Page 138 of The End of the World As We Know It

Elise pressed her lips together. Everything about this made herfeel sad. She took a deep breath through her nose, waiting for the emotion to ebb. Ruby finished the apple and gnawed the core to a strip and dropped it into the dust at her feet.

“Courtney sounds like a nice person,” Elise said.

Ruby nodded.

“Anybody else back there you know?”

“Only Ali Cat Lawson, but she’s bad. And her cousin Hiram.” Ruby lowered her eyes and visibly shuddered. “He’s worse.”

Elise looked at the bruise on Ruby’s cheek. She remembered the woman with the X’s painted on her eyelids and wondered if that was Ali Cat. Maybe. Maybe not. She was a part of that community, in any case, and Elise didn’t blame Ruby for wanting to take her chances and set out on her own, aimless as she was.

She’d be picked clean before the moon rose, though, and not all vultures were birds.

“Do you want to come with me?” Elise asked.

“Where you going?”

“A long way from here. Nebraska.”

“To see that sweet old lady?”

Elise drew a sharp breath and a chill raced down her spine. The dreams she’d had in recent weeks flickered through her mind: the shack-like house surrounded by rustling corn, the tire swing hanging from the branch of an apple tree, the tin-pot chimney and crooked porch… and of course the old Black woman sitting on that porch, rocking sweetly in her chair. Sometimes she’d lift notes from a scuffed but melodic acoustic guitar. Other times she’d study the corn behind Elise, as if expecting something to emerge from between the stalks and grab her. Always, though, she effused goodness and light. In many ways, she reminded Elise of the apple tree in her yard. Old, yes, but deeply rooted, full of character, and still strong enough to bear weight.

Ruby had dreamed about the same place, the same old lady. Maybe some of the details were different, but the essence was the same. Elise felt this deep in her soul. It made her wonder if they were dreams atall. Perhaps they were visions, or windows of collective energy, which crackled with good faith and were opened in the opaque passages between sleep cycles. With the world in crisis, it did not seem unusual that people were tapping into the same hopeful resource.

“Yes,” Elise replied, and shivered. Her forearms prickled with gooseflesh. “Yes, Ruby. That’s exactly where I’m going.”

“Polk County, Nebraska,” Ruby said, and smiled.

“That’s right. You want to come with me?”

Ruby nodded.

“Good,” Elise said. “That’s good.”

They walked to the Chevette, similar in demeanor, their chins up and their eyes forward. Elise opened the passenger door and Ruby climbed in. She looked very small in the seat. Elise stepped around the hood and got in on her side. “Seat belt,” she said. Ruby pulled the belt across her body and Elise helped her buckle it. She buckled her own, started the engine, and they set off.

Ruby sipped her water, looking around the car’s interior. The owner had hot-glued four California Raisins figures to the dash. Ruby poked one of them and smiled, then settled back in her seat.

“She plays a guitar,” she said a moment later.

“Huh?”

“The old lady. In my dreams. That’s how I find her.” Ruby nodded and Elise saw echoes of herself in her big brown eyes. “I follow the sound of her guitar.”

“That’s right,” Elise said. “I do, too.”

“I like the song about the train.” Ruby poked another California Raisin—the one playing the saxophone—and sang in the sweetest little voice: “This train is bound for glory, this train…”

Elise knew the song. She grinned—it had been many weeks sincethatparticular expression had brightened her face—and joined in. They sang the first verse together and some of the second, then dissolved into an equally tuneful laughter. Elise raised her right hand and Ruby laid a firm five on it.

She steered the Chevette onto SR 219, clear to the horizon in both directions. If every secondary road was as empty as this, and keeping to a steady fifty, they’d be halfway across the Colorado Plateau by nightfall.

They both needed to pee. Elise pulled over. “I’ll go first. Scare off the rattlers.” She kicked the buffel grass at the edge of the road—safe enough—then yanked down her jeans and squatted. Ruby went in the same spot. Elise walked a short distance from the car to give her some privacy. A sun-beaten sign put Caballo Blanco eleven miles behind them. A similarly weathered sign on the other side of the road announced that Cactus Belle’s Trading Post was four miles ahead.

“You got anything to wipe with?” Ruby called out.

“Nope,” Elise said. Toilet paper was one of the few essentials she’d neglected to pack. “Just give your tush a little shake.”