Mysterious
Ways by Steven Utley
When
the pain in his body began in earnest and forced him to admit to himself that
his time had finally come, the last man in the world went to his crude cot, to
lie trembling amid ancient, smelly blankets.
He lay there, waiting, almost until dawn. Nothing
was revealed. The
man sighed softly and fell into an exhausted sleep. Later
that morning, his animal friends came as they always had to the garden in the
lot behind the ruined supermarket. They
had grown fond of listening to the stories he told and the songs he sang in his
high, brittle voice. When he failed
to appear, some of the beasts crept into the disintegrating building and slipped
into his little room to wait quietly in the shadows beyond a wavering perimeter
of light cast by stub candles at the head of the cot. The
last man sensed their presence after some time had passed.
He raised his head with painful effort and smiled into the darkness.
“My friends,” he murmured, “my good and dear companions, I am
dying.” They
knew. The odd cat gave a brief,
whining howl. The big, strange dogs
whimpered and ducked their heads. The
lesser things that had come shifted nervously on small padded paws and sniffed
the close air, trying to determine the nearness of death. “It
is nothing to fear,” the man gasped weakly as he sank back into his pile of
blankets. “Remember that, my
little ones, that and all the other things I have told you.” * *
* Not
that it really mattered, but Homo sapiens the very last had once been
called Alexander something, or something Alexander, perhaps -- there had come
a time when he found himself unable to recall either the missing part of his
name or whether “Alexander” had come before or after. He
had been a minister, a man completely dedicated to God.
He had lived in a little brick house located next to a large brick
church, and then, early one morning, the world had ended all around the little
brick house. Miraculously unhurt by
the final, fatal human folly, Alexander had gone out to find the earth scoured
clean of his own kind. He
had been thirty-four years old at the time (not that that really mattered,
either, because he had soon afterward lost track of his years) and was convinced
that the Lord God in Heaven had spared him, singled him out, for some great
reason that would presently manifest itself. So
Alexander had worked hard to insure his survival while awaiting the bolt from
the blue that would make the nature of his mission clear to him.
He had raised vegetables in his garden and made friends with such beasts
as still sought the company of a human being, and he had kept on waiting. When
the last man in the world was very, very old, a slow, gray sickness had begun to
creep through him and gnaw at his insides. For
several weeks, he had coughed often and long, choking and spitting up thick,
fibrous clots of blood and mucus, but he had continued to putter about in the
garden, conversing with his mutely expressive animal friends, singing his own
hymns to them, lying to himself. Finally,
however, he had had to face the truth. He
was dying. No
purpose had been revealed unto him. No
reason had been given for his exemption from the extinction of the human race. It
made everything seem rather pathetic and futile. * *
* One
of the strange dogs whimpered again and moved nervously from corner to dark
corner. Smaller creatures scurried
out of the way in panic as the jittery beast’s nails clicked on the smooth
stone floor. The
man stared up at the ceiling, his eyes bright in the deep, black-rimmed sockets
of his pale and fleshless face. The
pain inside his chest increased steadily as the long day wound to a close.
He began to cry out at dusk and kept it up intermittently until well
after Shortly
before dawn, he grew quiet and lay with his arms pressed tightly against his
chest. He tried to focus his gaze on
the watching beasts and, failing, closed his eyes. “Remember,”
he said again. “The songs, the
stories, this place. Remember me.
If you can.” He
settled himself more deeply into his blankets and thought, Dear Heavenly Father,
the meek are truly about to inherit the earth.
Is this what you spared me for?
Is this all? He
waited hopefully for the revelation that would snuff out the ember of angry
doubt in his mind. Nothing
was revealed. The
last man in the world died as the sun came up.
The beasts edged forward one at a time to sniff at the cooling corpse on
the cot. The odd cat slunk away,
meowing piteously, and the lesser furry things quickly followed.
The strange dogs remained by the deathbed until mid-morning. Then
they gathered up their friend, bore him out to the garden, and gave him a decent
Christian burial.
This story first appeared in Vertex in December 1973 as "The Reason Why." Copyright © Mankind Publishing 1973 Photo Copyright © Eric Marin 2004 About the Author: Steven Utley, a founding member of Texas' Turkey City writers group in the 1970s, is the co-editor (with Geo. W. Proctor) of an anthology of fiction by Texans, Lone Star Universe (Heidelberg Publishers, 1976), and the author of Ghost Seas (Ticonderoga Publications, 1997), The Beasts of Love (Wheatland Press, 2004), Where or When (PS Publishing, 2005 [UK]) the perennially soon-to-be-finished Silurian Tales, and two volumes of verse, This Impatient Ape (1998) and Career Moves of the Gods (2000), both published by Anamnesis Press.
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