They moved on, leaving the slag and molten-made shapes to write their questions in the desert sands.
The Boy continued to sleep and once, when the Old Man looked down from his place in the open hatch, he could see the Boy, eyes open, watching him. The Old Man leaned down and handed him his canteen, keeping his other hand out of sight, ready with the crowbar.
Is he like that other savage boy?
The other boy who chased me across the desert.
The boy who chased my flare out into the night and must still lie at the bottom of the pass.
You would tell me, Santiago, that it was nothing personal. You would tell me that so I am not bothered by the memory of it.
It was nothing personal, my friend.
The Boy drank, swallowed thickly, and laid his head back down on the sleeping bag, exhausted. A moment later, his eyes were closed and the Old Man wondered if the Boy was sleeping and what he dreamed of.
Twisting hills and rocky ravines wound through ancient islands of mining equipment rusting long before the bombs. Stone outlines blackened by fire showed where once a village might have done business by the side of the thin ribbon of road.
Such times are long gone now. Now there is only the wind and burnt stone lying amid the red dirt and whispering brush of dry brown stick.
“We’ll stop here for the night,” said the Old Man over the intercom. A moment later his granddaughter pivoted the tank sharply to the left and pulled into a vacant lot banked by the fire-blackened stones of what had once been two separate buildings.
The Old Man shut down the tank, climbed out and down onto the hard red dirt that glimmered with broken glass and quartzite, his granddaughter meeting him near the massive treads.
“How’d I do today, Grandpa… I mean, Poppa? How’d I do?”
“The best. Better than I could’ve ever done. Better than anybody ever.”
“What’ll we do with that boy, Poppa?” she whispered, concentrating hard on remembering the Old Man’s new name.
“I don’t know yet.”
Silence.
“We can’t just leave him, right?”
“No, we can’t” said the Old Man after a short pause.
There was still a little daylight left and the Old Man turned to setting up their camp for the night. He built a circle of stones for a fire pit, gathered dry sticks with his granddaughter, and considered finding some snake for fresh meat. But in the end they simply heated more of their rations.
In the dark, as they watched the orange glow of the coals and a thin trickle of red flame that leapt upward, the Boy exited the tank, a dark shadow against the blue twilight of the coming night. He limped to the fire and took a seat on the hard ground.
The Old Man watched the Boy and then saw his granddaughter watching him also.
The Old Man took the plate of food he’d made for the Boy and handed it across the fire.
The Boy looked at it for a long moment, dipped his hand into it, and brought the food up to his cracked lips. He chewed slowly, painfully.
The Old Man watched the unused fork he’d given the Boy with the tin pie plate.
The Old Man sighed. He felt overwhelmed by all the questions he had for the Boy.
None seemed right.
None seemed appropriate.
That there was a great weight, a sadness even, that hung over the Boy who stared listlessly into the depths of the fire, that much was evident.
“Thank you,” said the Boy. His voice hollow. Deep.
The Old Man smiled.
“You’re welcome.”
“Where’d you come from?” erupted from his granddaughter. The Old Man winced.
The Boy turned to her. He smiled sadly.
Did he shake his head?
“Everywhere,” mumbled the Boy.
“Oh wow,” she squealed. “We’re just from…” She barely caught the look the Old Man briefly gave her. “We live in a village alongside the Old Highway. Have you been to the cities?”
Have you been to the cities? She must wonder what was in them. Imagine things about them as though they were a fantasy place. A palace of dreams, maybe.
Why wouldn’t she?
The Boy nodded.
He continued to chew slowly, painfully.
“Which ones?” she asked.
She is like Big Pedro when he gambled. She cannot restrain herself.
The Boy turned his gaze back to the fire.
“Washington, D.C., Little Rock, Reno, Detroit, and…”
But he didn’t finish.
He watched the fire.
But he is not watching the fire, my friend. He is there, wherever that city is that he cannot name.
“Here, drink a little; it will help you recover,” said the Old Man when the pause had become both long and uncomfortable.
The Boy put his food down. He took the canteen with his good hand. The withered hand was heaved into position as he grasped the cap with the good hand and twisted. Then the canteen was transferred back to the good hand and the Boy took a long pull, his Adam’s apple bobbing thickly in the firelight.
A night owl hooted, its call lonely and inviting.
When the Boy finished, he handed the canteen back to the Old Man. “Thank you.”
Silence.
“When I was young,” began the Old Man, “I lived in a city. At least I thought it was a city. It was really just a town on the outskirts of a big city. But that town was my whole world.”
The Old Man placed a few more sticks on the fire.
“Sometimes I think back about those times. There used to be nights when the town was quiet, when I was young, and my friends and I would roam the streets in cars. We would eat fast food and play video games. We saw movies.”
The Old Man looked at his granddaughter.
She loves these stories and I don’t know why. I have explained fast food and video games and movies. But they are just words.
She will never know those places. Those things.
She will have to make do with mere words.
Still, she loves these stories, my friend.
“Do you know those things?” asked the Old Man of the Boy.
The Boy nodded.
Someone has told him of the things that once were.
“So,” the Old Man continued, “these things were my world, and if you would’ve asked me at the time what the world was like, what its shape was, I guess I might have described it that way.”
He nodded at both of them.
“Even when I was older, just a few years beyond both of you, I knew the world had many places in it and I had even traveled to some of those places expecting them to be different. But life in one place is much the same as another. Life is life, despite your street address.”
The Old Man smiled at their blank faces.
You never told her about street addresses.
Didn’t I?
