He pictured himself sitting in a house, people lined up to see him, like Susan Pao, his eyes glazed with age.
He shook the image away. Whatever else happened, he couldn’t see himself as a symbol for these people, not the ignorant children of the Gone Time. One more time before he died, he needed to wander in the world.
“I’m serious, Dad. You don’t know what’s out there anymore.”
Eric almost laughed out loud. He’d seen superstitions and fears develop in the community over the years. The latest one was that bad spirits, some said “ghosts,” protected the countryside. The ruins of the city were safe, or as safe as ruins could be, haunted by nothing more than rusted metal and unstable foundations that collapsed on the unwary, and expeditions as far north as downtown Denver weren’t uncommon, but no one went past the fields to the east, south or west. When he’d proposed an exploration to Colorado Springs two years ago, Troy reminded the council of the seventy miles of country to travel and that ended the discussion.
Eric once talked to one man who claimed to have heard something at night when he’d gone after stray cattle. “I’m not saying I was scared,” he said. “But after that, I figured cows weren’t worth it and I came home.” He’d never said exactly what it was he heard.
“Maybe because we don’t know what’s out there, someone ought to go,” said Eric.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Dad. You’re old.”
At home, Eric packed. As he’d walked the dusty two miles to his house, the idea of a long trip made more sense. He’d been half joking with the boys about scavenging with them, but only half. Lately his muscles ached all the time. Not the good ache of a hard workday, but a queasy throbbing ache, like they wanted to be put to rest, and that frightened him. So he packed. Maybe a voyage would set my mind to ease, he thought. Maybe if I wandered north I could find other communities, places where they weren’t giving up on the spirit of the old America. But mostly he just wanted to walk, to feel the long pull of the road like he did when he was young, to set his eyes on a distant spot and watch it swell as he approached, to choose his direction without regard to where he was going or when the Journey would end. Yes, a long walk is in order, he thought. But the more he arranged items in the pack, the less sensible an aimless walk seemed. There was sickness in the community. He’d seen it; the Iversons on the river’s edge were all down with a wasting disease that robbed them of energy and appetite. The Sanduskys and Washingtons were nearly as bad, though they’d seemed to be making a recovery in the last week. Brent Washington had even worked a morning in the fields he’d heard. But the stillbirths—that bothered him. Too many labors ended in quiet burials.
No, a walk to indulge a whim, that would be senseless. He thought, I need to find an answer—to prove to them the value of the Gone Time learning. Ignorance is no shelter.
An old idea came back to him, the place to go. It was north, farther than anyone had gone in years, but still a reachable hike for an old man if he took care of himself, if he was carefuclass="underline" the library at the University of Colorado, in Boulder. If any learning still existed, if there were one place where science might provide an answer, that would be it. He would go there.
Smiling, he stuffed into the pack a collapsible fishing pole and lures, a good sheath knife, insect repellant (some things never rot, no matter how long they’re stored), a worn hard back copy of My Antonia that he’d been meaning to read, a rain poncho, a small first aid kit, binoculars, a compass, a Colorado map, and enough food to last for three days.
He walked through the house looking for anything else he felt he might need. Most of the ground floor rooms were filled with books, the largest collection he knew. He taught reading to children and adults who were interested, a group of four on Tuesday night and another group of five on Sunday afternoon. In a community of almost a thousand people, only a hundred or so were literate, and most of them were over forty.
Lit only by the small rectangles of the window wells, in the basement where canned preserves crowded the shelves, he chose a jar of strawberry jam and one of pickled watermelon rind. In the back of the room, he contemplated the boxes of irreplaceable goods he’d stockpiled over the years. He had three good artificial-fiber sleeping bags, two nylon one-man tents with fiberglass poles, and four rifles but only ammo for one of them. Sixty-year-old shells weren’t trustworthy. Some might work, but most of them wouldn’t, so the rifles were practically useless. Everyone had one they never used. He also had a small store of hardware to keep the house from falling apart. He looked into a box with one of his most valuable assets, a rare supply of hardwood axe handles that people came from miles away to trade for. Eric hadn’t worried about food for the winter for some time.
He needed a change of clothes, and he went to his bedroom where he kept the wardrobe he’d paid dearly for. When he was young, and realized new clothes might be hard to come by, most of the stores and houses had already been looted. He’d traded for the supply he had now, but, sadly, even though he protected them with mothballs and kept them dry, the fabric was not as sturdy as it had once been. He pulled apart the legs of a pair of jeans he’d never worn, and a seam ripped. Only a couple of threads popped on the second pair he tested. He put them in the pack. He hoped that before all the clothes from the Gone Times were unwearable that trade with the south would be reestablished, assuming the south was growing cotton again. There had been no news of the world from more than twenty miles away for years. Every once in a while, the younger men left on explorations, but they either came back after a few days, frightened and silent about what they’d seen, or they didn’t return at all. No wonder, Eric thought, they believe that ghosts protect the wilderness. He wondered how long it would be before the people would make maps that said in the unknown white space around their little world, “Here there be dragons.”
Eric grabbed his walking stick that doubled as a quarterstaff, a large-brimmed leather hat, and his slingshot to complete his outfit. Many of the men in the community carried bow and arrows, but he’d always been most comfortable with the sling. Of course, just like everything else people used from the Gone Times, he couldn’t replace the most valuable part, the surgical tubing rubber bands that provided the power. Once those broke, he would have only the weapon’s memory. He kept the tubing he had now in an airtight box in a cool spot in the cellar, and it hadn’t deteriorated too badly. Even at seventy-five, Eric could nail a wild dog at fifty yards. It was a skill that had saved him more than once. He locked the front door, closed the shutters on the windows, and walked away. The afternoon sun cut long shadows through the prairie weeds and grasses that grew up through the road. Eric figured he could get a fair amount of hiking done in the cool afternoon, find a safe place to camp in a few hours, and be near enough to the mountains by noon tomorrow to start north.
He pulled the brim over his eyes. The pack straps clung agreeably to his shoulders. I might be old, he thought, but I’m a long way from dead. I’ve left home before and made out all right. Just after the sun dropped below the mountains, Eric found a rocky outcrop with a flat top where he could spread his sleeping bag. The land darkened into deep blue shadows, though sunlight still glowed in the clouds. He guessed he had hiked eight miles or so. That would put him west of Chatfield Reservoir, which was now called “The Swamp,” but another ten miles away from the real beginnings of the foot hills. At first, he was afraid that Troy would take his talk of leaving seriously and send someone to the house to watch him, and then, after he’d started hiking, he was convinced someone was following him. He twirled in his tracks several times at sounds he soon dismissed as nothing. Troy never believed me when he was growing up, thought Eric. No reason to think he’d change now. Within a couple of miles he began to enjoy the road. The pack settled comfortably. Water sloshed and gurgled in his canteen. The walking stick planted solidly. He breathed deeply of the afternoon air, sweet with sage and columbine. When he came to the rock outcrop, it seemed perfect. He had resigned himself to camping in one of the many ruins along the way, always a spooky experience, when he’d spotted it poking up on the horizon like a blunt thumb. Tall enough to keep animals away, but not unclimbable, foot and handholds offered easy access to the top, and when Eric reached it he realized they must have been carved in by some other traveler who recognized the value of a safe campsite. A blackened pit and chunks of charcoaled wood confirmed his guess.