Ben Bedard - The World Without Flags

“Take care of yourself,” I tell him. I embrace him, trying not to notice his cold body against mine, or the smell of soap and ammonia. He smells like a place that has been scrubbed and disinfected and is now off limits to living things. But the smell is far, far better than before, and it makes me feel like we’re winning. I put my hand on his gray cheek. “I’ll be back so soon, you won’t even miss me.”

His face suddenly relaxes and then his jaw drops. “Unh,” he says softly.

Suddenly I get an awful feeling that I’ll never see him alive again. I freeze on the spot, stiff with fear.

“I’ll take care of him,” Pest whispers to me, putting his hand on my shoulder.

I turn toward him, fighting down tears. “Don’t let anything happen to him,” I tell him. “Promise me!”

He pulls me in for an embrace. I put my head on top of his and try not to cry. “I promise,” Pest says. “Nothing will happen to him.”

Then I pull away from him, falling back into the loneliness of my own body. I can’t bear to look at them, either of them, so I turn away. I leave the basement without looking back, but the feeling that I’ll never see them again won’t go away. It follows me all the way up the stairs, out the door, and into Randy’s cart where I’m too proud to show any tears or weakness. But as the church shrinks in the distance and the gates of Cairo shut behind us, I feel like I’m falling into a dark emptiness.

Randy doesn’t speak to me the whole first day. He sits on the riding board of the cart he bought in Cairo, holding Tangerine’s reins loosely in his hand. Sometimes he hums or sings or whistles. Mostly he just watches the road.

That whole first day, I feel like I’ve made a big mistake. I should never have left Eric. I keep waiting for the feeling to subside, but it doesn’t. It just grows bigger and more certain. I tell myself that I’m not leaving him, not forever, that I’m doing this for his own good, for our own good, but it doesn’t diminish the hollow feeling of guilt I am carrying. It’s like a dark eye in me, always open, always probing my mistake. I swore I wouldn’t leave him.

And I did.

The first night, on our journey to the north and east, Randy builds a fire. While he does that, I take Tangerine down to a stream to drink. After I tie her to a tree where she can get some fresh grass, I make my way back to the fire. Randy has planted himself in front of the fire. The way he does it is so natural that I can tell he’s done it thousand times. His long, spindly legs are crossed, and his feet are bare, being warmed by the fire. He looks like a scarecrow that’s collapsed.

He looks up at me when I come closer and smiles as I join him. Randy looks different out here, more real somehow, like visiting someone for the first time in their own house where they feel free to be truly themselves. I see there’s two pots on the fire, one with water, and one filled with a kind of stew made from old, wrinkled potatoes, shrunken carrots, and dried venison. Without wanting to, I think of how easy it would be make a thin mash of it to feed to Eric. I know he’s not there, I don’t forget that, but I think of doing it. The dark eye inside me opens.

“You don’t remember what it was like before the Worm, do you?” Randy asks me suddenly. I turn toward him and shake my head before I sit down near the fire and hug my legs to my chest. I notice for some reason that Randy’s hair is so messy, it looks like it’s trying to crawl off his head. “I envy your generation,” he says, smiling, but looking deeply in the fire. “I think it’s worse for those of us who remember what life used to be.” I think he’s waiting for me to ask him what it was like, but I don’t.

Randy sighs. “You know, there was a time when I used to drive Pop’s car to the movies. When the movie was done, we’d all meet up at the diner. We’d eat burgers and drink shakes. We thought it was all going to last forever.” He laughed. I’d never heard him be so bitter before, but then again, I’d never talked with him much before and never about the time before the Worm. Eric always told me that people could be divided into two: those that never talked about the time before the Worm, and those that couldn’t talk about anything else. Those who did all the talking and remembering, he told me, they were the ones who didn’t make it. “You ever seen a movie?” Randy asks me.

I nod. “One time,” I tell him. “I saw one on a big television, back when the generators were still working.”

“Hell of a thing, movies,” he says to me, like I said nothing. “You get in this dark room, and everyone is talking and whispering, eating popcorn, and slurping soda. Then the room goes dark except for this flickering light up in the booth. And everyone goes real quiet. Like it’s a funeral. Then suddenly, boom!” Randy holds up his hands. “Light!” He laughs, all the bitterness gone. “The movie starts and you’re in a total different world. For like two hours, you don’t notice anyone. You might as well be sitting in a cave all by yourself. Then, when it’s over, it’s everyone wakes up, like we’ve dreaming together and we wake up together. And we’ve all had the same dream. A wonderful dream.” His eyes drift away into the fire.

“Sounds nice,” I say to him, but I can tell he’s not listening. The firelight flickers in Randy’s eyes. He’s lost to his memory. Usually, I’m not bothered by silence, but this time, it prickles at me. “You think there’s a place around here we can hide Eric?” I ask him. “I don’t want to go too far.”

“What’s that?” Randy asks, looking away from the fire. I repeat the question and Randy sighs and then smiles at me, his teeth shining. “I’ve been thinking about that,” he says. “I think I know of a place, a perfect place for you all to rest.” He winks at me. “I think we’ll come across it tomorrow, but if not, the next day for sure.”

“Good,” I say.

“You in a hurry to leave my company?” he asks me and holds his hand to his heart like I’ve hurt his feelings.

“No,” I say with a little chuckle. “I just can’t stop thinking about Eric.”

“Thinking’s a bitch,” he tells me. Then he smiles. “Dreaming is worse.”

I laugh but I don’t know why.

That night, after a meal of stew, I climb onto the back of the cart. The stars are out, but I don’t remember any of the astronomy that Eric taught me. Besides the North Star and the Big Dipper, I don’t recognize anything. When I close my eyes, I see Eric standing alone in the darkness. Although I’m exhausted, it’s a long time before I fight my way through the guilt to sleep.

I wake up miserable. My neck hurts and I can’t seem to get warm, no matter how close I sit to the fire. I don’t remember my dreams, but I feel the wake of them. I feel like my heart’s been dragged through a patch of thorns and thickets. The guilt for leaving Eric is so strong in me that I almost tell Randy that I’ve changed my mind and have decided to go back. For a moment, I figure that Pest and I can find our own place, north of Cairo. We can just walk into the forest and hole up in some abandoned shack or even a cave. But as I eat breakfast and think of a way to tell Randy, I begin to remember the good reasons why I’m here. If there’s anyone who knows of a place where we’ll be safe, it’s Randy. He’s spent his whole life out here, I tell myself. He knows every road and every community, big and small, that scrape out a living around here. He knows how people move, he knows where they go, and, most important for us, he knows where they don’t go. All I have to do is be a little more patient.