Another Like Me

by Albert Norton, Jr.

  But that’s not to say, he mused, that he was wholly misanthropic in some mentally compromised way. There were people who liked being surrounded by others all the time, and there were people, like Jack, who sought society in measured doses. There was a difference between being antisocial and being emotionally self-sufficient. It was a part of Jack’s philosophy to have something of a barrier—a healthy one, he had believed—between his personal decision-making and the actions or decisions he undertook as part of some sort of collective. It wasn’t his instinct to think of himself first as part of a group. Society around him seemed to function best, he believed, when each person pursued his own aims and lived according to the dictates of his own conscience, self-consciously avoiding social conformity and reveling in his own individuality.

  He scooted his chair up to have the sun on his face. He closed his eyes against the brightness and basked in the warmth.

  In fact, he continued in thought, hadn’t the opposite view been the source of so much trouble in the world? Why couldn’t people just leave each other alone? Why did every collective undertaking always result in flagellating individuals into conformity, sometimes literally? Monarchs, the church, democracy, socialism—all guilty. Those snotty “it” girls in high school. Public figures who hyperventilated over the least crack in the bulwark of political correctness. He had bristled at sentences that would begin with “we should just.” But now he didn’t have to deal with any of that. The whole world was his, apparently.

  Jack rocked in his chair. He was experiencing a dawning change in outlook, like the lifting of a veil or the clearing of fog, and he self-consciously regarded these last trailing wisps of a self-perception that would never return. He could no longer perceive himself through others’ eyes because there were no others. We each of us cherish a vision of self, which consists of what we believe others believe about us. We do not say “I am what I think I am.” We do not say “I am what you think I am.” Instead, we say, “I am what I think you think I am.” But for Jack, this last illusion of self was finally gone. There were no associations at all now. He was alone, and lonely.

  Chapter 2

  Jack resumed his southwest trek. His map showed a corrugated landscape, ridges scrunched together and running southwest to northeast. It was a little much, he thought, all this interstate travel, but there seemed little remedy for it at present. The highway was hemmed in by the hills, and he with it. He briefly considered departing from the soulless road and trekking due west through the Cumberland Gap, but decided against it. He was not a frontiersman at the edge of a natural wilderness. His frontier was of a different kind altogether. Daniel Boone was Daniel Boone because there was a civilization behind him. Jack’s frontier was as much inside of him, as outside. Anyway, the Gap had long been superseded by these very roads, wide, level, and scientifically engineered.

  Jack slowed down at Knoxville, driving up and down its streets in his usual way. A scrap of faded color moved in the corner of Jack’s vision, and he looked over to a wide set of steps ascending from the sidewalk. It had been overcast these last two hours, and now occasional gusts of wind swept through, a prelude to rain. Weathered clothing had been disturbed by a gust, lifted, and flung down the steps. Past the steps and set well back from the street was what looked to have been the Parthenon, resurrected to glory. But not so. It was a temple of another sort—one of the grandest Baptist churches in Knoxville. Another set of steps, far grander, leapt up from the pavement to its massive foundation. And there, more clothing cluttered the expanse of level stone. The last place he would stop, a church. They had been gathering places, of souls and final hours. Now they were houses of ghosts, every one of them.

  A couple of blocks further along Walnut Street, though, and just a few yards down Church Street, was a public library. It would do, to ride out the gathering storm and even to spend the night, if necessary. He carried a small bag of heavy tools for just this purpose, and in a few minutes had the door open. Libraries were a favorite stopping place if not ideal for overnight. The books were often of help, though over time he’d abandoned the humanities sections altogether, and targeted the practical instead. The best libraries had big expanses of glass to let in the light, sometimes even such that it penetrated to dissipate the murk between stacks, obviating generator-aided light. This library was named after a Larson James. At this hour, he knew it was likely that the storm-darkening sky would just fade into darkest night, and Jack wasn’t up for dragging out his generator nor driving around to spot the ideal overnight place, such as an older commercial building—one with working windows and preferably a second floor. He was preparing a makeshift bed next to the front windows when the rain started coming down in earnest.

  The downside to these public buildings was that they were built for traffic and energy efficiency. There was no window to open and no air circulation, so the building was like a vast, sealed-off cave, and the weather outside contributed to a clammy feel inside. Jack considered going out again, after all, to find a more accommodating place, but the rain was coming down steadily even after the worst of the storm had passed, and anyway, tomorrow would be here soon enough. Plus he was tired. A languid torpor overcame him. Somehow he was exhausted despite the day having consisted only of sitting in one spot while being transported over the miles. Jack knew his fatigue was the result of that turning point on the steps of that farmhouse in Virginia, when his self-perception had finally shifted away from that artificial stage everyone lives on, the one in which we see ourselves through the eyes of others. Now the barriers were finally down. There was no hypothetical person out there whose perspective he could borrow for purposes of seeing himself. He was truly alone. There was now no sense in which he would, or could, live to others’ expectations. This realization had brought on a sense of ennui uncharacteristic for Jack, and coupled with that, a lassitude born of the emotional strain this new reality created. He slept.

  Silence and darkness can be so deep that they seem to lie in wait. Jack woke violently, disturbed and momentarily disoriented. Daylight was yet just a thought. He rose, despite the damp chill and darkness, and haphazardly stowed his gear away in his vehicle. He considered setting up a light in order to range the stacks. Perhaps there were books on the subject of batteries or hunting or food preservation. But the prospects looked slim, and anyway, there would be other libraries. Jack was no longer a social creature, but he nonetheless lived in hope of a reconciliation to a fuller self, and that meant moving, continuing the search. This was an odd self-admission for Jack—that he was searching. In all the time he’d been doing it, he hadn’t called it that, not to himself. And yet now, when all illusions were gone, he did.

  All was still but for the dripping of water from the awning in front of the building and a faint gurgle of water in the roof drains. Jack’s footfalls splashed in standing water in the road as he stepped up into his vehicle. He cranked it up while the door was still open, and the noise seemed a roar to awake the heavens, ascending from this shallow canyon of a city street. He was eager to be on the road again, even if it did mean being even more alone with his thoughts than usual. The time of day was no longer a thing he watched closely as he had before, when he billed his attorney time to clients in six-minute increments. Indeed, he carried no watch, and cell devices were obviously pointless. He’d developed a good sense of time from the angle of the sun and the “feel” in season, but in the dead of night, this was a mystery. The air and the stillness and the quiet told him it was long before daybreak, but how long, he didn’t know. No hint of ultramarine or deep slate spoke to him from the eastern sky.

  He had not really resolved his question—whither now? His goals had become a little cloudy. More from inertia than a clearly defined goal, he decided to continue on west or southwest. It was noticeably warmer already than it had been two days previously when he had left New York. He resolved to get off the interstate when it became lighter, but since it was still dark, he crept carefully down I-40 for a few miles
. When it was light enough, Jack decided that a full-service stop at a gas station was in order before getting too far out of town. He stopped at a large 20-pump place of the kind that used to stay open all night. It was time to rotate his gas cans and stock up on gas additive, and this took some time. Busy work that he was grateful for.

  Then? West to Nashville, or south to Chattanooga? He stayed on I-75 toward Chattanooga and was disappointed that the road seemed straight and nondescript. But then the terrain took on more interest. In the middle of a long bridge, he realized he was spanning the notch between the shoulders of mountains overlooking the city of Chattanooga. He glimpsed a bit of the wide Tennessee River, and behind it, the north end of Lookout Mountain, looming over the city like the prow of a ship far above the waves. It looked almost golden on its east side, lit with the early-morning light, and Jack decided to get to the top of it, one way or another, and take a good long look around.

  On the way there, he cruised the streets of Chattanooga for some time, occasionally forgetting why he was doing it and then renewing his focus. A small storefront looked promising, and for sport he shot out the window, something he hadn’t done in quite a while. Stepping gingerly inside around the broken glass, he quickly found the binoculars he sought, and then, on inspiration, picked up a monocular spotting scope and tripod.

  Now to find the way up the mountain. This proved trickier than he thought. It hadn’t seemed worth looting a map for, but now that Jack was driving around at the foot of the mountain pursuing false leads, he regretted not being more careful. He had just assumed, incorrectly, that the road up the mountain would be obvious, and he knew there was a road because he had spotted buildings on top through his scope. Eventually he found the right road and then found it to be a shorter sprint up to the top than he would have expected. He was able to drive all the way to the northern prow of the mountain—what he had seen from afar—and found himself in the middle of a Civil War memorial site. Still good for sighting—if he found the right spot—because the hillside was so steep that his view could overtop the trees yet still take in most of the city north of the Tennessee River. He had a quick tailgate breakfast, amused at himself for walking a few yards to toss the garbage into a trash can. Penance for the store window, perhaps. Then he slung his new optical gear by a strap over one shoulder and one of his rifles over the other. In the park, he found a low dugout-type stone building that had once been roped off. Quite old, he guessed. The roof looked solid, so he clambered up and set up shop. It took some time because he had to pause and learn how to use the equipment, but it was a pleasant morning, and, he reflected, this was as good a spot to be as any.

  More than an hour later, Jack eased the rifle and bag of stowed optical equipment down the side of the hut, and then he swung over the edge of the roof and dropped down himself. Overhead, birds twittered in the trees of the park. It had warmed considerably and near the hut the dappled sunlight fell to an area of the park grounds not so overgrown with grass. Fatigue from his early start overcame him, and Jack curled up with his rifle on the spongy moss, using the other bag for a pillow. He would normally be slow to fall asleep, out in the open, but this time, possibly because of his early start and possibly because he’d already assimilated all of the surrounding noises, he listened only briefly to the same pattern of bird twittering and then fell fast asleep.

  The sun was still high overhead when Jack awoke. Unlike with his sudden start in the darkness of the library in Knoxville, here he instantly recalled his surroundings, rolling over onto his back to take them in a while longer. There were high cirrus clouds in an otherwise blue sky and a light breeze. He was warm even with only his light jacket draped over him. Jack looked up at the sky as if at the eye of God. Was He there? There was not a soul living in Chattanooga. Nor Knoxville. Nor Staunton, nor countless towns of New England. Not in the entirety of New York City, that he could tell. Here he was, adrift in space, the entire planet at his back and pushing him forward. Was there any intelligence, in all of the cosmos, that would know he lived, or care?

  Played before him, as if on a scroll with the sky as a background, were the words of John Donne, which Jack had read and re-read until they were stamped in his memory:

  No man is an island,

  Entire of itself,

  Every man is a piece of the continent,

  A part of the main.

  If a clod be washed away by the sea,

  Europe is the less,

  As well as if a promontory were.

  As well as if a manor of thy friend's

  Or of thine own were:

  Any man's death diminishes me,

  Because I am involved in mankind,

  And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

  It tolls for thee.

  It was written in a sixteenth century roiled with Reformation cruelty and torture and inexplicable Black Death resurfacing randomly as a black angel. And the population of the world had been maybe five or six percent what it had been as recently as five years before Jack lay on his back atop the mountain overlooking Chattanooga. How much diminished was he now, thought Jack. Not a clod, and not a manor, but the entirety of a continent, with him, Jack, a speck of dirt adrift in a blank sea stretching to the horizon in every direction. He was an island, or else diminished entirely. And perhaps it didn’t really matter which was true.

  But wait. He breathed. From one day to the next, he lived. And even his living was not difficult, so far. There was plenty of food, if not of the fresh, cooked to perfection variety. There was plenty of shelter, though he generally had to search a bit to find a structure to serve as a habitation rather than a mausoleum. There was an endless supply of fuel for heat. He even had, at least so far, easy and fast transportation, though he questioned whether there was anywhere really to go. He lived, but why?

  This question of purpose burned within Jack, all the more so in his isolation. It was a new question for him, but, he considered ruefully, wasn’t it as much a question before the calamity? There were means to acquire food, shelter, and heat then, too, but there had not been such a sense of purposelessness. Why? Could it just have been the ever-present need to work to acquire those things? Was work alone mankind’s purpose? Surely not, if work was just a means of staying fed and sheltered and warm. That would only answer for the “how” of man’s existence, not the “why.”

  Jack considered his ambition in former times. He had worked well and exhaustively. But he’d given little thought as to why he did so. The best he could come up with now, in answer, was that perhaps he might have thereby produced more than he needed, and be able, as a result, to control more resources for the betterment of others. But that was lame—he’d never considered that as a reason to get rich before now. Perhaps though he would have, in time, put a positive stamp on the pursuit of the ideal of justice. But that was a new thought, too, truthfully.

  He worked for others, but not in those ennobling ways. He really worked for the esteem he would find in others’ eyes. All along, his purpose had really originated in the estimation of all those others. Others who were now missing.

  If he were to open his mind to finding purpose in the world of people around him, however, perhaps the possibility of love and children could be one’s purpose? It might make for a richer life, but would love for a woman by itself be a reason for living? He couldn’t imagine it in reverse. He knew himself reasonably well. A woman’s love for him might be important for her, but the sole purpose for living? Hardly. Notwithstanding the sentiment of popular love songs. Certainly if he’d remarried—and even if he’d had children—his work would nonetheless have been a priority well beyond that required for food, shelter, and warmth. He knew that.

  Children? The next generation? The continuation of the species? That seemed a better prospect for finding purpose. After all, it was something that reached past one’s own last breath. So much effort, so much love. Again, a love surpassing love for one’s self, or so he’d heard. But even th
en, so what? How could having children, in and of itself, provide a purpose for one’s existence? It would beg the question: what are people for? He had marched in step, within the throng, accepting the short-term reasons for “why” without examination of the larger purposes—the “why” stamped across an entire lifetime.

  Jack sat up and looked about him, in his aloneness but for the material reality around him—the stunted mountaintop oaks, the tired early-fall grass, the haze off on the horizon past the dead city. He longed for a clear expression of telos, even now, in the tangible things about him, or in the air that he breathed. Why did he live? And especially, why did he live now? On the mountaintop, there were numerous rock outcroppings, sandstone weathered white and in many places flaked with lichen. Was there yet a message of meaning around him? Do the rocks themselves cry out?

  A bird twittered, out of sequence. Jack cocked his ear, without otherwise moving. As he did so, he espied the bird with the abrupt change of call, just lifting off a branch at an angle ahead of him and to the right. Over his left shoulder, he heard a quick scuttle, a soft stamp, and he wheeled around as he stood, sweeping up the rifle as he did so. Only a deer. It froze for the merest moment and then bounded away, clearing a low stone wall by a good five feet and disappearing into the trees of the downslope on the other side.

  Chapter 3

  Chattanooga disappeared in the rear view mirror as Jack rounded a bend on a long, engine-challenging upslope. Removed from civilization, but for the interstate, he soon had to make another choice of direction and again chose south rather than west. He left the relatively safe I-59 for slower roads that paralleled it, stopping at a town called Rainsville before jogging east to Ft. Payne, Alabama, searching out both places superficially before quitting them. He continued south to Gadsden. After making his usual inspection for signs of recent life, he turned his attention to where he might spend the night. Gadsden was the ideal-sized city for what he was looking for, and he found it quickly enough, a two-story law firm situated in a pale yellow house that had been a grand residence in a time long past. He wasn’t seeking the familiarity of a law practice. What was the point of the law now? He was seeking a commercial space that was nonetheless comfortable like a residence might be, one likely unoccupied in its owners’ final days. He could sleep on the second floor, next to windows that would open to the night air. This house even had a fireplace and a wide couch that would do well for a bed. He got a fire going, stacking nearby a pile of fuel for the night. That done, he left to restock his food supplies in time to return, heat the food, and arrange his bedding before the last light of day.