The Wasteland Saga

The Boy shook his head.

“Then I’m sorry. The words of man are overrated. Saint Maggie again.”

The shepherd took a crunchy bite from an apple.

“I speak too much.”

Then, “That’s why I’m here. I spoke too much when I shouldn’t have. But I love to talk. Love to hear the sound of my own voice. And the sounds of others for that matter. I love talk.”

There was more silence for a while.

“Still, my words are overrated.”

“Will you stay, or are you determined to go on to the south?”

The Boy rose.

“You will find nothing worth having there!” the shepherd’s voice rose in pitched urgency.

“You will find the worst of this world and the worst that the world that died had done to itself.”

The Boy began to stumble toward the road.

“If you go west you will find life. Some. But in the south there is nothing but horror. Trust me, stranger!”

As an afterthought the shepherd said. “East. Don’t go east into the desert. That is death for sure.”

The Boy considered the high sun. Orienting himself.

He turned toward the east.

The shepherd looked at the Boy, eyes wide with amazement and then horror.

A high hill, speckled by a few gnarled oaks, rose up to the east.

The Boy began walking toward the hill.

The shepherd murmured, “No.”

The tall grass brushed against the legs of the Boy and he could hear the shepherd hobbling behind him, breathing heavily in the still air.

“Stranger, don’t go that way. I told you it was death.”

They neared the base of the steep hill as the shepherd pursued the Boy.

“There lies a desert, and it will consume you. A wasteland. You will be no more. Saint Maggie said, ‘We must do our best. We must live despite life. God will do the rest.’ Stranger, you will find no love that way. Turn west and live.”

The Boy fell to his knees and began to climb the hill.

The shepherd fell to his knees.

“I will pray for you, stranger. I will pray for you.”

The shepherd was still praying, hours later, when the Boy reached the top of the steep hill and saw the line of hills beyond, descending into the vast bowl of the desert.

WHAT DO YOU find when there is nothing left, Boy?

The days were brutal and there was no water. The land fell into a furnace of burning hard-packed dirt and suffocating dunes.

You left me, Sergeant.

I had to, Boy. The world didn’t need me anymore.

I needed you.

And someone, Boy, someday will need you also.

She’s dead.

He fell to his knees and wept.

The flat desert stretched away in all directions.

Never give up, Boy. I told you. The world needs us.

You take everything with you.

It’s too much, too much to carry, you and the broken places and the evil of the world… and what… and Jin.

He stumbled.

Then he crawled.

How many days?

But to think of them was to think of the pain of all his days.

And still he crawled through the days, deeper and deeper into the burning wastes.

There can’t be anymore left of me. Tonight or tomorrow, and that would be the end of the whole mess that is the world, that is me.

In the night, the stars were cold and clear.

He watched them and thought of Jin.

I am done. There is nothing left in me with which to grieve.

He felt empty.

He felt hollow.

In the morning, the sun rose from a thin strip of light.

This is my last day.

You take everything with you.

He reached for the tomahawk.

It felt comforting. As though he had been loyal and faithful to it. As though it stood as a monument, a testament even, to all his loss and failure.

You take everything with you.

His left side would not move.

Curse you then, you never helped me in life and now you won’t go with me to my death. What good have you ever been?

Then…

I’ll drag you.

He watched the empty wasteland ahead and knew that he would die today somewhere within it.

Five days without water. That’s the most a man, a person, can go.

He dragged himself forward.

Sergeant Presley.

Horse.

The bearskin.

The pistol that was once a rifle.

Where did you lose that?

I cannot remember. Somewhere in the poisoned valley.

The Chinese colony at Auburn.

Escondido.

The Chinese at Sausalito.

Jin.

It was a lie.

What?

He had trouble remembering. He was crawling through chalky sand. He had been for some time.

It’s so hot now, but at least I’m not sweating.

I don’t think that is good.

It depends on what you want to accomplish.

What was a lie?

That you take everything with you. That was a lie.

Oh.

Where are they now?

Sergeant. Horse. Jin.

How can you take everything with you when it is all gone?

I was lied to.