Foreign Enemies and Traitors (30 page)

The driveway looped in front of the house.  The truck jerked to a stop, the engine still running.  The soldiers stood and began yelling in their incomprehensible tongue, but their intent was clear: get out, get down!  The tailgate was thrown back with a bang, the girls were pulled and shoved and forced off the truck.  The troops jumped down with them, no box for a step this time, and it was a long way down.

The soldiers formed two ragged lines leading up to the big home, and gestured and prodded the dozen girls up the stone steps, onto the veranda that ran the width of the house and toward the massive front door.  There was fresh red blood in puddles and splotches on the steps and across the front of the wide landing.  There were splintered bullet holes in the varnished wood front door.  Bright golden shell casings littered the porch.  The three-story home was enormous, at least eight or ten bedrooms, Jenny guessed.  The door opened into a hallway with a Persian rug laid over hardwood, and more blood. 

The girls were pushed at rifle point into a living room that looked like an art museum, then through an opening into another room with a pool table and more art on the walls, then through a door to a large old-fashioned kitchen and down stairs into a cold cellar.  Finally, they were herded into a separate room that appeared to have been hastily emptied; there were still paint cans, rags, and trash on the bare concrete floor.  The soldiers didn’t accompany them into this room, but merely pushed them inside, slammed the heavy wooden door closed, locked it and left them alone. 

Weak winter light entered the room through a high casement window.  The room was cold enough to store meat.  A bare light bulb hung from the ceiling.  A girl gave its string a pull, and as Jenny expected, no light came on.  There was no electricity, not even in this mansion.  There was no electricity anywhere, not unless you had your own generator and enough fuel to run it.

The room was about ten or twelve feet on a side, with two walls of bumpy stone and concrete, and two interior walls of rough timber planks.  Jenny counted; there were fourteen girls jammed into the space.  All of them appeared to be terrified, and so was she.  None appeared to be older than about twenty-five.  They were all white girls—but this was no surprise, since almost everyone in the county was white.  A helicopter flew somewhere nearby, rotors clattering, turbine engines whining.  When it was gone, she could hear popping sounds, some in ripping sequences: distant gunfire.  

She had been in the Mannville area since fleeing from the Memphis suburbs, but she didn’t know any of these girls by name.  A few whispered to each other, a few wept, others appeared to be in shock, beyond any normal reactions.  Her friend Sue had not been picked for the truck ride.  Jenny wondered: who was the lucky one?  And what was happening to Uncle Henry and Aunt Rochelle?  She had not seen them at the market; more than likely they had been in the church hall when the foreign soldiers came.

Jenny asked no one in particular, “Does anybody know where we are?”  Several of the whispering girls turned to look at her, and finally a petite brunette with short-cropped hair said, “This place is called Barton Hall.  It’s not very far from Shiloh, the battlefield.  I’ve been to horse shows here.  Sometimes they hold Civil War reenactments.  What’s going on, do you know what’s happening?  Why are we here?  Where are our families?  Why didn’t they let us go with our families?  Why did they make us get on that truck?  What’s going on?”

Jenny remembered her tenth-grade Human Geography course and its chapter on the Balkan civil wars of the 1990s.  She had a very good idea of why the girls had been brought to this old mansion on the hill, but she kept these ugly thoughts to herself.  Instead, she placed an empty paint can under the casement window; leaning against the damp wall, she stood on it and peered outside.  Even balanced on the can, she could look outside only at an upward angle.  Pale afternoon light was filigreed by fingerlike treetops, silver and black.  The grimy window was set into solid wood frames and appeared unmovable. 

If they broke out the window, maybe they could boost and pull one another through.  Outside, the window was set below ground level, down a deep and narrow slot.  But even if they could squirm their way through and up and out, then what?  There was more than a hundred feet of clear lawn between the mansion and the trees, and soldiers were almost certainly posted as guards outside.  If escape were possible, the attempt would have to be made after dark.  However, it was already near freezing, and none of them were dressed to endure a night of bitter cold.  And where could they go, even if they could run away from the soldiers, with their horses and their helicopters?  Their families were being relocated, that’s what the American traitor had announced.  He had promised them food and warm showers.  Maybe they should just wait and see what happened next.  Whatever happened in the mansion, they would just have to endure it and pray that they would be reunited with their families later.  She had been through worse.

A few snowflakes as wide as cotton balls drifted down and settled at the bottom of the casement.

****

Mid-January, and it was dark early.
 It had been a wet couple of weeks since Phil Carson had come to be living under Zack Tutweiler’s roof, but today had been uncharacteristically clear and cold as a front blew in from the northwest.  The small living room was their winter quarters because of the cast-iron potbelly stove, set on bricks in the center of the floor.  The kitchen and adjoining living room were the only well-heated spaces in the house.  Carson half-reclined on an old sofa facing the black stove, dressed warmly and covered with blankets, reading in the soft light of a hurricane lantern on the end table behind him.  Zack was out stalking around with his compound bow.

He was almost through an old biography of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, and he was savoring every page.  Many of the general’s raids and battles had taken place within a hundred miles of this very house.  Between the foul weather and the Tutweiler library, he had spent most of his time indoors and immobile, allowing his wound to heal.  The last few days he’d been going on walks, up to several miles at a time.  Tonight he was grateful for the chance to read by the heat of the fire.  His activity was confined to turning pages and occasionally prodding the hot embers in the stove or adding a chunk of wood.

Neither Phil nor Zack was a gushing fountain of conversation.  After their life histories had been shared to their mutual satisfaction, they had become content with long periods of silence.  Both men preferred quiet reading.  Without electricity, there was no television or music.  Zack had a portable Sony AM/FM radio that ran on four rechargeable AA batteries.  The batteries had a charger that could be powered from a solar panel, but they were not holding their charge, and so they could listen to the radio only for brief periods.  The only daytime radio with a clear signal was government propaganda on two AM stations. 

At night, they could tune in stations from much farther away, Chicago and other distant cities, but the news reports were confusing and contradictory.  Every night they tried to tune in Radio Free America from Laramie, Wyoming, but an oscillating and chirping tone usually covered its frequencies.  Jamming.  Tonight Phil listened to old country tunes on the Nashville frequency.  When they ended, a male announcer with a folksy Southern accent began speaking. 

Now, friends, it’s time for some official news.  In response to questions from concerned citizens, Mayor Antoine Zaragoza has released the following statement that I’m going to read now.  Here it goes, so listen up.  “Nashville has ample food supplies; however, these food supplies are still being hoarded by the rich.  Anyone who is found to be hoarding food will be prosecuted to the utmost severity of all applicable emergency laws, not to exclude capital punishment in exceptional cases.  A two-week supply of food staples for each household is the most allowable under the anti-hoarding laws.  Anyone in possession of more than a two-week food supply must register the stockpile with his or her neighborhood food distribution committee—this is the law.  It’s unfair and unjust that many of our neighbors are still going hungry while the rich profit from selling their illegal stockpiles of food on the black market, food that they don’t even need.  Anybody who reports an illegal food stockpile will receive a generous cash and food reward for doing his or her civic duty.  Only if we all pull together can we make it across the…”

The old nicad batteries abruptly lost power, as they tended to do, and the radio faded to dead silence.  It wasn’t much of a loss, just more government propaganda.  Carson closed his book and set it on the floor, put his reading glasses in his shirt pocket, and folded his hands across his chest.  Gradually he nodded off. 

****

The final afternoon light steadily diminished,
until it was black inside the basement room.  The girls sat shivering on the cold floor, huddled together away from the damp stone outer walls, waiting to learn their fates.  The empty paint cans became their toilets.  Some of the girls prayed quietly, reciting the Lord’s Prayer and the 23rd Psalm.  In the darkness, Jenny’s hearing became hyperacute.  She heard several vehicles coming toward the mansion, accompanied by shouting, and a few gunshots not so far away.  The girls froze at the sounds, and the praying ceased. 

The vehicles stopped near the mansion.  Their diesel engines went silent, but the shouting continued.  Boots stomped on the floor above them, making the old wooden ceiling creak and groan.  A generator came on with a low, vibrating rumble, and their hanging bulb suddenly flashed on, causing them to blink at the unexpected light.  Overhead, they heard loud voices, the sound of furniture being scraped about on the hardwood floor, and…music?  Yes, music.  Soon there was shouting, singing, crashing and banging.  Jenny had no idea what was going on above them, but she instinctively knew that it would eventually involve the girls huddled in this room.  She had survived a deadly home invasion after the first big quake, and the stomping and loud voices over her head made evil memories flash through her mind.  Jenny had no hope at all that their presence in the cellar had been forgotten.  The girls went back to praying, more fervently and rapidly than ever.

After a too-short period, perhaps ten minutes, they heard heavy boots tromping down the basement steps.  The girls automatically moved away from the door when they heard the approaching footsteps.  Then the door was unlocked and jerked open.  In the doorway were four of the foreign soldiers, holding bright flashlights.  “Come here, girls,” Jenny understood one to say.  The “here” sounded rasping, as if the man had something stuck in his throat.  He said “girls” as if there were two syllables: “gay-rils.”  The rest of what they were saying Jenny couldn’t make out.  Soldiers grabbed the closest girls by their arms and yanked them toward the door.  “Come, gay-rils!  Now you come: vee havink big party, yes!”

The first two were pulled out of the room and shoved toward the steps.  The other girls shrank back and pressed together in the corner opposite the door, milling like penned sheep in the presence of wolves.

“No, no, gay-rils—everybody comink now!  Everybody out, comink big party, yes!”  Two enormous soldiers entered the cellar room and began grabbing and pushing them toward the entrance, brutal shepherds.  Two other soldiers waited outside the door and herded the last girls out of the room and up the dark wooden steps, back upstairs into the game room. 

Jenny was the third in line as they entered.  A stereo was playing loud rock music, with fast guitars, a men’s vocal chorus and accordions.  She’d never heard that kind of song before; she assumed it was in the same foreign language spoken by the soldiers.  A roaring fire blazed in an arched stone hearth, and a glance showed that broken furniture was being fed into the flames.  More than twenty men stood around the perimeter of the big room, mugs and liquor bottles in their hands, laughing and grinning and whistling as the girls were pushed into the open space in the middle.  On seeing them, the soldiers broke into a drunken song, slapping one another on the back, swaying together, and holding out their cups as they closed the circle on their quarry.  Some of the men had on their camouflage tunics; some were wearing only brown T-shirts over their uniform pants.  Jenny saw that they were glassy-eyed, filthy and unshaved, and well on the way to getting stinking drunk.

The song ended after a verse or two, and some of the soldiers began demanding, “Drink!  Drink, gay-rils!  Havink big happy party now—you drink, have good time!”  There were enough men to double up on each girl, putting arms around their shoulders, grasping their arms, squeezing breasts and forcing full glasses to their lips.  The girls, terrified and confused, put hands to the cups to steady them, and coughed as the hard liquor bit their throats.  Jenny was extremely thirsty after hours with no water, but still she resisted the whiskey a soldier was trying to pour down her throat.  Another man grabbed her from behind and pinched her nose closed with his other hand.  She was so surprised by this that after she gasped for breath, half a cup of whiskey was forced down her throat, leaving her coughing and gagging.  The soldiers laughed as if they had heard a great joke.

In the next room, the front door slammed open and a few more soldiers entered the party room.  The soldiers already present stood at sloppy positions of attention and momentarily quieted down as four newcomers entered.  There were greetings and chatter between them in the unknown tongue.  More loud laughter and backslapping, and after a brief interchange the soldiers returned to forcing alcohol into their young victims while groping, pinching and rubbing against them. 

Then, unexpectedly, Jenny heard an American voice call out from the unintelligible din.

“Hey, blondie!  Well, we meet again.  I promised you we would—and I
never
break a promise to a lady.”

The speaker was one of the new arrivals, who were all wearing Russian-style fur hats.  The four had just come from outside, and melting snow clung to them.  The one who spoke to her was also dressed in the brown camouflage uniform, with a pistol in a black holster on his wide military belt.  On his back was a medium-sized green backpack.  The new soldiers were clearly higher-ranking than those already in the house.  They were a bit older, they had shaved more recently, and their uniforms looked more complete and less dirty.  In fact, it occurred to Jenny that all of the troops in the mansion were officers, or at least sergeants of some kind.  It made sense that they would be the high-ranking soldiers, if they could simply seize a mansion—and kidnap girls for their “party” as well.