When he awoke there was a fox. It twisted in the morning breeze, its tongue lolling purple and its eyes wide in terror. It was beautiful. The Old Man admired its healthy coat as he skinned the little fox.
By late morning, strips of fox meat were skewered and roasting over ashy orange coals of smoking mesquite. The Old Man, calm and weak, walked among the palo verdes, drinking from the stream and looking for the honeycomb of the dead bee. Standing near the roasting strips of flesh was too much, so it was better to wander among the quiet trees.
By noon the meat was ready and at first he went slowly. He didn’t want to become sick from too much too fast. For the rest of the day he ate slowly and continued to roast more and more of the fox. It would keep for a few days.
As night fell, he looked out into the great desert he had come across.
I survived. I can return and accept the curse. It isn’t much of a curse. They will feed and take care of me. I will play my part. But as a salvager I am finished.
Maybe it is time to let that go.
Or I can continue on and try to find the town.
The dunes seemed nothing more than gentle curves and soft colors.
You tried to kill me. There was nothing in you. Nothing to take away. So what good are you? If I go across you again what could I find this time? Nothing. But if I find the town then maybe that is something, and if not I can pick up the Old Highway to the south and that will lead me back to the village.
But you will come from the east.
There is that.
He ate more fox and thought it might be nice with some tortillas. He set the rest of the meat to smoke in the coals throughout the night so that it would last for a few days more. Then he slept.
AT DAWN HE was up. He felt better. He drank from the stream and chewed a little bit of the dried fox meat.
I think I might go on a bit.
He spent the morning climbing up out of the stand of green palo verdes and onto the broken rocks of the mountain. When he gained the summit he looked east. The landscape sank away into a bowl deeper than the one he had crossed.
It will be hotter.
At the extent of his vision he could see mountains, jagged and gray.
Almost at the center of the bowl, halfway between himself and the mountains, he could see a collection of buildings. Too small to be the town he once knew.
There might be a map or a sign that might lead to the town.
By late afternoon the small mountain was far behind him. The going was mostly smooth and downhill. The heat reminded him of the bread oven back in the village.
Chapter 9
After the bombs there had been dreams. Dreams everything lost had come back. The dead might walk through the barroom door two years after the global car wreck. The survivors, drinking to forget, would put down their cups. All would be as it once was. The dreams after the bombs were like that.
The neon sign came stuttering to life in the twilight of the desert. The Old Man stopped in the smooth blown sand.
There is power here.
The sign showed a sleepy little boy, in nightgown and night cap drifting toward a bed. In rockets bursting script the words “Dreamtime Motel” loomed large, then recessed toward a universe of smiling faced stars. Vacancy, air-conditioning, and color TV were all available.
The cluster of buildings were merely an L-shaped motel complete with swimming pool and the blackened remains of a nearby gas station, its metal twisted in telltale strands away from where the pumps had once been.
The lights of the hotel came softly to life here and there where bulbs still burned.
The east is cursed.
He moved forward cautiously, remembering the pistol within his satchel.
The parking lot was gritty with the windblown sand of the years. Still, the cracks in it were nowhere near the rents and buckles of the main highway back near the village.
From the office, a man emerged wearing a Hawaiian shirt, his eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses.
“Room for the night, mister?” His voice the desiccated husk of a reptile. Used. Spent.
The Old Man remained staring.
If I am dreaming then this does not exist. Maybe the oasis of palo verdes did not exist. Maybe I am dying in the dunes still clutching the dead bee.
“Got room if yer lookin’.” Then the man with the mirrored sunglasses began to wheeze and laugh. After a second he said, “Have ever since before the bombs.”
The Old Man still standing in the twilight, his face illuminated by the flickering glare of the last wisps of neon, remembered the gun. His fingers, bony and old, adjusted the strap of his satchel.
“I got snake.” Mirrored Sunglasses moved forward. His body was long, though he wasn’t tall; the only roundness a potbelly that seemed more pregnant than fat. “You want snake for dinner?”
“What is this place?” croaked the Old Man.
Mirrored Sunglasses whirled, taking in the motel against the dying light in the west.
“This my hotel. Even before the bombs, I swear.” He seemed all out of breath and ragged at once.
“You got power.”
“Just a little ever’ night. Went solar before the bombs, but the panels ain’t doin so good these last few years. Got a well for water. Power ever’ night. No air-condition though. And snake. Lotsa snakes east of here.”
East is cursed.
“Where ya headed?”
“Into the town I thought used to be near here.”
“The town? Why ya wanna go there fer? Burnt down during the bombs.”
The Old Man was silent.
Still.
“Nothing left that way. All of it’s gone. Seen two clouds that week. First Phoenix then Tucson. Nothing there but death. Won’t be for another hundred years. Say where you come from?”
“West.”
“Really?”
“Three days to the other side of the dunes. On the Old Highway a couple days this side of the Great Wreck.”
“Never heard of no ‘Great Wreck.’”
They remained standing in the parking lot, the Old Man considering what was his and his alone.
“I’ll get the snake reheated. Et myself earlier, but I can get you some going.”
“That would be nice of you. Thank you.”
Mirrored Sunglasses turned and headed back into the darkened office mumbling, “Maybe afterwards you’d like to see the pool.”
The Old Man lowered his satchel to the ground.
How had this place remained? There was no sign of a town, other than the remains of the gas station. The road leading away from the motel seemed in better condition than the Old Highway near the village. It must have been new at the time of the bombs.
