A Line on the Wall

“It must be March. Or April,” the man said aloud, more to himself than to his companion. “I’ll do the math later.” It hardly mattered anyway.

The two stood atop a rise in the dirt and stared West over a wasteland at the approaching evening sky. Similar to the wasteland in every other direction, much of the Earth was barren. Sand and ash cover made most of the land inhospitable for growth. Any plant-life searching for subterranean water tables first had to send its roots through the dead topsoil, which lessened the chances of survival even more. The man once told James of the sun-loving deciduous trees that used to occupy Aspen. “So different it must have been,” James thought in his own language. He had been too young to remember.

“How ‘bout it, Pal?” The man looked down at James. “Let’s head back in. Nothing to see today.”

“Meow,” said James.

Satisfied that James would follow, the man turned and began the short trek back to the old mobile trailer homestead they shared. James the cat stretched once and trotted after him.

The two had been friends and companions since he was a kitten. James, whose full name was Jameson José Jack Daniels Cuervo, seemingly named for some of the man’s closest former associates, had been found alone in the sewers where the man worked in the time before. By chance, they had both been inside the concrete drainage labyrinth underground during the event that altered everything, likely lending to their survival.

Most evenings, he listened to the man’s lively stories about the wonders of the old world or despairing predictions for the world of the present and comprehended in his own way. Occasionally, he even added a thing or two for the man to consider but had recently decided that the human was only humoring him by pretending to understand. It was okay though. Besides, it was just the two of them for now. Surely there were others? The man often lamented that somewhere, somebody else must exist. Alive. They spent most days searching, watching. But mostly, surviving together.

James understood that the “clouded years,” as the man called them, were caused by a barrage of small space rocks hitting the Earth. Apparently, a warming globe and melting ice tilted the planet right into their path…or something like that. The sky darkened with dirt, smoke and ash for two blocks of lines, which was the way the man kept track of time. Each day, a new line was added to the tally on the wall inside their trailer. After several hundred lines or so, the man would start a new block. He was many columns into their fifth block and the man added a line for this day once they were inside. He stood back a bit and regarded the heavily marked wall for a few moments.

“Hmm,” he mumbled. “June, then.”

The man had become somewhat of a water farmer, which had proven greatly beneficial. James witnessed the digging, tapping and filtering of multiple water sources, directed from the man’s knowledge and former employment. It was labor intensive, so James helped where he could, mostly by yelling instructions to the man as he performed the physical work. It was exhausting, and James always looked forward to his mid-morning, mid-day and mid-afternoon naps.

A covered space connected to the outside of the trailer became the hydro-farm, where the boiling and distilling of collected water happened in order to make it drinkable. The mechanisms that the man cobbled together from different scraps of things currently produced enough clean water daily to fill an old glass bottle with some of James’ middle names on it. Less clean water was used to moisten a few vegetable plants they sustained in a separate shaded area. James was proud of the plants. He had been very instrumental in their origin. After the clouded years, James’ hunter instincts had led him out and away from the trailer in search of something to thank the man for his friendship, and for not eating him. He found a dead bird. Perfect! Well, they cooked it and ate it, of course, but not before the man realized that the bird had undigested seeds in its stomach. That evening, the man painstakingly salvaged a small number of seeds from the bird’s guts and started giggling. The next day, they began to search for more dead birds and more undigested seeds. They had been cleaning, sorting, storing and planting the seeds for about three blocks of lines now on the counting wall, and had become reasonably decent at it. Decent enough to survive, anyway.

That evening, per normal, the man prepared some small nourishment from their garden, a paste of corn and black beans on this occasion. Then he took the water bottle that used to belong to a "Jack Daniels" down from the distilling shelf and poured some in a bowl for James. He started a small fire in the pit that was used nightly and pulled up a rickety old chair they had found on one of their outings. The two supped on the bean-corn paste and water while watching the fire take hold. It was more for light than for warmth but the effect was always calming. After a while, James jumped up into his nightly perch on the man’s lap and prepared the space for his evening nap-before-bed. This is where he listened to the man’s stories, sometimes the same stories, and tonight was no exception.

Reaching over to an upended wooden crate that acted as a side table, the man lifted his gold, heart-shaped pendant that was some link to the past. James had seen before that it opened to reveal two small pictures. One side had a photo of a pretty female human sitting on the same lap he currently occupied. The other side had two small humans that resembled the bigger ones. The man kissed the pictures and closed the locket.

“One of these days, I’m going to make a collar out of this for you. You’re the last of my family,” he said to James. James didn’t care for jewelry but he didn’t want to hurt his friend’s feelings. The man tilted his head back to look at the dark sky and continued, “Ahh, the arrogance of man.”

“Meow,” said James, to mean “Yep.”

“To think that the Earth would correct itself after all the scars created by humans, and to use that as an excuse to continue profiting off natural resources. Man’s greed killed mankind,” he said introspectively, tinged with pain.

“Meow,” said James, to mean “Mmm hmm.” He had agreed to these thoughts before.

“Now its just you and me, Buddy,” the man continued sadly, staring at lost images in the flames of the fire. “Surviving by dumb luck, perhaps the last of our kinds. When we go, maybe that’s it.”

“Meow,” said James, to mean “Mother Nature will always win. Sure the Earth will continually correct itself to some degree, but to think it would do so in a single human’s lifetime, or even in the universal timeline of human existence was hubris. Pure hubris!”

The man softly scratched James behind the ears. “You said it, Pal,” he replied with a small chuckle.

James looked up at his friend, a little surprised. Maybe the man did understand him after all. He padded the lap a little and prepared for a snooze before bedtime. Tomorrow would be another day, another line on the wall, another stab at survival.