Warday

At first, I must admit, even my curiosity was not enough to move me. Even in tranquil times, one tends to hold on to anything definite and stable, and my job with the Dallas Herald News was a good one. Whitley and I talked about the book needing to be written, but I’m not sure I buy that. I don’t think there is such a thing as a book that needs to be written.

But the question of the state of the country—the way it feels for ordinary people to live in its various regions—wouldn’t go away. Since the wire services were reconstructed in ’90, we have all been getting a certain amount of outside news. But facts can’t reveal the things that are really important: how it feels and tastes and smells in America, what work is like and what hopes are general. The only way to find such things out is to walk the streets and talk to the people.

Travel is not easy, and in many places it’s far from safe.

I live in a nice house and, with two others, I own a fairly good car. I cherish my safety passionately. On Warday both my wife and my mother disappeared, my mother in the maelstrom of San Antonio, my wife in Austin. Mother I know is dead. But my wife—there is always the chance she remains alive, caught in the great shuffling departures that have marked the famine and the flu. I wrote only my mother’s name in the Governor’s Book of the Dead.

I ate dandelion leaves during the famine. I know what it is to have the flu and get told to leave the hospital or face arrest. I know what it is to lose relatives, home, possessions, friends.

And I know how I feel when I watch the sunset over the roofs of the neighborhood and hear the snick of the scythe as my neighbor cuts his lawn. But the things I did not know seemed to me more important.

What, for example, was life like in the least affected parts of the country, such as California? How was the federal government functioning now, with its new capital in Los Angeles and a whole new breed of bureaucrats? Have they documented the history of the war, and what are they saying about it now?

More importantly, what do ordinary people know about the war, and what have they learned from it? Will we ever rebuild the old “United States,” or is that as much a part of history as the USSR?

So curiosity became interest and I found myself drawn into working on the book. We both knew it couldn’t be done from Dallas, that we would have to do our research by traveling, talking with people, getting in touch with the landscape, gathering the vitally important personal stories and sensations even more than the official facts.

There would be risks, of course. We could get hurt or even killed. We could run out of money. Whitley would be away from his family for an indefinite time. Travel is not easy. We would have to do a lot of walking. We might, in fact, end up for a while in one of the civilian detention centers the Army uses to control migration.

We would have to use every contact we had and all the salesmanship we could muster to go where we wanted and meet the right people.

I also wanted to gather government reports, documentary evidence. Not to place blame, but to see and perhaps understand.

Transportation was the most immediate obstacle. Air travel is quick, but there isn’t much chance of doing it on a regular basis without government approval or foreign papers, unless you are willing to wait months for a reservation. Also, you don’t meet ordinary people on planes. We would go TBF—train, bus, and foot.

Just like everybody else.

Travel passes aren’t commonly needed except, as we found out, in California. Washington State and Oregon also have stringent immigration restrictions. War Zones were off limits, of course, but my government contacts could help us there.

Whitley is in somewhat more jeopardy than I. He is triaged because of his high lifedose. His chances of getting cancer in the next five years are seventy percent. His ten-year survival probability is zero. This comes from his living through Warday and the week after in New York.

I have lost so much: wife, mother, friends, expectations. All of my references are to the here and now, and I found I wanted to expand and enrich them. The trip would do that.

Besides, I remember something my grandfather used to say whenever someone would offer him a scotch and water. “Why not, I can’t dance.”

As much as any, that was a good reason for doing this.

Dallas to Aztlan to California, then back across the continent to New York, then home through the old South. A call to Amtrak confirmed that the rail service is not only running but somewhat expanded since prewar times. Amtrak’s diesels did not suffer from the effects of EMP because they have no delicate electronic parts like airplanes.

We made phone calls and sent letters. The telephone system is quixotic. Some large areas are still completely without service.