“I’m lost. I need to find out what happened so I can go on. Figure out what to do next. But I need your help. You’re all I’ve got.”
He nodded and sat up straight, got a fixed look on his face and creased his forehead. “Okay, I’m ready.”
“Don’t hurt yourself,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.
Failing. This Nate was not processing levity.
“Okay,” I sighed deep and long, not sure I wanted to do this myself. “Do you remember the morning this all happened?”
He shook his head slowly with big innocent eyes.
I searched his face for duplicity, seeing nothing but the most scared and blameless waif’s face, skin still dewy from his tears.
“Before I say… do you have any sisters or brothers?”
“No.” He shook his head almost in shame.
“Okay, well, what happened is…”
He looked up at me, his face curious yet full of dread.
I told him.
He nodded like he knew, like I’d delivered a diagnosis confirming what in his heart he’d already known to be a lethal syndrome.
“How do you know for sure?” he asked in a cracked but normal kid’s voice. It sounded the most normal yet, now that he was upset.
“Because I’ve seen. And because the world is quiet.”
“Mommy and Daddy?”
I shook my head. “Nobody. Didn’t the teenagers here tell you?”
He shook his head. “I hid from them. A large group of us came here. But the dogs were… they left. They took one of them, a girl. I stayed behind. The other teenagers left soon after.”
“Do you know what happened?”
“No. I saw one girl walk away down the road there. She held her throat and cried.”
Silence for a few moments. A spindle of drool fell from Maggie’s jowl, her eyes fixed on our food.
“We’ve tried with the radio, we’ve driven through the city, I drove out here from Austin and saw nothing, we’ve—”
His brave face crumbled, his eyes filled with tears which spilled over his lids and rolled down to his chin where the drops collected weight and gravity.
He burst out in a cry, a single loud one that echoed in the great room. I got upset too. I sniffled and swallowed it back, cleared my throat. I gave him a moment. His head hung and his emotion now so overwhelmed him that he went silent and he looked at me with his mouth open in that hideous pained way people do when their throats can’t even manage noise.
I don’t think he had understood until just that moment. It had taken my presence to draw it out. Whatever happened to him, all of them, that morning, I don’t believe allowed for understanding or pain or loss.
But here we were, these in-betweeners… falling through the fissure between the old and new world, feeling it all.
Nate sat in his chair and sobbed. Maggie waddled over, sensing the boy’s fear of her had slackened, and licked the hand he’d let fall to his side when he put his head down on the table. He let her. She wagged her tail. He turned his head to the side, laying his cheek on the table. Then he raised his licked hand and pet her head, and she let him.
One down, my head said.
Maybe I’m the warmth that breaks their ice. Maybe they all just need a good cry, to remember, to have a dog lick their hands again. The clarity of it struck me then. It made sense: they didn’t want to remember. It hurt too much. Their heads literally hurt. They didn’t want to remember and whenever we older ones were around, it made them hurt, made them start to remember. Mommies, Daddies. Home.
The pain was too much, and they fought against it not knowing why. Of course. This is why they stayed away and threw rocks. Pure reaction to stimulus.
My job, I thought then, was to let them feel their pain, to remember. So that then we can all come together and rebuild.
I float along now, and as if they agree with my thoughts, ratifying them, they sing to me, but not in words.
Maggie licking Nate’s hand was the first time I’d had any real hope since hearing those sounds the morning of.
My wonder grows more profound now as I get closer to the coast. I’ve plotted my course on a folded paper map I’ve sheathed in a Ziploc. This river, the flooded Colorado, has taken me through the south of Texas and now wants to deposit me at Matagorda Bay. It’s up ahead, maybe another day’s travel. I hope the travel remains smooth so I can keep telling you this story of my experiences during these first days. Once I get there, I’m not sure I’ll be doing any more talking because I think I’m going to be very busy. From what Nate told me, which I’m getting to, I know I will be.
There’s not much I want to say about the river, my trip down here. This isn’t a story about that.
Besides doing this for you, Mr. E, and you, dear reader, and for myself, I am doing this for them, so that they have a record of what my first days were like and how I came down to help them. Down to the place whence it came—the sea. They want me to come down, but to come down slowly, a pilgrimage, and in so doing take the time to record my story for them, for you, for you are, after all, one of them, aren’t you? You’re a new-world kid.
Even though I don’t feel the need to describe this trip, for nothing terribly eventful has happened, I do want you to know this: Maggie lies asleep in the front part of this tandem kayak. I’m sure she’s tired of hearing me talk to myself. Know that when the rain comes, which it has every day, and it comes now even as I speak into this, these rainy times are my favorite times. I erect my umbrellas, one for me, one for my dog, I fasten them to the boat in the cup holders next to each seat. I keep paddling, steering really, this current carrying me down. I feel this story come out better and faster when it rains. I’m at ease when it rains. I’ve got my headset microphone on, the recorder in the Ziploc with the map, and I’m just yakking away.
It’s raining right now, droplets hitting the water. You hear it? All those ripples moving out from each drop. Know this too: Though at one point during a rough patch of rapids yesterday I thought I might lose it over the side, I’ve still got my trombone.
And know that I don’t believe in luck.
We sat at the lacquered dining table listening to rain that seemed mad at us. I told him everything that had happened to me from Mount Bonnell on, including the reason why I was up there in the first place, point by point as a witness to my own small history.
A rather cold synopsis, really. I didn’t get into with him what I’ve gotten into with you, how I felt, how I feel, who I miss and how much. I didn’t tell him about Mr. English, my summerdreams, my story The Late Bloomers, the extra-credit essay, none of that. Mostly because he’s a little kid and wouldn’t get it. But also because that other stuff is between you and me.
He had stopped crying and gone stone-faced as he listened. He got lost at times in the narrative, and whenever I broke that spell it put him in, his face tensed up from the slack wonder it had fallen into.
Because he looked exhausted and because it hurt his head to remember, I couldn’t yet ask him what he knew.
Evening came, the rain continued but had lessened to a patter. I told him I was going out to feed the dogs. He nodded and said, “Kevin? I’m not like them, but I am… what I mean is they’ll know I stayed behind. I’m like a piece broken off, and they’ll…”
“What?” I let the screen door close, took a step back into the room. “They’ll what, Nate?”
“They’ll come back. They know you’re here. They won’t be coming for you when they come back. They’ll be coming for me. But I don’t want to go.”
I patted my gun. “Between this gun and all these dogs, I think we’ll be okay. I came out here to find those teens. But instead, I’ve found you and that’s something. Hang tight with Maggie, okay? She likes you. We need these others, so I’ve got to go out here and feed them so they’ll stay around. Understand?”