Fifteen or more years after the apocalypse, the world became pleasant. It was January, a few days into the new year. The sun was high and white. The sky, cloudless. Snow would come shortly, but for now, the ground was dry and brown. This place, a small pine forest somewhere in the Northeast of the North American continent, had once been called Fisher Brook Preserve, property of the Audubon Society. Like most organizations, Audubon no longer existed, but the places remained. In fact, this one, and others like it, was flourishing.
Two figures crested a hill. Their lean bodies were silhouettes before the rising winter sun. Dark and amorphous, outlines glowing. They walked together, keeping pace, though one of them, a man, was longer-legged. Soon the sun was to their left, and they strode into focus. Angus and Feo. Angus was pale. His nose was large, and his chin sharp. His cheeks flushed pink in the chilly air. Feo looked like someone’s carefree older sister. Her oil-black eyes flinched and flared, enlivened by their conversation. Angus wore a green canvas jacket and carried a small pair of binoculars, which he kept trying to tuck into one of his pockets in the hope that his fingers might become warmer. Unfortunately, neither pocket was large enough. Feo’s vest was blue. She carried a point-and-shoot camera, the strap carefully looped over her wrist. One of her rather large vest pockets contained a book of regional birds. It looked to be almost new, though it had been printed at least a decade and a half ago.
“It’s so beautiful today,” said Feo.
Angus nodded. He was thinking about his grandfather. He inhaled sharply, enjoying the sudden cold in his lungs.
“I wish I knew more about cameras.” Feo fiddled with the various nobs and dials.
“It came with a manual.”
“Yeah, I’ll read it in the car.”
“Oh, will I be driving?”
Feo laughed. “Yep. I wish I knew more about cameras, and I wish I knew more about birds.”
“I’m sure you’ll get better at both.”
They came to a fork in the overgrown trail. The colored markers had long since worn away, but a stone bench remained. It was speckled white, probably granite, built from one large block.
Angus sat. Feo walked about the space for a little while longer, peering through the viewfinder, zooming in and out. A grey and black songbird flitted overhead and landed in a bush.
“Feo, chickadee.”
Feo stopped and looked, then tried to align the camera with the bird. She zoomed in and the bird hopped out of frame, she zoomed out, found it again, and zoomed back in. The bird now stood behind a messy cluster of stems. The camera kept focusing on the stems, leaving the chickadee a blurry grey blob in the background.
“Damn sticks.”
Angus had found the camera in a rusted mailbox. The flag was still up, though it was no longer red. The package was unopened, a Christmas gift never received maybe. Lots of human things were frozen in this almost state now. Cars half out of driveways, grocery carts in line at the cash register, rotting books resting on rotting coffee tables, pages dog-eared at the last chapter. Angus had once found an axe stuck in a tree; its head absorbed by the still-growing wood. Everyone left in a hurry.
The book, they’d found together, also in an unopened box, this one in the back room of a bookstore. It never made it to the shelf.
The binoculars were old, they had been given rather than found. They were Angus’s grandfather’s. “OpOp,” they called him, Angus and his siblings. OpOp hadn’t gifted the binoculars. He had died. He had died before everyone else. He was walking the dog when a clot stopped his heart. The things that he owned that seemed representative were divided by his family. When they stacked all the representative belongings on a table, it almost felt like he was there. Almost. It made the remembering easy.
The chickadee disappeared.
“Did you get a photo?”
“No, but I took a video. He wouldn’t stay still, and the sticks were in the way.”
“I think it’s clearer further along. Better photos maybe.”
The sun was higher. The shade was still cold, but in patches where branches didn’t get in the way, the air was warm. Feo paused in one and closed her eyes.
“Mmm.”
She thought about the coming year. She would make a real effort to learn more about cameras and birds. Books were easy to find. No one had wanted them because no one had needed them. Now there was time to peruse.
Her parents lived in Maine. They were an unruly pair. Weekends were for the mountains, blizzard, or no. They biked across the country and then did it again the next year. They would have done well in this world. They would have enjoyed the new patterns of living.
Angus tapped her on the shoulder. He was looking through the binoculars, almost straight up.
“Funny little thing,” he said. “On the side of that tree. It’s a bird, but it looks like a mouse.”
Feo zoomed in. The bird clung to the trunk with tiny black legs. It walked about the tree as if unaffected by gravity. First, it went up, pointy beak prodding the cracks in the bark, then it went right. It walked around out of sight, then moments later appeared again on the left. It was rodent-like, the way its belly hugged so close to the wood. It couldn’t have been larger than her thumb. She clicked the shutter button twice. The bird scurried out of view.
“Is that a pond?” said Angus.
It was. The pond was fed by a wide stony brook. Old maps named them Fisher Pond and Fisher Brook, but Angus and Feo had no maps. The footbridge wasn’t yet rotted through, the wood was pressure-treated. Feo paused on the bridge and propped her elbows on the railing. She watched the pond. Angus leaned beside her.
“Winter is better than summer,” he said.
Feo’s brow crinkled. “Winter is hard.”
“We’re doing okay.”
“Mmm.”
Angus crouched and sat, flopping his legs over the side of the bridge. He let them swing and bump, the toes of his boots just above the water.
“Imagine it was hot right now. Hot and humid and horrible. You wouldn’t want to be here.”
“It might be breezy.”
“It often isn’t.”
Feo said nothing. After a moment, she shrugged.
“Spring is best.”
“And winter is better than summer,” said Angus. He laughed at himself.
They stopped talking. Feo spotted a cluster of mallards on the other side of the pond, and she followed them with her camera. Angus watched the brook spit and stretch beneath his feet. He missed OpOp. He remembered his smell, though he couldn’t describe it. When OpOp visited, he always hugged everyone before taking off his jacket. His cheeks were icy cold against Angus’s. When he died, no one talked about the little details. They remembered his kind spirit, and his welcoming attitude, and his sense of humor, and his mark on the world, and his presence. No one talked about his cold cheeks. No one talked about his big belly or the funny way he swung his arms when he walked.
Eventually, Feo and Angus left. The day was beautiful, and the birds were active, but it was time. They weren’t home yet. When they reached the parking lot, they stopped at the trail kiosk. The notices were faded but legible.
No dogs allowed, said one.
Bicyclists, please keep to the dotted trails, said another.
Fisher Brook Wildlife, the title of a large poster. Images of squirrels, foxes, cardinals, ducks, and other birds.
“The mouse bird!” Angus pointed.
“Brown creeper. You think that’s it?”
“Definitely, same pointy beak, same camouflage feathers. Mark it in your book.”
Feo flipped through the book until she found it. Another image of the tiny brown bird. Angus offered her a pen.
Fisher Brook, January, she wrote.
“No year?” said Angus. His features were shaded by the pine branches.
“Nope.” The book was old and new. She wanted to keep it that way. She missed her parents, but hardly thought about them anymore. They were vigorous when she’d known them, livelier than anyone, burning hot and fast. They broke bones and kept walking. They loved living, but she wasn’t sure they’d loved her. Not in the way parents should. Then they went, and she didn’t.
Feo, she wrote next to the other words. She had seen the brown creeper. She even had a photograph.
“You ready?” said Angus.
“Ready.”
They walked away, their bodies blurred and darkened. Their shapes melded with their vehicle, which sputtered and coughed, then moved. Soon, the shape was gone, leaving only the foreground in focus, a dusty old kiosk, a trailhead, a forest. The apocalypse was over. The world was pleasant. Though the place had once been called Fisher Brook Reserve, now it was just a place, and it was flourishing.
–
J.B. Marlow lives and writes in New England. He is the founding editor of Rock Salt Journal, a literary magazine for North Eastern stories. He shares an apartment with his partner, Hannah, and their two cats, Charlie and Chester. Recently, his short story, “The Old Casino” won the 64th Jerry Jazz Musician short fiction contest.
© 2024, J.B. Marlow
Halfway Down the Stairs 