The Last Man After the War
by Erich William Bergmeier
Raymond knelt at the edge the water and washed a bundle of carrots with his numb and calloused fingers. When he was finished he dropped them all into a worn metal bucket and wiped his brow with the sleeve of his shirt. He had on layers to protect himself from the early autumn cold but the water had soaked through them and his teeth were beginning to chatter. He looked out over the lake. The trees along the shore were turning orange and yellow and the sun hung low behind them. A flock of geese passed overhead. They were later than usual this year, Raymond thought, but then maybe they knew that flying south was a hollow gesture. That there wasn’t much waiting for them there.
His heavy boots slapped the stone walkway as he made his way to the cabin. The light was on inside and he could see Clara’s silhouette through the window. She was bent over the sink and her head bobbed from side to side to the beat of an imagined song. He waved at her and climbed up the steps to the porch.
It was warm inside and smelled like burnt hickory. Clara stood at the counter slicing tomatoes into manageable chunks. Her hands were covered in seeds and juice and her silver hair hung loose around her ears. She smiled at Raymond and set the knife down on the edge of the cutting board. Behind her the wood stove churned with activity, each burner occupied by a pot of boiling water. Next to it - on the counter and the table and the floor - she had arranged mason jars full of strawberries and sliced apples. The colors were like light sources themselves, glowing brighter than they had before they were boiled. If their cabin were more than just the one room, she joked, they might have used them to light their way.
Raymond tipped the bucket upside down on the plastic table cloth and the carrots poured out into one enormous pile. Clara ran her hands under the gravity-fed tap and dried them on the towel that hung from the stove.
“Last batch of the year,” she said.
Raymond nodded and walked over to the vanity that he’d mounted on the far side of the room. He looked at himself in the mirror. He ran his hands over his bearded face.
“I think maybe I’ll shave this off tonight,” he said.
Clara lifted one of the pots off of the stove and fished the boiled jars out with a pair of tongs. She set the jars on a tray to dry and then she moved the tray to the middle of the table. Steam rose from it and collected on the glass that surrounded the kerosene lamp.
“Just in time for winter,” she said.
As the next batch of jars boiled Raymond boxed the finished ones and walked them over to the foot of their bed. He got down on his hands and knees and slid his thumbnail in between two of the floorboards. Trembling with exertion, he lifted the camouflaged trapdoor and let it fall against the bed frame. He opened the padlocked metal gate with the key that hung around his neck and then he looked down into the root cellar where all of their food was stored. The feeling was coming back into his hands now and they tingled with pain. He descended the steps and breathed in the stale underground air. He set the box on the hard cement floor and then piled an older box on top of it. After he’d marked the date on the outside flap he climbed out of the cellar and locked the gate and lowered the trap door over it. His stomach rumbled. The sight of all that food made him aware of the fact that he hadn’t eaten since that morning.
Instead of collecting the next box for storage, Raymond walked over to the table where the jars were arranged and sat down. He lifted one that was filled to the brim with a coarse, red raspberry jam. Beside the lamp were a few slices of flatbread that Clara had made by mixing flour and water and then baking them on top of the stove. The edges were black with soot but the middles were soft and pasty. Raymond took one and covered it with a spoonful of jam. He bit into it and the warm sour flavor filled his mouth.
“We’re supposed to be saving those,” Clara said.
“For tonight,” he said as he wiped his mouth. Clara came around the table and put her hands on his thin shoulders. She kissed his scalp where his hair was parted and then she sat down beside him. A mosquito hovered around the lamp and its shadow projected itself like a spirit over the walls and ceiling. Raymond lifted a plate from the centre of the table and set it down in front of his wife. The jar of jam was more than half empty now and what remained of it was hers. He handed her the last slice of flatbread and they sat together quietly and ate.
The strangers arrived after dark. Raymond could hear them behind the cabin, the twigs cracking under their feet. He went to the bed and grabbed his shotgun and stood with his back to the wall. For a long while there was only the sound of the crickets and then under it the whisper of human voices could be heard. Quietly he chambered a round.
“Who’s that?” he called out.
“Just people looking for a place to sleep,” a man replied.
Clara opened the heavy oak door and looked out through the screen. She saw them standing there in the half light; a husband and wife and their little girl. She looked at Raymond with pleading eyes but he only shook his head. She thought of their own children, how much she hoped that someone would open their door to them.
“Come in,” she said. “You must be freezing.”
The three strangers came up on the deck and skulked in through the door. They were thin and pale and in the harsh light of the kerosene lamp the lines on their faces were as deep as dried up river beds. Clara motioned for them to sit down at the table while Raymond stood rigid in the corner with the handle of the shotgun pressed into his armpit. The man’s eyes moved around the room as he took stock of the empty shelves and the dishes stacked beside the sink. Clara had just finished putting the last of their food in the cellar before the family arrived and Raymond was thankful for that. It meant there would be no trouble.
“Aren’t many people left who would take in strangers,” the man said.
“I want you to keep your hands in front of you.”
“Of course.”
“Tell us your names,” Raymond said.
The man’s mouth twisted nervously. “Sure,” he said, watching the barrel of the gun. “Ford’s my name. And this here’s my daughter and my wife.”
Raymond motioned for the bench with the tip of the barrel and the three strangers sat down. He walked up behind them and patted their pockets. When he was satisfied that they were empty he stepped back and leaned on the edge of the bed. Clara was embarrassed by the tension. She hauled linens from a dresser drawer and made up the couch for the strangers to sleep on. The smell of the musty sheets filled the room.
“You folks live here?” the woman asked.
“Yes.”
She pulled back the curtains that hung in front of the half sized pantry and glanced in at the dark recesses. Raymond’s finger tightened on the trigger. The shelves were filled with canisters of dried tea and coffee beans and when the woman saw this she let the curtain fall again. “Smells great back there,” she said. “Maybe in the morning we can brew ourselves a pot.”
Clara shrugged and then walked over to Raymond and stood between him and the strangers. She put her hand on the gun and lowered it. “I think we’ve had enough of that,” she said.
Raymond laid the gun back in the rack beside the bed. Then he set himself on the far end of the bench, making sure that Ford was never closer to the weapon than he was.
Clara sat down across from the girl. “How old are you?” she asked.
The girl stared over the table but said nothing.
“She’s fourteen,” the woman said. “She doesn’t talk. Not anymore.”
“I’m sorry,” Clara said. She folded her hands together. “You’re very beautiful.”
The girl smiled but her eyes would not meet Clara’s.
“Do you have kids?” the woman asked.
“Yes.”
“Do they live here with you?”
“No. We haven’t seen them in years.”
“Oh,” the woman said. She chewed her lower lip.
Ford asked if they had anything to eat.
“We’ve got apples out in the shed,” Raymond said. “Behind the house. You’re welcome to as may of those as you can carry.”
The little girl’s eyes lit up and she rubbed her boney hands together.
“Any meat?” Ford asked.
Raymond shook his head. “Fish weren’t biting this morning.”
Clara walked out to the shed and grabbed a handful of spotted apples. She gave one to the girl who bit into it hungrily and the other two to Ford and his wife. While she did this Raymond climbed up into the rafters and pulled out a bottle of home made potato vodka. He poured four glasses and handed them around the table. Ford took the woman’s glass when she did not touch it and set it down in front of himself.
“My wife don’t drink anymore,” he said.
“The more for us,” Raymond said.
They drank and he poured another round. He sipped at it slowly and Ford was able to finish five glasses by the time Raymond emptied his second. Clara drank only the one, knowing that she had to stay clearheaded in case things turned sour. To pass the time she talked about how she and Raymond had laid traps in the forest around the cabin to catch rabbits. She said that in the morning, if the weather stayed clear, she would take Ford out to them and teach him how they worked. She could see from the look on his face that he knew nothing about hunting for wild animals.
“What did you do?” she asked him. “Before, I mean.”
“I was a janitor.”
“And your wife?”
“She didn’t do much of anything.”
Raymond looked at the woman who had fallen as silent as the little girl. She was staring down at the flower patterned table cloth and her dull black hair was hanging in clumps around her shoulders. Her clavicles were as hard as polished stones and Raymond let his eyes follow them into the crest of her low cut shirt.
“What brings you out this far?” Raymond asked.
“People in the cities are tearing themselves apart,” Ford said. “We heard about communes in the north and we thought we’d see if we could track one down. Only we don’t know a thing about surviving in the woods, so it’s been hard.”
Raymond cleared his throat. “I’ve never heard of any communes,” he said. “But we’ve never really gone much further than this cabin. First thing tomorrow morning you can follow the river that feeds this lake. It’ll take you all the way up to what used to be called Gorman’s Bay. There was a town there once and you might be able to stock up on a few things.”
Ford nodded. It wasn’t the answer he was hoping for. “Maybe we’ll do that,” he said.
Above the stove there was a painting that was covered in layers of ash. There was the faint hint of a mountain and a gently rolling stream; what might have been trees and a bright blue sky. The girl looked at it for a long time. She stood up and traced her finger across the ridges where the heat had warped the canvas.
“My son painted that,” Clara said.
The girl nodded and Clara stood behind her and took her by the shoulders. She ran her hands across the girl’s hair. “When was the last time you pulled a comb through this bird’s nest?”
The girl looked at her mother as if she might know the answer. Without waiting for approval, Clara marched across the room, grabbed a brush her nightstand, and began to drag it across the girl’s scalp. The first few strokes were painful as she cut through the knots, but after a while there was little resistance - the long stands shimmering under the light of the lamp.
A sudden calm fell over Ford’s features. “So your son was a painter, was he?”
“No,” Raymond said. “He sold cars. The painting was a hobby.”
“Seems he must have been good at it. You kept it up all these years.”
Clara nodded. “Maybe.”
Ford lifted the bottle as if he might pour himself another glass but then he stopped and set it back down on the table. Without lifting his eyes he said: “You both look really good for people who’ve been living off of nothing but fish and apples.”
There was a silence.
The only motion was that of the brush moving through the girl’s hair. Sensing the anxiety, Clara set it down on the table. The girl touched her head and smiled and looked across at her drunken father.
“Well I’ll be damned if you aren’t the prettiest little thing on the planet,” he said.
Raymond brushed his teeth and looked at Ford in the mirror. His gums hurt and he could taste blood in amongst the toothpaste. Ford sat cross legged on the couch and read from a book that he had pulled from the shelf. Between them was a half-filled ceramic wash basin. The women were already in bed.
Ford closed the book and looked up. “I do appreciate this,” he said.
Raymond gave a muffled reply and then spat a wad of foam into the lukewarm water. Swirls of red were mixed in with the white but he pretended not to notice them. He lowered his hand into the water like a cup and lifted it to his mouth. He rinsed and then spat into the basin again. “Sorry we haven’t got any toothbrushes to go around,” he said.
“Don’t worry yourself,” Ford said. “You get so used to going without something that you almost forget what you’re missing.”
Raymond lifted the basin and took it outside and threw the grimy water into the bush. He stayed out there for a moment and listened to the bubbles and the foam as they settled over the leaves. When he came back in Ford was at the sink filling a glass of water. He drank it in a single motion and then he made his way back across the room. When he got to the end of Raymond and Clara’s bed he stopped. He was standing right on top of the hidden cellar door. His head cocked to one side as if he’d heard something peculiar and then he looked at Raymond with a single eyebrow raised. He stomped the ground once with the heel of his boot, listening for that hollow sound, and then he stomped two more times to be sure.
“What the hell are you doing?” Raymond asked.
Ford smiled and sat down on the edge of the made up couch. He put his hand on his sleeping wife. “Just making myself at home,” he said.
That night Raymond stayed awake as long as he could and listened for sounds of stirring. He could hear Ford’s slow breathing and he watched him lying in his bed with his family curled up around him. He could feel his eyelids growing heavy at one point, so he brought the gun into the bed with him and rested it beside his pillow.
In the morning he was angry at himself for having fallen asleep. Clara was no longer in the bed next to him and the woman and her daughter were on the couch alone. There were voices coming from outside. Raymond threw his legs over the side of the bed and rubbed his eyes until they cleared. The gun had been set back on the rack. He took it in his hand and checked the chamber and walked out onto the porch.
Clara was kneeling in the grass with the ceramic basin between her legs. This time it was filled with soapy water and mounds of wet clothing. A fresh layer of leaves had fallen from the tree tops overnight and they lay scattered around her like bright pastel shavings. Ford was shirtless and sitting on the porch across from her, his legs dangling over the edge. He was chewing on an apple and when he heard the door open he looked at Raymond and saluted. He spoke without swallowing. “Wonderful woman you’ve got there,” he said. “Doing the laundry for us without even being asked.”
“The three of you looked as filthy as wet rats,” Clara said.
“Why thank you.”
Raymond put the gun down beside the door and took in a lungful of the cold clean air. “Beautiful morning,” he said. The muscles in his neck relaxed.
Clara’s hands probed the milky water for another garment to scrub. “I see you’re sleeping with the gun again,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Might be the company he keeps,” Ford said, smiling. He took one last bite of the apple and then he threw the core into the woods. “Your wife tells me that you were a rare book dealer.”
“A long time ago.”
“Not many rare book dealers I know can handle a gun as well as you.”
“You know a lot of them, do you?”
Ford shook his head. “No, I suppose not. I just imagined.”
The sun was hard and bright and Ford held his hand over his brow to block it out. Raymond looked out across the lake. “You’re welcome to come with me this morning,” he said. “I like to hunt geese first thing. I don’t often shoot anything, but when I do it’s a feast.”
“I’ve never been much for hunting.”
“No?”
“No. I thought maybe we could just sit down and have a conversation.”
“Suit yourself,” Raymond said.
The screen door swung open and Ford’s wife and daughter came out and sat down on the porch beside him. The little girl picked up three lengths of wheat grass and began to braid them together.
“Don’t make much sense,” Ford said after a long silence. “Hunting when you’ve got food to spare.”
Raymond did his best to ignore the implication. “Can’t say I know what you’re talking about,” he said.
Ford took a long breath and stood up and put his hands into his pockets. He gazed at the rising sun. “I’m asking you kindly if you’ll share that food.”
“We’ve only got the apples in the shed.”
“I’ve got a family to think about,” he said. “Don’t talk down to me.”
Raymond backed away from Ford who had moved another step closer. He saw the shotgun beside the chair. He picked it up and let it hang against his leg. The woman noticed this and stood up and took her husband by the hand. She pulled at him but he did not move. The little girl continued to braid the grass. “I saw a few birds down by the water yesterday,” Raymond said, trying to bring the conversation back to where he wanted it.
“What’s that key for?” Ford asked.
Raymond felt the string around his neck, itching. It was all happening too fast. He had never shot anything larger than a muskrat and he was afraid that when the moment came he would panic. “They nest along the shore,” he said.
“What’s it for?”
“The shed.”
“Liar,” Ford said, his voice climbing. “We walked passed that shed on the way in and saw no lock.”
Raymond felt his face flushing and his heart pounding in his ears. He raised the shotgun and looked at Ford through the sight. He squinted to keep his eyes from stinging. “I think you’d better take your family and go,” he stammered.
Ford closed his eyes and exhaled. His jaw muscles were clenched tight. His fists were like knotted ropes that hung around his waist. He mumbled something under his breath and everyone strained to listen. Then, in a flash, his hand moved toward the key and Raymond cocked the gun and fired. The spread hit Ford in the chest and he spun on his heels and landed face first on the deck. His fingers twitched behind his back and the blood fell down between the planks and splashed against the earth like water from an overflowing eves trough. The woman and the little girl were quiet and pale. They weren’t sure what to do. Raymond kept the gun level despite his quaking hands. The woman opened her mouth as if to scream but no sound ever came out. She hunched over and took her daughter tightly in her arms. The girl stared up at Raymond, little droplets of blood spread out across her face.
Raymond cocked the gun again. “You’d better go,” he said, his ears still ringing with the sound.
For a moment they didn’t move. Then the little girl broke free of her mother’s arms and took her by the wrist. She led her down off the porch and walked with her to the far end of the yard. The sound of the dripping slowed. As they approached the stone steps that led to the beach they paused. The woman looked back at the unmoving remains of her husband. As she did this she began to sob. “He might not have done it,” she said.
Raymond did not take his eyes off of them. He kept the barrel of the gun pointed at their heads and he waited until they were on the beach before he lowered it. Birds chirped in the trees and a fresh breeze blew in off the water.
Clara stood in the middle of the yard with the soapy water dripping from her finger tips. Her eyes were glazed over with tears and she was shifting her weight from one leg to the other. Her face was older now, as if she’d aged a decade in the last five minutes. She looked at the two women walking down the beach and then she turned to Raymond and wiped her hands on the legs of her pants.
“Come on inside,” she said. “I’ll fix you something to eat.”
He lowered the gun and tried to swallow. “Not just this minute,” he said.
Erich William Bergmeier lives in a cottage on the outskirts of Montreal. He spends most of his time fishing on the banks of the Ottawa River and translating the works of minor German poets. His work is forthcoming inEncounters Magazine
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