The panic that had been with them in the car like a crow keening over carrion took a break. She rolled the window back up. Thank God for attention deficit, Nana thought. Her own mind went traveling, far away from the narrow, deserted road with loose snow swirling across it. She remembered a picnic in a state park where the land was so desolate that it was beautiful, awe-inspiring. The weather dropped almost 30 degrees in a matter of hours; feeling it happen was life-altering. Her mother had been there, her father, her sister, her daughter, and an infant: Serena.
She rested in the memory. The panic passed. So many no longer alive upon the Earth. But isn’t that the way it always is—generations flipping like decks of playing cards in the hands of a gambler? Everything was broken, but nothing had changed. The first rule of life is that everything dies. Maybe not so fast, though, maybe not so quick.
She drove along two-lane blacktop. Goat Hollow was twelve miles away. One section of road with shelter belts of bare-limbed trees on either side had mounds of snow rising up and tilting toward them. Somebody was keeping the road open with a plow. The invisible hand of civilization still had its story to tell.
“Nana?”
The word took her by surprise. “Yes, Serena?”
“Are you crying?”
“Crying? No, I—yes, yes, I guess I am. Funny how that can happen.”
“Why are you crying?”
“Why? About something that happened in somebody else’s life that I can’t do anything to make better.”
“Really? There’s no medicine?”
“No, there isn’t.” She thought about it and slowed when she felt the tires slide into roadside gravel. The truck with its bare tires could be a boat, she thought, sailing across a great sea of white foam. “Well, there might be medicine, but it doesn’t work.” Not anymore, she thought. Too many quacks and con men. She waited for her own phone in her pocket to ping. Somebody would contact her. There had to be someplace in the Dakotas that was still safe, where “solitary” was a catchword and not a nightmare. She could remember not so long ago driving over a cattle guard to spend three nights with a family of farmers she had met in better times. They had made their money from oil. The land was spoiled, but they had built a sanctuary. They grew food in greenhouses even in winter.
Two cowboys had stood on either side of the cattle guard and given the stink eye to her and the child. “Hey, honey,” one said. She had showed him the gun. He had raised his hands like a marionette in an exaggerated shrug to show there would be no trouble. “Crazy bitch,” he muttered.
The farm family was alarmed to hear about it, because they didn’t know the cowboys. But at least they were just aimless drifters, not Marauders, and the family had fed the girl and the woman well; shared what they knew about conditions, particularly on the coast, where the waters were so high that some cities had built walls that didn’t do much good; and packaged up some food for them. They even tried—half-heartedly—to convince them to stay. “Thanks, many thanks,” she said. They headed back to the interstate and drove some days, stayed put on others, but never traveled, if they could help it, after dark.
“Medicine won’t help? It’s not that kind of predicament?” Serena asked. Nana was surprised she knew the word. Maybe it was something she had heard on one of the podcasts she subscribed to. Nana thought of the podcasts as little DNA packets of mediated information that might or might not be true about everything under the sun. “How about hugs and kisses, Nana? That always helps, doesn’t it? Mamá always told me that.”
“That almost always helps, doesn’t it?” she said, half listening, preoccupied. “But in this case I don’t think it can do much good.” She scanned the roadside for temporary shelter, someplace they could hide if the need arose. There were farm roads, driveways, places to stop and hole up and sleep if need be in the shelter of the truck’s camper shell. Even a grove of trees might do the trick if they could get to it from the blacktop in the snow. She had rope and cowbells she placed around the truck to tip them off if somebody with ill intentions entered their private space. Sometimes just the wind made a racket.
“Why not?” Serena laid the phone between her legs and turned toward her, now all ears. My granddaughter is well-made, Nana thought, a notion that threatened more tears. Minutes ago, she was close to panic. Now she’s taking a considered view of things.
“I’m sorry to say this, Serena, but it’s hard to explain to you.” What’s the right amount of information to share with a ten-year-old in such times?
“Will it make you cry again?”
Nana raised an eyebrow. What a clever thing to say. She considered the question. “It might. Even thinking about it makes me cry. But it’s also something that ’will be easier to tell you about when you get a little bit older.”
“When I reach the horizon, you mean?”
“It’s about missing people and knowing what you would do if it was you inside their skin. And you love them, so much, but maybe they try to do what they think you want them to do instead of what they want to do themselves, or maybe they just don’t know what they want. Things break, is what I’m trying to say. Things break inside people all over the world, and the world itself breaks, real bad, but I’m also making a mountain of a molehill because she’s alive, I think, just not happy or able to make her life move ahead. As long as you’re alive, there’s hope.”
“Who’s her? And how do you know she’s alive?”
“Let’s not get into it.”
“Somebody who might not come back? Somebody who doesn’t give”—Serena made sure to emphasize, like a headmistress, each of the next four words—”a good god damn?” The car became quiet. Nana almost turned on the radio to break the tension. “I think I know.”
“Okey dokey; maybe you do, but let’s not get into it.”
“Nana, you’re crying again.”
“Am I? That’s okay. It’s okay to cry.” It’s not, she thought, not now. “Just give me a minute.” The clouds cleared ahead, on the horizon. Flakes of snow, portending worse weather, followed behind. It would be close to a full moon. Even with the sparse white flakes, both grandmother and granddaughter could see sun and moon like low-hanging fruit. A welcome oddity, but neither said a thing.
They reached Goat Hollow. It was a town that had seen better days. She could see the gas station down the road past a pawnshop with heavy bars across its front window and an antiques store with plywood instead of glass. Still, whatever the Marauders had wrecked, if that story was true, the town had cleaned up some.
Without being told, Serena retrieved the gun but didn’t pass it to Nana, who could puncture an empty tin can smack dab in its middle from a distance of fifteen feet. She oiled it, kept it clean. Her father had liked guns and taught her what he could. Nana had done the same for Serena, but glanced at her in annoyance. “Let me have it,” she said.
“No,” Serena said. “I’ve got this.” She sounded to Nana like a stone-cold killer.
The streets were empty. Snow crunched under the truck’s wheels. Wind whistled in a minor key. The gas station was on a corner downtown, surrounded by brick buildings—a storefront black with soot and clearly vandalized, a few still looking sturdy and complete. This was a town that was still lived in.
An old white man with liver spots like creosote marks on his face and an oversized plaid shirt rolled up to the elbows that hid all but the bottom of his waistband holster emerged from the barred door of the station. He held out a palm like a traffic cop to indicate that she should stay inside the truck.
“Nana,” Serena said, almost laughing, pointing. “Look. A troll!”
Nana grinned hard to keep a straight face and retrieved a face mask—it didn’t pay to be careless these days—some cash from her purse, unrolled the window, and showed it to the owner. Walking hunched like a crab, he approached the cab cautiously. “Hiya,” she said.
“Bad storm coming,” he answered. She could see him take in the gun that her granddaughter held. “Why the mask?”
“Why not?” Nana said. “I don’t know what’s running its course in your town.”
He grudgingly offered a cramped smile. “Why not Minot? Ha!” he said, about as fake a sound as she had ever heard. He took her money. He fiddled with her gas cap and the machine pumped. She watched the gauge on the pump to make certain they got their money’s worth. “Receipt?” he asked, coming close to the window. He hacked out some phlegm. She could smell his breath despite the mask. Nicotine. Pork and beans. Whiskey.
She laughed. “Any food inside?”
He took a deep breath, seeming to consider the question. “Too late for the hot dish,” he said. “Sorry about that.”
She nodded. “Okay, then. I better let you go. Thank you.”
