Free The World as We Know It by Curtis Krusie Page B

without the slightest idea of how to survive in the wild, and nothing but hopes and prayers to keep them going. But they learned. We all had to learn.
    When the sun had gone down, leaving only an orange glow over the western horizon, it was time to turn in for the night. The first day had been light and uneventful but exhausting nonetheless, more emotionally than physically. But neither Nomad nor I were used to covering that kind of distance in a day, I on horseback and he burdened with the weight of a man and his gear. We stopped near a lake and a field of tall grass off of the side of the road where he could drink and graze. I built a fire, dug for earthworms, and went fishing, and then I enjoyed my filet with a healthy side of clovers, dandelions, and redbud flowers. Gathering food, however, proved significantly more difficult in the dark than it would have been in the light. Had I been thinking, I would have stopped to eat at one of the many farm fields that had lined both sides of thehighway for most of the day. It hadn’t occurred to me yet that someone must still have been cultivating them all and I was never quite as alone as I might have felt. Waiting to stop until the sun had gone down was my first mistake. Fortunately, it was one easily recovered from the next day.
    The stars were like an exaggerated stage backdrop across the entire pitch-black sky. They were the brightest stars accompanied by the darkest night that I had seen, even since the electricity had gone out so long ago. The loneliness of that night was unlike anything I had ever experienced, but it was nothing compared to what would come over the following months. I lay on the pavement in the middle of the highway for a while, looking up at the stars, watching them slowly creep in formation through the night. Not a soul made a sound beyond Nomad’s occasional heavy breathing as he slept tied to a tree nearby. Even the springtime crickets were silent. My fire crackled as it died down, and memories rushed in of vacations we used to take in the old world. How different that road was from the four-star hotels in which we used to sleep.
    I remembered a trip that Paul, Noah, and I had taken to New Orleans during college, where we had booked a room in a high-rise overlooking the French Quarter. After checking in, I had been inspecting the bathroom for cleanliness, as was customary when staying in any foreign place, when I heard Noah out in the room yelling, “What the hell? What the hell is that?” I had bolted through the door to see what was the matter, and I had found him holding the room phone with a dry washclothhalf a foot from his ear, a look of repulsion smeared across his face.
    “What’s your deal?” I had demanded. He had pointed at the mirror hanging above the dresser as he started in on the front desk operator.
    “We need maid service in room fourteen twenty-one immediately. No, no, we need another room! Someone ejaculated all over the mirror! Yes! The bloody mirror! You know he was looking at himself when he did it!”
    Paul had started rolling on one of the beds in hysterics.
    “That’s what we get for taking a room on the thirteenth floor.” He had laughed.
    “It’s the fourteenth,” I had said.
    “Did you see a button for thirteen on the elevator? It’s a trick to make the superstitious more comfortable. Think it worked?”
    He had looked at Noah’s animated expression of repugnance and erupted with laughter.
    I found myself laughing too, lying there in the middle of that highway with nothing but the moon and stars lighting the silent wilderness around me.
    I tried to count the stars, and the next thing I knew, the sun was rising, waking me to a beautiful bright blue morning sky. I must have been more exhausted than I had realized, because I had passed out on the hard pavement before I’d even had an opportunity to pitch my tent. My skin was sticky with dew. I got up, sore all over from my asphalt bed, and joined my horse in the