CHAPTER FORTY THREE

In the badlands, they crossed alongside pink canyons of stacked rock and through stunted forests twisting away beyond Santa Fe.

They began to find the bodies.

The first was a woman, her corpse bloated and lying in a ditch alongside the road.

The Boy exited the tank and searched the road and its sides.

When he returned he said, “Hard to tell, but less than a week. There was a fishhook in her lip but she didn’t die from that.”

He pointed to the center of the road.

“They were all chained together up there. She must have died along the march. Then they unhooked her and threw her over there.”

“Should we bury her, Poppa?”

You know we will find more of them as we go, my friend.

“No. We have to hurry now.”

To what? To overtake the slavers, and then what? Or do you mean the bunker and again, then what, my friend?

Project Einstein, whatever it does.

Whatever it does, indeed.

There were more bodies rotting in the merciless sun. They passed them and the Old Man wondered if any one of them was Ted.

The canyons and forest gave way to a wide plain of rolling grass and slight hills that swept away toward the hazy north.

When they stopped in the middle of the plain, the Old Man could hear insects buzzing in the long grass. In every direction, the tall grass ran off toward the horizon, its undefinable edges disappearing into a screen of summer haze and thick humidity. As if the wide plain simply fell off the edges of the earth.

At noonday, they rested in the small ledge of shade alongside the tank, drinking warm water and not eating. The Old Man asked the Boy if there was something they might hunt to eat.

The Boy stood and scanned the indeterminate horizon.

‘We have no idea what’s out there, any of us,’ thought the Old Man. ‘No idea.’

“It looks like horse country,” said the Old Man hopefully.

Whether it was horse country or not, the Boy didn’t bother to respond.

In time they mounted the tank and continued along the road as it cut like a straight line into the hazy north.

I cannot believe we’ve come this far. It feels like we’re in a strange land at the top of the world. A land I never knew existed. Or maybe it is like an ocean. Like a sea of grass so high up.

That’s because you spent so many years in the desert, my friend. You thought the whole world had become desert.

I thought often of the sea. Every time I read the book, I thought of the sea and the big fish.

Later, they passed more bodies.

At dusk, they pulled off to the side of the road. All around them, the plain continued to stretch off into a hazy pink nothingness where there was no mountain, or forest, or city, or even an end to things. An unseen orchestra of bugs clicked and buzzed heavily through their symphony well into the twilight and falling dark.

Down the road, dark barns crumbled beside a lazy stream about which oaks clustered greedily along the banks. The occasional wooden post showed where fences must have once claimed the place.

The Boy wandered off in the dusk and the Old Man hoped he would come back with something for them to eat.

His granddaughter gathered sticks for their fire.

She must be hungry too, but she has said nothing. She is good that way.

I am grateful to have them both. I would be too tired to hunt and make a fire after driving the tank all day.

The Old Man lay on the ground and closed his eyes.

In the dream he is slipping.

The voice, the familiar voice keeps asking him the same question. That same question it has always been asking.

Can you let go?

He is in the gravel pit south of the village this time.

The forbidden pit.

The gravel pit where Big Pedro died.

The Old Man climbs across the shifting gravel hill to reach Big Pedro, which is really how it happened. How Big Pedro died.

But I am dreaming. So it cannot happen again.

Yet the Old Man can taste the long untouched dust of the pile shifting beneath him, threatening to slide him right down to the bottom. And at the bottom of the pile is the pit’s edge. And below the edge is the fall into the pool of dirty water where Big Pedro will fall and die because the fall is very great and the pool is shallow.

Which is how it happened.

But this is a dream.

So you say.

But you taste the dust and it is very hot like it was that day when you had been trying to salvage the material off the conveyor belt and part of it had given way and Big Pedro went down onto the gravel pile that had not been touched in so many years. Now it is shifting, and as Big Pedro tries to climb out it shifts, pulling him each time closer to the pit’s edge.

Toward the fall.

Toward the shallow pool of dirty water.

Just as it happened.

‘But this is a dream,’ thinks the Old Man and hears the uncertainty in his own voice.

Then why are you trying to save him?

Because he is Big Pedro. Because he is my friend. Because I must.

And the Old Man feels the gravel shifting beneath his belly as he tries to get a little closer to Big Pedro. That way he can grab his hand and they can climb back up the rope that the Old Man has secured about his waist and to the conveyor belt.

The rope is not there.

Big Pedro smiles.

But this is a dream, right?

“Yes, of course, my friend,” says Big Pedro in his high Mexican tenor.

You screamed when you went over the side.

“Yes.”

And I heard that scream for years.

Yes, but this is a dream.

If you say so.

And Big Pedro falls and does not scream.

In fact, he smiles, and nods, and encourages the Old Man, just as he did when he taught the Old Man who was then a young man, a survivor of the Day After, all the skills one needs to live and survive in the very dangerous Sonoran Desert.

Traps for rodents.

Traps for Serpiente.

Traps for foxes.

“Can you let go?” asks the familiar voice.

Can you let go?

And the Old Man is sliding fast down the gravel, toward the pit, toward where Big Pedro has gone and the pool at the end of the drop where they will meet again. The pool that waits for us all.

Can you let go?

Yes. Yes I can.

And the Old Man lets himself think for a moment that he is tired. He thinks that his dusty and bleeding fingers could merely splay outward and he would glide down this pile and over the edge.

Yes. Yes, I can let go, if you will let me. If I don’t hear my granddaughter. If she doesn’t … then yes, I can finally let go.

Poppa, I need you.

And the Old Man is on his back and tumbling down the pile, and though he doesn’t see her he hears her calling for him, crying, Poppa, I need you.

Which is the worst.

Which is what makes the Old Man try and grab the shifting sand to save his falling life.

I must because the edge is so near.

And …

Because she needs me.

Why?

Because to break her heart is too much to bear.

It is?

Yes, yes that is the worst.

Worse than the pit and pool at the bottom?

Falling!

And he is up and awake and saliva is running down onto the side of his mouth. There is meat cooking and he hears her laughing beside the fire.

And the Boy is drawing faces in the dirt with a stick as she watches and what he draws makes her laugh.

“Can you let go?” asks that very familiar voice.

If I could take her laugh with me, then yes, I will let go of everything.

They eat meat and though there is no pepper, it tastes good. Wonderful in fact. The Old Man tells them about cities. About buses and trains and how one could take them to work, and after work, ride them to a game. Which leads to baseball. Which neither of them have ever heard of.

The Old Man tells them about baseball.

About ballparks in the early summer evenings.

About the importance of fall.

About a game in which he saw a man hit three home runs in one night. About how the floor of the stadium shook as the man, the hero, came to bat for the last time and everyone was sure he would do it. Sure he would hit another home run because it just had to be. Because it was meant to be.

They ask him details.

What were hot dogs?

What is a strike?

What are good tickets?

When they finally sleep, the Old Man lies awake.

Probably because I took a nap before dinner.

It wasn’t much of a nap. We cheated them, you know.

Who?

The young. We cheated them.

How?

They will never know that night of baseball. The night of three home runs when the floor of the stadium shook. We cheated them of that and all the good things we had and took for granted.

Yes.

They should never forgive us for that.

Later when he still cannot sleep, he rises and turns on the radio inside the tank.

He almost says, “General Watt.”

But instead he chooses, “Natalie?”

And after a moment …

“It’s so good to hear you tonight,” she says.

“I couldn’t sleep again,” explains the Old Man.

“Is everything all right? Are you still coming?”

“Yes. Everything is fine. We’re beyond Santa Fe and out in the grassy plains south of you. Maybe three more days and we’ll be there.”

“In two days, at exactly nine A.M., I need you to open the case and take out the Laser Target Designator. We need to test the device.”

“I don’t even really know the correct time,” said the Old Man. “I just guess.”

“The tank has a small clock near the commander’s seat. Set that clock using the tiny knob above it to 1:37 A.M., now.”

The Old Man did.

“The last time I knew exactly what time it was was just after a bomb exploded in my rearview mirror and disabled my car. It froze the clock at 2:06 P.M.”

I remember that after forty years.

“Why can’t you sleep?” asked Natalie. General Watt.

Silence.

“I was telling the children about baseball.”

“Maybe you’re just too excited to sleep?” she asked.

The Old Man thought about that.

“No. I feel … I feel like we cheated them.”

He waited for her reply.

When she did, she said, “You’re a good man. I’m sure of it. I don’t think you ever intended for the world to destroy itself.”

“I was almost as young as they are now when it happened. But still, after all this time I feel responsible. Guilty somehow.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Thank you, but lately, and for a long time, I’ve felt it was all my fault. For a long time I’ve felt ‘curst.’”

In the dark, a breeze passed and the Old Man watched as the wave it left in the grassy plain swept past him and off into the night.

“If it helps, I can tell you something about yourself,” offered Natalie.

“What?”

“I can tell that right now you are trying to make the world a better place. Why else would you help us if not because of that?”

The Old Man said nothing.

“The people who destroyed the world weren’t trying to make it better. Baseball wasn’t important to them. Nor were children who might one day see a game played under lights. They were more concerned with destroying themselves for power than good things like seeing a baseball game with their grandchildren. And what’s worse, if they were still alive, they would not feel guilty as you do now. Sadly, I imagine they would do it all over again.”

“If that were true, then that is very sad,” said the Old Man.

“Only the good feel guilty. So that means you are good.”

“Thank you.”

Silence.

“Natalie?”

“Yes?”

“I hope this works. I hope we’ll be able to set you and your children free.”

“I hope so too.”