Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalipse

What news, though? In the morning (the chair hasn’t fallen), we make some up. Carson City is as empty and rat-infested as our town. (It’s a good bet it really is.) I remember an airplane (I think it was called the gossamer condor) that flew by the propeller being pumped by a bicycle and doesn’t need gas. It can’t go far or we’d have seen it down here. Joe can say he’s seen it.

He says, "How about an epidemic of a new disease passed on by fleas? It hasn’t reached here yet." He says, "How about, way up in Reno, they found a cache of ammunition so they can clean up their old guns and use them again?"

I give him news about Clement to tell people. I’ll say that’s another reason Joe came to me first-to give me news of my brother. (I think I made up that news because I know my brother’s dead. Otherwise I’d not have mentioned anything about him. I’d keep on thinking he’s out in our mountains as one of the crazies, but I don’t think I ever really believed that. I just hoped.)

Once he takes my hand and squeezes it-says how grateful he is. I have to get up again, turn my back. I wash our few dishes, slowly. I’m so flustered I hardly know what his hand felt like. Strong and warm. I know that.

Lots of good things happen in those town meetings. We give each other our news. We have all kinds of helping committees. In some ways we take care of each other more than we did before the war. People used to bring in their deer and wild sheep and share the meat around, except there’s less and less wild game and more and more mountain lions. They’re eating all the game and we’re not good at killing lions. I’ll bet Joe would be, with his crossbow.

So I bring him to the meeting. Introduce him. They crowd around and ask questions about all their favourite spots, or places where they used to have relatives. He’s good at making stuff up. Makes me wonder, was he once an officer?

Or did he act?

I admire him more and more, and I can see all the women do, too. He could have any one of us. I’m worried he’ll get away from me and I’m the only one knows who he really is. Whoever gets him in the end will have to be careful.

He’s looking pretty good, too, horrible haircut and all. My brother’s blue farmer shirt sets off his brown skin. It’s too large for him, but that’s the usual.

The women have been out at the bird nets and had made a big batch of little-bird soup. I was glad they’d made that instead of the other.

There’s a Paiute woman who comes to our meetings and reports back to the reservation. She’s beautiful-more than beautiful, strange and striking. I should have known. At his first view of her you can see…both of them stare and then, quickly, stop looking at each other.

Later he sits drinking tea with several women including the Paiute. They all crowd around but I saw him push in so that he was next to her. The tables are small but now nine chairs are wedged in close around the one where he sits. I can’t see what’s going on, but I do see her shoulder is touching his. And their faces are so close I don’t see how they can see anything of each other.

I sneak away and run home. I wish I’d saved his smelly, falling-apart clothes. I wish I’d saved the dirty, tangled hair I cut off, but I burned that, too. I do find the old hat. That helps them to believe me. I bring the crossbow. It also helps that he tries to get away.

They hung Joe up in the depository. I told them not to tell me anything about it. I’d rather not know when we get around to using him.

Ginny Sweethips’ Flying Circus by Neal Barrett, Jr.