The Last Tribe

by Brad Manuel

they built a fired

Hank sipped his port. “I don’t know. I still have an urge to ‘do.’ I feel like we need to prep for something, but I don’t know what. We can’t plant. We can’t build. I am socked in by a storm, perfectly comfortable and with months of provisions. It’s made me slow down. I’m not taking stock of my life, or saying I have regret in how I lived my life, but this pandemic, it’s brought a new kind of order to my mind. It’s simplified everything.” Hank continued to drink. “I’m rambling, because I’m a little drunk. What I think I’m trying to say, what I think I’ve realized is, the rapture has created a world where I can enjoy a game of cribbage with my brother. Before all of this destruction, my mind was always half somewhere else. I was thinking about work, or mowing the lawn, or whatever. I’m free of that now.”

“Do you know how many people I fired during my time at work? I didn’t keep track, but it was north of thirty. That’s how I lived, climbing on the backs of others. It’s how it used to be. Life isn’t like that anymore. Life is pretty simple for us now. Eat, keep warm and dry, protect each other, go to sleep. Do I get to play golf? No. Will I miss a lot of things? Absolutely. But there is a purity to my life today.”

want to set up on plates and have