Long road home
“They used to go ten, twenty times faster than we can go now,” Mama says as we trudge past the rotting carcasses. They’re all rust, now, dissolving under the rain and time. Their wheels are stripped bare: the rubba that once covered them now soles my shoes. We walk along the haway, on the open side, towards sitee in the distance. “Time was,” Mama goes on, “they could make this trip in an hour. Now it’s all day we’ve gotta go on foot just to get there.” She gestures to the other side of the gulf between the two parallel stripes of stone that make up the haway; it’s clogged with carcasses of these cast-off chariots, “but now you see what’s come of it. That’s pride, which goeth before the fall.”
I’ve heard this all before, but these long treks can be a good time to tell old stories to take your mind off the pain in your feet and shoulders. Mama carries my baby brother on her chest wrapped to her in cloth; on her back’s a pack of tobacco leaves we’ve grown. I carry more of the same on my back, and the strings of the pack cut in to my shoulders. We’re both pulling wagons behind us, little carts on wheels loaded up with the tobacco our settlement’s grown in the last year. We’re heading to the sitee to meet folks from other farms; hopefully we can trade some of what we carry.
The trees alongside the haway crowd in and loom over it. The forest is dense, but has so far only slowly reclaimed the land painted over by the stone they had back then. Where it’s cracked after years of heating and cooling, the grass has come, then the shrubs, then the trees. Sometimes we’ve got to climb over a tree root that’s surged out of the ground. The gulf between the haway’s two stripes is forest; the trees have sometimes grown up and around the low stone baracades that seperated the two parallel channels.
“No one knows how they did it,” Mama continues, “but my grandmama’s grandmama told my grandmama, who told me, that when she was a little girl, she remembered sitting in the back of one of the chariots you see yonder, when they were still making them and riding in them, and she flew along faster than a bird or a horse could carry you, smooth and long along these stone paths they poured out like clay that hardens.”
“Aw Mama,” I said, “you know that’s just a story.” Mama’s always trying to get me to believe some nonsense about the old days, craziness like what she’s saying now. It’s all silliness. Back in the settlement, folks don’t like listening to Mama’s talk, so she’s got to get it all out now while we head to the town. There’s a little caravan of us making the all-day trek into the sitee, which looms ahead of us on the horizon: the toppled towers silouhetted against the midday sky appear through gaps in the trees as we drag our carts along. Sometimes I’ve got to hoist the cart over a crack in the road.
“No, Molly, it’s the honest truth!” she puts her hand on her heart over my baby brother’s head, “I’ll swear by the sun, moon, and stars!” The haway’s dappled by the sun through the trees overhead. The fall equinox is a little past, now, but it’s not yet really cold. That won’t come till a little after the solstice, I reckon. But by then the sun’ll be getting big again and the days’ll be getting longer. We set out before sunrise from our settlement, and we’re hoping to reach sitee not long after night fall. It’ll be a full day of trekking, and I’m beginning to get hungry.
“How long’s it been we’ve been out, Mama?”
“Aw Molly, you’ve been asking me that since we left.”
“But Mama…” I whine.
“Now look Molly, we’re not going to stop to eat till the sun touches the tip of yonder tower.” She points through a gap in the trees, holding out her fist to measure where the sun is in the sky. “It’ll be another hour or two before then, baby, but if you want some water or to chew on something while you walk I can give it to you.” We’ve kept moving this whole time, and by now my feet have forgotten what it’s like to stand still. Our carts bump behind us.
“Naw Mama, I reckon I can wait.” My baby brother gurgles and rubs his face into Mama’s chest. A bit of snot and drool drips onto her skin, but she doesn’t even notice. He’s still fast asleep against her.
Behind of us walks my big brother, leading a train of goats into town. The goats don’t seem to mind being led too much, they’ve been trained to it since birth. Like us, I guess. Only they don’t know we’re going to trade them away at the other end of our walk. Milk’s a valuable thing, and their fur can be useful too, in a pinch.
Ahead of us walks my Papa, carrying a long stick over his shoulders. From it hang bundles of cheese, bread, and salted meat; we’re bringing all we need to eat for the few days we’re in the sitee trading, and what we need to fuel us for the treks there and back. He’s too far ahead to hear Mama’s talk, and brother’s too far behind: she talks quietly, just for me to hear. And baby brother, I guess, but he’s too young to remember anything.
To our left as we walk are the carcasses of the old chariots Mama said her grandmama’s grandmama rode in. They’re big things, about the length of two of my Papas lying end-to-end and about as wide across as my Papa lying down. They’re different sizes, too: some are real tall, taller than me, and some are about my height. They’re all about the same shape, though: low in the front and back, then with an arcing roof in the middle held up by pillars. There’s broken shiny sharp stuff around some of the edges of the pillars. None of them is complete: they’re all dissolving rust piles, choked under vines and shrubs that took root in their bottoms. A few of them even have real old skeletons in them, or at least little bits of bone. Once I saw a skull looking out one of the chariots like it was gazing off in to the distance, and I jumped for a second when I thought it made eye contact with me. It’s so easy to drift off into a daze watching the endless stream of them sitting totally still next to us as we trudge along.
Ahead of us and behind us in the brush there’s a rustling. Papa stops and holds up his hand. He slides the bundles off his big stick and swings it down to his waist. Brother brings the goats in towards Mama and me and pulls a hatchet from his belt. Three men, two in front and one behind, jump out of the brush to our right and run towards us, screaming. They’re stark naked, covered in mud and long hair, and their nails are long and filthy. They’ve got no teeth, and their penises swing in the wind, flopping between their legs as they charge towards us. I drop my cart handle and cling to my Mama, who wraps her arms around me. My baby brother comes awake between us and screams.
In back of us my brother rushes towards one of the men with his hatchet drawn back. Papa in front of us swings his stick around as the two men close on him. There’s a terrible scream as brother plants his hatchet in the man’s shoulder as brother’s tackled to the ground. Papa lands his stick against the side of one man’s head with a crunch as the other one dives for Papa’s leg with his teeth.
Then Mama’s screaming and I’m screaming as she’s pulled away from me in among the chariots by another pair of them, women this time, whose muddy breasts swing as they tug her back across the gulf into the tangle of rusty heaps.
“Mama!” I scream, suddenly alone. Papa ahead is thwacking the end of his stick into the skull of the man whose closed his mouth over his calf; blood spurts out of the man’s mouth. Brother’s face is bloody as the man who’s got him by the shoulders on the ground beats his forehead into brother’s face over and over again. Brother’s dropped the hatchet, now, and is scratching at the man’s side and kneeing him in the groin over and over. The man bellows without words and plants his knee in brother’s stomach. I stand paralyzed for an instant, then remember what I’m supposed to do in times like these: fight like hell.
I run towards brother and grab his hatchet off the ground where it’s fallen. I put all my momentum into the handle and slam it into the man’s spine. It crunches through bone like splitting wood, and the man hollers like to rattle the trees and the teeth in my head. I try to pull the hatchet out of him, but it’s stuck. I kick him in the side of the head and turn to look at Papa. He’s got one of the men on his back strangling him and the other hasn’t let go of his calf with his teeth. Papa’s reeling around, trying the get the man off. He’s dropped his stick, now, and is trying to claw the man’s arms off from around his throat. Things aren’t going well at all. Brother’s groaning on the ground as the man, now pouring blood out of his back around the hatchet wound in pulses, rolls off him.
“Come on now,” I whisper to brother, “we’ve got to go!” I grab him by the hand and try to lug him up. He moans, barely conscious. I glance over my shoulder to try and catch sight of Mama, but she’s gone into the tangle of cars. Our goats have spooked and are running into the brush, tied together. Our carts are where Mama and I dropped them, and Papa’s tripping over one of his bags of supplies as he tumbles to the ground. He’s got one of the men behind him and under him, and the one attached to his calf scrambles up on top of him. In times like these, it’s smarter to run than fight. Maybe I can still save brother.
I drag him to his feet and towards the brush on the outside of the haway: we’ve got to be quiet and hope there aren’t any more of them out there. Usually folks like this, if you can call them folks, don’t live in groups more than a few: they’ll kill and eat each other otherwise. Papa’s screaming now and Mama’s nowhere to be seen. I guess they’ll raise baby brother as their own, and I hope we never see him again. I’ve got to remember the stories Mama told me, because now I’m the only one who knows them.
Brother and I hide in the bushes by the road. He passes out as soon as I drag us under a shrub, but I keep my eyes wide open and watch as the muddy men start tearing Papa’s flesh out of him with their teeth and eating it; his lips are blue and his face terribly purple when he stops struggling and they let his neck go. His head hangs at a terrible angle. I have to watch and listen for anything else that might try to get us. The one I hit with the hatchet is lying where I left him, his hands twitching less and less as his blood pours out on the stone; rivulets trickle down towards the edge of the stone on either side of him, spreading towards the grass on either side and staining the surface.
Eventually the men have eaten their fill of Papa and leave his body to rot near the other’s; the goats are nowhere to be seen, and neither are Mama, baby brother, or the women who took them. I figure they’re as gone as Papa; and if the stories I’ve heard mean anything, he’s probably the lucky one here. The men in front pick through the bags of food, sniff at the tobacco leaves, and run off into the woods whooping. For a horrible instant I think they’re running straight at big brother and me, and I tense to run in the opposite direction, hoping they take brother first. But they run past us into the woods.
All is quiet. The leaves rustle above us, and the dirt is cool under my hands. It smells warm and sweet, and I’ve been gripping it harder than I realized. Several tiny roots are torn up in the ground around my palms. I relax my fingers, and the dirt trickles into the tiny space I dug. The branches of our shrub crowd overhead and cover big brother and me in a cave of green just beginning to turn yellow around the edges, beneath a vault of trees towering above us that stain the light that shines through them.
“We’ve got to go,” I whisper to big brother, who’s bleeding out his nose and mouth, “come on, now,” as I put my shoulder under his arm and heave him forward. He groans, struggling to his feet. We climb up on the haway and stand there, wavering. I look at the sky above us, where the sun’s not yet reached the tower Mama pointed to. There’s one of the bags of food left, and I toss it in the cart of leaves I was dragging. I walk big brother to the cart and, pushing leaves aside to make room, set him in it. I reckon we’ve got to keep going to sitee: we must be more than halfway there by now. I just wish we had a faster way to get there.
