That's good to know.
Yes it is. When we're all gone at last then there'll be nobody here but death and his days will be numbered too. He'll be out in the road there with nothing to do and nobody to do it to. He'll say: Where did everybody go? And that's how it will be. What's wrong with that?
In the morning they stood in the road and he and the boy argued about what to give the old man. In the end he didnt get much. Some cans of vegetables and of fruit. Finally the boy just went over to the edge of the road and sat in the ashes. The old man fitted the tins into his knapsack and fastened the straps. You should thank him you know, the man said. I wouldnt have given you anything.
Maybe I should and maybe I shouldnt.
Why wouldnt you?
I wouldnt have given him mine.
You dont care if it hurts his feelings?
Will it hurt his feelings?
No. That's not why he did it.
Why did he do it?
He looked over at the boy and he looked at the old man. You wouldnt understand, he said. I'm not sure I do.
Maybe he believes in God.
I dont know what he believes in.
He'll get over it.
No he wont.
The old man didnt answer. He looked around at the day.
You wont wish us luck either, will you? the man said.
I dont know what that would mean. What luck would look like. Who would know such a thing?
Then all went on. When he looked back the old man had set out with his cane, tapping his way, dwindling slowly on the road behind them like some storybook peddler from an antique time, dark and bent and spider thin and soon to vanish forever. The boy never looked back at all.
In the early afternoon they spread their tarp on the road and sat and ate a cold lunch. The man watched him. Are you talking? he said.
Yes.
But you're not happy.
I'm okay.
When we're out of food you'll have more time to think about it.
The boy didnt answer. They ate. He looked back up the road. After a while he said: I know. But I wont remember it the way you do.
Probably not.
I didnt say you were wrong.
Even if you thought it.
It's okay.
Yeah, the man said. Well. There's not a lot of good news on the road. In times like these.
You shouldnt make fun of him.
Okay.
He's going to die.
I know.
Can we go now?
Yeah, the man said. We can go.
In the night he woke in the cold dark coughing and he coughed till his chest was raw. He leaned to the fire and blew on the coals and he put on more wood and rose and walked away from the camp as far as the light would carry him. He knelt in the dry leaves and ash with the blanket wrapped about his shoulders and after a while the coughing began to subside. He thought about the old man out there somewhere. He looked back at the camp through the black palings of the trees. He hoped the boy had gone back to sleep. He knelt there wheezing softly, his hands on his knees. I am going to die, he said. Tell me how I am to do that.
The day following they trekked on till almost dark. He could find no safe place to make a fire. When he lifted the tank from the cart he thought that it felt light. He sat and turned the valve but the valve was already on. He turned the little knob on the burner. Nothing. He leaned and listened. He tried both valves again in their combinations. The tank was empty. He squatted there with his hands folded into a fist against his forehead, his eyes closed. After a while he raised his head and just sat there staring out at the cold and darkening woods.
They ate a cold supper of cornbread and beans and franks from a tin. The boy asked him how the tank had gone empty so soon but he said that it just had.
You said it would last for weeks.
I know.
But it's just been a few days.
I was wrong.
They ate in silence. After a while the boy said: I forgot to turn off the valve, didnt I?
It's not your fault. I should have checked.
The boy set his plate down on the tarp. He looked away.
It's not your fault. You have to turn off both valves. The threads were supposed to be sealed with teflon tape or it would leak and I didnt do it. It's my fault. I didnt tell you.
There wasnt any tape though, was there?
It's not your fault.
They plodded on, thin and filthy as street addicts. Cowled in their blankets against the cold and their breath smoking, shuffling through the black and silky drifts. They were crossing the broad coastal plain where the secular winds drove them in howling clouds of ash to find shelter where they could. Houses or barns or under the bank of a roadside ditch with the blankets pulled over their heads and the noon sky black as the cellars of hell. He held the boy against him, cold to the bone. Dont lose heart, he said. We'll be all right.
The land was gullied and eroded and barren. The bones of dead creatures sprawled in the washes. Middens of anonymous trash. Farmhouses in the fields scoured of their paint and the clapboards spooned and sprung from the wallstuds. All of it shadowless and without feature. The road descended through a jungle of dead kudzu. A marsh where the dead reeds lay over the water. Beyond the edge of the fields the sullen haze hung over earth and sky alike. By late afternoon it had begun to snow and they went on with the tarp over them and the wet snow hissing on the plastic.
He'd slept little in weeks. When he woke in the morning the boy was not there and he sat up with the pistol in his hand and then stood and looked for him but he was not in sight. He pulled on his shoes and walked out to the edge of the trees. Bleak dawn in the east. The alien sun commencing its cold transit. He saw the boy coming at a run across the fields. Papa, he called. There's a train in the woods.
A train?
Yes.
A real train?
Yes. Come on.
You didnt go up to it did you?
No. Just a little. Come on.
