The Old Man and the Wasteland. Nick Cole

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СКАЧАТЬ the hours leading up to dawn, in the main hall of the old factory, The Old Man was the first to stand in front of the open door and feel the cold. How many years had it been since he stood in front of an open refrigerator door in the middle of the night, feeling that precious cold caress the dust caked lines of his face? He didn’t remember, he didn’t care. The cold was enough.

      ‘We would have that for all of our lives’.

      That’s what my friend in the book said when he and the boy talked of taking the great baseball player fishing. He understood.

      ‘We would have that for all of our lives’.

      Now The Old Man took another drink from his water bottle. That night of the refrigerator, the days ending in a carnivale of roast pig meat and ice seemed long ago. Something that happened to a hero who was not him, did not look like the old face in the pieces of mirror on the few days he chose to shave each week.

      He looked at the bowl of the wasteland. It seemed empty and void. A place of nothing.

      I must go into it. I am cursed by that hot radio.

      They never said you could not salvage with them again.

      They didn’t need to.

      From the Great Wreck to the village and as far east as The Gas Station he would no longer salvage, though no one salvaged in the east anyway as it was considered evil. Even the gas station which lay on the far side of a small town that burned to the ground for no reason anyone could remember in the days of the bombs, held little salvage. Further east the bombs had fallen. Anything from there was as bad as the hot radio. The village would allow no salvage from there.

      So he could not go east, and west and south was for the village. He must go north. North lay the wasteland.

      He rolled his water bottle back into his thin blanket placing it back in the patched leather satchel. He placed the wide brimmed hat he always wore back atop the stubble of his scalp. There was nothing in the wasteland. No salvage ever came of it. Treks into it returned with nothing or never returned.

      The sun was high above now. Adjusting the strap, he set off down the rocky slope, dodging lone black volcanic rocks that had dotted the landscape long before the bombs, before the Spanish, before the Anasazi.

Chapter Three

      In the desert, alone, I must look far and near at once. Things that are far seem very near and I must remember that.

      Jagged pink peaks to the east seemed a day’s walk. But The Old Man knew they were well beyond that.

      Maybe there is another reason for my curse and not the hot radio. Maybe I have become lazy. Too used to finding easy salvage on the ground at my feet. Or others finding it for me.

      Heading down the slope into the white sandy bowl of the wasteland, the thought of his failure as a salvager gave The Old Man a new comfort. Maybe it was not a curse. He needed better technique, he had grown lazy. He would return to everything he knew about salvage; he would forget to be lazy and instead remind himself to be vigilant. To leave no stone unturned. This was better than being cursed.

      On a far ridgeline, he saw movement and wondered if it were goats moving amongst the clipped rocks. For a long time he kept checking the ridge, hoping to see them again, but in time he gave up and cursed himself for not sticking to his new promise. Later, after the sun’s heat had reached its apex then sank to the horizon behind him, the details of the landscape ahead came into focus.

      The heavy sunlight and the sandstorms that seemed to come and go throughout the day had revealed nothing more than a hazy diffusion across his vision. Now as the last light of day shown directly into the heart of the wasteland, he could make out details. Purple scrub and gentle orange hills rising up along the edge he would make by tomorrow. Off to the east he saw a vehicle.

      He’d heard of this vehicle. The few who had tried the wasteland had never gone more than a day or two into its depths. All told of the vehicle. It lay to the east and it was always bad to head east. The villagers would often mutter ‘What good could come from the east?’

      Stopping for a sip of water, he considered the vehicle, a splotch of red rust in the afternoon haze.

      It seems harmless and there may be something to salvage. But it is east.

      This is why you are here. Do you believe in the curse or in your own laziness? If it is the curse, then anything east can only make the curse worse. But if it is because you have lost the gift you once had for salvage because you look for what is obvious and easy, then there is no curse and the vehicle is the first rule of salvage. Some always leads to more.

      The Old Man replaced the water bottle and shouldered his satchel. Thinking of when he might rest, he turned toward the east and the rusty car.

      Night fell, but the sky remained blue for a long time. He lost sight of the car as he descended in and out of dry stream beds. For the last hour he hunted for it in the dark and just when he had begun to curse himself that he was indeed useless and had lost it altogether, he found it.

      It was a sedan, half sunk in the dirt that became mud every monsoon season and frozen clay in the winter that followed. Forty cycles of monsoon, chill, and withering summer.

      The Old Man dropped his satchel and gathered brush and mesquite. It was early fall and the nights would be cold. It was important to get a fire going.

      Once the fire was in bloom with sparks rising into the night, The Old Man retrieved his crowbar and the tin of grease. He searched the wreck, finding a pile of bones on the floor beneath the steering column. The seats had turned to springs and nothing remained of the foam or material that had once covered them. The backseat held nothing, and in the trunk someone had once lit a fire, probably camping under the roof of the car. The fire in the trunk had kept them warm.

      The Old Man returned to the fire and removed the cold beans from his satchel. Unrolling his blanket, he found the tortillas but decided to save them for morning. He placed the tin of beans in the fire and waited.

      Above, dashing comets and stars restlessly winked at one another. Was there some sort of communication amongst them? How far away were they? Once The Old Man had seen, on a night far from the village, a satellite moving up there. Long after the bombs. It crossed the sky steadily, almost slowly, still flashing its lights. Its power still on. The Old Man looked for it again tonight.

      The beans tasted good.

      That was how hungry I was. A hard day’s work and food tastes good.

      Putting the beans down The Old Man returned to the car once more.

      Why here?

      He looked at the front of the car.

      The driver either crashed into something, or ran out of fuel. But for some reason the driver stopped here. Were you dying?

      In the days of the bombs, The Old Man who had been a young man, remembered the chaos and disorder. Remembered the authorities shooting people. Fleeing Los Angeles, he had been stopped at a checkpoint just south of San Clemente. For hours he had been stopped as military helicopters crossed the sky above the reactor close to the ocean. It had made him nervous being that close to a primary target, the big reactors. A man arguing with the guards СКАЧАТЬ