Everyone Says That at the End of the World

by Owen Egerton

  The crab’s elongated, lifeless body hung from the shell.

  “He’s dead,” the lawyer said.

  But as they watched, the crab emerged from behind the body, pushing his discarded exoskeleton forward.

  “He’s molting,” said the bald man. “It’s how they grow.”

  “Death and change,” said the auto mechanic. “Difficult to tell the two apart.”

  To Click the red moon dazzled, the wind rushed like chilled water through his shell, the sharp ground pushed upward, cutting into his claws. He was malleable, vulnerable, sensing the world through a skin beneath the skin. He should wait to harden, wait until his new outer layer solidified around him. But he would not. He crawled and felt everything.

  THE

  LAST DAY

  I won’t meet your baby

  MILTON WOKE RICA in the cool pale hour before dawn. She opened her eyes to his old face, even older now. He smiled and whispered her name, his voice filled with crack and vibrato. She stared at his face outlined by the half-lit sky.

  “Milton, you’ve seen her?”

  He nodded.

  “What is she like?”

  “She is like her mother and she is like no one who has ever been.” He brushed some hair from her forehead. “It’s time to go.”

  She moved and felt her belly tight and round. All her muscles ached. Slowly, with Milton’s help, she lifted her weight to standing.

  Ami was awake, sitting cross-legged by the ashes of the fire, Roy’s head cradled in her lap. She was breathing out tears. “He’s wet,” she said. “He’s bleeding.”

  Milton stepped toward him and knelt. “Roy?”

  Rica followed. She awkwardly sat and put a hand to Roy’s cheek. It was cool. The sand around his neck was a red mush. Roy blinked and smiled at her. “I’m sorry I won’t meet your baby.”

  “Shhhh,” Rica said. “We can drive you somewhere. We can find help.”

  “The car won’t work,” Ami said. “Won’t do anything.”

  “We’ll figure something out,” Rica said to Roy. “You’ll be all right.”

  Roy winked at Rica. “Thanks, Rica.” He turned his head to Milton. “Where will you go?”

  “The lights,” Milton said.

  Roy nodded. “I need to stay here, okay?”

  Milton nodded.

  “You should go now.”

  Milton nodded.

  “Good. Good.” Roy blinked his eyes.

  “Hey,” Milton said, touching his friend’s chest. “As far as spatting goes, you’re a natural.”

  Roy grinned.

  Milton leaned in close, running both his hands through Roy’s hair and gripping his head. He touched his forehead to Roy’s and stayed still. A sob, like a hiccup, bubbled up from Milton’s throat.

  Rica looked up to Ami. Ami’s wet eyes catching all the sad promise of the predawn light. Her eyes were asking Rica, and Rica had no answer for her.

  Milton stood. “We have to go.”

  “I’m staying,” Ami said.

  “Ami,” Roy said. “Come on now.”

  “Why? Why would I walk out there? Away from you?”

  Roy laughed. “You got me stumped.”

  Milton held out a hand to Rica. She took it and stood. Milton moved his head to the west. The lights still drifted above the far horizon. Milton and Rica stepped away from Roy and Ami and the wet, red sand. They stepped toward the lights spinning like renegade stars. Rica stopped and looked back. Ami was stroking Roy’s face.

  “Milton,” Rica whispered. “He’ll die.”

  Milton squeezed her hand and pulled west. “Everyone dies today.”

  Better than coffee

  MORNING FROST GLITTERED under his feet like ground stars.

  Hayden had walked all night, following at first the blue, sad-faced man. But when the sky to the east was just beginning to pale, he discovered he was walking alone. He stopped and watched the sun peel over the desert floor. Startled to think this happened every day.

  All his limbs ached and his head felt like a punctured tennis ball. But he was smiling. Hayden was surprised to be alive and it felt very good.

  “I should be surprised to be alive more often,” he said aloud. “It’s better than coffee.”

  Save for a few tufts of trees and grass, the landscape was wide and empty. Hayden noticed a far-off cloud catching the early sunlight, he noticed the frost melting to drops of wet, he noticed the changing smell of a warming Earth.

  He came to a two-lane highway and walked along the white stripes with the new sun to his left. The road led into the small town of Marfa.

  Marfa sat all but empty in the clear morning light. No cars drove down its wide streets. No lights shone from the old houses, store windows, or the stone courthouse. Hayden passed only a scattering of people: two old men rolling cigarettes on a porch and a young, bearded man in sunglasses and a stocking cap sitting on the sidewalk outside a closed coffee shop.

  “You got the key?” he asked as Hayden approached.

  “Afraid not.”

  “This is bad,” the man said. “I bet the Iron and Wine show is canceled, too.”

  “Where is everybody?” Hayden asked.

  “Vaporized or something. Other people just drove away.”

  “Vaporized?”

  “Pop. Like, turned to dust or beamed up or something.” The young man studied Hayden’s face for a moment. “Hey. You’re that guy from that show.”

  “Yeah.” Hayden nodded. “That’s me.”

  “I hate that show.”

  Hayden shrugged. “It’s a living,” he said. “Or it was.” He started off down the empty street.

  “Hey, you want to get high?” the man called.

  “Maybe later,” Hayden said without slowing.

  Hayden moved south through the town and over a set of train tracks stretching east and west. He navigated poorly paved roads past small houses and trailers. Then there were no more houses or streets, paved or otherwise. The town ended abruptly, like some back lot set with just enough town to fill the background and beyond that nothing.

  Hayden found himself again in the rocky desert. He continued south. The only sounds heard were his shoes against the hard sand and the warbling wind. His mind fell quiet as well, trying to keep a loose grip on the near emptiness of the view. He slowed his breath. This is what they mean by holy.

  Less than a mile away from the last homes of Marfa, Hayden came upon a wooden cabin. It stood at a slant, the roof sinking slightly near the center. Gray-brown logs and mud made the four walls. A chimney of stones was crumbling from the roof. No road, not even a dirt one, led to the house. Neither telephone wires, nor tire tracks. No path at all. No sign of connection. The house stood alone, facing a landscape with no visible life aside from desert scrub.

  A hundred yards or so in front of the house stood a sand-brown metal shed, a much more recent construction than the crumbling house.

  Hayden paused. No lights could be seen through the small windows, no smoke from the falling chimney, but Hayden was sure the cabin was not empty. He wanted to walk on, leave the ruin behind him, but something urged him toward the porch steps.

  He touched the doorknob and the door swung open a few inches.

  “Hello?” Hayden peeked his head around the door. The air smelled old, musty. A shadowed hallway lay before him. “Anybody here?” From somewhere in the house came the echo of a strained breath.

  “Hello,” he spoke. “I was just, you know, passing by.”

  The moan answered, and in it a word: “Come.”

  Hayden wanted to run, but he stepped forward and into the house.

  “Do you . . . need some help? Should I go—”

  “Come,” the moan said.

  He walked a few steps down the hall into the shadows. Two voices in his head: one begging him to run, the other, quieter by far, asking him to stay. He walked a few more steps. Framed photos hung on the hallway’s walls, but Hayden saw them only from the corner o
f his eyes. His focus was on the door to the left at the end of the hall.

  He still felt the sensation of holiness that had come upon him while walking, but it was now laced with horror. He was walking toward something holy, a terrible holy.

  “Please,” the voice wheezed. The sound froze Hayden’s blood. He stopped before the closed door. He could hear the breathing on the other side.

  The two voices still wrestled inside Hayden. To run or to stay. To survive or to serve. The choice was new to Hayden. Most likely, the same two voices had argued every day, but Hayden had never considered following the quiet voice as an option. Survive always. Only give away what you do not need, or, more honestly, what you do not want. He had done some charity work, visited sick kids in the hospital. It was part of the role of Saint Rick, but he had enjoyed it as well. He wouldn’t have done it otherwise. In fact, Hayden realized, he had only served when he desired the experience of serving.

  “Please.”

  He would not like what he found on the other side of the door. He was sure of that.

  “Please.”

  He opened the door and stepped inside. It was a small room with a chair and against the far wall, a narrow bed clumped with white sheets. A warm breeze blew in through an open window. At first he thought the room was empty, that perhaps he had only heard the wind. He was sighing in relief when the sheets on the bed moved and Hayden saw her. She was old, so thin she was almost not there at all. Her face was sunken, her skin paper.

  Beside the bed was a table with a pitcher of water and a glass. The figure in the bed reached out one thin hand and gestured toward the glass. Hayden stepped forward without a thought. He took the glass and filled it. He knelt by the woman and moved his hand behind her head, gently lifting and placing the glass to her chapped lips. Her mouth opened to the water. Her eyes blinked open. Her eyes, a pale blue, stared up into Hayden’s.

  “You came,” she said. “I thought you were dead.”

  “I . . . ” Hayden hesitated. Improvisation was never his strength. “I’m not dead.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad.” She smiled. “Are you sure you weren’t dead? I was sure you were.”

  “I got better.”

  “Oh. All right then.”

  She closed her eyes and reached out a thin hand, like a bare elm branch with white bark. He placed his hand in hers. Her skin loose, tissue, warm.

  “The mystery lights. Can you see them?” she said. “All around now.”

  Hayden squeezed her hand. He knew this moment. He recognized what it was. This was the reason he had come so far.

  Now would be the time

  RICA ARCHED HER spine, using her palms as support for her strained lower back. Milton stooped forward, his back forming the partner parenthesis to hers. They walked west, their dawn shadows stretching before them on the packed, dry earth. The mystery lights still bounced in the distance. Across the sands, standing in the line of their pointing shadows, stood a small cabin solid in the soft morning sun.

  “There,” Milton said. “That’s where we need to be.”

  “Milton, there’s something I want to tell you,” she said.

  “Now would be the time.”

  She stopped and turned toward him. “I love you more than I knew I loved you,” she said. “I love you so much I can walk into the desert and feel . . . ” she thought for a moment. “Not safe. I don’t feel safe. But I feel all right not feeling not safe.” She took his hands in hers. His hands were soft, like her grandfather’s. “If today is the day everything ends, I’m glad I’m with you.” She looked up into his face. “I’ve also loved Hayden Brock since I was fourteen years old.”

  Milton touched her cheek and smiled, a hundred wrinkles spreading from the corners of his eyes. “Rica, I had a dream come true. I got to grow old with you.”

  She smiled. He squeezed her hand and led her toward the cabin.

  “There’s something I haven’t told you, too,” he said.

  “Now would be the time.”

  “I don’t know what it is, yet.”

  Home-desire

  JESUS-18 WAS TIRED. His feet ached. The desert ground, though cooler in the predawn dark, was still hard. He had taken off the heavy shoes the men had given him and left them by a sleeping woman in a doorway. He still wore the warm shirt and strange hat. He had been traveling such distances, passing crowds and noises and miracles. There were miracles everywhere. Polished stones the size of homes moving like chariots, but with no horse. He had ridden in more than one, racing faster than a body falls. Stone and glass towers stretched higher than the Temple by five times. Chunks of sun in jars of ice hanging on the walls, the ceilings, the ends of sticks.

  And still with all these marvels Jesus-18 recognized the misery. The rich still looked sick. The poor still forgotten.

  In the city he had seen horrible statues. Stone images of dying men, cleanly crucified. They were hung on the outside of ornate buildings. At first, Jesus-18 kept his distance from these places. Were they prisons? Were they houses of execution? Curiosity worked against his fear. He peeked inside one of the buildings, prying the door and pushing his head in. Another crucified statue with a painted contorted face hung before empty rows and rows. Is this where they sit and watch the long death? So much wealth, so much cruelty. Like Rome. A black-robed man approached the door. A holder of nails, Jesus-18 guessed. Jesus-18 let the door fall closed and ran.

  He had left the city and sought the desert, walking into the night on the hard silent sands, talking with strange pilgrims, making up stories about red moons and fierce stars.

  He didn’t mind confusion. He was used to it. As a child the confusion would come in waves. Confusion and sadness. A home-desire sadness. Jesus-18 believed this home-desire was the primary emotion of all people. Home, he also felt, had very little to do with where one was born or raised. Home was the urge of what might be. What could and should be. Home was the kingdom rising up within the empire, the flower growing in the rock wall, the kind want emerging in the cool heart. He saw homesick souls in all he passed, no matter how foreign, how crippled, how cruel. He saw this home-desire even in the dead.

  Like a seed, that’s what he liked to say. See the seed grow, transform from small to large, stone to tree. Mystery. Since there is no way to understand a seed, why worry about understanding God? Once he saw that understanding was not the way to know God, he was free. Wine may come from water, waves can be stilled, quiet hearts can once again beat. All things can be if you surrender the need to understand.

  Last night he slept in the ruins of a desert farm. He dreamed of his mother. She had the face of every woman he had known. She was holding James as a baby to her chest and singing. Her voice was soft rain.

  He woke at dawn and greeted the sun.

  Abba, he prayed, are you here?

  He wept. And wept. As he walked toward nothing but more solitude. The sun peeked over the horizon, sending his shadow long before him. He turned, looking back toward the new sun. In the shine he could see silhouettes walking toward him. Angels? Was he going to be taken home? Was this salvation? They crept closer. Jesus-18 shielded his eyes, but he could still see only outlines against an orange sky. Then a cloud passed behind them, smearing the morning colors. Jesus saw a crowd, twenty, maybe more, walking slowly. They were singing.

  He remembered walking, arguing with Peter, laughing with James, flirting with Mary. And talking, ideas popping to life like morning flowers. They were bringing the kingdom. A kind kingdom. No more slavery and riches. Find the abandoned, feed the hungry. All things can be.

  The walkers were moving closer, the singing clearer.

  Ah, how John would whistle, how Thomas would trip over his robe, how the people listened or yelled, how fun it all was.

  Slowly, slowly, the walkers approached. The sun rose slightly over their heads. How many miles had they walked? How many had he? He looked at his feet, the dust and blisters, the black nails. Remember how she had washed them, how he hurt for h
er, how he wanted her, how the hurt and want were one and the same? How he knew that to wash his feet was love, how he wanted to share this. Ah, his feet, bent from many, many steps. Strong from many steps. As he watched, a blue-green shell crawled to the side of his foot. It reached out a large purple claw and gave Jesus-18 a tiny nip on his big toe.

  Moments from a family

  MILTON AND RICA stepped past the light-brown shed toward the house.

  The gate was open. Spits of dust blew through the yard. Rica raised her hand to shield her eyes. The steps up to the porch were worn. Rica could feel them bend under her weight. The front door was open, swinging on its hinges.

  “Hello,” Milton called out, his voice full of crackles. “Is anyone there?”

  There was a breath of silence and then a voice, a voice as familiar to Rica as her own. “We’re in the bedroom on the left.”

  Drips of sweat rolled from under her arms. Milton walked in first. Rica two steps behind him. The walls were lined with framed photos. Some yellowing, the edges curling under the glass. Portraits of a small family. A young woman with thin lips and kind eyes. Other photos were more recent. A woman and a man holding a child on his shoulders. They’re laughing. A woman and a boy in the sunlight. The boy now older, wearing blue graduation robes, the woman, also older, beside him smiling. Another photo, black and white, an unsmiling couple against a white backdrop. As far as Rica could tell, the scenes were in no order. Years and generations were scattered, moments from a family. Near the end of the hall was a photo of the kind-eyed woman. She is standing in front of this same house, her belly tight against a red dress. One hand shades her face, the other rests on the belly. Below the shadow of her hand. The woman is not smiling. Rica felt a kick.

  “Rica?” Milton said. He was standing by the open door, a hand held out to her. She walked to him, wiping her face. She took his hand and together they entered the bedroom.

  Inside the small room a man sat on a chair with his back to the door. Rica’s heart made small popping sounds she was sure the whole room could hear.