Authors: George P. Saunders
So, that’s my story for now, and I’m sticking to it.
The Hindus got it right – reincarnation is a fact.
I’m here to stay for the time being – or however long this new Earth will allow any of us to remain alive and kicking (or flapping, depending on your point of view).
JACK
So I went into the small burg of Ashwood on December 21, following a pretty routine morning of personal calisthenics and then depressing attention to news on both the Internet and CNN. I had never believed in this first half of the new millennium I would hear news delivered in such 1950s Cold War verbiage. “Atomic attack” and “emergency procedures for heading to fallout shelters in case of a nuclear strike” were all stock characters out of semantics that dated back seventy years. Yet this was the talk of today, as the world two days ago prepared itself for self-annihilation.
I had for some time divorced myself from the political details of what was going so terribly wrong in the world. I do know it involved Iran, Israel, Pakistan, North Korea and Russia. Also, the Chinese had taken center stage in matters for some reason. I even heard a headline that Venezuela and Brazil was boasting of their “nuclear readiness” I never knew that anyone in South America had access to a nuclear bomb, forget about impending readiness to act or defend, depending on developing circumstances.
I was determined to get out of Eden, and any excuse would do. I told myself, initially, that I needed some small, critical piece of toolery for fencing … but then realized I had no fence to mend, at least not one that required hammer and nails. My security system was an electrical wall of interlacing electrified steel girders that encircled the entire mountain, empowered by two hydroelectric generators below ground level of the Dome facility proper. So there was no pretext for me to go into town for accessories lending themselves to fence-mending. Then I decided that I was short on bottled water – realizing a moment later that I had over a million gallons in potable water within Eden’s mass interior, so that incentive was hardly justified.
At last, I just said, fuck it: I’m going in to get a six-pack of Coors Light because I hadn’t had a Coors in a coon’s age and just bloody felt like one and was going stir-crazy in my iron lead shielded fortress of salvation.
I listened to my one and only CD of Johnny Cash in my Suburban for the thirty minutes it took me to hit town from Eden’s location, and found myself singing to the familiar lyrics:
“Burn, burn, burn, I’m in a ring of fire …”
Most of the time, that’s as far as I got, so lousy was my memory when trying to capture anything close to the correct lyric. I usually hummed the rest of that particular song and others, just to kill the monotony of seeing nothing but wasteland around me for half an hour.
I looked out over the barren landscape that surrounded my little slice of paradise. It seemed so lonely; I could imagine that after nuclear holocaust, the loneliness factor would only skyrocket exponentially. The road I traveled on was one of my own making, more a trodden path worn down by my Suburban during numerous trips to town over the past year, since Eden’s completion.
To the south of me there was very little in terms of habitation, until around St. George, Utah. To the west, after Ashwood, there was really only Las Vegas. Due east, if I flew by the crow route, I would hit the Air Force complex known as Area 51, source of countless silly urban legends revolving around UFO activity, but still a fairly active and for-real experimental flight facility for the United States Air Force. I saw a mushroom go up in that area on Blast Day, so imagine that Area 51 was a thing of the vaporized past. North, there was nothing in a straight line for fifty miles, except for Dr. Mathius’ little cult-haven known as The Children of Perdition Free.
I had met Dr. Mathius in town now and then when he came in with his entourage for supplies every few months. He had been an actual practicing M.D. at one time, so I heard tell, but had as of the last decade taken up the mantle of verifiable Messiah (verifiable by God’s mysterious and silent revelation to him at the turn of the century). Now he led a group of highly misguided followers numbering in the several hundred, in the most inhospitable part of the country short of Death Valley.
Mathius, in my book, was certifiable in his delusion, but what made him truly frightening is that he was always lucid, and never spoke in the disjointed, drunken-fool kind of speak-easy that many cult leaders traditionally were afflicted with. Our meetings were generally brief, at the town store, or the Ashwood’s only saloon, where he would await his various children to complete their shopping chores while he (the Messiah) would enjoy a Budweiser at a quiet table, preaching to anyone who would listen to his hogwash.
I arrived in Ashwood and should not have been terribly surprised to find an inordinate amount of out-of-towner activity; folks who had driven off the main interstate to stock up on supplies, just in case nuclear war might hit like inclement weather.
I found myself a parking spot in front of Tomfoolery’s Saloon and got out, glancing at the town’s one and only Shell gas station, more crowded than I had ever seen it. The atmosphere there was one of barely contained frenzy and panic; an argument had broken out between two men over who had next turn at a gas pump, and the small store annexed to the station was filled to capacity with shoppers. Cars were backed up to the road leading from the main interstate.
I walked into the bar, and sure as shit, there was Dr. Mathias, at a table, chatting with, of all people, little loony Aunt Sheila. They were absorbed in the only conversation that absorbed the world of late – impending world war. It was perhaps unfair of me to label Aunt Sheila as loony, inasmuch as the woman was quite intelligent, even if her conversational content was off the charts.
Mathias saw me, and gave me a small salute that seemed to say “hail well, misguided scientific one. You shall burn in the hell-fires of eternity’ for your self-absorption and commitment to your evil sciences.” I gave him a cursory nod, and thought I could escape with that, but Aunt Sheila called out to me in what I could only describe as a contained shriek.
“Howdy, Dr. Calisto,” she wailed. “Grab yourself a beer and take a chair for a bit, won’t you?”
I genuinely liked Aunt Sheila. For all of her old-fashioned folksy pretense, she was highly intelligent and shrewd. I never learned her first name; in town, I suspect, most folks simply knew her as Aunt Sheila as well.
I tried desperately for the love of Christ to find a reason to decline her offer, but I was out of sorts that day with a quick response of “sorry, I’m on the move today, Aunt Sheila” so I simply nodded and said, “sure.”
I saddled up to the bar and old Hank was tending drink as usual, his wall-mounted television blazing away with broadcasts on Fox News about the impending calamity of war and how it would not be averted, short of Godly intervention.
“Howdy, doc,” Hank said to me in his customary quiet voice. “What’ll it be?”
“Coors,” I said. “How goes it, Hank?”
“It clearly goes,” Hank said laconically, glancing at the television, then looked out to his very uncharacteristically crowded bar. “Doomsday in the air has made for booming business.”
“So I see,” I said, glancing around at generally anxious folks, young and old, most of them glued to the television screen.
“How goes all the experimenting out there with that rocket stuff you do? Found a way to get off Earth yet?”
“Would hope that it could be that easy. No, like your business, it goes,” I said, feeling almost impulsively to add “But what I’m mainly waiting for is all out-nuclear war on the 23
rd
of December. Kinda like everyone in this bar … and the world.”
The frosty beer, poured from tap, suddenly appeared. I paid Hank, adding my customary one dollar tip for a beer that cost only three dollars.
I looked to the table where Dr. Mathias and Aunt Sheila were sitting, and saw that she was again waving me over to chat and chew jaw.
I trundled over to the table, and took the only remaining chair.
“Morning, Dr. Calisto,” Mathias nodded neutrally.
“Morning, doc,” I said. I still gave the man what little respect remained in my soul for him by acknowledging him by a title that once held some honor.
Sheila dove in immediately. “Dr. Calisto, Father Mathias and I have had the most fascinating conversation. Of course, it’s all about the talk of war. Now I may sound like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind when she says ‘fiddle-dee-dee’ to the notion of the Civil War starting, but I declare that I do not believe a war will transpire. Why? Because I don’t think folks around the world are that stupid.”
I took a sip of beer and said, “I agree, Aunt Sheila. I don’t think a war will happen, either, but not because of people not being basically dumb. Folks are that dumb, and the history of Man pretty much makes that clear.”
“Then explain your conviction that war can be averted,” Dr. Mathias said. “You know my position on this matter. Scripture and my own personal visions through God’s blessing, deems that war will indeed transpire in 48 hours.”
Oh, fuck. What nonsense, I thought.
“Yes, I’m aware of your connection with the Almighty, Mathias,” I said with clear irritation. You’ll forgive me if I have my doubts. But to address the issue you raised, Sheila, I do believe there is a good chance of a limited nuclear exchange in the Middle East. I believe that’s inevitable. But I don’t think it will go much beyond that.”
“It will,” Mathias said with damning certainty. “And those who do not embrace the Lord before that time will be consigned to eternal torment.”
I feigned a sudden fascination with my wrist watch, and then my cell-phone, but did not respond. Nor did I need to because Aunt Sheila spared me the effort to retort to Mathias’ deranged proclamations.
“I’m a church-going woman myself, Father, as you know, but I just have to disagree with you. But then again, perhaps I interpret scripture in my own way. I don’t see our Lord as a mean old bastard, hell bent on the destruction of his most beloved creation – us.”
I snorted my beer in repressed laughter, and ended up choking on a gulp of suds which sent me into a minute-long laughing fit, which was responded to by Mathias as follows:
“Good lady, you are a very sweet soul. And because of that, here is my offer to you. You just drive an hour or so east on the main highway, then turn off on my exit, well marked, of course, and when the nuclear fires begin, you high-tail it out of town and come to the welcome embrace of your Father Mathias.”
Aunt Sheila smiled graciously at him. “Thank you, Father, I’ll keep that in mind. But I’d rather go into a ten dollar bet with you on my being right, and you being, mistaken, in your apocalyptic prediction.”
“Done!” Mathias responded good-naturedly, and then he and Aunt Sheila shook hands on it over a chuckle.
“My word, though, I would feel out of place on a … commune.”
“You would soon fit right in,” Mathias assured her. “We are well-provisioned and in an ideal spot to avoid most of the effects of the radioactive fallout.”
Though Mathias would be proved correct that World War III would happen two days before Christmas, he would be tragically wrong about the absence of devastating effects of the radiation on his cult homeland.
I finished my beer in a chug, and looked at my watch once again, then looked to Aunt Sheila.
“I must be going,” I said, looking from Sheila to Mathias.
“Ah, yes. Back to your mysterious facility borne out of the ungodly study of all things scientific,” Mathias said through an acrimonious smile.
“Yes, back to that fetid homestead, doc, immersed in the world of science. A world, I am constrained to point out, that you were once a part of as a board certified physician.”
Mathias’ smile evaporated as fast as a subatomic quark.
“That was before my enlightenment and transformation into a vessel for God’s greater plan.”
“Yes,” I said dully, having no wish today to spar with Mathias on his clear insanity. I stood and looked to Aunt Sheila.
“But if that war comes, Aunt Sheila, and the doc’s invitation is surprisingly not inviting when doomsday hits, just follow that beaten up dirt road by your store, directly east for half an hour, and you’ll come upon my neighborhood. I’ll keep a pot of coffee hot and ready until that day comes.”
Aunt Sheila laughed with genuine mirth. “To heck with the coffee, a nice toot of tequila would be more called for on the day of Reckoning, don’t you think?”
“I’d have to agree,” I said.
Mathias suddenly rose, and looked to both Sheila and myself. “You must excuse me now. I have matters that require my attention in town.”
He exited quickly.
I leaned in to Aunt Sheila, conspiratorially. “I think we upset the preacher.”
“Oh, yes, I’m afraid so.” Aunt Sheila looked after Mathias as he exited the bar, and she shook her head in wonder.
“Now how does a man get that crazy, doc?”
I chuckled again, but with zero humor. “You got me, Aunty.”
“You here in town for a beer run?”
I smiled at her. Word gets around quick about the colorful characters living in and around town. I was known as the borderline alcoholic recluse medical man to the East who made bi-monthly runs into town to drink or purchase Coors beer, while Mathias was the barely-tolerated nut case who ran his own mooney camp of religious whackos.