Never Too Far

by Christopher, Thomas

  Joe played a little bit of an old song he’d learned from a tattered songbook. He hoped to get some kind of reaction out of the girl, but she only turned her head slightly before she let it hang low again like she didn’t care.

  He played some more and then stopped. What was the point? He listened to the silence and the occasional snap from the red embers. He looked at the stars salted across the sky. He felt lonely and anxious, especially after what happened to them that day. Being robbed at gunpoint on the first day wasn’t exactly reassuring. He wanted to say something about it. He wanted to talk it out and feel better again. That’s what talking did for him. He liked to discuss things the way he always did with Frank. But if the person you were talking to wasn’t going to respond, or the person acted like you weren’t even there, what was the use?

  He tried to take his mind off it, so he thought about one of the songs that the old hermit Hans had taught him before he died last winter.

  I’m gonna run, better not catch me;

  I’m gonna run, better not catch me.

  I’m going home, Lord, Lord, I’m going home.

  When he stopped singing, there was only silence again, and he wished the pregnant girl would finally say something, anything, even a grunt. An animal howled far in the distance, faint and fleeting. Joe listened hard for it again, but no sound came. Even though he played a few more songs, the girl didn’t act like she heard a thing. Maybe she was asleep.

  Chapter 8

  The next day they crested a hill and slowly descended into another valley. The brown grass flashed with streaks of crimson. In the distance was a smattering of trees that resembled small green smudges. Joe figured it must be the creek Frank said was a good place to stop. Joe glanced at the pregnant girl. She had her head down, bobbing and swaying with the bumps and jolts of the wagon.

  When they reached the creek, Joe found a cluster of scrub trees around a bend and pulled the wagon in. After he hopped out of the cab, he rubbed his sore butt and shook out his buzzing legs. He unhitched Lester and Sam so they could drink and munch for a while. Then he walked to the edge of the creek, where the yellowish water was clear enough that he could see some fish, which surprised him. Frank hadn’t said anything about that.

  He dashed over to the pregnant girl. She still sat slumped in the cab.

  “Hey, there’s fish in there,” he said.

  He grabbed her knee, which felt like a hard knot in a thin rope, and shook her leg. He didn’t mean anything by it. He was only excited and wanted to rouse her. That was all. But she clawed his hand away from her knee. She dug her sharp nails into his skin and darted to the other end of the cab. Joe was stunned for a second, but he shouldn’t have been, especially after what had happened with Frank. He touched her one time and she spooked like a rabbit and ran to a corner of the living room and hid.

  “I told you not to touch her,” Dad had said.

  “But I barely did,” Frank said.

  “What did you need to touch her for anyway?”

  “She seemed lost.”

  When Frank and Joe had come inside the house that day, she was standing at the sink, washing the dishes. She didn’t seem to notice they were there. She seemed lost in another world. Joe was still getting used to her being in the house. She seemed so odd and out-of-place. Ghostly. He wasn’t sure how to treat her. To be honest, he was kind of scared about doing the wrong thing. It was like trying to carry around an egg on a spoon.

  As Joe watched her, she circled a dirty rag around a plate. He thought maybe there was something wrong with her. She kept going over the same plate like she wasn’t ever going to stop. Frank must’ve been thinking the same thing because he walked up behind her and tapped her lightly on the shoulder. As soon as he did it, she whirled on him like he was trying to grab her. Her hair slashed through the air and slapped Frank’s arm. Then she vanished for a moment, as if she really were a ghost, until Joe saw her streaking through the doorway. She lay huddled in a corner of the living room for the rest of the day.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” Joe said to her now. “I just wanted to tell you about the fish and how I’m going to catch some for dinner. How’s that sound? You like fried fish?”

  The girl remained hidden beneath her floppy hat, totally unresponsive. And now he wished he hadn’t touched her.

  There wasn’t much he could do at that point, so he got the fishing pole out of the wagon, grabbed the can of earthworms, and walked to the creek. After he poked a worm on the hook, he lowered it into the yellowish water and held it there. Soon enough, a fish struck and he reeled it in with the rusty reel. He wrenched the hook out and scooped up the fish. But he nearly dropped it when he saw the pregnant girl standing in front of him.

  The fish wiggled.

  “I caught one,” he said.

  The pregnant girl stood motionless, her head down, her hat pulled low. He didn’t care how she was standing, though. He was simply glad she was standing at all and not hiding in the cab where he thought she might stay for the rest of the night. He held the shiny fish up to her, hoping she might look. She lifted her head slightly. He saw the point of her chin and the under-curve of her pink lower lip. She shuffled forward, maybe a couple of inches, but she didn’t raise her head anymore or move her arms, which hung like sticks at her sides.

  “How about you keep an eye on this one while I catch some more?” Joe said.

  He laid the fish in the grass and it flopped and gasped for air. It had a few red lesions on it but it didn’t look too bad. Joe had seen worse.

  “Don’t let him get away now.”

  Joe stood up and went toward the creek. He poked another worm on the hook and dropped it in. When he glanced behind him to see if the pregnant girl had moved, he found her sitting on the ground. He stepped back to see what she was doing. What he saw amazed him. She sat with her thin bony legs spread out in a V around the fish while she gently stroked and petted it, as if she were trying to soothe and comfort the poor thing in its slow gasping death. He felt a tug on his line and spun his head back to the creek. He jerked on the pole and reeled in another fish that he brought to the girl.

  “Watch this one, too,” he said, and set it in the girl’s outstretched hands.

  Later on, she helped clean the fish. After he gutted them with his pocketknife and cut out the lesions, he handed the fish to the girl. She took them to the creek to wash. Joe did his best to act like nothing unusual was going on and they’d cleaned fish together countless times. However, his insides were all abuzz. He even smiled a few times without even realizing it. As they worked, the sun sat bleeding away on the horizon.

  Joe fried the fish, heads and tails and all, in the cast iron skillet. He set it on a rusty grill in the fire. The fish sizzled and steamed until their skin blackened and cracked and their eyes crusted brown. Joe pulled them out by their stiff tails and placed them on two tin plates. After Joe said a prayer, the pregnant girl tore at her fish. She ripped back the skin and sank her teeth into the white meat. Joe was hungry, too, but not that hungry. He was surprised at how ravenous she was, especially since she seemed so shy when they ate at home. You didn’t even know she’d eaten until you noticed her plate was clean.

  When they finished, Joe got out the bag of pinole. It was a mixture of ground corn, dried and ground tepary beans, crushed squash seeds, and sage. He barely got the bag open before the pregnant girl snatched it out of his hands. Apparently she wanted to make the cakes. She pulled a handful of pinole from the bag and poured some water on it from her cup. She mashed the mixture into a ball, padded it flat, and then slapped it in the skillet. Joe looked at her and smiled.

  Afterwards, they washed the dishes in the creek and then got ready for bed. Stars started to pop and glow in the blue-black sky.

  “You want a blanket?” Joe said.

  The pregnant girl didn’t respond. Which was okay. He was getting used to her silence. He felt more comfortable just talking, even if it felt like he was talking to himself. M
aybe she was silent because of what happened to her before she came to live with them. He’d never really thought much about where she came from. It didn’t seem that important. Besides, the girl was more of Mom’s concern. He and Frank were supposed to steer clear of her. That was all changed now. Suddenly, knowing more about her seemed necessary. It seemed vital almost. The only problem with getting to know her was that she didn’t talk.

  He only knew that traders passing through Gunther dumped her off at the temple with no explanation. Mom couldn’t fathom not taking in this lost little lamb with child. Joe remembered Frank saying it was a bad idea to take her, but Dad said they could handle it and they couldn’t turn their back on such a child in need. Mom fawned over her like she was her blood daughter. And for a while Mom’s spirits seemed to rise.

  Joe remembered when he first saw the pregnant girl. Her long stringy hair hung from a bone-white part in the center of her scalp. It hung in front of her drooping head like a separated curtain that someone was peering out of to see who was coming up the road. Even though she was rail thin in her dingy brown dress, he couldn’t stop staring at her distended belly. She held the string handles of two boxes, which contained all her meager belongings. She was a sight to see, for sure.

  Joe pulled his recorder out, fitted it together, and licked the tip.

  “Anything you want to hear?” he said to the girl, not expecting her to answer. He just wanted to hear some human words, even if they were his own.

  But then the girl spoke. She said, “Blackbird.”

  Joe sat up, startled, and stared at the girl. He was unsure if he really did hear her talk or if it was his imagination playing tricks on him.

  “Blackbird?” he said. “Did you say ‘Blackbird’?”

  “Blackbird,” she said again.

  He was flabbergasted.

  “You want to hear that?” he said. That was one of the songs from his tattered songbook. She must’ve recognized it from when he played it at home. “I know bunches of those songs from that book. Every one. Even the ones where the pages are missing and I only know half the song. I learned them all. Is that the one you want to hear? You like that one?”

  Joe knew he was blathering on, but he was so shocked and delighted to hear the girl talk to him that words just tumbled out. He ended up playing the song twice, although the girl didn’t act like she was listening. It didn’t matter to Joe. He was simply happy that she’d responded to him. Even though it was only one word, it was better than nothing. He wanted to try to engage her in more conversation, to tease out some more words, but he thought he’d better not press his luck. Blackbird, he said to himself.

  Chapter 9

  The next day was grueling. The wagon cab felt like a furnace inside and Joe felt as if he were roasting in his own skin. Still, it was better than being exposed to the blistering sun, which would’ve cooked them even worse. Sweat soaked through his clothes and dripped off his nose. He thought the pregnant girl must’ve been burning up, too. He was afraid her baby might cook inside her like in an oven.

  The land they traveled through was mostly burnt. Only a few stands of living trees slowly withered under the relentless burn of the heat. They traveled southward into the dry dusty lowlands and swung east where the land was burnt the color of faded blood and rocks were scorched white as wood ash.

  The land hadn’t always been this way. Everything changed after the temperature began to rise. The fertile prairies turned into arid plains, while the plains turned to dust, all the way west to the Milapske Mountains. The plainspeople, as they were called back then, left their homeland and streamed onto the dry prairies. They squatted on any open property they could find and filled towns with more people than they could ever handle. Most towns were overwhelmed. Militias were formed. Skirmishes broke out.

  All the while, the sun never let up. It pulsed even harder, beating the land, day after day, year after year. Water grew scarce. Ponds and lakes dried up. Many rivers shriveled to streams and then to dust. Fire swept across abandoned fields. People fled the drying prairie all together. They went into the cities surrounding the Great Lelawala Lakes. Eventually, the caked soil began to lift off into the air and swirl into twisting sheets that spun into thundering dust storms, choking everything in sight. In winter, the cold winds scoured the ground and left it like a hard scab for spring to peel off and summer to tear away. Those who remained—all dirt-eaters now—struggled to hold on. They were bolstered by a few years when rain came and the heat lifted, only to be scorched and scabbed again.

  The final blow arrived with the dwindling of oil and other fossil fuels. When the prices of oil began to fluctuate wildly, shooting up and down but constantly rising, there were riots all over the Meshica Union as desperate and panicked people fought for limited resources.

  The cities around the Great Lelawala Lakes, like Menominee and Chikowa along Lake Mashenomak, created armies to protect what supplies they had and to fight off the marauders who terrorized and looted them. The Meshica Union became increasingly fractured and cities became isolated from one another. Gas and diesel were finally outlawed. Possession was a capital crime. In the end, the union broke apart completely, and the largest cities along the Great Lelawala Lakes took up the role of managing themselves. They essentially became city-states that were ruled by authoritarian power. They built walls around their perimeters like ancient cities and medieval castles to keep out the undesirables.

  As a result, many people turned to old religions and new. Many dirt-eaters, including Joe and his family, followed the teachings of a former itinerant worker turned prophet, Roy Neolin. A few years after the land dried up, Roy received a vision from the Goddess Virid who had created a new paradise in the heavens. Over the next year, he lived in a dugout and received messages. He wrote down all her words and his own thoughts in a book called the Word of Virid.

  When he first started to create a community, however, the prophet ran into a little problem. The central message of Virid, he said, was “The way to paradise is to live without a trace.” Unfortunately, followers took this too literally. They thought the best way to not leave a trace was to not exist at all. Consequently, there were mass suicides. Prophet Roy had to go back to his dugout and receive a new message. This time the message was more direct. “Heaven waits for the humble.” After that, the suicides stopped. Followers lived simple and humble lives, all in order to conserve resources so they all could survive until Virid’s return.

  Chapter 10

  During the following night, the wind kept nudging Joe’s shoulder until he woke up. They were sleeping outside in a gully that felt like a shallow bowl on the flat barren land. Above him the night sky was full of stars. He leaned forward on his elbows and glanced at the pregnant girl to see if she was okay. She was balled up in her blanket like a cocoon, in exactly the same position she was before he fell asleep.

  Despite the faint “shhhhh” of steady wind, the night was strangely quiet. The crickets had stopped chirping. Joe knew whenever crickets went silent it meant some kind of disturbance was in the air. That’s when he noticed something else. He couldn’t tell for sure, but he could’ve sworn the wind had a raspy sound to it. It was similar to the sound the wind made when a dust storm approached.

  Joe flipped off his blanket and pulled on his boots. He scampered up the side of the shallow gully and gazed eastward. The stars in that direction were completely gone. The sky was black. That wasn’t a good sign. But maybe his fears were unfounded. Maybe it was rain coming instead of dust. Chances of that were slim. Dust was far more common than rain. He licked his finger and held it up to the wind for a few seconds before he wiped it on his tongue. It tasted like dust all right.

  He didn’t know how much time he had, but he knew it might not be much. A dust storm moved with unpredictable speed. It was strong enough to scoop up chickens and sheep and even cows. Since the scrawny pregnant girl couldn’t weigh much more than a goat, Joe was afraid she’d be swept up and carried way. He had
to get to her before the storm hit.

  He turned and ran back into the gully, but he didn’t get very far. A sudden blast of wind shoved him to the ground. Flat on his face, he heard the wind whistling and screeching past his ears. When he lifted his head, he couldn’t see the pregnant girl anymore. All the dust whirled and whipped into a blinding black blizzard. He thought for sure she’d gotten snatched up in the duster. The wind lashed at his face. He went to call out to her, but he didn’t know what to say because he didn’t know her name. And even if he did, his voice would’ve gotten lost in the snarling wind. Nevertheless, he had to find her.

  The thick blowing air seemed hell-bent on prying him loose and hurling him away. He kept his belly pressed to the ground and clawed his way over to where he hoped the pregnant girl was. He groped around until he finally grabbed a hard lump shaking against the wind. It was the girl. She was still there. The blanket flapped around her, so he jammed it beneath her. Then he wrapped her in his arms and used his body to shield her from the whipping dust.

  In the dark cocoon he made, the pregnant girl poked her head out like a little bird and coughed. Joe caught only a glimpse of her before he pulled the blanket over her again. The wind slammed against his back. He felt his body rocking and quivering. His throat clenched and he gasped for air. He buried his face in the blanket next to the girl’s head to keep from breathing in any more dust. He could feel the grit on his teeth.