Janice Deal: COME WHAT MAY • Cleaver Magazine

Fiction by Janice Deal
COME WHAT MAY

Toliver was a bitter cuss but he had his reasons: 83 years old, and practically the last of his people. His wife, Cordelia, was dead, and so were most of his children and all of his grandchildren. Both granddaughters, twins, hadn’t even made it to ten years old. Malaria. In Illinois! While he’d been worried about smallpox and polio, measles, even diphtheria for God’s sake, the malaria crept in like a dybbuk. People were still having babies, God knew why, probably couldn’t help themselves, but even the most dedicated procreators couldn’t keep up with the deaths.

Such a thing, he’d say to no one. There was no one left to say it to.

Toliver had always had a strong constitution; when the CDC quietly shuttered he was able to manage better than most. Early on vegetables had become scarce, and forget about fruit (sometimes Toliver still dreamed about the sweet/floral taste of strawberries), but the protein powder he’d hoarded when he first got an inkling of what was coming had helped him stay strong, at least for a while. For months he mixed it with water and walked every day. The powder eventually ran out but he kept walking: in the rain, in the heat. It made no difference. It kept his legs sturdy. His will, too. Everyone said they knew what would happen, but he was the only one who really believed it, and here he was, still here, when so many of the optimists were gone.

A path ran behind his apartment complex. It used to be a railway; back in his youth it had been turned into a paved trail for hiking and biking. No one kept it up anymore and the asphalt was all broken, the macadam humped so that it was no good for biking and hadn’t been for some time. But he walked it, careful of the uneven blacktop and the critters (there were coyotes, and snakes, and a strange wolverine sort of thing that had recently started appearing in these parts). He was usually the only one on the trail, but others used it, he knew. He saw the garbage they left behind.

Some of the other walkers must have been wealthy enough still, based on the wrappers and the cans Toliver found. The colorful packaging spoke of energy drinks and bars that he thought had disappeared years ago. There were peanut butter jars, scraped clean! Tuna pouches! Toliver started bringing a sack and picking up the garbage; he thought of it as “his” trail and meant to keep it nice. One day he picked up a wrapper, and there was almost half a candy bar left inside. He’d been hungry that day—he was usually hungry—and didn’t even stop to think before jamming the candy in his mouth. All of it.

It was a caramel-peanut thing, with the chocolate just a little bit melty. Peanuts. It had been so long. It was only March but already hot, and for a moment he stood there, full in the sun and carried back to the summers when he’d buy his daughter this very same candy. An impulse purchase, checking out with a full cart of groceries, and he wished he’d appreciated it more then: his children; the candy bars; even the cart, its four wheels straight and sound.

Eighty years old he’d been that day, standing on the empty trail and devouring found chocolate. The candy was stale and required serious chewing, but he still had some of his teeth. And the taste! The memory! He cried like a toddler.

It had taken a beat more before he experienced a twinge of terror. Who knew what germs, what species of fever or misery, he’d just consumed? But so many of Toliver’s people had already died at that point, and he thought, “If it’s my time, it’s my time,” and turned around and walked calmly back to his apartment with its ceiling fans and the photos of everyone he’d ever loved.

The candy bar hadn’t killed him, and neither had anything else he’d picked up along the trail since. Half bags of chips, almost a full can of soda pop, warm but sweet. There were the usual dried wedges that the government called fruit, which he had at home also, but he even ate those, because somewhere along the line he’d gotten the idea that it all built up his immunity—the germs that were certainly on the food but also in the dirt that sometimes encrusted it.

He ate the dirt, and here he was, three years later. He had become indifferent to life, but living was a habit, it was what he did. Apparently, Toliver was as strong as a Belgian Blue.

He started to wake most days at five in the morning in order to walk—to see what food might be scavenged from the trail but also to beat the heat, which had in recent years become a curse. Dangerous, even. In the early, relative cool of the morning he would sometimes see other walkers, but he’d learned to keep his distance. The world was strange now, so emptied out; it could make a person crazy. Sometimes you couldn’t tell someone was off—physically, emotionally—until it was too late, and when he went to the market near him, he prowled the half-empty shelves with his head down. Keeping himself to himself, as Cordie used to say. He wasn’t stupid.

There was one woman, though, who walked every day like Toliver. She must have been about 60. She looked presentably clean, and healthy. She didn’t wear a surgical mask the way some of the walkers did, and her strong veiny legs gave her a purposeful stride. She and Toliver had gotten into the habit of nodding to one another as they passed. Recently, she’d seen him pick up what was left of a sandwich (peanut butter); Toliver’s hunger had bested his shame and he took a big bite while looking her straight in the eye. Today she had a brown sack in her hands. She stopped when she saw him coming and laid it on the path before stepping away.

“I thought you might like some of that,” she said, nodding at the bag, and then she continued on. She was wearing loose pants of that bright, almost-kite material that made a shushing sound when she walked, and her hair was shorn close. Toliver thought again how clean she looked; it was hard to keep fresh in this heat.

He paused till she’d disappeared down the path, then approached the bag slowly. It waited for him, broadcasting a friendliness he couldn’t put his finger on (later he realized how long it had been since anyone had given him a gift, had given him anything). When he opened the bag there was an unopened package of dried fig product, a slice of hard bread, and a handful of unshelled peanuts, plus a paper napkin and a small can of Brown Fizz, which was what they called it now. In his youth, it had been cola.

He looked around, then tucked the bag under his arm and made what was for him a sprint home. His apartment building was half empty, its halls neglected, but he kept his own space nice enough. For the most part it was a comfortable place to live: the ceiling fans still worked, between the rolling blackouts, and with the shades pulled it stayed cool. He sat at his kitchen table in the dim and proceeded to eat everything the woman had left for him. A picture of his wife was propped at his elbow; he didn’t like eating alone. After he had drunk the soda, he was hydrated enough to squeeze out a tear. He missed Cordie, even after all this time. And it moved him, the food in the sack, and someone being kind for absolutely no reason.

“I don’t know why I get out of bed every day,” he said, and he meant it. “But I do.”

“Yes,” Ruth said. They were standing on the trail. This was the second time she’d brought him food, and he’d decided her name was Ruth, like in the Bible (he’d been raised up Independent Baptist, once upon a time, and though he’d given up on all that long ago, some of the stories had stayed with him). She waited while he drank the soda she’d packed, which was actually cold, and when he belched, she smiled and nodded.

“I get out of bed and I know exactly what’s going to happen to me someday. It’s already happened to everyone else.” Toliver looked down at his shoes; he could see one toe, no sock, through a crack in the leather, and this embarrassed him. He was still capable of embarrassment, after all. “Almost everyone I knew,” he amended. He glanced back up and Ruth was looking at him frankly.

“You’re a survivor,” she said.

Her name was actually Penny, short for Penelope, but privately, he continued to think of her as Ruth. They started walking together some mornings—Ruth suggested it, coaxing him along the trail like a shy animal—and he told her, bit by bit, about his people. His wife, who had been an optimist but died of measles anyway. His two sons: diphtheria took one, politics the other. The second son was probably still living, somewhere, although Toliver wasn’t certain he even wanted to know anymore. His daughter had taken her own life after her twins died and, every once in a while, the erstwhile son-in-law, Mick, stopped by with crackers or toilet paper. Toliver knew enough not to ask how he got ahold of the goods he did. But Toliver hadn’t seen Mick in close to six months now. Maybe the man had gotten sick of him and moved on. Or was sick himself. Or dead. Honestly, he was probably dead.

Toliver told Ruth everything, or almost. He didn’t mention suicide, or go into any detail about Mick, or Daniel the estranged son. He spoke the most about Cordie. Toliver’s memory could be spotty and it felt good and sad both, remembering what had been. One day he and Ruth walked all the way to Ruth’s apartment building, which was in the main town and very tall. There was air conditioning, Ruth said. “Come see.” She had been talking about the wolverine epidemic: “The creatures are running down the main street in town,” she said. “People with animals, they worry. But some things are still nice,” she added, fanning herself with a folded piece of cardboard.

“Cordie liked animals,” Toliver offered.

Remarkably, some people still had pets—small dogs, or cats, life being such a lonely business—and the wolverines were snatching them up. They were eating them. A group called Save Our Pets, or SOP, was roaming the streets and shooting the wolverines on sight. That’s what Ruth said.

Toliver suddenly remembered: He had had a pet, once. A cat, a florid orange Tom the children had named Cranny. Cranny had stomatitis, and the vet had pulled all his teeth. After that Cranny still managed to thrive, eating kibble with gums that toughened with use. “That cat has a will to live,” the vet had said. Cranny died of old age, before that became rare, and they’d all cried: the children, Cordelia, and even Toliver, who’d always joked that the cat was so hardy, it would piss on his own grave.

“I’m sorry about the pets,” Toliver murmured, but Ruth just shrugged.

“That’s the way of things,” she said, and in this statement Toliver recognized himself. She unlocked the door to her apartment, which was on the 14th floor, and when Toliver stepped inside, he could hardly disguise his awe. The place was small but it was clear Ruth had means. There was the air conditioning, of course—the air was almost cold—but other little details leapt out at him: a coffeemaker, its carafe unscored by limescale; a pretty orange quilt that looked to be brand new, folded neatly against the back of the sofa. Ruth invited Toliver to sit at a small table with an embroidered cloth on it, and she served him cookies on a plate.

“I work for the city,” she said. She watched him eat, though she only sipped at tea herself. She was slim, wiry really, but it was clear she lived a life in which being thin was a choice. “We’re planning a parade. It’s almost Independence Day.”

Toliver nodded; he still tracked the holidays though he hadn’t celebrated any of them in a long time. Those traditions no longer seemed to belong to him. They were a part of what had been.

“How old are you?” Ruth squinted at him, appraising.

He answered truthfully and she nodded as if something had been confirmed for her. “You’re the oldest person in our county,” she said, and tapped the table. Her nails were blunt, frosted a vivid pink that matched the shushing pants she wore. The color made Toliver think of the cotton candy he’d eaten as a child. “I’m on the town council, and we—the board members and I—we’re wondering if you’d like to be in the parade this year.”

Toliver was eating his third cookie—there was oatmeal in them, and even a raisin or two—but he stopped chewing now.

“Parade?”

“Yes, to celebrate our country’s grand history.”

Toliver sighed. He’d never been much for parades, even Before. He was always waiting for them to be over. “No thanks,” he said. Not to seem ungrateful, he added, “I don’t think anyone needs to see me.”

“On the contrary.” Ruth leaned forward. “I think you would be an inspiration. A reminder of the resilience of this great nation.”

Ah. Toliver remembered, suddenly, why he’d kept himself to himself all these years. The arguments he and Daniel had had, bitter and usually hinging on the fate of the nation, which as Toliver couldn’t help but point out to his son, had never been so great as people liked to imagine. But the fact remained that Ruth had been kind to him. A parade couldn’t explain away why she’d helped him the way she had.

“I’ll think about it,” he said, though what he was thinking was this: No parades for him. He took another cookie, while he still could.

In the end, the food won out. She had so much of it! The night before the parade, Toliver even stayed at Ruth’s place, on the couch which she’d made up, sheets patterned with sailboats as if he were a child. He set the orange quilt aside, so as not to get it dirty, and showered carefully the next morning with soap that smelled like grass. Dirt from his body swirled down the drain in gritty arabesques. Ruth had a clean tee-shirt and khakis for him to wear; they hung on his spare frame but were undeniably crisp. It was like wearing a uniform.

He was to ride on a float, surrounded by members of the town council. A young man with beige teeth who introduced himself as Karl helped him clamber into his spot. As Toliver did so, he saw a bit of bagel on the ground, swaddled in napkin and only a bite out of it. He pocketed this, which Karl pretended not to see. There was a folding chair for him, and a pretty young woman pinned a brilliant corsage to his chest: red and white chrysanthemums surmounting a blue ribbon. Another young woman, plainer, handed him a tiny American flag to wave.

It was only 9 a.m. but the heat was already terrific. No one on the town council had thought to bring water, so he sat in his finery, sweating, and the chrysanthemums were heavy enough to make the front of his shirt yawn open. Looking down, he saw his ribs like a ladder. He looked up again quickly. The younger people talked amongst themselves, and Ruth was nowhere to be seen. Toliver, who didn’t like her as much as he had, still missed her. Hers was a familiar face.

When the float finally lurched to life there was a brief flutter of excitement, and Toliver leaned forward in his chair. People lined the road in patches, some of them carrying firearms, presumably in case of wolverines. Ahead of his float, a handful of women in short shorts waved American flags and kicked their legs in desultory fashion. Behind him, three teens with clarinets honked and shuffled. Small as the crowd was, Toliver thought that he hadn’t been among so many of his own kind for a very long time. Humans! A skinny, shirtless man waved from the curb, and Toliver waved back. He felt important even if he didn’t understand why; all he’d done was to keep on living.

But the crowds, such as they were—they cheered. Wheeling by slowly, the sun pressing down, Toliver wondered how many of these people would like him if they actually knew him. His wife had liked him. She had loved him. In fact, he and Cordelia had loved one another dearly, and he’d adored his children—who’d loved him back, even the second son before life changed his mind. Toliver was sitting in the dead center of the float, and the sun was pitiless. No one had thought to create a shade shelter for the oldest living resident in Sutton County, though otherwise the float, meant to celebrate the oceans when they’d still been teeming with life, demonstrated a certain creative flair. Toliver was surrounded by a wonder of blue and green tissue, and he reached out a foot to press down on a cerulean-paper bloom. It sprang back when he took his foot away.

When his children were young, it had fallen to Toliver to help them with their science homework. He’d had a good memory then; he drilled all three of them in taxonomy. One time he’d helped Daniel with a diorama, wrapping squares of blue tissue paper around the eraser end of a pencil and painstakingly gluing the florets, one by one, into the long bottom edge of an old shoebox. The blue tissue was supposed to represent Lake Michigan, and there was a sailboat cut from cardboard. The sun was glitter. Toliver wasn’t artistic, but he felt surpassingly proud of the paper lake he and his son made together. He closed his eyes now and could still see Danny, laughing in delight. In that moment Toliver had known he was meant for this life. That he was entitled to its joys.

He hadn’t thought of that humble diorama for a long time. The intervening years, their disease and want, had buried it, and for a giddy moment Toliver wondered what else he’d forgotten—about his life, about the people in it. He’d ultimately lost them all, one way or the other, but that didn’t change the fact that that afternoon in the sunny kitchen, glue sticking the ends of his fingers together, had happened. He’d been so happy. Looking out at the crowd now, the red faces and the guns and the sprinkling of masks, he touched the bagel in his pocket. He reminded himself that everyone there was missing someone, or would be soon enough, before too much time had passed.

Of course it had always been that way, recent history only speeding up the inevitable. His head felt light and he kicked at the tissue flowering at his feet. It was a wonder, the will people had to live, come what may. In his efforts to endure he had forgotten this simple fact. The beauty and courage of it. And all of the things that had happened in his lifetime, that continued to happen—meant that he’d lived. That he lived still.

Which was more than surviving.

“Are you okay?” It was the beige-toothed youth—Kurt, was it?—dark underarm rings staining a polo shirt that just moments ago, seemingly, had been fresh and new.

“Where’s Ruth?”

“Ruth?” The young man squinted nervously.

“Penny. Penelope.” He stopped, forgetting for a moment what he’d wanted to say. No, he knew: He wanted to thank her properly, that was it, for the parade, and the food. He wanted to reassure her that beauty still existed, outside of memory. Alongside the chaos. He would tell her about Mick, the son-in-law, in case Mick was still living. Or maybe even Danny, who had once created a diorama, awkward and beautiful, who surely was still living, somewhere.

Mick. Or Danny. They would know what to do. They would know what to do when the time did come.

He looked out at the scant crowd, hoping to spot Ruth’s bright pink pants, and what he thought was that he wasn’t alone, not yet, and he felt a surge of love, for the Beige Tooth, whatever his name was, and for RuthPenny. For his family that he’d done his level, imperfect best to protect. Toliver reached into his pocket again. There was the bagel, still. Gratitude flooded him, and the notion was precious and vaguely familiar, like meeting an old friend he had long ago presumed missing or dead.

The heat was a blanket. Toliver looked out, and there were no wolverines that he could see. He carried the fact of the diorama within himself, cool water in a cup. The diorama hadn’t gone anywhere—none of it had gone anywhere—and if the parade would eventually end, it hadn’t yet, had it? That was a good thing.

It hadn’t ended yet.

Janice Deal is the author of two short story collections and two novels, most recently the novel The Blue Door (New Door Books, 2025). She is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Artists Fellowship Award for prose, and has won The Moth Short Story Prize and the Cagibi Macaron Prize. Janice lives with her husband in the Chicago area.