John Adams - Wastelands 2

“I don’t bite,” he says and sets the helmet in his lap, leaning back against the glass double doors. When Fatha wakes up, he’ll come straight through there. “You got a name?”

Of course I do. Fatha calls me Boy because that is what I am. “What are you doing here?”

He shrugs slim shoulders. Mine are bigger. “Passing through. You alone here?”

“No.” I point past the doors at his back. “Fatha he’s here, and you’d best be gone before he comes.” Then I really give him a good long look, keeping my distance. There ain’t no beard on his face, and it’s a narrow face, one that wouldn’t look good with a beard anyways. He must be my age or so. And his hair, it’s so wavy and long and red like a copper penny, clean like he must wash it every other day. “What’s your name?”

“Gwyneth,” he says, and it don’t sound like no man’s name I’ve ever heard, but I’ve only heard the names Fatha reads to me from his big book, ones like David and Joseph and Moses. “Call me Gwyn. So, it’s just you and your dad here, that it?”

It’s always been Fatha and me and nobody else since Mama, and the ones who pass through don’t go no further. But I don’t tell Gwyn this; he wouldn’t understand; at least I don’t think he would.

“You got a soul?” The sun it’s burning through to my scalp now and I can’t stand out here much longer, but I don’t want to be gutted like no dumb cat neither. “In here?” I tap the side of my head.

Gwyn he chuckles, and it sounds like the music Fatha plays on his eyepad on Sundays when he fires up the generator for our weekly devotion time, high and clear and so pretty, and I want him to laugh some more soon as he’s done.

“So that’s where it is? I’ve always wondered.” He shakes his head, and the copper locks sway back and forth and I want to run my fingers through them. They must feel smooth like Mama’s old silk dress Fatha sleeps with. I felt it once when he wasn’t looking. “I don’t know, kid. Maybe none of us have souls anymore. What do you think of that?”

If that was true, I wouldn’t be the only one kept out of Heaven, that’s what I think. But I don’t tell him.

“You got any food around here?” Another chuckle, just as pretty as before. “What am I saying, of course you do! You’ve got this whole town to yourselves, right?”

Just us and the cats, that’s all. “I’ll go and get you some grub.” I make to approach him and the doors but remember the back of the bank, the emergency door, and the key I wear around my neck under my jacket. “Don’t you go anywhere.”

“No chance of that.” Gwyn motions toward that leg of his again.

I take off full-tilt around the building and close my eyes with a deep sigh once I’m in the shade of all that dusty brick. I come round to the back where the solid steel door faces a whole lot of nothing out beyond the vacant lot, dry hills grey with ash and what looks like little dots lined up on the ridge way out west. Squinting, I can’t quite make out what they are, too far away.

The key comes out easy once I’ve got my jacket unzipped and I slip it into the lock, knowing there are plenty of protein bars down in the basement where it’s cool, locked up so the cats don’t get to them. I’ve got the door open wide when I hear the blast, a sound more like a gawd-awful bomb than any of my concrete chunks against that dead car. I never heard nothing like it, but I know it ain’t good, so I run inside, past the offices and vaults and the cot where Fatha should have been sleeping. I run out to the big room in front where folks used to trade their paper, and I stop with my heart pounding like thunder in my ears.

Fatha he stands out front of the glass doors and they’re open now, and he’s got his crossbow trained on Gwyn who’s got what looks like a weapon pointed at Fatha, and there’s blood splattered on the glass behind Fatha, and Fatha’s jacket is all wet with fresh blood like that man he done shot just yesterday morning, but Fatha he stands tall and strong like always.

“You get back on that bike and you clear out of here,” Fatha’s saying, and I don’t know why he hasn’t shot Gwyn yet, but I’m glad of it. We’re going to be friends, Gwyn and me. “You tell your bunch they ain’t welcome here. This is our town. Y’all had better just move on.”

Gwyn chuckles, but it ain’t so pretty now. “We’ve got you outnumbered ten to one, old man. What makes you think you can stand up to those odds?”

I come up slow behind Fatha and squint out through the dim into the bright sunlight beyond. He’s been hurt bad, I can see that, but he don’t seem in much pain. He holds the crossbow steady, and if he was to pull the trigger right now, the arrow would go straight through Gwyn’s throat.

“Fatha it’s okay, he’s my friend,” I say, and Fatha he almost jumps at me, but he recovers quicklike. “His name is Gwyn and—”

Gwyn he’s laughing again, real hard now, and I don’t like it. Sounds like he’s laughing at me. “Twenty of us against you and that half-wit of yours. You sure you want to make things difficult for yourselves?”

“We mind our own business here. We got no issue with you passing this way.” Fatha he tightens his grip. “But you lead your bunch one foot into this town, and you’ll be wishing you hadn’t.”

Gwyn’s weapon makes a click-clink sound. “How about I just blow your brains all over that retard of yours?”

Fatha growls deep in his chest and his skin burns red and I know what will happen next, so I let out a “No!” and shove him aside, just to throw off his aim, because he was going to end Gwyn then and there. Fatha’s ribs they make a crunching sound where my arm hits him, and he falls off to the side, crashing through the glass of one of them open doors. Limp like a dead cat, he lays there in the bloody glass bits, the crossbow without its arrow.

But it didn’t shoot Gwyn. He’s fine, staring at me with those big blue eyes of his. The arrow it went straight into one of the flat tires on that car I always hit with my concrete.

“What did you do, kid?” Gwyn he seems mighty surprised.

“He was gonna kill you,” I say and kneel down beside Fatha who isn’t moving.

Gwyn chuckles again, the ugly sound not the pretty one. “I think you killed him, you dumb bastard.” He’s got his weapon tucked into his jacket now and is slipping on his helmet. Turns out he was just playing possum after all; his leg is fine and he can walk more than all right. He leaves his black helmet glass open and steps out into the sun. He takes hold of his motorbike and climbs on. “Get ready for some company, kid.” He kickstarts the bike, and it buzzes so loud my teeth they vibrate.

Fatha’s eyes are closed, his beardy chin on his chest, but he ain’t sleeping. He’s breathing and bleeding out, but he ain’t at peace, that I can tell. I hurt him bad, I’m afraid, and I can feel the tears spill hot down out of my eyes.

“You came with friends, Gwyn?” I remember them dots out on the ridge. Gwyn he must’ve come on in ahead to look around and see if everything was all right here.

Gwyn twists the handle on his bike and the engine revs up. “You behave, kid, and you won’t have any trouble with us.”

“Okay.” I turn to Fatha and stroke his beard. “Wake up now, you wake up, time to wake up now, Fatha.” Gwyn’s motorbike tears off out of town to go and fetch his friends. Might be nice to have more folks around. I have long forgot what that’s like.

Fatha burps, that’s what it sounds like, and now there’s blood coming out into his beard. His wrinkly eyelids twitch and peel open to focus his watery black eyes. One side of his face lifts up, and his bloody teeth grin at me.