Part One: Natural Evil
1. Extend an Olive Branch
Bryson City, North Carolina, America, May 7 and 14, 2108
7 August didn’t feel so young anymore. He ate berries over a sink in the kitchen of a little house, a forgotten handgun resting on the windowsill. The lawn faced a winding road that ran uphill, and traveling it on foot to forage what was considered suitable left his legs tender and full each morning. Forests surrounded the home on every side but the front; mushrooms and berries, like Hedgehog mushrooms and raspberries, were almost everywhere. The smell of burning tobacco wormed through the open window above the sink, the worn metal of the gun discovered a blue sheen of an early morning. August pictured Hosea leaning against the railing of the patio, while he put a match to his shag.
The sun hadn’t risen completely, so the air held onto the moon's crispness. But it was light enough to see the early birds among the deer pick grass that quiet morning. A mist hovered like a visibly dense gas, trunk decor trembled in the presence of sharp-toothed mountains. The only thing missing was the smell of grease in a skillet. By a sniff of the leaf, the boy suspected Hosea smoked nearby. It only became more apparent as the seconds passed. A latch on the front door rattled and clinked. Hosea opened the door the same way he always had—slow at first, paused to greet August, and stepped through without swinging it all the way. A black man wearing a baseball cap and a pistol at his hip similarly slipped into the house, as if a clone of Hosea. Another man followed a second after the black one, wearing a short rifle on his chest. August heard Hosea’s greeting from deep within, and each step he took sounded like a snapped twig as he walked from the kitchen to the small open space, with a coffee table on a rug, to meet his guardian. Three men were standing in front of him. Each man had a gun. August just wanted to watch the sunrise.
“Did you sleep?” Hosea asked the boy.
August seemed to be in shock. He couldn’t say a word.
“What did you dream of?” Hosea asked, digging for something deep.
August cautiously looked at the two strangers.
“It’s OK—they know.”
“Who are they?” August managed to ask.
Hosea took a second to pull the oddly shaped cigarette from his mouth after inhaling through it, then turned to his left to point with the same hand. A fog spilled from his lips. “This is Jeremy,” Hosea said. “And this is Gareth.” The men nodded. “They’ll take care of you while I’m gone.”
“Gone?”
Hosea smoked again and studied August’s face.
“What did you dream of?”
“I don’t remember.”
“OK,” Hosea acknowledged. “Did you hope to catch the sunrise?”
August couldn’t discern which of Hosea’s questions he truly wanted answered. He did want to see the sunrise, however. It would have been one of a handful he’d seen from that part of America. They plodded over the pavement during the dead of night, heading west of Raleigh, North Carolina—it was safest when going from city to city. Soft light meant the duo would gather their belongings, packing them away until the sun set again. Halfway between the market back in Raleigh and their destination several cities over, Hosea organized the pickup of a vehicle to carry them the rest of the way to Bryson City, where they found themselves a home isolated and hidden among the trees.
“You’re actually leaving me here, with them? I didn’t ask for this,” August said.
“August, I have a job—they’re expecting me in Rosslyn,” Hosea replied.
Hosea almost laughed at that, as it sounded too casual. But the house remained silent besides the ruffling of the strange men’s cargo pants.
The nature in Bryson City was already turning green, the color of an olive. Not far from the house was a lake with fresh, blue water that quietly spoke through the flow of the connecting creeks; sharp shapes of light layered on top of the bending, blue glass. The roads weren’t even badly damaged there; August felt he would need to jump over the cracks in a road just outside of Greensboro, North Carolina, if he were to walk it. He was glad to have moved away from that place. It felt like they were on another planet. Hosea’s voice registered differently with the peace of the land, respecting his language. It’s just that August didn’t like what he had to say.
“First, your job was to kidnap me at gunpoint. Now, your job is to leave me to the wolves, with strange men—” August couldn’t finish.
“You better be grateful you’re no longer a lab rat,” Hosea said, careful not to suddenly move. He slowly dropped his chin onto his chest. “I’m a traitor now.”
“I’m sorry, excuse me, but—I imagine there’s a toilet somewhere?” Jeremy, the black stranger, interrupted.
Hosea pulled from his cigarette again and squinted his right eye; a speck of impatience bothered him beneath his lid. “Yeah, of course. It’s just past the kitchen.”
Jeremy fixed his hat and carefully walked past August, who didn’t move and kept his eyes on Hosea. Gareth told the room he would wait outside and grabbed Hosea’s tin and matchbox. The floor creaked on his way out. Then, two were left alone in the living space. A clarifying breeze cautiously entered through the open door.
“I think it’s wrong of you to leave me here,” August said.
After a breath, Hosea said, as if only now realizing: “I’m a traitor to my job, to my department. I’m a traitor to my state, to Rosslyn.”
“And you’re a traitor to me,” August said, finishing for Hosea. “You dragged me here, and I didn’t ask you to drag me here. Now I’m—I don’t know how many miles away from home, in an unfamiliar place. And America just may be scarier than the lab.” August’s accent was clammy and thick at the end of some words.
“I saved you,” Hosea contested, stepping toward him.
Then, August moved.
“You were the one who was sent for me! And they’ll get to me eventually, especially now that I’m convenient. So, I guess you’ll get me, too. This way just takes a little longer.”
“I chose what was best for you at that moment,” Hosea turned and threw his hands on his head, the smoke on his jacket stinking the room. “And you’re alive and well, think about that. Why can’t you just be grateful?”
Catching a moment of repose, Hosea then peeled back his shoulder to plead with the boy. “I chose what was best for you. What do you want me to do, stay here with you? That helps nothing.”
“You chose what was best for you,” August said, contesting Hosea’s point after considering it. “But then again, you chose this life. Now, you reap what you sow.”
This froze Hosea. The toilet being flushed was heard through the wall. Then there was the opening and closing of a door, several cushioned footsteps through the kitchen, and Jeremy returned to his original spot without considering the weight of the room.
After he settled into place, unaware, he asked: “Where’s Gareth?”
Hosea and August locked eyes with an unshakable stare. Hosea then sighed and turned from the boy, after a slow blink, while holding two fingers to his mouth as he pulled at his tobacco. A set of keys attached to his belt loop scraped against one another. He quietly closed the front door behind him, and the door jam squealed.
Jeremy realized the air of an argumentative spirit, as he felt the soft wind fuse with the warm breath from the disagreement. “Yeah,” he placed his hands on his waist after Hosea’s footsteps faded, from the creaking steps of the porch to the subtle crunch of gravel. “I don’t like him either,” Jeremy told August, who appeared to be looking for a memory.
The room was situated in the muted cushion, and over time, it began to feel stiff, hard to sit on. After not getting a response from the boy, Jeremy asked, “You hungry?”
Luckily, there were wild chickens in a field near the neighbor’s house. It was likely that there was an ancient coop nearby that attracted them. Maybe a storm knocked some entirely too old feed onto the ground. It’d be rotten, that’s for sure. The houses in that area belonged to the wildlife, and most were filled with useful things the wild couldn’t utilize. Too bad it was all uphill and more than a mile and a half away. Jeremy said he could tell which chicken would lay eggs, and they planned on carting back a few to start a sustainable formula for feeding themselves.
“The only thing I’m unsure about making is dough,” Jeremy admitted, unprovoked. His backpack was clipped across his chest. The thumb of his left hand hooked under the strap of his bag, and he gripped the handle of some sort of hand truck meant to haul their supplies with his free hand. The sun had risen by then, summer was on the verge, and it was apparent to Jeremy that August was still upset, but he didn’t exactly know what about. “I’ll teach myself, though. You know, there used to be bread factories. I’ve seen what’s left of them. You can still smell the yeast. Imagine all the bread you can eat. A bread buffet.”
He looked at the boy who agreed to join him in securing chickens and eggs. If they were going to make it through the summer, they would need a sensible way to eat without over-exerting themselves. And the rabbits were swift, though abundant. The two of them matched each other’s walking patterns. Jeremy adjusted his backpack. August kept his hands in his pockets.
“You have an accent. Where are you from?”
“I thought Hosea told you about me,” August responded.
“Mhm,” Jeremy agreed. “But just about why you needed protection. Like, you’re not just some kid, right? Someone’s looking for you, or something?”
“I don’t think so,” August said. He slid his feet across the road, disturbing the loose gravel, gluing his eyes to the tops of his shoes. “Maybe. Probably.”
“Well, that’s good, if not. Or, I hope not. You haven’t been alive long enough to make enemies. Someone like me—I’ve made plenty. But all it does is keep you cautious of everyone, looking over your shoulder as many hours as you sleep.”
August was outwardly disconnected from the conversation, and they had at least thirty minutes of walking ahead. Not to mention the forty minutes back. The ascending road didn’t help—it felt as steep as the foot of a mountain. Jeremy brought up another topic.
“I’ve known Hosea for years,” he started. “We were kids together. We were kids and lived together. Then he went off and got recruited, is what they told me at the time. I was there when he lost his hearing, too.”
August looked at him. Jeremy pretended not to notice.
“He was walking on a ledge, slipped, and hit his head. That’s when the hearing went.”
“How did you help?” August asked.
“I didn’t know what to do. And I was scared. So I ran back to get help from the adults. By the time we returned, Hosea was walking himself home.”
August stopped and quietly turned to see how the short mountains loomed over his new world, flocks of birds accomplishing formations along the backdrop of the glittering sky. Delicate clouds appeared as halos above the heads of mountains, and they were implied to be a manifestation of the masses’ thoughts.
“Misfortunes come in pairs,” August said, in Polish, after he looked down the snaking road for a while, with an obvious house before the curve that disappeared behind the healthy green.
“What’s that?” Jeremy sought clarification.
“This is what Aleksander said to me when he lost someone close to him. He says that I should expect ‘bad to come with a brother.’”
Jeremy carefully considered the boy’s words, but embarrassingly felt he hadn’t understood the wisdom of the proverb.
The road ahead was split in half by two hardly visible lines running down its center. They were only apparent when the dirt and leaves were pushed aside, where the overgrowth hadn’t yet cracked through.
“Jeremy,” August said. “How can you tell if someone’s loyal?”
Jeremy thought for a second and walked with his front half heavily leaning over his feet. The hand truck he pulled hadn’t been used in many years, but it moved well. They oiled the wheels, and it started rolling quickly. However, a wheel was loose enough to rattle off an unending clang. Before, Jeremy spoke over the noise between strained breaths, but as he slowed his pace and gathered his air, he settled on a response: “I’ve never approached anyone on this side of the wall with much certainty.”
Two chickens clucked and complacently plucked at corn and grain as they had during the former golden days. Back when temperatures evenly rode a singular road that guided outdoor thermometers toward seventy-eight. August was only thirteen and a quarter when the weather was seeking order, and Fahrenheit was how he measured it. Watching the red stick point to the falling end of an arch to show him an example of thoroughly metric, August hoped Hosea’s put-together Jeep, with pieces fitting unusually, didn’t find the curves to be anything to mess with.
Once parked, Jeremy and August carefully unpacked their haul, having abandoned the hand truck an hour before, after discovering more supplies were available than there was space on the cart. Hosea put a wrench on his front left wheel. The axle of his vehicle was wrong; adjusting the wheel wouldn’t help. Still, it had gotten them up the winding road and back.
“Eggs, several chickens, quinoa from that farm—I think we can make this work,” Jeremy said.
August was quiet but participating, dragging weathered bags of stale corn from Hosea’s Jeep and onto the porch of the small house.
“Jeremy,” Hosea said.
Jeremy looked up from a notebook where he had begun to track their resources. Hosea moved from the driver’s side of the vehicle to meet Jeremy at the trunk.
Hosea spent some time with Jeremy’s eyes.
“This is serious. We’ve discussed that I can’t stay, not right now. The boy doesn’t get it,” Hosea said.
“I think the boy is plenty smart, smarter than me, smarter than you. I think he knows exactly what’s going on. He’s protesting,” Jeremy replied.
“That doesn’t matter,” Hosea said. “He’s ignorant.”
As if choreographed, the two of them looked at August.
“Just get your shit in order so you can take proper care of the kid. I don’t know if there’s anywhere in the world he could hide, not long-term. Bryson City may be a good start.”
Jeremy scanned Hosea’s face.
“You guys went through a lot out there, getting back to America,” Jeremy said.
Hosea turned, rubbing his stubble. He felt hardened, ruined by the trials of an unanticipated journey. They experienced prolonged hunger, loneliness, and the occasional death. A quiet, unforgettable part of their move. And after all of that, the work had only just begun.
“It’s terrible on the East Coast. New York is unforgiving. I know a guy who traveled the Brooklyn Bridge, because Highway 78 to Newport was taken over,” Jeremy said.
“Holland tunnel,” Hosea said.
“Shithole, some might say. Fort Hamilton and Fort Wordsworth were fine. Not incredible, not a vacation,” Jeremy said. “He was lucky to make it. Like you, I guess.”
The wooden steps of the patio suddenly interrupted the low murmur of their conversation with a sound similar to dropping pebbles. The two men looked over to see August struggling to contain the spilling corn. After placing the supplies and tools they had in their hand, they jumped into action.
“Here, let me—” Jeremy said.
“It’s OK, I got it,” August said, denying Jeremy’s assistance.
Nevertheless, Hosea planned to help them start their garden by pinching the seeds of soon-to-be seedlings and planting them into soft soil with the hands of a timid man. As if a softer man, he would need to channel a soul with more consideration.
He would need to treat the land like a child of his own or a partner nurtured to health by his efforts alone. He would need compassion to make it work. He would recruit the boy for that part. The man preferred avoidance over discretion, isolation over companions, and basil over thyme. But he agreed with good when it showed up green—the color of an olive. Falling in love would be a mistake there, so he never appreciated the color the way it deserved. But, he must have respected it if he wanted anything to grow in his favor, to shepherd new life.
A little later, after sorting the supplies, Jeremy cracked an egg over a pile of quinoa flour. August swore Jeremy invented this after harvesting a plant from a wild-growing garden where nature met five acres of an abandoned farm some miles away. Jeremy then sprinkled a pinch of salt over the egg and folded the quinoa flour over itself. August watched his palms press against the counter, starting from the elbow down to his wrist.
“We’ll have to let it rise after this—for sure—for at least a few hours,” Jeremy told him.
The house could have used more windows, and though the day was brighter than necessary that late afternoon, the men and the boy lit lanterns to even the lighting. A grey noise tinted the yellow walls blue, but the hot lanterns softly opened up like young flowers. Buds of light like sunshine, and not light like the weight of a petal, colored the corners of the walls and the kitchen tiles. Through the shine, Gareth smoked on the couch, his boots kicked up as he leaned back and watched the road snake away from the front yard and toward a montage of troubles unseen or unrecognized through the open door. Troubles are known to make a home in and around you, incognito but popping up like ghosts in hopes of casting a spurt of unfriendly reminders.
Outside, Hosea pushed another seed into the garden bed, then broke off a piece of his mind and let it flutter to the kitchen like a brain-shaped bundle of butterflies, where August and Jeremy worked. His imagination aligned with their reality for the most part. The bread was rising, and eggs and roots were cooked until squishy. Jeremy finally sang just for August to laugh. He continued to sing anyway. He only had a few songs in him. That much could be heard through the open window. August set out plates in front of Gareth, who must have been put on mute because he didn’t care to speak much. And when he did, it wasn’t very loud.
Eventually, when evening came, which lasted only a split second when they looked back on it in their memory, they ate, and Jeremy and August laughed at an inside joke they shared about Hosea. Gareth finished his plate of food, thanked them for their preparation, and announced he would watch the road to ensure no marauders followed them after arriving that morning, before the sun appeared. Hosea went back to gardening with the help of Jeremy, and August got the urge to pray for the food that would nourish his body and overwhelm his mind with recollections of sewn memories and encroaching future events.
14 The day Hosea would leave August behind came quicker than expected. With them happening upon the resources to start a proper garden, he hoped Hosea would reconsider the extent of his stay. A few more weeks to help prepare for their indefinite huddle would suffice. But his Jeep was packed and fueled. He could almost hear the truck beg to get moving, its wheels tense with an anticipation of rolling their way north. Up north, the sun must have been easier to admire when the trees gave way to a delicate sky. If the day were overcast, the clouds would be thin but fit with strong puffs at one end as if mocking the ways of the water. But before that, Hosea and August needed to find common ground.
The two sat in the driver and passenger seats of the four-door Jeep, while parked, with a bowl of berries and strips of baked dough, pelted with fresh water and charred by an open fire.
“I wish I could better explain myself and my situation,” Hosea told August.
August crunched on a failed attempt. Hosea side-eyed the boy and waited for a rebuttal. Hosea hadn’t needed to make a point or take a position—the subtext was painfully within reach. He took a berry from the bowl in August’s lap and softly placed it on his tongue, chewing it for several seconds, maneuvering his tongue to loosen the skin from the gaps of his teeth.
“I get why you’re upset with me, though. You’re not the first, as if I need to tell you. First was my mother. She also had a point to prove—that she was strong and could handle raising a boy on her own. Unfortunately for her, I took after my father; fortunately for her, she didn’t have to deal much with both of us at the same time.”
Hosea looked ahead, as if he needed to watch where he was going. August maintained the silent treatment.
“I, for one, think a man must raise a child the proper way when he espouses one,” Hosea leaned his chair back, waving a piece of bread held by the thumb and pointer finger. “That goes for non-kin, too. I’m not one to step out, I don’t think. I at least got that from my father.”
August shifted in his seat as he threw the burnt pieces of his bread onto the driveway, and a breeze flicked his hair.
“But when you’re a man—especially if you’re devoted to caring for someone—your personal story transforms completely. It’s no longer about you. All of a sudden, it’s about those you cherish. These are the things that make a man’s life whole, and the very same things that may end it.”
Dark skies were impending, but sunsets never took a day off. Consider this: sunsets are sunrises in reverse. And, of course, August noted the differences from his bedroom window in his camp back in Gdansk, Poland, as the boy was a fastidious one. Still, his mind was capable of suspending disbelief. What he loved about sunsets differed from his interest in sunrises. Sunsets left the sky the color of Darwin pea, sweetened by rows of cotton-like clouds that valleyed toward the land. A land where an infestation of entitled organisms on the hump they called Earth, decided between showing up as plankton or whale lice.
“I want you to know—that is what I’m trying. I’m cherishing you.”
And so it went—the apology and the awkward silence, the final speech to the group, and the three who remained watching Hosea’s Jeep rock away were all so predictable. The half-mile walk to the lake August took, during which he grappled with the bed near the water with bare feet as the sun set—his toes tickled by soft blades until he was all but forced to stop moving, was all so predictable. The absence of strongly scented breezes, which smelled like fire and sweet wood, and the minutes of the hours taking twice as long to turn over like the final moments before a new year, were all so predictable. Together with the mesmerizing backdrop of a well-lit North Carolina twilight, the Tangelo horizon carving through the woods behind the lake; the lonely flight of a hawk pricking the sky, its red shoulders flexing during a bold ascent; or the list of chores running through the boys head as he walked back to the little house, after some time, from the lake, which was a shockingly long list that was directly related to the world ending, August jumped with widened eyes at the pop of a gun going off from what sounded like only meters away, which disabled him with confusion.