BENNINGTON — from “The Last Drop”
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The Future. The last drop has gone. There is no more oil. Dusty Harkness walks toward New York City from Bennington, Vermont, in a world that seems on its last legs. Not knowing she contains the keys to its future.
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Absorb the need for a sea change. Green is something to move beyond. See a cyber world. Integrate pattern language and new design. Move beyond tall buildings and more of the same old with some green embroidery.
From The Notebook.
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Dusty rubbed her eyes. Vermont was misty this morning. She stretched beneath the counterpane. She wondered where Morris was. Morris was her chocolate Lab, her only contact with life since Frederick, who saw it all coming, decided to end it all. She had lost track of time after Frederick’s suicide. She buried him in the yard next to the rusted shell of their Volvo.
Dusty raised herself and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Morris?”
She was not as wasted as many other rural folk who had simply fallen to what many called LDT — Last Drop Trauma. She had known the end of oil was coming. Frederick knew decades earlier. He was fired from the magazine he founded for proposing bubble rides as an alternative to the unwieldy, gas-guzzling automobile. Both were glad when it became impossible to extract any more of the sticky stuff.
“Morris?”
Dusty became restless. Winter was in the air. She stretched again and let her feet touch the cold cedar boards. She thought, “If Morris has gone the way of Frederick, I will take to the road.”
She smiled. She chuckled. The road. What a joke.
She used to meditate. But after Frederick fired his last bullet into his cerebellum, she became too numb to do much but talk to Morris in a dismal monotone and brew soup from foraged things. When she heard herself chuckle, she was surprised. She got up and pulled on her jeans.
Morris’s door was ajar. She listened. But there was no sound of a dog padding about on the dry leaves outside. There was nothing but a low whisper of wind and the soft percussion of blown branches touching.
The day passed. She knew Morris was gone. And she knew why. She did not want to think about it. The end of oil turned good people into thieves and scavengers. Morris was too good-natured for his own good. Dusty’s mind was made up.
She wondered where she might go, then realized the obvious. She would go to New York — Manhattan. She would visit places on the way where she had spent time. Bennington. Williamstown. Pittsfield. Alford. Pawling. She would go down Route 7. Then down Route 22. All the way to Park Avenue. And then. She paused. Then remained to be seen.
Maybe this was a death march. But maybe not. Dusty filled her nylon backpack with what it would hold — some clothes, a book or two. She walked around the interior of the cabin, touching places at random, as if to establish a connection. Or say goodby. Ah, there was one thing. The Notebook. Their original outline of the philosophy they had built a future on. It was written in two hands, Frederick’s large circular scrawl and her compact slanted script. It filled a thick old spiral notebook. Heavy, filled with hopes and dreams. It was the philosophy they had struggled for years to promulgate but which was doomed with every damnable result of the very emergencies they they knew would come.
The small cabin stood in a wooded area on a hillside facing east. Down the narrow dirt drive, now turned to grass, lay a dirt road that led to Route Seven.
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Dusty was going on forty. Frederick was older by eighteen years. When they came to Bennington they swore off mirrors. With Frederick gone, Dusty had no one to tell her whether she looked good or not. During their last days, they talked about the change. How sudden it was. How unavoidable. Frederick said he was not mad anymore and that they were lucky to be here where at least there was some continuity. He was always using words like continuity. Dusty would listen and nod, increasingly horrified by his determination to end it all. On the final night, Frederick repeated for the hundredth time that suicide was a noble choice. That it was the ultimate validation of freedom. He joked again that he would be saved like a file on a computer. Even when a hard drive crashed, there were hackers who could find whatever was there. Creation was like a computer, with an omniscient memory and an omnipotent ability to save things.
Nothing worked anymore so Frederick could not play music or compute. On that last night he simply sang a Jesse Winchester song a capella. When he got to the line about not even knowing where he was, he shot himself, with Dusty looking on from a far corner.
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Route Seven was vacant. Dusty walked south for an hour before she saw a soul. It was an old man leading a cow, coming her way. He was across the road. The cow was thin, like something from Don Quixote. The man was tall. He dwarfed the cow. He dropped the rope and started moving toward Dusty. She had no idea what he intended. He stopped ten feet away. He was perhaps in his 70s. He crossed his arms on his chest and frowned.
“Where are you going?” he said. “Don’t you know it’s dangerous?”
“I’m going to New York,” Dusty answered.
“What makes you think you can get to New York? You’ll do well to turn around. Or go to Bennington.”
“I need to find something,” she replied.
Dusty had not talked with anyone since that final night. It was like recovering sea legs.
“I don’t think you’ll find it in New York,” the man said softly.
“There’s nothing for me here anymore.”
“Where have I heard that before?”
The two stood still. They looked at each other. Dusty shrugged and stepped forward, the man on her left. She passed him and kept on. She did not look back.
It was odd, Dusty thought. In the time of oil, you could depend on one thing. On an empty road you would hear a distant hum, gaining strength as a car or truck approached. Now she realized that all around the world, not one car, not one truck, could be heard. The silence was magnified. It seemed almost prehistoric.
Dusty approached Bennington. The road was soon filled with people of all shapes and sizes, bundled against the cold. Turbines were in evidence. The town was hopping.
“What’s going on?” she said to a passing boy.
“What do you mean?” the boy replied?
“Why are the people out?”
“It’s midday. We break. Where are you from?”
“Up the road.”
“That’s crazy,” the boy said. “No one lives apart anymore. It’s impossible. Everyone in the area lives here. We’ve doubled in the last two years. Every inch of space is taken. Are you going to live here?”
“I don’t know. Is the college still going?”
“Of course not. People came from all over. Nobody can go anywhere now. The college is filled with people from around here.”
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Dusty made her way to the Bennington College campus. It was almost as she remembered it. She walked from what had been a parking area down the hill to were she had lived but was brought to a halt by the sight of sheets suspended from windows. She realized it was washing. There must be families living here. She saw no one. But no. From the far end of the row of houses came what appeared to be a silent parade. Halfway to her the group broke up. She could hear speech but couldn’t make out any words. She was curious and suddenly in dire need. She walked briskly toward the scattering of people. She approached a tall woman with a somber but not unfriendly face.
“I’m new here. Can you help me. I need to use a bathroom.”
Without a word the woman guided Dusty toward the very house where she had once lived. She led her to a bathroom wordlessly. When Dusty emerged, the woman was nowhere to be seen. The hall was empty. What was going on? Had refugees from rural Vermont formed a cult and gone Trappist to boot? No, she had heard voices. She was used to weirdness. Living with Frederick had not exactly been a normal patch. Dusty was suddenly hungry. Money was no good anymore. In less than a year, proverbial debts had been forgiven as a matter of necessity because no currency was valid any more.
Dusty found her way out. The woman was gone. There were no people to be seen. She thought she would go back into the town and see about food. Suddenly she felt as though she had descended suddenly without stepping down. As if something had been taken from underneath her. Vermont was gone. The Vermont she had known. The world was gone. She heard a voice behind her. It was the woman.
“Do you want something to eat?”
Dusty turned. “You read my mind.”
Without smiling, matter-of-factly, the woman said. “You are new.”
“Not exactly,” Dusty said. “I lived there.
The woman led her to what had been the commons.
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The commons was nothing Dusty could remember. The spaces were unchanged, she thought, but the lighting was almost nonexistent, There were now long tables with simple benches. You had to step over them to sit down. The place seemed normal enough but there was virtually no sound. People ate in silence. Food was in serving dishes on the tables. You spooned it out. It was porridge-like. Water was the only beverage.
“Can we talk?” Dusty asked the tall young man beside her.
“Sure,” he said softly.
“It seems so quiet.”
“That’s because most of us are talked out. We think we’re living backwards. We don’t know what to make of it. We’ve all been thrown for a loop.”
“Do you have any kind of leader?”
“No. We were mostly brought up in the old way. Anyone can speak. We’re polite. Just nothing much to say.”
“I went to Bennington College.”
“Really. That’s strange.”
“Why?”
“It just is. People used to pay lots to put their kids through here and now look at it. We’re all living backwards.”
“I am living forward.” Dusty said. “That’s the only way.”
“What do you mean? How?”
“I’m on my way to New York.”
“Are you crazy? No one even knows if New York exists any more. If you walk anywhere away from here you’re courting fate. “
“What’s your name?”
“Dale.”
“I’m Dusty.” She put out her hand. He did not move. She pulled it back.
“You don’t want to touch me,” Dale said.
“Oh.”
“I’m bad news. On that front anyway.”
Dusty thought she could see where this was going. Dale had no doubt raped or come close to it. He thought that a handshake was the equivalent of a come-on. The lesson Dusty took from Dale was that the world was now a little like that Mel Gibson movie with people fighting over the last drop of oil. She would meet all manner of folk on her journey and the meetings would have a heightened sense to them, due to the circumstances. Still he seemed nice enough.
“Well, whatever news you are,” she said, “that was then and this is now. I’m not looking for anything but a safe trip from place to place and maybe New York at the end of the road.” Dusty was proud of her response.
“Fuck off,” Dale said, rising, less angry than hurt. He climbed over the bench.
Dusty watched him walking away. She was suddenly cold. She felt herself bunching up. She wondered if she would keep feeling this way. But the cold passed. Maybe Dale wasn’t a rapist at all, she thought. She got up. It was time to head toward Williamstown. She knew the day was ending but something told her to get out and walk. Even if she ended the night in the pitch dark somewhere, she felt compelled to keep moving.
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Stephen C. Rose has written a number of books (Fiction/Non-fiction). You can tweet him here.
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