Salvation City - By Sigrid Nunez Page 0,18

anyway.

Though he couldn’t stand more than three or four puffs at a time, he was satisfied that he was on his way to being a real smoker. (Two things he’d decided were definitely in his future: cigarettes and a motorcycle.)

Even in normal times their dead-end street was quiet. The Vinings hadn’t been living there long enough to know their neighbors, and Cole didn’t expect they’d ever know any of them all that well. His parents had strong ideas about not getting too close to neighbors. It was one more reason his mother disliked small towns. In places like Little Leap the neighbors tended to be overfriendly, she said. (And this would be one more source of bafflement for Tracy. “Loving your neighbor’s just another way of loving God. And there can’t never be too much of that!”)

The day after they’d moved in, Cole had taken a walk by himself to the end of the street, and as he was coming back a long-haired boy on a bike had suddenly appeared, whizzing past him from behind. “Outta my way, fag-boy!” But Cole had never seen that boy again.

Though pedestrians were a rare sight, Cole saw two animals from time to time: a calico cat that appeared to live under the porch of the house directly opposite, and a slightly lame chocolate Lab that wore tags but was allowed to roam free. Whenever he saw either of them, Cole couldn’t help wondering. Cats and dogs were smart, and they were sensitive, too. Did they have any idea that their human friends were in such deep shit? Cole knew animals could get the flu, too. In fact, there were people out there who blamed birds for what was happening and were shooting or trapping and killing them. There were crazies who believed any animal might carry the infection and were destroying every one they could get their hands on, even their own pets—the same kind of thing that had happened during the 1918 flu.

Cole’s father had told him how, when the United States was at war with Germany, there were people who’d walk up to dachshunds in the street and kick them. (“I bet they wouldn’t dare do that to a German shepherd,” Cole said.)

But imagine all the human beings on earth getting wiped out. A lot of animals would have to be happy about that, wouldn’t they? All those animals on the verge of extinction—they’d be saved then, wouldn’t they?

There were those who’d come right out and said it. The pandemic might be the worst thing ever to happen to mankind, but it might turn out to be the best thing to happen to Planet Earth.

This is not the end of the world. It’s Nature’s way of saving it.

Self-hating scum! Whoever thinks that deserves to die!

His mother wasn’t the only one in full-frontal freak.

To Cole, it was pretty exciting, albeit in a sick-making way, like watching an ultra-realistic slasher flick, or going on a roller coaster when he was still young and dumb enough to think it was a death-defying thing to do.

Men in riot gear with snarling dogs storming people storming pharmacies. It was like an extreme version of the madness of grown-ups in general.

It always gave him some satisfaction, seeing grown-ups lose control. He didn’t know why. It had to do with hating them, of course, but that begged the question: When had that started anyway? Cole couldn’t say. And though it could seem that the way he felt about his parents these days was the way he’d felt about them his whole life, he knew this wasn’t so.

“This is new,” his mother told her friends. “He used to be Cole the Cuddly. Now he’s practically autistic.”

It was true he didn’t want his parents touching him. Not that he could remember the last time his father had tried. What he did remember, though, was climbing onto his father’s lap and his father snapping his legs straight so that Cole slid to the floor. This had happened about four years ago. At first Cole had thought it was a game. He’d started giggling but stopped when he saw his father’s face. “You’re too old for that.” Voice like ice.

Cole often recalled this humiliation and how he had cast about in his mind for some way to pay his father back. But now that his father was so sick, thinking about this made him want to smash something.

Hard to believe only four mornings ago he’d watched his father, dressed in his usual