjoyed
THE SAVAGE BOY, read on for an excerpt from Nick Cole’s
THE OLD MAN AND THE WASTELAND
On sale now!
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 wa
lked.
He thought about tea, but the smoke from the mesquite would betray him as would the clatter of his old blue percolator and 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.
