Harvest Earth (6 page)

11    Gabriel

Gabriel works forty-five blocks from his apartment. From there it is another ten to his children’s school. He doesn’t know what time it is. As far as Gabriel can tell, all the clocks in the world have stopped. Even the watches in the store display cases, brand new ones with fresh batteries, had all frozen at the same time, 10:10 AM.

Looking towards the sky, Gabriel uses other indicators than the hands of a watch to keep track of time. The sun is up, just shy of reaching the midpoint in the sky. He holds his hand out in front of him, his fingers stretched out. He lines the edge of palm with the horizon and then counts palm widths till he reaches the sun in the sky. He counts to eleven, which means it is probably still early in the afternoon. Gabriel’s two girls will most likely still be in school. Where else they could be were possibilities that Gabriel tries not to think about.

The walk across the city will be long. In the past Gabriel had been forced to make the trek on foot a couple of times when the bus lines were down. Just like then, Gabriel seems to have no choice now. He has to make it across town, across the Schuylkill River, on nothing but the soles of his work boots. At first, Gabriel thinks about taking a car, but every one he tries has been carved up and made inoperable. In nearly all the vehicles only a large gap sits where the steering wheel should be. Some of the vehicles are still intact, those that are parked at meters mainly, but Gabriel has no way of getting inside without breaking windows. Even then, he has no way to start the vehicle. All that besides, the roads are too congested to travel by car anyway.

Stalled cars line the roads and clog the intersections. The vehicles are now nothing more than abandoned metallic shells wasting away on the pavement. They are each silently waiting for the ages to erode them where they sit.

Gabriel tries not to think of
this
as the end, the end of life as he knows it. He tries not to think of everything that he is seeing as permanent, but there is little evidence to the contrary. While he can’t put words to the existence he has awoken into, Gabriel knows that things are irreversibly different. No one is coming to rescue him. The fact becomes more and more evident the longer he walks and the more of the carved up city he sees.

The spherical cutouts are everywhere. There are even indentations in the sidewalks at places. It is like someone had scooped something up and taken the cement with it. Gabriel thinks he knows what that something was. The silence of the city gives it away. Somehow Gabriel has been spared. The pigeons seem to be his only company.

A few blocks in, Gabriel finds a motor scooter. Its headlight has been shattered from colliding head first into the trunk of a car that was in front of it. On the sidewalk there is a body. It is only the second that Gabriel has seen. Blood is caked on the cement of the sidewalk. Dried blood, leaving a trail where it has dripped out from the seams of a motorcycle helmet. Gabriel can imagine the rider hitting the back of the vehicle in front of him with his scooter as it suddenly stopped. The rider must have been thrown twenty feet before skidding across the street and up onto the walkway. The helmet had provided little protection from the force.

Gabriel sees that the keys are still in the ignition of the scooter. He turns them over a couple of times. There is not even a spark from the engine. The scooter lay dead. As dead as its previously owner. Both are left to rot away.

Some relief for Gabriel’s feet finally come by a drugstore at the intersection of the blocks ten and eleven. Outside of the store is a bicycle that had been discarded haphazardly near the doorway. Gabriel lifts the cycle up off the ground. Inspecting it, Gabriel finds the only damage to be a scratch in the bike’s red paint on one side. The gears are still in perfect working order. The bike is practically new. The only thing that seems not to work is the light that had been fixed to the handle bars. It’s an electronic on and off switch that does nothing when toggled.

Gabriel restocks on supplies in the drugstore. He finds bottles of water and some lightweight snacks. Gabriel also finds an allen-wrench. He uses it to adjust the seat on the bike to the proper height.

Gabriel is not a particularly good bike rider. He hadn’t learned how to ride until he was twelve or thirteen years old, whereas most of the children he grew up with had been riding for much longer. The fear of falling and hurting himself had always prevented Gabriel from trying. It was wasn’t until Gabriel had met Talia that he truly felt inspired to give learning a try.

Talia was beautiful, especially back then. Her innocence added an extra shine to her complexion. Gabriel had grown up in a small town in Arizona before moving to New Jersey. His father was looking for better opportunities for both himself and his family. He moved them into a trailer home community outside of Newark. It was the only thing they could afford at the time. Talia lived two doors down with her aunt and uncle. She came to introduce herself to Gabriel on the first day.

Gabriel learned that Talia had no brothers and sisters. The other kids in the neighborhood were never nice to her either. Despite being beautiful, to Gabriel at least, Talia had very few friends. Finding himself in a new city, Talia was the first to show Gabriel around, and the two of them hung out nearly every day after school. Gabriel remembered how his sisters would tease him. They would call him names and make kissing faces whenever the two of them were together. Gabriel would ignore it and tell Talia that his sisters “were stupid”. Yet secretly Gabriel hoped that Talia might feel that way towards him after all.

Talia had a bike and she loved to ride it. The only bike that Gabriel had was one of his older sister’s hand-me-downs. It was a purple street bike with no speeds or special gears. After school and on the weekends, Talia would often want to go riding and invite Gabriel along. He would always say he had “something better to do”. It wasn’t until she had invited him to go watch the sunset over the industrial park and he had said no yet again, that Talia finally guessed why Gabriel was so reluctant to join her.

“I don’t even think you know how to ride a bike.” She said. Talia’s nose was scrunched up. It was her attempt at an ugly face, but to Gabriel even her ugly faces were beautiful.

“Of course I do!” He shouted back, fiercely trying to hide his shame.

“Oh yea, then prove it!” She had retorted. It was an argument that Gabriel couldn’t win.

“I can’t.” He retreated into rage to protect himself. “Not today. I hate bike riding. I think it’s stupid and for kids!” He turned his back on Talia and only chanced a glance back once as he stomped away. Gabriel saw that Talia was crying.

That night Gabriel got up when the rest of the house was asleep. He found a canister of black spray paint and crept outside. Gabriel spent the night covering over the purple mess that had been his sister’s bike and instead made it all his own.

The next morning, and every morning before school, breakfast, and before anyone else in the neighborhood was up, Gabriel would practice riding that bike. He fell half a dozen times each morning. At school he hide his scraped knees and elbows from Talia whenever she was around.

Gabriel could recall when he first rode on his own. That first time when he had gotten up enough speed and gotten the balance just right. The wind blew through his hair. He did loops around the neighborhood. Each one was faster and faster. He dared himself to risk everything for a taste of just a little more speed.

That day after school Gabriel rode his bike to Talia’s house. He felt braver and bolder than he had ever been. The two of them hadn’t seen each other at all after school since he had yelled at her. Gabriel hoped Talia would forgive him, or even better, that she wouldn’t remember. To Gabriel it had been a moment of encouragement, a lightning bolt that had electrocuted him into conquering his fears. Gabriel never guessed that for Talia it had been a moment that led to something very different.

When Gabriel knocked on the door of Talia’s house she was not alone. She had a friend over, an older friend. Gabriel recognized him as a highschooler. They were home alone and had been watching TV on the couch. Without knowing explicitly why, Gabriel suddenly felt very scared. Something about seeing Talia with him seemed wrong. The two of them alone in the house gave him an empty feeling in his stomach and made his legs feel weak. He asked her if she wanted to go for a ride with him. She told him that, “Bike riding is for kids.” Gabriel walked his bike home.

As he rides his newfound red bike through the empty streets of Philadelphia, Gabriel finds that he is crying. Tears pour down his face in tiny and thin streams. The droplets of water whisk away as the wind sweeps by his face.

Gabriel isn’t crying for Talia. He isn’t crying for how if he had not told her the truth. How he hadn’t told her that he couldn’t ride a bike that night she had asked him. No, and he isn’t crying because she had gotten pregnant. That she had dropped out of school and disappeared from his life all together. He isn’t crying because if he had just told her the truth, or learned to conquer his fear of riding earlier, the two of them might have been together. No, Talia was long gone.

Now, Gabriel cries for his daughters. Though he fights it with all the strength that he can muster, Gabriel cries because he had never taught his daughters how to ride a bike.

12    Madison

After Dale passed away Madison sits in the dark alone for what feels like an eternity. Tears had stopped flowing centuries ago, but her body feels petrified by rust.

When Madison finally decides to move it is only out of respect for Dale’s body. He deserved better than to decay on the lap of someone who hardly ever noticed him. Someone who had gone out of their way to ignore him even. Madison buries him with stones. A fate Madison figures would be destined for her as well eventually. In remembrance of the man that had forced her to open up, Madison makes a ceremony out of placing each rock deliberately and delicately. The placement of the rocks becomes significant in and of itself.

Over this makeshift grave, Madison whispers a quiet prayer to herself. In it she mentions disbelief, anger and forgiveness. Madison’s body is weak from emotion, hunger and thirst. She lays one final trembling hand on the rough surface of the misshapen tomb and pats it softly. In this gesture she says her final goodbye.

Flicking on her flashlight, Madison crawls with what remains of her strength back to the stairwell. The  upper levels are obscured and densely buried with rock. Madison squeezes herself under the stairs to where the ventilation shaft cover is. Between the slants in the grating a gentle breeze still wafts. Madison presses her face against the slants of metal.

The ventilation hatch is screwed in place at each of its four corners. Madison searches herself for something to pry the screws loose with. Her hands find the stripes on her chest. Madison plucks one off, not caring which, and wedges the military stripe into one of the screw heads and twists.

Madison has made the decision that she can’t allow herself to waste away. There will be no one to bury her the way she buried Dale. There will be no one to cry as she withers away into oblivion. She has learned so much in these last few hours buried in the earth. Madison is determined to not let those lessons go to waste in the rotting skull of her corpse under the mountain.

Madison breaks several of her rank stripes as she works them into the screw heads and twists. One of the strips even cuts open her hand when it snaps loose. Madison wraps the injury with a torn piece of her undershirt. The final screw falls to the floor and the light sound of the pang of the metal against the cement echoes in the enclosed chamber. Madison kicks aside her broken striped bars. Part of her wonders if this hadn’t been the secret purpose behind collecting them all those years. There certainly didn’t seem to be any other purpose in the moment. Madison wraps her fingertips around the grating of the vent and pulls. It releases from the wall with a snap. Both the vent and Madison let out a sigh of relief.

Throwing the ventilation plate off the side, Madison doesn’t care how much noise it makes. The metallic clang of the grating hitting rock fills the space, echoing with a nearly deafening sound. Aiming her flashlight down the ventilation shaft, Madison examines the inside walls of the ventilation shaft for any collapsed portions. To her surprise everything appears intact. The shaft is deep in the wall. It was apparently both deep and solid enough not to have been affected by the cave-in like the rest of structure. Like Madison, it has survived.

Placing herself on her belly, Madison measures her shoulder width against the opening of the vent. It is a narrow fit, which she finds even more true as her shoulders rub up against the edges of the metallic walls. Madison can only manage to squeeze into the shaft by turning her body sideways. Her one arm is out in front of her with the other pinned underneath. Madison’s legs dangle behind. She holds the flashlight in the hand underneath her, angling it past her chest so the light shows from under her, lighting her way.

The first moments are the most uncomfortable. It isn’t until her body is fully inside the shaft that Madison truly feels herself start to be able to breathe again. There is no going back, Madison tells herself. Which is true. Even if she wanted to, her body is too far wedged into the shaft. There is no way to turn around.

Using the arm out in front of her to pull herself and her legs to push, Madison crawls through the ventilation tunnel on her hip. Her shoulder’s grind against the metal sides with every movement forward.

It doesn’t take long for the thoughts of claustrophobia to creep in. Thoughts of being stuck forever. Madison’s brain fights her. Her own fears are her biggest obstacle. Madison ponders the possibility that the shaft narrows. Perhaps she would get to the end and have no way out? Or there would be a sudden turn, too sharp for her to take? Or a drop that would be perilous to make head first? Then she would wait uncomfortably to die. To waste away lost, abandoned and alone.

But Madison is already dead, she consoles herself. She is dead either way. Madison can waste away in the tunnel that is now a rocky grave. She could die with Dale. Or she could die with hope, die knowing that she tried. Something Madison’s grandmother used to say rattles in the back of her mind, “The only way to truly fail is to never try.” Failure in this instance is not an option.

Madison grins despite the circumstances. Her grandmother’s voice echoes in the space between her temples. Madison’s grandmother had always claimed to have come up with the saying herself despite the fact that Madison was sure she had read it somewhere else while in her early teens. Madison never confronted her grandmother on her lie though. The magical part of her thought that the author must have known her grandmother before they had written the phrase.

Madison squeezes herself further down the shaft. There is no visible end in sight. Madison wonders if she isn’t delirious. She wonders if her own thinking now hasn’t been altered by the combined effects of desperation and fatigue. Is it absurd to think that a human being can fit through a space meant for mere air? Madison dreams of hopeful visions of freedom and a sudden burst of sunshine. Madison envisions herself crawling out of the vent, it opening out into some desolate part of the desert. She sees herself crawling out of the shaft and finding herself with more space than she knows what to do with. Were these crazy thoughts? Is delirium truly setting in? Or is it hope? The fantasies of something better giving life its meaning.

In the space at the end of desperation, Madison finds room both reality and fantasy. The ventilation shaft which seems to go on forever suddenly has an opening in the top of its paneling. Madison looks up and finds that the shaft deviates and a vertical portion of the shaft runs up above her.

The climb will be difficult. There are no handholds. Madison will have to wedge herself up against the sides to get to the top. But it is a change, and with change comes a new prospect for hope.