CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“General Watt? Natalie, are you there?” In the night, the Old Man sits in the tank, feeling the cold metal against his sunburned skin.

The nightmare that awoke him, the one of falling and hearing his granddaughter say No, Grandpa. I need you, has come again. And even though he reminds himself that she calls him Poppa now and that the terror has no power over him, should have no power, that he has changed the rules of the game and changed his name so the devil cannot find him, still he lies awake.

He slips away from the camp to urinate on ancient blackened stones that were once someone’s home, someone’s business, who can know anymore? Then he drinks cold water made pleasant by the night’s cool air.

I will think of tomorrow and the fuel we need to find at China Lake.

And when he cannot think of or envision what they might find there, he leaves his bedroll, knowing he will not return for the night and starts the APU on the tank.

He checks the radio frequency though he knows he has not touched it and can think of no reason why he should have.

“General Watt? Natalie? Come in.”

The Old Man wonders if the white noise he hears as he waits for a response from the General, from Natalie, is always there, waiting even when no one is listening.

How many years are there between these few brief signals since the bombs?

“Yes. I’m here,” says General Watt.

Natalie.

The Old Man finds an unexpected comfort in the woman’s voice. Older, softer, yes. Tired even. But a comfort he did not expect to find.

And yet you must have known it was there, my friend, or why else would you be calling her in the middle of the night?

He watches the barely red coals and the sleeping forms of his unmoving granddaughter on one side of the fire near his empty bedroll, and the Boy, his good arm thrown over his face, his body twisted as if tormented even in sleep.

“We’re not too far from China Lake, General … I mean, Natalie.”

“Good. I have more information for you on where to locate a possible fuel source. I planned on waiting until morning to contact you. I was estimating that you might still be asleep.”

“I can’t sleep tonight.”

“Why, are there problems? Is everything all right?”

“No. I mean … Yes. I mean … we picked up a passenger today. But now we’re proceeding on to China Lake. I’d expected this trip to be much more difficult than it has been so far.”

“Then why can’t you sleep?”

“I guess … because I’m old.”

“How old are you?”

“I was twenty-seven when the bombs fell. How long ago was that?”

“Forty years, six months, eight days, seventeen hours, and seven minutes since the nuclear detonation that occurred on Manhattan Island in New York City.”

The Old Man moved numbers around in his head.

We had lost track of time back in the village.

There had been more important things to do in those days after the bombs than to keep track of meaningless days.

I am old now.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“I am one year older than you,” replied Natalie.

Pause.

“Do you remember …?” asked the Old Man.

“Yes. I remember everything.”

Pause.

“Does it … bother you … to remember what’s gone?”

“No,” said Natalie. General Watt.

“Why?”

Pause.

“Because I still have hope that things can get better.”

The Old Man listened.

“I have hope that you will come and set us free from this place. I have hope that one day every good thing that was lost will return again. I have hope, and there is no room inside my hope for the past.”

“Oh,” said the Old Man and realized that his days, his story, this journey, were not just about him and his granddaughter who was his most precious and best friend. Or even the Boy they’d found alongside the road who seemed hollow and fading from a worn and thin world. This journey was about someone else. Someone who needed help. Someone who has only hope in the poverty of what remains.

“Every day is the chance that tomorrow might be better,” said General Watt.

Natalie.