Chapter 4 #2
Rodney was hunched over the steering wheel, the corners of his lips tugging down. Don didn’t push, knowing Rodney was working toward something. Don could see it in the set of his shoulders, the way the muscles in his jaw twitched.
About ten minutes later, he stopped the RV, and put it in park. And then he sat back in his chair, breathing in, breathing out.
Don waited.
Rodney said, “I know what you’re thinking.”
“Tell me.”
“We should have done more.”
Don looked out the window.
“I know you think that. And maybe I do too. But now is the time to do what we’re supposed to do. Nothing else can get in the way of that.”
“I know,” Don said quietly.
“We promised. We have to show up for him.”
“I know that too.”
They sat in silence for a time.
Rodney said, “I wish…” He laughed, a low, bitter thing. “I wish things never had to be this way. I wish we were at home. I wish we were at home, and I can hear you singing in the garden through an open window. I’m inside—”
“—sitting on the recliner.”
“Sitting on the recliner, yes, fine. And it’s wonderful. It’s wonderful because we know what’s expected of us. But here … out here, I don’t know.” He sighed as he slumped in his seat. “We might not even make it. It was just an estimate of how long we have left. Maybe it’ll end today. Tomorrow.”
“We have to try,” Don said. “I couldn’t stand it if we didn’t.”
“I know,” Rodney said. “Doesn’t make it easier.”
“Nothing about him has ever been easy.”
Rodney looked at him. Don stared back. Rodney smiled quietly. Don nodded.
They moved on.
Before they came across the girl lying in the middle of the road, they hadn’t seen much of anyone.
Making their way through Iowa, they’d marveled at how flat everything was, how linear.
No hills or mountains interrupted the landscape.
Halfway through Iowa, a fierce storm blew in, winds whipping the spring blooms on flowers and trees.
The rain fell in sheets, sideways, the sky a mass of gray-and-black clouds, thunder rumbling loudly, lightning tearing through the sky.
Some houses with lights on, some houses darkened as if no one had lived there for years.
Cars, but not many. Once, they went a full hour without seeing any other vehicle.
But now a storm came in, rocking the RV side to side. They parked at an abandoned gas station, the windows cracked, the letters on the sign above the building reading: ICE LOTTO GAS REPENT WHILE YOU STILL CAN. GOD’S GRACE IS INFINITE.
They sat in the RV, pot bubbling on the small stove. Canned stew. Slightly stale bread. The last of their apples for dessert. And it was while Rodney was cutting the apples that Don said, “Don’t you think it’s funny?”
Rodney grunted without looking up at him, flicking out the apple seeds with the tip of his knife. He handed over a slice, and Don bit into it, the snap crisp.
“It’s funny,” Don said as he chewed. “This is probably going to be the last time I have an apple.”
The hand holding the knife trembled slightly.
“I like apples,” Don continued. “Red ones. Green ones. Pink ones. I read once they can make a single tree that has many different types of apples. Who did that? Why did they do it? I don’t know.
But I like apples. I like the way they taste.
The texture. And then I start thinking of everything I’ve never gotten to try. ”
“Like what?”
Don thought for a moment. “Snails.”
Rodney grimaced. “Out of everything, you pick snails?”
Don shrugged as he bit into another slice of apple. The wind moaned around the RV. “Some people like it. Maybe I would have too. You?”
“Ice cream.”
“You’ve had ice cream. Lots of it. More than you should.”
“But I haven’t had every kind,” Rodney said.
“Apple ice cream.”
“Snail ice cream.”
They laughed.
Rain splashed against the windshield. Thunder loud. Lightning bright.
“Where do you wish we’d visited?” Don asked.
Rodney said, “Italy. I always thought we’d make it. Eating the food. Drinking wine. Looking at old buildings.”
“In the countryside, a handsome man as our tour guide.”
“He’d flirt with you and I’d have to put him in his place.”
“You would, wouldn’t you? Giacomo, his name would be Giacomo.”
Rodney nodded. “Knock him to the floor.”
“My hero.”
“Tell him I may look like I’m old, but I can handle my own.”
“I’d tell you to stop being so ridiculous, that I could never be with anyone else.”
“And he’d cry and wail and beg, but you love me too much.”
“Unless he has a scooter,” Don said. “If he has a little pink Vespa, it’s over between us.”
“Duly noted. If that’s the case, he can have you.”
“I don’t want to miss things,” Don said.
“But I can feel it already, like an infection working its way through me. Apples. Apples. How stupid is that? I never gave apples a real thought in my life. And now, all I can do is wonder why I didn’t.
All I can do is think about apples. What else have I missed?
What else was right in front of me this entire time but I just …
ignored it? Ignored it because I assumed it was always going to be there, no matter what.
But they’re not because there won’t be anything left.
If it was just humans going, I could accept that.
I really think I could. It’s always felt like we were living on borrowed time.
Not as individuals, but as a species. If it was just humans, and the plants and animals were to live, I think …
I think I’d find peace in that. Knowing that one day, far, far from now, something will find an apple on a tree and eat it.
” He sucked in a shaking breath, eyes burning.
“But it’s not that. It’s everything. No more apples. ”
Rodney wrapped a hand around his shoulders, pulling him close. Don shook as tears leaked from his eyes. “Yes,” Rodney said into Don’s hair. “But at least I won’t have to watch you eat snails.”
Don choked on a laugh as he felt Rodney grin. He pulled back slightly, turning up his face. Rodney kissed his cheeks, his chin, the tip of his nose.
“We’ll sleep here tonight,” Rodney said as they looked out the window into the rain.
“In a little while,” Don said. “Let’s just … sit here, for a bit.”
And so they did.
If they’d gone north from Iowa, they’d have entered Minnesota.
They decided against it. Odds were firmly against them running into that family again, the ones who’d said they were going to try to survive in Minnesota.
Don could still picture John’s and Megan’s smiles, twisted up into a rictus.
She was pregnant, she’d said. John was thinking of ending things, he’d said.
So no, they didn’t go north. They continued west, crossing from Iowa into South Dakota.
Fewer people here, though Don wasn’t surprised.
South Dakota was a wide state that barely had anyone living in it.
Vast expanses of open land as far as the eye could see.
Mountains again, finally. Trees, too, so many trees.
A river wound its way alongside them for hours before disappearing into the foothills.
They managed to find an open service station.
A few cars in the parking lot, men drinking inside.
Not quite drunk, but on their way. They wanted to talk.
They wanted to ask if Rodney and Don had heard about the border with Mexico, how Mexican officials were turning Americans away.
“Even the end of the world is ironic,” one of the men said, much to the amusement of his friends.
They’d gotten lucky: Not much gas was left at the station.
No point in getting the underground tanks refilled, they were told.
Soon, no one would be alive to need it. The men allowed Don and Rodney to fill the RV, and the extra canisters they had.
When Rodney went to pay, the man behind the counter laughed at him.
“What am I going to do with money?” he asked.
“Not like I need it. You want granola bars? They’re blueberry.
I hate blueberry. Already ate all the chocolate ones, so. ”
They did not take the granola bars and thanked the men for the gas.
“Y’all be safe out there!” a man called after them, followed by hysterical laughter.
“Is it just me, or is everyone losing their minds?” Don asked when they were back in the RV.
“What do you expect them to do?” Rodney asked as the RV rumbled to life.
“Are we crazy?”
Rodney snorted. “Little late to be asking that, isn’t it?”
Don changed tack. “Do you think anyone else is doing what we’re doing?”
Rodney said, “I expect there’s many people trying to set things right.”
Thankfully, Rodney saw the girl first. Don was dozing in the seat next to him, not quite awake, not quite sleeping. He was in that hazy in-between space, the one where thoughts are sticky, muddled, translucent. The purr of the RV, the splattering remains of the storm, now a misty drizzle.
Then Rodney barked, “What the fuck?” and the RV shuddered as he slammed on the brakes.
Don’s eyes shot open, heart rabbiting in his chest. He looked around wildly. Still in the RV. Rodney in the driver’s seat. The windshield wipers going back and forth, back and forth.
“What is it?” Don asked breathlessly. “What’s happened.”
Rodney nodded. “Look.”
Don followed his gaze out the front windshield. The sun was attempting to break through the clouds, the light weak. Around them, water dripped from old-growth trees, landing on ferns and underbrush.
In front of them, blacktop bisected by a faded yellow line. And there, lying in the middle of the road on her back, a woman.
Though, perhaps not quite a woman. She looked young, a girl on the verge of womanhood, her hair wet and plastered against the ground. She wore a yellow dress and white slippers that looked like they belonged to a ballerina. Her eyes were closed. Don couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not.
“We have to help her,” Don said, going for the door.