The Savage Boy

39



THE NIGHT AIR felt cool and dried the sweat on the Boy’s face as he was led back from the meeting beyond the gate. The wind had picked up from off the bay. It would be a long, cold night. The shantytown was quiet and only a single candle burned in the odd window they passed along its lanes.

In the shack it was warm from the heat given off by the brazier, its glow a dull orange. Inside, Horse raised a sleepy eye then returned to his rest and dreams. The troop leader left and came back with more hay. He said something in Chinese, a farewell perhaps, then closed the door to the shack behind him as he left.

The Boy took off the sweaty gear they had given him and went out the back door.

He walked to the end of the narrow two-plank dock and lowered himself into the freezing dark water of the bay.

It was cold.

Maybe the coldest water he’d ever felt.

He thought of the girl as he floated in the darkness.

Back inside the shack he put his clothes on and, as though he had known all along what he would do next, he took up the carved piece of charcoal once more.

He made a line. The outline of her hair. Long and straight. A curve over the top of her head.

Then another line for her delicate chin.

And a line falling away from the chin for her neck.

They’ll see this.

He put the charcoal back in its pouch and sat by the glowing coals of the brazier, watching the simple lines he had drawn.

The lines were enough to remember her by.

IN THE MORNING it was the troop leader who appeared once more. They both took Horse out into the mist and walked him along the bay’s edge, following a winding muddy street. Fishing boats lay motionless in the calm waters of the fog-shrouded bay.

They crossed into a ruined section of the shantytown.

Ruins from Before.

Buildings with chunks of concrete and whole sections missing. Buildings where the plaster facade had fallen away long ago. Buildings from which metal girders twisted wickedly upward. Buildings that had fallen into little more than piles from which rusty strands of rebar sprung like wild hair.

A work crew hovered over the ruins of a building, testing it with their crowbars and the occasional shovel. Other men moved piles of rubble in wheelbarrows.

They are removing the town that was here Before, Sergeant.

They came to a building. It was in better shape than most.

Inside they found the Chinese general.

He hobbled forward, his big frame leaning heavily on a bent cane.

“I have studied the map you gave me.” After a pause the general continued breathily, “Can you tell me about all those places? What is there now? That’s what we wish to know. Our outpost was our farthest settlement. We cannot go south due to the nature of contamination in that area, so it seems we must know what lies to the east. If we could go over the map together, you might tell me a little bit about each place. If that would be acceptable to you?”

The Boy thought of the girl.

He thought of leaving this place.

He had left every place he had ever been.

He wondered if he might see her here.

If he left he would never see her again.

“Yes.”

“Good,” said the general and led him to a large desk. The map lay spread out across its expanse. The floor that surrounded the desk was a sea upon which books rose like sudden and angry waves. Leaning against the walls were all manner of things. Tools, ancient rifles from Before, many things the Boy had no name for.

“So we know you came through Reno. What were your experiences there?”

The Boy thought for a moment. How did one describe the fear of an unknown mad animal lying in wait in the dark? How did one describe that laughing terror and the single leering face seen as a shadow through dirty glass for even just the part of a moment?

“Reno is like a hole where an animal lives.” He thought of the bear cave. “Where something that isn’t human makes its home now.”

The general laid his finger on the map over Reno.

“Colonel Juk was their commander. I have always wondered, over the years, what became of his unit and the men we sent there. Their last report told of being dug in and facing American armor coming out of the desert to the southeast.”

The Boy watched the map and all the places Sergeant Presley had been.

“How is it like a wild animal in a cave?” asked the general.

The Boy thought for a moment. He approached a wall and moved aside a heavy machine gun, dusty and untouched. He cleared a space along the wall.

He took out his charcoal.

He began to draw.

He drew the blind window-eyes of a corpse that was once a city. In his mind the angles were somehow distorted and maniacal. The buildings took on a surreal aspect, as if sanity hadn’t been a requirement for their architect. As if the years since, and the madmen within, had somehow turned the buildings “wrong.” He drew the bridge they’d passed under. The Boy, Horse, and Escondido. It was an open mouth, full of smashed teeth. He drew a high window, a long window twisting to the side, almost bending away from the perspective of the viewer. A window among a hundred other lunatic windows in shadow. In it the Boy placed the shadow of a man seen for just a moment. With a few quick lines he began the face, the jaw, the hair, and before he could add more to those few scribbled, hesitant, unfinished lines, the lunatic seemed complete.

When the Boy turned back, the general, watching him, nodded.

The old soldier turned to the map, his finger still resting above the word “Reno.”

“I understand.”

After a moment of looking again at the map, the Chinese general cleared his throat.

“Tell me about Salt Lake City.”

And then . . .

She entered, carrying a tray of teacups and a pot.