Circles in the Dust (5 page)

CHAPTER 4

As the days meandered by, David found himself pacing around his camp, through the trees, along the river. He walked for endless hours up and down the stony bank. He could be hunting or making much-needed repairs to his cabin or collecting firewood and tree sap for future fires. He knew these things had to be done if he were to survive. He made list after list in his head of all the preparations that could not wait. He would start on them, full of zeal and determination, but never accomplished more than one or two at a time. It was never long before he found himself peering over a cliff or swimming across a swollen stream. Searching. For what, he did not know.

             
Soon he began returning to a cold fire with an empty belly. He would wake sopping wet to a shocking reminder that his roof leaked and needed to be patched. The wind would slip inside his clothes and brush his arm as he sat at the top of a cliff, gazing off into a desolate valley, and only then would he think about patching the holes in his coat. Something was wrong. Something inside him. His skin crawled, itched, his muscles felt tight all the time. He slept less and less. Walking was his solution, combing the forest his prescription, but it brought no relief. He went days without eating, realizing it only when he couldn’t get out of bed without the world spinning and nearly going black. It was late in the fall, and rain fell near constantly. The air began to harden, to sharpen and freeze in his throat. Winter crept ever closer but he hardly noticed. He felt lost, confused, unsure of something he couldn’t put his finger on. It didn’t make sense. He got no satisfaction from anything he did. He felt empty, hollow, drawn out of himself.

             
But he always had water.

             
He found himself at the river more and more often, gathering water as if there were a lack of it in the eternal torrents of rain. He went to the river without his bucket, spending hours walking up and down the sandy shore, feeling there must be something just around the next bend, this bush, that rock. The river gave him the most relief, lessened the burning in his chest. At the same time it quickened his heartbeat, forced him to run until he collapsed. His eyes darted faster than they were consciously bid. He found himself wandering to other rivers and streams miles from home, sitting next to rushing water for days at a time. Waiting. He felt thin, like a sheet pulled tight, stretched until it hurt.

He had been so strong once. He’d watched others lose their hold and sink down into their graves. He had wandered through camps of other survivors over the years, appalled at the resources left untouched around their pitiful, starved corpses. But no one ever had found him dead in his cabin. He kept it together. Kept his head on his shoulders. That’s why he was still here. Where had his strength gone? It was leaving him and taking his sanity along with it. He paid no mind to what he ate or where he slept. He woke in the forest on the brink of death, soaked through, the last heat of his body sinking into a merciless bed of needles. He would snap out of his daze and stumble back to his camp and nurse himself back to health, feeling himself again; he was a survivor who had made it this far, and was not done yet. Sometimes that itch would leave him for a moment and he was himself again; he would gather some meager plants and dry them for winter, finish a stack of firewood, but all it took was a good look out into the world beyond his cabin and that faceless desire sank its teeth into him once more, dragged him out of bed, away from food and shelter, and sent him on a quest with no cause.

It wasn’t long before rain turned to snow.

A layer of fresh snow blanketed the valley, a creamy silk broken only by the treetops poking their heads above the glistening mounds and hills of winter. The morning ambiance gave the world a two-dimensional look. The sky was a brighter shade than it had been for years; there was even a subtle hint of blue. No movement could be seen in the forest below, no sound but that of a river bubbling by and a lonely breeze floating through the branches of the snow-laden trees.

A bird sat on a rock overlooking the valley where David made his home; the enormous tree that set it apart rose up behind the little quail which had his head buried in his feathers. The tree leaned heavily to one side, weighed down with its crushing winter burden, threatening to snap from the stress. Flecks of blue in the bird’s earthy plumage grabbed David’s attention back from his scan of the valley. He watched the bird shift its attention from cleanliness to hunger as it began pawing at the bare patch of dirt at the base of a sapling. Keeping his eyes on the bird, David’s fingers groped beside him and he slowed his breathing. The inconvenience of sitting while hunting became painfully clear in that moment. His hand wrapped around the weathered frame of his bow, the quail still unaware of the predator just a few feet away. As David lifted the bow in one hand and fitted an arrow to the string with the other, he watched the movements of the creature, waiting for a sudden cessation of motion, a hesitance, a stiffening that meant the end of his prey’s ignorant bliss. The bird remained unaware while David lifted his bow to sight down the shaft, slower than a passing glacier. He could see the kill in his mind’s eye. Every muscle tensed and focused, his body an arrow intent on the hunt.

Something flashed on the edge of his vision. There was a movement in the forest below and David let his fingers relax, his arrow flying off into a mound of snow and his bow forgotten and abandoned as he ran to the edge of the rocky outcropping, now vacant of any potential meals. He leaned over the edge of a large boulder as far as he dared toward the movement he had seen, willing himself to fly to the scene below. His eyes were wide, manic, his breath held while he scanned the panoramic view for that one dot of motion. He raked the landscape with ravenous eyes until he found what had lost him his lunch. A tree swayed lazily back and forth, a bright spot of green where its snowy coat had just sloughed off.

David’s mouth dropped open, forming silent words, fumbling for something. His brow knit together, his face burned and his eyes stung. A lump formed in his throat, choking him, allowing only a brief sob to escape his tight chest. He fell to his knees, letting his hands fall into his lap, arms limp. He slouched over and nearly fell off the rock before catching himself and collapsing on his back, the sky occupying his vision, consuming his rapid, frustrated emotions and leaving him blank and bare. He let the sky have him. He lay there for a while, focusing on the sky, hating it, hating himself, hating the bird. He imagined chopping that deceitful tree into tiny little pieces, hacking at the bark and needles that had given him so much hope, throwing them into the fire, pissing on the ashes. It didn’t make him feel any better.

He clenched his fists, screwed his eyes shut, and tried to return to himself. This was not him. This was someone weak, who couldn’t handle life out here, someone who wouldn’t survive. He couldn’t keep going on like this. He had to return things to the way they had been, regain the hardness that had kept him through all the storms this broken world had thrown at him. Weakness had no place out here. Especially now. He sat up and opened his eyes, forcing himself to stare out into the glare of the world. Tears of exasperation slid down his cheeks. He stared until he felt nothing, throwing a voiceless challenge at the world to finish him. He felt angry and violent, hot in his coat, like he was a bomb ready to blow and take this whole forsaken place with him into oblivion. That made him feel better.

When he returned to camp, he ate his last can of peas cold, stumbled into his cabin, and collapsed from the exhaustion of having hope torn viciously from his grasp.

The winter was milder than the one previous, following the pattern of recent years. The snow cracked his roof in fewer places, formed smaller piles around his cabin that had to be shoveled, and melted sooner. He split his time between lying on his dingy mattress where he stared listlessly at the splotchy tin ceiling and wandering aimlessly through the woods around his cabin, eyes forever open, always on the lookout for any unwarranted movement in the trees or in the snow. Toward the end of the season, he moved the last of his food into his cabin. It took a single trip.

chapter 5

Empty.

              The world is composed of matter; everything having mass that occupies a certain volume. Few, if any, places on Earth exist where there is truly nothing. A human body is packed densely, a river runs deep with water, hydrogen and oxygen. Even the “empty” air we breathe is filled with nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide. It is a rare thing for any place on Earth to be void of everything, void of life, of death.

             
David remembered the old man’s feeble attempts to teach him these things. They never did make sense. As he walked numbly alongside the river, he realized just how mad those notions truly were. All around him was emptiness. He was barren, this valley was abandoned, the world was empty. Nothing remained. He was the last one to continue to take up space in this place, and soon enough he would be gone too, forgotten by the land and the last of the plants until something came along that finished them off too. Even then the world would be, could be, no more empty than it was now. Neither did David imagine he could be any more destitute if he were dead as he stumbled along the riverbank, no conscious thoughts, no feelings, just hollow wandering.

             
He rubbed his puffy, red eyes and looked down at his feet as he walked, not even wanting to acknowledge the world as it held up all the emptiness on a mocking platter before him. He hadn’t even seen an animal since winter, since he had thrown away his last chance of a fresh meal. His feet slogged across the wet ground, soaked with the rain that had been constant for who knows how long. David looked down at his ankles and knew they were wet but felt nothing. It had been so long since he had felt anything, even something as simple as wet feet through soaked boots. He watched his clumsy feet drag through the underbrush that clung to his boots. His feet refused to even bother lifting themselves clear of the stringy grass and vines. He noticed through his haze that his feet were lazy and raised his eyes to the river, watching it run along, never ceasing, never slowing. It looked faster than it was once. Must be the rain. David imagined walking into the water, being carried away in the brawny arms of the river, taken away from this awful place, his body deposited on some other empty patch of Earth. Then it would really be over. It had been a long time since he had held any beliefs of a greater power. Who wanted one that let the world consume itself and leave its excrement on any chance of starting over anyway? This was the dark age from which the world would not recover. There would be no new nations, no revolutions or enlightenments, no industrial breakthroughs; this was the darkness that would never end, never be chased away by a new dawn.

             
If only the darkness would swallow him already.

             
David welcomed it, wanted to leap headfirst into the raging torrent of water and embrace the knowledge that death was upon him, welcome the darkness that would envelope him when he ran out of air. He wanted so badly to know that he would join those who had already left this world, even if it was only in death, bound together in the eternal bonds of inexistence. He wanted to see his mother again, feel her hand on his forehead when he thought he was sick. He was bigger now, big enough to give his brothers a beating for a change. He’d never had the chance to do that. The old man… His best friend. David could see him smiling in that way he did when David grasped hopelessly at things he wanted to understand, things the old man would blather on about but could never explain in a way that made sense. He hated that smile, missed hating it. He wanted to sit on the couch next to his father and watch the bombs going off, the bombs that were just the first of many. He wanted to ask him why he stayed behind, why he let them go out in the first place. He never had a chance.

These thoughts came out of his empty mind, tried to take hold and fill a little space inside him, give him a little warmth, but they could not. He was too far gone. He was a vessel that could not be filled, not by any hope or confidence. He was empty, and he would stay that way. The faces in his head slipped away before they could take root.

              As he traipsed through this valley and as far in the surrounding woods as his faint survival instinct would let him go, he uttered only a handful of words, usually in frustration. It had been so long since there had been anyone around to hear them, the value of voice had long vanished from his mind. Of course there had been a couple of instances when he shouted out for someone, anyone, to reveal themselves to him, to fill a space in the empty world, but it was so crushing to send his words out and receive nothing in return that he quickly abandoned the effort. Just saying the words acknowledged the chance that there was someone out there, and when hope of that left, there was no need to bother anymore.

             
David’s coat was heavy, the moist air clinging stubbornly to the already saturated fibers only to drip onto his tattered boots. The rain was not cold or wet, at least not in David’s mind; he was hardly sure it was even there. It could have all been in his imagination. Everything he saw and heard could exist within himself for all he really knew. Maybe this was what hell was like, walking alone through the woods, filled with pride in yourself for living so long until one day you realize that you have outlived everyone that ever meant anything to you and now you are doomed to wander aimlessly with no purpose or direction through a barren wasteland. There is very little satisfaction in anything when you are alone. No one to share things with, no one to do things for or have do things for you. No one to love. No one to hate. Even if there were, how could he hate someone if they were the only other person left? He needed people, and he hated them for that. He wished he had figured that out sooner. Everything was falling apart, leaving him behind.

             
He had been walking through the night, a fact thrust into his mind by the light of the rising sun shining suddenly and brilliantly into his eyes. He shut them tight and lifted his hands up to his face. This was unreal. There was no light left in the world but the faint glow that trickled through the clouds. He thought about going back to his cabin to sleep through the day but his feet had stopped listening to him. They were autonomous now, pressing onward of their own free will. There was nothing David could do to sway them, no entreaty pleasing enough to make them listen to his commands. He hung his head, shoulders slumped and hands once again limp at his side, and consigned himself to another tour of the valley. He should know this place like the back of his hand. His mind in the state it was, he would never make it home if it weren’t for his tree.

             
Even his tree slouched, having been bent and broken by the dense snow of last winter. It leaned precariously to one side, weighed down with lifeless appendages and many years. That tree must have been alive for countless years. It had outlived its brothers and sisters, seen eras come and go, and just now began to sag. David wondered how it had lasted on its own for so long.

             
He continued like this for a while before his head started to spin and his stomach began a chorus of somber growls. He knelt down to the water for a drink and pulled some berries out of his pocket. Whether they were poisonous or not he had no idea; not that he had a preference one way or the other. They were small, purple, and tasteless. At least they went down easy. He chewed each mouthful a few times before swallowing. He nibbled one of his fingers and realized he had dropped half the handful somewhere along the river’s edge. He wouldn’t go back for them.

             
The world was empty, of that he could be sure. Now it was shrinking. This bend in the river was familiar. The rock in the center of the stream, water frothing around it, he had seen earlier that morning. Or some other time. But he had certainly seen it before. When he lifted his eyes to the opposite bank all he saw was the same wall of trees that had been further up the river and could be spied further down. It was all the same. The world was a series of patterns. He didn’t want to see any more of it, felt no need to go anywhere else, because he knew it would be all the same as his valley. It had been the same old landscape for as long as his feeble memory could trace back. However strongly he felt this, no matter how hard he focused on the idea of the senseless monotony to which he was enslaving himself, his feet would not stop.

             
His hope must have all trickled down to his feet, where it was making its last stand.

             
He hated them, wished they would trip and twist and break, shatter into a million pieces, but they only ever stumbled, endlessly shuffling forward. Walking, stumbling, drinking, chewing. He did nothing else anymore, save when a thought wormed its way into his head. It wouldn’t last long though, left on its own in that vacant chamber with no sustenance to speak of. He made it back to his cabin every few days, though there wasn’t much left to go back to. Even his bed was incapable of comforting him, despite the warmth and softness it offered in this hard, rough world. It was artificial and he never slept anyway.

             
At length he knelt down for a drink of water and could not stand back up. His legs were too sore and starved to lift his weight off the ground again, so he toppled backward into the wet grass, water kissing the heels of his boots, his face blank and vision blurred. He sat like that for a while until a pinecone fell across the river and disturbed the static picture of the far bank. He watched it fall, watched it collide with branches on its way down, shaking needles loose, freeing them to follow it through the air. It landed with a dull thud on the grass at the base of the tree that had given birth to it. The boughs eventually ceasing their swinging and the needles came to rest on their fallen brethren. The picture returned to its natural, lifeless state.

             
Watching the cone’s escapade, this subtle movement that had disrupted the world only to be quieted and forgotten, its effects faded and gone, David snapped. His eyes widened, bulging out of their sockets, he clenched his fists and tilted his head up toward the gray sky. He looked at it, blank as ever, a pale, uniform sheet, staring back at him from its throne on high. He felt a swelling in his abdomen, a pressure building. His skin grew hot and he felt beads of sweat form on his forehead. The world was staring at him, watching him, mocking him. He had had enough of this awful world, enough of living on the leftovers of his selfish forefathers. He let out a vicious roar, laden with notes of frustration and anger, laced with agony and despair, topped with a whimper of loneliness. He yelled until he was out of breath and his throat cracked; then he sucked in as much air as he could hold and resumed his howling. He put all of himself into this one action, all that he had left. He yelled until black spots crowded his vision, until the world swam before him, until darkness finally took him and he collapsed on the cold, wet ground.