Mr. Barlow

Mr. Barlow is the first survivor Ish finds, but not the companion he hoped to meet: incapacitated by drink and unable to endure the world around him, he dies before Ish can return. Their brief encounter moves from the promise of a human reply to a quiet burial, making Mr. Barlow a measure of both the disaster’s devastation and Ish’s capacity for pity.

Identity and First Encounter

Ish discovers Mr. Barlow by following what seems to be a reply to his car horn. At first the answer gives him reason to think another person is nearby; he drives through the streets, changing direction as each response seems to come from a different point. In a small business district, the sound draws him to a car parked at the curb. Its occupant, a man with a long, straggly beard and a bloated, red face, collapses forward onto the steering wheel. His weight presses the horn down, producing the long blast that has been guiding Ish toward him.

The scene overturns the hope built into the call-and-response. Ish had been searching for a person capable of answering, perhaps even of making contact; instead, he finds a man so far gone in intoxication that he cannot stand or sustain a conversation. A nearby liquor store stands open. In the car, whiskey is close at hand, and its reek makes the man’s condition unmistakable. The signals were real, but they were not a deliberate effort to summon help: they came from a body slumped against the horn.

A Name and a Failed Possibility

Anger is Ish’s first response. He shakes Mr. Barlow, who revives enough to open his eyes and make a faint sound, then pushes him upright. The man’s hand reaches for a half-empty whiskey bottle propped in the corner of the seat. Ish takes it and throws it against the curb, where it breaks. The gesture expresses his bitter frustration at finding, among the survivors he had imagined, someone apparently unable to help himself or build a life in the changed world.

But looking into Mr. Barlow’s eyes changes Ish’s judgment. He sees fear and horror there, and understands that the swollen, disheveled appearance does not exhaust what the man is: behind it, Ish recognizes a sensitive mind that has seen more than it could bear. He feels pity rather than anger. The book does not explain what Mr. Barlow witnessed or how he came to depend on alcohol; his past remains inaccessible. What Ish can see is the extremity of his distress and his retreat into drink and unconsciousness.

When the man tries to give his name, Ish initially hears it incorrectly, then offers Barlow. The man nods at the name and smiles before drinking again. Ish recognizes this small exchange as an attempt to make a gesture of goodwill of the kind that belonged to civilization. A name cannot restore that civilization, but the act of giving and receiving it momentarily makes the two men more than a searcher and an inert stranger.

Mr. Barlow then sinks back into stupor, and whiskey runs from the open bottle onto the car floor. Ish considers staying to sober him and try to reform him, but doubts that this would succeed; he also fears losing the chance to find another, more capable survivor. He leaves with a promise to return. The decision does not make him Mr. Barlow’s rescuer, and the narrative offers no recovery or later conversation between them. Their contact remains brief, divided between Ish’s concern and his inability to commit himself to saving the man.

Death and Burial

Ish keeps his promise and comes back to the street later that day. Mr. Barlow’s body is lying on the sidewalk in front of the liquor store. Ish concludes that there is a limit to how much alcohol a person can absorb and, remembering the man’s eyes, cannot feel sorry that he has died. His response is neither triumph nor simple condemnation: death ends the sight of a person trapped in the condition Ish witnessed, but it also confirms that the hoped-for meeting has become an irreversible loss.

With no dogs nearby yet, Ish does not want to leave the body exposed. He cannot work out where or how to conduct a burial, so he finds blankets in a nearby dry-goods store, wraps Mr. Barlow carefully, and lifts him into the car. He closes the windows, making the vehicle a sealed, lasting tomb. The improvised burial is practical, but its care is unmistakable: the man who had first appeared to Ish as a disappointing, helpless drunk is handled with dignity.

Ish says no words over him, judging speech out of place. He looks at the neat roll of blankets and thinks that Mr. Barlow was probably a good man, unable to survive a world falling apart around him. Then Ish removes his hat and stands uncovered for a few seconds. This small, formal gesture takes the place of a funeral rite that the circumstances cannot provide. It acknowledges the dead man as someone whose life merits respect, even when no community remains to mourn him.

Narrative Significance

Mr. Barlow’s episode gives human shape to the difference between surviving the disaster and being able to live after it. Ish’s horn finds a response, but the response comes from an accidental pressure of the deadened body against a car horn; the apparent beginning of fellowship leads instead to an encounter with fear, addiction, and death. The open liquor store and the whiskey in the car show the immediate materials of Mr. Barlow’s escape, while his past and the precise source of his horror remain unknown.

His brief appearance also tests Ish’s expectations of other survivors. Ish cannot turn the encounter into a rescue or a new partnership, and he chooses to leave rather than risk missing other possibilities. Yet his return matters: he does not leave Mr. Barlow on the sidewalk, and he replaces his initial anger with pity, then with a deliberate act of respect. The sealed car and the uncovered pause at its window mark the limits of what he can do—and the human recognition he can still offer. Mr. Barlow therefore stands not as a guide or mentor, but as Ish’s first encounter with another survivor and with the possibility that survival alone may not be enough.