Marcy, can we talk about this alone for a minute, he said. Climbing the ladder took a very long time.
It was night now. The sky clear in places. A giant moon with an odd cold color leered through the clouds, huge and brilliant. It’s beautiful, he said.
It’s a blue moon.
I didn’t know they were really blue.
Well no, this one looks blue. Which is rare– only in times of atmospheric catastrophe, like a volcano. The dust bends the red light. Or a nuclear war apparently. But it’s also a blue moon- two full moons in one season. It’s rare. “Once in a blue moon-” like a second chance.
You know about astronomy too–
Why don’t you just do what he says
I can’t believe you’re asking me that.
I want to stay alive.
We’ll be fucking fine–
No we won’t. Are you kidding me? I don’t like him either but he’s right, we have to stay together, we have to get organized–
That’s not alive.
What is your problem? He has food, water- he’s going to have electricity! Why don’t you compromise? You can stay in the tent– we can figure it out–
I’m not going to do this anymore. We lived, Marcy. We had a second chance. I’m not going back. I’m not going to just make shit the same as it was. And I can’t fucking believe that you would–
I’m not leaving.
Get fucked, you dumb bitch– I should just take you.
Like you have the balls.
Don’t test me, he said. Then knew she had. And he’d failed.
I’m staying, she said. You can go. I’m staying.
She meant it. He walked back into the hills alone. The face in the moon seemed to laugh.
Funeral
She won’t come with me. She doesn’t care about me. The world ended. I’m still the lesser option.
God let her have everything I want, he prayed. Let her be desired and loved. Interesting and important to somebody. Let her have happiness, let her not be alone, feel alone. Praying as he’d been taught. No one heard.
Out in the desolate hills, a mile past the water tank. Only the high passes were burned. On the lower slopes the fall grass was coming up. It had rained early.
He set up the tent. A fine product. It required no tools. He’d bought it for a trip to Montana. Saw bighorns in tall weeds in the hills outside Lincoln. Woodpeckers big as chickens. Two of them together on a collapsed pine. Man and wife. Birds always found each other.
When he heard a sound like outboard motor on a lake he crawled on his belly to a hilltop. The sky was brown-black and full of thin clouds that moved like worms. But in the brilliant blue moon everything was lit. From here he could see the freeway. The black twisted cars. The crater. And something moving. A semi truck. No trailer. Black diesel smoke poured out the tall chrome exhaust pipes. It looked like Optimus Prime. Dirt bikes behind it screaming. Ahead a procession of tween girls naked in chains, marching, faces down. An honor guard. Brutes in masks whipping at their backs. He saw three Lord Humungus’, one Reddit Unicorn, one Fluttershy. These men were dentists once. Or not even– not the jobs animals had in Richard Scarry’s Busytown. A worm driving an apple who did something children had heard of. They were Regional Brand Managers, Hispanic. Blockchain Business Development Account Executives. Executive dangled in the want ads with the understanding you’d say it to women. Now they were living the dream.
It had been five days.
He watched them steer around the cars. Stop at the crater. The truck had been a bad idea. But then they could just get another one. Where were they trying to get to. The big burned hole in the ground and now what. Move up into the hills. They’d find the grass. The snow peas. The water tank.
Or maybe not. None of his business now.
With Marcy gone he could fold her blankets under his sleeping bag. Less bothered by rocks grinding in his hipbones. The hot wind made a pfoom sound on the nylon tent cover. At the gas station ruins where the Slim Jims were poking out from charred concrete there’d been a few magazines flapping around on the pavement. They hadn’t thought to pick them up. Now he would have liked an Us Weekly. Something. Inside Ashton Kutcher’s $20 Million Bachelor Pad. Stars, they’re dead. Just like us.
He lay awake in the pfoom sound. Played with a flashlight on the ceiling. The light would make the tent visible to cannibals. But his life was over. There was nothing to steal.
He was in a church talking to his mother. He was saying I’m sorry and she said it’s OK, it’s OK. Nothing you can do now. He reached out to touch her hair and she seemed put off. It wasn’t OK after all. Are you alive, he said.
Are any of us.
Do you think I did this? It’s not my fault–
Everybody works, you know. Everybody suffers. You didn’t have to do what you did.
Why did you send me to a fancy school and then make me clean toilets at night. Why did you make me work at McDonald’s. The kids looked down on me. I had to tell them–
I wanted something better for you.
Well– I know. I’m sorry I wasted it. I’m sorry I was ungrateful–
She was gone. He’d been here a long time. Night coming on. He had to get home to his cat. Who would feed him. He needed to let him in, the coyotes were out– and he was standing with his father. Big as a bear with scars from tattoos rubbed off with a wire brush. When he was five they’d found a pigeon in the street. Stomped on but alive. His father made a splint for its wing. Kept it warm in a box of wood shavings on the porch. He would whistle to it at night until one day it flew off. He had thought it might come back to visit, but it never did.
I’ll take care of him, son, his father said.
He felt an incredible relief.
But you ought to take care of someone too.
There was a sound beginning. An organ. A man in a suit. You were friends with the deceased, he asked. He looked like Tony Todd from Candyman.
Was he? Yes, he said. Very close.
How long?
My whole life.
You loved him?
Sometimes.
Well I think thing are about to wrap up, the man said. I’ll see you outside. And there was Marcy in her toothpaste color underwear. Dirty hair, dirty face, the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. He was asking why did you leave me. I didn’t leave you, she said.
I’m sorry I gave up–
You didn’t yet, she said.
I didn’t want to lose you.
You’re still here. But why did you let me go. It’s not safe.
A hymn played. Things were indeed wrapping up. And did those feet in ancient times walk upon England’s mountains green. He remembered it from Monty Python. And they’d sung it at his school. In chapel. Years later he’d looked at the lyrics in a book of hymns. Something something dark Satanic mills. The Industrial Revolution. From some William Blake poem. The school was kids whose grandparents had money from factories and slaves. That was who read William Blake.
There was a crowd now. He recognized every face. People murmuring, mumbling, losing their places; half-coherent lyrics swirling around big glass stained glass windows that were beginning to melt. Jesus with a sheep. Jesus with a U.S. Navy corpsmen circa 1912 kneeling, offering him something. Old bearded men in togas. Peter or Paul or somebody. There was some convention as to who had what face since 30 AD but he could never remember. Holding a book open to three Greek letters he couldn’t read. Pointing up an impossibly long finger. Eyes of the pictures all blue. The coffin was closing. New growth pine, semigloss. He had a headrush coming on and he was walking fast up the aisle toward a back door open a crack. Everyone looking at him. A thump as the door slammed behind him. A black vestibule for a second. The big gray sky outside. Then the wind picked up. And he fought, but he was being carried.