Cruel World(107)

The painting in his room at home lay before him in all its splendor.

His father’s words came back to him. The only way to feel something that you haven’t seen in real life is through art. Tears clouded his eyes, and his lower lip trembled. He sat down beside the guardrail, its cold steel beneath his palm the only sensation telling him he was here and not in his room dreaming of the day he could see the artist’s rendition in person.

“Are you all right?” Alice stood beside him, and he looked up at her, blinking away the tears.

“Yeah. I’m more than all right.”

“What is it, Quinn?” Ty asked, appearing at his shoulder, Denver close to his other side. “I hear water. Is it a river?” Ty gazed out over the rolling hills, not seeing the beauty that was right there before him. Quinn fought off another bout of emotion and grasped the boy’s hand. You have to feel it, Quinn.

“You’re right; it is a river. It’s deep and wide with big, dark rocks in its middle. It curves between two hills that come down to meet it. The hills have trees and long grass, and the sun is shining on it all. Can you feel the sun?”

“Yes.” Ty closed his eyes.

“Can you see the river?”

“Yes.”

“It’s all right in front of you. Everything’s there.”

A smile spread across Ty’s small face, the sunshine lighting it like it did the grass and trees so that he looked more alive than Quinn had ever seen him.

“It’s beautiful,” Ty said at last.

~

They stopped for the night at a farmhouse at the end of a dirt road that cut between two fields full of greening alfalfa. At its rear, a plantation of stark trees stood in even rows, their shaded tunnels narrowing to nothing with the setting sun. There was a smell of death inside the house, but Quinn found only a dried mass in the corner of the kitchen floor. He poured a bottle of bleach on it that he found beneath the kitchen sink, and the stench subsided enough for them to breathe easier.

They brought their belongings inside and ate a meager supper of cold sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce. Denver had a bowl of dog food Quinn had packed, returning to Ty’s side the moment he was finished.

“I think I’m losing weight,” Alice said between bites. “If society ever rebuilds itself, I’ll start my own program. ‘The Apocalypse Diet: all you need is a gunshot to the leg, canned food, and overwhelming fear to lose those extra pounds’”.

“You’ll make a million,” Quinn said.

“Yeah. At least then if we run out of toilet paper…”

Ty’s face crinkled. “You mean wipe with money?”

Quinn and Alice laughed. Denver woofed once, and they all laughed harder. After he’d finished eating, Quinn took a quick tour around the farmhouse, watching the land for movement, but there was nothing, only the sharp flitting of a bat past his head and the hoot of an owl somewhere deep in the tree plantation behind the house.

He stood there as the clouds roiled amongst themselves, their bellies going from gray to black, dyed by the night. Crickets sang their endless tune, and somewhere to the east, a single coyote howled. There was no traffic trundling along the road, no planes tracing a path across the sky. He could’ve been the only human being alive on Earth.

He shivered and went inside.

Ty was asleep on a pile of blankets Alice had packed from the house where they acquired the truck. Denver lay next to him, one paw almost touching the boy’s outstretched hands.

“Have you ever seen such a thing?” Alice said, motioning to Ty and the dog as she changed the bandage on her leg.

“No, can’t say I have. They’ve really taken to each other.”

Alice laughed without mirth.

“What’s really funny is that I considered getting a service dog for him about a year ago.”

“Really? I thought you didn’t like them.”

“I don’t, but the benefit to Ty was too important. There were organizations that provided guide dogs for free, but the waiting list was over two years. There were places that trained and sold them, but the problem was the dogs were close to fifteen thousand dollars. I couldn’t afford it out of pocket, so I signed up for a grant. And we were to the point for final approval when it was defunded.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. It was through the state. My income was so low we qualified. Bastards pulled the rug right out from under us. Anyone who says people applying for government assistance are lazy have never filled out any of the required paperwork; it took me almost a week to gather everything they needed. And then to have them take it away.” She shook her head. “After seeing the disappointment on his face that day, I vowed never to mention a dog again until I had the flea-bitten mongrel paid for and in the house. I started saving and had about three thousand built up when everything went to shit.” Alice pulled her pant leg down over the clean bandage and stared at her son. “Now he’s got one, and all it took was for the world to end.”