by Eisele, Kimi
He remembered how Beatrix had told him about the dogs in Ecuador. Just because its tail wagged didn’t mean it was friendly. If it came for you, best to find a stone quick, pick it up, and be ready to hurl it. If there weren’t any stones, you could just pretend to pick one up and the dog would slink away. Worked nearly every time, Beatrix had said.
The point, Carson told himself, wasn’t to hurl stones at a stranger but to be on guard, ready for anything.
The man was his age, maybe older. Tucked into his armpit was a baseball cap, which he had likely just removed. His thinning hair was damp, and his pale, expansive forehead glistened with sweat. He wore loose jeans and a thin white T-shirt. His narrow eyes darted around as if unable to focus. He tossed Carson the apple. “Save the seeds, please,” he said.
Carson rolled the dull, waxy apple around in his palm, wondering whether it was safe to eat. “You live around here?” he asked.
“Don’t live around here, no,” the man said. “Traveling through. You?”
“Going west,” Carson said. “Getting the lay of the land. Chronicling.”
“You’re a journalist? Wait, are there even any newspapers anymore?”
“I’m a schoolteacher,” he said.
“You gonna eat that?” the man asked, glancing at the apple in Carson’s hand. “I’m saving the seeds.” He reached into the pocket of his jeans and held some out. They looked like shiny little eyes in his pink palm. “Future trees,” he said, sifting the seeds back into his pocket. “I’m Jimmy. Jimmy Weed.”
Carson felt relief. The encounter could have easily gone another way. An apple wasn’t exactly something you’d throw a punch at. Carson had never been a fighter anyway. Out here, he might need another strategy, but so far, so good: a strange cabbage sandwich and an apple.
“And where are you headed?” Carson said.
“Also west,” Jimmy said.
Carson gave a nod. “After you,” he said politely. That’s when he noticed the limp.
“Maybe you’ve heard of me. WeedRivers Inc. Our company. Rodrigo Ríos was my partner. ‘Ríos’ is ‘rivers’ in Spanish. We made video games.” Jimmy Weed was panting, struggling to keep up with Carson. “We had a new one in the works called Colapso. There were a few similar games out there, but ours would have put them all to shame. The graphics alone. I mean, it was hyperreal. We were just about to launch. We had to—things were already so iffy, but we were gonna do it. We figured if we still had the internet, people would play. And then, well, you know.”
Carson stood still for a minute, disbelieving. “You developed a game about”—he held out his hands—“this?”
“Pretty much, yeah. Ríos had family in Puerto Rico. He knew up close what disaster could look like.”
“Prescient,” Carson said.
“Yeah, but you knew it was coming, too, didn’t you? We all knew.”
“Art imitates life,” Carson said.
“Life imitates art,” Jimmy said. “But what good is a video game now? No console. No power.”
Carson nodded, wondering if such a video game would have prepared anyone for this. Could anything have prepared them for this?
He recalled his dark apartment. Were any of his things still there? Or had the looters come to take it all? Not that there was much to take. Most of his possessions were stacked in a storage unit outside the city, where they’d been since he sold the farmhouse. All the items of his life with June: dinner party plates, tablecloths, subscription magazines, flower vases, a few antiques. None of it fit in the city apartment, and besides, without her, it had lost its luster. The only things he’d brought to the city were his books, box after box of them. But he hadn’t been able to read—the words tangled across the pages, indecipherable in his grief and exhaustion. And now? What kind of nomad needed a personal library? As far as he was concerned, the thugs could plunder everything.
Jimmy and Carson followed the rail line through a small woods and out again, to the edge of a town, where the tracks mirrored a road. Along it were defunct businesses: Pizza Kitchen. PartyLand. Western Union. Kram’s Deli. A nameless gift shop still offered weathered postcards on a rack out front, and they wandered over to look.
Jimmy held up a postcard of a lion with a full mane spread out in the grass, and the words “I like LION around.” Carson pulled out one depicting Horseshoe Curve, a place where the railroad tracks made a 180-degree turn around the edge of a lake. “I’d like to spend some time ‘lion around’ this,” he said, pocketing the postcard.
They walked on, Jimmy limping like a cheerful drunk. “You said you’re a teacher?”
“History and world civilizations,” Carson said. “High school.”
“Like ancient Egypt and stuff? I used to love pyramids as a kid. The architecture, those tombs. I was so fascinated by King Tut. I used to make lists of all the things I’d want with me in my tomb,” Jimmy said.
Carson felt a lightness in his step, pleased when anyone was interested in history. It made him feel useful.
“My favorite is the early Southwest,” Carson said. “The Ancestral Puebloans, or Anasazi people.”
“Oh yeah, the cliff dwellers?”
“Pretty remarkable people. Made life in the middle of the desert. Figured out how to grow food with little rain. Archaeologists found macaw feathers and seashells in Chaco Canyon, which means they traded with the Maya in Mexico. Their structures were incredible, the highest in America until Chicago built steel skyscrapers.”
“But they disappeared, right?”
“Population got too big, probably. They cut down a lot of trees. Erosion happened. Then years and years of drought. That finally did them in.”
“Damn. I guess they weren’t all that advanced, or they would have seen it coming.”
“Perhaps,” Carson said, a little annoyed at Jimmy’s insinuation.
“Seems to me that someone took them down,” Jimmy said. “I mean, how can you just outgrow your society? Wouldn’t they have seen all the damage they were causing? Seems more likely that an enemy tribe came in and slaughtered them.”
“There are theories about that. But there’s no evidence of it in the archaeological record.”
“Well, I’m sticking to it—the enemy ambush. I just don’t buy that they would have missed all the signs. My guess is that we just haven’t found that evidence yet.”
Carson frowned. He didn’t have the energy to argue. “My guess is, no one’s going to be looking for that evidence now,” he said.
As they walked, Carson turned it over in his head. For a time, he’d believed it was about writing. Without written culture, the Ancestral Puebloans couldn’t track their history. They’d lived through drought before. But because those droughts were spread across time, they didn’t have continuous living memory of it. But he also knew that the writing of history didn’t always mean the reading of it. So what did that mean for this enterprise of his? Another record no one would read?
“Maybe it was about conflict,” he said after a while. “Societies fail because they are unwilling or unable to adapt their cultural values to environmental realities. We humans can’t reconcile how we live with where we live.”
Their shoes crunched against gravel. To accompany his irregular gait, Jimmy made a little wheeze on each exhale, and their walking took on a kind of jazz rhythm. Carson’s own legs were fatigued, and he was pretty sure a blister had formed on the ball of his right foot. The road alongside them meandered southward and disappeared. The sky shifted, grew lighter.
“Or maybe some bad humans just come in and wreck everything we’ve built,” Jimmy said.
At the far end of Halcyon Street, Beatrix started in on the neighborhood survey Rog had asked her to do. How hard could it be? You just knocked on doors, talked to people, and catalogued their skills. She’d done similar work in Ecuador, when she’d started organizing farmers. The best way to win people’s trust was simply to listen. That’s what her friend Angel had told her. He’d grown up in one
of the local communities and knew the people well. The day they started working together, they drank Nescafé at a wobbly table at a roadside café tucked into the gangly tropical vegetation. “Small talk first,” Angel said. “The weather, the children, the crops. Then you listen. Everyone has a voice. Everyone has a wish. Your job is to hear theirs.”
On Halcyon, the first woman Beatrix met, Anita, wore a long blue knit scarf, bright against the black coils of her dreadlocks. A midwife, Anita had delivered nearly two hundred babies. She’d also worked at the public library. “I’ve been meaning to sneak in and take out some books to read,” she told Beatrix. “I still have my key.”
A couple in their late twenties had more skills than they should have for their age, Beatrix thought. “We went DIY a long time ago,” the woman said as Beatrix checked off knitting, sewing, canning, and curing.
“I used to make good money selling beard oil,” her husband said, laughing. “It was kind of a luxury, I guess. But I can do practical stuff, too.”
“He’s the fastest wood chopper in the crew. We used to have contests,” his wife said. They gave Beatrix a jar of plum preserves on her way out.
The next house seemed abandoned: a broken window, and leaves and papers strewn across the front porch. But then a curtain moved and an old woman with sunken eyes appeared at the door. No, she didn’t have a moment. No, she couldn’t answer any questions. “Do you have food?” she asked plaintively. “We’re hungry.” She opened the door wider and pointed to a cat on the floor, skinny and barely moving.
Next door, a stout middle-aged man told Beatrix, “We’ve given her plenty of food already. Is it for her or for her cat?”
“Both?”
The man sighed and returned with some dry biscuits. “I can’t keep doing this. I’ve got my own to feed.”
“She just seems so desperate,” Beatrix said.
“Who isn’t?” he said.
Back at the other house, the old woman grabbed the biscuits Beatrix offered and disappeared inside the house. Beatrix made a note in her packet and moved on.
At the next house, no one came to the door. Then three in a row refused to participate in the survey. Just when she was about to call it quits, a block from home, a man opened his door readily, filling the entire doorframe. Gary, the perimeter guard.
“Finally. Someone willing to talk to me,” Beatrix said, telling him about the resistant neighbors.
“They’re all just afraid,” he said.
Beatrix started the survey, checking off his many skills. Construction and repair? Yes. Maintenance? Yes. Managing budgets? Yes. Musical instrument?
“Harmonica,” he said, moving close enough so that she could smell a hint of toothpaste, his sun-drenched shirt.
“You’re versatile,” she asked.
“I was a Boy Scout,” he said. “I joined the army and became a general, and then I worked as a defense contractor.”
Beatrix flinched. “In Iraq?” she asked.
“And Iran.”
“Like Blackwater?”
He nodded, taking the list from her. “Under ‘Trade Skills,’ you can check off ‘Electronics’ and ‘Radio.’ I was really into ham radio as a kid, first, and then later in the service. So I have all the equipment. You’d be surprised. You don’t need much power at all to communicate.”
Beatrix remembered the preacher she’d heard the other day, but before she could ask about it, Gary said, “It’s mostly ham guys like me trading practical information. Water sources. Crime reports. That kind of thing. Two-way talk. Not a lot of long, meaningful conversations.”
Beatrix laughed. “About your feelings?”
Gary listed off more skills. “Primitive skills. Survival skills. Orienteering, check,” he said. “Firearms.”
“That’s not on there,” Beatrix said.
“No, but it should be. Why would you deny people the right to protect themselves?”
“I don’t want to deny anyone anything,” she said, feeling her face get hot. “I just—”
“Well, you seem pretty smart, kiddo,” he said, “but when someone has a gun pointed at you, you’re gonna want to protect yourself.”
Kiddo? Did he just call her kiddo? She stared at him without blinking. Guns don’t stop guns, she wanted to say, but she didn’t have the energy to get into it. “Okay then. Thank you for your time,” she said, taking the packet and backing onto the porch. Too bad. What a waste of handsome, she thought.
The last house on the block looked like an old farmhouse, set far back from the sidewalk, camouflaged by a large magnolia tree. A stooped old man introduced himself as Mr. Greeb. “You’ve come for eggs?” he said, inviting her in.
“Eggs?”
Inside, the house smelled of magnolia blooms and something fermented. In the corner of the living room was an ocher-colored reclining chair, its velour upholstery worn through at the arms and headrest. A single strand of red yarn traveled up and over its arm from a basket on the floor.
Beatrix followed Mr. Greeb through the dining room. Covering the table was a collection of brightly colored squares, each made from yarn woven around two perpendicular sticks. “God’s eyes,” Beatrix said. She remembered making them as a child.
“It’s my little hobby. Keeps my eyes working. Summons the view of God,” Mr. Greeb said. He led her to the backyard, where a dozen or more chickens were pecking or bathing in the dust. He pointed to one of them. “She’s got some eggs under her, for sure. She’s hoping they’ll become chicks. Sometimes, a hen will do that, even if there’s no rooster around. Just need to be gentle when you reach for the eggs so she doesn’t take it too hard. No chicks in there, even if she doesn’t know it.”
Mr. Greeb reached slowly underneath the hen, pulled out an egg, and handed it to Beatrix.
“I’m listing you as ‘the resident chicken master,’ okay?” Beatrix said, cradling the smooth, warm egg.
“Sounds good to me. Nothing in this yard is secret. Just gotta keep the dogs out is all. And hawks.” He led her back through the house. “You want to take some home?”
“They are beautiful,” Beatrix said, looking again at the God’s eyes. She picked out one for Rosie. Light-blue yarn interrupted with a thin stripe of brown. The colors of her eyes.
“Oh, take as many of those as you want. I meant the hens. You want some? I got so many I can’t keep ’em straight. Consider it a barter for all this work you’re doing.”
“Really?” she said, startled by his generosity.
“Just need to build a coop. Make sure they have a place to roost. Unless you don’t mind ’em in your trees,” he said. “Go home, build a coop, then come back.”
Late in the afternoon, Carson saw a drawing scratched with chalk into a cement post next to the tracks: a square with an X in the upper right-hand corner, and a line of Ws across the bottom, the same symbols someone had drawn on the map Ayo had given him.
“I’m guessing that means water?” Jimmy said.
“That’d be my guess,” Carson said, reaching for the map in his pocket. He let out a small gasp. It was gone.
Jimmy pointed to the sky, where dark clouds were assembling in the distance. “Maybe sooner than we think.”
Just ahead, they saw a station house, a long room with wooden benches lining the walls. What little light was left in the sky reached through the windows and reflected off the floor.
“We could bed down here, Professor,” said Jimmy, collapsing onto one of the outdoor benches.
Actually, it’s “Principal,” Carson thought, remembering how Ayo always greeted him—Mr. Principal! “Let’s get a fire started before it rains,” Carson said. He gathered up some twigs and began to arrange them on the cement platform.
Jimmy added some larger sticks to the pile. “Maybe my nickname should be Fire Starter.” He struck a match and lit the twigs, blowing on them to augment the fire.
“Not Gamer?” Carson said.
“Those days are over. I’m thinking about trees th
ese days. I’m planning to start a nursery at my uncle Frank’s in Iowa. I actually have a pretty good green thumb. Kept a hundred houseplants alive. Not just snake plants or spider plants either. I like getting my hands dirty. Maybe I’ll even pull off an orchard. But a nursery for starters. Everyone’s gonna want saplings.”
“Sounds like a smart plan,” Carson said, scanning for any larger pieces of wood. “So that’s where you’re going then—Iowa.”
Jimmy nodded. “So for dinner I’ve got apples and part of a sausage. You?”
“Macaroni,” Carson said. “Still some peanut butter, too. Maybe a can or so of tuna. Beans are gone. A few protein bars left. I’m going to have to kill an animal eventually. And plants, of course.” He spotted a shipping pallet tucked behind a dumpster and hopped off the platform to retrieve it.
“Yeah, thank God for plants,” Jimmy said, then disappeared.
Carson took off his boots. Sure enough, there was the beginning of a blister on the ball of his right foot. He found moleskin in his pack and tended to it. Then he built a fire and cooked noodles with salt and powdered milk, his best approximation of the mac-and-cheese backpacking meal he had made so often. He was halfway through the macaroni when Jimmy appeared again, a mischievous grin on his face.
“I got a surprise for you. Come look.”
Carson followed Jimmy behind the station to a boarded-up house. In the backyard was a kidney-shaped swimming pool full of murky water. “Good Lord! You’re getting in that water? Sheesh—”
“You better believe it!” Jimmy had already pulled off his clothes. He pounced into the water like a child and let out a high-pitched squeal. “Just a tad swampy. But worth it. C’mon, Professor! Gotta make time for fun.”
Carson undressed and lowered himself slowly in. The cold stole his breath, and the water stung his sore feet. He forced himself under and felt the ache in his brain. He got out quickly, trembling, but sensed every cell in his body awake.