Randy tells us what happens when war comes. Burnt houses. Corpses in the street. Women screaming. Children crying. There doesn’t seem any reason for it. I mean, we haven’t done anything, but Randy says it won’t matter. He says that war is like a wildfire. It eats up everything it touches. Eric still likes to think that we can avoid it, but the more I listen to Randy, the more I see war as a kind of disease that’s spreading. Just like the Worm. And like the Worm, it doesn’t care what your opinion is. It will destroy you.
I sit down with my back to the tree. From here I sometimes imagine that I can hear the rust eat away at the Land Rover. In my imagination, it makes a sound like termites in wood. I will be glad when the truck is gone, when the earth takes it completely. Some things should pass away. Some things should be forgotten.
I breathe in deeply. The air coming over the lake is cold. There is no ice on the lake anymore, but it’s still frigid and dark. Through the pine trees, I can see the island, and I picture for a moment, without wanting to, the image of Lucia’s face: dark but smiling, and, for an instant, I can smell her again, feel her presence. The feeling is gone before I can remember her clearly. It’s just the beginning of her now, that’s all that’s left. I brush the thought away with my hand.
I should be thinking about this war. I know how to shoot, how to use my knife, how to bite and claw and punch and scratch. I won’t be taken prisoner and dragged from my home. I won’t let anything happen to Eric either. I feel in my heart that I’m ready to die. It’s a hard thought. Maybe it comes from the Land Rover. These are not just dark thoughts. I know it as I touch them. These things are necessary to prod and explore. If war really does come, I will be better at what I need to do if I give these thoughts time to bloom. If I don’t try to crush them out of fear.
I am ready to die. I don’t want to die. Who does? But I imagine if they come and there is fighting and they threaten Eric, I will have to fight. If I must fight, then I must be prepared to die. I can’t let the thought panic me. I can’t let it have that power. If war comes, then these are things to know. Like the rust on the Land Rover. Like the smell of the dead you can’t remember. Like the cold wind coming off the lake.
These are the things that will save me.
They are not pleasant.
8
On the way back, I run. I run as fast as I can. I feel like I outrun the wind. I feel I could run into the sky. I feel like I could disappear into the clouds. But I don’t. Instead it all comes rushing toward me faster, and I’m home again too soon and everything is just the same as it was before like I haven’t made a pact with war and death.
“You don’t know what’s coming, Eric,” Randy is saying as I come in the door. He’s sitting at our table, and Eric is sitting on the other side. “Everyone thinks they have nothing to do with this war and it comes anyway.”
Eric is quiet for a second, staring at the table like he sometimes does before he speaks, as if he’s rehearsing everything a few times before he opens his mouth. “Maybe,” he mutters finally. Even he seems unsatisfied with his response. I shut the door behind me softly.
“Look,” Randy says. “Both sides think they are inevitable. They think that it is only a matter of time before someone unites the people again. They both think they are the ones meant to do it. So they imagine there are only two sides to it.” Randy leans forward. His long nose seems to point right at Eric. “Don’t you see? If you don’t choose a side, each will assume you are choosing the other.”
Eric makes a sound somewhere between a huff and a laugh. “It’s absurd.”
“Is it?” Now I detect a little annoyance in Randy. He studies Eric for a second, sharply, incisively, almost violently. I haven’t seen Randy like this and it scares me and makes me angry at once. I step closer to Eric. But the look vanishes, or at least softens, and Randy continues. “Is it really absurd, Eric?”
“We just want to be left alone,” Eric insists, laying a hand flat on the table.
“And who do you trade your surplus food with?” Randy asks.
“We don’t have much surplus,” Eric says.
“But when you do, which side are you going to trade with?”
Eric opens his mouth and then closes it. “I see what you mean. Our actions will always choose a side, even if we don’t mean to.”
“You’re in this world,” Randy states, stabbing his finger down on the table. “You do have to choose. There’s no middle ground.”
Eric shrugs. He looks tired and demoralized. I move next to him and he turns toward me and smiles a little, faltering smile that makes my heart give out a little. Even in the midst of all this, he’s happy to see me. You can tell with people sometimes that they love you. I put my hand on his shoulder, and Eric turns back to Randy. “You’re probably right,” he says.
“I am right,” Randy says. “Listen, I know people.” He leans forward. “I can find people to talk with President Barber. You can join the Stars, and the Gearheads won’t dare come after you. I bet the Stars would send soldiers and everything to protect you.” Randy pauses and then adds quickly.
“Soldiers? Here?” Eric frowns. “I don’t know anything about the Stars. I can’t join them without knowing the first thing about them. I can’t put the Homestead at risk like that. I won’t. I have to try to stay out of this war.”
“You can’t.”
“Maybe,” Eric says again.
Randy and Eric look at each other for a few seconds, and then Randy gets up. He shrugs. “I tried,” he says, looking at me. I just hold his eyes because I don’t know what the correct response should be. “Don’t ever say I didn’t try,” he says to Eric. “It’s out of my hands now.” He shrugs before he leaves, shutting the door firmly behind him.
The silence continues for a long time.
9
After we finish a light dinner of bread and eggs, I tell Eric I’m tired and lean down and kiss the top of his head on the way to the ladder to the loft where we sleep. Eric puts his hand on the side of my head as I kiss him, but I can tell he’s distracted and won’t be sleeping that night.
I climb into the loft. It’s divided by thick wool blankets. I sleep on one side, Eric sleeps on the other. My head hurts from all the thinking. I collapse on my bed and try to stop thinking for a second, but it’s like trying to step off a racing wagon without falling. My mind won’t stop going. I’m remembering all kinds of things. I remember Carl Doyle and the violent jerk of the shotgun in my hands. I remember Eric lifting me up in his arms and telling me he won’t leave me again ever. Not ever, he says. I remember further back too, but these are just images: long roads and bleeding feet and the smell of smoke and fire and the shuffling sound of people with the Worm. I remember the light of the sky when the world was on fire. I remember the horrible, choking thirst, and the smoky, blood red skies.
I open my eyes to my dim share of the loft. It’s better than the darkness where the memories are rising. I reach over and light my bees wax candle. It gives off a weak, yellow light, but light is what I need. The darkness engenders too many memories. My room is filled with junk. Most everyone’s houses are like it, filled with memorabilia of a world that’s long vanished. In my room, there are parts of dolls, all faded; aged and ragged magazine covers of beautiful men and women, all long dead; plastic balls and figurines; ceramic cups and vases; old plastic toys, cars and trains and barnyard animals; stacks of my favorite books; old bottles of all colors and shapes; a radio that might still work if there was electricity; some albums for music I’ve never heard; wrappers from candy bars that haven’t been made in a decade; several maps; and a whole stack of National Geographic to remind me of the world that was and that might still be, somewhere. We all have rooms full of junk from the world that is no more. Sometimes it seems that that old world was only good at the production of junk, that junk is all that is left of it. Shards of emotions. Slivers of reality. Faded smiles on magazines that were never real to begin with.
But we too are from t
hat world. We too are cast offs. Remainders. Like the wood that drifts ashore after the lake thaws. Maybe that’s why we have all this stuff. Not to remember, but to be with family.
Our family of plastic crap.
I want to laugh, but I don’t want to hear myself.
Instead I sigh and then rollover.
Below, I can hear Eric doing nothing at the table. I can hear him thinking, grinding out the possibilities, playing his endless games of what-if. It makes me feel protective of him. When I think of it that way, I feel something red hot inside me, furious and violent. I start falling asleep holding to that. Angry is a lot better than afraid.
10
“Come on, Tangerine!” I plead. The horse steps away and tosses her head. I can never get Tangerine to come to me. All I have to do is get her hooked up to Randy’s wagon, but it’s turning out to be a pain. Artemis is watching me and hiding her giggles badly with the back of her hand.
“It’s not funny,” I tell her.
At the sound of my voice, Tangerine walks back another few steps. Hitching her up to the wagon was my only job, and I can’t do it. Randy is leaving to warn other little communities of the war. All he asked was that I do this one simple thing. The thought of disappointing Randy irritates me.
I hold out my hand and make kissing noises, but Tangerine just tosses her head.
“Tangerine,” I whine. “Don’t be this way. Come on, I’m not going to hurt you!” When I hear Artemis giggle again, I turn my head and scowl at her.
Artemis bursts out with a laugh. “She’s a horse, you know,” she tells me. “She doesn’t understand what you’re saying.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “Do you want to do this?” I ask her. She forgets that I know she’s afraid of horses.
Artemis stops smiling immediately and shakes her head.
I’m about ready to try again when Randy suddenly appears, smiling his ivory smile. He looks at Tangerine and then at me and his smile grows larger, exposing even more of his teeth.
“Giving you trouble, is she?” he asks me. I shrug and shoot the horse a little glare of annoyance. Seeing this, Randy laughs his deep, booming laugh. “The thing about Tangerine,” he says, “is that she’s afraid of everything and everyone.” As if to prove his point, Tangerine backs up another step and whickers at us disapprovingly. Randy continues. “Thing is, just like people, there’s always something that defeats fear. You just got to find that thing. Then they do what you want them to do. “ Randy cups his hand like he’s holding oats and then holds it out toward Tangerine. Used to being fed by hand, Tangerine walks forward immediately, and Randy takes her bridle. Tangerine doesn’t even seem bothered that the hand was empty. Randy smiles down at me and hands me the bridle. “For Tangerine, that thing is her stomach.”
Once I have the bridle, Tangerine is easy to maneuver. As I hook her up to the wagon, a crowd gathers to say goodbye and see Randy off. When I’m done with Tangerine and get back to the group, Randy is saying goodbye and shaking hands. He smiles his toothy smile and winks at Artemis. She does that I’m-so-cute giggle and twists her body at the waist back and forth. Artemis steps forward and gives Randy a quick kiss on his cheek and says goodbye before she rushes away, apparently out of shyness, but I know that’s mostly a show. Guys like that sort of thing, don’t ask me why. Then Randy comes over to me and smiles but he doesn’t wink. He reaches into his jacket and takes out something and puts it in my hand. It’s a candy bar. It’s not chocolate, there hasn’t been chocolate for a long time now, but oatmeal and beet sugar, mostly, but there’s nuts too. A real treat. I smile at Randy.
“Make sure you share that with your Dad, kiddo,” he tells me. I frown.
“He’s not my Dad,” I tell him.
Randy shrugs and cocks his head to the side. “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck. . .”
I don’t respond, but I narrow my eyes to let him know he’s on thin ice.
He just laughs and turns away, and I feel a little bad for getting irritated with him. I follow and watch him leap up on the cart. He’s pretty nimble for an older guy. But then again, he’s all bones and muscle.
“Take care of yourself,” I tell him, hoping he’ll see it’s my way of letting him know I’m not really irritated with him.
“Always do,” he says. This time he does wink at me with those blue eyes of his and I can’t help but smile a little. “Up now, Tangerine!” He shakes at her reins and before I know it, the cart is clattering down the road and leaving the Homestead behind.
I don’t stay to watch him leave like a lot of people do. Instead I turn back toward our house, holding the candy bar. There’s work to do. The fields have to be plowed and planted soon, and the last few days have been a real distraction. When I get home, I hide the candy bar for later, when I can really savor it. I know I’m supposed to share it with Eric, but. . . well, I’m not perfect.
11
After a long day working fertilizer (shit) into the field, getting ready to plant our crops, we usually meet at the Lodge. This day is no different. The usual crowd is here: Norman, Crystal, Eric, Matt, the goon squad of Crypt, Gunner, Rebok, Pest, and Curt, Diane’s son, who’s just a year or so younger than me. Norman and Crystal are warming up some cider while the rest of us pull some benches up to the table and sit down. We all stink like a barn that hasn’t been cleaned in a week. If you don’t know what that’s like, let’s just say it’s only pleasant if you’re a maggot. The goon squad sits at another bench, poking and punching each other like they do constantly. Rebok is angry about something and the others are teasing him. Only Pest is quiet. He’s studying me, like he’s been doing ever since the news of the war. I turn away from his gaze. Spooky little freak.
There’s an iron cook stove in the corner of the Lodge, the kind covered with white enamel. It was already old when the Worm was around. It works perfectly though and even heats up the Lodge, so it’s perfect for us. We’re always on the look out for more of them. They’re way better than gold. Norman and Crystal are feeding the stove with good seasoned wood and setting up the kettle of cider. Nothing like cider to cut the taste of fertilizer (shit) out of your mouth.
Eric is sitting next to me, quiet. Across from him is Matt, fidgeting in place. Matt hasn’t been doing very well since Randy told us about the war. His eyes are dark and red. I’m sure he hasn’t been sleeping. He’s shifty and communicates in hisses and grunts, and I’ve seen him give Eric dirty looks when he thinks no one is watching. The great thing about not talking much and being practically invisible is that most people don’t notice me. I observe. I remember. I’ve told Eric that Matt’s got it out for him for some reason. Eric just looks sad and shrugs.
This night Matt is worse than usual. Probably because earlier, while he was spreading manure with a spade, he stumbled. Eric was right next to him, so, by instinct, he reached out and grabbed his arm to keep Matt from falling. Instantly, Matt pushed the helping arm away. He fell because of it, but he got up instantly, swearing, and brushing off fertilizer (shit) from his pants. The look he gave Eric made me reach for my knife. I calculated how long it would take me to reach Eric’s side, and if I should cut Matt or stab him. Luckily, none of that was necessary. Matt just hissed again and continued to work.
I was hoping that Matt would go straight home from the fields and cool down, but he didn’t. So he’s here now, giving Eric a baleful look with bloodshot eyes. I don’t like that look. I feel something’s going to happen. I move my hand closer to my knife, making sure I’m ready. Eric doesn’t seem to notice. He just sits there, thinking, as we wait for our cider. I’m ready, even if he isn’t. I calculate I can slice Matt to the bone in about the time it would take him to stand up. But I keep a nice look on my face, blank, unreadable. I hope.
Crystal and Norman come with cider and set it down on the table and the goon squad comes over to grab theirs and fight over it. I ignore them and keep my eyes on Matt. He’s taken his mug from Crystal, but he’s not drinking it, he’s
just fidgeting with it and looking everywhere but at Eric. I put my hand on the warm mug of cider, and I smile and look down at it, but my attention is focused tight on Matt. If I see his body tense up like he’s about to do something, there’s going to be trouble. Suddenly I get shoved. Pest has sat right next to me, way too close.
“Sorry,” he says. He sidles away from me and then smiles at me. He has brilliant blue eyes, like Eric’s, but it’s a quizzical little thing, that smile. Gives me the heebie jeebies, as Franky would say.
I narrow my eyes at him but don’t say anything. I haven’t got time for Pest’s weirdness now. I turn my attention back to Matt. He still looks angry as hell. Norman sits beside him with that old man groan he uses whenever he sits or gets up. A couple from the goon squad laughs at the sound, I’m not sure who.
“You wait until you're my age,” Norman tells them with a severe look. “You’ll be making the same sounds, believe me.” The goon squad look away, abashed.
Eric lifts up his mug. “To another day,” he says.
“Another day of shit,” Rebok says and we all laugh—well, except for Matt—and lift our own mugs over the wooden table. Matt mumbles something while everyone drinks. I keep an eye on him over the lip of my mug. His hair is all crazy and messed up and his body is full of nervous energy, like he’s about ready to explode. Times like these I wonder why I’m the only one who sees this stuff.
“This is shit,” Matt mumbles finally.
Crystal looks over to him. “What’s gotten into you?”
Matt hisses, his whole body jerking up. My heart starts beating. When people get riled up like this, that’s when you don’t know what they’ll do.
The World Without Flags Page 4