Read Online The World as We Know It by Curtis Krusie - Free Book Online

heard, I suspected that there was no law anymore in our country or in any other. The only thing keeping aman honest was his own set of morals, and in the world we had known before, that simply hadn’t been enough for most. The human factor was just one of many dangers. The environment was another. If I were to embark on such a journey, it would be a slow one, and there would be no Hiltons along the way. My fear grew by the day, as did the knowledge that I would inevitably have to face the challenge for the sake of everyone there. James Neil Hollingworth, under the pseudonym Ambrose Redmoon, wrote that, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than one’s fear.” That definition could not be more accurate.
    While working in the fields one day, I confronted Paul with my thoughts.
    “What do you think?” I asked him.
    “I think somebody’s got to do it. There are billions of people out there right now going through the same things were are. We can learn from them, and perhaps they can learn from us. We can’t stay isolated the way we have been.”
    “And I volunteered.”
    “And you volunteered.”
    “I was thinking. If I’m going out there, we could use a long-distance system of communication. I could help set it up.”
    “The Pony Express.” He laughed.
    “Well, yeah, something like that.”
    “Postmaster Joe. You’ll be like Kevin Costner in that movie.”
    “
The Postman
?”
    “Yeah,
The Postman
.”
    “I hope the world hasn’t come to that.”
    Then I took the conversation to Maria, which is probably where it should have started. I had grown less concerned with considering her in my decisions. She sat stroking the cat to calm her nerves, not speaking, just listening as I explained why I had resolved to leave. The job could only be entrusted to a person of great ambition and persistence and integrity, and I was the one person willing and able to take it on. I didn’t say it, but it gave me that sense of success and purpose that I’d had before the collapse.
    When I was finished speaking, I turned to leave, and that was when she stopped me to ask the question that I would find myself agonizing over for some time to come.
    “What happened to you, Joe? Where is the man I married?”
    “Right here, Maria!” I yelled at her. “Success or failure? Your choice.”
    “You never gave me a choice, and I think you and I have different ideas about what those things mean. Look, we’re OK here. God’s given us everything we need.”
    “Your superstitions are useless, Maria. Where was God when the market tanked and people lost their jobs and destroyed everything?”
    “He was right there. But they were looking the other way.”
    She began to cry.
    “Nonsense,” I said. “We lost everything. Don’t you understand that?”
    “We don’t need all that stuff, Joe.”
    “Oh, really? So all those hours I worked to give you everything you could ever want meant nothing to you?”
    “Of course they did,” she answered, “but you’re more important to me than any of that.”
    “So you’d rather I stay here in this aimless existence, living off of the generosity of successful people?”
    “You’re obsessed with success, Joe! Stop thinking that way. You have me here.”
    “Do I?”
    “Joe, what do you mean?”
    “I mean I don’t know what’s going to happen with us. I need a change.”
    “Joe, please don’t abandon me.”
    “It’s done, so deal with it.”
    She sat down on the bed, and I left her there alone in our cabin, still crying.
    We spoke less and less after that, and when we did, she couldn’t look at me. It was as if she were speaking to the floor. There was no backing out after that argument, and my resentment festered. It was easier not to ask myself why. Perhaps it was that I envied her faith, or that she remained so content after losing all of the things that I had worked so hard to provide.
    I asked around, trying to