Eli's Tears

By M.D. Miller

We do not know the day or how the end will come. Elis
Tears is the fi rst of three in an adventure playing out
what the world might look like after the end arrives. Such
characters from very different walks of life, fi nd themselves
walking together to survive. Kris-crossing themes of love,
friendship, companionship and family weave throughout their
adventure. Even with loss and separation, Miller reminds us
through sometimes hilarious dialogue that we are never alone.
We can always fi nd someone to share our disasters and our
victories. Just like we never know when or how our own end
will come, we also dont know how or who our friends will
turn out to be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479761470

M.D. Miller

M. D. Miller was born and has spent most of his life in Michigan. It is also where he found his love for the great outdoors. He has personally met numerous “through hikers” during his own hikes on and off the Appalachian Trail. Miller’s love for hiking, kayaking, hunting, canoeing, snowshoeing and the like can be seen through his style of writing. Miller’s education has taken him all over the United States and the world. He now serves as a pastor in Mitchell, South Dakota. Miller’s own life experiences as a Wilderness Counselor, Firefi ghter/EMT, Pastor, and even bartender have given him the details and inspirations pictured through the characters portrayed through his stories.

Book preview

IN THE BEGINNING

I’m sorry I can’t give you more details, but I will try to put words to events as I remember them. Please know that the words are mine and sometimes, well, more than sometimes, the memories of the events are sketchy at best. I’ve tried to keep the happenings in some sort of order, but paper and things to write with are hard to find. When I find a pad of paper or something to write with somewhere, I write down everything I can remember. There are a whole slew of problems with this though the main problem being is that books and things in print on paper have really fallen away due to technology. Almost everything went to some sort of digital format with people downloading information. Phones and readers could hold volumes of information, entire libraries in most cases. These technologies became so reliable that we forgot that we needed power to drive them. So with the collapse, that’s really not a good word for it, but it works here, everything almost in an instant vanished in print. There was still a small subculture that wanted books or bound volumes of information, and there was also some nostalgia for libraries. They became more like museums where kids would go on field trips and have someone read to them the old way. Library shelves were still stacked with classic novels and best-sellers, but most books were recycled into fuel sources. That makes finding paper now quite a chore. Finding scraps of paper along the way is rather exciting, and I’ll jot down another detail of a memory, wrap in some plastic and stuff it in my pack. When I get to shelter, I’ll compile my notes and put them in some sort of order and stash the folder away until next time. The mess of papers, folders, and scraps that you have found may look a lot like a pile of rubble, but I promise there is a reason to them. This is the complete collection of my thoughts. All the folders from all the shelters (really I only kept a folder at four of favorite shelters) now together in one place. In a very intentional way I’ve taken to writing out our history. And this is it too. I’m not carrying it any further. My story has become too cumbersome to carry any further. I left it here for you. I’ve entrusted it to you. If you find it more necessary to burn it to keep warm, so be it. I could give a quart a piss; I’m done with it.

I say our history since there is a lot of personal history in these pages, both mine and those I’ve traveled with, but there is a history of the world too. Or I should say the end of the world’s history.

I’m not sure what year it is. But I think the war, incident, or federal private policing action, whatever the volumes of damned history will call it, the conflict has ended. Religious types called it the Apocalypse or Armageddon. I know the differences between the two and depending on context and perspective, there is argument for either. Yes, I’ve read the Bible. I’ve picked up different ones along the way and whenever we’re not running scared shitless or walking for miles on empty stomachs, we’re bored out of our skulls. So I read. As I stated before, there are not very many bound books lying around anymore, but there seems to be plenty of bound Bibles everywhere! Most of the time, I’d read some other bound book I found, the other times, it’s the Bible. Now Eli reads his Bible every day. It’s the first thing he does in the morning and the last thing he does at night. Whenever we find some tape, glue, or even contact paper, Eli excitedly gets busy fixing up that old book of his. I’d ask him questions about something I’ve read in the Bible I’m carrying, and he’ll read me some verse from his version. I’d hem and haw about it for a minute, but that’s as far as it goes most of the time. You see, I like reading different versions, and I leave them behind, I don’t carry them around with me. Eli, he’s had his since our beginnings. I tried a few times comparing whatever version I had to his but that’s was too tedious. Besides, bound books are heavy, so I leave them and I could care less what Eli carries in his pack!

Regardless, I think it’s been about ten years, maybe twelve, since we’ve seen any other survivors other than us. I’ve stayed here in the trailer putting the mess of papers, scraps, and sticky notes together now for a couple of months. Whoever finds this compilation of my thoughts will not try to follow me or figure out where I have gone to next. I want to finish my life alone. I can no longer endure the pain of losing anyone else.

So let me start and finish at the same place:

It has been decades since civilization had come to an end. What is important or more the reason for my documentation is the event. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Eli cry. He’s just sitting there. After all these years of walking together, decades together, right over there, under that fat tree, he’s just weeping. Eli’s crying uncontrollably. I’ve never seen him filled with such rage, such hurt, such brokenness. Not even the day we witnessed his family get tortured and slaughtered. I know because I was there. My world, my reality all seemed so out of sync that I immediately felt that I should have some written record of all the events that have gone by in the past years. A record for whom and for what reason is up to you to decide.

I’ll start with my boring history since I’m not sure how I’m going to start with Eli’s history, even though we’ve been walking together for at least a decade. I have come to realize, I don’t know much about him. Our conversations never seem to be about the past, just the present and the close-at-hand future. Neither of us is much for idle chitchat. We really don’t waste breath on shit that doesn’t matter. Since he is the reason for my novice bout of journalism, I’ll have to get to his due face time later.

My name is Dude. Actually, that’s more of my trail name. I was hiking the Appalachian trail or what was enduringly referred to as the AT back before the turmoil. Ah yes, that is a perfect name for it, the Turmoil. Not my own turmoil, but the planet’s or at very least this country’s. It’s a perfect description! Turmoil! That’s what I’ll call it from now on. The maps I’ve been able to hang on to over the years still have the AT marked clearly. Right now though, we are nowhere near that trail. But back to my name, many years ago when I was registering to walk the trail for the first time, I was asked for a trail name. I told the cute but plain-looking girl working at trailhead’s office, I never had a nickname before, and asked her, What do I look like?

She told me half-jokingly and half-seriously, You look like the Big Lebowski!

You mean ‘the dude’? I knew exactly who she meant, and replied. And there it was. From that point on, I answered to such a name. In her defense, I really do look like the 1998 character. I carried a similar lifestyle too before the Turmoil. The name did seem to fit, and for whatever the reason, it stuck.

Back to what matters, I do tend to ramble. Not the beginning, but sort of the middle. No, maybe more like a Markov chain. Yes, just like that. An event that randomly triggers a decision about what happens next, which in no way, shape or form influenced the next random decision. The event of Eli crying under a tree randomly marked the moment that I despairingly decided to write down the pieces of our past, so you then can randomly decide what to do with it. Not the beginning but a place to start.

Dude, as you now know, is not my real name, let me start from where I remember. My name is Ray, well, Raymond actually. I was named after my uncle who died somehow serving this demolished country. Before the Turmoil, what was called the United States was a world power. I never heard the story straight about my uncle, just that he was killed in action, defending our freedom! or something like that. My uncle was my mother’s brother. My father was a terrible drunk, which may explain a few things as you read on. Raymond Tellis Williams, that’s my full name, and don’t ask where the hell Tellis comes from because I never found out.

I left my parents, if you can call them that, when I was fifteen years old or so. I mean they made me into this biological construct, and they must have raised me until I was aware enough of things to leave at such a young age. I think I was a sophomore maybe a junior in high school; again it was a long time ago! Either way, I was fifteen and on the streets of what was then Chicago. My life has been like an old carnival ride known as a roller coaster ever since then. There have been rises and falls, turns and straightaways, pulses forward and sudden stops. One thing for sure, it hasn’t been boring. In fact, I wish sometimes it would be! But maybe that’s the way life is supposed to be now. Maybe the ride of life is supposed to be bumpy and hilly.

My dad was in a rant about something—my hair, the music I listened to, my existence, god only knows! I had no idea where mom was, it was night time, so again, god only knows! Dad took a swing at me like he had a number of times before. I was on the porch smoking a joint and he kicked through the screen door and got his foot caught in the wood frame. He rolled forward in his momentum and couldn’t keep his footing. He slammed through the middle wooden screen support, splintering it onto toothpicks and fell with the entire door, crashing down on the porch in a plume of dust. As you may remember, I was, I guess you could say, in an altered state of humor. Putting it plainly, I was laughing my ass off. He of course did not see the humor, and he was off to get some payback. Of course it was somehow my fault he was ranting anyway.

He was so drunk that it took him nothing but sheer anger to get to his feet. He threw a sloppy punch, I guess it was at the blurry me, and he fell again. My laughter escalated. He managed to get to his knees, and he somewhat slithered to the broken doorway yelling, I’m gunna kill ya this time, you little son of a bitch! Keep in mind that in this mêlée with the door, he never dropped his beer bottle. He smashed the bottle through the glass pane of his gun cabinet, grabbed his 30-30, cocked the lever action, pointed it toward me, and shoot the paint-peeled railing four feet away from my head. Ah, my head with the deafened ears, the bloodshot eyes, and the sulfur scent wafting across my pallet. I had all my wits about me now! He started to cock it again, but with two sobered steps, I was on him. With my right hand, I grabbed the gun where he couldn’t close the action, and with my left, I reached back with all my strength and struck him on the bridge of his nose with my elbow. His glassy eyes rolled back and he hit the broken remnants of the door lying on the porch. Like a bag of wet sand, he hit decked floor with a dusty cloud now mixing with the smoke from the riffle.

I heard sirens. Not an unusual sound in Chicago and even less unusual that they were heading here. The police were there quick, but again, they knew the way. I’m sure even a rookie at the station sees a red dot on their map with our address and could get here before things get really crazy. It wasn’t the first time dear ol’ dad’s been wielding firearms on the porch. It was the first time he ever (and the last, I might add) got a shot at me. I racked out the two shells that were left in the gun onto the porch while dad twitched and drooled on himself. I sat the rifle on the inside of the window sill with the action open so the kind officers could see that it was empty, and waited for their anticipated arrival.

Smells like someone’s burnin’ leaves, Ray? the officer tossed his sarcasm. Been puffin on some weed?

Nope, Officer Harris, I’ve been studying for finals. Both officers chuckled and shook their heads, and Harris retorted, It’s July, Ray!

Summer school, I’m an overachiever. I tossed back, and both roared with grins this time, and they smilingly asked me to replay what happened.

Everyone has a gift of some kind. Dad’s was drinking and somehow making it through day to day. I don’t want to sell him short; he was really good at drinking, really gifted! Call it charisma or charm, but my gift is conversation. Maybe it’s the soft features of my face. I’m not certain. But I can talk. Everyone has a gift. Mine usually works so well that most don’t even realize I’ve changed their mind. The two officers were perfect examples of that.

I told them that dad was boozed up, and I had no idea what he was smoking out here on the porch either! He busted through the door with the 30-30 screaming something about cats and old ladies, and I further explained that I wasn’t going to let him hurt any helpless cats or old ladies who housed them. I explained to the officers that I tackled dad right there, but only after he got a shot off. They stood their shaking their heads, but what were they going to believe? My unconscious father, who was now lying in his own urine, would come to tomorrow in a jail cell having no recollection of anything. It was so true of a lie that dad would never know the difference. Off went the three of them.

I grabbed the two 30-30 bullets lying on the sill with one hand and the 30-30 rifle with the other. I walked to the busted cabinet, grabbed the Glock 9mm, and busted up the other guns into pieces, throwing springs and pins all about the house and the backyard. Like Humpty Dumpty, dad would never be able to put them back together again! I went to the closet where I knew Pop’s kept the ammunition. I grabbed the four boxes of 9mm shells and the four boxes of 30-30 and headed upstairs to start packing for what would be the rest of my life. I had an old army duffel that with everything I could carry packed around the 30-30 no one could even tell the difference, it just looked like a bag full of stuff. I put the Glock in the small of my back, pulled my T-shirt over it, and started walking. I never went back.

I was hitchhiking my way out of the city when a VW bus pulled up ahead of me. To my surprise the door slid open. A friendly face peered out of the driver’s window and another out of the opened door that seemed to slide open as the van stopped. They both waved me over to the van. As I got closer and the darkness held less captive from my sight, I saw the driver. He was a thin bushy-haired man but with childish looks about him. The other, holding the sliding flower-painted door was a young woman. I’d say at least ten years younger than the driver and rather figureless with her soiled, baggy linen dress. Her sandals covered her unwashed feet, which came at the end of her hairy legs. As I rounded the edge of the van, I peered inside cautiously for somewhere to set my bag. I saw three similarly dressed people sprawled across what looked like a bed in the back. The van was littered with sleeping bags, bongs, laundry, backpacks, books, and lots and lots of smells!

The three sleeping across the bed, very unaware that the van had even slowed down let alone had picked up another person, just lay there with mouths open. There was another man and two women.

Hey, man, hop in, the soft and almost fragile angelic voice said. Where ya goin’ man? We can take ya!

With a smile and glint of my eye, I responded, I’m goin’ with you! Where you takin’ me? The driver laughed a low raspy sigh of laugh, and the woman (girl) looked at me like a dog that hears a high-pitched whistle.

Oh, that’s cool, man. She recovered. We’re going to the Dead show!

Now I had heard of the Grateful Dead, but thought their guitarist had passed away a long time ago. Their following and the culture had not.

We were off in a shot, and we headed just outside the city, where in the night sky I could see a sea of tents and bonfires with women and men dancing and twirling to music with which I was unfamiliar.

I’m Jasmine. Jaz my friends call me, you know, like the music. The guy drivin’s Teeter. She must have seen my brows rise with the name, Ya, I know, craziness isn’t it? Wait ‘till you meet his brother Totter! I must have broken into a smile because she let out a high-pitched but soft laugh, I’m just kiddin’ man… Wow, you got really righteous eyes. I simply nodded and tried to look bashful. Sometimes the best conversation is the one you don’t have, particularly when it leads to immediately understanding. Thanks, I said, taking it as a compliment. I mean really, what are righteous eyes?

She climbed back into the front passenger’s seat, and from there, it seemed like we turned and began driving across a roadless lawn. Dust mixed with incense, mixed with fire and weed smoke. I was beginning to fall in love with the complexity of the atmosphere. The van jerked, creaked, and slid to a stop on the lawn. Teeter and Jaz hopped from the van in unison and ran to hug people they knew. Jaz began hopping and spinning like the other thousand fans, dancing to the mixture of music. The three remaining people just lay there eerily. So much so that I was beginning to wonder if they were alive at all or perhaps heading into the light of an overdose of some sort. Each time that thought came me, one of them would rollover or snort, rub their face, and smack their lips back into their slumber.

The back door of the van suddenly opened, and I turned from the door and planted my back on the adjacent side. I felt the Glock still in the small of my back. The three remained sleeping. It was Jaz that had lifted the door, and she pulled a drag from a fresh joint and handed it to some guy she obviously knew. She grabbed a pile of stuff from under the bed. It looked like a wadded up tent and maybe some clothes—I wasn’t sure. She slammed the back hatch as if I wasn’t there. Some people might be hurt by such a thing but not me. Anonymity is my friend. I already knew so much about them, and they knew nothing about me. I could be anyone I wanted to be.

The three travelers were still asleep in the back, so I felt safe enough to unlock my bag and pull out my blanket without even drawing any attention. It was getting a little chilly, so I also pulled out my sweatshirt. I never really got into any bands. My clothes didn’t have any distinction to them. No lightning bolts, skulls, or famous people or sayings. Just a plain dark navy blue hooded sweatshirt with a zipper down the front, some denim blue jeans, and plain green T-shirts. The hooded sweatshirt was large enough that I could conceal just about anything if I had to.

I fluffed up one of the sleeping bags behind me, leaned back against the back of the passenger’s seat, and took quick stock of what I’d carried out: some underwear, the T-shirts, ammunition, the 30-30 of course, another pair of shoes, a full carton of my dad’s cigarettes (even though I didn’t smoke yet, I took them out of spite and I could barter with them), a bag of pot, and for whatever reason, a flashlight from the kitchen drawer. It had been there since my earliest memory, and I was shocked to see that with the turn of the head, it blazed bright across the three sleeping in the back. I smirked and quickly turned it off. I had my keychain, which included my keys; a whistle; a Leatherman Micra; a small set of hemostats; and a plastic sleeve holding a lighter. I rolled the ammo in a couple of the shirts and snuggled them down close to the bottom of my bag. I locked the bag and put my keys in my pocket. I laid my duffel bag across the back of the van as my makeshift pillow and fell asleep.

There are a few times in a person’s life that leaves such a lasting and vivid memory of sleep. I slept hard, deep, and thick. But I didn’t sleep long. I heard the door of the little van slide open. Sleepy, as if each muscle was made of lead, I could only open my eyes halfway. Before I fully realized what was happening, Jaz was straddling me with her salty, smoke-laden tongue jetted into my mouth. Her small hands quickly roaming under the blanket and across my stomach to my belt. I frantically sat up in a jolt, and firmly held her away from me.

Hey, man, she said innocently, I don’t remember your name.

Hello, Jaz, I said coming quickly out of my slumber. What time is it?

I dunno. I’ve never had a watch. It’s nighttime, I think. If she was anything, she was clever at conversation too. I wondered when I looked at her, what her family was like? Where did she come from? How did this little pretty earthy girl grow up? I could have had her right then and there, but I chose not to.

I just love your eyes, she said gazing at me. I played the bashful routine.

My name is Ra— I stopped coldly. Tellis. My name is Tellis.

Wow, what a cool name, I don’t think I know anyone named Tellis. I know some Thomases and Teeter, and yeah, I know an Ellen and maybe an Ellis, but no Tellis. She laughed again still straddling me. Can I call you Telly? I remembered early in my memory that one way to control a conversation is to make the rules. No, I’d rather you didn’t, I said flatly and authoritatively.

Aw, was that something other kids called you when you were little? she asked as if she didn’t want to hurt me. I simply nodded allowing her to believe her own lie. Well, come on then, Tellis; let’s go out to the fire and drink some beer. God, I love those eyes, she said again, and with her soft but grimy hands, cradled my cheeks and kissed me again. This time the kiss was not passionate but more a kiss of promise.

And a collage of faces there were around the fire, passing bongs and all drinking something. Not everyone was drinking the same thing though. Yes, you guessed it; the other three were still sleeping in the back of the van.

At fifteen, maybe sixteen, I had already decided I was eighteen. And I am afraid with such things, such as the lies in my life, like ticks and tocks of the clock, the more and more I know of lying, the less and less I know of the truth.

Jaz it seemed had all but forgotten about her advances. She was dancing and twirling like a butterfly in the wind. We all smoked and drank. A couple of people had guitars, and they sang songs, and we all laughed and lived. I was a man. Free! And I intended to ride this freedom as far as I could.

Somehow I made it back into the van, my head swimming for some conscious memory but unable to find it. Cloudy. It was bright outside, and I could feel the van starting to warm up in the day’s sun. There was a rustling among the three. The one person farthest away from me slowly sat up. The sun hit her young and beautiful face. It was as if an angel was beginning to stretch her wings and would fly off if I didn’t shout out some prayer for her to stay. The radiant beams of the morning light met her green eyes, which seemed to sparkle. She stretched up her arms, nothing like Jaz—she was smooth, taut, her hair a mess, but in the way that leaves form a tree, the way random hills make up a landscape. Her shirt was wadded up from sleeping, and her breasts peaked out from under her top. Her tiny nipples exposed in the warming morning air. She nonchalantly pulled her top down to cover herself in an action that seemed only natural, like it happened every morning when she woke.

Hi, she said in