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Can you let go of what is gone?
I think at first I felt that I could not go on. The things I lost were too painful and I could not imagine a life without them. I remember feeling awful. All the time. But I cannot remember when I changed. When I thought of salvage. When I thought of what was today, and not of what had been or what was lost.
For a long time he sat hugging his knees, watching the crystal of the sky turn and revolve, and when the fire had burnt down to red ash, he moved his blanket close to it and sat for a little while more, listing to it pop. Soon the sky began to grow dark. In a few nights, he thought, his last thought before sleeping, we’ll have the moon. Funny saying ‘we’ he wondered, sleeping.
Chapter Five (#ulink_19670ade-daac-555f-8f59-029c241b6fa7)
There were no dreams that night and when he awoke, the sun was already well up and the heat a part of the day that could not be separated from it.
His face was heavy from the night as though the sleep had been more fight than rest. Instantly he wanted water and knew that any drink would be his last.
Then it will be my last.
Draining the bottle he decided he would find the water he would need to continue the journey or that would be the end of it.
I have in me what remains. So I have to be smart. If I dig and find no water, I will have sweated for nothing. I must find water.
He continued on now, bearing more east than north.
East is evil and that is why things are not going well. You should have continued north. Why are you going east?
The dunes continued in their sandy smothering brilliance and before long he began to think of the ocean and the book.
How would it be to have such a skiff as that in the book? To have ropes and a hand-forged hook. To catch the tuna and eat it raw with a bit of salt and lime.
He did not have salt and limes in the book. He wanted them but he did not have them. He ate the tuna raw.
He caught himself, sweating, almost sleeping as he walked, thinking that this was just a day at the beach, as if, in any experience that was his, he’d ever had a day at the beach.
But I did. I remember the sting of saltwater on burned skin. I remember hot dogs and mustard and blown sand in the buns.
It was the thought of the watermelon that jerked him back to the present. Sweet, cool watermelon on a windy afternoon at the beach. School buses idling to take the children back to school during the last week of the school year. No more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks. He saw his father’s handwriting as he thought of those words. Summer would never end.
Everything ends, he croaked to the dry silence between two monolithic dunes, as he trudged upslope through the clutching sand.
It is so hot that even the scorpions won’t come out.
In the distance, the sun sank lower in the sunburned sky, as dunes began to grow long cool shadows pointing thin fingers to the east.
Without making camp he lay down in the cradle of a shady dune and fell to snoring.
When he awoke, the sun had fallen behind the highest dune and a stiff breeze lifted sand, sending it skirting across the smooth surfaces of the dunes. The body of a dead bee lay in the foreground of his skewed vision. His head pounded and he knew he was beyond any point of thirst he had ever experienced. Already his hand was half buried.
I have been asleep but a few minutes. The sand doesn’t waste time.
Not ready to move his aching head, he remained staring at the dead bee in the canted landscape. He wasn’t sure, but the sun seemed in the wrong position. If that was the case then it was not a few minutes but maybe the next day, and if that was the case then things were even worse than he had first thought. A new day of heat amongst the dunes.
There is little hope.
So at least, you have some hope.
It’s just a saying. I actually have no hope.
No, you said you have little hope. Why?
Why what?
Why a little? A little hope would have gone a long way for that dead bee. But for you maybe it is too little.
The bee.
The Old Man shook himself upright. His face sandy, he stared wildly about, then closed his eyes as his head began to throb.
Bees always fly straight to water. Big Pedro had taught him that. And he had seen it. Many times.
The bee is dead. How can a dead bee lead you too water?
He was an ambitious bee. Like me.
Or he was cursed. Like you also.
Then this brother is a bee to me, he declared in confusion. I will find more bees. His brothers are my brothers. Some always leads to more and where there are more bees they will lead me to water.
It is morning so it will be cool for awhile, but not long. Bees like the heat.
Bending low he gently picked up the dead bee.
I will find us some water my brother.
He placed the bee in the tin of grease and snapped the ancient lid shut.
That way seems familiar but dunes are all alike.
Heading into the sun now he climbed the first dune, and far to the east he saw blue ridges shadowed in the rising sun.
East is evil and curst.
Ah but there are two of us now. I have my brother the bee and he has his brothers.
Soon the sun was hot, as first he climbed a dune, then descended only to start the process once more. It is the only way, he told the bee. It is the only way I can be sure I am heading to the ridge.
At the top of each sandy dune he scanned for swarms, or movement of any kind. His eyes were still good and yet he saw no bees.
Maybe in the rocks, brother. Maybe that is where we will find your home.
At the full blaze of noon The Old Man descended the last dune into a short sandy scrub of low bushes. A few miles away lay the now red rock ridge.
For a moment The Old Man considered digging amongst the scrub for water but the plants were papery and did little to convince him of the chance of appreciable water.
Opening the tin of grease he looked at the dead bee.
I can only go so far bee. So which way, huh? He held the bee up hoping to catch a breeze and saw himself from afar.
This is insane. Look at yourself. An Old Man holding a dead bee in the desert. If he comes back to life you are really crazy. The Old Man realized it was his young self talking to him. The self he had once been and had been thinking of too much since the dream of the child.
Be quiet. This is not so crazy. One of his brothers might smell him and come for a look. Then maybe I can follow him back to water.
The Old Man lurched forward into the scrub holding out the bee for any passing stray bee to smell. I can’t trust my ears he said. They have been buzzing. So I will look for a black shape moving, hopping between the bushes of low scrub. That will be a bee.
When he had reached the limit of the little strength he had left, the ridge was still far off and on fire with the red of a late afternoon sun in decline.
The Old Man sat down knowing he would not rise. The wings of the bee still held gently between thumb and forefinger.
Well, we tried.
He could no longer swallow. His mouth felt coarse and thick. His throat a ragged burning trench and his body ached. Mostly in his throbbing head.
If I can lay here until dark, then the light won’t hurt my eyes so much and then maybe I can make it to the ridge.
But it was a lie as soon as he told it. By nightfall he would be beyond standing.
Then I must stand a little more and maybe a few steps will take me to the rocks of the ridge. And that also is a lie.
Standing, a dull bomb went off with a solid crack in the back of his skull as stars raced forward toward the rocks.
But it is my lie.
He continued forward. Moments later he saw a bee which came diving at him, and then quickly tore away off toward the rocks. The Old Man shambled forward, trailing the bee which hopped from shrub to shrub, sometimes methodical at other times racing off toward the horizon. Just when The Old Man thought he had lost the bee forever, again the bee would leap up and head off along the same bearing.
Ahead, The Old Man could see a spur jutting out from the ridge, and following the spur back to the crook it left in the ridge, he saw a splotch of green.
But it is too far.
He continued after the bee, still holding the dead bee between his thumb and forefinger. The line from where he had met the bee and the splotch of green was true and straight.
Falling forward, he tripped on an exposed root and fell into the sandy chalk that rose up in plumes around him.
I have never been so comfortable in all my life.
If you don’t get up, the bee who is flying will be gone and you will never find the water, never find salvage, and you will die curst.
I am curst. I don’t care. I want to sleep now.
He closed his eyes and when he did, he thought of his granddaughter who was just thirteen. It was she who had stayed faithful to him after the other villagers had cursed him and refused to salvage with him. She had begun to salvage with him. He had enjoyed that. The salvage had become more enjoyable and less desperate on those long mornings he spent with her as they walked and talked. Talked of all manner of things from the way the world had been to the way it is and sometimes of the way it might be. That had been enjoyable.
I am sorry my brother bee.
Arms of sleep beckoned him a little farther down the well of darkness.
I must use your help for a moment little bee. I am sorry. I have to wake up for a while. Long enough to see what lies in the crook of the ridge.
He squeezed his palm hard shut and felt the stinger of the dead bee enter the flesh of his palm. An electric jolt coursed through his body and instantly the palm was alive with fire.
The Old Man kept his fist shut as he pushed away from the sand and began once more to the ridge.
Desert scrub, sandy and brown, gave way to large sunburnt rocks. Reaching the crook in the ridge, he entered a stand of palo verdes. The Green Sticks the villagers called them. Back amongst the rocks a quiet stream, barely more than a trickle, came out of the rocks feeding the little stand of palo verdes. The Old Man dropped his satchel and lay down to drink. The water was cool.
Chapter Six (#ulink_81970275-73d5-5719-a38d-7fb5b7a12349)
Noon turned to afternoon and soon a stiff breeze picked up amongst the feathery branches of the palo verdes. For a long time The Old Man returned to the stream to drink and drink again. All the while he gathered dead branches, piling them high for the night’s fire.
There were just a few beans and one tortilla left. He had not felt hungry during the thirsty hours of torment amid the dunes, but now as his body began to soak up the water, his appetite returned. The few beans and tortilla were a coming feast to his hungry mind.
He went out beyond the perimeter of the palo verdes once more, into the scrub that bordered the wasteland. The dunes through which he had passed were now falling to pink and orange. Thin ribbons of snakelike shade slithered onto the desert floor while the graceful arcs of the dunes told the lie that he did not exist, had never existed among them.
He returned to his camp and started a small fire. In the twilight he finished the remaining beans and reluctantly saved the tortilla for morning. Tomorrow he would look for animal tracks and make the appropriate traps. Once he had enough food and water he could either return across the wasteland to the village or he might continue on.
He had failed to find salvage in the wasteland. The known parts of the wasteland were behind him and he could only guess where he might be now. If he had to say, he would say west of what was once Phoenix and north of what was Tucson.
In the days of the bombs, he thought while the first stars began to peak through the drifting branches of the palo verde, there had been a large town in that area. The name was lost to him, but the memory of once having known it was not.
If he could find the town he might find salvage. Might find others too and that would present a whole different set of problems.
There is the gun. Yes, he mumbled his throat still raw. There is that.
He was glad his granddaughter was not with him. People, strangers who came to the village, made him think of this. After the bomb these people, had not found villages, had not banded together to survive. They had wandered, and in their eyes he saw that they had done things. Things they found it hard to live with, but things they had done nonetheless. Too many years of ‘done’ things, too many years of desert. Too many years in the cold and heat and condemnation. They didn’t seem human anymore. So, if he had to meet strangers, then it was good he didn’t have his granddaughter.
It is good then, he laughed, that I am cursed.
But what if you stay out here too long? What if you do too many ‘done’ things?
‘Too long out there’ is what the villagers would say whenever those strangers who had no village of their own would show up to trade, to beg, to die. Too long out there.
Now the sky was speckled with the stars above, as the blue light of the west seemed to draw away. He returned his eyes to the fire and tried to think about traps.
He thought of the traps he had been taught by Big Pedro in the days after the bombs when the village was not a village but just a small refugee camp. Traps for varmints, as Pedro had called them. Traps for serpente. Snake would be good. He had enjoyed snake.
I’ll go as far as the town whose name I cannot remember. If there is no salvage then I’ll come back. Then the other villagers will know that I am cursed and it won’t be expected of me to go out. I can help the women. Watch the children if they’ll let me. Make things. I have always wanted to make a guitar.
You don’t even know how to play.
Yes, but that has never stopped me from wanting to.
The fire burned the logs to ash amongst the orange and black glow of its heart. The stars above. The gently moving palo verdes in the night’s breeze. The Old Man wrapped himself within his blanket and slept.
Chapter Seven (#ulink_ca1e3f3c-0c9c-5a24-b492-2c5166b30565)
He returned to the stream at first light. He had been lying wrapped in his blanket, and for the first time the morning was not so bitterly cold.
