The Wasteland Saga: The Old Man and the Wasteland, Savage Boy and The Road is a River. Nick Cole

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       CHAPTER SIX

      Noon turned to afternoon and soon a stiff breeze picked up among 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 snake-like 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 bombs 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 serpiente. 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 among 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.