Part 3, Chapter 3 (Second Half)

Here's the second half of Part 3, Chapter 3.

I hope you're enjoying your weekend. I'm having a super-lazy day, watching TV, and reading a 1970's sci-fi anthology.

I've just uploaded a new edition of A Pittsburgh Storm, with all new grammatical fixes, some junk chopped out, and some good stuff thrown in. It has a new cover too, with a really nice review from Stacey Cochran on there (from howtopublishabook.org).

Pick it up for only $1.25 from the links on the right, and support independent publishing.

Enjoy the post.

Dave

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3 (Continued)

We drink beer together for several hours. After eating his own dinner, Saul makes up some canned stir-fry vegetables for me and it is, without a doubt, the best meal I’ve eaten in weeks.

Through most of the afternoon, Saul fills me in on his views about literature, and I chip in bits learnt from college. Then Saul recounts his experiences riding on the Trans-Siberian railway in the late nineties, when he was already an old man, rolling across the endless fields of snow. He tells me about growing up in Manhattan in the thirties and forties; what it was like to be a young black man in a big city, who was promised so much but given so little.

We talk, and talk, and the sun sets. It’s too dark outside to continue on the snowmobile and I can hear the wind pick up again. So Saul offers to let me sleep in his spare room. We both knew there was no question about this. There are new rules of hospitality, and they apply as much now as when I met James, and then Hank, and we banded together back then for mutual survival.

Some time later, between beers, he hands me a thick book, its spine wrecked with many readings, and certainly on its third or fourth owner.

“You should read this. Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Take it. It’s a travel story, like yours, about a man on an impossible quest. Again, maybe that’s like yours. It’s full of disaster, which I guess we’ll both face, but through all that, the narrator finds incredible humor. That’s good advice, Matthew. So don’t forget it.”

“Thanks,” is all I say because Saul gets up and leaves the room. I read a few pages while he busies himself in the kitchen.

Eventually, Saul returns to the living room and we drink more.

And soon enough, I fall asleep on the couch.

*

The morning after the Oakland riots, Emily woke up earlier than I did and put the television on to watch the news reports. In the night, she had developed a cough and it unnerved us both, though neither of us mentioned it. From bed, I could hear the TV, as I buried my head into the pillows, relishing the warmth they offered and aware that the rest of the apartment was nowhere near as cozy as that cocoon of blankets and comforters.

Local news had a short segment the Oakland riots and then returned to national and international problems. Of prominence was the U.S.-Mexico border conflict. At that time, Mexico had a much lower infection rate than the U.S. and subsequently many U.S. citizens were attempting to flee there. In an effort to control the situation, the U.S. military sealed the borders, escalating tensions as individuals found themselves in increasingly desperate situations. Violence brewed and breaks in the fence appeared with alarming regularity. The U.S. was losing tens of thousands of citizens over the Mexican border. Both countries regarded this as dangerous.

The broadcast moved to a press conference the President gave the previous evening. “There will soon be a cure,” he said while I curled up beneath the comforter. “It is our number one priority to find this cure,” “researchers are making fantastic progress,” and so on and so on. He mentioned Singapore and Japan. They had the highest infection rates in the world, because of the high density of people and strong trade routes. The news show cut to scenes of chaos around the globe and I pulled the blankets aside to watch the images. It looked like a movie. All of those events and pictures were so removed from my reality. I couldn’t help but distance myself from them, even though they were happening on my own doorstep.

That’s why, as I lay in bed that morning, even though I had evicted an injured woman from my couch the previous night, and Emily was coughing, which spelled nothing but bad news, I felt like I could cope. Even though I had thrown that woman onto the streets as she could barely stand, so destroyed by her illness, and I felt terrible for hours, I awoke with an ease of mind. I should have been shivering in those sheets, rapt in self-loathing, but instead I was too busy listening to the news as a distant observer. All this was too big for me. There was nothing I could do anyway.

Two days earlier, I’d found myself unemployed when the manager of the coffee shop I worked in succumbed to the illness and was forced to close the store. The day before that, I’d watched the Students’ Union belch smoke out of its upper windows as burning paper floated up into the air and glass shattered from the heat of the flames. The fire gutted the entire top four floors and destroyed everything else around. This is how unreal my life had become.

Emily’s cough worsened as the day progressed into the afternoon. She said her stomach hurt and her limbs felt weak, so she went to lie down in bed while I stood leaning on the kitchen counter feeling useless; feeling impotent. How could you defend your home against such a thing? How could you defend against an enemy that could creep up in the night, creep into your cells, and render you utterly defeated without any chance of retaliation? Everyone kept asking that same question. And there were no answers.

I concluded that if Emily was infected then I was too, but this didn’t shock or worry me as much as it should have done. As I said, I far away from the reality of these events. I sat on the couch and stared at the wall, trying to comprehend the ramifications of the situation, but nothing would seem real for a few days yet. By then I would ask why I was the only person not developing any symptoms.