by Robert Reed
“Noah,” say a couple of the older voices, sounding reproachful .
Then a girl, maybe twelve years old, blurts, “Who’s that man?”
I’m not seen around town enough to be familiar . But Old Ferris
says, “That’s Helen’s boy,” and it is strangely heartening to know
that I am still defined by one miniscule accident in biology.
I walk halfway to the apparition and stop .
It’s Butcher Jack who emerges from the crowd, winking ner-
vously when he joins me .
“What do you think?” he whispers .
A thousand years of guesses wouldn’t find the truth. I say noth-
ing, and we walk together up to the RV’s big front door, hesitating
an instant before each of us gives the filthy metal a friendly, flat-
handed slap .
Jack starts to say, “Hello?”
And the door opens . The violent hiss of compressed gas startles
us, and we leap back . I’m so nervous that I am laughing, and that’s
what the young woman sees when she pops into view .
She sees a giggling fool. To me, she looks twenty, fit and very
pretty . Smiling as if it is her natural expression, she jumps to the
bottom step and grabs the door handle while leaning out at us . She
PALLBEARER, by Robert Reed | 33
is lovely and slender with her gold hair worn long and trousers that
couldn’t be much tighter. It’s not that I fall in love. But my first
impression is that if I were ten years younger, I would be helplessly,
shamelessly infatuated .
“Oh good,” she says .
There’s an accent to her words—a warm friendly way of speak-
ing that is completely new to me .
“Can you two boys help with Grandma?” she asks .
Jack looks at me .
I suppose this could be a trap . A beautiful girl lures ignorant older
men into her mobile home, making them her prisoner, abusing them
in all sorts of wicked ways . That certainly is worth the risk, I decide .
So I lead the way, climbing up into the RV with Jack close behind .
The woman says, “Thanks,” twice before adding, “My dad hurt his
back, and I’m not strong enough to do this alone .”
What looks like a giant dirty box from outside proves smaller and
less dusty than I expected . I smell people and recent meals and this
morning’s bathroom business . The “dad” proves to be a wary fellow
maybe five years older than me, sitting behind the little table where
a happy traveler might eat his meals, watching the countryside roll
past . I remember enough to piece together a compelling daydream .
This is how millions of people lived . Before . Burning gasoline by
the tanker, wandering their world on the smooth happy roads .
Loudly, confidently, the girl announces, “I’ve got help for us,
Grandma .”
Dad watches the two strangers, thanking us with a little nod as
we pass . The old woman is in back, laid out on a bed big enough to
sleep two . I can’t remember ever seeing a lady of these proportions .
She probably began life big, time and too much food making her
astonishingly fat . According to the one working scale at my house,
I weigh two hundred elk-fed pounds . But I wouldn’t want this lady
standing on my scale . She’s that fat . And worse, her smooth round
face is drawn around a couple blue eyes that look at me and look at
Jack and then look at the blond woman, registering nothing in the
process .
PALLBEARER, by Robert Reed | 34
She’s blind, I guess .
But no, she suddenly asks, “Who are you?”
I start to answer . But the woman says, “I’m May and you’re my
grandmother .”
She says those words instantly, like a reflex. As if she says them
a hundred times every day . She’s patient enough, but I notice that
she doesn’t bother trying to sound sweet . These are pragmatic words
meant to carry us through the next several moments .
“May?”
“Yes, Grandma .”
“Where are we, May?”
“At home,” the girl says . “Your home .” Then she looks at me and
brings up that smile again, saying, “If you can each get on one side
and lift . She’ll help us, I think . And we can get her outside .”
I don’t want to touch this strange old woman . It amazes me how
hard I’m looking for any excuse .
But butchers are made of tougher stuff . Jack leaps to work, and
the force of his example causes me to grab hold of the other arm and
shoulder . Grandma is a pale soft and very cool piece of humanity . I
can’t feel the bones for all of the fat riding on her . Yet as promised,
she doesn’t fight us. We grunt and get her to stand on her own mam-
moth legs, twisting her sideways to leave room in the aisle, and with
her granddaughter in the lead, coaxing and tugging, we herd the
old lady up the length of the RV, giving her just enough lift that she
doesn’t collapse, at least until we make it to the front .
“Oh, damn,” the doting granddaughter exclaims .
But the old woman falls like an expert, crumbling without com-
plaint or noticeable damage . The man with the bad back pulls him-
self off his bench, getting in our way . Everybody is tugging on the
limp arms and up from under the shoulders, and May says, “Try to
stand, Grandma .” She says it several times, her voice not angry but
insistent . Then she turns, suddenly shouting into the vehicle’s cab .
Somebody else, someone I hadn’t noticed, sits behind the steering
wheel, watching the drama with utter indifference .
“Get off your ass,” the girl tells him .
PALLBEARER, by Robert Reed | 35
The man is barely adult, maybe a couple years younger than her,
and judging by appearances he is a close relative to the others . But
where Grandma has bulk, the boy has muscle . If I have ever seen a
bigger, stronger fellow in my life, I can’t remember it. He fills the
huge leather chair, enormous hands clinging to the armrests . And he
has no intention whatsoever of moving .
Now the girl’s father says, “Help us .”
But the strong man shuts his mouth in a defiant fashion, deliver-
ing his answer without making noise .
“Goddamn it, son . We need your help here!”
My dislike for the boy is immediate and scorching . But anger has
its functions, and I’m not exactly weak . As if to show the idiot what
courage and determination look like, I grab Grandma under both
arms and grunt, lifting with my legs, dragging her limp body up to
where the others can help, pulling her skyward until those puffy legs
remember that they’re supposed to walk .
“This way, Grandma,” the girl coaxes .
“Who are you?”
“Your granddaughter . I’m May .”
“Where are we, May?”
We’ve made it to the steps . That’s where we are . I’ve taken over
for everyone but the girl . I’m holding the old woman under her
damp cool armpits, keeping a couple steps above her as I steer her
out into the open air .
May keeps saying, “This is home, Grandma . You’re at home .”
Saintly people talk this way to the senile . Home is a magical
place of rest and security, and I assume that the girl is misleading the
old woman with a small, sweetly intended lie .
The first slipper hits the ground, and the old woman nearly col-
lapses again . But I jerk hard, holding her steady until the second
foot finds its way. Then with an exhausted smile, May says to me,
“Thank you . You’ve been such a help .”
I’m gasping and my back burns, but I feel proud of myself just
the same .
“Winston’s such a dick,” she confides.
PALLBEARER, by Robert Reed | 36
“Your brother?” I guess .
“So they tell me .” She says that, and like you do with any new
audience, she feels free to laugh hard at must be a very old family
joke .
“I’m Noah,” I tell her .
May doesn’t just smile . She repeats my name, making it sound
better than it normally does, and she offers a little hand that feels
warm and comfortable, shaking my hand and then letting her fingers
linger inside my grip .
Inspired by sunshine or the fresh air, Grandma stands without
aid . The good residents of Salvation come close and look at her and
study the machine . The old woman looks at their faces, and then she
turns and stares at the RV with what might be a flickering curiosity.
“What is this thing?” her eyes ask .
I’m not holding hands with May anymore, but we’re standing
close . Her grandmother does one slow turn, majestic in its own way .
Then her gaze fixes on one of the closest homes—a three-story man-
sion built to eat sunlight and wind while wasting nothing—and with
a voice as clear and certain as any can be, she asks, “Where is this?
Where am I?”
I nearly laugh at her harmless confusion .
And May shows me a big wink while calling out, “This is Salva-
tion, Grandma . Just like you described it . And doesn’t it look won-
derful…?”
* * * *
My father was gone. He was never officially shunned and cer-
tainly not banished, and the other adults began treating me with an
uncommon amount of consideration . Warm voices asked about my
state of mind . People I barely knew offered words of encouragement,
friendly pats delivered to my shoulders and back . I was the man of
the family now, and what a good young man I was . Yet those same
voices began to whisper . Our community was better off without that
very difficult soul. Nobody missed my father. Nobody wanted his
return . The man’s peculiar ideas and attitudes were problems, yet his
PALLBEARER, by Robert Reed | 37
enemies preferred to laugh at his lousy carpentry and his inability
to grow tomato plants . Cooperation and competence were what the
world demanded, and how would a man with so few skills manage
to survive?
One day, a teacher warned my class that the easy pickings were
running out. Good water was harder to find, and bad water was rust-
ing away the last of the canned goods . Then she looked at me . With
a glance, she told me that she was thinking about my father . Then
with a winner’s grin, she promised everybody that soon, very soon,
the last of the wicked people would face God’s justice .
Salvation was built without an official school. Its original chil-
dren were taught at home using the Internet and smart software . My
school was the local organic grocer, stripped of its refrigerators and
freezers, the empty space divided into simple classrooms . My teach-
ers were women with little experience and uneven talents, but who
nonetheless volunteered to stand in front of a mob of kids, giving
us an opportunity to do something besides tending crops or running
errands .
One lady tried hard to teach history . Our random textbooks cov-
ered a few periods in suffocating detail, while most of the past was
as empty and unknown as the far ends of the universe . She liked to
show movies even older than her . Using aging DVD players and
televisions, she educated me about those black-and-silver days when
everybody smoked and everybody could sing and dance . But more
useful were her memories of life as it stood in the recent past . She
was a natural talker blessed with an audience just old enough to re-
member bits and pieces about the world before, and she spent entire
days rambling on about her lost life, how she and her husband had
four cars between them and a big beautiful house that they didn’t
have to share . The woman had little family and no children . She and
her husband had survived the worst, but he died of a heart attack
days after their arrival here . Few could talk as easily about the end
of the world . Just mentioning the topic made most of the adults quiet
and strange . But our teacher hadn’t lost as much as the others, and
PALLBEARER, by Robert Reed | 38
blessed with a tenacious optimism, she could claim total confidence
in God’s mercy and the existence of Heaven .
More than anything else, we wanted to know about the plague
and its aftermath . She listened to our questions and warned that she
was no medical expert, but in the next moment she carefully defined
the plague’s miseries: Blisters and bleeding lungs, the high fevers
and painful, suffocating deaths . China was halfway around the
world, but new diseases often came from there . Twice in two years,
the Chinese government barely contained the viral monster . And
that’s why the world was terrified: What if the bug someday climbed
onboard an airplane or bird, and what if it was carried across the
helpless world?
This was grim odd rich fun, sitting in that quiet room, learning
about horrors that would never hurt us . One day, our teacher arrived
with an unexpected treasure . The original residents in Salvation
had left behind furniture and clothes, plus fancy machines like sky-
watching dishes and digital recording equipment . Also abandoned
was a nondescript box tucked into a tornado shelter in the basement
of one house . The box was full of hundreds and maybe thousands
of hours of news reports . Somebody had worked hard to record the
end of civilization . Each one of those bright silvery discs was care-
fully marked with dates and the network of origin . Not all of the
disks worked, and most were surprisingly boring . But our teacher
had made it her mission to hunt for the most interesting survivors .
The old player began to run . The room was full of patient, en-
thralled children. We watching the Chinese plague flare up twice
and then die back again . Nearly ten percent of the stricken had died,
and maybe half of the rest were left with scarred faces and shrunken
lungs . If that virus got loose, as many as ten million people would
die, and a hundred million more would be left as invalids . That’s
why the hard push for a vaccine . And that’s why there was celebra-
tion when a pharmaceutical company mass-produced an injection
that would protect everybody who rolled up
his sleeve, offering a
willing arm .
PALLBEARER, by Robert Reed | 39
Some nations did better than others . To me, Canada was that big
green splotch at the top of a favorite old map . But it was also country
with money and an efficient health care system, and the Canadians
achieved a nearly perfect inoculation rate . Finland and Denmark
and Costa Rica were equally successful . Japan and much of Europe
exceeded ninety-seven percent compliance . But the United States
was falling behind in this critical race . Too many of us were poor or
isolated . Empty rumors and misguided beliefs were huge problems .
In the end, emergency laws and the National Guard managed to
bring up the totals . Every doctor and nurse, teacher and law enforce-
ment officer was inoculated. Every soldier and prisoner and hospital
patient was inoculated . But there were always stubborn people who
refused, and in the end we never even achieved ninety-five percent
saturation .
I remember being five and sitting in my bedroom, listening to
my father and mother arguing . Mom didn’t want to obey Caesar’s
Law . She didn’t want the government to force her to do anything .
Dad didn’t want to hear about prayer and God’s decency staving
off illness . But Mom kept insisting, batting aside Dad’s logic until
he finally found his own way out the trap: If everybody else was
inoculated, then we would be safe too .
As a family, we visited a fat little man who only seemed to be a
doctor. The man took our money and filled out the proper forms, and
in the eyes of the state, we were inoculated . Then we went home,
and Dad came into my room, sitting on my bed while explaining that
this was what married people did . They compromised . And despite
what he knew to be best, we could sleep easy because so many of the
people around us had done the smart right noble thing .
China, where the murderous plague was born, managed to do
better than the United States . India did less well, and parts of Latin
America fell behind . But even those poor places managed to beat
that ninety percent mark . The meanest, saddest corners of the
world were the most exposed . Africa and the wild nations in Asia
achieved one-third compliance, if that . But charities and volunteer
doctors didn’t stop fighting. Brave defenders of the public good,