As I Walk These Broken Roads

down the volume.

“Huh,” Wentworth shook his head.

“I wonder how much of it’s true… I pretty sure he’s right about some of it; but then other stuff is hard to believe. I want to know why he’s doing it — the guy’s gone to a lot of work just to talk about ancient history. What does he think he’s going to accomplish? How does he get the energy for the transmitter? And who does he think is listening? It’s crazy, man.”

“You ever had processed cheese?”

“No. What is it?”

“The Kraft cheese he was talking about. You’re not missing much. He was wrong about the date — it was invented during the First World War. But it does taste like shit and messes up your bowels, so he had that.”

Raxx let out a soft laugh, but neither of them said anything further. The rain’s oppressive drumming was building once more. They sat there in silence until Raxx spoke.

“I grew up in a commune full of people just like those Mennites.”

Wentworth looked over, eyebrow raised.

“That’s why I had so much insight into the way they think, that’s how I knew how to talk to them. From what I gathered, back in the day my people thought the bomb was going to fall and be a judgement on the unholy. So they all packed up and headed north, starting a commune up in a place called Algonquin.

“Anyway, I’m telling you this to explain why I was acting the way I did back in Hope. That’s the reason those Mennonites pissed me off so much — I’ve seen how that kind of arrogance, those lies, can hurt people. I don’t have much tolerance for mysticism — and yet every so often I find a bunch of it in me that I didn’t even realize was there.”

Wentworth nodded, though Raxx couldn’t see this, and though about what he’d said. “So how’d you get out of it?”

“You know, that’s something I ask myself. Could I have escaped if the right books and people hadn’t been there to help me? I like to think so, but I don’t really know. Maybe in the end we’re all nothing more than the products of our environment.

“My uncle’s helped a lot — Uncle Xavier. He gave me my first non-parable book. At the time, reading wasn’t forbidden, but it wasn’t exactly encouraged either, you know what I mean? Uncle Xavier didn’t care, though. I always thought he was funny growing up. He was always cheerful, but my parents and lots of the other adults didn’t like him. When I was young I thought it was because he wasn’t serious enough for them, the way an adult is supposed to be, but looking back at it now it was because he didn’t really believe in the superstition. Not that he broke from it, like I did, he just didn’t worry that much — and he wouldn’t let it stop him from collecting his own library.

“The man really loved books. He mostly collected fiction, and that’s what I got most of my education from. He even gave me my first copy of that book I bought you — Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance — I was probably too young at the time, I didn’t take care of it and it fell apart, but I’ve got it all down in my head, more or less.”

“I’ve almost finished it.”

“Oh yeah? What do you think?”

Wentworth chewed his lip. “You know, when you picked it up I thought it was a joke — a joke about how we met. But now… I’ve got a few thoughts, but they’re not sorted out yet. Ask me again when I’ve finished.”

“Okay. Anyway, thanks to my Uncle I started asking a lot of questions. At first my parents and the pastor were happy about it. I tried to help by figuring out better tools for harvesting the grain, or a better pulley for the well, all that stuff, but that only seemed to make it worse. They were concerned with my ‘materialism,’ they said. You know, it’s ironic, really. What they saw as my ‘materialism’ was really me trying to understand how the world works — what the underlying rules are, the theoretical; asking ‘Why?’ It was anything but materialistic. But they didn’t see it that way.”

“That’s what drove me to start exploring. Playing with old tech lying around home just got me in trouble, so I’d walk and think. That’s how I managed to find this baby here,” he patted the dashboard.

“The problems started when my Uncle bought this book from one of the merchants that came through occasionally, a guy who worked all the smaller communities, without an established trade route. He sold knickknacks, not hard supplies. We had most of what we needed to survive.

“The book he sold him was called Origin of the Species, written by a guy called Darwin. I never got to read it, but my Uncle told me about some parts — that’s where I got those ideas that I was telling you about back in Blackstock. The way he described it… it was just elegant; exciting. But see, that was the problem — my Uncle got all excited, and started talking to everybody about it.”

Raxx paused for a second and looked down at the steering wheel, a bitterness in his eyes. “All he wanted anyone to do was read it. He wasn’t even trying to argue with them, he just wanted them to share his excitement. The damned thing’s so obvious once you understand the principles… have you ever heard of it?”

Wentworth nodded, “I never read Origin but I read some derivate works. The Regiment had a lot of stuff buried in its archives that wasn’t official curriculum. And you’re right, the theory is elegant.”

Raxx nodded, “I’m glad to see you know what I mean. That’s what makes it so tragic. He was just trying to share something beautiful with them… but they wouldn’t even listen. They just had to keep believing…. I don’t know, whatever their myths and magic were.”

He took a long puff on his cigarette, “My Uncle was put to death for heresy — a lot like what Slayer did to that kid, when we were watching. That was when I figured it was time to go. By then I didn’t even know who anyone was anymore. My world was growing, while they were in this tiny little box. I’d stopped believing years ago, but it was his — murder — that made me realize that.”

He took a deep breath and pulled out another cigarillo. “Excommunicated, man… everything that I was, everyone that I knew. I’d become the polar opposite. Not even the polar opposite, I was a book written in a different language. I guess that’s why tech is so important to me. If I can start to understand that maybe I’ll be able to understand myself. ‘Cause sometimes I worry I’m going insane.”

He lit the cigarillo and stared out at the scattering rain. Wentworth checked his cigarettes. They were damp, but lightable. He pulled one out, delicately.

“Parents?”

“Still alive, I think. They’d hand me over to the priests if they knew what I did with this truck — let alone the rest of it.”

Betrayer, that what Jenkins had called Raxx in the interview room. He realized, now, that the hurt on the man’s face had been real. The term could just as well be levelled at himself. Raxx wasn’t the only one who’d been ‘excommunicated.’ But that didn’t really matter a damn.

Raxx wasn’t looking for empathy or validation. He wasn’t a subordinate either, it wasn’t Wentworth’s place to help crystallise his thoughts, to act as a historian and interpret his own past to him. Shared experience didn’t really matter. There was a deeper reason they’d been acting as partners for this long. Past be damned, it was the present that mattered.

“You and I think differently. I’ve noticed that when you’re explaining things, your thought patterns are in some ways opposite to my own, as if you’re attacking the same problem from a completely different angle. But somehow we both arrive at the same conclusion.” He puffed his cigarette. “Raxx, I’m pretty sure you would have arrived at your present stance regardless of who was around you. Because I’m standing here too, with a completely different background. For a long time I wondered if I was crazy… but then I figured that if some Mechanic I just met agrees with me, and his reasoning’s different, but not contradictory, well…” He looked over at the man, and the reflected light glinting off of his piercings. “Raxx, I don’t think either of us are crazy. We’ve got the other one to prove it.”

Chapter 29

Raxx drove as if the road were his enemy. A scowl creased his features while the transmission hummed low