The Fourth Panel

Unsure of the next step, he reached into his back pocket pulling out the black leather bound moleskine journal that had become his most prized possession. He felt the smooth warm pages and was delighted to find that he knew what to do all along. He liked the reassurance of consulting the book. He smiled remembering the first time he laid eyes on the contents of the journal.

***

He’d been alone for a long time, struggling to meet his basic needs. Growing his own food wasn’t an option, as the soil was depleted from poor farming practices. Water, too, was difficult to find as the wells had all dried out. Aquifers drained and sent elsewhere for unsustainable farming operations ill-suited to their environment. Surface water was polluted with micro-plastics and heavy metals, mercury and byproducts from animal agriculture, and any waste with no defined destination that invariably ended up slugging down shrinking rivers. Hunting was increasingly difficult as habitats faded from existence. What remained was a cadre of invasive species and those no doubt highly contaminated.

Extreme hurricanes, blizzards, tornadoes, floods and drought had become the norm. Nature had a perfect formula for every phenomena but humans managed to unbalance that. The man was caught in one of these blizzards. He saw the sign from the highway and decided not to go to the abandoned farm store but the wind picked up and the sky darkened and he knew the temperature could easily drop 50 degrees within the hour. What other choice did he have?

Inside he felt an instant reprieve from the harsh winds. He approached the clerks counter and discovered a paper bag there. Sifting through it, he discovered a black notebook and a bundle of cash. Judging by the heft probably in the range of twenty thousand dollars. He went to toss it aside but reconsidered. Fire tinder. He laughed at the thought. As a younger man in very different circumstances he would have gladly reached for the cash and tossed aside everything else in the bag. How the times had changed. Now the little green paper was worthless. These days the best currency was knowledge.

He opened the leather-bound journal and began to flick through it mildly disinterested. Towards the beginning was a short letter scribbled on lined paper and neatly tucked into the crease. He tossed that aside and continued perusing the contents of the journal. As he continued a growing sense of intrigue led him to gasp out loud. He tenderly touched the soft pages and brought the book to his face and kissed it for he could not believe his good fortune. Beautiful handwritten graphs and diagrams and pictures documented various seed varieties better suited to this particular climate, and requiring fewer soil amendments. It documented methods for increasing the resilience of crops to changing conditions and utilizing symbiotic relationships between plants to maximize yields. That was just the beginning. The neat pages demonstrated methodology for cultivating the land to form habitats that repressed their own weed growth and formed entire habitats that attracted animals allowing for sustainable hunting. Towards the back of the book is where it got really good—an architectural jackpot. Ornate pictures demonstrated housing blueprints that require no additional energy for heating. Few resources and those present easily found were all that was required to build such a home. These blueprints were titled “Earth Ship 7.0.”

The craftsmanship of the journal was not unlike his own drawings from what felt like a lifetime ago. It was clear that the owner of the book had poured themselves into it. Every aspect was tidily labelled, with colors and gradients that meticulously reflected the beauty and simplicity of the design.

Having now discovered the contents of the black notebook, he felt curious about the letter he initially dismissed. Unfolding the page, he began to read.

To You (You know who you are),

So you found my journal. If it appears nonsensical to you then I recommend you throw it down and be on your way. If you know what you are looking at then congratulations, you may yet survive. But you will need more than that. Three things I will tell you…

At the bottom of the letter was a signature, initials he could not make out.

***

In the atrium he knelt down to examine the result of his labor. His eyes skimmed over neat little terraced rows of vibrant green seedlings emerging from the spongy soil. It had been many years since he had seen anything like it. Seven, eight, or maybe nine years of eating nothing but processed foods. It was too unpleasant to think about all the nasty things he had eaten. He thought about that first piece of advice from the letter he had found in that miraculous little notebook.

1. Do not concern yourself with perfect for it does not exist. There is only the process. You just have to start.

Looking at the seedlings, he felt pride and excitement. He was nurturing life which would then nurture him. It was far from perfect. It was enough and enough was more than he’d had in a long time.

***

The man sat at his desk in the main hall with his latest prize displayed in front of him, uncertain where to start. He found it earlier that day in an abandoned farmhouse a few miles west and while the target of his expedition had been rations, he thought this item too precious and gladly forfeited a day of scavenging for it. It was evening and the only light flowed from the crackling fireplace nearby. There was no electricity yet for that would be a future project. For now he was safe and warm and that was enough.

What place was there for art in this kind of world? Why do it? While these questions gnawed at him, he methodically crafted a thin wood frame and alternated between stapling and stretching canvas onto the frame.

The room had darkened since he began so he stood, stretching his legs, and stiffly walked over to kneel beside the fireplace. He shifted the logs until a bright flame roared back to life. He reached into his coat pocket plucking out the last bills of cash from the paper bag. Amused he watched the flames curl around the edges of the bills and then quickly consume them. He chuckled and this act brought to mind the second piece of advice from the letter in the journal.

2. You are going to die. Maybe today or tomorrow or in seventy years time. It will happen. Everything you build will eventually be gone. So have fun and laugh at yourself.

Maybe that was all the reason needed for art. No one was going to tell him the point of any of this so then maybe the point was whatever he made it.

A barking sound ended his reverie. He held perfectly still, listening. At first, the bark was low and only occurring every twenty seconds or so, and then increasing in frequency.

One evening while roasting rabbit over a fire after installing the glass southwest face of his home, he looked up to see a bright pair of yellow eyes watching from the cover of the Ponderosa pines. The animal appeared to be a wolf-like dog. It stayed in that spot until the man kicked dirt on the fire and went inside to sleep. When he woke at daybreak, pulled on his boots and stepped outside munching an apple to watch the sunrise, the dog was there waiting for him.

The dog had hung around ever since and he had taken to calling him Friendly. Every day when he emerged from his earthship, Friendly was waiting for him and stayed close by as the man continued to improve upon his home. Certainly the bits of food the man shared with the animal helped to forge this new connection but he liked to think the dog wanted a friend as much as he did.

He’d never heard Friendly emit more than a low growl or whine, so when the dog started barking his curiosity was piqued. He reached above the doorway to the main hall and felt for the old hunting rifle there. He checked the chamber to ensure the bullet was still there and proceeded to the atrium where he opened the door a crack and listened. He could not see Friendly but he could hear his bark emanating some paces from the east.

The man sighed and stooped to lace his boots. He set off in the direction of the sound. He walked slowly so his feet made no noise. As it became apparent he was closing in on the source of the disturbance he crept lower to the ground and even slower. He could see Friendly in the moonlight pacing on the gravel road on the other side of the wooden fence. Next to him was a sack cloth or maybe a garbage bag. He stood and walked over to it. Why was Friendly so interested in this? The man came to stand next to Friendly and from this angle with the moonlight shining down he saw that what he mistook for a cloth sack was in fact a person clothed in a large black wool peacoat and laying on the gravel unresponsive.

A woman appearing to be in her mid thirties and quite beautiful. Her face, framed by a tangle of messy blonde hair, revealed hard lines that spoke of endurance. What she endured, he didn’t know. He took her shoulders in his hands and shook. “Hey, are you okay?” he shouted. The woman’s eyes rolled but she did not respond. Running the back of his hand across her forehead he found she was dangerously frigid.

The man slid his arms underneath her easily lifting her and with friendly in tow made his way through the dark landscape towards the barely visible glow of his home. Using knee and hip to open the atrium door, he made his way towards the crackling fire and lay the woman down. Quickly grabbing several wool blankets he bundled them around her.

Now it was up to the fire and passive heating of his home. Filling a pot with water from a metal barrel in the atrium he set it over the wood-fire stove. With these tasks completed he finally stood by the fireplace to examine this mysterious woman. Looking at her face the man was haunted by the last piece of advice from the letter

3. You cannot do it alone. Nor should you. The best part of having something good is sharing it. Good luck.

With a last look at the woman, the man returned to his desk where his latest treasure and newly stretched canvas lie waiting. It was a canvas copy of the famous trifold painting by Heironymous Bosch “The Garden of Earthly Delights.” While the original was crafted on oak panels, for the sake of congruency with the copy he planned this new section for canvas as well. He chose to copy the dimensions of the center panel. It was also the biggest panel which he felt was fitting to match. The man wondered briefly if the woman liked art as he put pencil to canvas and started the fourth panel.