The World as We Know It Read online

  “Yeah. What’s your horsey’s name?”

  “Nomad.”

  “What kind of name is that?” she asked.

  “He’s a drifter. A perpetual wanderer. Like me.”

  “Can I pet him?”

  “Of course you can.”

  The little girl began to follow me, as did other lost souls we happened upon. Perhaps all they needed was a final sign of hope—a simple man on a horse emerging through the palms. I put the child up on Nomad’s back while I took to my feet. My companions and I traveled for a couple of days before we came across the new population center of southeast Florida, which spread, as I learned, throughout the vast farmland surrounding Lake Okeechobee and stretched all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. It was centered on the lake for both its fresh water and fishing.

  Even in the eastern parts that had once been saturated with development, it appeared that many of the existing structures had been demolished and the whole area—or at least the part that I saw—had been flattened to start over. It just made more sense than trying to build upon the mistakes of the past, I guess. The old methods had worked in the old world, perhaps, but they would only hinder the creation of a new civilization. If we’re going to rebuild, I thought, we might as well do it right from the ground up. It was beautifully executed. A great number of wells had already been completed, and significant progress had been made toward development of new housing stock.

  From our perspective inland, most of the homes appeared to be constructed as domes built of earthbags, which are just what the name implies. Organic woven sacks are filled with soil or whatever ground material is available on site, and then stacked in a brick-like formation to create vertical or curving walls. There, the dome shape was preferred for its stability and simplicity. Once the walls were complete, they were coated inside and out with adobe. Some of the curved roofs flowed directly into small hills surrounding the homes, making them appear as if they had grown from the ground. Most consisted of a single room with a single arched doorway and perhaps a fireplace or a hole in the roof to draw smoke from a central fire pit.

  Near the shore, construction was different. Rows of wooden homes were built on stilts to mitigate hurricane damage, and they had hip roofs to reduce drag in strong winds. Networks of trenches spread throughout to direct floodwaters away from neighborhoods. Solid, thoughtful construction is particularly important in geographic areas prone to regular bombardment from the environment. They had to be prepared for the coming hurricane season and many more that would follow annually like clockwork.

  We passed through a number of farms, small and large, nestled within the community. An old woman named Esther operated one of them.

  “What happened to your leg, boy?” was the first thing she said to me. Before I could answer, she was preparing stitching and insisting that I let her fix me up. She gave me a shirt of her husband’s to replace the shabby rag on my back. Then she went to work on my swollen arm, which was then clearly infected. She scrubbed vigorously with soap and a coarse sponge from the ocean, and I had to bite down on a stick to keep from breaking my teeth as I screamed through them. I took the sponge from her to work at it on my own, but the pain was no less agonizing.

  “You’ll need antibiotics,” she said.

  “You have any?” I asked, lying on the floor with my arm outstretched when I could no longer take the pain.

  “Not here,” she replied, “but there is a place where you can get medicine.”

  “Where?”

  “It’s a clan that keeps it. I don’t want to send you there, but I don’t think you have a choice.”

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “They’re pirates,” she said.

  “Pirates?”

  “You’ve had a long trip. Rest here a few days. Then we’ll talk more.”

  Esther took me in for the duration of my stay on the peninsula. The refugees who had come with me were all given room and board at neighboring residences, but the child didn’t want to leave my side. She had to stay with Esther and me. She needed someone to look up to until her parents could be found and, for whatever reason, liked me for the job. Esther reminded me of my grandmother. She was generous and friendly to me and to the child, but outside our company, she was quiet and seldom smiled. When the collapse began, her husband had been on a trip to Asia somewhere, though I was never clear on exactly where or why. He was one of those unfortunate souls who had not managed to make it home in time. So Esther was just waiting. She spoke little of him. I figured his absence caused her deep pain, so I didn’t ask for any more information than she volunteered. I empathized with her. Her heartache was something I felt more deeply than most.

  Esther got up at an ungodly hour every morning, earlier even than the predawn hour at which I had become accustomed to rising. I couldn’t feel right about sleeping in while the old woman worked, so naturally, my own schedule had to suffer. She said the animals needed her, but I think she just couldn’t sleep. She would make breakfast, and the three of us would eat together by candlelight. I would help her on the farm for a few hours each day until the rest of civilization began its morning. The child stayed with us always, feeding the goats or chasing the chickens in the field.

  Then I was off, meeting the citizens of the place and teaching as much as learning. I helped to build homes for the people in the community, filling earthbags, stacking them, mixing adobe from sand, clay, straw, and water, and coating the earthbag walls with adobe. I understood how so much progress had already been made. Their construction was quick, simple, and beautiful. Surely demolition of the old structures had been the hard part. Rebuilding came naturally.

  Several postal centers had already been erected across the expansive commune, from which one was selected to serve as the primary stop for long-range mail and the couriers who were sure to follow me. A more complex communication system was already taking shape. Large provincial centers would be spread hundreds of miles apart, where mail would be received by and dispersed to less widespread regional centers. Daily transfers would be made between the regional centers and the local ones within their districts, which would serve as the drop-off and pickup points for individuals within a particular radius. I figured the burgeoning population of mail centers would simply adopt those roles as new civilizations grew. A piece of mail would be addressed this way:

  Provincial Center Designation

  Regional Center Designation

  Local Center Designation

  Name of Recipient

  The new provincial center there was where I posted and dispatched notice about the child in search of her parents. I was always thinking of her, which helped to take my mind off Maria. I couldn’t imagine an innocent child surviving so long alone without food or access to clean water. What had happened to her parents? Were they alive? Could they have left town and abandoned her? And if they had, did they even deserve her? In a city that massive, the best hope for finding them and answers to those questions would be to spread the word via post. Surely someone there missed the child.

  I met many new friends with whom I shared recipes for both food and hygienic products. Flora was far different there than back home. The flavor of toothpaste and the aroma of soap changed. Residents cleaned their hair with a blend of cucumber and lemon; the lemon cleansed, and the cucumber conditioned. They used coconut oil for lotion and in soap as well as cooking. Toothpaste was made from dried bay leaves and citrus peels. I was running low on hygienic products, and I had to make more as I traveled. We ate oranges, grapefruits, and bananas among other produce that could not easily be grown outdoors in the Midwest.

  I could also add salt to my meals, a treat that I suddenly realized how much I had missed since we had moved to the farm. They say salt doesn’t actually have a flavor of its own; rather, it simply enhances the flavor of whatever is seasoned with it. Even more importantly, it was used to cure meat stores. Salt was something we had taken for granted before, and I understood why it had served as currency for
hundreds of years in many places across the earth. Unless you lived near the sea or a salt lake, it was not easy to come by. Even extracting from a salt mine was difficult and dangerous without industrial equipment, which, of course, we no longer had use of. Thanks in part to my sacrifice, I thought, the day would soon come when we could ship such commodities around the continent.

  I mentioned that in conversation with some of my new friends while peeling a fresh grapefruit at lunchtime; only I used the word “country.”

  “The lines separating this country from the next don’t exist anymore,” suggested Andrés, one of those who had joined me as I had passed through what had once been Miami.

  “Well, I guess you’re right about that,” I replied.

  “Geographically, ‘continent’ has always meant far more anyway, and not just in terms of size,” he said in his thin Latin accent. “Nature never recognized the invisible lines that humans drew between states and nations among the same land. I forget them too, now that even my own native country has grown as foreign to me as this one. Really, what is the difference between you and me and the Canadian down the road? For that matter, between me and a Peruvian or a Nigerian or a Pakistani or a Korean? If every person on the planet chose a husband or wife from another country and made children, within a few generations, there would be no distinguishing between cultures based on appearance.

  “‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’ Those words are from a plaque at the Statue of Liberty. It’s a sonnet written by Emma Lazarus. Do you know it?”

  “I’ve seen it in pictures,” I replied.

  “That sonnet is why I came over here,” Andrés continued. “It filled me with hope. It was a statement that Americans could proudly adopt and stand behind in recognition that this truly was a nation of immigrants, as we always heard the politicians say. But instead, we were referred to as ‘illegal aliens,’ as if our search for a better life was in some way criminal. What were we supposed to do? It seemed like everywhere we looked, the cartels were killing people, leaving body parts in the streets. We didn’t have the time or money to do things the way the government wanted us to—the legal way. We just had to get out. The value of a person shouldn’t be determined by the location of his or her birthplace in relation to some imaginary line. None of us makes that decision.”

  What Andrés said made me wonder how Esther’s husband was faring in Asia, and I imagine the same thought had been troubling her all the time he had been gone. In many parts of the world, white Americans were not always welcomed with open arms. Perhaps wherever he was, the transition had passed more smoothly.

  Although scrubbing my arm regularly seemed to slow the infection, after a few days I knew it would not be healed unless I had the antibiotics to treat it. If it got much worse, I might lose my arm. I would have to go see the nefarious pirates. Their stores were kept on a boat at anchor in the Atlantic, where approaching customers or adversaries were visible a long way off. Their position ensured they always had the upper hand, and only desperate souls with no other choice dared to meet them in their waters. Even fishermen avoided the area for fear of a confrontation. The clan had pillaged all remaining medicine from the coastal hospitals shortly after the collapse and kept it all under close guard ever since.

  I was told not to bring anything of value that I didn’t intend to trade for medication. The pirates were likely to take everything I had. Bringing a weapon would almost certainly get me killed. I hadn’t taken anything with me on the journey that I didn’t need for my own survival, but Esther was endlessly generous. She gave me a hen and a rooster to barter with.

  It was about a six-hour walk to the coast, where I borrowed a rowboat from a local resident. He was reluctant to loan it at first, but when he saw my arm and heard where I was headed, he took pity on me.

  “Good luck,” he said. “I’ll be praying for you.” Then he pointed me in the direction of the clan’s floating fortress. I placed the two crates in the boat and set off.

  The ocean waves smacked the hull of the little rowboat like a heavyweight boxer with a punching bag, and it was all I could do to keep a straight heading as I was tossed about. The flightless birds squawked in confusion within their crates. My stomach grew ill and my arm ached as the pirates’ ship came into view—a massive white yacht that never moved because it had run out of fuel, which was even scarcer than medicine. As I drew near, I could see silhouettes of men moving around on the deck. Five of them boarded an orange lifeboat and began rowing toward me.

  “What do you want?” one called from a distance.

  “My name’s Joe!” I yelled back.

  “I don’t care who you are!” he replied, still rowing closer. “I asked what you want!”

  I could then see guns in their lifeboat.

  “Antibiotics!”

  They said nothing else but continued to approach. I stopped rowing, the waves still rocking me from side to side. When they reached me, they drew alongside, peering into my rowboat. Then they hooked a rope to the bow and began towing me toward the yacht. My stomach grew sicker. What had I gotten myself into?

  We reached the stern of the yacht, where more of the crew on board pulled me in and tied up my rowboat. All of them carried automatic weapons. They directed me to come aboard their vessel, and I collected the crates and climbed from one boat to the other. We rose up the steps that led from the water level at the stern to the main deck, and I was led alongside the cabin out to the bow. They’re going to rob me and throw me in, I thought. I was too far from the shore to swim. Would they just shoot me?

  I was told to stop at the bow and to turn facing toward the stern, still holding a crate under each arm. Three pirates stood guard on either side of me. Across the deck their spoils were strewn—stacks of coins and cash, cardboard boxes full of jewels, and clear plastic packages of marijuana that could have been stolen from a medical supplier or traded by a desperate customer. Among their treasure laid empty cans of food and trash they hadn’t bothered to throw away. There was a grimy filth covering most of the exposed surfaces of the boat.

  A few moments later, a young man, perhaps not even twenty years old, emerged from the cabin wearing a red robe and a tricorne hat. A black patch covered his left eye. His boots clapped on the wooden deck with every slow and menacing step he took. The only thing stifling the humor of the spectacle was the terror I felt in the presence of those men who wanted so desperately to emulate pirates as portrayed by Hollywood that they would kill me for any mockery.

  “What do you want?” asked the boy in the tricorne hat.

  “Antibiotics,” I replied.

  “You’ll address him as ‘Captain’!” demanded one of the men beside me.

  “Antibiotics, Captain,” I said again.

  “What do you have for us?” he asked.

  I held up the crates in my arms.

  “Chickens?” he asked incredulously. “What do you expect us to do with two chickens?”

  “Breed them, Captain,” I said. “One is a hen, and one is a rooster. You can breed them, and you’ll have more chickens.”

  He stared at me for a moment and then asked, “What else have you got?”

  “Nothing,” I replied.

  “Search him,” he commanded of the men standing guard. They did as they were told, and he watched sternly and expectantly. I stared back at that black patch and the one good eye with its heartless expression as they jerked me about and patted me down. His disappointment was plain when they produced nothing of further value.

  “Are you a poor man?” he asked me.

  “Not sure I would put it that way.”

  “You don’t carry gold.”

  “I don’t carry much of anything. Where I’m from, we don’t trade in money or precious metals. We trade in commodities and labor.”

  “Where is that, exactly?”

  “A woodland in southern Missouri.”

  The boy in the tricorne hat took a seat on a plush
bench built into the deck of the yacht.

  “What did you say your name was?” he asked.

  “Joe.”

  “Would you like to know how I lost this eye, Joe?”

  “Yes, Captain,” I humored him.

  “It was a duel with a man over a single gold coin. I killed him. It belonged to him, and then it belonged to me. Do you know what I bought with that gold coin? Lunch. He lost his life so that I could have lunch.”

  “And you lost an eye,” I replied, immediately regretting the slip. His face turned angry for a moment, and then his frown grew to a grin.

  “Yes, well, I would do it again,” he replied.

  I stood still, looking at him, doubting whether his eye patch actually served any purpose other than as an ominous prop for some nonsensical anecdote. He sat silently as if he was waiting for me to respond. When I didn’t, he said, “Perhaps you’d like to swim back to shore.”

  With that, a man on either side of me grabbed my shirt and dragged me to the edge of the boat. They leaned me backward over the water, still holding onto my chickens, who were squawking with madness.

  “Wait!” I exclaimed. “These birds are far more valuable than some coins!”

  “Do you see any place around here for us to breed chickens?”

  “I don’t, Captain, but what is the big plan here?” I asked at the risk of offending him. “What happens when you run out of medicine to trade? These chickens are an opportunity, Captain. What if you went down to, say, the Caribbean, and commandeered an island the way you did this ship?”

  His eyebrows rose.

  “Let him up,” he said. They reluctantly lifted me back to my feet.

  “You could build an empire,” I continued, “but you’d need food. You’d need farms. Perhaps these two chickens are just the beginning, Captain.”

  He continued to stare at me for a moment, his gaze slowly drifting out to sea. After a while, he turned and nodded to another pirate, who grabbed my arm for a look at the infection and then disappeared into the yacht’s cabin. The minion returned a few minutes later with a jar and handed it to me.