Ben Bedard - The World Without Flags

“Unh,” he says, his jaw drooling a line of black filth. I wave away the flies that crawl on his face. I could kiss him. In theory. I’m not going to, but I could. I put my hand on his shoulder instead and give him a squeeze. Then I reach into his coat and pull out the drooly towel. I really have to wash it, I think to myself, as I try to wipe his face and scrub away the black bile that dried in his beard overnight. It falls from his face like pepper. “There you go,” I say happily. “You’re growing quite a beard, aren’t you?” I smile at him and stand up.

I have a plan for breakfast. The sleep has been good for me. I’m thinking a lot more clearly. I take out our food from the backpack and my jackknife. Then I begin to slice deer meat into smaller and smaller pieces before I add some bread. I break this down too. Then there’s the problem of water. When I look around for a well and don’t find anything, I walk through the field to the line of trees and sure enough, there’s a babbling little brook underneath the trees and I fill up our kettle with water. Back at the farmhouse, I start a fire and wait for the water to boil. In the meantime, I slice up the bread and deer meat into even smaller pieces. Then I mash it into a paste. When the water boils, I pour it into a mug, and then add just enough of the meat and bread to make a thin soup. Eric will drink, that’s no problem. I just have to trick him into eating some food along with the water.

When I go back to Eric, I’m careful. I’ve learned my lesson. When he begins to lap at the soup greedily, I steady him with a hand on his chest. I want to look away as his black tongue laps away at the soup, but I can’t, I have to make sure it’s getting in his mouth. It’s messy and disgusting and his open mouth stinks like death. It takes me like an hour to feed him all the soup I can. More of it is wasted than I’d like. The soup is all over his beard and down the front of his shirt. I take out his drooly towel and wipe him off as best I can. Then I take the towel out to wash it with boiled water. I wring black water from it and then lay it out on a rock to dry in the afternoon sun.

Only after I lie down do I realize that I’m hungry. Not like normal hunger either. It hurts. I look over at the food I have and it’s not much. Some deer meat, a little bit of bread, a jar of pickles, two shriveled little apples, a big, rubbery carrot, and four, rock-hard potatoes. I want to eat the deer meat and bread, but it’s all I have to feed Eric. I put the potatoes in a pot to boil while I eat both apples without hardly pausing. The hunger pains subside, but I’m still famished. I open the jar of pickles and eat three of them. They are wonderful and salty and it’s all I can do not to eat the whole jar. I drink some of the pickle juice and then look greedily at the deer meat and bread. My stomach twists in me. I bite my lip. I tell myself that I could have just a little meat too, maybe just one piece. I have to stay strong too, right? I reach out, but I stop myself. I have to save it for Eric.

I have to get up and walk away from the meat. It’s too much temptation. If I had a rifle, I could hunt down a deer easily enough. Hunger makes you a really good hunter. But I don’t have a gun. All I have is a few jackknives. I’m going to have to figure out a way to get food. The problem scares me for a second before I walk away the panic. I’m out in the middle of the field, thinking now. I don’t have a gun, I don’t have the material for a trap, it’s really too early in the season for foraging. Spring is still pretty new. When the fear wears away and I feel a little more practical, I turn stride to our backpack. I take out everything and survey what I have. While I look at our stuff and think, I crunch into the carrot and then stab the potatoes and cut them open. They’re far too hot to eat.

When I turn my attention back to our inventory, I take a deep, pensive breath. It’s not much. For a second, I regret that I hadn’t packed with a little more forethought, but then I push that thought away. I did the best I could under the circumstances. There’s no use in whining about it anyway. Then I find what I’m looking for: a few paperclips that Eric used to hold together his papers, which I don’t know why I brought. I take the paperclips and look at them with a smile. They just might work. I have an idea. I did have the smarts to bring some fishing line, but it takes me a while to carefully disentangle the thing and wind it carefully on a nice, supple piece of solid wood. During the process, I find an old rusty hook which makes me so happy, I feel giddy. A real fish hook is way better than the one I was going to try to make with a paperclip. I’m feeling much more positive as I eat the boiled potatoes. They’re not bad, but I really wish I had salt.

After I put Bandit back in his stall, I check on Eric before I go down to the brook. He’s sitting exactly how I left him. Just to be safe, I tie Eric up to the stall before I go. “I’ll be right back,” I tell him. Then, shrugging on my backpack, I head down to the brook. On the way, I pull up some grass out of the field and pick some worms out of the roots.

I don’t know if the fishing was this good before the end of the world, but the brook is full of beautiful, colorful rainbow trout. I fish three fat ones out of the same little dark rapids and clap their heads down on a rock to kill them before I string them out on a branch through their bright red gills. The fishing is so good, I don’t want to stop, even though it’s headed toward evening. I follow the brook downhill until it vanishes into some swampy area. It’s late afternoon and a bit hard to see, but I’m having a lucky day. There are fiddleheads sprouting up everywhere! I forgot about these beautiful ferns! It’s the perfect season for them.

I waste no time and fill up my backpack with dark green fiddleheads. I feel like some conquering hero as I walk back to the barn, laden with my spoils, a backpack full of fiddleheads and seven plump trout.

Soon the fire is crackling and our pan is bubbling with boiling fiddleheads and the fish is frying in the pan, their tails getting wonderfully crispy. I’m too hungry to wait for long, so I devour the first trout before it’s even fully cooked. It tastes like fresh water and a hot spring day and it’s the best fish I’ve ever eaten in my life. Then I pull a bunch of fiddleheads out of the boiling water with a knife and put them on a plate to cool. I have the patience to wait this time until the second fish is cooked and crispy and I eat it with little fingerfulls of soft, warm fiddleheads. They melt in my mouth like butter. It’s indescribably delicious and I hardly pause before I eat a third and fourth trout. I eat them as soon as they are ready, one right after the other. Finally I lay back and sigh. I haven’t felt this good since before the Worm came back. I’m full and comfortably tired and there’s a gentle breeze in the air.

The first stars are just coming out. Looking up at them, I feel lucky. I’m still alive. So is Eric. The farmhouse was a real stroke of luck. We can stay here and live off trout and fiddleheads for a long time. Maybe as long as we need to. If Eric makes it through the Worm, we can go back to the Homestead together. I think about the sour look on Franky’s face when Eric returns alive, how Franky will fake being happy, and I feel a thrill of pleasure, a little taste of revenge. But it won’t be the same. I’ll remember what Franky’s really like. I’ll make sure Eric knows. Together we’ll talk about it, think it through.

The thought of Eric reminds me that I should try to feed him again. I feel a little guilty suddenly that I just leave him in the barn like an animal, but it passes. It’s for the best, I guess. He’s safe. I’m safe. It’s the way it has to be for now. I try to tell myself it has nothing to do about how I feel when I look at him or how horrible he smells. The guilt I feel tells me I’m not entirely successful with this.