CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Old Man lay under a blanket of stars. Above him a thousand points of broken glass shimmered. The moon had gone down and now the sky was black before dawn.

This is how the world is in the night. In all the nights I was a child and a young man before the bombs. It was like this in the night.

It was like this for the man in the book. At night. With the great fish. Will I find my great fish? Will my story go that far?

Below the wolves had disappeared for the most part. He could hear them ranging through the dirt and scrub. All except the big one. The big one waited. Sitting mostly. Waiting. Occasionally he would pad around beneath the Old Man, checking the perimeter. A loping little gait, almost friendly. Just business.

The Old Man lay precariously across the top of one of the girders where it intersected with another. It was a small space and not much more.

A strong wind or sleep and over I go. So no sleep tonight.

What will the wolves do in the morning?

What will you do in the morning?

The big wolf didn’t answer. But he seemed to be listening.

The Old Man drank some water.

His neck was tired. His back felt numb from the girder. And his legs were falling asleep. He flexed them, moving back and forth. He winked at the big wolf.

If I fall, you must be ready. So no sleep for you either.

Are you crazy?

No.

The wolves won’t let you go five feet.

I must try.

You will fail if it comes to that.

“If” it comes to that.

Below the wolf waited.

At dawn, the wolves settled to wait. There were thirty of them. The two killers baited the Alpha. They wanted to leave the scrawny man and return to the sickly mule deer near Phoenix, a hot pile of ruins the wolves called “The Uneven Ground.” The two killers walked away decidedly. But none of the females followed. The young watched. As if their decision mattered. But the big Alpha waited.

The Old Man watched the wolves play their game.

It’s obvious to me.

How so?

They don’t want to stay. They want something to kill. To eat. But the big one there won’t let them. What he says goes. There is more to me, for him, than just a meal. So I think all of us must wait.

He awoke with a start. He had drifted for only a moment. But he had started to roll. Started to roll off the girder to the wolves below.

I can’t wait all day, my friend. Maybe you should listen to the rest of your family and go. That would be for the best.

The big Alpha watched from underneath the top of his eyes, giving away nothing.

I have a family too, you know.

Do you?

The Old Man looked behind him, toward where he had been heading. A dawn breeze moved softly over his gray hair in the orange light of a new day.

The power lines ran down the length of the fallen tower, which was even higher at the far end. The lines continued out across a low riverbed. They stretched loosely across the gap to meet another tower, twisted and fallen in the same direction on the other side of the dry riverbed.

These must have fallen in the shock wave after Phoenix.

The Old Man rose to his knees. He moved his satchel onto his back.

Listen, wolf. I can’t wait for you to leave. So I must go. You understand, don’t you?

The Old Man began to crawl over the length of the tower. At once the wolves were up and pacing, whining and crossing back and forth underneath him. Some growled.

This requires all the concentration you have ever had in your whole life, so pay attention. You must focus like your friend in the book. He needed to bait the hooks and cut the tuna while his hand was cramping. And still he held the line the big fish was on.

I will.

Patiently, unlike the rest of the pack, the big Alpha below paced the Old Man above, each of the paws tracing each of the hands and knees of the Old Man.

When he arrived at the end of the tower, he was at least ten feet higher and the girders were wider. The power lines were draped and bunched on the desert floor around the tower but they continued up across the base of the fallen tower and out across the riverbed.

I must be fifty or sixty feet up from the riverbed.

I don’t think I have the strength.

The heavy cables swung in the morning breeze.

He tried them. He would never know for sure. Never know if halfway across the gap they might start to slide downward.

These are heavy cables. They stretch for miles and miles. They weigh tons. Surely they can support the weight of just me.

You will never know.

I don’t have much choice.

Most of the wolves below were losing interest and they began to chase small animals. All except the big Alpha. As the Old Man began to work at his satchel, cutting it into strips, the big Alpha began to growl. And when the Old Man began his journey across the void, the big Alpha let out a sudden mournful howl, and soon all the wolves were back and baying at him.

His tools were in his pockets and he had secured the grease in his bandolier with his water bottles. Everything he had tied across his waist.

Cutting the leather satchel into strips, he missed his wife.

She had made the satchel for him before she died. It had not been salvaged. It had been made. He left it at that. He didn’t think anymore about their love. Their love after the end of everything. Or the short time they had together. Or her olive skin. Or the boy he raised. Or all the things that are made when love is reason enough.

He tied the strips three times about one wrist. He tied another set of strips about the other wrist. He did the same with his ankles, ending up with a leather collar for each limb. He ran thicker straps made of sturdier leather through those bands about his wrist. He did the same with his ankles.

Moving to the cable that stretched across the riverbed, he greased the tough straps and then tied them to the other bands about the opposite ankle and wrist, leaving the power cable between his body and his arms and legs.

The sun was directly above him. He looked across the gap to the other fallen tower.

Two hundred yards.

He started out headfirst, using his hands to pull and his feet to brace. He was thankful for his gloves.

The big Alpha howled and then stopped.

This might be tougher than I’d thought.

The cables were dropping down at first and so the Old Man was braking himself more than pulling. Halfway across when he would be most tired, he would need to pull.

Just work and think about something.

What will the wolves do?

Think about something else.

What is the name of my friend in the book?

He is not much of a friend if you don’t know his name.

I would like to have been in the boat with my friend. I could have helped him with the fish.

Great drops of sweat broke out across his body, and by the time he was three quarters of the way down the descent, one glove tore above his index finger.

Listen. Do you hear the wolves?

I think they have gone.

He looked down and saw the big Alpha bounding across the rocks of the dry riverbed. Two leaner wolves paced behind him.

At the lowest point of the descent, he could barely see from the glare of the sun and the salty sweat running into his eyes.

He gripped the cable with his legs and felt it slip, or thought he did. He opened the tin of grease he had placed in the bandolier across his chest. Trembling fingers flipped open the lid as he poured the rest of the grease across the straps and the cable.

He let the empty tin of grease that had accompanied him on so many salvages for so many years fall as the wolves danced away from it.

Now you must pull.

Ten feet farther up and climbing, he was exhausted.

I can’t. I am too tired.

You have no choice. You must pull. Think about something.

I wonder what the wolves will do when I get to the other side.

Think about something else and pull.

Pull.

You must pull.

You should teach your granddaughter to do this in case she is ever surrounded by wolves and trapped on top of a fallen power tower.

I would rather teach her to read.

You must pull.

I am pulling.

Pull. Pull. Pull harder.

There is nothing left.

You have no other option, now pull, Old Man.

I am pulling.

Whatever happened to all the people you ever knew? Knew before the bombs.

I don’t care.

The women you loved?

I still love my wife.

Pull. Pull. Pull.

I can’t see. There is too much sweat in my eyes.

There is nothing to see now. Pull harder. Pull harder.

I can’t go much farther.

You must go to the end.

Then the end is the farthest I’ll go.

Pull and stop with the nonsense.

Okay.

Pull.

Pull.

Pull. Pull. PULL!

The Old Man’s shoulder bumped against the rough dirt wall of the far embankment. His shoulders felt like glowing iron bands of steel just pulled from the heat of a furnace. The thongs keeping his feet across the cable were frayed and only one remained whole. Below him, the wolves danced back and forth, insane with anger.

The Old Man pulled himself over the edge of the cliff and lay breathing heavily. The air burned hot and clean in his lungs. Reaching for his knife, he cut the straps at his hands and feet and stood. He thought about drinking some water, but without meaning to he glanced down below and saw that the wolves had disappeared.

They’re coming.

The Old Man turned to look at the downed power tower. This tower was more crumpled and bent than the one on the other side of the gorge. What it might provide in refuge wouldn’t last long.

I am at the limit. There isn’t much more in me.

He reached into his bandolier and took out the can of pitch. Bending down, he quickly collected some sticks and then piled them near a wall of dry tumbleweeds that had gathered against the side of the ruins of the power tower. He spread the pitch over the dry weeds and took out his matches. Using one match and then another he quickly had a fire going. Smoky heat waves rose into the afternoon heat. For a moment the Old Man broke out into a cold sweat as his vision blurred. He drank quickly from a bottle and threw it aside.

He reached into his waist belt and pulled out the pistol. Listening for the wolves above the crackle of the growing fire, he snatched up three smoldering sticks and threw them into other stands of weed and brush nearby. He grabbed another torch, and looking to the sides of the cliff for the wolves and not finding them, he dove into the smoking brush.

The smoke was thick and gray and smelled of desert mesquite. A good earthy smell that always reminded him of cooked meat.

Wolves, you’re afraid of fire. Remember that.

He continued to light other stands of brush as he passed down a sandy track leading south. One of the wolves howled.

That sounded like the big one. You wolves might even get lost and burned up in the fire. It’s a wall between you and me.

A wind picked up from the west, and when the Old Man looked back great walls of flame were leaping toward the highway east of his position. The Old Man began to light the bushes to his right as he pushed on to the south.

Soon I will have two walls. Then how will you find me, wolves?

Now the wind shifted to the east and it came at him in blowing gusts, leaping ahead of the brush he was running into and igniting. The smoke grew thick and tasted of sulfur. The Old Man began to choke and cough. He took off his shirt, tied it about his mouth, and moved off, hoping he was going south. The sun above him was obscured by gray smoke and drifting ash. It was too high in the sky for him to find a direction, so he hoped he was going south and not north. Away off he heard the wolves yelling back and forth. They seemed farther off to his right and behind him.

He came through a wire fence long blown down. He crossed it, stumbling in the thick acrid smoke. His huaraches landed on cracked and broken asphalt. He could see no more than a few feet at times, as ash and sparks mixed with gray smoke and the blown dust and sand of the desert wind.

Ahead of him, a large wide building with an arched roof and an opening to an inner darkness groaned in the gusts of the firestorm. It was an old aircraft hangar. The Old Man stumbled forward.

As he reached the entrance of the aircraft hangar, he heard the wolf behind him. Turning, he raised his pistol, but the fatigued arm felt foreign to him, felt like leaded weights tied and sent to the bottom of an ocean of mud.

It’s the big one.

The Alpha came on hard, bounding fast out of the smoke and dust. His muzzle a rictus of hate and anger. His eyes burning with rage. The Old Man emptied the gun and felt a dry click on the sixth cylinder after five little cracks had cleared the barrel.

The wolf stumbled and then veered off to the left. The Old Man saw that the wolf was bleeding. The look of anger and rage was gone as the big wolf circled, looking down and then back again at the Old Man

The Old Man backed into the open darkness of the hangar, leaving the wolf to the firestorm.