Read Jornada del Muerto: Prisoner Days for Free Online Page B

play with, children
to tell tall stories to, and friends to drink beer with. Hell,
there’s no beer.
    There is only death and wasps in front of
us. We may not make it ten miles out of the Pen, let alone all the
way to Pecos Pueblo.
    We hope to find horses along the way. We
hope to ditch the vehicle at the Pueblo and head into the hills. We
hope to make a place there, a homestead that we will use as a home
base for our explorations to find other humans. My hope is that the
Navajos, Hopis, and Apaches survived. Until we look, we won’t
know.
    Ten years ago, there was a major highway,
the 285, between here and the Pecos Pueblo. By the highway, it was
only a little more than thirty miles. At 75 miles per hour, we
could be there in less than a half hour. But we have no idea if the
entire highway is still intact. We can get across the valley but
the mountains? We don’t know what will happen in the mountains.
    Another reason I’m the worst person for this
job -- I hate to drive. My cousin was 4-wheel driving from the time
he could drive. He could have gotten us there. No problem. He knew
the Pecos Pueblo like the back of his hand. I don’t even remember
what’s there.
    Why did my great-great grandmother pick me?
Why did she use her magic to make all this happen?
    Why am I the only living human? Some days I
want to kill myself. Some days I look into George’s vacant eyes and
long for that kind of silence inside my own brain.
    The answers never come. Not from spirit
guides, not from the undead souls, not from the earth or sky or
mountains or clouds or empty prison. I’ve asked my great-great
grandmother when her spirit visits me. Like she had for most of my
life, she tells me to do what I’m told. “Don’t question so much,
Emil. Do what you’re told.” That was her answer for everything.
    There’s no one left to tell me anything.
Some stupid prophecy controls my life. Some days, I feel such
desperate despair and hopelessness that I can barely move. I sit in
the old prison yard and watch George work the fields.
    Outside of the most basic -- anger, love,
fear -- George doesn’t feel emotions. He can no longer understand
despair or hopelessness. Even if he did, he’d have no use for it.
Life lies out in front of George like a highway. He knows he’ll die
someday, but, until that day, he can’t (literally) worry about
it.
    And I can’t seem to get the question out of
my head -- What if I fail? What if I cannot do what is in front of
me?
    What’s hardest, for me, is that I never felt
this way. I never had this kind of fear or insecurity. I never felt
unconfident. I always did what was next -- down to wasting my life
way in the Penitentiary. I was told to come here, and here I
am.
    Now I’m consumed with doubt.

11/08/2056
    I probably haven’t said this, but I taught
George to read. Of course, it’s possible that after some of his
brain went to mush, he remembered how to read. Anyway, it took
about a year.
    I wanted to be able to communicate with him.
I wanted to hear what he thought without reaching into his brain to
listen. Mind reading is a delicate art fraught with
misunderstanding. When I would look into George’s mind, I’d find
chaos, fear, anger and frustration move through him like breath.
The next moment, he might feel something else. It’s much clearer to
communicate -- verbally or in writing -- than to do all the mind
work.
    George has a white board that he uses to
“talk” to me on. After all this time, we have developed a shorthand
I like to call “George-speak.” It reminds me of the cryptic
language people developed for texting and IM conversations. “C U
later.” That kind of thing. I let George make the language, which
he enjoys.
    He’s become a voracious reader. I guess with
no television, movies, computers or people, books seem more
interesting. Over the last three years, he’s read about half of the
Pen library. He likes comedies the best. He refuses to read books
by African-American