The World as We Know It Page 13

  One by one, boats had been docking and seafaring travelers disembarking since early morning, and they were still coming in. As we reached the front, we helped to tie up the next one and unload its passengers. That particular vessel had come from Rome. In addition to myself, Leah took in a small family who had been vacationing in Italy and had not realized the severity of the situation until it was too late. By then they had been stranded. Fortunately for them, their home was only about a day’s hike from where we were, and they would just need shelter for the night. She also took in a quiet businessman named Pete.

  Once we had brought them all back to Leah’s flat, the family settled in for the night. Leah convinced Pete to join us at Eli’s for more nocturnal mischief, which I wasn’t looking forward to after the previous evening. I humored her anyway, and I’m glad I did. Over drinks, I asked Pete what the collapse had been like in Rome.

  “Pretty much the way it was here, I assume,” he said. “At first, it was crazy. Protests turned violent, services went out, and a lot of people cleared out of the city. I lived on a vineyard in Tuscany for a while, which was all right. If you’ve got to run, there are worse places to run to. Got me out of the chaos of the city. But I had to come home. My family had to bear it all without me, and every day since has been torture. I headed back toward Rome to look for a way home, but I found the boat a little way up the coast, so I didn’t quite make it back to the city. Not sure what became of it. Now I’ve got a long walk ahead of me.”

  “Where’s home?” Leah asked.

  “Chicago.”

  “That’s where I’m headed tomorrow,” I said. “You can join me. It’ll be nice to have someone to talk to.”

  “You’re from Chicago?”

  “No, St. Louis. But we moved out of the city when this all happened, to a farm in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Flyover territory.” Leah laughed.

  “Flyover territory?” Eli repeated. “Leah, you’re from rural Ontario.”

  “It’s true. I confess.”

  “Don’t need a passport to get home now,” I said. “I thought you went to Annapolis, though.”

  “I did. My parents were US citizens, so I was both American and Canadian.”

  “If you’re from St. Louis, what are you doing up here?” Pete asked me.

  “I volunteered to help establish long-range communication. The New World Mail Network, we call it. I’ve already been to the Gulf and all the way up the east coast, and now I’m headed west.”

  “Do you not have family back home?”

  “I do.”

  “And you left them?” he asked, incredulous. “I’ve been searching for a way home for months. Every day has been a struggle to move on, doing everything in my power to get back home, and you left yours? I can’t imagine the kind of will that took. Admirable.”

  “I had other responsibilities,” I said. Only I knew the truth.

  “Hey, Leah,” Eli broke in, slamming his drink on the table, “let’s hear the Canadian national anthem.”

  She stood and began to sing proudly, “O Canada! Our home and…”

  “No, no, no, in French!”

  “You drunken idiot,” she said, shaking her head and beginning again, “O Canada! Terre de nos aïeux…”

  As Leah sang, I pondered what Pete had said. What I was doing didn’t feel admirable. It felt selfish. I had left home to fulfill egocentric desires under the guise of a greater purpose, and there I was, drinking with strangers a thousand miles away from my wife, one of whom I had nearly had an affair with the night before. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to go home, and I began to realize how much I missed Maria. I had treated her so coldly, and why? Why had I let myself become that person? Was I really so weak? The guilt made me sick, and I began thinking that I might end my journey in Chicago. I might head south and leave the rest of the job to someone else. Perhaps I just needed to go home, pick a trade, and wait for the world to evolve like every other normal person. There was nothing exceptional about me. How arrogant I was to have thought that way. It was time to end the game I was playing and get my priorities straight.

  The next day, Pete and I parted ways with Leah. She was leaving town, heading south to what had been DC to reconnect with Jake. They needed each other, I thought, and I was glad to know they would soon be together again. Pete and I started back to the registrar. Before we left, we had to arrange for them to send and receive mail using the new network. I mapped out all the places I had already been and where to find their provincial centers. The City That Never Sleeps had had a number of people like me come through with messages from various places, but none on a specific mission to establish a postal matrix. I left them with a letter to deliver back home to Maria in hopes that their messenger would go straight there, connecting more people and places along the way. Another messenger was sent north to connect the cities that had been Boston and Portland and places beyond. Leah would inform those to the south of the registrar up the coast. One man could begin the job, but I couldn’t do it all alone. Better men and women would soon take over.

  As we departed—Pete, Nomad, and I—with us came my precious cargo: the two letters I had been asked to deliver out west.

  9

  THE GREEN MILL

  We picked up a horse for Pete while passing through Amish country in the former state of Pennsylvania. It was a slow walk for the first few days, but the company of another person was a fair trade for speed. Nomad was growing restless though, so the generous gift was a good thing for all of us. Aside from their clothing, the Amish people and their neighborhoods looked pretty much like our home at the farm. They blended with the expansive coastal commune so well that I barely noticed any change when we passed from one to the next.

  Pete and I got to know each other well as we passed through Appalachia. The mountains slowed us down, but the horses carried most of the burden. My abs and lower back grew sore from leaning forward as we climbed and backward as we descended.

  “What happened to miracles?” I asked, watching the sunbeams shining through the clouds ahead of us and settling on the tops of the pines. “They used to happen all the time.”

  “I think they still happen,” Pete replied, “but in today’s world, there’s usually some scientific explanation. If there isn’t, they say you’re crazy. They say it was a hallucination. Some things they used to call miracles are so commonplace now that we don’t think twice about them. People are intrigued by mystery in fiction, but in real life, they’re afraid of it.”

  Aside from some time outside of what was once Cleveland, the trip to the Chicago area was largely devoid of human contact. Pete talked a lot about his family. He had a wife and three children, twin girls and a boy, waiting for him back at home. His work had taken him to Rome, and, like the family he had shared a boat with, he had expected things to improve, so he had tried to wait it out. Work had been important until it was gone.

  “Back then,” he said, “success was just a matter of kissing the proper asses.” How right he was. “Look where that got us.” When it all came down, he felt as though he had abandoned his family, and he wondered if they would ever forgive him. That was a feeling Pete and I shared. It was a strange coincidence that he and I were paired for those few weeks, because our lives were so similar in so many ways. The nice house in the suburbs, the loving wife, the sense of responsibility and the need for success that had come to feel so trivial by comparison. Sometimes listening to him talk was like listening to my own conscience. Hearing it from the outside gave me a bit of a different perspective on my own life.

  “Family is the most important thing,” he would say. “I know it sounds like a cliché, but it’s true. My business is gone, and I don’t even care. All I want is to be with my wife and children. I’d do anything for them. Have you ever heard of the Tabonuco tree, Joe?”

  “I haven’t.”

  “They’re interesting trees,” he continued. “They grow in Puerto Rico and other Caribbean
islands. Their roots weave together underground so that, as a forest, their structure can withstand hurricanes, but individually, they would be doomed. Nature teaches lessons in such gracefully subtle ways.”

  I was excited to see what Chicago had become. Not only would I be closer to home than I had been in months, but Chicago had always been one of my favorite cities to visit. You had the big-city atmosphere with the pace and hospitality of the Midwest. Not that my hometown was a small one by any means; St. Louis had a plethora of history, architectural charm, and culture of its own—like most cities, I expect. Chicago was just bigger and sprawled along the shore of the endlessly beautiful Lake Michigan. It seemed to rain every time I would visit, and I loved the fog that would drift in off the lake, leaving skyscrapers poking through the gray ceiling block after block.

  That time was no different. It was raining and foggy when we came across the outskirts of the newly expanded metropolitan area. The place was designated by a sign that I knew well. For decades, it had hung above the door to the old Al Capone hangout in Uptown. “Green Mill Cocktail Lounge,” it read. Someone had removed it from the old building and propped it up out there in the middle of the highway to welcome newcomers into the city. Paul and I had enjoyed some memorable jazz performances at the Green Mill over the years. We shared an appreciation for the art that not everyone understood, and I realized how long it had been since I had heard a musical instrument of any kind. I hadn’t picked up a guitar since we were back home in St. Louis. It hadn’t even occurred to me to bring one with us to the farm, even if we’d had the space. Instead, I was graced only with the sound of nature’s music, which played ceaselessly all around us wherever we traveled. The birds in the day. Coyotes and owls at night. Wind in the wheat and corn, water in the streams and rivers we passed over.

  Just outside the old suburbs, we came across an expansive soybean field, bright green from the fresh rain, even under the gray sky. Behind it was another village of cabins not unlike the one I had left at home. Pete was anxious, I sensed, the prospect of home being so near to him then. He seemed to be filled with both joy and apprehension. We hastened our pace to reach the village, where we found a small group of farmers just cleaning up after the day’s work.

  “How goes it, fellas?” one asked as we rode up.

  “Very well,” I said.

  “You guys lost?”

  “Just returning home, actually,” said Pete. “Well, almost, anyway.”

  “Where ya from?”

  “Evanston. I’ve been gone awhile, and I figure my family moved out of town with everyone else. Is there a registrar of some kind around here to help me find them?”

  “Sure thing,” the farmer said. “Up in the city. We go up there most weeks. Goin’ tomorrow, if you fellas want to stay the night.”

  I did stay, but Pete couldn’t stand to waste any more time than necessary. Once they had given directions, he departed with such haste that it was as if the past weeks spent in only my company had been completely lost on him. But I couldn’t blame him. He was off to be reunited with his beloved wife and children, and damned if he wouldn’t spend that very night holding all four of them more tightly than he ever had before. Had I been so close to home, I don’t think anything could have slowed me down either. Besides, I figured we would meet again someday anyway.

  The farmer who took me in was named Matthew. He insisted on being called Matthew. I made the mistake of calling him Matt once and was briskly corrected. He and his wife had taken in so many drifters of late that they had a place in their home always made up for the next visitor. They fed me and insisted that I rest early to prepare for the morning’s trek into the city.

  I was awakened by the sound of a rooster for the first time ever. It was a more welcome sound than that of a buzzing alarm clock, but he could have had the decency to put some distance between himself and my window. I had become accustomed to being awakened by the sunrise.

  They prayed before breakfast, Matthew and his family. I don’t know why I noticed it. I had seen a lot of people praying over the last year and a half or so, more than I ever had before the world had changed. I closed my eyes, clasped my fingers, and kept silent. After we had eaten, Matthew’s children set to cleaning dishes, and Matthew and I began our journey toward the city. It only took the morning to get there on horseback. The fog had lifted, and I could see the old Chicago skyline ahead of us. The Sears Tower, once the tallest building in the world, still defined the west end of the skyline with unmistakable prominence. It was called the Willis Tower then, but to my generation, it will always be the Sears Tower. Who knows what they’ll call it next.

  Matthew and I rode into the city on horseback, weaving through streets bordered by hanging gardens and tower gardens and urban blocks of vertical aeroponic and hydroponic farms. I had never seen Chicago so green and lush. Even in the city, with limited space at their disposal, people had learned to produce their own nutrition on a massive sustainable scale. We made our way to an old warehouse on the south side where their registrar was housed. There were a few of those throughout the city, but that was the one Matthew used. I figured it was probably the best of any to use as their provincial postal center for the New World Mail Network, as it was the most convenient to the majority of visitors from the outside. It was directly off the highway for anyone coming from the east, west, or south.

  Finding the organizer of the facility was a bit of a hassle, but once I had, I was greeted with news that brought me great joy.

  “We’ve already sent a guy south on the same mission as yours, friend,” he said. “And another east. You probably passed him on your way here.”

  “Brilliant! You hear that, Matthew? Where have they been?”

  “Don’t know yet. They only left a few weeks ago.”

  I could hardly contain my emotions. There were indeed more just like me as I had hoped, and it would not be long before the civilized world was reconnected, if not united as one. I felt a sense of glorious pride for having been a part of such a thing. It was the paramount achievement of my life, I thought. Of course, I also felt that my own burden had been lifted. Finally, I thought without hesitation, after the long journey and the months away from my wife and family, I could return home and allow the New World Mail Network to evolve without me. My work had been done. I mapped out all of the places I had been, and the organizer offered to take any correspondence off my hands and have it delivered south, to my home, while I continued west. I had not written yet, but I assured him that I would return the next day with outgoing mail. That was not my plan, though. Instead, I planned to head straight home the following morning.

  As Matthew and I rode back south to his farm, my smile could not be turned.

  “What you’re doing is pretty incredible,” he said. “It shouldn’t surprise me that it took so long for somebody to step up to the job, but I guess most people give up when they lose everything they’ve got. What’s the point, they figure. Giving up is easier than starting over, but we’ve done it before, and someday we’ll have to do it again. Nothing on this earth lasts forever. We’re never ready for it, but the strongest few pull the rest of us out of the dirt and brush us off. Most people would be surprised to learn what they’re truly capable of. In the early 1860s, the Pony Express made it possible to send mail from one coast to the other in about ten days with nothing but men on horses two-thirds of the way. Of course, their system was less complex than the one you intend to build. Our population is much larger and more widespread these days, but we learn from history, don’t we.”

  “We do,” I said, “but you give me far too much credit.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I left home out of weakness, not strength.”

  “Whatever your reasons,” he replied, “you’re here. Poor judgment sometimes produces the greatest accomplishments, against all odds, just as the best of motives can end in catastrophe. I don’t presume that all of the riders back in those days were the best of men, but they did wh
at they had to do. The new network will probably evolve the same way theirs did, I’d figure, with swing stations and all.”

  “With this growing number of riders, our main obstacle will be organization,” I said.

  “That will come.”

  “They’ll move far more quickly than Nomad and I can alone. Like the Pony Express, this is just a first step toward something larger, faster, and more efficient. Someday we’ll have the railways again and electricity. Even cars in one form or another.”

  “It has to start somewhere,” he said, and then he looked at me. “Someone has to make it happen. Like Ishmael said, ‘For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything.’”

  I felt he was trying to inspire me, but I tried to ignore it. I had made up my mind. It was time to go home.

  When we rode back into the small farming village toward his home, the farmers who had been with Matthew on the previous day when Pete and I had arrived were digging trenches into a field.

  “Finally!” he called as we approached. “It’s about time you goons did something productive!”

  “Well you two took your sweet time!” one of them yelled back. “We got bored. It’s getting hot out here. Have you come to relieve us?”

  “Relieve yourself,” Matthew said.

  “I plan to, once we’re finished here.”

  “What are they planting?” I asked.

  “They’re not planting. They’re laying a leach field.”

  “Like a septic field?”

  “Yes. You ever notice how green the grass is above the leach field?”

  “Never thought about it,” I replied.

  “Well, once we’re done here and we’ve got running water again, our crops will thrive. In the meantime, we’re using composting toilets, which are working just fine for now.”