4
SELF-RELIANCE
We were up just before dawn the next morning, which was actually a lot easier than you’d think. Dry desert ground is quite uncomfortable when you have nothing but a sleeping bag. This all took place a couple of years ago now, but I remember that morning vividly. I had been so exhausted the night before that getting to sleep had been easy—I don’t think I could have stayed awake if I had tried. On the following night when I met Billy, I had a hard time drifting off due in large part to the novelty of having company again. That and the hard ground meant that I only found sleep in brief, thirty-minute stretches before parts of my body started aching enough to wake me up and force me to move.
The Nevada sun was just coming up over the horizon, turning the blue-black sky blood red, when we were rolling up our sleeping bags. I was stuffing mine back into the trailer and Billy was strapping his back onto his hiking rig; a massive backpack that hung lower than his backside and peeked up over the top of his head.
He looked to the sunrise and said, “Dawn stretched out her fingertips of rose.”
“How’s that?” I asked.
“It’s Homer,” he said, standing up and setting his hands on his hips. “The Iliad. It was just one of those lines that always stuck with me. The phrase is used in the story almost every time a sunrise is described.”
“What, you mean over and over? That’s a pretty flowery line to go around repeating all the time, isn’t it?”
Billy chuckled; pushed his fists into the small of his back and leaned into them, growling as he responded. “Yeah, well, Homer didn’t actually write the Iliad. He composed and recited it. It was an epic poem, and he was a famous poet of the day, sort of the equivalent of a big-time actor or rock star. People like him would be invited to entertain important people. Kings, wealthy landowners, you get the idea. The performance was the recitation of sections of these heroic poems that were kept memorized. All written down, the things span hundreds or thousands of pages, but Homer kept it all in his head.”
“Man…” I muttered.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “So in order to make it easier, you see a lot of the phrasing in these works take on a formulaic quality. Whole passages turn into a kind of mnemonic device. People like Homer must have kept whole paragraphs in their heads and shuffled them about at need to make a meaningful story in the same way we use words to make a coherent sentence. It suggests an incredible amount of genius.”
I didn’t quite know what to say to this. Up until now, Billy had shown a simple, easy manner that almost bordered on “backwoods bumpkin.” His speech and pronunciation suggested a blue collar education, but when he started talking about a nearly-three-thousand-year-old poem, it was like listening to a different person. His demeanor changed to that of a professor. His elocution became precise and clear—nearly musical.
I said, “Billy, go ahead and say this is none of my business if you like, but what exactly did you do before things went south?”
“I was involved in the casino business. Indian gaming.” That twinkle in his eye again.
“There a lot of call to read ancient Greek poetry in your line of work?”
Billy leaned in conspiratorially and said in a low voice, “You know, the Greeks loved their games…” He gave me a light slap on the shoulder and moved by me to walk over to the bike trailer. Right, I thought. Take the hint.
“So, we’ll make it into Vegas today,” Billy started. “How did you want to run this? We can push straight through and check on your parents, but I had planned to take some time moving through the area, keep my eyes out for supplies, like. What kind of a rush are you in? Also, how far north of Vegas is their place?”
I decided to answer the questions in reverse order. “It’s not that far, just on the north edge. It’s up Decatur, if you know the area.”
“I do, and that’s good news, I think. That’s close to the shooting range. It would be good to go through there; we might get lucky. They always sold range ammo in those places.”
“That sounds fine,” I agreed. “Aside from that, if you have places in mind that you want to check on, let’s do that. Just about anywhere you’d want to go would be on the way to my folks’ place. We might as well handle your scavenging on the way.”
“Okay, deal,” said Billy. “So let’s run through the gear you have so we can figure out what you need. Put a shopping list together, see?”
“Right. So with this trailer, I have the rifle and the ammunition that goes with it, obviously. Then I have the canned food, the MREs, and the protein bars and those water jugs, there. Spare clothes with jeans, sweater, some socks, and underwear. I have this little flashlight here with some extra double A’s to go with it. Aaaand, I guess all that’s left is the sleeping bag, hatchet, and the pistol with however many rounds are in that box.”
Billy didn’t say anything for a few moments after I finished speaking. He just stood there next to me with his hands on his hips, staring at the open flap of the bike trailer, and nodding.
“What?” I prompted.
“Oh, it’s fine,” he said, making a shooing motion at me with his left hand. “You’re missing some important items, but you kind of make up for your lack of gear with this trailer thing. I don’t know why the hell I didn’t think of it; it’s pretty smart. We’ll keep our eyes open to round out your kit. There should be plenty of room to carry it all, I think.”
“Well, what am I missing?” I asked. “I know there could probably be more food, but the gear seems pretty okay.”
“Okay, where’s your trauma kit?”
“Uh…” I hesitated. “You mean like first aid?”
“No, I mean like trauma. First aid kits are good for sprained ankles and paper cuts. I’m talking about a serious trauma kit. Kind of thing you can use to treat gunshots or sucking chest wounds.”
“I wasn’t aware there was a difference, but I don’t have either anyway.”
“Yap,” Billy agreed. “Either way, we’ll keep our eyes open and find you something—either ready-made or we’ll get some stuff together to cover all the bases. We need to beef up some other things as well. You and I could probably both use a tent if we can find something small enough to haul around. We’ll get you a rain fly at the least. We’ll want fire-making tools, a good knife for you, and some better clothes for when the weather goes to shit. We’ll see if we can find some medicine like Tylenol, Aspirin; if we get really lucky, we can find some antibiotics, maybe.”
He trailed off as he saw me staring at him while he rattled off the list. “Will we be able to haul all that?” I said.
“Just trust me,” he said. “You keep your eyes open for anything that might be useful. No one is making new stuff anymore, Whitey, and if you find yourself needful of something you can’t just pop off down to the store to get it. Most things have been picked over already so we’ll get lucky to find even half of what we’d like. You’ll see. The new basis of short-term survival is going to be defined by our ability to loot like it’s 1992.”
“Short-term survival, huh? What will be the basis of long-term survival, then?”
Billy pinned me in place with a sober, serious gaze. “Long-term survival will depend on our ability to wean ourselves from the dependency on that loot.”