Light Bearing

by Ben Woollard

  ***

  One day, when I was around fifteen or so, me and Shiloh were out on the southern edges, at a spot we didn’t normally scour much. We’d run into some other foragers and they’d brandished knives at us, threatened to flay our skins if we didn’t get out of their territory, so we wandered through the garbage hills until we found the ruins of a little house. Looking inside there was nothing but decaying furniture, all the springs already stolen, sold somewhere, probably built into the barrel of some Gov rifle. We were about to leave when Shiloh found a hole, dugout under the floorboards in the corner. He stuck his head inside and found a handheld crank-radio. We’d found radios before, but they’d been useless as nobody except the Gov and some of the more successful cafés and bars had access to any electricity, all of it having to be generated with just a few turbines that’d been scraped together inside of Columbia. They’d tried to start manufacturing them again, but for that they needed raw materials, and the workers and the infrastructure to mine them wasn’t exactly forthcoming, not to mention there weren’t any people around who knew much about making things like that. I sat down next to Shiloh, and cranked the handle attached to the right side of the radio. It was a miracle to us both when it worked and started blaring the soft crackled static, the sound of the era. Flipping through the different frequencies there were the Gov-approved stations, playing only propaganda news reports about progress and the importance of solidarity, spreading fear of another collapse. We thought the Gov were the only people who had access to broadcasting equipment, and so we both went silent when out of the one small speaker drifted, in intermittent distortions, the sounds of the first pre-collapse music we’d ever head, other than the old folksongs passed along by the vagrants of the city, barbarizations and evolutions of half remembered melodies. We sat in complete stillness listening to the rhapsodic notes that were sung, smoother than any sounds we knew of. When it was over we listened with full attention to the low voice that followed, telling us it had been William De Vaughn singing “Be Thankful for What You Got”, and that we were listening to the only free station in the former United States, broadcasting day and night.

  Later that same day we went to Portlock’s to sell the meager electronic scraps we had collected, but we agreed not to give him the radio. He looked at us with an eyebrow raised, can’t get anything by Portlock, he was an old friend of Momma’s, the most discerning type I’ve ever met before or since.

  “Is that all?” he asked us. Me and Shiloh both turned eyes downcast, couldn’t get anything by him, I swear. “Hmm, must be something really good,” said Portlock, “none of my business I guess. Well, if that’s all give my best to your mother, I know she’s out there breaking her back day and night.” We said we would and left the small shop, eyes still directed at the floor. I don’t know why we didn’t tell Portlock about the radio, I guess it felt like something we had to keep secret, like it was the type of miracle that, when shared, would make other people jealous, make them want what we had just because it wasn’t theirs. We didn’t even tell Momma or Grandpa at first, but they found out when we were discovered huddled over the small thing late one night after they’d gone to sleep. But they understood why we hadn’t told them, and after that we would all sit around and listen to the symphonies of times that had long ago rolled their way back into the tide. It really is amazing how the simple vibrations of the air can bring people into before unknown states of happiness. The station played anything and everything, from Tchaikovsky to Tupac, two of my favorites. It broadcast from an anonymous location somewhere in the wilderness outside Columbia, or at least that’s where we assumed it must’ve been, since anyone running that much electricity inside the city would get raided by the Gov right away.

  That’s how it went for a lot of years, me and Shiloh foraging for scrap metal to sell to Portlock, that he would then sell to the Gov so they could keep pursuing their mad dream of making the world just like it was before the collapse. Momma worked all day everyday, Grandpa spent his time chatting and sleeping, hobbling around on his small wooden cane carved with what he called sigils. He said his cane was the only important thing he owned, that everything he had worthwhile while in his life was because of it. He said that it had magic power, that it was the source of his vitality and life force. That made me laugh, especially as the years went on and his back got more and more hunched, like some tree bent over by the wind. Back then it never occurred to me that he could actually die, though, since he really was the toughest old man I’ve ever met, pushing eighty after a hard life of doing what he had to, and never complaining about a single ache or pain or having anything short of a grin on his face for me and Shiloh. Looking back I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for him, growing up right after the collapse, before even the crystallization of anything that could be called a settlement, much less a city. Pure anarchy he said it was, not even an established currency, although for some reason he always had a glimmer in his eye when he said that. He thought different than most, laughed at everything the Gov said about abhorring anarchy and trusting only in the solidarity of society, the shining light in this sea of darkness that always stands at the perimeters waiting for the opportunity to swallow us up with gnashing teeth.

  Besides Grandpa’s attitude, which he never tried to push on us, me and Shiloh never had much reason to doubt the things the Gov told us, but it wasn’t as if we liked them very much, either. They talked constantly about the importance of stability, the need to rebuild, to make society into what it was before everything fell apart. They would blare it through the plaza loudspeakers twice a day, and on every radio throughout the city, most of which were provided by the Gov to various establishments for that specific purpose. The Daily News they called it.

  Me and Shiloh differed in our opinions: I thought it was all a pipe dream, that society wasn’t going anywhere, and didn’t care anyway, being more concerned with getting whatever meager pay we could. Shiloh believed in progress, though, really thought a new golden age for mankind was right around the corner, just waiting to be grasped by those who were intrepid enough to build the future. He even did some cadet training at the Gov Academy, thought maybe he would become an officer, or even a politician someday. I tried to talk him out of it, told him it was a waste of time, just indoctrination into more propaganda, but he wouldn’t listen. He scraped and saved every penny he could for years just to pay for the damn introduction class. Fucking typical if you ask me, recruit the poorest and most desperate, then make them pay just to get their foot in the door. His enthusiasm didn’t last long, luckily enough. I didn’t ever hear exactly what happened, but he came back one day after only two weeks crying and saying something about another student being beat half to death over something minor. Shiloh never could come to terms with the troubles we were always surrounded by, especially those of the Gov, who were supposed to be our protectors, the nurturers of a new age. After that he didn’t want anything to do with The Academy, or anything the Gov tried to sell us, which worked fine for me, more time to forage, more time to sit around with my brother and listen to the radio playing an endless mix of genres, all blending together into what would sometimes feel like a single sound, a single vibration originating from a single time and place, somewhere higher than where we were, trapped by the machinery of systems we didn’t understand and couldn’t fully see.

  Chapter 2

  The rumors started to trickle into the city around the time I turned twenty-one. Me and Shiloh were dropping off a collection of old batteries, a few mutilated cameras, and the frame of a small TV to Portlock, having our usual small talk, generally just thinking about getting the pittance we were due in Gov notes, full of utopian imagery, sun rising over a futuristic city on the back, pen and ink portraits of the founding members of the UCG smiling blissful on the front, all knowing. All I wanted to do was take the money over to the Café Noir and sit down for coffee and a slice of bread with Grandpa and Tolka, his “girlfriend”, as he liked to call her, just a
s wrinkled as he was. There were two people standing in the shop, apparently also there to sell scraps, talking about a new religion, or something like that. I didn’t pay it much mind at the time but looking back it was the beginning of it all, the first drop of the pin that would tear everything I knew apart.

  “They say they can unite everybody into a single mind,” said one of them, a girl with bones visible under her skin.

  “How could that be?” asked the other, a tall, brown-skinned man with dreadlocks cascading out from beneath a woven cap. “The Gov wants to unite everyone too, and look how much success they’ve had, out harassing people every night, collecting taxes, barely doing anything but stockpiling their guns and ammunition.”

  “I don’t know,” the girl replied, “maybe there’s some truth to it, either way it’s kind of nice to see people with some hope since everyone’s so downcast all the time, faith never came back after the collapse, I guess.” And that was it, that was all we heard before saying our goodbyes to Portlock and moving on. Walking over to the café Shiloh asked me if I heard what they were saying.

  “Some bullshit,” I replied, which I noticed made him squint, but he didn’t bring it up again. We walked to the café and ordered coffee, then sat down next to Grandpa and Tolka, who were talking busily to one another, hands gesturing in the air around them.

  “Oh I just loved the days right after, when everything was fresh and new, anything seemed possible,” Tolka was saying. “None of this Gov currency shit, no endless prattling on about stability.” Grandpa was smiling, tracing the markings on his cane, nodding slowly.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked her.

  “Me and your grandfather were just discussing the time right after the collapse,” she said, “when the world was The Zone.

  “What’s The Zone?”

  “The Zone,” Tolka said, looking very serious, “is the line between reality and possibility.” I laughed.

  “That’s supposed to be a real place?” Grandpa looked at me at that, flashing me some warning glare, said I’d understand someday, I’d know what the word freedom really meant. That annoyed me, his talking downwards at me; I thought I was mature, even then.

  “It sounds scary,” said Shiloh.

  “Oh it is,” Tolka responded, “but what joy can be found amidst those fears.”

  “Don’t you mean it was,” I said, fed up with the whole conversation.

  “No, no, dear, The Zone is timeless,” she said, and was about continue, but got interrupted by the café’s radio coming on, brand new, apparently Café Noir had met the Gov’s popularity requirements to be issued one. It blared the Daily News, recited in monotone and even-rhythm syllables, spouting the same things they always said.

  “Today the United Central Government has made a massive step in the direction of progress and revitalization. We have achieved our monthly goal of munitions development, and Academy recruits are at an all time high.” The voice went on and on about the importance of solidarity, stability, their achievements as vaguely related to such. “Remember: radicalism is the fire that burns down nations, to all the Columbia citizens out there working hard for a better future, stay strong!” The typical sign-off, though I noticed the mention of radicalism was new. I thought it was weird, but didn’t manage to put it together with the other events of the day.

  “That thing really is annoying,” said Tolka in her subtle accent, passed down through her family’s immigration long ago. “Maybe we’ll have to find a new place to hangout, the Noir’s gotten far too crowded.”

  ***

  As the weeks rolled on I started to see strange people around the city, people who walked with a different type of gait than normal, as if they had absolutely no cares in the world at all. They would always be ragged, in some type of old cloak or some such tattered outfit, their heads shaved, almost always dirty like beggars. Hell, some of them were beggars. At first I barely noticed, but it got to the point where I would pass those types in the streets almost daily; some of them seemed to be living in the area. Around that same time, when me and Shiloh were out foraging as usual, the sky darkened hues of late-winter grey, light drizzle coming down and the wind an ever present howl trying to blow us off course, we wandered into a hut, mostly fallen down, really only two walls and a half caved-in roof, the remnants of a storage shed or something like it. We were surprised to find that someone had build a small shelter inside, a kind of lean-to formed from the trash of the surrounding hills, conglomerated from flayed plastic and half-burnt wood. I thought we should leave it alone, let whatever devils or downtrodden souls were desperate enough to live in a dump like this rest, but, as always, Shiloh was curious, and decided to go in and see if anyone was there. I followed after him when I heard the noise of a greeting. Fucking idiot, I thought, we’ll probably get killed for the broken strands of wire in our pockets. When I came around the wall I saw one of them sitting in front of Shiloh, all smiling tranquility, those damned monk-looking homeless that I’d seen wandering around the streets and alleys of Columbia. This one had the same shaved head as all the rest, tattered blue robe, almost russet from wear and dirt.

  “Ah and who’s this?” The man asked.

  “My brother Sam, come on Sam he can’t hurt us,” Shiloh said, but I wasn’t so sure and stayed back glaring.

  “Your brother is right,” the monk-man replied, “and I have no desire to, no desires at all, really, except to see the full exaltation of humanity in the glory of unification.”

  “What’s that?” Shiloh asked him.

  “It’s the destiny of us all, boy, the Holy Grail, the light at the end of the tunnel, the philosopher’s stone. Unification is the string that will tie us all together at last, gather all mankind under a single banner.” He let the words hang in the air like he wanted them to sink in and do their work on us. “You two should come to one of our events,” he said after a moment, “neither of you seem so clouded as to live on the wrong side of history. Here,” he said, and handed Shiloh a scrap of paper scrawled with a flourished-style script. “Come to this address, in the basement, tomorrow night at ten. I’ve put the entrance word on there as well,” he tells us, “on the back.” I said we’d think about it and pulled Shiloh out by the arm before he could respond, back into the rain, which had picked up and started to form iced projectiles, becoming tiny bullets that stung our faces.

  Walking home, collars turned up, bags barely full, Shiloh asked me what I thought and I told him the tattered man seemed to be in hellish conditions and I wouldn’t trust a person who would live in such a way. Shiloh said he thought what the man had said was interesting, beautiful, even. I laughed at that.

  “None of it’s true,” I said.

  “What if it is, though? Maybe we should go to the meeting.”

  “Do what you like; I won’t go,” was all I said in return, and that was the extent of our conversation. We went home and Momma was there, earlier than usual, cooking up meat for the first time in weeks. It was bonus, she told us as we walked in, nostrils flaring. Meat was a rarity, but she’s the hardest worker and had earned it, she said. So we sat around the table, cranked the radio, and ate all together while we listened to the melodies of Debussy’s “Clair De Lune”, the night breeze gently rattling the windowpanes and making us thankful for this outpost of light and good vibrations we had built together. Neither me or Shiloh mentioning the encounter with the dirt-caked man living in the outskirts.

  Chapter 3

  The next day was uneventful, gloomy overcast, no sign of the spring we prayed for the coming of, to turn the muddy land into an arid, dusty terrain. Foraging was harder in the cold seasons, the dumps and ruins at the edges where we normally went could become like sickly bogs full of traps of mud to get your boots stuck, or smalls ponds you might be forced to wade through, not knowing what you might step on, there being more than enough crap out there you wouldn’t want sticking in your feet, although I guessed you might count yourself lucky if you were only sta
bbed by a nail or two; at least you could sell them for scrap. Shiloh didn’t bring up the meeting all morning, and I hoped he’d put it out of mind. Of course he hadn’t though, and later that afternoon he asked me if I still had my heart set against going. I said I did, and if he had any sense he’d stay away from those frauds, too. He said he just wanted to see what it was about, if there was any kind of truth in what the man had said.

  “Of course there’s no truth in it,” I told him, but he said he just wanted to see, and that was that, I wasn’t gonna stop him. After dinner Shiloh told Momma where he was going, and she put up no qualms, we were grown and she’d never been the restrictive type of parent anyway. I waited up for a while in the small room me and Shiloh shared, listening to the rain. Eventually I got sick of it and went for a walk. When I got home it was about two or three in the morning, and Shiloh still wasn’t back. I started to worry maybe those freaks were radical, even violent, but decided there wasn’t a point in thinking about it yet, maybe it was just a long meeting.

  I woke up the next morning and Shiloh was in his bed, curled up like normal. I threw my boot at him and got a groaning response.

  “Long meeting?” I asked.