David Dalglish: A Land of Ash

The roar of ash soon drowned out her voice, and Harvey turned his eyes away. He looked at the beach puppies and smiled as the darkness and fire came crashing down.

It was always storming to the northwest. Gertrude decided that was why she struggled to maintain a cheery attitude through the long, dreary day. Before the ash had swept across her Kentucky home, she’d been bright as the morning sun when hosting potlucks and meeting with their church choir, of which she had been the undisputed leader. Now she walked with a stoop, her skin a permanent gray, her hair a scraggly stiff mess no comb had a hell’s chance of fixing. Every day, she travelled west, toward the forever looming gray wall.

Through her weeks of travel, Gertrude had made it to I-44. She almost felt like laughing sometimes when she looked around her. Before, she’d always been too scared to drive on the interstate, not feeling comfortable going above fifty, let alone anywhere near the ninety it seemed the other drivers wished her to go. Now she had it all to herself, and at walking speed no less. Vehicles rested on the sides, some wrecked, most not. When the ash had hit, the cars, trucks, and semis had sputtered and stalled, their engines ruined and their drivers blinded.

“Oh goodness,” Gertrude said, coming upon a particularly vicious wreck. A small sportscar lay perpendicular to the road. Sprawled further ahead was an ash-covered lump, most certainly a body. Gertrude wiped a hand across the twisted metal, cleaning away until she could see the color.

“Always red,” Gertrude said, her voice muffled by the thick scarf she wore wrapped around her face. “The careless ones always drive red. A smart driver picks blue.”

She peered through the broken windows, looking for anything useful. A suitcase lay half-open on the floor, full of clothes, a broken laptop beside it. Gertrude shook her head. Careless and ill-prepared. She doubted she’d have gotten along with him when he was alive.

“May God be kinder toward you than I would ever be,” she said to the lump as she walked on by. If there was one thing good about the ash, it was how it slowly, steadily buried the dead. That was just like God. He’d made his mess, and now he was helping to clean it up.

Gertrude walked with no particular haste, just fast enough to keep herself warm. She had a second scarf wrapped about her hair, two thick jackets, a sweater, long underwear, and tall black boots. Little of it matched, but that also mattered none. Once the world wiped it gray, it all matched. The clothing kept her warm enough, though come nightfall she’d still need a fire to keep the chill out of her old bones.

The next vehicle she came upon looked more promising, although every vehicle had potential. At times she closed her eyes and pretended she was garage-sailing, seeking out bargains with every stop. You never knew what you might find if you looked hard enough.

“Going to put you down now, Alice,” Gertrude said. She removed the strap to her thick pack from around her neck and set it upon the street. Her ‘garage’, a proper family car that turned out to be dark green, parked on the far side of the curb. After she struck the sides to break away chunks of ash, she opened the door, her hand over her nose. Sometimes the people remained within, rotted and bloated because they were and hidden from God’s burial snow. Thankfully, the car was empty. The family inside must have abandoned it in a mad attempt to walk to safety.

Gertrude found the button for the trunk underneath the steering wheel and pressed it. She heard a click. The trunk didn’t open immediately, waiting for her to clear off the excess weight atop it. Once free, it flipped open. The old woman stared greedily at the blankets and grocery bags. Evidently the family had stocked far more than they could carry. By her estimate, she could stay at least three nights before moving on. Excellent.

“I count two blankets,” she said to Alice. “Some canned food…let’s see here. Corn. Green beans. Spaghettios. Ooh, some pudding, how wonderful! Doubt I’ll find some cat food, but this, let me look, yes, this should do. Spam!”

From within the pack, a small feline head stuck out and looked around. It sneezed twice and then retreated back into warmth and safety. Gertrude grinned at it from behind her scarf. Alice was very calm for a cat. She slept in the pack, relaxing during the day while Gertrude walked. At night she cuddled on her chest for warmth and ate a little of the food Gertrude set out for her.

“Hrm, what else do we have?” Gertrude asked, her busy hands carefully adjusting the contents of the trunk. “If there’s food, then there is always a little bit of…well fiddlesticks. No water, Alice. We might have to move out sooner than I hoped.”

She shut the trunk and returned to the front, not at all worried that Alice might slip out and run away. Inside the car were a few more possessions, which Gertrude rifled through with numb fingers. Part of her wondered what the family had been like. Had they been good church-going folk, on their knees every Sunday like God expected? Or perhaps they were the football-worshipping type, more likely to cheer at a touchdown than God’s daily miracles come his day of rest?

Gertrude found a child-seat strapped in the back. Her lips quivered, and shaking her head she struck her breast.

“Forgive me, God,” she said. “It’s wrong of me to judge. Your job, not mine, and old Gertrude Henderson isn’t much good at anything to dare take your place.”

She leaned back inside and moved a jacket. As if in reward for her prayer, she found a six-pack of bottled water resting on the floor. Tears welled in her eyes, but she quickly wiped them away. The land was too hard for tears. She had to remain upbeat, positive.

“We got water!” Gertrude shouted to Alice. “Hallelujah! Let’s make us a fire!”

Gertrude claimed one of the blankets, then piled the remaining two together behind the car. She sat on its eastern side, using it to block the wind. Night was falling, and while it looked like a storm, it was hard to tell. Clouds forever billowed from the west, and even though she marched toward them every day, they never seemed to come closer. Sure, a piece of it might break off and rage eastward, rumbling with thunder but always withholding its rain. But the vast wall always stayed still.

One of the things she had the most of were lighters. It seemed every other car had at least one stored in their glove compartments. Gertrude would be no cavemen, not as long as she traveled her precious highway. Toward the storm, not away, that was the key.

“God doesn’t reward those who run from their troubles,” Gertrude told Alice as she used a lighter to set the remaining blankets aflame. For hundreds of miles, trees lined the outer edge of the interstate, sometimes near, sometimes far. With so much ash weighing down their branches, most had collapsed or snapped in half. Finding kindling and logs for fire was never difficult, just sometimes tiresome. But the treeline was particularly close that night, so she had extra firewood lined up beside the tire of the car.

Once the blankets were going good, she tossed on the branches and huddled closer. She opened the top of her pack, letting Alice come out on her own terms. She pet the cat a few times as she reached inside, then pulled out one of her most treasured possessions: a can opener. Not one of those modern plastic pieces of crap that Gertrude hated, either. It was an old fashioned can opener, made of steel and requiring only the strength of her hands to work. The ones with knobs and gears always seemed to warp and break on her. Not this one. Not her Trusty.