“I’ve grown to hate towns,” Elsie said. “And don’t think I don’t get the irony of me, of all people, saying that.”
CHAPTER 40
Veronica continued her solitary watch, standing on the porch as the atmosphere slowly turned from purple to blue, then yellow, and then pale white, and then pale white turning golden. These colors splashed across the atmosphere as the morning wore on. The air shimmered in iridescence. Veronica blinked. As the light expanded, the horizon turned brown, green, and red. These colors in the distance slowly came into focus. The red, is the neighbor’s barn. The brown, she thought, was the shingled roof of his farmhouse. An Amish farm, Clive had informed her. It was beautiful, in the distance, in the white morning light. The smartly constructed barn and outbuildings stood in crisp relief against the natural elements. She admired how the farm didn’t have all the dissecting and diagonal power lines leading up to the house to mar the natural beauty of the objects, and she thought of the farm’s value as a canvas, wondering how Van Gogh would have painted it at just that moment. She admired it as a rural landscape, and then wondered if art would even be possible to imagine in this new world. That thought caused her to make a mental note. She’d have to take the boys out in the spring and teach them to pick berries to mix up some paints.
In some of the farthest corners of the field, along the fence line, the slightest dusting from the black soot in the atmosphere sat on the tops of the snow, a distant reminder of what was going on over there, beyond this tribal region. The tiny dots along the horizon seemed to stand as if in a snow globe. The smoke kicked into the air from the recent dustups over in the cities, with the civil war and anarchy and lawlessness breaking out in the world – there had been… all of that.
Still, the light breaking through on the horizon was beautiful. The earth was now fully out of its shadow.
****
Stephen D’Arcy lay twisted among the sheets of the sofa-bed. He’d slept roughly last night—when he’d slept at all. He kept waking up with his back hurting him. Even at his young age, his back hurt him. He hadn’t realized how deeply the muscles in his shoulders had ached from the bike ride and all of the excitement after that. He’d realized it last night, however. So much sleeping on the ground, floors, and tables recently had taken its toll.
The scrounging was hard work too, and had added to the soreness. The tension in his flesh, the little tears in the fibers of his unused muscles, made them tender from overstrain. The soreness radiated out across his young shoulders and down his back, into his deltoids. He was sore even in his bones. The sheets were tangled like vines around his legs as he lay. He’d tossed and turned, trying to find a comfortable place to rest his body against the strange shapes of the fold-out couch that he’d shared with Calvin for the past week. The couch, for its part, didn’t care about his comfort, or lack thereof.
Both boys had risen early each day to get ready for their scrounging duties. Today they were making a run to the outer limits of the property line. Stephen stretched his back and yawned, and wondered if Calvin was just as sore. He arched backwards to roll his shoulders forward fully, looking to find the range of motion so he’d know just where the pain would hit.
He looked around and got his bearings. He still was not completely used to living at the farm. Through the open door, he could see that his mother was already up. The rest of the fold-out was empty, and that meant that Calvin was up too. He felt for his boots and sat up on the edge of the bed.
Mom has been sleeping roughly too, he thought as he dressed.
They’d sat up talking last night, just the two of them, as they did at the end of every day. She talked with him about where they might go in the future, and what they might do. He felt that she couldn’t bring herself to tell him what she feared was coming. All she’d said was that they should stay put.
This is a good place, she’d said. At least for the moment. Even with the weird relationship that they’d established with Clive and Red Beard, it was a good place. His mother liked the men personally, and she’d left no doubt about that. She was concerned, however, that there seemed to be a tension between them all. Stephen had noticed the tension, too. They all had developed some sort of unspoken arrangement, and it must be admitted that the arrangement allowed everyone to live peaceably—that much was certain. However, his mother was still too new at all of this to entirely trust the two older men. She wasn’t sure she was fine with the arrangement, and told him that she wasn’t completely comfortable with people who kept secrets. She made motions in the air, putting air quotes around the word “secrets.” However, they were guests, after all, and she’d told him that she understood everything that being a guest implied.
Maybe it was just her motherly instincts towards Stephen and now, by extension towards Calvin, who seemed like he was close enough to be Stephen’s brother. Stephen could see that. He knew why his mother liked Calvin so much. Calvin had an old soul. There was something in his manner and presence that suggested that he was a man who ought not be slighted or treated like a youngster, merely because of his youthful appearance. He exuded a kind of wisdom born from experience. Where, Stephen wondered, did his new friend get such wisdom? He was clearly too young to have had much experience. It was a mystery.
Veronica had said all of these things, and Stephen had listened. Stephen listened to her and thought that maybe his mother had been saying that Calvin was somehow more mature, more capable than he was. He laughed to himself when he thought of this. He didn’t see it that way at all. He saw Calvin as a brother, as an equal. They were two brothers who had lost their fathers – misunderstood, as all youth are.
****
The morning was cool and light and Stephen couldn’t help thinking of the way his mother looked as she stood at the fence line while he and Calvin headed out to their day’s work. She stood and watched as if she were waiting for something, just as she had on his first day of school, when she’d sent him down the hall towards his classroom. His mother perennially had that look of a mother sending her child off to the danger of the world. Even now, in the midst of catastrophe, she had it.
As the two friends walked off to work, Stephen saw Calvin look back at Veronica over by the fence, and noted that his friend saw the look too. Calvin glanced back at him and smiled. Stephen smiled back and changed the subject that had never been spoken aloud.
The three of them, as a family, bonded as the scrounging project progressed. It was important for Stephen, as a youth still growing in his maturity, to have someone his own age to talk to. Someone who spoke his language. Someone who was member of his tribe. He had often leaned on Calvin’s guidance. He did that now.
“So what’s the plan?” He asked.
“Okay, dude,” Calvin said, “you head out along that south fence line over there where it looks like there was a chimney that got burned out.” Calvin pointed out shapes across the field to Stephen as he talked. He directed his friend’s attention toward the distance. “Usually those kinds of places are picked over pretty well, but sometimes they were picked over in a different time, by people with a different mindset. You might find things that appear useful now that wouldn’t have meant anything to people then, back when the last set of looters went through it.” He leaned into the word “looters” and pointed across the land as if ironically. He winked at Stephen. “I’m going to go along that ridge over there. I’ll circle back down to you. Okay, bro?”
“Cool.” Stephen said. He looked up in the direction of the chimney. Like his mom, he saw triangles and boxes of color. He knew there would be bricks, boards, who knows what else…
****
Calvin walked out of the field, then up and along the fence line. He followed the fence for about fifty yards, stopping here and there to mend it when he could, when it poked out of the snow piles occasionally. He came out to a stand of trees at the northwest corner of the field and entered onto a rocky clearing. There, under the trees, he saw a couple of heavy boulders. Where, in
such a landscape, could large boulders like those have come from? Calvin wondered. He thought of Stonehenge for some odd reason. He thought of the pyramids, and of Easter Island.
The boulders were huge and stacked on each other, and he walked under the trees as his eyes adjusted to the light and to the distance. There was a man sitting on one of the boulders. The man was peeling an apple in the cold morning air. He gave Calvin a little wave. Calvin looked at the craggy features of the man sitting on the boulder, and he knew who it must be. Until that very moment, he had never before seen an honest-to-goodness Amish man. Calvin looked at the man, and the man looked at Calvin, and then they exchanged head nods.
“You must be Jonathan Wall’s man.”
“Yes, Mr. Stolzfus. Calvin Rhodes. It’s nice to meet you.” Calvin had heard Clive and Red Beard talking about Henry Stolzfus, and figured that this had to be the man himself.
Henry Stolzfus waved off the offer of a handshake. He made a motion as if to say he would offer an apple if he had another.
“Good to meet yu’uns.” He looked Calvin up and down. “Is everything okay with Mr. Wall, then?”
“Yes sir,” Calvin explained, nodding his head. “We’re managing down in Texas. About as good as can be expected, I guess.”
“Good. Well, I appreciate the risk you ran in bringing up this package all that way. The medicines especially were much appreciated. The gold was important too, and you tell Jonathan that we’ll store the amount he said for him until he wants or needs it. Tell him we’re thankful for the help.”
“I will, Sir.” Then, Calvin snapped his fingers. He’d just remembered something he was supposed to tell the Amish man if he saw him. “Mr. Darling said he’d bring your shipment over in stages.” He paused to get the man’s reaction.
“Yes, well…” Stolzfus nodded his bearded chin. “It’s true. We’ve received some already. We need one or two more, I expect. I don’t foresee any problems.”
Calvin nodded his head and then moved to make his departure. “Okay. Well, then, thanks. We sure appreciate everything you’re doing. If you get down to Texas, you know you have a place to stay.”
“I know it, yung’un. Y’uns take care.” With that, Henry Stolzfus turned his head back toward his own field and rested his feet on the boulder. The conversation was over. He turned again, after a while, and watched the young Chinese man disappear into the shadows. What an odd choice for Jonathan to have made there, he thought. He watched as Calvin walked into the field, followed along the fence, and then dropped down into Clive’s place. Henry Stolzfus looked across the field toward his own farm again and pushed the last piece of apple into his mouth. He tasted it, pushing the piece around on his tongue, before standing and walking back down toward his own valley.
****
Calvin was just coming up along the fence line, across the field where they’d first sighted the chimney, when he saw Stephen in the distance.
His friend was standing, shaking his leg, tripping out from some woodpile or something. As he watched, he began to make out what was going on. Stephen was hopping, and then Calvin heard a series of bloodcurdling howls. Stephen fell backwards and caught himself against the pile, stumbling around, and from a distance, Calvin finally saw what it was. Stephen had a board attached to his foot. Sparked into motion, Calvin ran toward the screams, and as he ran, he stared into the middling distance watching the drama unfold. He saw Stephen drop like a rock, or like a man that was dead.
****
Stephen’s boot had a board attached to it. There was no getting around it. Stephen was passed out and Calvin was looking at his boot curled up under his foot, wrenched at the end of his leg in an agonizing position. Calvin wondered if anything was broken, and he saw on the other end of the board another nail, like the one in Stephen’s foot. He saw the gauge of the nail, its rusty length protruding ominously from the board. It likely went all the way through the foot, Calvin thought. He saw the nasty hook at the end, where the tip of the nail had broken off in a jagged slice of rust. He calculated that Stephen had slipped or stumbled backward and landed on a trashed piece of barn siding that was still home to the nails that had once attached it to an even older Amish barn or out-building. No doubt about it. Stephen’s foot was definitely nailed to the board.
Calvin reached down and woke Stephen, shaking him firmly by the shoulder. Stephen stirred and looked up at him, but the two brothers didn’t speak. The pain hit again just as he helped Stephen up. Pain gripped Stephen’s face, as the two brothers clasped one another tightly and nodded. They knew what they needed to do.
In the old world, they might have secured the board so that the weight of it wouldn’t do more damage, tearing flesh, dislocating bone, or maybe cutting a vein. They might have called an ambulance with paramedics on board that could come and immobilize or remove the board more professionally. But this wasn’t the old world.
Stephen put his weight into Calvin’s shoulder. Calvin placed his arms underneath the shoulders of his younger, new-found brother. Together, they lifted.
There was a vicious sound, unlike any that Calvin had ever heard. What was going on inside the boot—inside the foot—he could not know. Outside the boot, all he heard was a thud and a thwack of rubber and wood and snow. And screams of pain.
Then Calvin felt Stephen pass out in his arms.
****
“Dude, you should have seen yourself.”
Calvin was sitting next to Stephen, who was coming groggily back to life.
“You were doing this little dance with this board. I thought you were trying on skis, or waving your arms all James Brown like. I thought maybe you had stepped on a snake!”
Stephen looked down at his foot and began to inspect it while Calvin joked, trying to keep his friend’s mind off the pain. Laughter was the only medicine Calvin had with him. Stephen tried to see whether there were any broken bones first.
Stephen stopped Calvin and pointed to the pile of wood about ten yards away. “Yeah, I jumped across that pile over there. I should have taken the time to walk around it. My foot kind of slipped through a rotted piece of wood, and my weight came down directly on the nail.”
He looked down again at the foot. “Ouch.” Ouch! The skin was all blue on the top of the foot. The nail hadn’t quite punctured the skin on top, but had gotten… just … that… close. Blueish-black blood was already coagulating just under the skin, and there was a tiny circle of deepening hues where the nail had nearly come through. The bruise moved outward in concentric circles of purple. The pain, too, radiated outward.
Stephen looked up at Calvin, who tried his best to smile at his friend sheepishly.
“You want to put the boot back on or hobble with it off?” Calvin asked.
“On.” Stephen said. “Maybe it will help hold down the swelling.” He put the boot back on and they headed back across the field toward the farmhouse.
****
Veronica was standing in a cornfield, thinking about the harvest that this field might bring in the spring. She’d always read about Pennsylvania farmland and its rich soil, and its suitable climate. She looked around and thought, it has other advantages, too. She’d read that Pennsylvania has more miles of rural roads than any state in the nation—miles of roads running through cornfields or dairy farms. Back ways. Away from the huddled masses, yearning to… well… to live. Many of the Amish farms were connected, one to another, fence to fence, for miles in every direction.
She looked across the field now, examining it forensically, with her artist’s eye. She’d always liked the way snow looks against the line of the sky. The field was white but splattered here and there with broad swaths of color. The fence line cut a grid across the fields, and Veronica was trailing her eye along that fence line, and then along the fence by the river, when she saw Calvin helping Stephen along. She could see that Stephen was hurt. Something in the pit of her stomach made her know that it was bad. The birds in the tree above their head scattered, chirping madly
as they flew away in the opposite direction of the two approaching boys.
She ran, her arms outstretched, unconsciously open like a hen wanting to gather in her chicks. She was running toward them, eyes wide open, panic gripping her heart, when there was a blinding flash, as if someone had flipped on a light switch, amplifying the light and making it ten times brighter. Day. No. More than just day. Daylight itself, as if the world had just been put under a magnifying glass. The light was intensified.
It almost blinded her with its intensity. Had she been looking just a few clicks further to the right, it certainly would have blinded her—at least temporarily. As it was, it knocked her to the ground. She rocked, feeling as if the flash of light had sent a wave under her feet. She heard a boom. No, it was more. It was a BOOM! She was on her knees and trying to get to her feet.
The thing she’d most feared had happened.
She stood up again and continued running toward the boys. She saw Calvin helping his brother along, with Stephen’s arm slung over his shoulder. Stephen, her son. He looked like a wounded soldier whose friend was helping him hobble back from the battlefield.
She saw them come over the hill and she was running. When she’d been knocked to the ground by the blast, something in her had changed. There’d been an almost instantaneous realization, as if God Himself had stepped out of the clouds to speak the awful truth.
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