Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalipse

I deliberately turn my back. I go to the main room, light the lamp with the sparker, keeping my back to the bedroom door. I hear him come in. I turn and get a good look.

Pieced-together hat, long scraggly hair hanging under it. I can’t tell if he’s a brown man or just weather-beaten, sunburned, and dirty. A full beard with grit in it. Eyes as black as the enemy’s always are. Eyebrows just as thick as theirs. He has a broken front tooth. Nowadays that’s not unusual. Nobody to fix them. He has a greenish look under his tan and dark circles around his eyes. If he thinks he isn’t sick he doesn’t know much.

"You are the enemy. And you’re half-dead already."

There’s a chair right beside him, but he sinks sideways to the floor. Ends up flat on our worn linoleum. If he thinks he’s still fighting the war, I should kill him now while I have the chance. He looks such a mess and smells so bad I’m almost ready to kill him just for those reasons alone. After Mother died I thought I was finished with disagreeable messes.

"Hide me. Just for tonight. I’ll leave in the morning."

"Are you crazy?" I kneel beside him. "You’re the one killing people. I should kill you right now."

He’s trying to prop himself up against the wall. I don’t want to touch him but I grab his shirt front to help him and the rotten cloth rips completely out.

"You stink something awful. And why would I think you won’t kill me? You’ve been killing everybody else."

"I don’t have a weapon."

"Strip."

"What?"

"Take those filthy clothes off. I’ll burn them. I’ll bring you a basin to wash in." (And I’ll find out if he has a weapon.)

He hasn’t the energy to undress or wash. I hate to touch him but I do it. I’m used to it. Mother was a mess as she was dying. (At the end I sprinkled pine needles all over but it didn’t help much.) I thought that was the last of that sort of thing I’d ever have to do. I thought I was free. But, all right, one more thing. I wash him and dress him in my brother’s old clothes, and… what then? If I kill him, the town will be grateful.

At least his body is entirely different from Mother’s, thin and strong and hairy. It’s a nice change. If he wasn’t so smelly I’d enjoy it. Well, I do enjoy it. He’s half asleep through it all.

I burn his clothes in our little stove. After I’ve washed him, I feed him jerky broth with an egg in it, though I keep thinking: Why waste my egg on him? He falls asleep right after he’s finished the broth. Slides down the wall flat out again, in what seems more a faint than a sleep.

I decide to shave him and cut his hair. He won’t notice. If he’d been more conscious I’d have asked him if he wanted a moustache or a little goatee but I’m glad he isn’t. I have fun with different haircuts, different sideburns, smaller and smaller moustaches until there’s none. Hair, too. I take off more than I meant to, except what does it matter, he’s a dead man.

Not a very handsome man whatever way I fixed his hair and beard, though along the way there were some nicer stages-better than what I ended up with. I finish by shaving him. Also not a good job. I make nicks. Where I shaved his beard, his skin is pale. His forehead, where his hat was, is pale too. There’s only a sun-browned strip across his face just below his eyes. I like the maleness of him no matter that he’s ugly. I don’t mind his broken tooth. We’re all in the same boat as to teeth.

I fall asleep at the kitchen table, right in the middle of thinking up ways to kill him. Also thinking about how we’ve all changed-how, in the olden days, I’d not ever have been thinking things at all like that.

In the morning he seems some better-well enough for me to help him stagger, first to the outhouse, and then into my brother’s room. He keeps feeling his face and hair. I stop at the hall mirror and let him take a look. He’s shocked. He has a kind of wet cat/plucked chicken look.

I say, "Sorry." I am sorry… sorry for anybody who gets their hair cut by me. But he should be glad I haven’t slit his throat.

He stares at himself, but then says, "Thank you." And so sincerely that I realize I’ve made him the best disguise there is. He said, "Hide me," and I did. Nobody will take him for one of those wild men now.

I prop him up on the pillows of my brother’s bed and bring him milk and tea. He looks so much better I wonder… If he’s not going to die on his own, I’ll have to think what to do with him.

"What’s your name?"

He doesn’t answer. He could say anything. I’d have believed him and I’d have had something to call him by.

"Tell me a name. I don’t care what." He thinks, then says, "Jal."

"Make it Joe."

I don’t trust him. But if he has any sense at all he knows I’m the only one can keep him safe. Though nobody has much sense anymore.

"Everybody got tired of the war a long time ago." I bang my cup down so hard that my tea spills. "Haven’t you noticed?"

"I swore to fight to the death."

"I’ll bet you don’t even know which side is which anymore. If you ever did."