I cain barely breathe from takin' all this in. My eyes glisten at the corners, but I refuse to cry. Ro looks a mite apologetic, layin' all this on me, but he's got a story to finish, so he keeps goin'.
What Amos said, Ro takes to heart. He don't bury it back in his mind like he did the sufferin' of the refugees back when he was a boy. Till this point, the underground press has acted to git information out to the common poor. But him and Stuart agree that it's time to inform the genteel population of the followin'—their perfect little world ain't nothin' but a dream nearly come to an end.
So, they git to work, writin' up a booklet detailin' the desert's spread over the years, and estimatin' how long it'll take to reach the Regions. They don't just take Amos' word fer it, neither. They talk to dozens of refugees from all over the land, ask 'em when they left their homes, what year the desert reached 'em, how fast the dust storms traveled. So on and so forth. This helps 'em form what they feel is a fairly accurate depiction of the continent's process of desertification. And it confirms Amos' statement in a most alarmin' way—it won't be but a few years 'fore the luck of their kind takes a turn fer the worse.
The three of 'em, Amos, Ro, and Stuart, write up their findings and Ro gits to printin'. They start with five hundred copies, which don't maybe seem like a lot, but it's enough to fuel the flames. 'Fore long, their booklet, Why the Spread of the Desert Should Matter to You, is the talk of the town. People pass their copies 'round, speculating as to its truthfulness. It don't take more than a month or two fer them to start questionin' their leaders.
This ain't no poor folks' rally Ro and his friends are plannin'. It's a whole renovation of society. They want the government to wise up and tell the truth fer once, but the government—they're still hostin' their party, and they ain't wantin' to go home and deal with their hangovers just yet. They like keepin' folks in the dark, thank you very much, and they don't want no one to listen to these lies, as they call 'em. As you'd expect, this is when the law comes down on Ro's little band of rebels.
One evening, Ro is on his way to the latest location of the press. He's figurin' to start printin' another run of booklets and is real excited about the prospect, thinkin' of the stirrin' the first run did within the lucky parts of the city. Up ahead, he spies smoke, and that ain't good. Soon as he sees it, he knows the press's been compromised, which means they're goin' to have to start over with all new equipment and supplies, yet again.
Only it's worse than that.
Just as he's contemplatin' how close he cain get to the fire without drawin' attention to himself, one of his fellow lucky conspirators, a woman named Breanna, comes hurryin' 'round the corner, holdin' her arm against herself, soot covered and grey tears streamin' down her face.
"They're burning us all," she cries, and Ro thinks she must be out of her mind, but no, she's just statin' a simple fact. Her singed hair's the only proof she needs. She says the law came, waited till they knew there was people inside the press room, sealed the doors shut, and set the place on fire. Breanna managed to break through a boarded up window, but the wall she climbed through collapsed right after her exit. "They're all dead, Ro. Gods, they're all dead."
All dead means fourteen good people, includin' Amos. And it would have been Ro too if he'd shown up a half hour earlier. Ro heads back to the lucky zone that night, heartbroken, and directionless. What's he gonna do now? He cain't quit, and yet, look what his friends got fer their efforts. Cain he put others at risk that way again? He feels responsible, seein' as he's a decent person who thinks heavily upon these sorts of things. But he ain't the one who should be carryin' this burden, as he soon finds out.
Stuart waits fer him by his house, practically scares Ro out of his skin when he calls Ro's name and invites him into the alley to speak.
"You've got to leave the city." Stuart grips Ro's shirt. His eyes are wild. Frantic. "They'll be here soon, Rordan. You'll never breathe air outside a prison cell again if they catch you."
"What?" Ro's eyes dart to and fro. "How do they even know I'm involved? And Stuart, how do you know they're on to me?"
Stuart, he cain't hide his guilt. He don't even need to say one more gods damn word.
"You sold us out," Ro just cain't believe it. Stuart's the one who brought him in, made him a part of this. He thought his friend was tried and true. "Amos and the others are dead because of you."
Stuart hangs his head, but Ro makes him explain himself. "I had no choice," Stuart claims. "They found out I'd funded the first run. Said they'd pin it on my father. He'd be arrested, maybe even executed, and our family would be ruined."
So there you have it. Fer all of Stuart's grand ideals, when it looked like his own good times were over, he let every well-intended notion slip away. One more dance at the party fer Stuart, but the jig is up fer everyone else.
"I tried to buy you some time." Stuart's shakin' now, but he manages to smile. He truly believes if he cain git Ro to safety, it will make up fer their dead companions, fer the dismantling of their press, fer the end to their quest to enlighten the world. "I told them you were drinking at Mattie's tonight. They'll check there first before coming here."
Ro has just enough time to pack his bag, into which he slips his last ten copies of Why the spread of the Desert Should Matter to You. His parents and his little brother are asleep. He don't wake them to say goodbye and he don't leave a note. He cain barely keep movin' when he thinks of the grief he's 'bout to cause 'em. By the time he gits back out of his house, Stuart's gone, which is just as well, considerin' he never wants to catch sight of that traitor's sorry face ever again.
Ro is only a block away when a whole charge of lawfolk come up from the opposite direction. He hides himself and listens to the rhythmic stomping of their boots as they march towards his house. Soon they're at his stoop yellin', beatin' on his front door, and then there's only the poundin' of his own feet, runnin' away from the law, away from his family, from his life, lucky, unlucky, lucky, unlucky. I imagine, the distinction 'tween the two don't carry much weight fer him no more.
He leaves the city, heads east, stickin' to the Regions, but this ain't safe. Too many lawfolk in the Regions, and too many folks of the law—people who would turn him over soon as they figured out who he is. And he's got the proof of himself right there in his bag. Ten copies of his book. Ten reminders of who he wants to be, not who he was born to be. It's a terrible risk, keepin' them books with him, but he does it anyways. He don't wanna die, he wants to find a new place to set his principles flyin' out into the greater world again. But if he is caught, he ain't gonna turn coward like Stuart did. Those booklets are his insurance that his sense of self won't vanish along with everything else he's lost.
Despite the hardships he faces, Ro endures. He keeps himself fed, upright, and movin'. Several times he almost succumbs to despair, but he just has to believe in himself, believe that he survived and escaped so he could continue his mission. He heads through the Northern Region, then gits to thinkin' that he ain't doin' his mission no good if he cain't face the desert—learn what it's like firsthand. If he cain't brave it, then he'll never be anything more than a hypocrite, and a hypocrite's what Stuart is. That comparison turns his stomach and spurs him on.
'Fore he cain attempt the desert, he needs supplies, a map, knowledge of water sources. So he does what he's avoided doin' till this point. He enters a small town situated not far from where the prosperity of the Regions leaves off fer the plight of the destitute.
He tries to make like he's a local of sorts, just travelin' from another town somewheres in the vicinity. Ain't no trouble comes his way at first, and he gathers the things he needs. He even gits directions to the house of an old desert trader who should be able to clue him in as to where he cain fill up with water on his way south. As he passes the shops on the main lane, he spies the weekly paper in a store window.
How could he not stop and read that headline? How could he not stand there and stare at the article, the news, sent on the wings of a courier bird, straight out of the capital:
Spread of the Desert Revealed as Hoax
Son of Disgraced Business Man Funding Sham Commits Suicide
Co-conspirator Still At Large
"Well, I'll be damned." I cain't control my loose lips when Ro tells me this part. "They pinned it on Stuart's father anyways, even after he turned rat on you."
That is surely what happened, and Stuart, if the paper cain be believed, paid fer his betrayal by guzzlin' a bottle of poison.
There's a line-drawin' of Stuart in that paper, a real good likeness of him, Ro says, and right next to his likeness is one of Ro. It's a sketch his parents had done by a notable artist only a few months past, and it's like lookin' in a mirror. Anyone who reads this paper and notes an unfamiliar man walkin' down their lane is gonna know Ro and this co-conspirator are one and the same.
Shakin' himself free of this realization, Ro resists the urge to flee from town right then and there and carries on with his plan to seek out the trader. He cain't get too far in the desert without the trader's advice and he knows it. But it's still a gamble. One of them shopkeepers may have already identified him, and if they didn't, this trader guy might. He don't got nobody he cain trust, but that's the thing about bein' desperate—you either decide to go ahead with yer sorry excuse fer a plan, or you give up and lay right down in the lane and wait fer the law to descend.
Ro went on ahead. He met with the trader, got the information he needed, and struck out into the wastelands just as soon as he could.
Ever since then, he's had the law on his tail, so someone back at that town must surely have given him up. The desert turns out to be every bit as harsh as he'd been told, and then some, but he lets that spark him on, lets his anguish dry up like the sands at his feet.
"Sand?" I gotta correct him on this point, though technically, I guess in certain places, it cain rightly be called that. "Sand's fer beaches. What we got here is dust—all that's left of the people and things in this world that git swept away. Dirt and skin and ash and bones. Soon there ain't gonna be nothin' but one big ball of dust circlin' the sun."
"Well," he goes on, "The dust, the desert, whatever. It doesn't scare me. I mean, I know it's awful."
"Ain't no doubt 'bout that." I nod, letting him continue with his thoughts.
The dust and Ro, they come to an understanding. He brings his stories with him into that desolate land, asleep in its fallow state and assumed to be dead ferever. He brings his truths, and in exchange fer not killin' him, these truths of his wake the desert's spirit, give it a soul, make it something less monstrous, something that's just tryin' to survive, just tryin' to spread itself, find a new homeland.
That's a curious way of lookin' at it and I tell him so, cuz if he's gonna make the desert into a livin' creature, then what it is is a pest, a parasite that won't be satiated till its host gives up the ghost. And ain't we so lucky that they plopped our ancestors down on this doomed world of ours, only to watch it eaten by Ro's spirit of the wilds, a parasite of monstrous proportions if ever there was one.
Ro, he walks across the desert and it wakes under the feel of his feet and it don't take him down, not even when he crosses that gulch, the one filled with the bleached bones of those that tried to pass that way before him. Then it leads him to my doorstep, which he claims to be happy 'bout.
"If you got any sway with the desert, Rordan, maybe you could add my name to its list of people to spare." Not that he cain. This happens sometimes—the desert takin' a man's sanity along with his hydration. What's alarmin' is how sane Ro appears to be when he speaks of the desert, like it's been a better friend to him than most of the people in his life.
#
It's been nearly six months since he left the capital, and still, he ain't found a place to resettle. He don't know how he's gonna spread the word and how even if he finds a way, he cain convince people that we're our own worst enemies, that lies and betrayals and a hunger fer power are all greater evils than the spread of the desert. If we done away with all that, we might find a way to work together to solve our problems. He don't know how he cain accomplish gettin' out to the world everything' that's in his mind.
"Cain I see it, yer booklet?" I bite my lip. I don't know why should I be afraid he'll say no, but I am.
He shifts his weight, lookin' uncomfortable.
"Look here, Rordan. My pa taught me how to read, so you don't gotta worry 'bout me lookin' at it wrong side up or nothin'." I suspect them people in the Regions would be real surprised to know how many of us common folks got some book learnin' in us. Not the kind of book learnin' you git from school, since as I already mentioned, we don't got too many of those, but the kind that determined parents passed down to their offspring, to make sure the next generation ain't completely unversed in the old ways.
"It's not that. I—I haven't shown it to anyone since leaving the city. I haven't even looked at a copy myself."
"Well then, it's 'bout time."
Ro nods, pulls one of the booklets out of his bag, hands it over.
I flip through the first few pages, and then git to readin'. It's everything he told me it would be. All the data he gathered, the stories he documented from desert dwellers. It's all there. Plain as cain be that we got us a global situation on our hands. He watches me as I read, but I don't let that fact rush me. I ain't the fastest reader in the world, but I read real thorough and I remember the words I take in.
When I finish, which don't take too long cuz it's a booklet, only twenty-six pages and there's charts and graphs and whatnot, I hand it back to him.
"Dinner's in an hour." I stand up and head to the door. "Make sure you wash up good at the pump and leave yer boots on the porch. Don't need no more dust inside my house."
A/N: Now you know what Ro did to earn the status of lawbreaker. He took quite a few chances while in route to May's little corner of the dust. Do you think he was recognized by anyone? Could someone be following him?
Thanks for your support! The children of the capitol were mighty impressed with the new slate boards provided to their school thanks to your generosity in the last chapter. But... they still need chalk if they're going to be able to use those boards. Help 'em out and vote. 100% of profits will go to the kiddos!
Today's dedication is for the one and only JoshTownley whose featured story ZOEY is way up there on the horror hot list right now. He's planning some bonus chapters soon, so get in there, read, and be ready for them!