They are not pleasant.
8
On the way back, I run. I run as fast as I can. I feel like I outrun the wind. I feel I could run into the sky. I feel like I could disappear into the clouds. But I don’t. Instead it all comes rushing toward me faster, and I’m home again too soon and everything is just the same as it was before like I haven’t made a pact with war and death.
“You don’t know what’s coming, Eric,” Randy is saying as I come in the door. He’s sitting at our table, and Eric is sitting on the other side. “Everyone thinks they have nothing to do with this war and it comes anyway.”
Eric is quiet for a second, staring at the table like he sometimes does before he speaks, as if he’s rehearsing everything a few times before he opens his mouth. “Maybe,” he mutters finally. Even he seems unsatisfied with his response. I shut the door behind me softly.
“Look,” Randy says. “Both sides think they are inevitable. They think that it is only a matter of time before someone unites the people again. They both think they are the ones meant to do it. So they imagine there are only two sides to it.” Randy leans forward. His long nose seems to point right at Eric. “Don’t you see? If you don’t choose a side, each will assume you are choosing the other.”
Eric makes a sound somewhere between a huff and a laugh. “It’s absurd.”
“Is it?” Now I detect a little annoyance in Randy. He studies Eric for a second, sharply, incisively, almost violently. I haven’t seen Randy like this and it scares me and makes me angry at once. I step closer to Eric. But the look vanishes, or at least softens, and Randy continues. “Is it really absurd, Eric?”
“We just want to be left alone,” Eric insists, laying a hand flat on the table.
“And who do you trade your surplus food with?” Randy asks.
“We don’t have much surplus,” Eric says.
“But when you do, which side are you going to trade with?”
Eric opens his mouth and then closes it. “I see what you mean. Our actions will always choose a side, even if we don’t mean to.”
“You’re in this world,” Randy states, stabbing his finger down on the table. “You do have to choose. There’s no middle ground.”
Eric shrugs. He looks tired and demoralized. I move next to him and he turns toward me and smiles a little, faltering smile that makes my heart give out a little. Even in the midst of all this, he’s happy to see me. You can tell with people sometimes that they love you. I put my hand on his shoulder, and Eric turns back to Randy. “You’re probably right,” he says.
“I am right,” Randy says. “Listen, I know people.” He leans forward. “I can find people to talk with President Barber. You can join the Stars, and the Gearheads won’t dare come after you. I bet the Stars would send soldiers and everything to protect you.” Randy pauses and then adds quickly.
“Soldiers? Here?” Eric frowns. “I don’t know anything about the Stars. I can’t join them without knowing the first thing about them. I can’t put the Homestead at risk like that. I won’t. I have to try to stay out of this war.”
“You can’t.”
“Maybe,” Eric says again.
Randy and Eric look at each other for a few seconds, and then Randy gets up. He shrugs. “I tried,” he says, looking at me. I just hold his eyes because I don’t know what the correct response should be. “Don’t ever say I didn’t try,” he says to Eric. “It’s out of my hands now.” He shrugs before he leaves, shutting the door firmly behind him.
The silence continues for a long time.
9
After we finish a light dinner of bread and eggs, I tell Eric I’m tired and lean down and kiss the top of his head on the way to the ladder to the loft where we sleep. Eric puts his hand on the side of my head as I kiss him, but I can tell he’s distracted and won’t be sleeping that night.
I climb into the loft. It’s divided by thick wool blankets. I sleep on one side, Eric sleeps on the other. My head hurts from all the thinking. I collapse on my bed and try to stop thinking for a second, but it’s like trying to step off a racing wagon without falling. My mind won’t stop going. I’m remembering all kinds of things. I remember Carl Doyle and the violent jerk of the shotgun in my hands. I remember Eric lifting me up in his arms and telling me he won’t leave me again ever. Not ever, he says. I remember further back too, but these are just images: long roads and bleeding feet and the smell of smoke and fire and the shuffling sound of people with the Worm. I remember the light of the sky when the world was on fire. I remember the horrible, choking thirst, and the smoky, blood red skies.
I open my eyes to my dim share of the loft. It’s better than the darkness where the memories are rising. I reach over and light my bees wax candle. It gives off a weak, yellow light, but light is what I need. The darkness engenders too many memories. My room is filled with junk. Most everyone’s houses are like it, filled with memorabilia of a world that’s long vanished. In my room, there are parts of dolls, all faded; aged and ragged magazine covers of beautiful men and women, all long dead; plastic balls and figurines; ceramic cups and vases; old plastic toys, cars and trains and barnyard animals; stacks of my favorite books; old bottles of all colors and shapes; a radio that might still work if there was electricity; some albums for music I’ve never heard; wrappers from candy bars that haven’t been made in a decade; several maps; and a whole stack of National Geographic to remind me of the world that was and that might still be, somewhere. We all have rooms full of junk from the world that is no more. Sometimes it seems that that old world was only good at the production of junk, that junk is all that is left of it. Shards of emotions. Slivers of reality. Faded smiles on magazines that were never real to begin with.
But we too are from that world. We too are cast offs. Remainders. Like the wood that drifts ashore after the lake thaws. Maybe that’s why we have all this stuff. Not to remember, but to be with family.
Our family of plastic crap.
I want to laugh, but I don’t want to hear myself.
Instead I sigh and then rollover.
Below, I can hear Eric doing nothing at the table. I can hear him thinking, grinding out the possibilities, playing his endless games of what-if. It makes me feel protective of him. When I think of it that way, I feel something red hot inside me, furious and violent. I start falling asleep holding to that. Angry is a lot better than afraid.
10
“Come on, Tangerine!” I plead. The horse steps away and tosses her head. I can never get Tangerine to come to me. All I have to do is get her hooked up to Randy’s wagon, but it’s turning out to be a pain. Artemis is watching me and hiding her giggles badly with the back of her hand.
“It’s not funny,” I tell her.
At the sound of my voice, Tangerine walks back another few steps. Hitching her up to the wagon was my only job, and I can’t do it. Randy is leaving to warn other little communities of the war. All he asked was that I do this one simple thing. The thought of disappointing Randy irritates me.
I hold out my hand and make kissing noises, but Tangerine just tosses her head.
“Tangerine,” I whine. “Don’t be this way. Come on, I’m not going to hurt you!” When I hear Artemis giggle again, I turn my head and scowl at her.
Artemis bursts out with a laugh. “She’s a horse, you know,” she tells me. “She doesn’t understand what you’re saying.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “Do you want to do this?” I ask her. She forgets that I know she’s afraid of horses.
Artemis stops smiling immediately and shakes her head.