“I guess, but I don’t know you.”
“You know your family and they put you out. What do you have to lose? If you stay here, you will surely die. You are so thin. I’ve seen dolls with bigger arms than yours.”
“I didn’t see it that way. But now I do,” she said to me. Leaning into me she gave me a kiss on the cheek. It made me feel wonderful. It felt good to have human contact and someone to talk to. And she was pretty.
We started out walking before light filtered through the dense black clouds. We walked along roads that were desolate and barren. Nothing for miles. This was farm country and the population of this area was sparse. Every hundred or so miles, we saw the remnants of old barns and rusty tractors that had become part of the landscape. That was the only way we knew that humans had lived there.
The straight road and the flat land without vegetation looked endless and we could see for miles. “Can we stop at that barn? Maybe we can find something in the cellar,” the girl said to me.
“Do you think that place has a cellar?” I said.
“All the houses here will have cellars. This is where the first of the huge tornados began ripping our crops from our fields, after that, we no longer had anything to sell to the Farmer’s Market.”
“The only reason we lasted this long and didn’t go to New York was because we had canned food in our cellars and we grew some potatoes, beets, all kinds of vegetables that could grow under grown. Then the soil died everywhere and we ran out of water.” She talked as we walked slow nearing the dilapidated farm-house. “The large farms which provided the world with crops were using up all the ground water here, and the imported water from all over the world, not realizing that water was more important than food.”
She looked at me and continued talking, “How is it that you have so much water?”
I reached for my pocket, her eyes fell on my hands and I remembered the words of my father. “This map is your life. Guard it as you would your life.” I took my hand out and changed the subject.
“What is your name? What do I call you?”
“Sheila,” she said with a light smile, afraid to show her teeth, which was surprisingly bright and white.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“My name is David.”
“Oh. Like in the bible,” she said to me with a big smile and a giggle.
I hadn’t read the bible. “Yeah, I guess so,” I said returning her smile. But my mother placed it in my back pack and said that I should when I needed strength. I was too busy reading the magazines of a bygone era. Hoping for things to change. Maybe I’ll read it later, I thought.
We walked cautiously toward the barn. The wood dry rot, and looked unsafe for anyone. “We can camp out here it looks safer than that barn.” I said to Sheila.
“We should look for the cellar,” she said.
“Not in the dark. I need to build a fire,” I said. Sheila sat down and crossed her legs. She remained in that one spot and didn’t move. She watched as I gathered the old dry wood from the barn and placed one board on top of the other in a sand pit.
We sat in silence and glanced up at the million starless sky covered by a dark cloak of clouds that not even the moon light could brighten our world.
It was hard for me to tell the day, month, and the year. I tried to make a calendar and check off the first of the month. Sheila asked, “What are you doing?”
“I’m making a calendar.”
She leaned over and said, the days are all wrong, “It’s the first of the month.”
“How do you know?” I said to her.
“She smiled at me and said, “Trust me, I know. Don’t you know anything about girls?”
“I know enough. I had a sister. And I know they can be temperamental and spoiled.”
“What happened to your sister?”
“I don’t want to talk about her now. Maybe later.” I gazed out looking into the empty land and then I felt Sheila’s hand take mine and then she lay her head on my shoulder. I turned and watched her sleeping peacefully. It was the first time I thought that maybe I would have a family after all.
We woke the next morning with me holding her in my arms, and her head resting on my chest. “Wake up. We have to get started before the winds come,” I said to Sheila.
“But they don’t come now. We will be far from here when the winds begin.” I had to believe her because she was from this area. She had seen the weather patterns. Each section of the country in the U.S. had a different weather pattern. It was as if the weather system decided to make a visit like an unwanted relative, visiting a different relative every day, then moving on when its welcome ran out.
I gave her a piece of salt meat and a ration of water. Then we packed up everything and placed it near the pit where we built the fire, and headed in the direction of a boarded up structure that appeared to be a house for a large family.
“Why are the houses so large here?’
“These were once farms that had been in families for generations. It wasn’t unusual at the time to find extended families living there. There were workers living in that small house to run the machines to milk the cows.” I looked at her with a curious glance. I read about such things but had no concept of milk. Maybe that’s why her teeth were in such good shape.
“We had a farm once. We grew vegetables and fruit,” I said stumbling along kicking mounds of dust out of our way and stopping on occasions to empty the sand accumulated in my tired old boots. Because I was captivated by Sheila’s big blue eyes, I made a misstep and fell into an open shaft. I dropped down three feet and landed on a mound of dust and sand.
The sand crystals gave a faint light. I searched around trying to free myself. I touched something and grasped it in my hands. I knew what I was holding. It was a skull of a human and nearby it felt like a skull of a small child.
“Are you ok?” Sheila asked.
“I’m ok. I need you to get my backpack at our campsite and open it. Get out the tether and bring it back. Then I’ll tell you what to do next.” I heard her running on the dry earth. It felt like hours had passed. I could feel a graveyard of bones with every movement I made.
“What do you want me to do?” My heart leapt. My life depended on trust of the person closest to me. Now that person was Sheila. I knew now I could trust her. She came back for me when she could have taken off with the water and what was left of the food.
“I want you to make a loop in one end of the rope and tie the other end to anything that appears stable and can hold my weight.”
A few minutes passed but again it felt like a lifetime. My body had begun to drift down. And when Sheila returned I let out a full breath. She threw down the rope. I hitched it over my head and under my arms and made a pulley. Then I pulled myself up one step at a time. When I got to the opening of the cellar, I climbed out.
Covered in dust and sand, Sheila helped me knock some of the dust from my face and clothes. I hugged her, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For coming back for me.”
“Why wouldn’t I? You’re all I have.” And she reached and hugged me back. But her embrace was one of gratitude and when she kissed my sandy cheek, it overwhelmed me. Tears pooled in my eyes, and one escaped, even though I tried to hide it. But the new infusion of water helped to release emotions I held back for a year.
Drying my eyes on my sleeve, I followed the rope that lead to an object. My mouth opened. “It’s a motorcycle.”
“Yeah.” It belonged to a boy name Chad. He would use it to motor from farm to farm bartering water and sometimes food.” She looked up from staring down at the bike. “He taught me to ride it,” she said.
“Are you serious?” I said in disbelief.
“Of course, why would I kid you?” She walked to it and up righted it. The bike was a motor bike that people used when gas became scarce. Before I could tell her not to get on it. She hopped on. “See, it’s easy. I can show you how to ride it.�
� She flicked the handles, stepped on the gas and it cranked up.
I rushed to her. “It has gas. It has gas in it,” I said jumping up and down with joy, “Don’t turn it off, it might not start again.” I ran and grabbed my backpack as she waited and I hopped on the back. I should have checked the gas but I was too excited to care. Anything that could save my feet from the horrible sand for a few minutes or hour would be a blessing.
6
We rode the bike going at seventy-miles an hour, on into the night into the next day, stopping only for a restroom break. Sheila exhausted kept riding, all I could do to keep her awake was talk to her, and kiss her neck to let her know that she was safe with me. Finally she stopped the bike when she couldn’t go any further. She was spent. I hopped off knowing that it was tiring to have to do what she was doing. So we slept on the ground close to each other and to the bike.
***
We hadn’t slept but a few hours. I didn’t want to wake her but I had to wake her. I kneeled and kissed her cheek. Her eyes opened and she greeted me with a warm smile. “There’s only a few more miles to go. We can do this,” I said looking down on her. I paused to marvel at how beautiful she looked after sleeping.
“I can’t,” she said with a moan. “Leave me. I can’t go on. I’m tired I’m no use to you.”
My glance swung to her. “Why would I leave you? You are everything to me.”
“Because my father said that I have to be of some use in times like these or I should be discarded.”
Horrified by her statement, I knelt beside her and held her in my arms. “As long as you are alive, and I can see your pretty face, and talk to you, that is enough for me. I will never leave you.”
Her eyes swung up staring in my eyes and the corner of her mouth lifted and she smiled. I held her close. And she fell back into a deep restful sleep. I had pushed her too far and too long. She didn’t have the stamina I had. I let her rest.
The next day we woke to a blast of sunlight. The air was cleaner. There was no swirling dust or lightning strikes. I looked around and no longer did I see houses scattered and dotting the landscape every hundred miles. The buildings lay in clusters like the honeycombs of bees.
My father taught me about bees, and how they gathered pollen and nectar and pollinated flowers, and that they were instrumental in the growth of flowering plants, which once fed us. He showed me a honeycomb that had once housed thousands of bees. And when the bees began to die they deserted their homes. These homes built for men by men looked deserted.
Before us stood huge structures miles up into the bleak unforgiving sky. “This is amazing. It’s a city. I’ve never seen a city,” I said to Sheila. My gaze swung to her propping herself on the bike.
“It’s wonderful,” she said looking to me. “Isn’t it?”
I held her as if we were two lovers gazing into the sunset on a wonderful beach. The kind of picture I had seen in magazines when teens were being teens. But our reality was a grim reminder that we couldn’t afford to dream and be the frivolous teens we imagined.
“You need to show me how to ride this bike. You’re tired and you don’t have the strength to do this any longer,” I said to her.
“I can…” she said but I interrupted her.
“No you can’t. I don’t want anything to happen to you. You’re my family now.” Another smile from her.
She showed me the basics at first, how to climb on and start it. This bike had an electric starter with a hand grip. The hand lever operates the clutch. When I squeezed the clutch the motor began. When I released the lever it moved forward with a quick jerk.
“Hey. You’re a quick learner,” she said. I felt proud of myself and excited that Sheila thought that I was good at something. Maybe it was because I had never had a girl of my own. I had gone through seventeen years and never kissed a girl. That was one part of my education that my father never got around to. There were pressing needs, like finding water and food to stay alive.
Now I realized why my father left that for last—it came natural. Like breathing.
I needed to figure out how to protect her and feed her. The pressing need at the moment, shoes for our feet. The soles of our boots had come loose and I tied rags around them to hold them in place. From my estimation, we had enough food and water to make it to the city ahead of us. It was there that the map showed that I would find the next well.
I climbed on the bike and Sheila hopped behind me. She held me close around my waist. She leaned her head on my back and I felt good for the first time. I relaxed because I felt a sense of peace. The motorcycle cranked up and zoomed down the road. I could sense Sheila’s tense body as the speed increased. It was difficult controlling it over the rough terrain and through the dirt and sand, but the bike loved the sand. It wasn’t the bike but a novice like me. When I gained control of the bike and felt at ease, we were a hundred miles away.
We rode night and day. She hung on to me never complaining. We stopped only for a water and a toilet break. When her hands loosened on my waist, I stopped and turned the bike off. I had to carry her and lay her in the sand. She stretched out like a rag doll. She was exhausted from sitting on the hard seat.
I picked her up and lay her down on a soft blanket I pulled from my backpack, and checked her breathing. Relief covered me. She was fine. I built a fire and lay down beside her and held her in my arms. She began crying and moaning in her sleep. I couldn’t make out what it was but she was having a disturbing dream.
I knew what it was. I had experienced some episodes when I lost my mother, father, and sister, and now Shaun was gone but it was too soon, and I was too busy for the loss of Shaun to affect me. Now I don’t think about it as much. I don’t have time. My father said that when men return from war they experience terrible dreams that haunt them a lifetime.
We were in a war. A war with nature to stay alive.
***
I cradled Sheila in my arms, her nose nudged my chest and she slept in silence. When I woke the next morning I couldn’t see. There appeared to be a thick fog covering everything. There was no way we would be able to ride the bike. I wouldn’t be able to see the road.
I gazed at a peaceful sleeping Sheila. I hated to disturb her but we had to leave. We had to find water to take us into New York. I had cut down on large portions of salted meat. I allowed only small pieces. “Wake up.” I touched her softly and she didn’t respond.
I bent over her looking at her flawless face, and I kissed her on the lips. My first real kiss. Her eyes opened and she smiled. Sitting up she pressed her hair down with her hands and she said, “Where are we now?”
“I don’t know? I was never able to get a real map. Only one that will lead me to water.”
“You have a map like that?” She questioned with excitement.
“Now we don’t have to die.”
“I won’t let you die,” I said holding her hand and pulling her to her feet. She seemed to take comfort in my words. I had to be positive in order to survive. What was I going to say? If we don’t find the next well, we will never make it to New York.
“We’re going to make it to New York,” I said.
“What’s a New York,” she said puzzled, her brow furrowed. Why had she never heard of New York? Maybe that was why her family remained on the farm and allowed everything and everyone to die without trying to get there.
“It’s a place where we can have a family. You and I.”
“Not like my family,” she said to me moving away. “Where you send me out and my children out…”
“No. no.” I would never do that.” I moved closer to her to hold her tight. She laid her head on my shoulder and a tear fell on my shirt. She took her dusty hands and wiped her eyes.
“Look over there. There are iron things that are touching the sky,” she said with a strong voice.
“I looked ahead and up and there were enormous buildings of iron, steel, and concrete. “It must be New York,” I said. “See we made it.” W
ith a renewed purpose for life and happiness, we hitched all our belongings on the motorbike and walked in the direction of the buildings.
“Why don’t we ride, we will get there sooner. I can’t wait to see New York,” Sheila said laughing. It was the first time in a year I heard laughter. My little sister would laugh all the time even when things were at its worse.
7
As we neared the buildings, I swung my gaze up, up, up. There stood a tall monstrosity, a skeleton of iron and steel. It leaned with the blowing of the wind. I didn’t recognize it as a part of the New York skyline. “Where is the Empire State Building?” I murmured. Everyone has heard or seen the Empire State Building. It never occurred to me that we had not arrived in New York City.
We kept walking along a sea of rubbish and rusty wrecks of cars and boats lined along the streets. I looked down the wide street and there stood no one but me and Sheila plodding along. We looked up and down at the buildings. Windows broken and garbage strewn in the apartments. The fog had cleared and the sky dark, threatened to rain, but there was no rain, only lightning strikes in a distances and above our heads.
Walking with the motor bike, I had grown tired of holding it and I lay it on the sidewalk. If there was only us what was the use in protecting it. Protecting it from whom?
“Should we leave it there?” Sheila asked.
“There’s no one to bother the bike or us.”
“How do you know? We can’t be the only ones alive.”
“Look around. There haven’t been people here in fifty years.” I reached and gathered a large bundle of yellow disintegrating newspapers held together with twine lying on the sidewalk. We sat in the gutter and piece together the remainder of the Chicago Times.
Saturday, June 28, 2022 the headlines front page story: New York Has Room for Everyone. Come one, come all, and you will never have to worry about food and water again.
I laughed. “What’s so funny?” Sheila asked.
“It sounds like a scam. The kind I read about in my mother’s old papers. All of this sounds too good to be true and as my father said, “It probably is.
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