The World as We Know It (17 page)

The farmer who took me in was named Matthew. He insisted on being called Matthew. I made the mistake of calling him Matt once and was briskly corrected. He and his wife had taken in so many drifters of late that they had a place in their home always made up for the next visitor. They fed me and insisted that I rest early to prepare for the morning’s trek into the city.

I was awakened by the sound of a rooster for the first time ever. It was a more welcome sound than that of a buzzing alarm clock, but he could have had the decency to put some distance between himself and my window. I had become accustomed to being awakened by the sunrise.

They prayed before breakfast, Matthew and his family. I don’t know why I noticed it. I had seen a lot of people praying over the last year and a half or so, more than I ever had before the world had changed. I closed my eyes, clasped my fingers, and kept silent. After we had eaten, Matthew’s children set to cleaning dishes, and Matthew and I began our journey toward the city. It only took the morning to get there on horseback. The fog had lifted, and I could see the old Chicago skyline ahead of us. The Sears Tower, once the tallest building in the world, still defined the west end of the skyline with unmistakable prominence. It was called the Willis Tower then, but to my generation, it will always be the Sears Tower. Who knows what they’ll call it next.

Matthew and I rode into the city on horseback, weaving through streets bordered by hanging gardens and tower gardens and urban blocks of vertical aeroponic and hydroponic farms. I had never seen Chicago so green and lush. Even in the city, with limited space at their disposal, people had learned to produce their own nutrition on a massive sustainable scale. We made our way to an old warehouse on the south side where their registrar was housed. There were a few of those throughout the city, but that was the one Matthew used. I figured it was probably the best
of any to use as their provincial postal center for the New World Mail Network, as it was the most convenient to the majority of visitors from the outside. It was directly off the highway for anyone coming from the east, west, or south.

Finding the organizer of the facility was a bit of a hassle, but once I had, I was greeted with news that brought me great joy.

“We’ve already sent a guy south on the same mission as yours, friend,” he said. “And another east. You probably passed him on your way here.”

“Brilliant! You hear that, Matthew? Where have they been?”

“Don’t know yet. They only left a few weeks ago.”

I could hardly contain my emotions. There were indeed more just like me as I had hoped, and it would not be long before the civilized world was reconnected, if not united as one. I felt a sense of glorious pride for having been a part of such a thing. It was the paramount achievement of my life, I thought. Of course, I also felt that my own burden had been lifted. Finally, I thought without hesitation, after the long journey and the months away from my wife and family, I could return home and allow the New World Mail Network to evolve without me. My work had been done. I mapped out all of the places I had been, and the organizer offered to take any correspondence off my hands and have it delivered south, to my home, while I continued west. I had not written yet, but I assured him that I would return the next day with outgoing mail. That was not my plan,
though. Instead, I planned to head straight home the following morning.

As Matthew and I rode back south to his farm, my smile could not be turned.

“What you’re doing is pretty incredible,” he said. “It shouldn’t surprise me that it took so long for somebody to step up to the job, but I guess most people give up when they lose everything they’ve got. What’s the point, they figure. Giving up is easier than starting over, but we’ve done it before, and someday we’ll have to do it again. Nothing on this earth lasts forever. We’re never ready for it, but the strongest few pull the rest of us out of the dirt and brush us off. Most people would be surprised to learn what they’re truly capable of. In the early 1860s, the Pony Express made it possible to send mail from one coast to the other in about ten days with nothing but men on horses two-thirds of the way. Of course, their system was less complex than the one you intend to build. Our population is much larger and more widespread these days, but we learn from history, don’t we.”

“We do,” I said, “but you give me far too much credit.”

“Why’s that?”

“I left home out of weakness, not strength.”

“Whatever your reasons,” he replied, “you’re here. Poor judgment sometimes produces the greatest accomplishments, against all odds, just as the best of motives can end in catastrophe. I don’t presume that all of the riders back in those days were the best of men, but they did what they
had to do. The new network will probably evolve the same way theirs did, I’d figure, with swing stations and all.”

“With this growing number of riders, our main obstacle will be organization,” I said.

“That will come.”

“They’ll move far more quickly than Nomad and I can alone. Like the Pony Express, this is just a first step toward something larger, faster, and more efficient. Someday we’ll have the railways again and electricity. Even cars in one form or another.”

“It has to start somewhere,” he said, and then he looked at me. “Someone has to make it happen. Like Ishmael said, ‘For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything.’”

I felt he was trying to inspire me, but I tried to ignore it. I had made up my mind. It was time to go home.

When we rode back into the small farming village toward his home, the farmers who had been with Matthew on the previous day when Pete and I had arrived were digging trenches into a field.

“Finally!” he called as we approached. “It’s about time you goons did something productive!”

“Well you two took your sweet time!” one of them yelled back. “We got bored. It’s getting hot out here. Have you come to relieve us?”

“Relieve yourself,” Matthew said.

“I plan to, once we’re finished here.”

“What are they planting?” I asked.

“They’re not planting. They’re laying a leach field.”

“Like a septic field?”

“Yes. You ever notice how green the grass is above the leach field?”

“Never thought about it,” I replied.

“Well, once we’re done here and we’ve got running water again, our crops will thrive. In the meantime, we’re using composting toilets, which are working just fine for now.”

One of the farmers paused his digging suddenly and turned to me with a look of surprise.

“That one nearly escaped under the guise of a fart,” he said, “but at the last moment, its identity was revealed and its plot for exodus foiled.”

“Soiled?” Matthew exclaimed. “You soiled yourself?”

“Foiled, my friend. Foiled. But now I need to pinch one, if you’ll excuse me.”

Matthew closed his eyes and shook his head in embarrassment as the man threw down his shovel and waddled toward one of the two small sheds they used for outhouses.

“That’s Lucas. I just call him Number Two,” he said, “and that other idiot out there digging is Nathan. I call him Number One. Whatever happens, if he challenges you to a sword fight, decline. There’s no shame in it.”

The man who was still digging laughed. “Probably more shame in accepting,” he said.

“They’re plumbing experts,” Matthew continued. “Something that happens to benefit me in my trade, so I keep them around. They needed food and a place to
sleep. I needed extra hands and a leach field, for both the latrine and the crops.”

I heard Lucas yell through the walls of the outhouse, “That’s funny.”

“What’s that?” Nathan yelled back.

“I don’t remember eating a football.”

“Damn it!” Matthew scolded. “What did I say about that kind of talk? Have some class!” Then he turned to me to apologize for his comrade, “I’m sorry. He’s very crude.”

After a while, Lucas emerged from the outhouse and came to introduce himself formally. I declined to shake his hand. His hygiene was suspect. Despite their demeanor, though, Nathan and Lucas were clearly skilled in their craft. Everyone excels at something, I figure, and each person and each trade is a necessary piece of the puzzle. That’s the beauty of humanity. It’s just a matter of determining one’s calling. That’s the tough part. Sometimes it takes a disaster to find that out.

Matthew made sure that his guests washed properly before handling food, even in the fields. Cleanliness was a rule of the house, one that I was pleased to abide by. Cleanliness is next to godliness; isn’t that what they say? When we sat down for dinner that night, there was a pitcher of ice water awaiting us at the table.

Ice water.

Water with ice in it.

I had never thought I would miss such a thing after the previous winter, but then, having sustained the scorching summer without a single ice-cold glass of the most basic
necessity for life on earth, I could hardly restrain my thirst long enough for them to finish their prayer. When I finally took a sip, the flavor gave me goose bumps all over. It was the freshest, most delicious drink I had ever tasted.

They had a deep underground cellar where ice was stored. They would pack the walls in the winter, and it would last until the next. In the center of the cellar, surrounded by walls of ice, they could keep produce or meat, if the need arose. That wasn’t common, though. Enough people relied on the area farmland that there was seldom a surplus great enough to require long-term storage. There was never a shortage, though. Matthew was what I would call a giver. He and his farm were almost entirely self-sufficient, but like Abraham, he shared his blessings with those less fortunate in those times. People like them gave the rest of us hope. Besides, there was more than enough land to feed everyone. It’s a mystery why people had ever gone hungry in the old world.

Waking the next morning, I questioned the ethics behind my decision to abandon the mission and call it complete. My morals seemed confused by the planned change in course, and I decided to stick around the farm a few days, conflicted as my conscience was.

The internal debate over my destination raged silently while I worked the fields with Matthew and his family. It was a decision that grew more important and less certain with every passing moment. I didn’t speak much, which
was fine. My time was better spent in contemplation, and there was plenty of solitude in the crop rows.

Before sunset on the third evening, I was sitting on the porch, dicing hot peppers to use as a wildlife repellant for some of the crops. I hadn’t worn gloves, and the juice from the peppers was burning my hands and face with a fury that rinsing with water only intensified. It felt like fiery needles pricking my skin everywhere. Matthew came through the door and sat next to me, squeezing the juice from a tomato over my hands.

“See how that does,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“See, we take care of the crops, and they take care of us.”

“What was it like for you before?” I asked.

“Harder,” he said. “My expenses running this place were twice what I took home, and people who didn’t know better criticized us for taking government subsidies when the corporate farms were putting us out of business. You wouldn’t believe what they used to feed livestock at those places and their animal factories. There were plenty of resources to provide for everyone, but where was the incentive? Sometimes we were paid more
not
to produce. The industry wasn’t valued, and there was a separation between the producers and the consumers so that the only winner was big business.”

“And now?”

“Now we’re rich.” He laughed. “We don’t have any money, and we’re richer than we’ve ever been.”

I sat back and took a deep breath as the burning sensation in my hands began to subside.

“Smell that rain?” he said. “It’s coming tonight.”

Sleeping hadn’t been easy, but that night a fine storm came through and the sounds of distant thunder and raindrops on the aluminum roof soothed my soul enough to doze off. I was thankful to be indoors. Lightning flashed shadows on the walls of the bedroom in the old farmhouse. Storms can be miserable when you’re sleeping outside, but so calming when you have a solid roof over your head.

The following morning, we stepped out of the house to start work, and Matthew paused on the porch, looking out as the sun rose over the fields. It was quiet, as if the fresh rain on the ground and the crops absorbed every sound the way the ground and the crops had absorbed the rain. The air was cool and still.

“So what do you think, Joe?” Matthew asked me.

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

“Is this not the greenest crop you’ve ever seen?”

“It may be.”

“I love the way they look after a storm. So refreshed. Rejuvenated.”

“They’re healthy,” I said.

“Yup. All we use is all natural animal waste. We eat from the land, the cows eat from the land, the horses eat from the land, and when we’re through with it, we give it back to the land. Who ever decided it was a good idea to pump healthy foods full of chemicals and hormones and
antibiotics? As if humans could improve upon nature in a lab. Outsmart God.”

I enjoyed harvesting their tomatoes. I would tug a wooden cart through the rows with me and pluck them, one by one, slowly filling it until I could barely pull it through the dirt. Then I would take it to the house, empty it, and head back into the field. There were so many of them that the work never ended. They were enormous. Bright red. Sometimes when the area wildlife got a little greedy, Matthew would spray the crops with a solution of vinegar, water, and crushed hot peppers that the animals found less appealing, but mostly it wasn’t a problem. He figured the land belonged to them as much as it belonged to us, so he didn’t mind sacrificing a few fruits and vegetables. Besides, a healthy wildlife population was as important to keeping us fed as the crops were.

West. South. I was deeply conflicted. On that last day before I left home, when I told Maria that I would dream of her night and day, I’d had no idea how true it would be. She was always there. But every day I was gone, she seemed less and less real. When everything you know to be true about your life is suddenly taken away or abandoned, as the case may be, even your memories start to change. Everything was unfamiliar then. Even the places we had been to before were different. I had nothing left to associate with my memories of my wife. There was no telephone and certainly no e-mail. I couldn’t even receive a letter from her. There I was on a farm with a family I had never met before, completely isolated from everything I
ever knew, yet closer to home than I had been in months. It would be so easy, I thought. I could be there in a week. But, I wondered, would she still take me back?