Rubber City Ruins

by Tara Summerville

  “See, it’s good stuff.” He waved the bag in front of her.

  “Goodnight, Clovis.” Anna groaned as she headed back up to her bed.

  The following morning Anna got dressed and ready to head out. Cole was awake when she reached the bottom of the stairs but his complexion was still an ashy yellow and he was still shaking.

  The sun hung low in the sky and had just begun to lift the morning dew off of the grass. The streets were faded by the fog as Anna and Clovis began to navigate their way to the drug store at the end of the street.

  However, Clovis had requested that Anna follow him to another part of town to show her a place that he said that he visits often. She hesitated at first, partly because she wanted to get Cole his drugs as soon as she could, but she also felt uneasy about going to an unknown location.

  “You can’t just tell me what you want me to see?”

  “Sure, I could… but I have been telling you fantastical stories that I’m still uncertain if ya even believe. So yeah, sure, I could tell ya, but I’d prefer if ya just see for yourself,” Clovis explained.

  “Is it far?” Anna asked.

  “Nah,” he replied. “It will only be a short detour to the UFCW building. You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”

  “If I said that I was would you just tell me what’s up there rather than show me?”

  “Nah. Where’s the fun in that?”

  “Then it appears my curiosity has dictated that I am not afraid of heights.”

  They climbed 17 flights of stairs that led to a large restaurant on the top floor. The chairs were still pushed up to their respective tables. On top of each table was a flower pot that was wrapped in red and green foil that contained a dead plant. The white cloth napkins were folded neatly around cloudy silverware at each place setting. In the back of the room was a white Christmas tree with silver tinsel that overlooked the town from the wall of windows.

  Clovis’ heavy boots kicked up dust that sparkled in the early morning sunlight as he made his way over to the bar.

  “You wanted to show me a cancelled Christmas party and a make a cocktail?”

  “Not exactly.” He popped the cap off of two beers and handed one to Anna. “Hope you like warm beer.”

  She reluctantly took it.

  “We’re heading to the roof, but I thought we would take a break here.” He studied Anna’s uneasy facial expression. “Don’t give me that look. I just thought you could use a beer. I know yer worried about your friend.” He tapped the mouth of his brown bottle against hers and look a long gulp. “My God I love the taste of beer.”

  Anna smiled weakly. “Thanks… I am worried about him.” She took a small swig of the old, warm beer. “Oh wow… that’s terrible.”

  Clovis laughed. “Yeah, you have to really try to imagine what it tasted like before it went bad.”

  Anna took another sip. “Nope… It’s too gross.” She sat it down on the bar. “Is there any wine around here? Isn’t wine supposed to get better with age?”

  “As a matter of fact…” Clovis walked into the back room and reappeared with a deep purple bottle, “We just happen to be in the presence of a bar that was fully stocked for a Christmas party.” He used the bottle opener by the sink to uncork it and then turned around to select a glass.

  “No need, it comes in its own glass," She said as she took a gulp right from the bottle.

  Clovis clasped his hands together. “Be still me heart… a lass who drinks wine directly from the bottle. Me mother would be proud of ya.”

  Anna smacked her lips together. “Not bad. Not great, but not bad.”

  They climbed the last flight of stairs that led to the roof. Clovis used a large cinderblock to keep the door from closing behind them.

  “So. What did you want me to see up here?” Anna asked, admiring the modest cityscape.

  Clovis used the palm of his hand to shade his eyes from the sun. “Oh yeah, today is going to be a really good day to see it.” He walked over to the southwest edge of the building and pointed to the horizon. “Over there.” He pointed.

  “I don’t see anything.” Anna scanned the streets and the windows of buildings. She read the common graffiti she had seen in every other part of the city. She looked in windows, and along the highways. She scanned the trees in the distance and the color of the clouds that touched the horizon- and that is when she saw it. She raised the wine bottle to her lips and look a long gulp. “What is that?” She wiped her mouth with her forearm.

  Clovis laughed in excitement and clapped his hands together. “I’m not crazy… thank the Lord… I’m not crazy. You see it too?”

  “Of course, I see it. There is a big black… thing... over there, and it shoots up all the way up there.” She pointed to the clouds. “It might even go further… but the clouds shied its visibility. Is it a building? Or some type of machine? Do you know what it is?”

  Clovis crossed his arms across his chest. “No idea. It’s just too far away to tell.”

  “Where do you think that it’s coming from?”

  “I have a pretty good idea. I brought a map and a compass up here one afternoon, and I figured that it’s comin’ from the southeast. Now, assumin’ that it’s located in a big city... the only cities that lie southwest of here are Pittsburgh, Baltimore, or Washington D.C. But that’s just me assumin’. It very well could be planted in a field in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Pittsburgh isn’t that far from here.”

  “Yeah… which is why I’m pretty sure that it ain’t there. I figure it would be a lot clearer if it were there. That leaves D.C and Baltimore, but my gut says it’s coming from Washington.”

  “Huh.” Anna took another drink from her bottle.

  Clovis sat down on the roof floor and propped himself back on his arms. “I wanted to show you, Anna, that yer window of understanding of the world is very limited. There are things off on the horizon that you can’t even imagine exist.”

  Anna sat down next to him. “Why don’t you go see what it is?”

  Clovis squinted his black eyes in a painful concentration. “I could do that, yeah. But I have settled into a new normal, ya know? I have a nice place to live, I have a purpose: killin’ off the remainder of those abominations an’ working on rebuildin’ my relationship with God… and I have a good dog. It took me a long time to work through my anger and all my hatred for the things that were done to me, and I’m finally at peace.” He finished off his beer and threw the bottle off of the roof and waited for it to smash on the pavement below. “Besides, nothing good ever came out of Washington D.C.”

  Chapter 13

  Anna and Clovis delivered the medications to Cole later that afternoon, but didn’t speak of their detour to the top of the UFCW building. Cole eventually took the only book in the house, the Bible, out to the porch swing and read in the warm afternoon sun with a glass of Clovis’ special herbal tea. Anna helped Clovis water the vegetables in his garden and occasionally threw Oz a partially rotten tomato. They dug up carrots and potatoes, plucked green beans and bell peppers, and threw them into a large utility bucket. Clovis walked to the edge of the lot to show Anna the apple and pear trees that were just beginning to bear small and unripened fruit. The bushes behind the fruit trees were specked with black and red berries. As Anna neared, she gasped when she recognized that the bushes were loaded with raspberries and blackberries. Clovis handed her a small bowl and she eagerly gathered the fruits that were still warm from the afternoon sun.

  They took the bucket of vegetables and Anna’s bowl of fruit down to the small pond at the end of the lot. There was a narrow trail that weaved in between the trees and bushes they had to follow that led to the pond. Clovis dumped the vegetables on the ground and they proceeded to clean each one in the warm, shallow water until the bucket was refilled.

  Later in the afternoon, Anna dragged the table that was on the back patio to the front porch and scooted it to where Cole was sitting on the swing. She grunted as sh
e lifted the bucket of vegetables and dumped it on the table.

  “What’s this for?” Cole asked as he dog-eared the page he was on and set the Bible next to him.

  “It’s going to be dinner.” She pulled up the chair to the other side of the table and handed Cole a vegetable peeler.

  “I don’t know what this thing is.” He picked it up by the handle and examined it.

  “It’s a peeler. Watch.” She picked up a potato and slid the blade along the skin.

  Cole smiled. “I see. That’s a pretty clever kitchen tool.” He picked up a potato and began to peel it.

  They peeled the first few potatoes in a concentrative silence filled only by the sound of Clovis moving around pots and pans in the kitchen.

  “So... are you feeling any better?” Anna broke the silence as she began to get the hang of peeling potatoes.

  “Yeah, almost back to normal. I’m really hungry, strangely enough.”

  “That was pretty crazy last night.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Has that happened a lot?” She was reluctant to hear his answer.

  “Not a lot. But it has happened before.” He shrugged without taking his focus off of the potato that he was working on.

  “Do you have any idea what---”

  He set the potato and the peeler down and looked up at her. “No, I don’t know what it could be. And yes... there was a time that I scoured the medical journals trying to figure out exactly what was wrong. But then I thought ‘why do I even want to know?’ It’s not like I could go to a doctor for treatments. If there is some terrible growth inside of me I couldn’t have it surgically removed. So why bother? I decided a long time ago that I’m going to only do the things that make me feel good. And if I die… well… then I die. There wasn’t really anything I could do about it anyway, could I?”

  “That was when you were alone.”

  “So what?”

  “Now you have people who… care about you… and don’t want you to die.”

  Cole’s cheeks began to burn red.

  “...I mean… that’s just what Clovis said to me. He’s was really scared for you last night.”

  Cole smiled. “Huh. I didn’t realize that Clovis actually felt that way about me. All this time I thought he was mostly annoyed by me.”

  “He’s not.”

  “You can tell him that I will take better care of myself from here on out.”

  “Thanks. He will appreciate that…. I, uh… I’ll be sure to tell him.” She smiled down at the table.

  Cole picked up his peeler and got back to work.

  Once they had finished peeling all of the potatoes and carrots, Anna went into the kitchen and grabbed two kitchen knives from the drawer. On the way back outside she had noticed that Clovis had fallen asleep on the couch with Oz squeezed between Clovis and the back of the couch cushions. She grabbed the blanket that Cole had left on the floor and covered them both.

  Instead of letting the screen door slap against the door frame, she slowly guided it closed.

  “Clovis and Oz are curled up together both completely asleep on the couch inside,” Anna whispered as she walked back to the table and handed a knife to Cole.

  “You must have worn him out this morning. Did you go anywhere else besides the pharmacy this morning?”

  “Actually… we did.” Anna had debated all afternoon whether she wanted to tell Cole about what she had seen on the roof of the UFCW building. As the day wore on, her curiosity continued to grow and she desperately wanted to discuss it.

  “Where did you go?”

  “I was reluctant at first… But Clovis wanted to take me to the roof the UFCW building. He said that there was something he wanted to show me.”

  “What was it?”

  Anna laughed as she searched to try and find the words to describe it. “Huh. I now see why Clovis insisted I see it firsthand rather than try and explain what it is.”

  “Was it a person?”

  She shook her head. “No, nothing like that. He took me up to the roof and pointed off in the distance. I searched the horizon and that’s when I saw it--- there was this… geez, I don’t know… this big dark blemish off in the distance.”

  “A blemish?”

  “No, that doesn’t describe it. I want to call it a building. It was a big building with this long arm that stretched up and disappeared into the clouds.”

  Cole raised his eyebrows. “You sure you didn’t bring along any of the father’s special herbs?”

  “I knew that you were going to think that.” She chuckled. “But it’s true. I don’t know what it is… and neither does Clovis. He figured that it might be coming from Washington D.C.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We should go see what it is.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it all afternoon. Clovis said that he has no intention of ever finding out. And I think that I’m going to follow his lead.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Some pretty messed up things happened that we don’t even know about. I don’t even know what happened to me. And you don’t know what happened to your family.”

  Cole looked shocked that she had mentioned his family. “I don’t need to find out what happened to my family.”

  “You’re never going back? Not ever?”

  “Do you know how hard it is to live with yourself after abandoning your family and friends and leaving them there to die? I was just stalled and waiting to live out the rest of my days… however many that ended up being. But you inspired me to move forward. You have a mission here, and I want to help you get there.”

  “That’s very flattering that you think that about me… but you can’t move forward if you’re dead. And that could be what is waiting for us in Washington. I mean, look what A-IX did to Clovis. That’s the kind of shit going on here. I’m all for searching for answers… but we have to be smart.”

  “You don’t know that it’s bad.”

  “No… but I don’t want to take the chance.” Anna’s tone was definitive.

  “But what if there is a whole town of survivors? There could be doctors and teachers and cooks…”

  “...And cannibals, rapists and murderers.”

  “You’re not even a little bit curious?” Cole urged.

  “Of course, I’m curious. But it will just have to remain one of those unsolved mysterious we all have to deal with. Like who really shot Kennedy or if Atlantis was an actual city.”

  The screen door swung opened and Clovis walked out with a frying pan in his hand. “The CIA killed Kennedy… Oswald was a patsy.”

  “Why am I not surprised that you would think that?” Anna rolled her eyes. “And the moon landing?”

  “Faaaake.” Clovis sat the pan on the table. “Load up those veggies on this and I’ll fry them up.”

  They ate dinner on front porch that evening. Clovis fried the potatoes and the carrots together over the fire and seasoned them with salt and pepper. He had chopped a head of iceberg lettuce and divided it evenly between three bowls and topped them with cucumbers, chives, parsley and finely chopped red peppers. After he had placed all of the vegetables on the table, he went back inside and reemerged with a large platter that held a large fish.

  “I caught this just a little while ago," he said with pride.

  “It looks really good,” Anna lied, unable to take her gaze off of the fish’s glassy eye.

  They started to eat as the first of the fireflies began to light up in the distance. The sounds of forks clanging on porcelain, crickets, and Oz’s whimpers for table scraps were the only sounds filling the conversational silence.