Ben Bedard - The World Without Flags

Pulling off the backpack, I dig around for Eric’s papers. I thought earlier, while I was fishing, that maybe some of these papers were letters that he exchanged with Good Prince Billy. For years when Randy the Vandal would return from trading, he’d bring letters to Eric. I knew they were from several people in different communities, but I never asked him about it and he never said anything. He’d just sit in the cabin by the stove and read them and then sit and stare at the wall so intensely, I could hear his mind grinding away, thinking. I never thought to ask him about it. Maybe there’s some information here, in these letters, that can help us.

The first couple letters are from people I don’t know. Some guy named Burt and a woman, Jenni. The letters are filled with news about crops that work and don’t work, troubles in their community, an interesting attempt to form a court, but nothing that could help us. The third letter is from Good Prince Billy. She signs it “Good Prince.” I wish there was a date on it, something to give me an idea of how old it is, but there isn’t. She talks about her community. Lots of names I don’t recognize. Some speculation about various other groups that I don’t know. A passing mention of the Gearheads. All in all, pretty disappointing.

The next page is folded. I can tell it’s old because the paper is yellow and brittle at the edges. The letter makes me hopeful because I’m looking for information about the Worm and the older the letter, the more likely it is that they will be talking about it. When I open it, I’m stunned.

It’s an old drawing. It shows two people under a blazing orange sun. They have smiles that reach out of their heads, twirling into the page like their joy cannot be contained. There’s a big man with a large head and a smaller person with curly hair. It’s my drawing. I did this many years ago with the crayons that Eric scavenged on our way across a dangerous landscape, during the Worm. Eric kept it all these years. Drawing was the only thing that made me calm and relaxed and happy after the collapse of everything. Eric knew that. He always made sure I had crayons. Always. I study the drawing and then shake my head. I don’t have time for this. I wipe away a couple tears, annoying things, and then tuck the drawing behind the other letters.

“Come on, Birdie,” I say. “Focus.”

But it’s hard. I flip to the next letter and the next. There’s just not much in the letters that would help us. Most of it is about how to manage farms and keep people happy and focused. Lots of it is just worrying about winter. Once in a while there’s a mention of the Stars or the Gearheads and in one letter the Good Prince mentions Carl Doyle. That was the man I shot, the one who was trying to kill Eric. The man who owned that old Land Rover. But it’s just a quick mention, it doesn’t help us. After I go through all the letters, I look down at them with disappointment. I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe some details about the people that the Good Prince had helped get over the Worm, maybe just a few tidbits about how she accomplished that little feat. But there’s not much about the Worm. It’s as if everyone was trying to forget that it even happened. They just talked about whatever was happening in their lives as they struggled to learn how to run a farm and a community at the same time. I guess I understand, but I’m frustrated. I feel like throwing the letters into the brook. But I contain myself.

Instead I fold them up carefully. They’re Eric’s. He kept them for a reason, and I’m not going to throw them away. I tuck the letters under one arm and grab up the trout with the other and then begin to walk back to the farm.

That’s when I see the smoke.

I’m running full tilt back to the barn, my heart racing in me much faster than my legs can go. Eric’s papers flutter behind me. I know the smoke is much farther away than the barn, but where there’s smoke, there’s bandits. They could be headed our way. My mind conjures up images of them finding Eric. They won’t hesitate to kill him. Not for one moment. There won’t be any amount of begging I can do to keep Eric alive. The thought pushes me forward. I’m flying over the fields, faster than I’ve ever run.

When I race up the hill to the barn, I can see plainly that I was right to run. From the north, with the column of smoke behind them, there’s a small gang of bandits, some on horses, dragging a couple carts with them. They’re headed toward us. I have to get Eric out of here! Dashing to the barn, I throw open the doors.

But I’m too late.

Inside the barn, their guns pointed toward me, are three ragged-looking bandits. I can tell they’ve been waiting for me. They have sneers on their faces, happy to have caught me in their little trap. Putting up my hands, I look toward Eric’s stall and see him standing with his face in the corner. I’m scared, but I’m relieved to see that they haven’t killed him, not yet. My heart is pattering in me as I try to think through the surge of fear. I’m not sure why they haven’t shot the both of us.

“Look at this!” one laughs. “We hit the goddamn motherlode with this one!” He laughs again, looking over to his companions. “We got a little nigger girl too!”

The others laugh.

I freeze. I’ve heard that word before. Nigger. I’ve heard it. I’ve read it. But I’ve never heard it like this before. So naked, so full of derision, hate. I’ve never had it pointed at me, never felt it directed at me. Until you’ve heard it like this, until you’ve felt it, raw and putrid, crawling around your skin, you can’t know. You can’t know what it does to you. It feels like being stripped naked in front of a laughing crowd. It feels like being beaten in public. It feels like being locked up in a filthy cage. In my mind, I imagine wrestling a gun from one of their hands, pointing it at the bandit’s face and drilling a hole through his head. But I can’t do that. I have to think. A move like that will kill us both.

“Oh, she didn’t like that,” says the bandit on the right. He’s wearing an old, stained leather jacket that’s missing an arm. He smiles widely at me, showing me a mouth full of rancid, brown teeth.

“Well, I don’t blame her,” the first bandit says. “If I were a nigger, I wouldn’t want to be one either.”

The others laugh at that. I keep my hands up.

When they’ve stopped laughing, the first bandit comes forward, stepping out of the shadows toward me. He’s got a lean, dirty face, with thin, cruel eyes. The eyebrow on his right eye is almost totally missing from a scar, and his right eye has a milky color to it. I doubt he sees through it. His good eye shimmers with dark intelligence. This one is dangerous. “Now don’t you move so much as an inch,” he says as he comes closer. “Don’t you budge.” His gun is tense in his hands. I keep as steady as I can, but it’s hard not to shake a little, knowing just the tiniest movement could end your life. “There you go,” he says to me as he gets closer. “There you go.” He’s close enough now so that I smell him, a mixture of smoke and sweat and dried shit. He takes my hands and spins me around. Before I know it, he’s got me down on the ground, tied up.

With my face pressed to the ground, I watch as they guide Eric out of his stall. The way they do it tells me they know what he is. They’re careful to stay clear of his face and hands, and the way they guide him with gentle tugs tells me they’ve done this before. These aren’t normal bandits, I realize. They know what they’re doing. My mind races. Why would they want to keep an infected person alive? I’m glad they do, it keeps Eric alive a little longer, but the question is disturbing. I try not to think what they want with me alive. I can’t think about that. I have to plan a way to get both of us out of this alive.