Though the Earth Gives Way

Mark Johnson

Description

Mark Johnson tells a timeless tale of the struggle to find truth in belief, faith in fact, and friendship in times of fear. It is a new survival story, one that takes place post-climate apocalypse where our main character, Elon, thirty-seven, alone, hungry, and desperate to hear just another voice, is determined to discover what is next for a world sunken and on fire. When Elon discovers a hidden retreat deep in the woods of Northern Michigan, he soon finds himself on the verge of regeneration, as a pack of loners band together amidst a society turned hostile and an environment turned violent. No longer must he travel alone with his shopping cart, his jug of gasoline, and rotten crabapples. Now, he has the chance to rediscover friendship and intimacy. Johnson's novel asks the question-what would it take to start over?-and readers walk away from Elon's story pondering their own responsibility to the climate-challenged world outside their own front yards. The chapters read like campfire tales, and Johnson's lyrical voice heightens Elon's perceptions of shame, guilt, and accountability. The setting of this treacherous world creates an intriguing backdrop as each night the new residents of the Kenneally Retreat Center slowly reveal stories from their lives before. These stories are admissions of guilt, secrets, failures, and grief, and they challenge our ability to forgive. Johnson uses the art of story-telling to critique the categorizing nature of the American identity.

Sujets

• Science fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Bancroft Press
• Date de parution: 11 janvier 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781610885492
• Langue: English

Extrait

THOUGH THE EARTH GIVES WAY
A NOVEL
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER
MARK S. JOHNSON
Copyright: Mark S. Johnson, 2021. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by electronic means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote passages in a review.
Cover & Interior design: Tracy Copes 978-1-61088-547-8 (HC) 978-1-61088-548-5 (PB) 978-1-61088-549-2 (Ebook) 978-1-61088-550-8 (PDF) 978-1-61088-551-5 (Audiobook)
Published by Bancroft Press “Books that Enlighten” 410-358-0658 P.O. Box 65360, Baltimore, MD 21209 www.bancroftpress.com
Printed in the United States of America
To my wife, Mary-Liz, and our son, Evan, who inspire me every day.
“Other cultures have camped here a while and disappeared. Only earth and sky matter. Only the endlessly repeated flood of morning light. You begin to see that God does not owe us much beyond that.” —Annie Proulx
CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Wandering Children
Chapter 2: Blood Meals
Chapter 3: The Refugee
Chapter 4: The Bow Tie
Chapter 5: Leadership Academy
Chapter 6: Baby in a Dress
Chapter 7: From Hannibal
Chapter 8: The Guitar
Chapter 9: The Bonesaw
Chapter 10: Blindness
Chapter 11: The Bus Driver
Chapter 12: Lottery Tickets
Chapter 13: Escape
Chapter 14: The Cause
Chapter 15: The Act
Acknowledgements
About the Author
CHAPTER 1:
WANDERING CHILDREN
L ast night I dreamt of a gathering, all of us sitting around a fireplace, drinking Scotch and sharing stories the way people once did. The sight of others, the simple pleasures of telling and listening, felt comforting as I slept, like warm breath on my neck. Even the vague awareness that it was only a dream could not unsettle me. Somewhere outside this drifting cloudland, from my sleeping bag under the cold stars, I was conscious of trying to prolong the scene, willing it to keep going. Let me stay here and meet the others and match voices to faces until we are like old college friends. Until we drift along tuned only to our conversation and the calming smell of cannabis and the purr of alcohol circulating through the blood.
My eyes blinked awake and no one was there, and the air was cold and damp with no smell to it at all. And it had been that way for days. Shit, shit, shit. I reached for the binoculars. A dusty orange haze hovered over the landscape, such as it was. Parched soil. Leafless sugar maples. Small clumps of meadow grass. Blurs of impressionist color in a land gone brown.
It was early morning, maybe 6-ish. Birds chattered in the trees—perhaps they’d filtered into my subconscious as the gathering that had felt so real.
I dressed in clothes that hadn’t been washed in weeks, and breathed in the stink of old sweat, my own.
How can you stand it?
You stand it because it is yours.
Even so. Even so. A man’s got limits.
There’s got to be a river or brook to bathe in. Must be.
After months of traveling on foot alone, I carried on conversations, sometimes in my head, sometimes out loud. And there were times I wasn’t sure: Were the words in my head or in the air?
I gathered my bedding, shaking off the dirt and dry leaves, then folded it and set it atop my other belongings in the shopping cart. I took a last look to ensure that nothing had been forgotten, an old habit from days I spent in hotels—days when there were hotels to stay in.
As the last of the early darkness receded and the new morning took possession of the country, I caught a hint of promise, the first faint smell. A Lake Michigan breeze wafting miles inland. I set out on the road north, bound for Interlochen, but with little commitment to this arbitrary destination. I’d been only once to northern Michigan, years ago, when the last winter snow lay over the rocks and the forest bed. There was no snow now.
There was nothing to guide the living beyond the general imperative to go where the ocean wasn’t and where there were trees to dim the burning sun. I don’t know how many months I’d been walking. There seemed no point in counting. Walking was how the days had gone and how they stretched out ahead of me.
The name is Elon. I was 37, still figuring out what to do with my life, when I fled Rhode Island alone, carrying only clothes, a flashlight, binoculars, gasoline, and other items that, in my panicked state, I thought I’d need. I left so quickly; I had to. Bathroom: Toothbrush, deodorant, Come on, what else, what else? Bedroom: Pants, socks, shirts (long-sleeved or short?) Kitchen: Bread, cereal, drink. What am I forgetting? How much time is there?
Peering out the window of my first-floor apartment, I watched the tide roll in carrying black water over the front steps. Floating past were plastic garbage barrels, a bicycle caught in a large tree branch, a silver football helmet, a hockey stick, a baby stroller, a small car— Good God!
Then the tide receded, carrying everything back—a section of white fence, an umbrella, a plastic slide, a young boy.
As I exited the front door, the wind hurled me sideways into the swirling, waist-deep tide, my legs tangling in the branches and debris, my hands gripping the duffle bag full of clothes, everything soaked. A deep chill traveled through my body. I fought my way upright, staggering through the water, a maelstrom whipping around me. Shoulders pushing past. Shouts from all directions. Make room. Let me past! Oh, boy…Hold on. I’m coming. Stay where you are. Legs sloshing, pushing against the tide. More shouts, louder. Get out of the way, goddamn it!!… Someone help!.. Oh, God! Please… Oh, God! The pavement beneath my feet was no longer the surface of the world. It was the place where the ocean floor began.
I left on foot at a time when people still believed they could escape in cars. But with everyone on the move, who was there to refill the gas pumps? Or, for that matter, who was there to clear away the abandoned vehicles that clogged every road? Who was there to sell food or water? The Atlantic kept coming, pursuing the migrants miles inland. The optimistic tried waiting in the traffic, believing it better to stick it out with a roof overhead and wheels beneath.
Who knows how many were swept away in their cars? I’d seen a few on the way out of Rhode Island. Even as the dark tide advanced, some tried to drive through it. I remember the face of a young boy peering out the back window. I had scrambled onto the roof of a 7-Eleven when I saw the water pull his family’s SUV from the road, dragging it back into the ocean. He wasn’t screaming or crying, just staring in disbelief, a look that reminded me of the ancient words: “Eli Eli lama sabachthani.” My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?
This was not God’s doing. It was ours alone.
After a day and night of walking, I’d covered perhaps a dozen miles, and my thighs ached from dragging my body through the water. Finally, I reached an area where the water was only ankle-deep. Behind another 7-Eleven, I found a shopping cart, dumped my bag inside it, and kept moving.
The exodus seemed to come from far off, and I wondered sometimes if I hadn’t dreamt that too. We were all like children, waiting for the scientists to tell us how long we had left before the tipping point. Just twenty-five years until the sea levels, temperatures, and extreme weather events reach a crisis, they said. Just ten years. Just five.
Naturally, others reached the midnight hour before us. The Great East African famine sent millions streaming out of Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia. Hundreds of thousands died in Rajasthan State in Northwest India during a summer of 125-degree days. Elderly men and women, burned from within, their core temperatures soaring above 104 until they hallucinated, lost consciousness and collapsed from heat stroke in their homes and in the middle of the street.
We watched these distant disasters pretending the trouble would never reach our shores. Scientists had to be working on a brilliant plan to save us: a giant ozone patch, colonies on the moon, permanent space stations. Something. We had survived a worldwide pandemic, after all. Nature had nothing more to throw at us, nothing we could not overcome.
Then came Tropical Storm Amber forming in the warm waters off the West African Coast, swelling into a Category 1 Hurricane in the Atlantic, lumbering east at Category 2, then massing for a direct hit to the island of Anguila. At Category 3, Amber glanced off the Dominican Republic, leaving nothing where the islands of Turks and Caicos once had been—just compass points and floating debris. Category 4 Amber roared up the eastern United States. Large chunks of land surrendered to the ocean from Miami north to Port St. Lucie; it was hard to grasp that they were not coming back.
It can’t reach Rhode Island. It won’t, thank God…
Except the forecasts and computer models were wrong, as they had been too often, always understating the approaching disaster.
Amber kept rising, washing over the New England coast, now trailed by Hurricane Matthias only a week behind. When the final warnings came, they were rushed, contradictory, without a pretense of calm. Gather belongings. Move inland. Take your cars. No, not cars. You will not outrun the water. Seek higher ground. Take clothes and food, nothing more. No, take cell phones too and flashlights and batteries, but only if there’s time. Do not panic. Be calm. The Midwest and Plains are preparing for refugees.
But how exactly was that supposed to work? How does Cleveland prepare for 250,000 people; where does Chicago put another million? Some cities and states tried setting out the welcome mat. We’re in this together . Others stationed armed National Guard people at the borders.
Both approaches turned bloody. I saw people fight for food, water, shelter. I passed looted stores littered with shattered glass and empty plastic bags. I stood and watched as armed mobs surrounded apartment buildi