Sunset

It’s true that you couldn’t see the sun for most of the day, but once in a while, on a very lucky day, you could see it at sunrise and sunset just as it touched the horizon, as if the edges of the cover of filth over the world were burned away briefly to reveal the sun.

Dad and I both lived for the sunrise. Somehow he managed to wake up every morning in time to wake me, and he’d heat a cup of coffee for himself and something that tasted like chocolate for me. And we’d walk out to the edge of the big lake where we could hope to see that sunrise. And sometimes we’d get to see it. The great white/yellow orb on the edge of the world, setting clouds on fire and painting the thin line of clear sky on the horizon. “Remember this,” Dad would say. “It’ll never be the same again.” And at night we’d hope to see it set in the east.

But those sunsets, with the day behind us and some hope for a better tomorrow, were bittersweet reminders of what the world once was, and that hope was always tinged with doubt. But still, we had our little adobe home that kept us cool in the summer and warm in the winter, and we had hope that some day it would change. So there was always a reason to look forward to tomorrow.

We always went to bed at sundown. That way we never needed any lights because light meant fuel and fuel was too rare and valuable to use for the simple purpose of staying up late. And as Dad said, there wasn’t much to do at night that we couldn’t do just as easily during the day. And during the day you didn’t need to burn fuel.

I lay in bed, unable to sleep, watching Dad sit there on the edge of his bed, framed against the thick and cloudy glass of the window. Beyond was the night sky that I remembered as having been black before everything had ended. Black except for the stars and the distant lights of Mojave. Now all the lights were gone, and the black was more of a very dark gray. As if the sky had been covered by soot and walked through by giants. There were no stars. Ever. But there was the light from Dad’s cigarette. The tip that rose and flared as he took a drag on it, and then dimmed and fell through the cloud of pungent smoke that he breathed out.

Then I’d see him turn his head, either towards me or out the window. Sitting there silently, mysteriously, with his thoughts. What were they? Was he looking at some memory of mom out there somewhere? When she died I was too young and too small and too scared to do more than watch him bury her, though I tried and he let me get away with that. Was he talking to her? I’ve talked to her myself, but only through tears and not in any words. I really only knew what he told me about her, and that wasn’t much.

Then Dad would turn back to look at me and I didn’t dare speak, because it was quiet and he was quiet and he only really lost his temper now when I disturbed him. As if he could hardly fight anything any more and just needed to be left alone sometimes. So I watched him, momentarily watching me. He took another drag on the cigarette, and the fiery tip made his face glow red, and his eyes seemed to lock with mine. They were black, like the night sky used to be. Except with no friendly glow of stars. They were just black. I wished I could talk to him, but I couldn’t. Years ago I might have, maybe, but not now. Now I just left him alone.

It occurred to me, as I watched him in the darkness, that I wanted to be able to catch up with him some day. To able to talk to him as an equal. To understand the mysterious things that went through his mind at moments like this. In reality I knew that I never could. He’d always be older than me. He’d always be my dad and I’d always be his little boy. But I at least wanted to get to the age where I could see him from his age now. From where we could talk to each other and understand each other.

I wanted to know how he felt about our relationship while I was growing up. Because truly, it wasn’t always easy for either of us. Dad was hard to grow up with. His temper hadn’t been worse then, but it had been more easily sparked. And while he’d never been cruel, he wasn’t always very nice. And I was too young to understand that you could love someone but still get mad and spank them. And I was also too young to understand that you could love someone but not necessarily like them because of something they’d done. So for many years there was this gap between us where he didn’t understand me and I thought I didn’t love him. Now, for so many silent moments like these, I’m six feet away from him, and about fifty years distant. We’ve been forced together by life and by death and by the end of the world, and somehow we found a way to live together. To depend on each other. We reached a silent, understood accord that we needed each other and didn’t have any choice but to make it work. And that is where the love is that keeps us both warm even when the world is unspeakably cold.

So in that silence broken only by the slight creaking of the beds, and the strange mostly-darkness of our small cabin broken only by the flare of his cigarette, Dad and I had reached a kind of understanding. He took one more drag on the cigarette and looked me in the eye, and his gaze softened as I’d rarely seen before. He wordlessly bridged the gap. Then his eyes closed, the cigarette dropped from his fingers, and Dad was gone.