The Road is a River. Nick Cole
up, are we, Grandpa?”
“No, we won’t give up.”
She seemed relieved and soon she was back in the tank handing out their bags and sleeping gear for the night.
“Can we have a fire?”
“Yes.”
“A story?”
“Yes, of course.”
“A ghost story?”
“I don’t know any.”
“I do.”
“I don’t like them before I go to sleep.”
“Oh, Grandpa.” She snorted and laughed.
Later, when their gear was out and they’d made camp in front of the ancient headquarters building, clearing a space along the broad sidewalk that ran through the ghost of the once-lawn, she said, “This is the best salvage trip ever, Grandpa.”
“But we haven’t salvaged anything yet.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s not the best.”
“Yes, you’re right, it is the best.”
They ate food as the stars began to appear, as the sky turned from orange to purple, then from purple to deep blue.
Night.
The Old Man watched, listening to his granddaughter talk about the tank. He watched for the satellite above. The one that General Watt was using to talk to them.
The satellites are still up there crossing the sky.
Like me crossing this land.
Which is something, if you think about it.
In the night, long after she had drifted to sleep listening to him tell about the time he had seen the fox walking down the old highway, he awoke. The fire was low. There is nothing left to burn but the weeds of this old lawn. Unless I want to pull the boards off these buildings, but the sound would wake her. Besides, the night is warm enough.
The Old Man rose.
Because the ground is too hard and I need to pee. And also because I am not sleeping.
Tomorrow we will have to turn back. Without fuel, it’s just not possible to make it all the way. The tankers were most likely in Yuma, at the airport, when the bomb went off. Now, they are gone.
He tried to remember if he’d seen any such vehicles forty years ago on the last hot day of his country.
I can’t remember. She will be disappointed.
He turned and crossed the ancient outline of the weed-choked lawn, hearing the dry crunch beneath his feet.
Why would the Army have lawns in the desert?
I guess that was the way the military did things. They imposed order and rules regardless of the situation and location.
They were crazy to try to grow grass in the desert.
But they did. As long as they had water they must’ve grown these lawns. The world was crazy then.
We were all crazy.
And then he knew where he would find fuel. Or at least he hoped to. Excited, he drifted back to sleep for what remained of the night as though he had found a missing puzzle piece or remembered something good that would happen. Excited that he would not disappoint her. Excited that the best salvage trip ever might go on for at least one more day.
The best ever.
In the morning they found where the military kept its gardening equipment. Ancient rakes, rusty shovels and time frozen hedge trimmers. Dust-choked oily lawnmowers forever resting in dress-right-dress formation waited at the back of a large dark hangar. And off to one side, an immense storage tank of military-grade kerosene.
The Old Man drew off a little of the kerosene in a coffee mug he’d found in an office where clipboards hung neatly on the wall. He took it back outside as his granddaughter followed with questions, unsure of his game.
“Will it make the tank go, Grandpa?”
“If it’s still good, it might.”
The Old Man took a match from his pocket. He had loaded up on matches for this trip, remembering the last three matches inside the sewers beneath the hangar the wolves had chased him into. He struck the match and dropped it into the fuel. It caught and made a heavy chemical smell erupt in gray waves of smoke.
They rode the lumbering tank away, leaving the dry and dusty military post to itself and the years that must consume it. Off to the west, sand dunes rose in the afternoon heat.
Soon the sand dunes will arrive here as they march across the desert. Then they will cover this place and the kerosene that still remains inside that big storage tank.
But I will be gone by then.
Now we must hope there will be other fuel sources along the road. We may not find our river, my friend, but in a way the road is like that.
And what ocean will it lead to?
That night, the Old Man dreamed that he and Santiago were on a wide sea, under a hot sun, watching the flying fish leap from the water. Waiting for the big fish they would catch.
Ahead we will find places I once knew long ago and have forgotten since. And I can only imagine what time and the bombs have done to them. I can only imagine that my past memories have changed to present nightmares.
Yes, my friend.
The tank trundled down a long, dirty, brown slope. In the distance they could see a strand of Highway 10 cutting the landscape in two.
It too is still there.
His granddaughter, ahead in the separate compartment containing the driver’s couch, steered the tank across the crumbling dirt slope. Often he needed to remind her to slow down.
I feel like we’ve gone off the edge of something. The edge of everything we’ve ever known. Did you feel that way, Santiago, as you pulled at the oars farther and farther out into the gulf, watching the color of the water deepen until it was dark and not blue? Did you too feel like you were going off the edge of something?
And yet I knew it all once and long ago.
Memories of the cities of the West began to come and stand around the Old Man like mourners near an open grave.
You must forget all this melancholy and think only of the facts. You have enough fuel to reach China Lake. If you don’t find fuel there, then crossing Death Valley into Area 51, will be impossible. You must follow this road until you come to an old tactical outpost set up alongside the highway. General Watt told us we would find it there.
“Grandpa, there’s someone on the road ahead.”
The Old Man scanned the horizon.
Far to their right, in the direction they must go, he could see the dark silhouette of a human.
It stood, unmoving in the late heat of the day.
The Old Man continued to watch the unmoving man-shaped shadow far down the cracked road as the tank heaved itself up onto the old highway. His granddaughter maneuvered the tank to point west at his instruction. A mile off, the lone figure remained unmoving beside the road they would follow.
I wish I knew how to work these optics like she has already learned to.
“Can you tell me what he looks like?” he asked her.
He knew she would be using her viewfinder.
“He’s tall,” she said after a moment. “Long dirty hair.