The Man Who Watched The World End

by Dietzel, Chris

  Pictures of the parents and children were still hanging on the walls. The man had left with just his Block brother and not much else. It was impossible to think of this man as ever making friends with the other families on the street, and I couldn’t help but feel our new neighbors would think of Andrew and me as an improvement from the pair of brothers who had lived there before us.

  We settled in. A year later, the Johnsons moved to our street as well. The six of us—me pushing Andrew in his wheelchair and the Johnsons both pushing one of their Block sisters—frequently toured the neighborhood as the houses on our street became vacant. Each time we surveyed the houses, we walked with bats or golf clubs tucked into the ba'al,be,ck of the wheelchairs. They were necessary instruments on the days we came across an animal, or a pack of animals, with the courage to attack a group of people.

  Even when the neighborhood was still half full, it was common to see foxes that were no longer afraid of humans. Shortly after that, wolves were seen roaming for prey during the daylight hours. One of the few things I remember my grandfather telling me was that it was bad luck to see a wolf during the day because it meant your cattle were going to be killed that night—he either said that or that if you saw a wolf during the day it meant there was also a bear nearby. I can’t remember which.

  On each of these trips with the Johnsons we found a newly empty house that had once played host to a neighborhood cook-out or New Year’s Eve party. Some of the abandoned homes were used as meeting places for everyone in the neighborhood to gather and plan for the future. Eventually, even the people who hosted these meetings disappeared. Some left in the middle of the night because they were ashamed to leave during the day when we could see them go. None of the families could be blamed; everyone had to make their own decisions on how best to care for their families. Some were sick and needed medical attention, others just needed the comfort of knowing they were moving closer to other people.

  Now, with the Johnsons’ house empty and Andrew and me growing older, I finally see the end that my first neighbors in Camelot must have known was coming all along. There will be a time in the near future when my house, maybe the last house occupied within a hundred miles, goes dark and joins the others. Hopefully, when that happens, I’ll be heading south too, Andrew and me taking up space in the back of someone’s truck.

  Please, we need to be saved.

  I stayed at the edge of my driveway for a while today. An invisible barrier, something other than the animals, kept me from walking down the street to the Johnsons’ house. I told myself it was because I didn’t want to leave Andrew for too long. That isn’t true, though. The fear does linger that as soon as I leave him he’ll choke on something, gain awareness and be frightened of his unfamiliar surroundings, or be attacked by an animal, but those thoughts don’t keep me chained to him. The real reason I didn’t want to go down the street was because it would crush me to see another dark, empty house. I don’t want incontrovertible evidence that I’m alone, even though I know deep down that I am. The Johnsons’ house is just as empty as all of the others, but until I see it with my own eyes I can’t be absolutely sure. That’s what I tell myself when I want to remember the feeling of being part of a neighborhood, to see men and women driving to work in the morning, coming home at night, taking their dogs for walks, and having barbeques in the back yard.

  So instead of actually going there, to the Johnsons’, I stared at their home from the edge of my property. At least they were considerate enough to turn off all of the lights before they left. The doors are probably unlocked too. Nobody locks their doors anymore, except in the group communities. Even if a burglar did see my house, I have nothing that he couldn’t find in a hundred other homes down the street.

  In the entire time I stood on my driveway I didn’t hear a single man-made sound. As hard as I strained, listening for the rumble of an approaching truck on its way to save us, I heard nothing. The silence of abandoned houses and empty streets surrounds every corner of the neighborhood so it seems like Camelot was never really a genuine community that hosted hundreds of families, but some sort of studio prop for a failed movie, or a fake development made for an out-of-business amusement park.

  When I was little I would lie on the grass at the edge of the driveway with my eyes open and look up at the clouds. Planes would roar in the distance, cars would go back and forth down the road, horns would honk, kids would yell and play, adults would talk about what the future was going to hold. Now, weeds, some as tall as corn stalks, have overtaken any spot where I could put a blanket down and lie and listen to all those sounds. Even if I could lie on the grass, I doubt my back and knees could support me when I tried to stand back up.

  Other noises have replaced the planes and cars. Wild dogs bark, flocks of birds squawk, leaves rustle. Ah, the leaves. Without cars honking and TVs blaring, they rustle all day without much else to blot out their noise. They scrape against the ground until they form piles on the side of each house. Every year I see the start of a new tree growing from where the leaves hid an acorn. The side of the Thomas’s house broke open because of a tree growing up along its foundation. It didn’t take a single day before the house was reclaimed by the squirrels and deer and maybe even a bear. It’s only a matter of time until a tree grows straight up through the middle of a house, its trunk coming out through the shingles like a chimney of leaves.

  Although it makes almost no noise, the fire I have going creates a nice plume of smoke arcing into the air for a couple of hours each day. Soon, someone will see it, they have to, and Andrew and I will be heading south to join the others. I’m not sure how many people will be there at the group community. Honestly, I’m not sure what to expect at all—I half expect to run into the Johnsons as soon as we arrive at our next destination, an awkward silence ensuing as they try to explain why they left in the night. Different scenarios play out in my mind before I go to sleep. The possibilities are endless.

  I checked on Andrew as soon as I came back inside today. I’ll go and check on him now too; it’s what I do after every entry I finish.

  q when ,be,

  December 22Andrew has a slight fever again, or the most recent fever never got better and he’s been sick all this time. The medicine I put in his nutrient bag doesn’t seem to do anything. I often wonder if the fever actually matters; does he feel any discomfort, or is he immune to it because he’s oblivious to everything? In that regard maybe the Blocks might be an evolved version of us.

  I had another nightmare last night. Gradually, as I have seen fewer living people over the years, bad dreams have become more frequent. In these nightmares I’m exactly like my brother. I watch the world going by all around me but I can’t join in on any of it. Kids laugh and play while I’m motionless and quiet (my dreams usually take place back when I was still in school). I wake up having an idea of what it’s like to be a Block. It’s maddening, truly maddening, when people talk to you and you want to reply but you can’t. You have so many things you want to say and no ability to say any of it. I always wake up in a sweat from these dreams.

  December 23I want to tell a good story about Andrew, something that would make my parents smile, something that makes him seem like my partner in crime. No matter how much I try, though, I can’t think of one. Every story I think of involves him sitting to the side as a story of my life unfolds. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is.

  There was the time when I was twelve and I had a crush on Debbie from down the street. She used to come over and watch TV with Andrew and me. The two of us would sit on the living room floor while Andrew sat on the sofa behind us. In between shows I asked her if she would be my girlfriend and she burst out laughing. I think her exact words were, “You’re gross.” I asked why she was watching TV with me at my house if I was gross and she said she didn’t have anything better to do. My face reddened. I wanted to yell at her and tell her I hated her. Behind me, Andrew stared at the TV as though nothing embarrassing had taken place. He didn�
��t smirk at my misfortune the way a normal brother would. He didn’t make a fart noise to break the tension. He only stared, the way he always stares. That didn’t prevent me from venting to him for an hour after she was gone. a nice, quiet neighborhoodU little .

  One time, when I was fourteen and struggling mightily with teenage life, I came home with a black eye after getting beaten up at school. All it had taken for me to get picked on was being smaller than another boy. That automatically gave this other kid enough reason to push me to the ground in order to impress his friends. I should have known better than to call him a stupid dick face after finally getting back up to my feet. The stupid dick face punched me square on my cheek, dropping me to the ground again. I still remember that asshole’s name: Timmy Bockle. You never forget about people like Timmy Bockle. I ran home crying, and I was still crying when I got in the front door. My parents weren’t home yet, but Andrew was sitting on the sofa. Instead of being ashamed to have my brother see me cry, I sat down next to him and sobbed until I felt better. He never made fun of me for getting beaten up. Not once did he hold it over my head by bringing it up the next time I was a brat. I think about the things I do for Andrew now, and nothing I do—changing his diaper, brushing his teeth—will repay what he did for me that day by letting me be upset, giving me someone to share my tears with without making me feel self conscious. For that, I’ll gladly take care of him for the rest of his life, or mine, whichever comes first.

  I guess if I had to relate this entry back to Andrew, which is what I intended when I started, I would tell the story of the Witherspoons’ birthday party for their Block daughter. All of the Blocks in the neighborhood were invited. The parents and regular siblings were invited to “keep the other children company” so I went too. Tracy Witherspoon couldn’t blow out the candles on her birthday cake or open her presents. She didn’t even know it was her birthday or that her parents were throwing a party in her honor. All of the Blocks sat motionless in a giant circle of picnic chairs.

  The thing that stuck in my head about the party was seeing Debbie, the same Debbie who said I was gross, holding hands with her new boyfriend and how it felt to have my feelings hurt again. I went up to her and told her she smelled like fish even though I didn’t know what the insult meant at the time, had only said it because I’d heard some of the older boys saying it. She returned my insult by saying she was glad she turned me down because I was too short to be her boyfriend. The boy she was holding hands with laughed and said I would be more likeable if I was quiet like my brother. I wanted to fight him but had a sneaking suspicion it wouldn’t end any better than it had with the stupid dick face. So I didn’t do anything. The two of them stepped behind a tree in the Witherspoons’ backyard to make out. I wanted to smash his face with a baseball bat. Instead, I walked away with my hands in my pockets and my dignity up my ass.

  When I rejoined the party, however, I noticed all the Block children were still seated in the same general area of the backyard. None of them were making fun of each other. None of them were saying mean things or trying to ruin each other’s self-esteem. In that moment, I was jealous of Andrew. Here he was, with all of these other kids around,q. The edo and none of them would ever know what it was like to have their heart broken or be bullied. How great it must be to go your entire life without feeling ashamed or embarrassed because someone says mean things just for the sake of hurting your feelings. Blocks were enviable, not only because they went a lifetime without receiving these inhumanities, but also because they didn’t know how to inflict them on their peers. What a nice thing it would have been if the older brothers and sisters of all these Blocks were as well off.

  December 24Hours after yesterday’s entry, in the middle of the night, I dreamt that Andrew walked into my room and woke me up. Startled, I asked him what he was doing. In my dream I was irrationally alarmed that he was walking around in the middle of the night instead of, appropriately, being shocked that he could walk at all.

  He stood in the middle of my room and said, “I remember that girl’s birthday party. It was nice seeing everyone come together like that. And I remember that vacation we all went on when I was little, and how Dad held me above the water while the waves broke.”

  I tried to say something, but for once I was the one that couldn’t talk. Andrew smiled, nodded as though satisfied with what he had come to say, then exited my room. My mouth was still wide open as he walked away, not a single word able to escape.

  I woke up after that. When I went to the living room to check on him he was lying on the sofa in the exact same position as when I had left him. His eyes were open, so I turned on the lamp, brought one of our old photo albums over to the sofa, and began recounting the old days with him again. Page after page of photographs kept me laughing about something we had done as little kids. When I got to the end I closed the album and turned the light back off.

  More and more of our nights are spent without music or movies playing. Andrew and I still sit in the living room, but it seems nicer to leave the TV and stereo off and tell him stories late into the night. Usually it isn’t until his eyes randomly shut before I realize I can barely stay awake myself.

  It used to be that I would only recount the happy memories from our childhood: the time I hit the game-winning homerun in middle school, the time I got to meet one of my favorite actors, my senior prom. But q, spspjonow I find myself telling him—I won’t say the bad parts—the less favorable stories I used to keep to myself.

  I remind him about the time I accidently overflowed the toilet and tried to blame it on him. I’m still ashamed when I retell the story of putting a mouse in the refrigerator so it would startle my mom, but leaving it there too long, and how she found a dead rodent the next morning. I’ll never forgive myself for how that mouse died, or for how I acted as though its wellbeing was something I could play with. Some of the stories I recite, like the one of the mouse, don’t present me in the greatest light, but they were turning points in one way or another. And they each made me into the person I am today.

  With the bears and dogs growing more aggressive every day, and with our health declining, there’s a good chance Andrew might feel bad about his lot in life if he could understand the stories I tell. He never takes anything to heart, though. He sits there with a blank expression, unaffected by everything I say. He even sat that way when I told him that our father had passed away. The absurdity of the Blocks is that there will never be a single thing I can say or do that will make one of them gasp with shock or break out in a giant smile. They get to skip the bad parts of life, but they also miss the good parts. Life is neither pleasant nor depressing for them; it passes them by as though everything were a completely neutral shade of grey.

  It forces you to ask what the point of their lives is if they can’t participate in their existence. Why would nature create life that can’t interact, can’t do anything? The Blocks are like flowers or trees: they hope for food and water but are unable to ask for either. The end result of their life is completely out of their own hands—like us being found by someone travelling south.

  I try not to think about it because I know it’s out of my hands. Periodically, throughout the day, I find myself forgetting to keep the fire active, and I know that deep down I’m doing this because I doubt anyone will ever come and find us. For Andrew’s sake, I make myself get up and add something else to start a new fire.

  December 25Christmas. Where has the time gone? It certainly doesn’t feel like Christmas. Each day takes forever for the sun to rise and set, but then I look back at the culmination of days and it seems like just last week it was still summer. It makes me wonder if Andrew has any perception ofq before about ve been time or if his life is one never-ending day.

  I am glad, though, that he isn’t able to understand the waiting game we’re playing. The baseball cards are gone. The supply of comics shrinks each day. Through it all, no engines have approached the community. I would thankfully spend Christmas in the b
ackseat of a pick-up truck if it meant we were on our way to one of the final settlements.

  My parents constantly reinforced the idea that Christmas was the most important family day of the year. There were times when my father had to miss my birthday, but he never missed a Christmas. Each year on my birthday, my mother made my favorite meal, but the portions of food she made at Christmas outdid anything she prepared the rest of the year. The bowl of mashed potatoes lasted us a month. The platter of stuffing was high enough to block my view of Andrew sitting on the other side of the table. Now, Christmas is a time for me to sit alone with my brother in silence. Jingles echo in the empty house to remind me of how alone I am. Listening to the carols is depressing, but it’s even more disheartening to have silence, so when the CD gets to the end I push PLAY again and listen to it all over.

  I used to make a present for Andrew each year. Sometimes it was a decorated picture of the two of us, other times it was a painting I made to give our house more color. Many of these are still hanging in Andrew’s bedroom. I rarely take him back to his room anymore, however, so he never sees them. Layers of dust have collected on each one, turning the happy, vibrant colors into muted, historic-looking relics.

  One Christmas Eve I found an abandoned kitten on our patio and presented it to Andrew as his present. He stared through me and through the kitten without any reaction. I took care of the miniature cat as best as I could. If I didn’t, if I left it outside to fend for itself, it would be eaten by a dog before it ever had a chance to freeze to death. It dawned on me right away that I had almost no idea how to take care of a pet. Pets lost all of their charm sixty years earlier when the first generation of Blocks were old enough to resemble adults. The elderly were bogged down with taking care of thirty and forty year-old Blocks; they couldn’t manage, or didn’t want to manage, the additional responsibility of iguanas, parrots, hamsters, or something larger. Not many people wanted a dog if they didn’t have children to offer as a playmate. Brothers and sisters who couldn’t take care of themselves and needed constant attention took the place of needy cats.