by LeMay, Jim
One of the front twin doors burst open, nearly hitting her. Jaclyn bolted out and crossed the front porch, her dark pigtails switching right and left as she swung her shoulders angrily.
“Where are you going?” demanded Alicia.
“Why do you care?” shouted her little sister without slowing or looking back.
Alicia sagged, guilty. She and Jaclyn had been close, allies against her mother and Ronald. Their estrangement was Alicia’s fault.
Now she even hated herself.
She ripped the door open savagely. God help Ronald if he said a single word to her.
* * *
Unrelenting, sweltering heat dogged Stony and the boys through the rest of May into June. Not a hint of rain clouds darkened the sky’s shimmering humid haze. The occasional hot breeze merely raised dust to cake their sweat-slick bodies. Stony woke them to start work at the faintest first light; they dozed through the hottest part of the afternoon in the shaded stream and resumed work when the shadows grew long until it grew too dark to see. A few tasks could be done in the slightly more bearable time after dark by candlelight. They sorted truck into cart-sized or mule-sized piles for transport. The carts, constructed mostly from bicycle wheels, aluminum pipes and scraps of plastic sheeting, were Stony’s inventions. He fussed over them every few evenings, oiled and cleaned them, tightened parts here and there. He loved fixing things and working with his hands which he had had little opportunity to do, he complained, before the Last Days. Then everything was manufactured in units that precluded tampering by anything but a robot or computer. Confusingly, Stony called his carts “trucks.” Some day, he said, he would have a factory to build them for sale to farmers and other scroungers.
“What’ll y’ call ’m?” hectored Red Leighton, the gang smart-ass. “Truck trucks t’ carry your truck’?”
“’Course not, y’ dumb ass,” Stony replied snootily. “I’ll call ’m ‘Stonebuilt Trucks – Built t’ Last.’”
Though the creek was too shallow to swim in, it helped to sit in it during the heat of the day to talk or doze. Further downstream, in undisturbed waters, they caught bullheads and crappies. Kincaid practiced with his bow and arrows and went on a few (fruitless) hunting expeditions on the rare days they took off to gather food. John killed rabbits with his high-powered slingshot. Stony caught them in his snares. They found greens and berries in the woods and eagerly watched the apples, peaches and apricots ripen on trees in some back yards and the orchard by their hole-up. They seldom had to eat the dry tasteless pemmican they had brought and spent many pleasurable evenings after supper listening to Stony’s tales and lies. Many afternoons, instead of lounging in the stream, John and Rossi toiled over Rossi’s reading lessons in the orchard. Since John first had to teach Rossi the shapes and sounds of the letters, the first lessons were as difficult as he had feared and the slow pace frustrated Rossi.
By the end of June they had gathered enough truck to store in seven or eight widely separated stash holes, more than they could haul back to Coleridge Gardens. They hadn’t completely stripped the town though; scroungers believed that not leaving something for the next gang would bring bad luck the next season. Even though they could do as they pleased until the others returned, the enervating heat forced them awake early and down to the creek soon after breakfast.
John thought only he found the town’s many skeletons disturbing until Stony announced, one morning after breakfast, that they deserved a decent Christian burial. The youths grumbled at first, not because of the chore’s grisly nature but because of the enervating heat. They excavated a huge common grave at the edge of town then began collecting the remains. The bodies’ soft tissue had long since gone and the rotting rags that had been clothing often failed to hold the skeletons together. Raking and shoveling the remains onto ad hoc litters to carry to the trench seemed, at last, to John, to shock even these orphans, usually inured to death’s horror, into silence. Or maybe it was just the heat. In the evening, after the grave was finally covered and Stony had said a few words over it, they stumbled down to sit in the creek. The dying sun turned the humid haze into a bloody curtain. No one spoke for a long moment.
Then little Jack Kincaid said, “So all a them folks we just buried died a that sickness, that ...?”
“Yeah,” said Stony. “Chou’s Disease.”
“Why did it come an’ kill ’m all, then just ... just stop an’ go ’way?”
“After it ran out of people to kill,” said John, “it just kind of died out.”
“Not ever’body died,” Kincaid persisted. “Like Stony here. And us.”
“No, some people didn’t even get it,” said John, “and some lived through it. My mom did, though she died of something else when I was little. It killed my dad before I was born.”
“Where’d it come from?” asked Big Miller.
“Nobody knows for sure. Probably some bacteria that got too strong for medicine.”
Stony was frowning. “That’s what some folks b’lieve, John – I’m sure Matt told y’ that – but others figger somethin’ different. Others figger our Maker watches over us an’ when we fuck up too bad He punishes us to bring us back to the righteous path. We was astrayin’ from the Word. We followed the false path a Techne. God showed us we’d gone too far.”
“I don’t unnerstan’ this ‘techne’ stuff,” said Big Miller.
“Techne is what scientists an’ such-like people invented t’ explain how the world works. They explained it differnt from what the Holy Scripture tells us. Techne came t’ be modern-day idolatry. They got so edjicated that reg’lar people didn’t know what they was talkin’ ’bout. Before long they had all the money an’ all the power while most folks didn’ have shit. Then God got fed up, used Chou’s Disease t’ git rid a techne an’ set us back on the righteous path. It’s been a purty tough lesson He give us but we’d best not forgit it.”
“What happened t’ all these techne folks?” asked Miller.
“People who followed techne are called ‘technics.’ They lived in the cities. God wiped out the cities first, some say ’cause most technics was there.”
“But some folks got out a the cities,” said Jack. “Like Matt and Lou. Didn’t some a them technics git away?”
Stony snorted. “A few of ‘m prob’ly. If they did they had sense ’nough t’ keep their mouths shut. Technics ain’t been too pop’lar since the Last Days.” He glanced at John as though daring him to challenge his view.
John kept quiet. He knew Stony considered Matt and Lou marginal technics, Matt a college professor that spread the gospel of techne to youngsters and Lou a civil engineer who somehow used techne in his work. Like most survivors with little education Stony distrusted those with education. Though he got along well enough with Matt and Lou he probably did so with reservations.
A few stars had winked on in the darkening red western sky.
“I’m gonna turn in, boys,” said Stony, as he pulled himself out of the water and reached for his clothes. “If anybody’s hungry they’s smoked rabbit an’ blackberries on the porch.”
Big Miller and Jack Kincaid soon followed Stony to the hole-up, leaving John and Rossi alone.
“Wonder if it’ll come back some day – Chou’s?” said Rossi. “I had it when I was little. Never wanta be that sick again.”
“No body knows,” said John. “I was born when it was dying out. Mom said I didn’t get it.”
The enormity of that fear made them quiet.
* * *
Stony and the boys spent the next couple of days quietly, rather subdued by the burial detail and the grueling heat. But the exuberance of youth gradually lightened the boys’ moods and Stony found it infectious. Jack Kincaid resumed his horsing around. With Miller’s help, Stony started building another cart. Though slow the big kid was in some ways, Miller had an innate mechanical dexterity. John and Rossi resumed the reading lessons. Rossi was learning much more quickly now. He had finished the children’s book and sta
ted another. The lessons brought them closer together but the dark, secretive Rossi could only be drawn out so far. One day as they walked down to the creek, Rossi in high spirits because of a successful reading session, John asked him why he had only one name.
Rossi turned away sullenly and kicked through the dust silently for a moment. Finally he mumbled, “Nobody don’t need more’n one fuckin’ name,” and turned abruptly back toward the hole-up.
Early one afternoon everyone but Kincaid sat in the shallow bend. Jack suddenly erupted through the willows with a fey shout. “C’mon guys, I need help! I got me a deer!”
And indeed he had. A young buck, further up the creek, apparently headed there for a drink. Jack had tried to gut it. He was so excited he didn’t notice Stony frowning at his inept job. Stony didn’t criticize the boy; he even complimented him. Then he showed the boys how to hoist the carcass into a tree and the proper manner of bleeding and gutting it. They spent the afternoon roasting what they needed for the evening and smoking the rest. So excited at having so much fresh meat they – almost – forgot the heat. That night they ate until they were stuffed and talked for a long time. They listened to the hero Kincaid’s tale of the hunt over and over. His prowess increased with each telling and everyone praised each version of the tale.
Many years later, John learned from studies of hunters’ habits, modern and from time immemorial, that he had shared the experience of countless forebears: listening to the successful hunter’s boasts and cheering on his embellishments.
Also in years to come, John remembered this summer, despite the heat, despite the mass burial, as one of the best of his life up to that time.
* * *
The Nellie’s Fair guys returned two days later with pockets full of Nelson dollars, usually called nellies or ens, the town’s currency, and a few supplies, including corn meal and cooking oil. The first night they celebrated their good fortune with one of Stony's fine meals, mostly gathered in the wild: bluegill tempura as a kind of appetizer; a salad of water cress, finely chopped wild onions and ground walnuts; bread made from acorn flour (made edible by grinding the nutmeat to powder and soaking to remove tannic acid); and for the piece de resistance, a brace of wild hares stuffed with wild Jerusalem artichokes, apples and hickory nuts, roasted with peeled artichokes. Before, during and after the meal they enjoyed some of the best whiskey scrounged from the Dumfrey tavern. The next day they recuperated from the trip (those who had gone to Nellie’s Fair) and their hangovers and packed the truck.
The following day they started back to Coleridge Gardens. Mules pulled Stony’s four “trucks.” The other mules carried truck and their camping and cooking gear which scroungers called gang-scratch. Each man carried his personal gear in a scratch bag slung over one shoulder and a folded poncho over the other.
* * *
The trip from Coleridge Gardens to the Green Hills had taken twelve days. As expected, the loads of truck and more intense heat made the trip back longer. To minimize the unpaved roads’ choking dust they wore bandannas over their noses and mouths and Mitch ordered the caravan to spread out. Doc grumbled that they looked like a pack of goddamn lost gypsies.
Paved roads were easier on them and the mules. Albeit cracked and buckled, the paving allayed the dust and delayed the invasion of brush and saplings that clogged unpaved roads. Civil engineer Lou Travis had explained how nature gradually digested the paved roads. Freezing and thawing split asphalt paving into a scale-like pattern called “alligatoring.” Moss and lichens settled into the, at first, miniscule crevasses and pockets. Water from rain and snow-melt expanded when it froze, to create new cracks and widen them all enough to admit roadside weeds like burdock, ragweed and curly dock. The cracked, rotting paving now, over a dozen years after the Last Days, accommodated small shrubs and saplings, a process Matt had called “ecological succession.”
They stopped only for one day to celebrate the thirteenth birthday of their youngest and newest member, John Moore.
Since they reached the Sheridan River bridge in mid-afternoon they could have continued on for several hours but they and the mules were worn out. Besides, Coleridge Gardens was only a day and a half away and the market didn’t start for almost a week. Nobody complained when Mitch said to pitch camp. Only big Lou Travis seemed unfazed by the travel and the heat. They unhitched the mules from the carts and the boys led them to the river to drink. The older men sprawled in the shade of one of the huge signs called “billboards” beside the road. When the boys returned they tethered the mules where they could crop the yellow grass summer and joined the men.
Little Jack Kincaid studied the sign’s blank face for awhile. Then he said, “Perfessor, tell us agin ’bout these here billboards. It just don’t seem natcherl that they could talk.”
Because of Matt’s, to the boys, apparent limitless knowledge of the world before the Last Days they referred most questions about that time to him. And though Matt didn’t like kids in general he enjoyed explaining things so getting him to expound wasn’t difficult.
“Well, that’s what they were programmed …,” he started, but paused at Kincaid’s bewildered look. “uh, designed to do. They normally showed an illustration of whatever they were advertising. Then, when a car moved along the road in front of the sign” he indicated the highway before them “the motion activated the illustration. It became a moving picture accompanied by talking or singing to describe the product or upcoming sporting event or new video or whatever. If your car had the right audio equipment the billboard sounded like it was sitting right beside you.” Matt winced at the memory. “I had my car’s audio components taken out and listened to my commcomp.”
The youths listened intently. None interrupted for clarification of unfamiliar terminology, most to avoid Matt’s withering impatient glare, and Leighton who pretended indifference.
The older men, of course, had grown up with automated billboards.
“They could be a pain in the ass, okay,” said Stony. “’Specially when y’ was in a city an’ the damned things crowed at cha from ever’ angle.”
Doc Garson frowned, poked a thumb toward Lou. “It was engineers like him that come up with the goddamn things.”
Lou shook his head, rumbled in his deep voice, “’Fraid not, Doc. I was a different kind of engineer. I designed the roads you drove on and the pipes that brought water to your house and carried your shit off.”
“Well, you engineers all went to the same colleges.”
Lou smiled slightly, but said with an edge to his voice, “I don’t know about you, Doc, but I was glad the doctor that took my appendix out had a medical degree.”
Doc looked embarrassed as he mumbled, “Sorry, Lou. I don’t mean nothin’ ’gainst you.”
“I know, Doc. Forget it.”
Berating higher education bewildered John. Why would anyone be against learning?
After resting for an hour or so, they took turns bathing in the river, older men first while the youths watched the mules and the truck. Most meals on the way back had been smoked meat and dried fruit to save time but that evening Stony prepared a rabbit stew. As usual, they complained about his cooking but left not a morsel.
Not long after dark, except for whoever stood watch, they settled down for sleep. Since the younger ones were least trusted to stay awake during the wee hours they stood the early watches. John, the youngest, took the first. He would wake Rossi when he started feeling sleepy. He was tired but not sleepy, somewhat invigorated by the evening’s slight respite from the heat.
He paced the camp’s perimeter, paused by the mules to rub the noses of those who snorted greetings, then around the sleeping or soon-to-be sleeping scroungers – quietly, exceedingly quietly – thence along the road. The only sounds were cicadas in the trees and small animals hunting or settling in for the night. As he passed the billboard he thought how funny it would be for its long-dead energy source to awake squawking in the middle of the night to scare the shit out of the sleepe
rs. The billboard also reminded him to wonder, as he so often had, what the road had looked like before the Last Days – it was hard to imagine automobiles, now lifeless rusting hulks, racing up and down it – and these old guys living in houses full of wondrous gadgets and mysterious crap, living amid throngs of people instead of all this emptiness.
He went down the bank to the river to watch the reflected sliver of moon dance with the stars in the water and listen to the raspy barrumph of unseen frogs. Then back around again. Silently, silently, remembering making his rounds in his first days with the gang, how Mitch would jump out of nowhere to shush him quiet. When John believed he moved like a shadow! Mitch was small, hunched and subtly misshapen, his black brows habitually drawn together in a frown, bearded like all except for the youngest boys. Never harsh, loud or unfair, the leader nevertheless intimidated John, perhaps because he seldom showed emotion or shared his thoughts with anyone.
When John again approached the river he saw a man seated there gazing over the water. The long sloping back identified him as the gang’s chief grouch, Doc Garson.
He crept down across the slope, still silently demonstrating his stealth, but stopped just close enough for his shadow to nudge its way into Doc’s peripheral vision. He had learned not to approach the older guys without warning. Doc turned to look at him for a moment, his expression invisible in the faint moonlight, then looked back toward the river. John continued down the slope and stopped beside him. Doc, who didn’t hide his dislike of the younger gang members, also intimidated him a little.