by Brian Hart
“I don’t have a horse.”
“Of course not.” Sol passes over his bottle of vodka and leaves the firelight to get his rig. The man doesn’t drink. He leans over stiffly and puts the bottle on Sol’s side of the fire, sets the Neosporin and ibuprofen beside it.
When he comes back: “I’m from Philadelphia originally but I’m on my way up from Texas now,” he says. “I was working down there for the last six years or so.”
The man nods, OK. He keeps the rifle in reach.
Sol swigs from his bottle, speaks. “I came through the mountains, drove through New Mexico and Utah, so’s to miss the nonsense on the interstates, but I got robbed at a campground near the Utah border, took my car, everything I had.” Sol unscrews the cap on the ibuprofen and tosses a few in his mouth and chases them down with liquor. “After that I stumbled onto an old Mormon place, a compound I guess they call it, lots of canned food and water I could draw with a handpump.”
“Nobody was there?”
“No, and hadn’t been for a while. The livestock, cows mostly and maybe some sheep, goats, I couldn’t really tell what was what, were dead in the fields.”
“You could’ve stayed.”
“I could’ve,” the visitor says. “I spent a month waiting for someone to come back but they never did. Nothing but wind. Nothing to read but the Book of Mormon. That is a tremendous book. I don’t know if you know this, but according to them, my black ass is cursed.”
“I wouldn’t take it personally,” the man said.
“I won’t.” Sol put his hat back on. “But I had to get out of there. I was absolutely losing my mind. So I loaded up their little tractor with all the fuel I could carry, every can, jar, water bottle I could find. I still smell diesel.” He takes a moment to sniff his hands. “Almost made it to Provo. You know, there’re people there doing just fine. They won’t even let the J’s and the other militias pass city limits.”
“So they’re a militia too.”
“True. That’s right. But they all had names. Every one of them. I didn’t meet any nameless people there.”
The man looks at the dog and back at Sol. Sol points at the militiaman’s rifle, the STT emblem carved in the stock.
“I’m not militia,” the man says. “I took this off of one of them.”
“Explains the cuts and bruises,” Sol says. “Anyway, I got my bike and more supplies from the Mormons in Provo. Very fair, honest people, doing fine, more than surviving. Maybe I should’ve stayed. They were all like growing food, pumping water, birds singing, children playing, happy happy.” Sol smiles again and the man takes a sip this time when it’s offered and hands the bottle back. “Texas is a cinder if you get tired of going north,” Sol says. “Don’t go there. Utah is town by town. Nevada, fuck off. Fuck Nevada.”
The man smiles. “Reno will burn you down.”
“Didn’t make it out that way.”
“Good thing,” the man says. “I lived south of here, not far, a little town. The dog got hurt and I had to go to the vet in Sacramento, and when I came back the town was gutted. They used heavy equipment, stripped everything. It’s not the Jeffersonians anymore.”
“I know,” Sol says, nodding at the rifle. “It’s them now. They’re worse than the first ones.”
“I have water,” the man says. “If you’re thirsty.”
“Thanks,” Sol says. “I filled up at the rest stop, same as you. I saw your tracks in the dust.” He points at the man’s rig. “What kind of bike is that?”
“The kind with two wheels.”
Sol shakes his head. “Anybody ever tell you you come off as a bit of an asshole?”
“Lots of people.”
Pecos is curled beside the fire fast asleep, suddenly he lifts his head and growls. There is the sound of rustling leaves but there are no leaves and when they look up they can see the blur of an ancient four-rotor drone as it speeds by in the darkness.
The man gets slowly to his feet with the rifle. The dog is sniffing at the air and the man can hear the whir of the drone in the distance, once again coming closer. “You should get away from the fire,” the man says, as he and the dog walk into the darkness toward the bike.
From his coat pocket, Sol produces a small pistol and pops a couple of shots like a cowboy and by some miracle hits the drone and it crashes high in a tree and hangs up in the dry branches. Sol whoops and he’s laughing like a maniac as the man pedals away. It isn’t long until Sol catches up to him and they dismount together and leave the road.
They stash their bikes under some deadfall and the man wanders into the dark with the dog looking for a place to hide. He slides beneath a downed tree and pulls Pecos against his side.
Sol comes stumbling after them lugging what looks to be a piece of carpet but is in fact a half dozen lead aprons stitched together with monofilament line. Sol slips under the tree beside the dog and they huddle beneath the lead aprons like children under a blanket and wait.
“I was an X-ray tech in Dallas,” Sol says. “After all the news about militias using thermal imaging to find refugees, I had an idea where it might be going. I borrowed the aprons from different hospitals I worked at, thinking maybe I could get them to people that could use them but, before I could, the power went out. When I got robbed at the campground, these were the only things they didn’t take. Heavy as hell but worth the trouble.”
They sit still and listen to the silence, the panting dog, then Sol continues. “There was a fire in my apartment building, fires everywhere downtown. They burned down—” Sol takes a deep breath and the dog licks him in the face and he laughs and the man can feel him shudder. “They cut gas lines and waited for the repairmen to come and fix it, then they shot them. If anybody tried to get out, they shot them. They lit it on fire. My boyfriend, most of my friends, they were waiting for me to get home from work. It was our anniversary.”
They hear the trucks approaching, headlights sweep. The lead blanket is pulled lower over their bodies. Brakes squeak, doors open. Voices, the sound of breaking limbs, laughing.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” someone yells. The night is dead quiet, windless.
“Here, pup. Here, boy.” A dog whistle.
“Fuss,” another voice. “Fuss.” The man knows who it is now, the same ones as before. Sei brav. They’re following him. They know he’s here. He’s sure they will find him, then doors close and motors start, one two, and the gravel sprays. Silence.
Sol pushes the blanket off of their heads and gives the dog a pat, gets to his feet and dries his eyes on his sleeve. “I think they’re gone,” he says.
“We’ll see soon enough.” The man searches the horizon for brake lights, listens.
“Are they looking for you?” Sol says.
The man looks down at the rifle. “They might be.”
“Ponyboy one, fascists zero.”
“I’m up by more than one.”
“So they are looking for you?” He doesn’t answer. “Someday, it’s gonna be them versus the Mormons,” Sol says. “I bet you anything. Like Shiites and Sunnis.”
The man rolls up the lead aprons neatly like he’s rolling a sleeping bag and passes them to Sol. He returns to the scattered fire and kicks the embers from the ground and gathers his wadded sleeping bag and repacks it in his pannier. The man and the dog watch the sputtering coals until Sol comes to join them. Without a word, they get on their bikes and pedal away.
“Wyatt Earp would’ve been a warlord,” the man says.
“Who?”
“Never mind. Shit happens fast, is all. The west is dead.”
[27]
R<35
CA 96118
Wiley was on her coaster bike in the driveway. Roy could tell that Karen was trying to decide if he was lying or not. They spent quite a lot of time like this, accounting for Roy.
“After I left here, I got a job in Sacramento,” he said. “I lived in Carl for a while. I was skating a lot at night. Pretty much as soo
n as I got back to Portland I ran out of money and I was back to sleeping in parking lots and at Burnside with the heathens until Justice and Leon invited me to park in their backyard next to the ramp. Remember their place off Forty-second?”
Wiley wrecked her bike in the dirt and Roy and Karen watched as she crawled out from under it and pushed her too-big helmet out of her eyes.
“Yeah,” Karen said. “Justice was dating that girl from Israel.”
“Elise,” Roy said. “He married her. He converted first, got cut, then he married her. They said their vows on the ramp.” Karen raised an eyebrow, impressed, but didn’t say anything.
“I must’ve got used to sleeping in Carl,” Roy said, “because pretty soon I got a job with Owen and Sed at DreamLine building skateparks and Carl was home sweet home. We went all over. One summer, I helped build two spots in Washington and the next I worked on a monster in Idaho. Two years gone. I learned a lot and I thought I was pretty smart about concrete and cutting forms and flat work but Owen canned me anyway. He got sick of me telling him what he should do.”
Wiley laid down her bike in the driveway and started toward the porch. Karen told her to put her bike away in the shed if she didn’t want it to get run over. The little girl did as she was told and when she topped the stairs Roy gave her a fist bump and took her helmet like she was a jet pilot. “Can I have some water?” she asked.
“Last I checked the glasses were in the cupboard and the water came out of the faucet,” Karen said. Wiley raised an eyebrow, just like her mother, and opened the screen door and went inside. A dust cloud moved over the road and onto the field.
“We’re going to dry up and blow away,” Roy said.
“This is global discomfort,” Karen said, “not global destruction.”
“Tell that to Florida,” Roy said. “Tell that to eighty-five percent of the world’s population living on the coasts.”
“You’ll get statisticular cancer if you keep that up. Eighty-five percent? Where’d you get that?”
“Made it up.”
“You and Barry, you guys—you men—you want the end. It excites you, gives you apocalypse boners. Better watch what you wish for.”
“What do you mean, Barry? Barry, your neighbor Barry?”
“Yeah, Barry Miller. He moved in, I don’t know, three or four years ago. He’s another prepper douche, doing that whole militia thing, Jeffersonian breakfast meetings. They have powwows at his house and shoot guns, dress up in commando outfits, accessorize.”
“When in Rome,” Roy said.
She narrowed her eyes at Roy, sizing him up. “I’m still not sure if our brand of domestication suits you but you don’t strike me as the militia type.”
“That’s why I’m still in the barn. Because you can’t figure me out?”
“Are you complaining?”
“No, I love the barn. I do.”
“If you want to complain, you can go sleep in Barry’s barn.”
“I’m not. I won’t.”
“This has all happened before, right?” Karen said. “Drought, fire, strife, dead forests, the threat of world war. Actually, this has happened forever. It’s never stopped. Moves continent to continent. It’ll be our turn soon but not yet.”
They stood for a moment and watched a few of the goats take turns leaping on top of the propane tank, falling all over one another, butting heads.
“It’s going to be hard to eat those things.” Roy opened the door for Karen.
“We generally cook them first.”
“That’ll help.”
“I’m still surprised that you ate rabbit,” Karen said. “Tougher than I thought.”
“Wiley did it first or I would’ve bailed,” Roy said. “You’re the one that killed them and skinned them.”
“Goats should be no problem for a rabbit eater.” Roy followed her inside and stopped the screen door with his heel so it wouldn’t slam. Wiley had pushed her stepstool in front of the sink and she had the faucet on and was letting the water pour through her fingers.
“Don’t waste water, sweetheart,” Karen said.
“I’m not, Mama.” She was in a kind of trance and didn’t make any move to do as Karen had asked. Roy reached over her and turned the water off and she gave him an angry and terrified look and started screaming no no no.
Karen gave him a thanks-a-lot look and picked her up, squirming and crying, trying to punch her mom, and took her down the hall to her bedroom. “You played right through your nap, didn’t you?” Karen said. “You’re so tired.”
“I played outside, not in my nap! I didn’t play through my nap! No!”
Roy stayed in the kitchen and listened to Wiley’s angry screams for five minutes, logged his time on the clock on the stove. It made his jaw ache, then, just as he was about to go outside, to surrender, her screams went to quiet sobs and pleading, “Mama, mama, mama.” A minute later it was quiet. Karen came back into the kitchen.
“Sorry about that,” Roy said.
“It’s fine. Next time give her some warning. You just surprised her. She was tired.”
“If you let me stay, since I’m not planning on going anywhere—” She looked at Roy and her face was so much like Wiley’s at the moment when he’d turned off the faucet—after the water had stopped but before she’d registered any anger—that he couldn’t help but smile.
“That’s a big if.”
“OK, like I said, if you let me, miracles happen, who am I going to be to her?”
She placed her hand on his heart. “The cart at this point is in a different solar system than the horse but I’ll humor you. I’d expect more from you than your stepdad ever delivered. You get me? No casual dismissals, no lying, no bullshit.”
“Steve? I can beat that. I’m better than him eight days a week.”
“I know.” Karen stepped away from Roy and grabbed a dishtowel and wiped up some of the water that had splashed onto the counter. “So let’s run this whole fantastical hypothetical out. If you stay, what are you going to do about skating?”
“I told you, I can skate anywhere.”
“But you have an image. What will you do about your image?”
“Fuck it, image ain’t shit.”
Karen reached out tentatively and took his hand. “First of all, I don’t want to hear how you got by, OK? I guess we should be clear on that. You know that I was married and that was pretty much it for me. I don’t want to hear about where you’ve been.”
“I won’t say a word.”
“Not that you wouldn’t have mentioned it by now, but do you have kids?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Are you trying to be funny?”
“No, that’s what people say, what guys say. Not that I know of. It’s supposed to be funny.”
“Fatherless children, I didn’t think you of all people would think that was very funny.”
“OK, I don’t have any kids.”
“That you know of.”
“Sorry I said it.”
She lifted up his shirt to see the tattoo of her name. “I can’t believe you crossed me out.”
“I regret that. I’m sorry.”
“You crossed me out along with the rest.” She stuck a finger in his ribs. “What the fuck is a Darlene? Christy? Monica? This is evidence of some serious, serial assholery.”
“I’ve changed.”
“You’re such a liar, even your skin is lying.”
“What about that? That’s not lying.”
“Crossed out my name.”
“I’ll get it fixed.”
“You’re still sleeping in the barn.”
“Me and the goats are hatching some big plans. Wait and see. Total goat domination. Militias don’t stand a chance against me and the goats.”
She finally kissed him, really kissed him. He finally held her.
Three months later he jockeyed his Triumph out of the back of his new/used pickup and rolled it into the barn. That afternoon he stoo
d outside waiting for a lumber delivery. Karen and Wiley were barely visible out in the field, Wiley, riding high in Karen’s backpack, waved at him and he waved back. He was going to build a skate bowl in the barn. If he was staying, he’d need somewhere to skate. He was staying.
His first visitors to the bowl were Aaron and April Simmonds. Through the open barn doors Roy watched them park their bikes—cool canyon racer Hondas, same vintage and cut as the CB that Yano had given him—in the shade of the apple tree near the house.
When they ventured into the barn and said hello, Roy did the same. Then, “If you’re gonna kick my ass for breaking your window, I don’t blame you, but can you wait until I finish this?” He’d spent yesterday building forms and all of the morning pouring the concrete coping for the bowl in sections and was in the middle of the final piece.
“No hurry,” Aaron said, and wandered off to take his time inspecting Roy’s motorcycles while April cooed over the baby goats making all the noise in the stall nearest the new ramp.
Roy finished and loaded the wheelbarrow with his trowels and floats and buckets and went outside to the frost-free faucet to clean up. The sun was high and it felt good as it warmed his shoulders. Aaron and April came outside and after Roy dried his hands on his shirt, he offered his hand to Aaron and Aaron took it.
“I’m not gonna kick anybody’s ass,” Aaron said. He’d gone all the way bald and shaved his head now. He had a beer belly and some tattoos on his arms.
“I might,” April said, and slipped off her motorcycle jacket without turning around to face him. Athletic build, cut, with tough girl shoulders straining against her black T-shirt.
“I’m sorry about what I did, about your window,” Roy said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Aaron said. “It’s not like you’re the first one to do some stupid shit in Reno.”
April swatted his hand away when he offered it and gave him a hug. “You have some big fucking shoes to fill here,” she said in a whisper.
Roy nodded but didn’t say anything. April looked as if she might cry. Aaron slung an arm around her shoulder. “Nice bikes.”