[StLee]

My purpose, to tell Lee’s tale to those who read this later, is now done. For all that I have seen, for all that I would rate as what is needed in the post-apocalyptic world to keep it turning, I never thought I would draw this conclusion:

Lee created hope that will run deep through this section of waste and will remain for a long, long time. Only the people who chipped away at Lee’s accomplishment could be called true enemies of the world. Politics are politics. But Lee’s war was won, even if he could not see it through to the end.

Only a few days after killing Tommy Torini, Lee received a tip that the ghoul was in a hideout in the Mojave. Lee went out to pursue “Zombie,” as he called him, Jerry Nicks. After that, I never saw Lee again. Like I said in my introduction, though, the load of fresh deathclaw carcasses convinced me Lee was alive and OK. Perhaps he went in pursuit of the “Shadow Man” after he found and killed the ghoul. Who knows?

On a related note, one day, a few years ago, not long after I joined up with Lee in his post-heroic quest of fixing the Mojave, I was sitting on the side of Red Rock with a group of people in Lee’s contingency. We were traveling the wastes, looking for people who could contribute in any task they had talent for doing, even things as simple as collecting herbs and fruits for the old or disabled. I was really young, but I had one of those “epiphanies” Lee spoke about only a few years before. Lee was the North Pole and I was a magnet drawn to him. I could not explain how or why, but one day when I was a teenager, I woke up from a dream and knew that I had to seek out Lee. My past life was no longer important. I had a purpose.

The dream I had was exactly as I was experiencing on Red Rock. I was there with Lee as he was telling the people sitting around the campfire about this game that he was spreading. He was mentioning names I would have mostly ignored, but on that day, I had a graphite stick and an empty journal ready to be filled with notes. Lee spoke of guys named Dee Babe, Bob Gibson, Ron Gidree, Ricky Henderson, Big Mac, Charlie Hustler, Mantel, Tryst Speaker, Trout, Pull Holes, the Big Hurt, the Hawk, Strawberry, Esau Moon, Eden Jay, and many more. He talked about what they could do and how their very names could send chills through people of yesteryear. In my dream, I remembered that same sort of speech. I also remembered how Lee was giving the speech in my dream and also whispering to me about other things at the same time in my mind. It was surreal.

Just as in the dream, as we were sitting there listening to Lee speak, something told me to look away from Lee to a spot just left of the fire. There, looking at me, was Poseidon. You may remember him from the story. He created the RNC screens. After that night, he never stopped looking at me.

In Lee’s last journal entry, he told me ‘Congratulations.’ I think I know what he meant. To me, he gave me hope of something else. A Historian with a future.

To the Mojave, he gave them baseball.