How to Find Peace at the End of the World (12 page)

At one point I have to remind myself:
How long has it been since I last thought of my fiancée? Several hours at least. Strange when you think about it. So much has happened. Or does it only seem that way? No, so much has happened, so many discrete things. When I was working and living that life just forty or so hours ago, I would often catch myself asking how long it had been since I last though of Amy. It would usually be a day or two, whenever we both got enough of a breather, between work and time at the gym and eating dinner in front of the TV alone. Such was a long distance relationship between two people who were not strangers to being alone. The longest I ever caught myself not thinking about Amy was four days. Four days. Time is now compressed. I thought about her no more than five or six hours ago, but it seems lifetimes away. It is like the scale of magnitudes for earthquakes. Each level up is like, what, ten times more powerful than the last level? I feel like how I’m living now, each additional hour I live is increasingly like another life. Each day will likely no longer be exactly same as the last. I don’t really know how I feel about that.
I call her again.
You’ve reached the voicemail of Amy Seager, junior partner-
I have this love hate relationship with my phone, now. It’s a nervous tick but also a sort of comfort. There seems to be almost something alive, something human in the rounded numbers on the screen, the tiny text in the buttons. The actions and motions whisper of other ages and a vanished humanity. I hold in my hand my last connection to the past, to what might have been had I been a better person or something. Surely that must be it. Since it’s just me, none of this would have happened had I listened a little more, been a little less apathetic, a little less inconsiderate.

The road is quiet and elongates, luxuriates in front of me, stretching out like a housecat.

She had said that she wanted to work it out. She had said that long distance was do-able. Maybe a few years. That’s all it would take. And after those few years of sacrifice then both of us would be advanced enough in our careers to have the life we’d always wanted. Did we?

On I drive. What else is there?

??? - The longest stretch out of Houston is through Conroe and it’s just as cluttered as I’d feared.

Well, there will be miles and miles, long stretches, wide open or with one off cars but once every ten miles or so I’ll hit a massive clump that has me driving on the shoulder or getting out and cutting the wires on the median fencing. I’ve contemplated just driving the Beast over the low wire staked out in the grass divider but then usually contemplate myself right out of it: I only have one spare and I’m not about to do anything stupid, like driving over wrecks a la The Crushinator at a monster truck rally.
Going is slow. Before this and in no traffic it might be a five hour hump up to Dallas. Now it takes me two hours just to cover twenty miles, average. One mean five mile stretch of freeway had me loosening the barb wire on some graze land because the median was solid concrete divider.

Out in the open Charley and I had somewhat of a blast, actually, doing what I’d always occasionally fantasized of doing on those long stretches of I-45. I took the Beast at a good clip over all the hills I could find, jumped it over little creek ravines, left giant loopy figure 8’s in the scrub grass. Childish and time consuming, but fucking worth it.

The other thing holding me up is all the stops I make. Charley is a worse road trip companion than Amy ever was. A rest break every hour is nothing compared to Charley barking his head off every ten minutes. Admonitions of “No Charley” only eliciting more barking and, eventually, the most pathetic whine I’ve ever heard, from dog or fiancee.

Admittedly, I am one to indulge. I’m a sucker for it, what can I say? The stupid dog saved my life. I pull over to the median and Charley goes running off into the tree line, marks a few trees and then comes bounding back, tongue flopping about like a kid off ADD meds.
I really should have been more careful, what with the Beast eating up a gallon of gas every eight miles. I’m down to a quarter tank of gas and ten gallon plastic jug. Ten gallons. Eighty miles. Driving conservatively, that will get me to city limits. I shouldn’t be too concerned: I’ve got that plastic siphon thingy and there are plenty of wrecked cars along the way to feed off of. Shouldn’t be a problem I tell myself over and over again from the back of my mind somewhere.
Still, I stop at the place I usually do on my way up to Dallas, this truck stop and tourist trap place called the Hitchin’ Post. I decide that it’s a good place to get some more gas because not only is the faux wood cabin building a nirvana of knick-knacks and treats from my childhood: multicolored rock candy grown on a wood stick, a wall of clear plastic bins filled with sour worms and gummy bears and coke bottle candies, but I distinctly remember there being this bright red novelty gas pump, hand crank powered, and the thing worked, too. It was a monumental gag, I remember thinking, this huge line for this hand crank pump that took forever even to bring the fuel up, and you could only get the lowest grade. Not good for an Audi, but for the Beast...
The ditch across the store is full of cars and a large semis sticking ass end into the air: the road to the popular gas station curves before it reaches the line and I guess they pretty much ran off the road just like I did in my boss’s flashy sport car.

There are a few eighteen wheelers huddled down in the spaces painted on a large parking lot adjacent to the store and I think about taking one of them for a second, you know, just unhooking the trailers and riding in style and relative comfort: I’d watched one of those shows on the Discovery channel that showed like the world’s most crazy tractor trailers and some of them are pretty nice. Satellite TV (not that there’s still such a thing) and Tempur-pedic beds and even Barco loungers for seats. But even though I know about driving them the logistics boggle my mind.

I put the thought aside and stop the beast by the hand crank gas pump. Before I spend in future back pain on filling up, I check the electric pumps, you know, just in case the station had some crazy backup generator system or something but nada.
I head into the store. I haven’t been back to the place in four years but it’s just like it was then and just like it was when I was a kid. As I walk by the large bank of clear plastic bins full of candy I grab a sampler handful: sour gummy worms and coke bottles.

I remind myself that there’s another reason I came back here besides candy, however frivolous that reason might also be. I walk into the dim store into the back where all the western gear is. I’d always wanted this stuff when I was a kid but my mom would never get it for me. Waste of money, she’d always say and slap my hand away from what I’d been reaching for and take it and lead me back out of the store to the car. God knows why I never thought, before now, to buy myself a damn pair.  I look on the wall of boots until I find a style that I think will suit me and grab a box with a pair in my size and plop down on one of the mirrored fitting bench. I take off the tennis shoes I’d changed into two nights before and slip my feet into the boots. I feel around at the end for my toes. Perfect fit.
I grab a leather holster off of where it hangs on the wall and buckle it around my waist. I try to fit the S&W 500 in it. The barrel is too long and it sticks out comically. I find another holster, but a modern looking one. It fits but doesn’t look as good, of course. Well, I guess I’m biased by my dedication of my childhood vision. Speaking of which: I head back further into the store to where all the hats and lassos are arranged carefully on wooden shelves.

This is the end of the line, Dr. Jones! Ha, might as well. I grab one of the bull whips and swing it in the air overhead and give it a crack. Not much of a crack. Snapping it is much harder than it looks in the movies and instead of piercing the air the whip limply caresses it.  

I coil it up and stick it into the little hook on my holster belt that seems like a place to hook a whip or a rope and what do you know it works pretty well.

I certainly feel like one ridiculous bad-ass. More ridiculous than bad-ass. I find the last piece of my outfit, a white Stetson hat, and then I square up against the mirror. Then I pivot on my boot heel and I square up against the mannequin. “Hold it right there,” I say using my best John Wayne. “There’s only enough room in this town for one bad-ass mother fucker.” “Draw,” I say. I whip the gun out of my holster and shoot, completely missing the mannequin because of the recoil and shattering the front window of the store. The tip of the gun actually goes flying upward and smacks me on the forehead. It’s more of a scare than anything else.

After I can see again, the head crushing pain fading away I make out the busted window and a big white head poking out from the bottom of the frame: Charley staring in at me quizzically. “I’m all right, boy!” I say and head back towards the front of the store.
I pause beside the big stand of chaw and debate the merits of it. The one and only time I’d tried it I was still in college and I’d accidentally swallowed a little of my tobacco tinged spit and gotten really sick as a result. I decide to go back to the candy section and grab some grape flavored Big League chew instead. Oh yeah.
I do another once over of the Hitchin’ Post and grab a few fishing rods and a big tackle box. I go behind the counter. Then, doing what I’d seen the various employees at the hitching post do, I bend down and reach to open the little refrigerator there and grab two of the large, lidded Styrofoam containers. Bait worms.
I also grab an old fashioned brass lantern from a ceiling hook. I realize that it’s an oil lantern and will probably need some lantern oil. I find the oil behind the counter and load all I carry in my full arms into the truck. I also grab some long matches to replace the dinky ones I have in the truck. Of course, I also relieve the store of all of its fresh beef and turkey jerky stock. Well supplied up I climb back into the Beast with Charley and head back out again.
There is a reason I grabbed the fishing rods. Our travel is picking up, our wounds are healing. We’ve been through some shit. I think we can use a little something.

Charley cocked his head at me as I loaded the van as if he might be inclined to ask if he could speak: What about what’s really important, man? What about getting back to Amy? Hell, other people? What about finding other people at least, finding out what happened?

“Come on boy. I need this,” I told him. I need this. We need this. Just for a bit. Come on, Charley.

He cocked his head. Cocked it back. Ok, then.

At night my urges towards the company of others resounds to an almost deafening degree. I sweat and get the shakes. Last night I had to pull the only other warm body close. But now, in the daylight I’m downright cavalier, almost manic: it’s all bullshit. Amy will be there or Amy won’t be. Dallas will be there or Dallas won’t be. Hell, I tell myself, it’s probably where everyone in Texas has gone. That, or something really really fucked up is going on. There isn’t a middle ground where time will matter all that much. At least, this is what I feel right now in the daylight hours, with Charley right beside me, his big floppy head flagging in the wind coming in through the open window.

What else is there? Such a nice day. I’ve been down this path before and rarely have I not stopped by the Hitchin’ Post to grab a few lives worms for bait and rarely have I not taken the opportunity of a few hours along the lake for a few casts. I’ve also rarely caught anything, but that’s beside the point. The point being, what better time to hang out by the lake for a few casts than after the motherfucking rapture.

But I know that tonight will be rough. After the sun goes down and the warmth I might try to build a fire. I won’t be able to go on and whatever spot I find I might never leave because of the certainty of another good day on the lake, at least.
I take the usual exit off of I-45 and bump through the potholes in the long neglected road. I know these parts. I know how many entrances I have to pass before I reach my friend’s land. We had not started out as friends. Actually, I had started as trespasser on his land because his land extends farther down to where the edge of the reservoir lake comes closer to the highway. One day a truck approached me as I lingered on the bank of the reservoir and out popped a graying man in stovepipe jeans, a button up shirt and western boots and hat. “Howdy!” I said, giving my old “Don’t know any better” swagger.

“You realize you’re trespassing, don’t you?”

“No sir. It was just such a nice day and passing by this pristine stretch of water I saw the ripples. I can’t pass by ripples and not stop for a few casts.”

There was a pause as I looked back to my line.

“They biting today?”

“Not yet, but I’m forever hopeful.”

“Carry on, then.” I heard the man say. Funny, I didn’t notice the shotgun until I saw the man get back into his pickup truck from the corner of my eye. A shiver ran through me like a goose stepped over my grave but I never took my hand off the rod and the chill went away in the warmth of the sun soon enough. I kept on fishing, though I didn’t catch anything that day.
Each time going up I-45 to Dallas to see Amy I’d stop by his piece of the shore and make a few casts. I don’t see any gain from skipping it this time. In fact, I might mess things up if I do.

Sometimes the old rancher would drive by and offer me a beer from a cooler in the back of the truck. We’d pop’em and sit on the bank over the placid waters of the reservoir and drink the whole six pack and communicate in terse, almost monosyllabic answer responses, that somehow, on those occasions, seemed to contain a meaning greater than the words uttered. Or, at least now, with me having not heard the sound of another human’s voice for several days, it seems like those exchanges held that.
It’s getting kind of late in the day and by late I mean 4PM. Say I cast for two hours, that would put me at 6 O’clock. Sundown. I don’t mean to continue on the highway after sundown.
In fact, I mean to go deeper into the McCallisters’ land and try to find his little ranch house. And I mean to stay there for the night.  Old McCallister wouldn’t mind. And besides, travelling through a post-apocalyptic wasteland really takes it out of you.
I finally come upon the right gate. It’s really pretty much like any ranch gate in this part of Texas, all bent silver metal tubing and adorned at the top by wiring formed into a family name or the name seared into a long wood plank. Sometimes there’s a cow skull or something set in the center of another bent wire circlet or something, as is the case with the McCallisters’ gate. I get out of the car and walk the low gate open and then get back in the Beast.
I take the first left off the main path and pretty soon I’m in the trees and just as soon I’m past the trees and out into a clearing again. The grass all around looks dry: Texas is in the worst drought it’s seen for like two decades. I stop the car a few hundred feet away from the bank because of how the land slopes. I park the car diagonally and up against the slope and pull the parking break.
“Let’s get us some fish, Charley!”
“Ruff.”
I grab the two foam containers and stick them in the tackle box and then with the tackle and rods head down towards the water, Charley by my side. I take a deep breath of air: it’s dry and probably about 65 degrees, the sky is clear and just yellowing around the edges. The birds are singing. There isn’t another person in sight...of course. How many times sitting in my office did I think about what I’d be willing to give up for a day like this. A work day. Nobody else around because they’re all too busy with the rat race. Out of sight. Out of mind. Was all of humanity ever on the offering table? Was I that antisocial?
~7 PM Charley has a hell of a time tracking squirrels in the trees. He runs in and out of the tree line and sometimes he’ll simply stop right at the edge of the shadows and growl and bark at phantom shapes I can’t see.
Every once in a while he comes back to where I’m standing on the shore and huffs and falls onto his side. I take my eyes off the reservoir and watch as he chomps at bugs, or imaginary squirrels or something and then I look back to where my line sinks into the murky water and smile.

I should write a book, I think to myself, “How to find peace at the end of the world.” That would be an awesome title. Of course, the very depressing corollary is that at the end of the world there’s no one else around to read the books that you write. Also, no one to make a movie. Well, I guess I could read my own crap and try my hand at making movies, but the thought makes me queasy. Instead, I divert my fishing thoughts towards what movies one should have at the end of the world. The Last Man on Earth, of course. Godfather I and II. But not III. Star Wars IV, V and VI. First three Trek movies. The BTTF sage. I throw a few other movies in to be classy, you know. Like 2001 though the last thirty minutes goes way over my head. Also Shawshank. Must have Shawshank. It’s an exercise in self distraction, of course. I’m nervous. I know how disturbing thoughts can creep into your head when you’re standing there in mostly quiet and in near solitude. It’s happened the last few times I’ve been out. Mostly doubts about Amy, about the future. Hell, whatever might come now if I didn’t just think of dumb shit…I’m not risking it. I hope fishing Nirvana will find me soon as the ripples settle on the surface.

It works for the most part. And, of course, I lose track of time. I had planned to leave just as the sun was setting and have about fifteen minutes in the deepening dusk in which to seek out the McCallister’s homestead. Instead, by the time I reel the lure back in, having not drowned anymore worms than that first one, the sun was already well below the horizon, the last dregs of prismatic light funneling down into the hole the sun had punched on the horizon.
“Well, Charley, looks like we’re sleeping in the truck tonight.”
There wasn’t any reason we couldn’t have some fresh food for once. Jerky will only take you so far. I set up the camper stove I’d nabbed from Wal-Mart on the way out of Houston and put a pot on. I cut up and let some vegetables sweat in the pot and when they are nice and caramelized I pour in some boxed stock and some bottles of water. I cube up some pretty fresh (not yet rancid) beef I’d also picked up. I throw Charley one of the cubes and he sniffs at it and looks at me, puzzled. “What’s there to puzzle about boy? It’s meat. MEAT!” He puts his head back down and licks the cubed beef and then looks back up at me. “What, you saving it?” I make to grab it and Charley hardly reacts. I shrug and take the cube and throw it in the pot with the rest. After the meat has cooked a while I add some more seasoning and chop up some fresh veggies into the mix. “I really hope this shit doesn’t give you the runs, especially tomorrow when you’re in the truck.”
“Ruff.” I concur.
Ha.
The smell of the soup pervades the dark grasses and surrounding forest. I worry about drawing unwanted attention I worry, that is, until I put the first spoonful of soup into my mouth. Though it scalds the skin off the top of my mouth, it is simply so good that it pushes all bad thoughts out of my brain. I take Charley’s bowl and mix in some of the stew with his canned wet dog food. He laps up a few mouthfuls and looks up at me, licking his chops, as if saying “My Danny boy, you’ve outdone yourself.”
“You’re welcome buddy.”
We tuck in to our meal by the fire seated in the soft, tinder dry grasses. That would be another irony, to escape the Rapture only to kill yourself in a wildfire that you start yourself. About as ironic, I guess, as dying when a plane crashes into the Ferrari you hijacked on the first fucking morning. Ah. Well, I’m here now. I make a note to throw some water over the embers eventually.

Charley polishes off his plate real quick and while I eat he stands there licking his chops for some more. I slather another ladle full of stew into his bowl and top my bowl off while I’m at it. “Hold on,” I say to Charley, on remembering the other stuff I’d carried out of Wal-mart: the garlic bread wrapped in foil. I take the garlic bread and throw it on some coals not directly in the fire but next to it but discover, to my great dismay, that what I thought was foil is actually foil paper, and the accompaniment to my stew goes up in smoke. More stew, then. I put another helping on Charley’s plate.
We’re almost done with our seconds when I hear something, a rustle.

I look at Charley and for some hare brained reason I bring my finger up to my lips. Charley cocks his big white head at me. He follows my gaze and then gets up. I hear the thing before his canine ears hear it. I don’t smell anything, though. We are upwind, I guess.

I grab the rifle by my side and slowly ready it as I scan the light shifting on the surrounding foliage. I don’t know what I’m looking for, but it’s readily apparent when I see it. A dark mass like a black hole chewing up the forest. The light dappled on the leaves falling inwards into a formless, dark shape.

I realize I am shaking like crazy, trying futilely to keep the rifle still enough. Why so jumpy, Dan? It’s probably a deer or something. Most likely a deer. Then a low snuffling like a hoover with its pipes clogged. Definitely not a deer. What other animals are out here in east Texas? Bear. Unlikely. I should just try to scare it away, especially with this two hundred pound goofball next to me. Then I realize a two hundred pound goofball, while able to save me from a dog half his size, would fare poorly against a bear…or a boar. Fuck. A boar. Just thought of it. Killer Bs. Wasn’t there a story in Texas Parks and Wildlife about a record breaking boar that was shot around here. Eight hundred pounds or something like that. I breathe out again and steady my aim. Either us or it. I squeeze off the shot. The dark shape bursts from the foliage, the black mass resolving the whole time as it emerges into the light of the fire, the long legs and neck and the tangle over its head. It heads straight for the camp fire and then through it, throwing great plums of sparks in the process. Then it takes two more, great loping strides and collapses right at the edge of the other tree line.