The road (11 page)

Okay.

They passed through towns that warned people away
with messages scrawled on the billboards. The billboards had been whited out
with thin coats of paint in order to write on them and through the paint could
be seen a pale palimpsest of advertisements for goods which no longer existed.
They sat by the side of the road and ate the last of the apples. What is it?
the man said. Nothing.

We'll find something to eat. We always do. The boy
didnt answer. The man watched him. That's not it, is it? It's okay. Tell me.
The boy looked away down the road. I want you to tell me. It's okay. He shook
his head. Look at me, the man said. He turned and looked. He looked like he'd
been crying. Just tell me. We wouldnt ever eat anybody, would we? No. Of course
not. Even if we were starving? We're starving now. You said we werent. I said
we werent dying. I didnt say we werent starving. But we wouldnt. No. We
wouldnt. No matter what. No. No matter what. Because we're the good guys. Yes.

And we're carrying the fire. And we're carrying
the fire. Yes. Okay.

He found pieces of flint or chert in a ditch but
in the end it was easier to rake the pliers down the side of a rock at the
bottom of which he'd made a small pile of tinder soaked in gas. Two more days.
Then three. They were starving right enough. The country was looted, ransacked,
ravaged. Rifled of every crumb. The nights were blinding cold and casket black
and the long reach of the morning had a terrible silence to it. Like a dawn
before battle. The boy's candlecolored skin was all but translucent. With his
great staring eyes he'd the look of an alien.

He was beginning to think that death was finally
upon them and that they should find some place to hide where they would not be
found. There were times when he sat watching the boy sleep that he would begin
to sob uncontrollably but it wasnt about death. He wasnt sure what it was about
but he thought it was about beauty or about goodness. Things that he'd no
longer any way to think about at all. They squatted in a bleak wood and drank
ditchwater strained through a rag. He'd seen the boy in a dream laid out upon a
coolingboard and woke in horror. What he could bear in the waking world he
could not by night and he sat awake for fear the dream would return.

They scrabbled through the charred ruins of houses
they would not have entered before. A corpse floating in the black water of a
basement among the trash and rusting ductwork. He stood in a livingroom partly
burned and open to the sky. The waterbuckled boards sloping away into the yard.
Soggy volumes in a bookcase. He took one down and opened it and then put it
back. Everything damp. Rotting. In a drawer he found a candle. No way to light
it. He put it in his pocket. He walked out in the gray light and stood and he
saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless
circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun
in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two
hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and
borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.

At the edge of a small town they sat in the cab of
a truck to rest, staring out a glass washed clean by the recent rains. A light
dusting of ash. Exhausted. By the roadside stood another sign that warned of
death, the letters faded with the years. He almost smiled. Can you read that?
he said. Yes.

Dont pay any attention. There's no one here. Are
they dead? I think so. I wish that little boy was with us. Let's go, he said.

Rich dreams now which he was loathe to wake from.
Things no longer known in the world. The cold drove him forth to mend the fire.
Memory of her crossing the lawn toward the house in the early morning in a thin
rose gown that clung to her breasts. He thought each memory recalled must do
some violence to its origins. As in a party game. Say the word and pass it on.
So be sparing. What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or
not.

They walked through the streets wrapped in the
filthy blankets. He held the pistol at his waist and held the boy by the hand.
At the farther edge of the town they came upon a solitary house in a field and they
crossed and entered and walked through the rooms. They came upon themselves in
a mirror and he almost raised the pistol. It's us, Papa, the boy whispered.
It's us.

He stood in the back door and looked out at the
fields and the road beyond and the bleak country beyond the road. On the patio
was a barbeque pit made from a fifty-five gallon drum slit endways with a torch
and set in a welded iron frame. A few dead trees in the yard. A fence. A metal
tool shed. He shrugged off the blanket and wrapped it around the boy's
shoulder. I want you to wait here. I want to go with you. I'm only going over
there to take a look. Just sit here. You'll be able to see me the whole time. I
promise.

He crossed the yard and pushed open the door,
still holding the gun. It was a sort of garden shed. Dirt floor. Metal shelves
with some plastic flowerpots. Everything covered with ash. There were garden
tools standing in the corner. A lawnmower. A wooden bench under the window and
beside it a metal cabinet. He opened the cabinet. Old catalogs. Packets of
seed. Begonia. Morning glory. He stuck them in his pocket. For what? On the top
shelf were two cans of motor oil and he put the pistol in his belt and reached
and got them and set them on the bench. They were very old, made of cardboard
with metal endcaps. The oil had soaked through the cardboard but still they
seemed full. He stepped back and looked out the door. The boy was sitting on
the back steps of the house wrapped in the blankets watching him. When he
turned he saw a gascan in the corner behind the door. He knew it couldnt have
gas in it yet when he tilted it with his foot and let it fall back again there
was a gentle slosh. He picked it up and carried it to the bench and tried to
unscrew the cap but he could not. He got the pliers out of his coat pocket and
extended the jaws and tried it. It would just fit and he twisted off the cap
and laid it on the bench and sniffed the can. Rank odor. Years old. But it was
gasoline and it would burn. He screwed the cap back on and put the pliers in
his pocket. He looked around for some smaller container but there wasnt one. He
shouldnt have thrown away the bottle. Check the house.

Crossing the grass he felt half faint and he had
to stop. He wondered if it was from smelling the gasoline. The boy was watching
him. How many days to death? Ten? Not so many more than that. He couldnt think.
Why had he stopped? He turned and looked down at the grass. He walked back.
Testing the ground with his feet. He stopped and turned again. Then he went
back to the shed. He returned with a garden spade and in the place where he'd
stood he chucked the blade into the ground. It sank to half its length and
stopped with a hollow wooden sound. He began to shovel away the dirt.

Slow going. God he was tired. He leaned on the
spade. He raised his head and looked at the boy. The boy sat as before. He bent
to his work again. Before long he was resting between each shovelful. What he
finally unburied was a piece of plywood covered with roofingfelt. He shoveled out
along the edges. It was a door perhaps three feet by six. At one end was a hasp
with a padlock taped up in a plastic bag. He rested, holding on to the handle
of the spade, his forehead in the crook of his arm. When he looked up again the
boy was standing in the yard just a few feet from him. He was very scared. Dont
open it, Papa, he whispered. It's okay. Please, Papa. Please. It's okay. No
it's not. He had his fists clutched at his chest and he was bobbing up and down
with fear. The man dropped the shovel and put his arms around him. Come on, he
said. Let's just go sit on the porch and rest a while. Then can we go? Let's
just sit for a while. Okay.

They sat wrapped in the blankets and looked out at
the yard. They sat for a long time. He tried to explain to the boy that there
was no one buried in the yard but the boy just started crying. After a while he
even thought that maybe the child was right. Let's just sit, he said. We wont
even talk. Okay.

They walked through the house again. He found a
beer bottle and an old rag of a curtain and he tore an edge from the cloth and
stuffed it down the neck of the bottle with a coathanger. This is our new lamp,
he said. How can we light it? I found some gasoline in the shed. And some oil.
I'll show you. Okay.

Come on, the man said. Everything's okay. I
promise. But when he bent to see into the boy's face under the hood of the
blanket he very much feared that something was gone that could not be put right
again.

They went out and crossed the yard to the shed. He
set the bottle on the bench and he took a screwdriver and punched a hole in one
of the cans of oil and then punched a smaller one to help it drain. He pulled
the wick out of the bottle and poured the bottle about half full, old straight
weight oil thick and gelid with the cold and a long time pouring. He twisted
the cap off the gascan and he made a small paper spill from one of the
seedpackets and poured gas into the bottle and put his thumb over the mouth and
shook it. Then he poured some out into a clay dish and took the rag and stuffed
it back into the bottle with the screwdriver. He took a piece of flint from his
pocket and got the pair of pliers and struck the flint against the serrated
jaw. He tried it a couple of times and then he stopped and poured more gasoline
into the dish. This may flare up, he said. The boy nodded. He raked sparks into
the dish and it bloomed into flame with a low whoosh. He reached and got the
bottle and tilted it and lit the wick and blew out the flame in the dish and
handed the smoking bottle to the boy. Here, he said. Take it. What are we going
to do? Hold your hand in front of the flame. Dont let it go out. He rose and
took the pistol from his belt. This door looks like the other door, he said.
But it's not. I know you're scared. That's okay. I think there may be things in
there and we have to take a look. There's no place else to go. This is it. I
want you to help me. If you dont want to hold the lamp you'll have to take the
pistol. I'll hold the lamp. Okay. This is what the good guys do. They keep
trying. They dont give up. Okay.

He led the boy out into the yard trailing the
black smoke from the lamp. He put the pistol in his belt and picked up the
spade and began to chop the hasp out of the plywood. He wedged the corner of
the blade under it and pried it up and then knelt and took hold of the lock and
twisted the whole thing loose and pitched it into the grass. He pried the blade
under the door and got his fingers under it and then stood and raised it up.
Dirt went rattling down the boards. He looked at the boy. Are you all right? he
said. The boy nodded mutely, holding the lamp in front of him. The man swung
the door over and let it fall in the grass. Rough stairs carpentered out of two
by tens leading down into the darkness. He reached and took the lamp from the
boy. He started to descend the stairs but then he turned and leaned and kissed
the child on the forehead.

The bunker was walled with concrete block. A
poured concrete floor laid over with kitchen tile. There were a couple of iron
cots with bare springs, one against either wall, the mattress pads rolled up at
the foot of them in army fashion. He turned and looked at the boy crouched
above him blinking in the smoke rising up from the lamp and then he descended
to the lower steps and sat and held the lamp out. Oh my God, he whispered. Oh
my God. What is it Papa? Come down. Oh my God. Come down.

Crate upon crate of canned goods. Tomatoes,
peaches, beans, apricots. Canned hams. Corned beef. Hundreds of gallons of
water in ten gallon plastic jerry jugs. Paper towels, toiletpaper, paper
plates. Plastic trashbags stuffed with blankets. He held his forehead in his
hand. Oh my God, he said. He looked back at the boy. It's all right, he said.
Come down. Papa?

Come down. Come down and see. He stood the lamp on
the step and went up and took the boy by the hand. Come on, he said. It's all
right. What did you find? I found everything. Everything. Wait till you see. He
led him down the stairs and picked up the bottle and held the flame aloft. Can
you see? he said. Can you see? What is all this stuff, Papa? It's food. Can you
read it? Pears. That says pears. Yes. Yes it does. Oh yes it does.

There was just headroom for him to stand. He
ducked under a lantern with a green metal shade hanging from a hook. He held
the boy by the hand and they went along the rows of stenciled cartons. Chile,
corn, stew, soup, spaghetti sauce. The richness of a vanished world. Why is
this here? the boy said. Is it real? Oh yes. It's real. He pulled one of the
boxes down and clawed it open and held up a can of peaches. It's here because
someone thought it might be needed. But they didnt get to use it. No. They
didnt. They died. Yes.

Is it okay for us to take it? Yes. It is. They would
want us to. Just like we would want them to. They were the good guys? Yes. They
were. Like us. Like us. Yes. So it's okay. Yes. It's okay.