The World as We Know It (7 page)

While working in the fields one day, I confronted Paul with my thoughts.

“What do you think?” I asked him.

“I think somebody’s got to do it. There are billions of people out there right now going through the same things were are. We can learn from them, and perhaps they can learn from us. We can’t stay isolated the way we have been.”

“And I volunteered.”

“And you volunteered.”

“I was thinking. If I’m going out there, we could use a long-distance system of communication. I could help set it up.”

“The Pony Express.” He laughed.

“Well, yeah, something like that.”

“Postmaster Joe. You’ll be like Kevin Costner in that movie.”

“
The Postman
?”

“Yeah,
The Postman
.”

“I hope the world hasn’t come to that.”

Then I took the conversation to Maria, which is probably where it should have started. I had grown less concerned with considering her in my decisions. She sat stroking the cat to calm her nerves, not speaking, just listening as I explained why I had resolved to leave. The job could only be entrusted to a person of great ambition and persistence and integrity, and I was the one person willing and able to take it on. I didn’t say it, but it gave me that sense of success and purpose that I’d had before the collapse.

When I was finished speaking, I turned to leave, and that was when she stopped me to ask the question that I would find myself agonizing over for some time to come.

“What happened to you, Joe? Where is the man I married?”

“Right here, Maria!” I yelled at her. “Success or failure? Your choice.”

“You never gave me a choice, and I think you and I have different ideas about what those things mean. Look, we’re OK here. God’s given us everything we need.”

“Your superstitions are useless, Maria. Where was God when the market tanked and people lost their jobs and destroyed everything?”

“He was right there. But they were looking the other way.”

She began to cry.

“Nonsense,” I said. “We lost everything. Don’t you understand that?”

“We don’t need all that stuff, Joe.”

“Oh, really? So all those hours I worked to give you everything you could ever want meant nothing to you?”

“Of course they did,” she answered, “but you’re more important to me than any of that.”

“So you’d rather I stay here in this aimless existence, living off of the generosity of successful people?”

“You’re obsessed with success, Joe! Stop thinking that way. You have me here.”

“Do I?”

“Joe, what do you mean?”

“I mean I don’t know what’s going to happen with us. I need a change.”

“Joe, please don’t abandon me.”

“It’s done, so deal with it.”

She sat down on the bed, and I left her there alone in our cabin, still crying.

We spoke less and less after that, and when we did, she couldn’t look at me. It was as if she were speaking to the floor. There was no backing out after that argument, and my resentment festered. It was easier not to ask myself why. Perhaps it was that I envied her faith, or that she remained so content after losing all of the things that I had worked so hard to provide.

I asked around, trying to recruit a companion with some kind of useful skill. I knew that Paul was too
important to the livelihood of everyone at the farm. He knew the land better than anyone, and he had learned so much from Abraham through the years that our community would have been doomed without his expertise. All of our knowledge about how to survive, everything we manufactured, and everything we grew came from the two of them. I had no doubt that without them, most of us would have died long before, and the rest would still have been struggling to survive. Mike and Gabe were the best hunters behind Paul, and the growing population needed all three of them and many more to keep everyone fed. We had expanded to the size of a small village by then, and our population was well into the hundreds, much larger than when we had started with just Paul’s and Abraham’s farms. Daniel and John had the fields and livestock, and none of the newer arrivals possessed the same combination of physical endurance and farming knowledge that the two of them had gained from the old man. The number of their apprentices grew as our population did. Noah tended all of our horses, and he had become an invaluable groom and trainer to our growing herd of mustangs. Beyond them, I could think of no other person who wouldn’t be more of a burden than an asset. I would be traveling alone.

Word of my impending journey began to spread throughout the community. Talking to Abraham, I started to realize just how trying that journey would be. We no longer had cars, so I would be traveling by horse, and I couldn’t expect to cover much more than thirty miles each
day. The route we had planned, however, was close to nine thousand miles. Taking into account time spent at other settlements, assuming I could find them, it would be nearly a year before I would see home again. It was a shocking realization. A knot began to grow in my stomach.

We drew the journey out on an old map that we had taken from one of the cars the year before, figuring that the major population centers of the past would be the best places to look for new settlements nearby.

New Orleans.

Miami.

Washington, DC.

New York.

Chicago.

Seattle.

San Francisco.

Los Angeles.

Phoenix.

Denver.

My course traced a line around three-quarters of the perimeter of what used to be the United States of America and then straight through the Midwest and back to our Ozark home. I would experience a range of climates from hot and dry to cold and wet, and I would see landscapes from flat to mountainous and fertile to arid. I would visit more places in the next year than I had over my entire life combined, and I would certainly see them all in a way in which they had never been seen before, either by me or anyone else. Most importantly, hopefully, I would meet
many people who shared our burden and our need for a new beginning. And a new beginning it would be. It was a new world, just as literally as it had been when Amerigo Vespucci had coined the term over five hundred years before, and I was in a position to pioneer a whole new culture and way of life to go with it.

I would like to say that leaving Maria was the most difficult part. When I was a single man, there would have been no hesitation before embarking on such an adventure. Before I entered what people had called the “real world” of adult responsibility, I used to take thousand-mile road trips on a day’s notice. But things were different. There was a person relying on me, trusting me to keep her safe and to provide for her, but I was too ambitious and selfish to be concerned with that. Instead, I looked upon her as a burden—a hindrance to my potential. What if I didn’t make it back? She might never know what had happened—or how or where. For her, there would never be closure. She would spend every day of the rest of her life waiting for me, still hoping I would come riding in with some extraordinary and heroic explanation of where I had been. I knew that because there was a time when, had our roles been reversed, I would have done the same.

Some nights when we were curled up in bed, warm under the covers but cold to one another, I could feel her body tense as she choked back sobs. She thought I was sleeping, but I wasn’t. I imagine those dark nights brought back memories of times when we were happy in our old home. Nights when we used to lay wrapped up together—when
we could sleep until morning without being awakened by nightmares. Perhaps those memories of a time when the two of us had been so blissful in the company of only each other made her feel the most vulnerable. Happy memories brought her pain and a tormenting fear that she was losing me. Sleeping in the dark cabin without me would be different. Maria was afraid of both the dark and of being alone, which was a dreadful pair she would have to face every night while I was gone. She would always wonder when I would be coming home. Would I ever? I suspect we both had our doubts. Eventually, her breathing would slow, her muscles would relax, and I would know she had fallen asleep. Then I could.

As her agony became more evident, I became more frustrated and anxious to leave. I grew unsympathetic and bitter toward the one person for whom, not long before, I would have given my life. We had debated breaking up the journey into shorter, more manageable trips to places close by, but I always rejected those suggestions with tenacity. I needed a change—a momentous one. Though I couldn’t explain why, I had reached a point where just looking at Maria made me angry, and I hated that feeling.

One day, she told me how proud she was of me. “You’re a great man, Joe,” she said. “I’m so blessed to have found you, and I’m so proud of you.” It was an undeserved approval I had not heard from her in so long, and rather than taking it as I knew she had meant it, I called her a liar.

Preparation took weeks as we gathered the supplies I would need for the journey: the map, a tent, minimal clothing for warm and cold weather, toiletries, my Mossberg and Ka-Bar, bow and arrows, a fishing pole, a compass, a water skin, flint and stone, rope, a mug and pot, and a journal would all go with me. Carrying any more than I needed would mean an even slower trip.

I rode every day to build up my endurance on horseback. I studied edible plants and how to prepare them. The common weeds that had been such a nuisance in my green suburban lawn would serve as nourishment. Dandelions. Certain species of honeysuckle. Some could be eaten raw, some boiled. Although most of the journey would follow the old highways, there were deviations here and there to minimize excess mileage. I missed my car. Traveling any kind of distance was a proposition far more involved than it would have been in the past. It wasn’t a matter of making sure the tank was full and hitting the gas. I didn’t have heat or air conditioning to keep me comfortable or a roof to keep me dry. It would be slow and rough.

My responsibility on the journey was threefold. First, I was to accumulate knowledge—especially that which would be applicable to our own lifestyle back home—in every place that I traveled to. Second, I was to share what I had learned on the farm with people along the way. Third, I was to establish a postal center, if one had not already been established, at every major settlement I came across. It was likely that I was not the first to embark on such a
mission. There could have been hundreds out there doing the same. I hoped there were.

Construction began on a cabin that would serve as our post office. We called our settlement “Eden Valley.” That was how it would be known under the new postal service. We were far from having the capacity to deliver to each home individually, so instead, the cabin would be a central location where residents of the settlement could send or receive mail. That method helped to simplify the inevitable logistical complications of a mail service that would be used by hundreds of millions of people over millions of square miles—and that was just in our part of the world that used to be called the United States. Ultimately, a global mail service would be necessary.

I made a commitment to send letters from each place once I had deemed the company safe and to update Eden Valley on my wellbeing and progress.

“At least do that for me,” Maria asked as we lay quietly by the fire after dinner one night, “so I know you’re OK.” Her eyes glistened and she pressed her lips together. In less than a week, I would depart, and every time we spoke of it, that was the face I saw. She never ran dry of tears.

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “Think of it as a long vacation. And when I get home, it’ll be like I never left.”

“I hope that’s not true,” she whispered. I didn’t reply. “Take that book of Abraham’s,” she said. “The one with all the plants that tells you what to eat and what you can’t.”

“Of course.”

“You’re not used to cooking for yourself. The last thing you need is to make yourself sick out there. I won’t be around to take care of you. And wear your hat so you don’t get sunburned.”

“I will.”

“Are you all packed?”

“Not yet.”

“You can’t procrastinate, Joe. You’ll forget something. Are you sure I can’t go with you?”

“You’ll be safer here, and I’ll be faster alone.”

“Will you dream of me?” she asked sweetly, hopefully, looking into my eyes. Her beauty made me weak, and for a moment I bared enough humanity for a glimpse of the man she had loved.

“Of course I will,” I said. “Night and day. I’ll never stop dreaming of you.”

She smiled, put her arms around me, and rested her head on my bare chest.

“I love you,” she said. She didn’t complain when I replied with silence.

5

HEADING SOUTH

O
n the day in early April when I was to leave, I awoke anxious. Maria made a wholesome breakfast for me, covering the table in plates of eggs, fruit, and bread. She had begun preparing the meal before I had risen that morning to occupy the time that should have been spent sleeping if she could have. I was awake the whole time, but I didn’t let her know it. It was better to avoid the awkward silence that was sure to overcast the morning. I could hear her crying as she cooked. When I finally did rise, I savored my breakfast slowly and pensively like the civilized person I had once been. It was, as far as I knew, the last time I would enjoy such a meal for quite a while. Maria didn’t eat much that morning.

After breakfast, we met Paul under the communal canopy to go over the final details of my trip. We gathered my gear and reviewed the route, reiterating the need
to avoid going directly into the old cities, at least until I had determined that they were safe. God only knew the manner of people left lurking in them. It would be wise to stick to the outskirts, where I would be more likely to come across civilized people—places with land and trees, open spaces and forests. I didn’t expect much difficulty in finding what I was looking for. Population centers had adjusted and spread out, surely, but the population itself, I hoped, hadn’t changed in number.

Noah joined us with my horse, who was already saddled, and tied him up so that we could load my gear. He was a beautiful red stallion strikingly marked by a jet-black mane and tail, chosen for his power and stamina that was unsurpassed by any of the others. I was told he had been a daunting challenge to tame. I liked that about him. In the weeks we had been riding, I believe he had begun to develop a reverence for me that matched my own for him. It was as if he recognized the journey as his calling and me more as his companion than his master. I preferred it that way. His spirit was free with a persistent desire to see the world, a characteristic that gave him his name—Nomad.