Foreign Enemies and Traitors (54 page)

“The worst part of it was I could hear my mother upstairs screaming.  The sound came down through the air ducts to the old furnace right next to me.  She screamed and cried for at least an hour, until her cries grew weaker and then they stopped.  I felt like such a coward, hiding in the cellar.  I could hear them stomping around upstairs, knocking things over and raising hell, looking for food.  They must have found the liquor cabinet, because when they finally came down to the cellar, they were drunk.  I don’t think they even realized there was a cellar in the house; they were probably just checking closet doors and found it by accident. 

“I could just tell that they were stinking drunk coming down the steps by the way they laughed and carried on.  I don’t know how many came downstairs, I couldn’t see from my hiding place where I was curled up, but I know there were at least a few men looking around the cellar.  I could see their flashlight beams through the cracks of my hiding place.  I was never half so scared in my entire life.  Not a quarter, not ten percent.  I turned the knife around, pointing it at my own heart, holding it with both hands.  That’s how scared I was.  I thought I was having a heart attack the whole time.  I had an ache inside that I’d never felt before in my life.  Physical pain.  Pure fear, absolute terror.  I kept remembering what happened to that blond girl in Knoxville…and to her boyfriend.

“I was just petrified that they were going to find me, and drag me out and gang-rape me and torture me to death.  I didn’t know if I should try to kill myself with that carving knife if they pulled back that plywood and found me, but they didn’t.  It wasn’t a big cellar, it was old and rough and very dark even in the daytime.  It wasn’t a fixed-up rec-room kind of cellar, especially not on the side where the furnace was.  Anyway, they didn’t find me, or I wouldn’t be here right now telling this story.  My mother and father were upstairs when our home was invaded.  I was certain they were dead, and there I was, hiding like a scared rabbit behind the old furnace.  That was the low point of my life, up to that time.  I think my parents stayed upstairs to save me.  If they had run downstairs with me, we would have all been killed.  Instead, they stayed upstairs and died…died for me, I guess. 

“After midnight, when the house finally got quiet, when the party upstairs died down, I eased out of my hiding place and snuck over to the basement window that I’d gotten ready.  I didn’t even have a flashlight, so I had to move across the cellar all by feel, like a blind person, about an inch a minute.  I was so afraid that I might bump right into somebody who might be hiding there in the basement in the pitch dark!  My God, that was so, so scary.  I was glad I’d gotten the cellar window ready, and that I knew the way by heart.  There were bushes outside the window, so nobody could see me climbing out.  Once I was outside, it was just barely light enough to see, if you knew your way around.  I knew my neighborhood better than anybody, so I could sneak around in the dark, and I made it to a little woods behind our street without being seen.  That was the very beginning of my journey to Mannville.

“I had an old boyfriend who lived just a few blocks away.  Bobby Buchanan, he was in my ninth-grade homeroom, and our families went to the same church.  His neighborhood didn’t connect to Poplar Avenue.  You had to know your way in; his whole neighborhood was like a big loop, with only one entrance road.  You could only drive into it from another direction, not from Poplar Avenue.  It was on the other side of a creek and a city park that ran along the creek, so I was hoping it wouldn’t be overrun with refugees yet.  Once when we were going together, Bobby told me that if there were ever riots in Memphis, his father and his friends were going to guard the road into his neighborhood.  I laughed at him and said he was paranoid.  I know better now.  There were no refugees on his side of the park, at least none that I saw, thank God.

“I knew all the shortcuts, even in the dark.  Like the little footbridge over the creek that cuts through the park, so I made it to his street okay.  His parents still liked me, even though I kind of dumped him.  His father was a real gun nut, a deer hunter and all that.  He had an entire room in his basement that was full of guns and stuffed animal heads and Army stuff.  He even had a little machine to reload his own bullets down there, which I used to think was crazy.  I hoped the Buchanans would still be there.  Prayed, actually.  They had a big property, about an acre.  There were two trucks in the driveway.  It was so dark I practically had to feel my way, like tonight.  I’m lucky, I’ve always had cat’s eyes, and I’ve never been afraid of the dark. 

“I was only about twenty feet up the driveway when somebody shoved something hard in my back—a gun.  He said, ‘Stop right there.  Where are you going?’  I didn’t recognize the voice.  I said that I was coming to see Bobby.  Like it was any normal night, but there was nothing normal about it.  He asked if anybody was with me, I said no.  He whistled, and Bobby came down.  I told him what had happened at my house, how it was taken over by refugees, and that my parents were dead.  I’m sure I was hysterical.  It was kind of a blur, what had happened the last three days since the quake. 

“Bobby said they were leaving that night, just as soon as they finished packing.  He brought me into their garage through the side door.  They were packing their SUV, a Suburban or something big like that.  They had lots of lamps and flashlights turned on in there.  In their garage it was so bright, it was almost like the regular electricity was still working.  Bobby’s father listened to my story.  Then they made me wait in the laundry room while they talked about bringing me along on the trip.  Only it wasn’t just Bobby’s family that was going that night, it was three families. 

“I could hear what they were saying through the wall.  They were arguing about me because they had all agreed not to take anybody outside of their group.  They had already turned people down, left friends behind, so it wasn’t fair if I went.  That sort of argument.  All of the seats were taken.  Their trucks were jammed with stuff inside and up on their roof racks.  They were going to some hunting place down in Mississippi, and they knew from the police radio that the Mississippi National Guard was going to close all the roads the next day, to keep out the Memphis refugees.  The Buchanans had police radio scanners, night vision goggles, and guns all over the place.  This trip down into Mississippi was their bugout plan.  That was the first time that I ever heard that expression, ‘bugout plan.’ 

“They had all agreed to a plan, and that meant no outsiders, none at all, but Bobby and his father were on my side.  I think the hunting place belonged to one of the other families; at least that’s what it sounded like to me.  They compromised, and agreed to take me about twenty miles out past Germantown, but not to their place in Mississippi.  They said it would already be too crowded at the hunting cabin with three families.  They wouldn’t budge on that.  They were even yelling at each other about it.  They were not happy to see me show up, that’s for sure, but they took me.

“I rode in the middle seat of the  Buchanans’ Suburban, squished in with Bobby’s two younger brothers, with his little sister on my lap.  She was about seven or eight, not really so little.  Bobby’s mom was in the front middle, and Bobby was on the right side, by the passenger door, with his rifle.  Literally riding shotgun, except with a rifle.  The third-row seat and all the way to the back was piled with boxes and bags right up to the ceiling.  I mean, from right behind my head to all the way back was just full up to the roof, every inch.  When we pulled out, the Suburban was the front vehicle of the three trucks, like the convoy leader.  Bobby’s father drove with night goggles on, and his headlights turned off.  They put little green chemlites on the front and the back of each truck, that’s how they saw each other.  The ones without night goggles, I mean.

“It was wet and cold out, nobody was walking around, thank God, and there were almost no cars moving, at least not from what I could see with the streetlights out.  A city is a completely different place when the lights go out.  I guess all the Memphis refugees had found houses to take shelter inside of—one way or the other.  There were a few cars driving, but not many.  Sometimes we put our headlights on, but most of the time they were off.  They had walkie-talkies to communicate between the three trucks.  Sometimes the trucks had to go slow and kind of weave around telephone poles and things, but at least the wires didn’t have any electricity in them.  For once I was glad about no electricity—funny, huh?

“I was hoping that they’d just sort of forget that I was there, or maybe take me along to be a babysitter.  I was being quiet, just a perfect nanny with the little kids, keeping them calm.  It felt so warm and safe in the Suburban that I never wanted to leave it.  I couldn’t believe that they would put me out, no matter what kind of agreement they had with their friends.  And all the time I was trying not to cry about my parents and my friends back on my street.  But what could I do to save anybody?  It was everybody for themselves.

“We almost made it out of Collierville.  That’s the last real town in Shelby County, the county Memphis is in.  After Collierville, it’s mostly open country.  I’d been on that road lots of times, so even in the dark I kind of knew where we were.  We were almost through Collierville, but a bunch of wrecked cars were smashed together in a tight spot between some buildings, and we had to backtrack.  We messed up the convoy order turning around, and our Suburban ended up in the back of the line, number three.  I couldn’t see much of anything outside, it was too dark.  All I could see was the green chemlite on the truck in front.  We were driving down a small side street between houses, and somebody started shooting at us.  No warning, no nothing: just shooting.  I almost had a heart attack again, and everybody started screaming at once.

“And not just one gun was shooting at us, there were at least two of them, you could tell by the different booms and bangs they made.  The truck in front was hit.  They were yelling in the walkie-talkie that they had people shot.  It was pure panic.  Bobby’s father stopped real fast, and he and Bobby jumped out with their rifles and ran up to help their friends.  A bunch of stuff that was loaded behind the middle seat fell all over us when he hit the brakes.  I stayed in the Suburban with the kids and Bobby’s mother; we got down as low as we could. 

“There was a lot of shooting, and it was close, very close.  Shooting and yelling, and the bright flashes from guns going off.  I mean hundreds of bullets—I was just hoping they were
our
bullets, going
out
.  It’s funny how you can think of something like that, at a time like that.  It was the loudest thing I ever heard in my entire life, it sounded like machine guns.  Bobby had an Army rifle like yours, one that takes thirty bullets at a time in the clip—I mean magazine.  So did his father, and they both had lots of extra magazines in pouches.  Bobby’s mother had a big pistol.  She was scared to death, I could tell.  She kept saying, ‘We should have left yesterday, we should have left yesterday, I told him and told him, we should have left yesterday!’  The boys were crying, the little girl was hysterical—it was basically a nightmare. 
Another
nightmare.

“After just a few minutes, or maybe just one minute, Bobby and his father came back to the Suburban.  They had two people with them from one of the other families who were shot and wounded.  Or maybe they were just hit by glass, I’m not really sure, but they had blood all over them.  The truck that had been up front after we got turned around couldn’t drive anymore.  Its motor was ruined, and it had flat tires.  That’s what they said.  The men were all yelling and screaming at each other, and they were yelling that I had to get out.  Just like that.  I wasn’t part of their group.  They had a deal, and it was the group first, and no room for strangers, period.  Bobby’s father said, ‘I’m sorry, Jenny, I’m so sorry.’ 

“There was no room for me, not when they had to put two more people in the Suburban and two more in the other truck that wasn’t shot up too bad but would still run.  And there were all the boxes and backpacks that fell over onto the middle seats when they stopped so fast.  It was all yelling and screaming and crying, it was another nightmare from hell.  They had people bleeding, but they were too afraid to stay there and do first aid.  They had to get moving, and they had to fit two extra people into each truck.  They were screaming and crying and yelling at me, like I had brought them bad luck or something.  I had broken ‘the plan.’  I guess I was their Jonah, that’s how they saw it.  I can’t blame them, in a way.  I
felt
like bad luck.  Jonah, that’s me.”  Jenny sniffed and wiped away tears with her sweater’s sleeve.  After a deep sigh, she continued.

“And so…I was put out on the side of the road, right there near the end of Collierville.  Bobby gave me a flashlight and a pistol, a little .38 revolver, just put them in my hands and got back in that Suburban, and his father hit the gas pedal.  They took off, just like that, heading down Route 86 toward Mississippi, trying to get across the state line before the Mississippi Guard blocked off the roads.  I was pretty damned depressed about not going with them to their hunting cabin in Mississippi, but at least I’d gotten past Collierville, and now I had a gun and a light. 

“There were railroad tracks that went along our road heading east, and I figured less people might be on them than on a real road, so I just started walking.  At least I had a good head start over most of the people walking out of Memphis: I’d made it all the way to the outskirts of Collierville.  I heard later that most of the refugees couldn’t drive out of Memphis.  Most of the roads were blocked because of earthquake damage, and when everybody tried to drive out at the same time, it just gridlocked and then it turned into a gigantic gun battle.  They used to call Memphis ‘Mogadishu on the Mississippi.’  After the earthquake, I guess it really was.  So most of the people in Memphis had to either walk out, or just stay where they were and take their chances finding food and water.  At least I was ahead of most of the walkers.  It was something like seventy miles to Mannville.  I figured that I could hike there in a few days, and get to my uncle’s house.  Boy, was I ever way off on that guess!  It ended up taking me over a month.