Through Darkest America

It wasn’t hard to follow a man in the wastelands. He couldn’t get away from you. All you had to worry about was getting too close. If you could see forever out across the desert, so could he.

Howie kept out of sight during the day. After dark, he’d wait until the man built a fire and then he’d move in some. He never got too close. He just sat quietly in the dark watching the man’s shadow move about the fire. After a while, he’d crawl back to his place, pull his blanket about him, and go to sleep.

Before he slept, though, he thought about the man. What kind of man was he? He’d never gotten close enough to tell. What did he do? Did he live out here? He sure wasn’t making any kind of living hauling eight head of stock around. Maybe he was just trying to get away from other folks, too.

He’d think about things like that, or guess what the man’s name might be, or how old he was. And then he’d go to sleep.

One morning, about a week after he’d first seen the man, Howie woke up with a start, knowing something was wrong. The man stood right above him, big boots spread wide and a heavy, long-handled axe in his hands.

Howie didn’t move.

“That’s right,” said the man. “Just stay quiet like.” He nodded toward Howie’s belt. “Slide that knife out slow and toss it aside.”

Howie did as he was told.

“You got anything else on you?”

“No.”

“What’s in your pockets?”

“Some nuts. And a couple of them, green fruits.” The man looked at him. “What kind of fruits?” “The kind that grows on the end of sticker plants.”

The man almost grinned. “You eatin’ cactus buds, are you?”

“I eat whatever I can get.” Howie couldn’t hold back any longer. Ever since he’d opened his good eye he hadn’t been able to take his gaze off the man. Strong, wide chin, dark eyes, a broad nose, and—he was black! Just as black and shiny as pitch!

“Something bothern’ you?” asked the man.

“You, I reckon,” said Howie. “Damn… you ain’t a nigger, are you?”

The dark face didn’t change. He motioned with the axe. “Get on up.”

Howie did. “What you goin’ to do with me?”

The man slung the axe over his shoulder and scratched his belly. “First I’m goin’ to ask you why you been sniffin’ my heels for ’bout a week. Sittin’ behind bushes and watching a man eat his supper.” The man made a face. “You got to have some reason for doin’ somethin’ like that.”

“I just wanted to, I guess,” said Howie.

The man shook his head. “Not good enough.”

“It’ll have to be, mister.” Howie looked right at him. “’Cause there ain’t no more to it than that.”

The man seemed amused. “You’re not much afraid of this axe, are you? Don’t you figure I can use it?”

“I figure you can. But I ain’t goin’ to stand here shaking, if that’s what you’re waitin’ for.”

“How’d you lose the eye?”

“A feller cut it out with a knife.”

“You fight him back?”

“There wasn’t much way I could.”

The man nodded. He dropped the axe down to his side. “You can come and have some breakfast if you like. I don’t have no cactus buds, but I reckon you’d eat somethin’ else if you had to…”

There was a big flat pot of beans in the fire and loaves of hard bread that looked like they’d been baked in ashes. There seemed to be plenty. Howie dipped his cup gratefully. The taste of real food almost made him cry.

The man watched him, eating just a little himself. He motioned for Howie to take more, if he liked, but Howie nodded his thanks. His stomach had been empty too long.

He had a lot of questions he wanted to ask the man. Mostly, he wanted to know about niggers. There weren’t supposed to be any since the War. But he guessed there were, all right. Did they live out here, in the desert? Was that where the man was going?

He kept the questions to himself. The man probably had plenty of questions about him, too, but he hadn’t asked much, considering.

When he was finished, the black man took his own cup and Howie’s and set them aside. Then he took the rest of the beans and the ash-colored bread and carried everything away from the fire and out of the camp into the brush.

Howie watched, more than a little puzzled. The man sure didn’t strike him as the wasteful sort—throwing a whole good meal away when food was hard to come by. He walked on, making his way over the flat, and when he finally stopped he just set the beans and bread on the ground. Right down on the ground where his stock was bedded!

Howie was horrified. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The meat jumped right in and fell hungrily on the food, dipping it out of the pot with their hands. Howie’s stomach turned over. He could taste everything he’d eaten in his throat and he could have gotten up and killed the black man on the spot. There was no use hoping it hadn’t happened before. This was clearly the man’s regular habit, which meant he’d been scooping up beans, big as you please, right where stock grubbed their filthy hands the meal before!

“Something wrong?” The man stood watching him across the fire.

Howie was too angry to hold back. “Maybe I got no business saying it, mister…  but I sure never seen a man feed good beans and bread to his stock. An’ off of pots meant for people, at that!”

The black man’s face didn’t change. He squatted by the fire and squinted far off like he was chewing something over in his mind. “They ain’t exactly stock,” he said finally. “They just kinda ’pear to be.”

Howie didn’t look at him. He just sat real still where he was. If he’d learned anything at all about people there was one thing certain as night: You couldn’t ever really figure a man inside, even a man you knew some. And he sure didn’t know this one. He wondered if he could get up and out of there on his bad leg before the man could grab the big axe again.

The black man read him easy. “I’m just telling you.” He eyed Howie squarely. “You was the one asking.” He poked a stick in the fire. “They was wandering ’round half starved when I come on ’em. Picking up leaves and bugs and whatever. Looked more like a bunch of bones than anything. Got all this far, though. Halfway ’cross the damn country.”

Howie considered. “Just how you figure-that?”

“Figure what?”

“Where they come from.”

The man stopped his poking and looked up. “One of ’em told me, is how. Rest of them got their tongues cut but this one talks so you can understand him some. You don’t believe none of this, do you?”

“About meat talking?” Howie studied his hands. “Mister, I ain’t arguing with a man that’s feeding me breakfast. But I’m saying if one of them… if something talked to you, it sure ain’t meat.”

The man gave him a humorless grin. “Well, that’s what I’m saying too, ain’t it?”

While the black man gathered up his things Howie kicked dirt over the fire, though there was nothing on the land to burn away. Neither spoke about it, but when the sun blazed up and turned the land hard as brass they started out together. Howie didn’t ask any more about the others. They trailed along behind, always keeping a distance. The black man didn’t seem to notice they were there.

They walked the long day, together and not together, neither pressing the other, taking their company for what it was. When they did talk, Howie found the black man knew surprisingly little about the world beyond the desert. Was there a war? He hadn’t heard about it. The name Lathan meant nothing to him. He did know men came down_to the desert more than they used to, moving to the south and then coming back with horses. He knew what