Nick Cole - The Road is a River

It’s just a nightmare, my friend, heard the Old Man as though his friend from the book were with him and they were discussing some problem of fishing or salvage together.

But it is my nightmare.

Everyone dies. What would you have her do? Laugh about it? Of course she will weep.

I was hoping it would be later. When she has her own family and everyone is tired of me. When I have become such a burden to them all that they will be glad to see me go. Then, that would be a good time to die.

She will still cry for you.

Of course.

The Old Man felt the night. Felt its emptiness was only a lie and that all the world and the places and dangers hidden in it were waiting to devour him.

I need to leave soon. In the dream she says, No, Grandpa. I need you . It’s terrible. I never want to disappoint her. I never want to hear her say those words. I never want her to have to say them. Is it too much to ask to just fade away and have no one miss me until I’ve been gone for a long time?

And yet you must leave, my friend. Soon.

Yes. If I leave when no one is watching, just as I did last time, then I will not hear her grief.

Still, you will know. You will know she’ll say that which you do not want to hear. And even if you don’t hear her, in your heart the nightmare will lie to you and tell you that you did all the same.

Yes, that is the thing about nightmares. They embrace us when we are vulnerable, telling lies that seem very real. Like an older child who teases a younger child by making the child believe things that aren’t true.

In our nightmares we are all children.

The Old Man looked down. In his nervousness he had picked up his copy of the book. The one he had read for those forty years in the desert. The one with his friend inside.

The Old Man settled into his sleeping bag. He held the book in his hands and watched the ceiling.

So we will go together, my friend?

Yes.

The Old Man listened to the soft howl of the wind outside the large windows.

Soon I will be asleep and tomorrow all this might have just been a nightmare. Things will be different by the light of day, right, Santiago?

They are trapped in the bunker, my friend. They need someone to come and help them.

Yes.

She said she was going with you.

Yes.

And you must leave soon.

Yes, that too.

The Old Man gathers the supplies he will need. There are only a few people inside the Federal Building now. Most have staked out homes and are busy salvaging throughout Tucson. Hours pass before any one person might encounter another in a city so large and the villagers so few.

There are only eleven rounds left for the main gun.

But there are the smoke grenades still in their canisters alongside the turret. You could use those when you need to run away from trouble, my friend.

Yes, Santiago, what I don’t think of you will, my friend from the book.

Yes.

He takes a large map that covers all the places he must go and folds it down until it fits in his pocket. He takes a hunting rifle and two boxes of ammunition. Canned and packaged food. Plastic drums full of water. He places his crowbar inside the tank.

When his granddaughter finds him in the late morning, he is exhausted and sweating from his efforts. She takes hold of the box of food he has been carrying and together they take it down into the depths of the garage and to the tank waiting in the darkness.

“When are we going to leave, Grandpa?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

They went ten more steps toward the tank.

“Grandpa, are we going to leave tonight, or in the morning, or when?”

“I’m not leaving tonight,” says the Old Man. “I’m too tired.”

“That’s why you need me, Grandpa.”

He looked at her for a long moment.

I need you more than you’ll possibly ever know, not because I can barely do it with the hoist and winch, but because you are the most important person in the world to me.

“That’s why,” he said simply and turned to check the heavy straps they’d used to secure the fuel drums to the side of the turret.

The tank is loaded by nightfall. She takes the keys and stuffs them in the pocket of her cargo pants.

I’ll get another hundred miles out of these drums at best. Taking her would be the most selfish thing you could do.

It would seem so, my friend.

“If you go without me, I’ll follow you, Grandpa.”

If I keep her with me, then maybe the nightmare will be powerless to harm me.

Do you think so?

Yes. And I hope so too.

“All right.”

“All right what, Grandpa?”

“We’ll leave in the morning.”

And maybe in the night I will just leave without her.

“Why not now, Grandpa? You drove most of the route we’d cover tonight in the dark last time.”

I’m tired.

Do you think you will actually sleep tonight?

No.

Then maybe it’s better to be done with the waiting. You know what you must do. Now do it, my friend.

I feel like I haven’t thought everything through.

Did you the last time? Did you have any idea what you were getting into the last time? And yet you survived.

Barely. And now I’m even considering taking her with me. Do you want the truth?

Yes, my friend. Always.

Besides not wanting the nightmare to torment me … If I admit to myself a truth I do not want to hear, then yes I am taking her with me because I feel too weak for this. Not as strong as I was Before. The others should do this, but they won’t.

Those people are trapped.

The Old Man sighed.

“Climb aboard then,” he said to her.

Her face, tiny, elfin, perfect, exploded in a brief moment of joy and was quickly replaced by determination as he helped her up onto the turret.

After all, we’ll be inside this thing. What can possibly hurt us?

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, Grandpa.”

Only the young are excited about going anywhere.

Maybe it is because they are too willing to believe in what they will find where they are going, my friend. That something good might happen at any moment. Expecting it simply must.

“You must do everything I say, no matter what. Promise me you will do that.”

“I will, Grandpa.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. And you have to promise me you’ll never leave and go salvaging again without me, Grandpa.”

“I promise.”

Someday I will die and you will remember that I promised. Please forgive me when I must break that promise. I won’t want to, but death will make me. I hope you’ll understand then.

Inside the turret they strapped on their thick green helmets and plugged communications cords into their stations, the Old Man in the commander’s seat, his granddaughter in the loader’s station below him. He turned on the auxiliary power unit, the APU. He could hear their breathing over the soft dull hum of the communications net.

“I’m glad you’re with me this time,” he said and squeezed her shoulder tightly.

“Me too, Grandpa.”

Her eyes shone darkly in the red light of the interior as she stared about at all the equipment. He started the main turbine and the tank roared to life in the dark garage.

“Here we go.”

In the night, the headlight of the tank flooded the streets with bright light. Only one woman, out late and coming home with a pushcart of salvage, saw them as they turned onto the overpass and headed north into the midnight desert. He expected someone, anyone, all of them maybe, to come rushing out and stop him. To save him from himself and his foolishness. But they passed only the woman with the pushcart and no one came out to stop them.