The World as We Know It (6 page)

It was inevitable that I would learn to hunt. Paul preferred a bow to a rifle, and he insisted that it was important for me to learn that way. Although we could make gunpowder using guano, coal, and sulfur, those commodities were limited, and we only acquired them infrequently. Abraham, who was never short of useful wisdom, came with us on my first trip out. He met us—Mike, Gabe, Paul, and me—early in the morning, and we headed into the forest when it was still dark outside. They had given me some lessons on the bow and arrow, and I thought my shot was decent, but the shot itself was just a small part of the hunt. We wore camouflaged attire made from the very woods
from which we gathered so much of our sustenance. My steps were hasty, and more than once I was reproached for the noise I made when I walked. “Boy, you mak’n a racket,” Abraham said. “Scar’n deer next county over.”

When we were deep in the woods, we separated until we were far enough apart that we couldn’t see each other, and I found a sturdy tree and climbed about ten feet up. After half the day I hadn’t seen anything close enough to take a shot, and suspecting that the height of my perch might have been inadequate, I decided to climb higher. Heights were not my favorite of things. I reached about twenty feet or so and settled into the pit of a large branch where it met the trunk and secured myself with a leather strap around the tree. Then I waited.

The sun was going down when I spotted her—a young doe. She strolled casually right under me and stopped nearby to gnaw on a dogwood branch. For a few moments, I just watched her, admiring her beautiful presence in the quiet setting. Birds were chirping. The yellow light on the leaves changed as the breeze blew and their shadows flickered, and the stream babbled faintly behind me. Her bronze fur glistened as she ate. She was like the finishing brush stroke on a long labored-over painting, the graceful completion of which finally granted rest to the artist.

I was there to ruin that serene masterpiece. I might as well have been tearing up the canvas. Although I tried, I could not feel any other way about it. I had never killed before, and though I knew it was then my responsibility to provide for my family in the most primal of ways, I was
still not at peace with the idea. Was the life of that doe less valuable than my own simply because she lacked the capacity for deeper reasoning? It would certainly have been improper to suggest the same of a human being who suffered the same deficiency, and I would have had no trouble naming more than a few of those. There was no time for justification. Though perhaps not at that very moment, there would come a time when such a decision would mean the difference between life and death, and at that time, my deeper reasoning would be meaningless to predator and prey alike. The conscience will only interfere when there is a choice.

My stomach felt uneasy as I took up my bow and aimed the arrow just behind her shoulder. I had the perfect shot. She was completely vulnerable and unaware, but I didn’t release right away. I kept on watching her, the bone tip of my arrow never leaving the invisible line that would take her life, her fate resting on no more than three of my fingertips. In my mind, I couldn’t help but personify her. I thought of the old cartoon,
Bambi
, and how tragic it had seemed to me as a child. I had become the hunter. I was the villain.

My hesitation cost me the shot. I felt a bead of sweat drip down my face, and as soon as I realized that I was perspiring, she smelled the stink of my humanity. Her head jerked sharply, and just as I released the arrow, she bounded off, leaving it stuck in the ground having not even grazed her. I called the day then and headed back home, where I was welcomed by Maria’s beautiful and ever-forgiving smile when I came in the doorway.

“Get anything?”

“No.”

“Hm,” she replied softly. I sensed a tone of relief.

The other four arrived after dark, and a bunch of us already had a fire going outside while we waited for them. Paul, Mike, Gabe, and Abraham each dragged a deer behind them, already field dressed and ready to be skinned and hung.

“Already back, Joe?” Gabe asked. “You must have had better luck than we did. Didn’t see a thing all day, but a whole group came through just a little while ago.”

“I didn’t get anything,” I said, looking away, more ashamed then of my tarnished masculinity.

“Well, don’t worry about that,” he replied. “I didn’t kill anything my first time out either.”

Abraham laughed and said, “Yep, sometime the deer git away. Sometime he win, an’ sometime you lose. Ya hafta lose sometime. People always win git cocky, an’ that’n a worse loss than a deer, but they too cocky to know it.” Then he gently laid out the eight-point buck he had brought back, knelt over the carcass, and bowed his head for a moment.

There was a time when I had always won. I didn’t explain why I had come back empty-handed.

It was weeks later when I shot my first deer, and that was a bittersweet moment. It was my hardest kill, both physically and sentimentally. Between Abraham’s farm, the woods, and the stream, hunger was seldom a problem, which was
more than I could say for anyone who was still in the city. We used Abraham’s plow and Clydesdales to cultivate more land for crops, and he generously provided all the necessary seed as promised.

We rose early every morning to our respective trades. I had not adopted one in particular yet, so I was sort of learning them all until I found one that fit. I wasn’t much good at anything. Every occupation, though, gave us time for thought, whether we were hunters, fishermen, farmers, or craftsmen.

There was a lot of contemplation happening on the farm—more than there ever had been during our former jobs. Not that we didn’t think before, but it was about different things. I used to think about market capitalization, price/earnings ratios, derivatives, dividends, and interest rates. After the collapse, I thought mostly about the consequences of failing to provide for the one person who depended on me and how to ensure that those consequences were never realized. That used to be accomplished with a steady paycheck. Some things had become simpler, and some things were more complex.

I thought a lot about the rest of the world. I wondered how people in other cultures were adapting to the new condition. Many were certainly better equipped to adapt than we were, which was a strange thought. We had considered ourselves so advanced. The terms “first world” and “third world” no longer had any meaning, and the places that had once been so labeled were no longer separated by invisible lines.

I also thought about war. Most modern wars were rooted in differences that seemed more and more inconsequential. Anyone who still had the time to look for someone to blame for their problems had fewer of them than the rest of us. There wasn’t much point in placing blame, just like there wasn’t much point in attempting to recover the lifestyle we had left, even if that was sometimes all we wanted.

The people of the new world did have one advantage, though. We had seen the way the world was before and everything that had been wrong with it. Most of our luxuries had been lost in the collapse, but with them had gone most of the corruption that we had all despised. Based on what we had heard from other refugees and seen with our own eyes, it was reasonable to assume that there was no more government and that there were no more corporations. Never before had we possessed the influence to fix such powerful entities. In the aftermath, we did. From experience, we knew what worked, and we knew what didn’t. It’s far more difficult to change a culture set in its ways than it is to create a new one. We no longer had ways to be set in. Our only way then was the way forward.

4

THE JOURNEY

I
immediately regretted volunteering for the journey. It had seemed sensible at first, as I had not yet found my niche on the farm, for me to be the one to leave it in order to find out what was happening outside of our community. I was not particularly good at anything useful. It was a glaring fact I had to face and the reason it was always I who volunteered for scavenging missions and searches for nearby settlements. We had found two other villages with which we shared food and supplies, and the barter system between us brought a literal meaning to the term “horse-trading.” I never knew where they were getting all of the livestock that we procured from them, but we were in no position to judge anyone for stealing. After all, they never stole from us. It seemed that the commodities we produced were too valuable to jeopardize the relationship.

People there would ask me if I had heard anything of the outside world. My reply was always the same: “I know of you. How far outside is the outside world?” Among those of us who did leave the farm, we all agreed on one thing: it was quiet out there. Some of those who went back to the city in the later months didn’t want to talk about what they had seen, but I felt there was more happening than we knew.

Over a year had passed since the Great Collapse, and the springtime sowing had begun again. The forest and fields were greening for the second time since we had moved to the farm, and still, I was a broken man without direction. Perhaps accepting a new and unclaimed responsibility was my way of compensating for my shortcomings, giving myself some degree of importance. Maria loved me no matter what, she said, but there was this primal need to prove my worth.

“You’re so brave, honey,” she used to say patronizingly when I would kill a spider in the kitchen or toss a garter snake from the yard with a rake. Then she’d follow her words with a kiss on my cheek. Bravery had been defined differently then.

Our curiosities had been discussed over campfires for a while.
I wonder how my cousins in Colorado are holding up—yeah, I have friends in Florida. I hope they’re doing OK—this winter must have been rough on Chicago
. I don’t remember whose idea it was originally, but eventually, it was suggested that we send someone to find out.

“I’ll do it,” I said. It had been a particularly emasculating day of hunting, and I’d had a few drinks. Everyone just looked at me. I took another sip.

“Joe, come on,” Maria stopped me.

“What, no faith?”

“Of course I have faith in you, but have you forgotten I’m your wife, Joe? You need to stay with me,” she mumbled. “You promised you’d never leave me again.”

“Maria, sometimes a guy has to take responsibility.”

“Fine, then I’m going with you.”

“No way.” I laughed. “That’s too dangerous. We don’t have any idea what’s going on out there.”

Everyone was quietly watching us.

“Exactly,” Paul interjected, “you don’t know, Joe. It wouldn’t be a good idea to send one guy out alone.” He looked around at the group. “Anyone else willing? Daniel? John? Noah?” Nobody spoke up. “Gabe?”

Silence.

“Then I’ll go,” he said.

“No way, Paul,” Sarah jumped in.

“You’re way too important here,” Noah followed quickly. “Nobody knows this land like you do.”

“You’ve got Abraham,” replied Paul.

“We can’t just rely on him. He’s an old man, Paul. What if, God forbid, something happens to him while you’re away?”

Paul smiled. “Somehow I don’t see that happening.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Sarah. “We need you.”

“They’re right, Paul,” I slurred. “I, on the other hand, am expendable, and it’s about damn time I did something productive. What’s the problem? You’ll trust me with your IRA, but now that that’s all gone—”

“Joe, relax, that’s not what I’m saying.”

“Well, let me tell you something. All of you. I didn’t put us here, but I can put things back the way they were.”

“Well, look at you, big man,” Mike laughed, pushing me over.

“I’m not so sure everyone wants things back the way they were,” Gabe said, “but it would be nice not to feel so isolated. We’ve got to find out what’s happening out there.”

“Let it go, Joe,” Maria whispered to me. “You and I can talk about this later.”

I shut my mouth and took another drink, and the conversation awkwardly evolved to a lighter one.

The next morning, I realized what I had done. I’m never drinking again, I thought, a sentiment I had awoken to so many mornings in college. After the previous night, the journey was on everybody’s mind, and I had committed myself. We all knew that we needed some connection to the outside world, and thanks to my big mouth, everyone was looking to me. Nobody talked about it, but I knew they were waiting for me to bring it up again—to reaffirm my commitment.

My true emotions, those that I was always straining to disguise, had been publically exposed that night at the fire
as I had wallowed in my own sense of failure and drank myself into buffoonery. I had been important in the world before the collapse. I had worn a suit to work. People used to come to me for advice on all sorts of things, not just on where to put their money. I had been a success, somebody that people looked up to. My marriage had been happy. My life had been good. As soon as the system came crashing down, nobody was interested in anything I had to say anymore. It was as if I couldn’t be trusted, but perhaps that feeling was simply my own conscience interpreting the guilt I felt over having been part of that system. I had enjoyed the rural lifestyle, but only as an occasional weekend escape from the fast-paced routine that we had fallen into. Although I may have dreamed of a simpler life, I had never actually planned to live that way. But I was completely immersed in it. I was angry, and though on a clear day, I knew that things could and should never go back to the way they were, I often wished that it were all just a dream I would wake up from.

Under the stress of the last year, my marriage had been struggling. Maria and I had been fighting more than we ever had. Every little thing set me off. I didn’t hold her when she slept anymore. Given the current state of things, I didn’t understand why she had asked to come along. The more I thought about the journey, the more I realized that it was something I needed to do and that I couldn’t bring my wife with me, even if I wanted to. Based on what I had seen and heard, I suspected that there was no law anymore in our country or in any other. The only thing keeping a
man honest was his own set of morals, and in the world we had known before, that simply hadn’t been enough for most. The human factor was just one of many dangers. The environment was another. If I were to embark on such a journey, it would be a slow one, and there would be no Hiltons along the way. My fear grew by the day, as did the knowledge that I would inevitably have to face the challenge for the sake of everyone there. James Neil Hollingworth, under the pseudonym Ambrose Redmoon, wrote that, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than one’s fear.” That definition could not be more accurate.