John Adams - Wastelands 2

He soberly counted out a few paper bills, then handed back the rest of the worthless currency. “And who are you writing to?” Gordon asked Abby as he took the letter. He felt as if he were playing Santa Claus, and found himself enjoying it.

“I’m writing to the university. You know, at Eugene? I asked a bunch of questions like, are they taking new students again yet? And do they take married students?” Abby blushed. “I know I’d have to work real hard on my reading to get good enough. And maybe they aren’t recovered enough to take many new students. But Michael’s already so smart… and by the time we hear from them maybe things will be better.”

“By the time you hear…” Gordon shook his head.

Abby nodded. “I’ll for sure be reading a lot better by then. Mrs. Thompson promises she’ll help me. And her husband has agreed to start a school, this winter. I’m going to help with the little kids.

“I hope maybe I can learn to be a teacher. Do you think that’s silly?”

Gordon shook his head. He had thought himself beyond surprise, but this touched him. In spite of Abby’s totally disproportioned view of the state of the world, her hope warmed him, and he found himself dreaming along with her. There was no harm in wishing, was there?

“Actually,” Abby went on, confidentially, twisting her dress in her hands. “One of the big reasons I’m writing is to get a… a pen pal. That’s the word, isn’t it? I’m hoping maybe someone in Eugene will write to me. That way we’ll get letters, here. I’d love to get a letter.

“Also”—her gaze fell—“that will give you another reason to come back, in a year or so… besides maybe wanting to see the baby.”

She looked up and dimpled. “I got the idea from your Sherlock Holmes play. That’s an ‘ulterior motive,’ isn’t it?”

She was so delighted with her own cleverness, and so eager for his approval, Gordon felt a great, almost painful rush of tenderness. Tears welled as he reached out and pulled her into an embrace. He held her tightly and rocked slowly, his eyes shut against reality, and he breathed in with her sweet smell a light and optimism he had thought gone from the world.

“Well, this is where I turn back.” Mrs. Thompson shook hands with Gordon. “Down this road things should be pretty tame until you get to Davis Lake. The last of the old loner survivalists that way wiped each other out some years back, though I’d still be careful if I were you.”

There was a chill in the air, for autumn had arrived in full. Gordon zipped up the old letter carrier’s jacket and adjusted the leather bag as the straight-backed old woman handed him an old roadmap.

“I had Jimmie Horton mark the places we know of, where homesteaders have set up. I wouldn’t bother any of them unless you have to. Mostly they’re a suspicious type, likely to shoot first. We’ve only been trading with the nearest for a short time.”

Gordon nodded. He folded the map carefully and slipped it into a pouch. He felt rested and ready. He would regret leaving Pine View as much as any haven in recent memory. But now that he was resigned to going, he actually felt a growing eagerness to be traveling, to see what had happened in the rest of Oregon.

In the years since he had left the wreckage of Minnesota, he had found ever wilder signs of the dark age. But now he was in a new watershed. This had once been a pleasant state with dispersed light industry, productive farms, and an elevated level of culture. Perhaps it was merely Abby’s innocence infecting him. But logically, the Willamette Valley would be the place to look for civilization, if it existed anywhere anymore.

He took the old woman’s hand once again. “Mrs. Thompson, I’m not sure I could ever repay what you people have done for me.”

She shook her head. Her face was deeply tanned and so lined Gordon was certain she had to be more than the fifty years she claimed.

“No, Gordon, you paid your keep. I would’ve liked it if you could’ve stayed and helped me get the school going. But now I see maybe it won’t be so hard to do it by ourselves.”

She gazed out over her little valley. “You know, we’ve been living in a kind of a daze, these last years since the crops have started coming in and the hunting’s returned. You can tell how bad things have gotten when a bunch of grown men and women, who once had jobs, who read magazines—and filled out their own taxes, for Heaven’s sake—start treating a poor, battered, wandering play-actor as if he was something like the Easter Bunny.” She looked back at him. “Even Jim Horton gave you a couple of letters to deliver, didn’t he?”

Gordon’s face felt hot. For a moment he was too embarrassed to face her. Then, all at once, he burst out laughing. He wiped his eyes in relief at having the group fantasy lifted from his shoulders.

Mrs. Thompson chuckled as well. “Oh, it was harmless I think. And more than that. You’ve served as a… you know, that old automobile thing… a catalyst I think. You know, the children are already exploring ruins for miles around—between chores and supper—bringing me all the books they find. I won’t have any trouble making school into a privilege.

“Imagine, punishing them by suspending ’em from class! I hope Bobbie and I handle it right.”

“I wish you the best of luck, Mrs. Thompson,” Gordon said sincerely. “God, it would be nice to see a light, somewhere in all this desolation.”

“Right, son. That’d be bliss.”

Mrs. Thompson sighed. “I’d recommend you wait a year, but come on back. You’re kind… you treated my people well. And you’re discreet about some things, like that business with Abby and Michael.”

She frowned momentarily. “I think I understand what went on there, and I guess it’s for the best. Got to adjust, I suppose. Anyway, like I said, you’re always welcome back.”

Mrs. Thompson turned to go, walked two paces, then paused. She half turned to look back at Gordon. For a moment her face betrayed a hint of confusion and wonder. “You aren’t really a postman, are you?” she asked suddenly.

Gordon smiled. He set the cap, with its bright brass emblem, on his head. “If I bring back some letters, you’ll know for sure.”

She nodded, gruffly, then set off up the ruined asphalt road. Gordon watched her until she passed the first bend, then he turned about to the west, and the long downgrade toward the Pacific.

The barricades had been long abandoned. The baffle wall on Highway 58, at the east end of Oakridge, had weathered into a tumbled tell of concrete debris and curled, rusting steel. The town itself was silent. This end, at least, was clearly long abandoned.

Gordon looked down the main street, reading its story. Two, possibly three, pitched battles had been fought here. A storefront with a canted sign—emergency services clinic—sat at the center of a major circle of devastation.

Three intact panes reflected morning sunlight from the top floor of a hotel. Elsewhere though, even where store windows had been boarded, the prismatic sparkle of shattered glass glistened on the buckled pavement.

Not that he had really expected anything better, but some of the feelings he had carried with him out of Pine View had led to hopes for more islands of peace, especially now that he was in the fertile watershed of the Willamette Valley. If no living town, at least Oakridge might have shown other signs conducive to optimism. There might have been traces of methodical reclamation, for instance. If an industrial civilization existed here in Oregon, towns such as this one should have been harvested of anything usable.