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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
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.
At the stream he waited, watching as the light came up. He was thirsty, had been thirsty through the night. But he did not drink from the stream and would not until the light was good enough to see the tracks. Then he would know what made a home of these palo verdes beneath the rocky slope.
At first light he saw the tracks. Different pairs, one behind the other, four toes and a claw. Near the water’s edge in the wet mud he could see the impression left by the fur. It made sense, muttered The Old Man and he knelt to drink the cool water of the stream.
Finished, he looked up to survey the rocky hill that rose above the little oasis of palo verdes. The hill was more a small mountain. Like other small mountains it was more a collection of boulders; large, broken, shattered rock turning a soft hue in the rising sun of the morning.
He looked at the tracks once more. They had definitely come down from the rocks for a drink, and to hunt. The single file nature of the prints told him they were foxes. He knew these animals. Often times they would come near the village, but never to scavenge at garbage. Once he had seen one pass him on the highway as he returned from salvage. He was in the southbound lanes walking back to the village; the fox, in the northbound lanes carried a large dead rattlesnake in its mouth. The fox barely regarded him and continued its bouncing little trot toward the west. His son, then a little boy, had loved that story when he had told it, often asking him to tell it again.
He returned to his camp, hung his blanket in a tree and began to search for an area under the palo verdes; an area of clearing but near enough to the trees. When he spotted a den of mice he knew he had a good area.
In the center of it he dug a small two-foot hole. The bottom was deep and wide while the top was narrow. He dug two more exactly like it and then began to gather deadfall back at the camp. He thought he might like a nice fire that night even though there would be no food. When the firewood was gathered he selected six sticks and returned to the clearing. He placed two sticks on two sides of each hole and then returned to the stream to drink.
From the bottom of the rocky slope he retrieved three flat stones. He placed these atop the sticks surrounding each of the holes. Now there was a nice roof. Also there was a tiny entrance on each side of the hole underneath the rocks
Feeling tired he returned to his camp and lay down for awhile. His strength was fading and he began to sweat thick salty tears. He was starving and the thought of the foxes made him hungrier. He would prefer rattlesnake, but there probably were none. Foxes also liked snake and had most likely hunted the area clean.
They are good salvagers.
After some rest and another long drink at the stream he returned to the clearing. He watched the dens at the base of the palo verdes. He would need to catch the mice before the fox. He leaned against the thin green trunk of the tree he was standing near and closed his eyes. Then he opened them just enough.
Mice will think I am asleep. That will make them bold.
He waited. The sun turned to late afternoon.
Much longer and I won’t have enough time to build a trap for the fox.
The day isn’t done yet.
Moments later he was asleep.
As a young man, passing through Yuma on that last day. That last civilized day. He remembered thinking ‘I have just three hours to go. Three hours and I’ll make Tucson’.
Above, the sky was filled with fighter planes attempting to refuel from the big airborne tankers. People camped out along the road while the state police barred any entrance into Yuma. Surely, it was too small of a target for the bombs. They would hit the major cities first, as they had been doing. Each day another city exploded. First it had been New York. Everyone watched on the news. The next day Chicago. Had it been Chicago, The Old Man wondered in his dream? Had that been the next city?
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