John Adams - Wastelands 2

Fatha he said, “No soul, and you don’t get into Heaven, Boy.”

And I asked him, “How come I was born with no soul?”

And he told me, “The Good Gawd seen fit to leave the planting of it to me, child, and soon as I find you one, I’m gonna plant it right in there.” He tapped me on the forehead just so, like his sausage finger could do it too, put an honest-to-gawd soul right into my brain where it belonged.

“What do it look like?” I asked him.

“Why, that’s one there.” He pointed me at the punctured skull of a different man at a different time, one who’d come through this street—Main Street, Fatha calls it—in a gas-guzzling racer. He pointed his thick finger and I strained to see, but all that was there was blood and brains. “It ain’t right for you. What you need is an honest soul.”

That is what we pray for every night.

But now at this time Fatha he cries like he does whenever he’s taken a life, and I know why, he told me before. He’s afraid, you see, that he’ll have to kill every last man on this ugly old earth before he finds me what I need. The tears now they skid down past the rims of his goggles and slide into his big grey beard, covered up for now with his red scarf, the one he always wears when we’re outside. I’ve got one too, but it’s black.

“It ain’t your fault,” he told me once. “You didn’t know what you was doing. It ain’t no sin when it’s from ignorance.”

I didn’t know nothing about that. I just know Mama ain’t here no more, and if I ever want to see her again, Fatha’s got to do what he knows best.

“Come, Boy.” He turns away from this dead man and heads across the street to the brick building he says was a bank at a different time, a place that used to hold paper for folks who didn’t want to share it. “Time to eat now.”

I follow, and I hope it ain’t cat. I’m getting awful sick of cat.

Next day I’m sitting outside all covered up, smearing the ash on the sidewalk with my rear end, taking chunks of broken concrete and breaking them into smaller pieces to throw at the cars and listen to the hollow sounds they make. Ever since the nukes and the EMPs, long before I was born, these rusty old things been sitting here, blocking the road this way. Most all electrics are no good no more, Fatha says.

“What was they thinking?” He mutters a lot when he thinks back on the old days, when the world was green and the sky was blue. I can’t even imagine.

It’s middleday now and the sun’s burning bright and Fatha he’s taking his nap inside the bank where it’s cool and dark. Ain’t nobody ever tries to come through our town this time of day. Only a true fool would. You wait until dawntime or dusktime, that’s how you do. Never when the sun’s high, because it’s too hot and you can’t go around sweating out all your water when there ain’t much good water to be had.

That’s why I sit here in the shade while I sling the concrete and hear it go thunk like a bomb—like I imagine a good bomb to sound.

But there’s something buzzing this way now, and I know I should go roust Fatha because that is what I do whenever I hear somebody coming, yet I don’t because I know there can’t be anybody out this time of day. Would be suicide, Fatha says, and suicide won’t get you into Heaven, so who would go and do a stupid thing like that?

I hunker down and keep to the shade while sliding myself under the rusty old car with the dents in the side from my concrete. The ash is real thick down here, but my scarf keeps me from breathing it in, and besides I’m holding my breath anyway and waiting while the buzz gets louder in my ears. It don’t sound like that dead man’s motorbike from yesterday. That one chugged and Fatha called it a Harly. This one, I don’t know, but I can hear it come straight this way, and I can feel my heart thump with it.

The buzz grinds into town from the south and the sound changes like it’s speeding up and slowing down, and I know it’s weaving around the dead cars and the bodies inside them, and I want to see who it is this time, who would be so foolish to ride under the sun. I should go get Fatha, but no, it’s too late for that because I’d be seen—and besides, would he really want to take the soul of one so stupid?

I’m about ready to peek out from under the car when I hear the buzz falter a bit, then a big clatter-noise. A body goes sliding across the ashy street, a body my size, not like all them men Fatha’s had to kill up to now—I can’t even count how many. This one’s covered in rough brown leather and denim and a helmet and gloves and boots. And no crossbow to see.

So I crawl out from under the car and I go straight for the bank to wake Fatha—

But this stranger he’s heard me though I moved quiet and quick like a cat, and the black glass on his helmet faces me with my reflection in it. I freeze up.

“Hey,” I say before I know it.

He watches me with no words, like he’s as frozen as me.

“You hurt?” I notice his motorbike then, but I ain’t never seen anything like it. The tires they’ve got chunks to them, and they’re narrow with bigger rims than any I’ve seen, and there ain’t much at all to the chassis.

“My leg.” He gestures, and his voice is quiet but I hear fine.

“You want I could—” But I don’t want to get Fatha, and I wouldn’t know what to do with the red cross box anyhow. He always takes care of things when we hurt ourselves. “You bleeding out?” If so, it might bring the cats out from the shadows, and they’ve been mighty hungry lately.

The helmet shakes just a bit, and his hand waves toward his leg again under his other one, but I can’t tell if it’s broke. Only if I went up to him and checked for myself I’d know, but he might have some kind of weapon I can’t see, like a blade or some such, and if I come up too close to him he’ll like as not gut me open and leave me out there in the sun to fester with sores till I die.

“You can’t be out there too long, you know,” I say.

“Wasn’t planning on it. Mind sharing some of that shade?”

His motorbike’s still running, eating up his fuel, and I know he can’t be happy about it no more than he’s happy about his leg. I could shut off the engine while he drags himself out of the sun, unless he’s just “playing possum” like Fatha says. That’s why he’s always got his crossbow and shoots dead center in the back so they’re no trouble.

I beckon to this small man to join me, and I should go get Fatha and wake him and tell him we’ve got company—but I don’t want him to open up this one’s skull for me. This one, he’s my size. We could be friends.

He drags himself backward, legs trailing through the dust and ash, and I step quicklike out into the sun and hoof it over to his bike. I pick the thing up and kill the motor and I watch it grind down into quiet.

“Hell, you’re a strong one,” he tells me, scooting back onto the cool concrete in front of the bank.

I’m holding the motorbike up off the asphalt and it ain’t no trouble. Fatha he always says I don’t know my own strength.

I set the bike down and prop it up against the car with the dents in the side, and I look for my concrete chunks but now he’s sitting with them, this stranger, and he’s reaching for his helmet to remove it. I keep my distance, but I know I shouldn’t be out here in the sun, even with all the coverings I’ve got: hat, scarf, goggles, jacket, gloves—

He’s got his helmet off, and I see now I was wrong about him, dead wrong. Sure, he’s my size, but he ain’t nothing like me at all. He’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen, and he’s looking right at me with eyes like the bluest paint in all the world.