~~~
“Where are we?”
Her voice shook, and she wrapped her arm around my waist and pulled herself hard against my side. I sighed heavily into her hair, and I saw tears standing on her cheeks. She did not know why, the way I did not know why my heart was steeled, or what grief I held at bay. We walked away from that spot, the shadeless ground hard and cracked, crumbling beneath our feet.
“Not where we aught to be,” I answered. My tongue felt too large for my mouth.
On we continued in dazed silence, the setting sun breaking across our backs. We forsook it: we could not bring ourselves to look back even once.
The first night we did not stop, but stumbled on beneath the barren moon. Our stomachs voiced a misery that our throats could not, and we shivered in the cloudless cold. The sun rose, slanting in our squinted eyes, and we did not look back, and when the sun stood high and sweat salted my brow, we stopped.
“Do you know why we are walking?” I looked over at the woman. “We have walked a full day and night, and I have been too afraid to ask such things, too afraid even to think them. I cannot wander another step while choked and blinded by fear of truth and memory.”
She returned my desperate gaze, and told me with a soft quiver that she did not know. I believed her, though her eyes shined with buried sadness, for I did not know either, and could not remember anything before this wasteland.
“How did we get here?” I asked.
“Where are we going?” she replied.
And why must I choke back this sadness? I wanted to wail, to rip my hair and pour tears into the hard dirt, but I did not. It was then that I noticed the packs on our backs, and our clothes. I must have been numb indeed to have ignored the onerous sack strapped to my shoulders. I saw a similar surprise on the woman’s face as I slung the burden to the ground, where it landed with a solid tumbling thud that cast dust into the air. Hers landed softly beside mine, and we sighed and stretched the foreign soreness from our bones.
“What do you carry?” she asked. “I hope there is food, though I’d find a river first, for I thirst desperately.”
I turned my bulky sack empty on the ground, and dry, shriveled fruit thumped and rolled free across the dirt. An assortment of familiar hand tools clattered. The skin of a goat sloshed heavily. Dried flesh and nuts tumbled. Seeds of many sizes scattered, hard and dry.
“I carry food and water enough for many days, though we should eat lightly, for it will not last, and we do not know if more is to be found. This place is so empty.”
She was polishing the wrinkled skin of an apple, gazing into its lost luster. I passed the large water skin to her and she drank, deep and frantic. Precious drops escaped, glittering and beading on her clothes like shining gems that slid slowly to the dust.
“There are also seeds for planting, though I am not sure what plants will spring from them, and tools for working the crops. Their uses are obvious enough.”
I sensed an old memory surfacing, for I knew the purpose of the digging stick and the scythe, the shears and the hammer, and I realized where more food would be found.
“We are to plant the seeds, to tend the crop, and of that we may eat. We are not meant to starve.”
She handed me the water, making a face, and took a bite of the apple before gently pulling free the contents of her bag.
“I carry linens and furs. There are sheets woven from the fleece of sheep, though I know not how it was so woven. Nor do I know which animals lost their coats. We need not be cold another night, for these things are fine and warm. There is also rope. We could build a home with these things, and I am very glad, for I do not wish to sleep beneath the naked sky.”
I took a bite of her unfinished fruit before returning it to my pack. The meat was chewy, though still sweet. I drank from the skin, and she began gathering the many scattered seeds. The water was from a sweet river, clean and pure and refreshing, but had taken the taste of the goat skin. I made a face and sealed the water away.
“Nothing can grow here,” she said. “The ground is sand and clay, and will not hold seed or water, if ever water comes. No fruit can be had of this land.”
I nodded. “We must find water first, or our bones will be as the soil. Do we have anything more?”
She pulled herself into my side again and held so tightly she surely bruised a rib. I smiled and nodded. I understood and kissed her, whispering, “Then we have enough.”
We walked on.
On the third day, the sun leapt over the horizon and dazzled our eyes, and I knew that something was different. The woman was sniffing the air, and I found myself doing the same.
“My love,” she said to me, and my heart fluttered. “There is hope, for the air is moist. There is water here, and life nearby.”
She pointed toward the horizon, where white wisps lingered against the empty blue, and then stooped and dragged her fingers across the ground, and the dirt clung to her fingers. She showed me, smiling.
As we continued toward the clouds, sparse, leafless shrubs speckled the previously barren landscape. At noon, I spotted them: trees breaking free of the flat, endless horizon. Our arrival some hours later proved them to be short, sad things, thin trunked, with far too little foliage on the spindly branches.
But they were trees. I’d forgotten trees.
There were tears in my eyes when I turned to her. She was weeping also.
We slept beneath branches that night, with a great fur beneath us, to the thin song of a trickling stream and dry clatter of thirsty leaves. Wisps of clouds broke the starry landscape, and the woman slept soundly in my arms.
A single bird roused us in the morning. I shivered against the early chill, and she pulled me closer and enveloped our bodies in the silky fur.
“We can stay here,” she whispered to me, pressing my cold hands against her warm body. “This can be our home.”
I could hear the sadness in her voice, even through the hope and love she so strongly exuded.
“No,” I said, “this is not home, my love. We will stay here a while,yes, and plant grains so we will not starve while we search. But this is not home. Home will be beautiful and green. Water will fall from the sky and everything living will flourish. I will grow a garden for you; it will rise tall and thick, and we will only ever see the sky if we so desire. Lush moss will cushion your feet, and heavy fruit will droop to your outstretched fingers. It will be yours, my love. Every leaf and stem will crown you.”
She smiled a smile that stole my breath, her cheeks reddening as a swelling apple reddens.
“And I for you, my love?” She slung her arms around my neck. “How can I deserve your toil, this paradise?”
I pressed my lips to hers, and she tasted of forgotten sweetness. I breathed her breath and tasted her lips so that I pulled her tight against me, and tears wet my dry cheeks. She could not be close enough to me.
“Only smile,” I replied, “and stay with me.”
She pressed herself against my side and answered, “Always.”
We lay ourselves upon the fur, though it was still early in the day, and we sought to see each other’s souls through glittering eyes until the weariness of our long walk sent us to dream.
The wife awoke with a heavy sigh, and worry scrunched her forehead. The husband was still in his work clothes, sitting at the small desk, squinting in the dim lamplight as he raked through the cluttered pill of Autumn bills. The wife glanced at the dim face of the alarm clock and slid softly from the sheets. It was nearly three, and the husband had work in three hours. She padded up behind him and whispered her love into his ear, so the hair on his bent neck rose.
“Are we okay?” asked the wife.
“It’s close this month,” the husband answered, sighing and glancing toward the brace on his knee. “The hospital trip wiped us out.” He cursed quietly and kicked with his good leg. “We can cover the credit cards, and the insurance co-pay. We can keep lights, heat, water. We have enough to eat.”
“But…” She waited.
“But we’ll be short on the rent again, until payday.”
“I’ll talk to the landlord.”
“No,” the husband said, shaking his head. “I’ll do it.”
He hung his head back and released the tension, the sigh hissing like steam. The husband smiled up at his wife, and the wife’s smile was worried and veiled. Her stomach leapt in a confused mixture of joyful excitement and fear as she remembered, and she touched her flat belly fondly.
“We’ll be okay,” he said, “as long as I can stay out of the hospital.”
“Come to bed,” she said. She would tell him another day.
