“Perhaps we could arrange for you to be whisked away to heaven.”
“I want to be carried to the end of the highway.”
“Keep driving, and if we don’t run out of gas, that’s a wish you’ll get. You don’t even have to be dead. Have you noticed the gas mileage we’re getting? It’s got to be super or the gas gauge is fucked.”
“Forget the goddamn gas gauge and the mileage, I’m serious here. I get croaked, you guys make sure I get to the end of the highway. Something about that appeals to me. I like the idea of finishing things. Dinosaur eats me there, so be it.”
“Crier, if you’re dead, it doesn’t matter if fifty naked girls with tits like zeppelins are at the end of the highway ready to suck your dick until your balls cave in. You’ll still be dead.”
“Promise me that should something happen to me you’ll make sure I get to the end of the highway to be buried.”
“Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“If you get killed. I’ll see you get to the end of the highway and get buried or cremated or something.”
“Not cremated, I don’t like that.”
“Tried it?”
“Just bury me. I’ll make you the same promise if you like.”
“Something happens to me, leave me in the bushes. I’ll be past caring.”
Bob rose up in back and tapped on the glass with an elbow, held out his hands to question why we had stopped.
Crier waved him down, started up the engine and pulled back onto the highway.
“I’m going to talk to Bob about it too,” Crier said. “Think he’ll do it?”
“Who knows about Bob?” I said.
We finally came to a clearing on the right-hand side of the highway. There was grass, but it wasn’t high, and I figured a lot of critters had been grazing on it. In the distance I could see the blue of a great lake. Or what looked like a lake. I still felt as if I were on a movie set. Reality was not to be trusted.
Crier turned off the highway and drove over the grass, and it seemed like it took forever to reach the lake. He parked about six feet from it, jumped out and went belly down on the bank and stuck his face into the water and began to drink.
It was real water.
I opened my door and tried to get out, but it was too far a step and too much pressure on my feet to manage it.
I sat and waited for Crier to finish drinking. If there had been any moisture in my mouth I would have salivated.
When Crier was done he came over and got me out of the truck. The grass was soft and I found I could hobble across it without too much support from Crier.
“I couldn’t wait,” Crier said. “Sorry.”
“I’d have done the same,” I said.
The water was cool and sweet, and pretty soon Crier had Bob beside me, then all three of us were lying there on our bellies drinking. I was the first to overdo it. I puked up the water and the sardines on the bank, and Bob and Crier followed shortly thereafter.
We finished puking and went to drinking again, slower this time, and when we were finished, we pulled off what we were wearing and went into the water, Bob and I entering it on elbows and knees, looking like pale alligators.
Waterlogged, we climbed on the bank and lay on our backs and looked at the sky. The sun went down-in the south, go figure-and the lake went dark and the moon rose up-in the south, go figure again-and the water turned the color of molten silver.
After we had talked a while about this and that, Crier said, “I’m one tired sonofabitch, boys. Let’s call it a night.”
Crier got us in the camper and stood at the tailgate. He said, “I’m in no hurry to leave. I like that water. What say we stick around a while? The highway’s out there when we decide to try it again.”
Sounded good to me, and I said so.
“Yeah,” Bob said. “The idea of going off and leaving all that water doesn’t excite me right now. Maybe just because I been thirsty for so long. But yeah, let’s wait a while.”
Crier nodded and went around to the cab to sleep. I lay down on my bedroll, and for the first time since before the big red comet, I felt a stirring of hope. Or maybe I had drunk too much water.
Whatever, it wasn’t so exciting it kept me awake.
4
Next day Crier drove the truck to the other side of the lake, near the jungle, and that became our home. In spite of the water, we hadn’t planned to stay as long as we did, but one day rolled into the next.
The jungle provided all kinds of fruit, and in defiance of the age of dinosaurs, all manner of recognizable animals from rabbits to squirrels to monkeys to snakes. All of these were good to eat, but in the beginning we left them alone. Not out of any respect for the lesser species, but simply because we couldn’t catch the little bastards and had nothing suitable to kill or trap them with. Also, Bob and I were still crips, and you’ve got to have legs to run critters down.
Crier made a spear by breaking off a long, thin limb in such a way that it left a point. He put fruit rinds in the lake and stood in the water with them floating around him. He waited for fish to come and nibble at the rinds, then he tried to spear them.
Sometimes it took all day for him to get one, but he stayed with it. He was so determined that sometimes dinosaurs would come and stand off in the distance and watch. I think they were amused.
As time went by Crier got better, and later he changed to a more successful method. He got some strong vine and whittled a hook out of wood with a beer can opener he flattened and sharpened with a file from Bob’s tool box. He used bugs and worms for bait. By the end of the day, he’d have a pretty nice mess of fish.
I was the fire builder. I’d pull grass and let it dry for a day or two, always keeping the supply ahead of the demand. When the grass looked brittle, I’d take two files from the tool box and knock them together until they made a spark, which I directed into the grass. By blowing on the spark, I could get a blaze going, and then I would feed it twigs, then larger kindling, and finally big hunks of wood. Before long, I’d have a good fire going.
Bob cleaned the fish and cooked them by spitting them on a green limb and hanging the limb between two upright forked sticks. The fish tasted pretty good. Every night, before bed, we ended up with a pile of fish bones and fruit rinds around us.
In time, Bob and I healed, and once we could get around, we turned industrious.
With what we had in the toolbox, we managed to make some simple tools for cutting and splitting wood. And damn if we weren’t making crude lumber, notching it and pegging it and building a two-story house at the edge of the jungle. It wasn’t anything to impress Better Homes and Gardens, but it was all right. We managed to use the limbs of this big tree as part of it, and the tree’s foliage was so thick the house blended into it. We christened the place Jungle Home. It made me feel like I was a relative of the Swiss Family Robinson. A poor relation, to be sure, but a relation.
The upper floor was the sleeping nest, and by stuffing it with leaves and dried grass and putting the sleeping bags and blankets on top of that, we had a pretty comfortable place,
We also built a deck of split wood and bamboo on either side of the top floor, and it gave us a place to sit and feel the wind.
It wasn’t paradise, but it beat being jabbed in the eye with a number two pencil.
But, as a great philosopher once wrote over the urinal in Buddy’s Fill-up, “Things will go and change on you.”
