The road (14 page)

Does that work? No.

What's in your pack? Nothing. You can look. I know
I can look. What's in there? Nothing. Just some stuff. Nothing to eat. No.

What's your name? Ely.

Ely what? What's wrong with Ely? Nothing. Let's
go.

They bivouacked in the woods much nearer to the
road than he would have liked. He had to drag the cart while the boy steered
from behind and they built a fire for the old man to warm himself though he
didnt much like that either. They ate and the old man sat wrapped in his
solitary quilt and gripped his spoon like a child. They had only two cups and
he drank his coffee from the bowl he'd eaten from, his thumbs hooked over the
rim. Sitting like a starved and threadbare buddha, staring into the coals. You
cant go with us, you know, the man said. He nodded. How long have you been on
the road? I was always on the road. You cant stay in one place. How do you
live? I just keep going. I knew this was coming. You knew it was coming? Yeah.
This or something like it. I always believed in it. Did you try to get ready
for it? No. What would you do? I dont know. People were always getting ready
for tomorrow. I didnt believe in that. Tomorrow wasnt getting ready for them.
It didnt even know they were there. I guess not. Even if you knew what to do
you wouldnt know what to do. You wouldnt know if you wanted to do it or not.
Suppose you were the last one left? Suppose you did that to yourself? Do you
wish you would die? No. But I might wish I had died. When you're alive you've
always got that ahead of you. Or you might wish you'd never been born. Well.
Beggars cant be choosers. You think that would be asking too much. What's done
is done. Anyway, it's foolish to ask for luxuries in times like these. I guess
so. Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave. He lifted his head and
looked across the fire at the boy. Then he looked at the man. The man could see
his small eyes watching him in the firelight. God knows what those eyes saw. He
got up to pile more wood on the fire and he raked the coals back from the dead
leaves. The red sparks rose in a shudder and died in the blackness overhead.
The old man drank the last of his coffee and set the bowl before him and leaned
toward the heat with his hands out. The man watched him. How would you know if
you were the last man on earth? he said. I dont guess you would know it. You'd
just be it. Nobody would know it. It wouldnt make any difference. When you die
it's the same as if everybody else did too. I guess God would know it. Is that
it? There is no God. No?

There is no God and we are his prophets. I dont
understand how you're still alive. How do you eat? I dont know. You dont know?
People give you things. People give you things. Yes.

To eat. To eat. Yes. No they dont. You did. No I
didnt. The boy did. There's other people on the road. You're not the only ones.
Are you the only one? The old man peered warily. What do you mean? he said. Are
there people with you? What people? Any people. There's not any people. What
are you talking about? I'm talking about you. About what line of work you might
be in. The old man didnt answer. I suppose you want to go with us. Go with you.
Yes.

You wont take me with you. You dont want to go. I
wouldnt have even come this far but I was hungry. The people that gave you
food. Where are they? There's not any people. I just made that up. What else
did you make up? I'm just on the road the same as you. No different. Is your
name really Ely? No.

You dont want to say your name. I dont want to say
it. Why?

I couldnt trust you with it. To do something with
it. I dont want anybody talking about me. To say where I was or what I said
when I was there. I mean, you could talk about me maybe. But nobody could say
that it was me. I could be anybody. I think in times like these the less said
the better. If something had happened and we were survivors and we met on the
road then we'd have something to talk about. But we're not. So we dont. Maybe
not. You just dont want to say in front of the boy. You're not a shill for a
pack of roadagents? I'm not anything. I'll leave if you want me to. I can find
the road. You dont have to leave. I've not seen a fire in a long time, that's
all. I live like an animal. You dont want to know the things I've eaten. When I
saw that boy I thought that I had died. You thought he was an angel? I didnt
know what he was. I never thought to see a child again. I didnt know that would
happen. What if I said that he's a god? The old man shook his head. I'm past
all that now. Have been for years. Where men cant live gods fare no better.
You'll see. It's better to be alone. So I hope that's not true what you said
because to be on the road with the last god would be a terrible thing so I hope
it's not true. Things will be better when everybody's gone. They will? Sure
they will. Better for who? Everybody.

Everybody. Sure. We'll all be better off. We'll
all breathe easier. That's good to know. Yes it is. When we're all gone at last
then there'll be nobody here but death and his days will be numbered too. He'll
be out in the road there with nothing to do and nobody to do it to. He'll say:
Where did everybody go? And that's how it will be. What's wrong with that?

In the morning they stood in the road and he and
the boy argued about what to give the old man. In the end he didnt get much.
Some cans of vegetables and of fruit. Finally the boy just went over to the
edge of the road and sat in the ashes. The old man fitted the tins into his
knapsack and fastened the straps. You should thank him you know, the man said.
I wouldnt have given you anything. Maybe I should and maybe I shouldnt. Why
wouldnt you? I wouldnt have given him mine. You dont care if it hurts his
feelings? Will it hurt his feelings? No. That's not why he did it. Why did he
do it? He looked over at the boy and he looked at the old man. You wouldnt
understand, he said. I'm not sure I do. Maybe he believes in God. I dont know
what he believes in. He'll get over it. No he wont. The old man didnt answer.
He looked around at the day. You wont wish us luck either, will you? the man
said. I dont know what that would mean. What luck would look like. Who would
know such a thing? Then all went on. When he looked back the old man had set
out with his cane, tapping his way, dwindling slowly on the road behind them
like some storybook peddler from an antique time, dark and bent and spider thin
and soon to vanish forever. The boy never looked back at all.

In the early afternoon they spread their tarp on
the road and sat and ate a cold lunch. The man watched him. Are you talking? he
said. Yes.

But you're not happy. I'm okay. When we're out of
food you'll have more time to think about it. The boy didnt answer. They ate.
He looked back up the road. After a while he said: I know. But I wont remember
it the way you do. Probably not. I didnt say you were wrong. Even if you
thought it. It's okay. Yeah, the man said. Well. There's not a lot of good news
on the road. In times like these. You shouldnt make fun of him. Okay.

He's going to die. I know. Can we go now? Yeah,
the man said. We can go.

In the night he woke in the cold dark coughing and
he coughed till his chest was raw. He leaned to the fire and blew on the coals
and he put on more wood and rose and walked away from the camp as far as the
light would carry him. He knelt in the dry leaves and ash with the blanket
wrapped about his shoulders and after a while the coughing began to subside. He
thought about the old man out there somewhere. He looked back at the camp
through the black palings of the trees. He hoped the boy had gone back to
sleep. He knelt there wheezing softly, his hands on his knees. I am going to
die, he said. Tell me how I am to do that.

The day following they trekked on till almost
dark. He could find no safe place to make a fire. When he lifted the tank from
the cart he thought that it felt light. He sat and turned the valve but the
valve was already on. He turned the little knob on the burner. Nothing. He
leaned and listened. He tried both valves again in their combinations. The tank
was empty. He squatted there with his hands folded into a fist against his
forehead, his eyes closed. After a while he raised his head and just sat there
staring out at the cold and darkening woods.

They ate a cold supper of cornbread and beans and
franks from a tin. The boy asked him how the tank had gone empty so soon but he
said that it just had. You said it would last for weeks. I know. But it's just
been a few days. I was wrong. They ate in silence. After a while the boy said:
I forgot to turn off the valve, didnt I? It's not your fault. I should have
checked. The boy set his plate down on the tarp. He looked away. It's not your
fault. You have to turn off both valves. The threads were supposed to be sealed
with teflon tape or it would leak and I didnt do it. It's my fault. I didnt
tell you. There wasnt any tape though, was there? It's not your fault.

They plodded on, thin and filthy as street
addicts. Cowled in their blankets against the cold and their breath smoking,
shuffling through the black and silky drifts. They were crossing the broad
coastal plain where the secular winds drove them in howling clouds of ash to
find shelter where they could. Houses or barns or under the bank of a roadside
ditch with the blankets pulled over their heads and the noon sky black as the
cellars of hell. He held the boy against him, cold to the bone. Dont lose
heart, he said. We'll be all right.

The land was gullied and eroded and barren. The
bones of dead creatures sprawled in the washes. Middens of anonymous trash.
Farmhouses in the fields scoured of their paint and the clapboards spooned and
sprung from the wallstuds. All of it shadowless and without feature. The road
descended through a jungle of dead kudzu. A marsh where the dead reeds lay over
the water. Beyond the edge of the fields the sullen haze hung over earth and
sky alike. By late afternoon it had begun to snow and they went on with the
tarp over them and the wet snow hissing on the plastic.

He'd slept little in weeks. When he woke in the
morning the boy was not there and he sat up with the pistol in his hand and
then stood and looked for him but he was not in sight. He pulled on his shoes
and walked out to the edge of the trees. Bleak dawn in the east. The alien sun
commencing its cold transit. He saw the boy coming at a run across the fields.
Papa, he called. There's a train in the woods. A train? Yes.

A real train? Yes. Come on. You didnt go up to it
did you? No. Just a little. Come on. There's nobody there? No. I dont think so.
I came to get you. Is there an engine? Yes. A big diesel.

They crossed the field and entered the woods on
the far side. The tracks came down out of the country on a banked rise and ran
through the woods. The locomotive was a diesel electric and there were eight
stainless steel passenger coaches behind it. He took hold of the boy's hand.
Let's just sit and watch, he said.

They sat on the embankment and waited. Nothing
moved. He handed the pistol to the boy. You take it, Papa, the boy said. No.
That's not the deal. Take it. He took the pistol and sat with it in his lap and
the man went down the right of way and stood looking at the train. He crossed
the tracks to the other side and walked down the length of the cars. When he
came out from behind the last coach he waved for the boy to come and the boy
rose and put the pistol in his belt.

Everything was covered in ash. The aisles littered.
Suitcases stood open in the seats where they'd been lifted down from the
overhead racks and rifled long ago. In the club car he found a stack of paper
plates and he blew the dust from them and put them inside his parka and that
was all. How did it get here, Papa? I dont know. I guess someone was taking it
south. A group of people. This is probably where they ran out of fuel. Has it
been here for a long time? Yes. I think so. A pretty long time.

They went through the last of the cars and then
walked up the track to the locomotive and climbed up to the catwalk. Rust and
scaling paint. They pushed into the cab and he blew away the ash from the
engineer's seat and put the boy at the controls. The controls were very simple.
Little to do but push the throttle lever forward. He made train noises and
diesel horn noises but he wasnt sure what these might mean to the boy. After a
while they just looked out through the silted glass to where the track curved
away in the waste of weeds. If they saw different worlds what they knew was the
same. That the train would sit there slowly decomposing for all eternity and
that no train would ever run again. Can we go, Papa? Yes. Of course we can.

They began to come upon from time to time small
cairns of rock by the roadside. They were signs in gypsy language, lost
patterans. The first he'd seen in some while, common in the north, leading out
of the looted and exhausted cities, hopeless messages to loved ones lost and
dead. By then all stores of food had given out and murder was everywhere upon
the land. The world soon to be largely populated by men who would eat your
children in front of your eyes and the cities themselves held by cores of
blackened looters who tunneled among the ruins and crawled from the rubble
white of tooth and eye carrying charred and anonymous tins of food in nylon
nets like shoppers in the commissaries of hell. The soft black talc blew
through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along a sea floor and the cold
crept down and the dark came early and the scavengers passing down the steep
canyons with their torches trod silky holes in the drifted ash that closed
behind them silently as eyes. Out on the roads the pilgrims sank down and fell
over and died and the bleak and shrouded earth went trundling past the sun and
returned again as trackless and as unremarked as the path of any nameless
sisterworld in the ancient dark beyond.