I stared at him. “You are pretty old.”
“Yes. Lived a full life in the old time, was forty-five on the day—that makes me a hundred and eight years old now, is that right?”
“Sure, that’s right. You know it best.”
“And I look that old too, God knows.” He took a deep breath, held it, let it go. I noticed that he hadn’t coughed since I had arrived, and thought that the dry wind might be a help to him. I was about to remark on that when he said,
“But what if I wasn’t?”
“What?”
“What if I wasn’t that old?”
“I don’t understand.”
He sighed, shifted around under the sheet. Closed his eyes for a time, so that I thought he might have fallen asleep. Opened them again.
“What I mean is… is that I’ve been stretching my age a bit.”
“But—how can that be?”
He shifted his gaze and stared at me, his brown eyes shiny and pleading. “I was eighteen when the bombs went off, Henry. I tell you true for the very first time. Got to while I have the chance. I was going to go to that ruined school on the cliffs that we saw down south. I went for a trip in the Sierra the summer before and that’s when it happened. When I was eighteen. So now I’m… now I’m…” He blinked several times in succession, shook his head.
“Eighty-one,” I said in a voice dry as the wind.
“Eighty-one,” he repeated dreamily. “Old enough, and that’s the truth! But I only grew up in the old time. None of that other stuff. I wanted to tell you that before I go.”
I stared at him, got up and walked around the room, and ended up at the foot of the bed where I stared at him some more. I couldn’t seem to get him in focus. He stopped meeting my eye and looked uncomfortably at his mottled hands.
“I just thought you should know what I’ve been doing,” he said apologetically.
“Which is what?” I asked, stupefied.
“You don’t know? No. Well… having someone around who lived in the old time, who knew it well, too—it’s important.”
“But if you weren’t really there!”
“Make it up. Oh, I was there. I lived in the old time. Not for long, and without understanding it at the time, but I was there. I’ve not been lying outright. Just stretching.”
I didn’t believe it. “But why?” I cried.
For the longest time he was silent, and the wind howled my distress for me.
“I don’t know how to put it,” he said wearily. “To hold on to the part of our past that’s of value, maybe? To keep our spirits up. Like that book does. Can’t be sure if he did it or not. Could be a Glen Baum that did go around the world. Could be Wentworth wrote it right there in his workshop. Doesn’t matter—it’s happened now because of the book. An American around the world. We needed it even if it was a lie, understand?”
I shook my head, unable to speak. He sighed, looked away, bonged his head lightly on the oil drum. A million thoughts jammed in my mind, and yet I said something I hadn’t thought, in a voice thick with disappointment. “So you didn’t meet your double after all.”
“No. Made it up. Made a lot of things up.”
“But why, Tom? Why?” I started walking around the room again so he wouldn’t see me cry.
He didn’t answer me. I thought of all the times that Steve had called him a liar, and how often I had defended him. Ever since he had shown us the picture of the Earth taken from the moon, I had believed him, believed all his stories. I had decided he was telling the truth.
In a voice I could barely make out he said, “Sit down, boy. Sit down here.” I sat in my chair. “Now listen. I came down and saw it, see? See? I was in the mountains, like I said. That part of the story was true. All the lies were true. In the mountains on a hike to myself. I didn’t even know the bombs went off, can you believe it?” He shook his head like he couldn’t believe it yet. And suddenly I realized he was telling me what he had never told anybody. “It was a fine day, I hiked over Pinchot Pass, but that night smoke blotted the stars. No stars. I didn’t know but I knew. And I came down and saw it. Every person in Owens Valley was crazy, and the first one I met told me why, and that moment—oh, Hank, thank God you won’t ever have to live that moment. I went crazy like the rest of them. I was just older than you and all of them were dead, everyone I knew. I was mad with grief and my heart broke and sometimes I think it never did get mended…”
He swallowed hard. “Now I see why I don’t talk about it.” He bonged the oil drum with his head, blinked to clear his eyes. In a fierce whisper he said, “But I got to, I got to, I got to,” banging his head lightly, bong, bong, bong.
“Stop it, Tom.” I put my hand behind his head, against the resonant metal drum. His scalp was damp. “You don’t have to.”
“Got to,” he whispered. I leaned forward to hear him. “At first I didn’t believe it. But the greyhound wasn’t running and I knew. It took me a work of walking and hitching rides with madmen to get home, but when I came down five it was still burning pillars of smoke everywhere, the whole city. I knew it was true then and I was afraid of the radiation so I didn’t go on to see my home. Up into the mountains looting and scavenging for food. How long I don’t know, lost my mind and only really remember flashes like flames through smoke. Killing. I came to in a cabin in the mountains and knew I would have to see it to believe they were all dead. My family, see? I didn’t care about the radiation anymore, don’t think I even remembered it. So I went back to Orange County, and there, oh, oh,” he exclaimed; his hand was clutching at the sheet over and over, and I held it. It was feverish.
“I can’t tell that,” he whispered. “It was… evil. I ran and came here. Empty hills, I was sure the whole world was destroyed, world of insects and people dying on the beaches. When I hoped, I thought it might be just us and Russia, Europe and China. That the other countries would get help to us eventually, ha ha.” He nearly choked, and held onto my hand hard. “But no one knew. No one knew anything beyond what they could see. I saw empty hills. That was all I knew. Marines had kept them clear. I saw I could live in these hills without going mad, if I could avoid getting killed by someone or starving. It could be done. See up to that point I didn’t know if it could be done. But here was the valley and I knew it could be done. And I never set foot in Orange County again.”
I squeezed his hand; I knew that he had been up there since.
As if to contradict me he said, “Never, not to this day.” He tugged my hand and whispered rapidly, “It’s evil, evil. You’ve seen them at the swap meets, scavengers, there’s something wrong with them, wall-eyed or something burst inside—there’s something wrong in their eyes, you can see it’s driven them crazy to live in those ruins. Insanity’s horse. And no surprise either. You got to stay out of that place, Henry. I know you’ve been up there at night. But listen to me, now, don’t go up there, it’s bad, bad.” He was leaning off the pillow toward me, both hands on my side of the bed to prop himself up, his face intense and sweaty. “Promise me you won’t go up there, boy.”
“Ah, Tom—”
“You can’t go up there,” he said desperately. “Tell me you won’t, not ever.”
“Tom, I mean sometime I’m gonna have to—”
“No! What for? You get what you need out of there from scavengers, that’s what they’re for, please, Henry, promise me. There’s evil up there so bad it can’t be spoken of please I’m asking you not to go up there—”
“All right!” I said. “I won’t go up there. I promise.” I had to say it to calm him down, you see. But the knot tightened across my stomach until I had to hold my left arm over my ribs, and I knew I had done wrong. Done wrong again.