Authors: Nick Cole
T
HEY GAVE THE
Boy and Horse a shack to sleep in for the night. It was small and it lay next to the road and the ocean, its only furnishing a baked clay brazier with hot coals. The wind beat at the shack in the night, and once, when he stepped outside to urinate, he saw a clear night sky and the moon riding high over the bay. He saw the dark shapes of birds crossing the waters in the night toward the broken shadows of the ruins of San Francisco.
He was so tired and so comfortable from the meal and the Pee Gee Oh that he almost could not sleep.
But then he did.
Later the Boy was not sure if he was dreaming or awake when he heard the hooves of another horse disappear off into the night.
H
E
AWOKE TO
the hands of the Weathered Man gently shaking him, giving him a cup of tea, beckoning him to come outside into the morning light.
The Boy wrapped himself in his bearskin and led Horse out into the gray mist, drinking the tea, his withered hand holding the lead. Horse would only go as far as the Boy went and when he stopped, so did Horse.
The Chinese soldiers wore the same uniform as their comrades in Auburn. They also wore cartridge belts about their waists and carried long rifles.
One of the soldiers turned from inspecting the concrete pad and the charcoal drawing.
Their leader, a bright-eyed thin man walked toward the Boy, speaking in Chinese. When he realized the Boy did not understand, he turned back to the others, speaking rapidly.
They mounted their horses and made signs that the Boy should come with them.
The Weathered Man nodded in agreement.
T
HE TROOP
OF
Chinese horse soldiers, along with the Boy and Horse, rode away from the village a short while later, following the coast road. Just before the village was lost to a bend in the landscape, the Boy turned back to look upon it once more.
I am always arriving and then leaving, he thought.
What would it be like to stay?
I wish you would speak to me again, Sergeant Presley. That you would say,
Ain’t nothin’ but a thang.
But the Boy knew it was only his own voice.
Knew it was what he wanted to hear.
Knew it was a lie he wanted to believe, which is the worst kind of lie we tell ourselves.
The Weathered Man was already out in the water with his rake.
He was working.
Long strokes through the water.
Only the rake betrayed the Weathered Man’s presence in the water and the fog. Then the troop passed the bend on the coast road and the Weathered Man was gone.
The troop rode on through the quiet morning mist. From a small inlet they could see a great shroud of fog clutching at the ruins of San Francisco, across the bay.
I can go there now, Sergeant; if you will not stop me I will go there.
He hoped the voice would come. He hoped it would tell him, as it had all the other times before, that he must avoid such places.
But it didn’t.
A
T A SMALL
farm, the troop leader dismounted and knocked at the door of a large spreading house. After words and more words, a small man, squinting and hobbling on bad feet, opened the door and came out. He peered at the Boy as if seeing him from across a great distance.
The leader spoke softly and then the small man walked forward, standing in front of the Boy.
“
Hey canna me?
” the small man said.
The Boy had no idea what this meant.
“
Whas goons runnna you?
”
The Boy shook his head to mean he didn’t understand.
“
Betcha ken rednecks?
”
After the third failure the small man turned back to the Troop Leader and shook his head sadly. The leader laid his hand on the small man’s shoulder and whispered something in his ear. Then he patted the old man and moved off to remount his horse.
They rode farther south and for a moment, the Boy thought they might be going to cross a massive bridge that spanned the entrance to the bay and landed in the ruins of San Francisco.
The Boy felt a surge of excitement.
The troop descended into a little cove that opened up onto the bay. A small city ran alongside the edge of the water and climbed up into the green heights overlooking Sausalito.
The edge of the bay was guarded by rock walls that ran upward over the green hills inland and down to the water’s edge. Soldiers with guns watched from the high walls as the troop came down the road toward the gate and disappeared into a spreading shantytown that threw itself along the mudflats and out into the calm waters of the bay. In the shantytown there were many Chinese mixed with others like himself. Like the outpost at Auburn.
There were buildings where the smells of food came wafting heavily out onto the muddy lanes. They passed stores where he could see objects waiting in the dark beyond the front porch. He smelled fish. He smelled the oil of the rifles. He smelled the same smell of the fields that he’d tasted in the Pee Gee Oh.
Children and women came out and watched as the Boy was escorted through the winding maze of the shantytown that lay at the foot of the gates to the city beneath the green hills and along the edge of the bay. Soon a small crowd followed at a distance.
The troop came to a large gate of polished dark wood set in a smooth white wall. Tall buildings rose up in stone and timber on the other side. But only their tops could be seen.
The leader dismounted and indicated the Boy should wait. Then he disappeared through an opened crack in the gate.
When the leader returned there were many other Chinese soldiers with him now. There was chatter, voices bouncing and bubbling, but over all pervaded a sense of seriousness, even concern.
An older Chinese soldier, steely eyed and with an air of command, his iron-gray hair streaked with black, came forward in highly polished leather boots.
He barked in Chinese at the Boy.
The troop leader interceded.
The older Chinese soldier watched the Boy.
The troop leader, who’d been inspecting the drawing that morning at the village by the water, turned to the Boy and waved his hands at the ground.
He wants me to draw what I drew at the village where they eat stones.
The Boy went to his saddlebag and took out his bag of charcoal.
He took out a long piece and sharpened it with his knife.
He looked at the troop leader, letting the thought, “Where should I draw?” form itself on his face.
For a moment the troop leader, intent and hopeful, didn’t understand.
Then he raised his hand to his head. He looked around.
He led the Boy to the smooth wall that encompassed the gate.
The Boy tried to see the attack.
The old courthouse.
The bodies.
The horror.
He limped forward until he could feel the wall blocking out all the watching pairs of eyes.
He raised the charcoal to the wall and made the first line. A curving arc that represented the dome of the old courthouse from Before.
At once there was a gasp from the crowd.
The older soldier began to speak in definite and harsh tones to the troop leader. But the troop leader gave a quick reply and silence returned.
The Boy looked back at the troop leader.
The Chinese soldier nodded.
The older soldier rolled his eyes toward the sky and then lowered them into a thin slit. Then, he too nodded at the Boy.
The Boy gave them war.
The Boy gave them the rain of arrows.
Fire and smoke.
The staring dead.
The Boy went big.
He showed the ashen-faced warriors, grim and determined as they worked their shining crossbow.
He showed them the Psychos in their mohawks and tattoos, their axes held aloft, reminding him even as he worked of winter trees in morning’s first light.
He showed them MacRaven in armor.
When he stepped back, he heard his foot make a sandy scraping sound as he dragged it across the flagstones of the pavement. It was the only other sound he’d heard besides his charcoal
scratch-scratch-scratching
against the high wall.
He turned.
He saw horror in their eyes.
They had known those people.
A woman wept. She was Chinese. She was pregnant.
The Boy thought of the Chinese snipers in the courthouse windows.
Soldiers and fathers in the same moment.
The older soldier walked forward.
His hand traced the broken dome.
He turned to the Boy and raised a hand pointing east, pointing over the bay, over the green hills and the river beyond, and the city it had swallowed and the fields and into the foothills and to the place of the drawing.
The Boy nodded.
He had destroyed their world more completely than MacRaven’s shining crossbow ever would.
“Name?”
The voice came from the side of the crowd, from near the open crack in the gate. It gurgled, as though erupting up through a sea of mud.
The Boy turned.
“Rank?” It was an old Chinese man. Fat. Tall. Bent. His gray hair was slicked back over his large liver-spotted and peeling head. He wore the old Red Chinese army uniform from Before. The Boy had once seen the tattered scraps of such a uniform. Sergeant Presley had shown him one they’d found inside a downed transport, crashed in a field outside Galveston.
You told me it was the uniform of a Chinese general, Sergeant.
For a moment the Boy had almost heard the voice of Sergeant Presley. It reminded him of hearing someone call out for a child at dusk, telling them to come home finally.
The Boy remembered that day. It had been cold. They’d huddled inside the creaking wreckage of the big transport crashed long ago in the plain of waving grass.
You told me, Sergeant, that they were Chinese airborne. You told me they tried to drop them all across North America after we nuked the Middle East. You told me they were all in on it, but they got scattered, shot down. Jumped by our few remaining fighters. Pockets of Chinese airborne everywhere. Even made a good defense in Reno. The map said so.
You told me that, Sergeant, and now I need you to tell me what to do.
“Serial number?” barked the old Chinese general, wearing the same type of uniform Sergeant Presley had shown him on that day they spent hiding in the wreckage.
Another uniform the same as this one.
Another Chinese general.
The Boy croaked, “I don’t . . .” It had been a long time since he’d spoken aloud.
“I speak . . . American,” said the old man, the Chinese general. He rolled forward on a crooked cane.
He probably was once very strong, but now he moved worse than the Boy.
“I am General Song. I defeated the American Army.”
The Boy lowered his eyes to the sandstone pavement.
I am glad . . . and then he was about to think, ‘that you are dead, Sergeant Presley.’
But he stopped.
Behind the Chinese general stood a girl. She was young. His age. Chinese.
She was beautiful.
And . . .
She looked at him.
Without horror.
Without fear.
Without pity.
She was beautiful.
H
E WANTED TO
see her again.
He wanted to be left alone by all these Chinese.
He wanted to be left alone so that he might draw her.
He wanted to draw the way she had looked at him.
All about him, the Chinese were in an uproar.
Suddenly there was activity and work. Riders were dispatched to the east. A woman gave Horse an apple. The Chinese general and the girl disappeared behind the massive gate, the old soldier casting his steely gaze back upon the Boy.
She stood before the Boy, even though she was gone now.
She looked at him.
The troop leader led him to a shack by the water of the bay. The troop leader tied Horse to a hitching post nearby and pointed toward the shack.
Stay.
The Boy went inside. It had a table, a chair and a cooking pit. Stairs led to a loft with a pallet and blankets. Out the back door was a small dock and the bay beyond where tiny slender boats bobbed in the windy afternoon.
Toward evening he smelled fire. Then food cooking.
The troop leader returned with a plate of chicken, chilies, and garlic. There was a small wooden basket full of rice.
They both ate at the table.
The sun was setting when the troop leader went out for a moment and returned with a bundle of clothing. He draped the pieces over the chair.
Overalls made of wool.
A rubber trench coat with a high collar.
Rubber boots.
A hooded gas mask.
He took out a slip of paper.
“Please,” he began to read haltingly from the paper, “put . . . these . . . on . . . and . . . come . . . with . . . me.”
The Boy brought Horse inside the shack. The troop leader gave a pained look, then seemed to accept this. He left and returned with hay, setting it down in front of Horse.
The Boy nodded to himself and began to dress in the items.
He had seen them before.
Sergeant Presley had worn similar gear when he’d entered the ruins of Washington, in the District of Columbia.
The clothing made him feel warm, and within moments to the point of suffocation.
When the Boy came to the mask he donned it, unsure if he had done it properly, trying to remember how Sergeant Presley had worn it. The patrol leader went behind the Boy and pulled the straps of the mask tightly, jerking them almost. Then he patted the Boy’s shoulder.
The Boy looked out through the steamy eye holes.
He could hear his own breathing.
He tucked his withered left arm into the pocket of the trench coat and made to take up his tomahawk but the leader shook his head.
The Boy placed the tomahawk on the small wooden table.
Then they left, stepping outside into the twilight of early evening. From behind the soft-lit windows of the shantytown, the Boy could hear, muffled by the hood of the gas mask, the low murmur of voices.
Someone cackled.
There was distant laughter.
Someone played long whining notes on a lone violin, then repeated them.
Dogs barked.
They arrived at the shining wooden gate. Two sentries stood aside as the massive portal swung open.
Beyond the gate they found a long, empty street. Large houses with stone exteriors, polished wood trim, and sloping rooftops lined the street, which looked out onto a park and the open bay beyond. At the end of the street the water of the bay glimmered softly in the night behind a low wall. Torches guttered before each house along the quiet street.
Through the mask the Boy could smell the heavy scent of jasmine. A smell that reminded him of Sergeant Presley and their days passing though the South.
He thought of the map.
It was still in its secret pouch inside the bearskin.
He thought of his tomahawk and said to himself, “Might not get it back,” as though Sergeant Presley were warning him. But still, it was just his own voice.
They stopped at an old building from Before. It rested on the far side of the road, standing on pillars that rose up out of the lapping waves. The Chinese soldiers, and others more finely dressed than the dwellers of the shantytown, were gathered about its steps. A hush fell over the small crowd as the troop leader with the Boy in tow, approached.
Inside, great glass windows opened up onto a view of the wide bay and the shadowy city lying in ruins beyond its waters.
There was the Chinese general.
The Old Soldier.
A group of Chinese, dressed in soft clothing that caught the flickering light of candles, stood at the far end of the room.
They held fans over their mouths.
They watched the Boy with sideways glances, murmuring to one another.
T
H
E GIRL WAS
there too.
She watched him from the farthest corner. She watched him from just behind the Chinese general.
The Boy sat on a stool in the center of the room, as he was directed, then the Chinese general came forward, standing halfway between the Boy and the audience.
“I am General Song. Do you remember that we met earlier? Outside the gate.”
The Boy nodded.
The general smiled. Pleased. As if his greatest fear had been that the Boy might have forgotten their earlier meeting.
“Our governing council”—the general stopped and indicated those who stood behind him, pressed against the far wall, fans covering their mouths—“would like to ask you a few more questions, if that is possible.”
“I thought you were their leader,” said the Boy.
The general smiled.
“I am no longer . . . I am now merely a scholar who knows a little more of the past than most because of my military service, and only because I lived through it.”
“I will answer what questions I can,” said the Boy.
“Has our outpost, the one you drew—has it been destroyed?”
The Boy remained silent.
“The place you drew. Did anyone survive?”
The Boy spoke through the mask, his voice muffled. The insides of the mask were slick with sweat and heat. Mist clung to the lenses.
“I didn’t understand you. Could you please say that again? I’ll come closer,” said the Chinese general, and when he did he asked the same question again.
“I don’t know,” replied the Boy. “I doubt that anyone who remained there could have lasted much longer.”
The Chinese general turned back toward the audience at the far end of the room and spoke in their language. The people in the audience murmured among themselves and then someone spoke above the others. The Chinese general turned back to the Boy.
“And how is it that you survived?”
“I escaped.”
And thus a pattern formed. The general spoke in Chinese. The audience murmured. Someone spoke. The general asked a new question.
“Where did you come from?”
“The east.”
“Who are your people?”
“I don’t have any.”
“How far east?”
“A place that was once called Washington Dee Cee.”
“What is there now?”
“A swamp.”
“Who destroyed the outpost, I mean the place that you drew?”
“A man named MacRaven. He has an army of tribes.”
“How big?”
“More than you have in all the soldiers I have seen who carry your rifles.”
“The characters on your rifle indicate it was given to a man who was a known skin trader. What has become of this man and how did you acquire his rifle?”
“He rescued me from lions in the high desert beyond Reno. We fought together on the walls of your outpost. He did not survive and I took his rifle when I escaped.”
“Will this MacRaven the barbarian come here?”
“I don’t know.” Then, “If I were you I would plan for him to. He seemed that sort of man.”
“How do we know you are not part of this MacRaven’s barbarian army and that you yourself didn’t kill the owner of the rifle and come here as a spy or a saboteur?”
“I know ‘spy.’ I am not that. The other word I do not understand.”
“A destroyer. A terrorist.”
“I am not a terrorist.”
“And how do we know you are telling the truth?”
The Boy stopped for a moment. He was hot. Sweat was dripping down the inside of his mask. He moved to take off the mask and the Chinese general lunged forward with sudden vigor and command.
“Do not take that off! It is forbidden here for you to remove your mask.”
The Boy could feel his audience pressing themselves farther away from him, toward the back of the room.
The Boy lowered his hands from the mask.
The general walked closer. “I am sorry,” he said softly, his eyes speaking an unspoken message of friendliness. “They do not understand.”
“And why,” began the general again, “should we trust your account?”
The Boy stared for a long moment at the crowd surrounding him. When his eyes rested on the girl he forgot everything he’d intended to say.
He forgot . . .
. . . everything.
When he was reminded of the question by a gurgling cough from the Chinese general, he spoke.
“I don’t know why you would trust me.”
The audience murmured at the translation.
A discussion started.
“May I ask a question?” said the Boy.
Silence.
The general walked back toward the Boy.
“Ask.”
“What has become of I Corps?”
The general did not translate.
His face fell.
His mouth opened.
His shoulders slumped.
He seemed suddenly older.
The general shook his head to himself as if finishing an argument he’d started long ago and lost many times since. Then he looked at the Boy.
“They are no more.” And, “I know that for certain.”
There was no pride in his voice. No triumph. No satisfaction.
But there was guilt.
There was shame.
“When I was young I thought it would be different,” said the Chinese general very plainly. “I thought only of victory.”
The general sighed heavily.
“I know differently now.” He looked at the Boy, maybe beyond the Boy. “I am responsible.”
“You were there?” asked the Boy. “At the end of I Corps?”
The general whispered, “Yes.”
“If the man who brought me here,” the Boy indicated the troop leader, “would return to my things and bring me the bearskin I wear . . . I have something for you.”
Orders were given and the discussion among the Chinese renewed. All the while, the general watched the Boy and waited for the return of the requested bearskin.
I have given away all my intel, Sergeant. I know that is not what you taught me to do. But what good is it to anyone, now that all of you are dead?
There was no reply.
The bearskin arrived and the Boy laid it out and retrieved the map from inside the hidden pouch.
Sergeant, I’m doing this so that maybe they’ll trust me. I’m doing this so they’ll be ready for MacRaven when he comes. I remember what we both saw outside Oklahoma City.
The Boy stood.
He raised his right arm and saluted the Chinese general.
He held out the map.
Tell them who I was, Boy.
Tell them I made it all the way, never quit.
Tell them there’s nothing left.
“There’s nothing left,” said the Boy.