Journal (17 page)

We
next half dragged and half carried the two men into the trees.  On the way back,
I picked up my pack from where I’d first dropped it, and once back at the road,
we divided up the things to carry.  Anna put the food in Gabriel’s rucksack,
and I took the machete and first aid kit.  We each took one of the water
bottles.  We were almost ready to go.

I
walked back over to the three people who had been murdered and signaled Anna to
join me.  While I pulled down the woman’s undershirt and did the best I could
to secure the front of her heavy top, Anna made her way over, still showing
signs of being mad.  When she reached me, I asked her to help me put the
woman’s pants back on the Author

Anna
looked at me for a second or two, and her eyes went moist.  After a bit she
shook her head and said she thought I was the most confusing and annoying man
she had even met.  I guess I can’t argue with her there.  Not the part that I
am confusing and annoying but that she thinks I am.

It
wasn’t easy putting pants on a dead person, especially when they’re turned
inside out like that, but we got them back on and buttoned up.  Not leaving her
yet, I took the gold ring I found in the pocket of the last man killed and
slipped it on her left ring finger before resting her two hands on her chest.  I
figured it was an important artifact to her and because of that she should have
it with her in death as she did in life.  If there had been enough time, I
would have buried them.  Anna turned and walked away ahead of me.  I was pretty
sure she was crying because, from behind, I saw her wipe her eyes with her
fingertips and shake them vigorously as if she were fanning herself.  Talk
about confusing.  I had nothing on her.  But that’s the way it is, I guess.  If
it’s not bullets, it’s tears.

As
we checked to make sure we had all our equipment and that our weapons were
ready to go, Anna avoided eye contact.  I don’t know if that meant she was
still mad at me, or embarrassed, or what, but something was sure eating at
her.  My attention was directed toward other things, though, so I didn’t spend
too much time on trying to figure out the impossible.

I
need to say something here.  It’s been on my mind since the events I most
recently described occurred, and now is as good a time as any to try and say it.

I’m
ashamed of myself — now.  It’s not because I took those lives, either.  That
needed to be done.  Torture, murder, rape — they had it coming.  As it turned
out, it also was Anna and Gabriel they were looking for, just another justification
to kill them — self defense.  No, the reason I feel shame is because of my
attitude, my state of mind while I was going about that unpleasant business.  I
need to confess, in the truest sense of the word, that I took pleasure, a great
deal of pleasure, in shooting those men.  I was swollen with it, filled to the
brim.  There wasn’t a wit of hesitation in me while doing it either.  I went
about it like some conquering warlord killing everything in my path.  I didn’t
pursue it out of duty, or justice, or even self-preservation.  I killed them
because it made me feel good.  Afterwards, in a manner of speaking, I pissed
and danced on their graves.  That’s what’s really bothering me.  I shouldn’t
have enjoyed it so much.

I
don’t think I would have felt that way a few short days ago.  I know I wouldn’t
have.  So it makes me wonder.  This change that has come over me, is this how
we lose our humanity, one compromise at a time?  First, I shot and killed a man
whose name I can’t now even remember, at the farm where all this started.  Then,
I strangled a man, an unconscious man, back there in the forest, to keep him
from alerting his friends to our location.  Now I’ve killed three more men, two
from ambush and shot the third in the back after letting him think he would
live, and was happy to do it.  Are more compromises to come from me?

Is
this how it was with those who hunt emotional connection he fsepus?  Were they good people once; fathers,
mothers, neighbors, people who always signaled before turning, stopped at stop
signs, smiled at the antics of small children, and said please and thank you?  Will
I be their facsimile, not caring about anyone or anybody, killing in due course? 
What the hell have I become – am becoming?  I feel as if I’m slipping away from
myself.  What will I do next?  I don’t have the answer, and it scares the shit
out of me.

I
wish this was over with, or maybe had never started.  It’s not so much that I
can’t deal with it.  It’s more that I apparently deal with it all too well. 
I’d much rather live in peace.  I don’t want to kill.  I don’t want to be
angry.  I want to go back to being the person I was.  Maybe in Woburn.

“I
know it seems there is no promise and each day our future darker yet, but we
must see hope and recognize that man’s compassion and love is all the brighter
by contrast.”  Claire Huston, December 2051

When
we were set, we headed south, this time with Anna taking point.  I was now
operating on the assumption that Mr. Ponytail and his crew was behind us to the
north, so I felt pretty certain that the road ahead was reasonably safe.  We’d
also make better time that way.

As
it turned out, we weren’t quite done with surprises.  We probably hadn’t gone
more than 150 feet before Anna put up her hand and brought us to a stop.  I
kneeled down and asked what she saw.  She just showed me her palm and told me
to “shush.”  Her turn I guess, so I shushed.

After
a minute her head snapped toward the right side of the road.  There was nothing
but brush in that direction all the way to the river, and from my view, nothing
moved.  I could tell that she was looking into the weeds close to us, so I
stood up and shouldered my rifle in that direction.  Gabriel did the same with
his pistol. 

Silence
at first.  A bird, no bigger than my fist, light brown with white tail
feathers, swept in low and veered off toward the river at the last second.  A
light breeze bounced a tumbleweed the size of a beach ball into a tree with dark
red limbs that twisted up and out from its base.  The top of a nearby bush shimmied
when the others around it were still.

Anna
started into the weeds, and I heard her say, “It’s OK, you’re safe now.  You
can come out.  The bad men are gone.  Come on, sweetie.”

Both
Gabriel and I lowered our weapons.

Anna
stopped, and I saw her hold out her hand.  From behind a four, four and a half
foot tall bush, a little girl emerged.  That’s how short she was.  She couldn’t
have been older than six or seven.  She took Anna’s hand while looking at her
shoes.  Anna kneeled down, put her arms around her, and they both hugged.  The
little girl cried without hesitation.

If
I had to guess how she got there, I’d say that when the three men confronted
this family, at least I suppose they were a family, the men couldn’t see the
little girl because she was shorter than the bushes along the road.  So whoever
was standing say, “wot next to her must have shoved her into the brush to hide her from
their attackers.  And that’s where she stayed throughout the whole ordeal.

I
can’t imagine how scared she must have been.  Think about it, a little kid like
that hiding a few feet away and hearing screams and shouts and gunshots.  What
an awful image.  It made me want to go back and shoot those guys all over
again.

I
figured that a moment had to be given here.  We were strangers, she was a
little girl, and she needed to feel we could be trusted.  So I told Gabriel to
walk south a ways and keep watch.   I did the same to the north.

Alone,
I distinctly remember being aware of my body dialing itself down.  I was
emotionally and physically exhausted.  It was as if all the energy in me had suddenly
drained out through holes in my feet.  First, my eyes felt as if someone had pitched
a handful of sand in my face.  They were raw and scratchy.  After that, I
noticed that the muscles in my neck and shoulders were tow-rope tight.  Twisting
my head from side to side, and up and down did little to loosen them up, either. 
The small of my back, right off center, began to hurt like someone was grinding
a thumb there, back and forth, back and forth, deeper and deeper.  And from my
knees down, there was this dull, persistent, aching pain.  All this and our day
had plenty left to it.

I
looked back at Anna and the little girl once, no twice, and both times Anna was
sitting on the ground with the little girl on her lap and they were talking. 
The second time she signaled me to join her, and soon after she did the same
for Gabriel.

As
I said, the youngster was about six or seven and just a little thing.  She was
a blondie, too, with pale blue eyes to match, and skin as soft as the light of
a half autumn moon.  She wore a pair of thick, dark blue sweat pants with
elastic around the waist and cuffs, and a matching sweatshirt under a purple vinyl
raincoat with a hood on it.  She was clean and combed and sweetly innocent.  Someone,
the woman I suppose, had taken better care of her than she had taken of
herself.

Anna
introduced her as Petra Bloom, seven years old, and her favorite things in the
whole world were butterflies and flowers.  Her “mommy,” sister, brother and “daddy”
were all in heaven.  Her auntie Tina had been taken by some bad men while she
was hiding in the bushes.  She wouldn’t shake my hand, but she shook Gabriel’s and
seemed to take to him immediately, asking him why his arm was “tied-up like
that” and if his face hurt.  She had a small bag with her that had a child’s
book about a dog in it, along with a hairbrush.  That was about it.

This
transaction, a child alone, found by a stranger, made me wonder if this would
be the face of the new American family.  Maybe even Auntie Tina wasn’t really
an aunt at all.  It was a different world, that’s for sure.  It seemed the
extremes ruled.  We’re either our neighbor’s killer or our neighbor’s keeper.

As
Anna and I watched Gabriel and Petra get acquainted, she asked me for the map. 
I gave it to her and, after studying it for a few seconds, she pointed to a
spot near the intersection of Highways 24 and 241 and said, “That’s where we’re
going.”  When she hand our enemies woted it back, I could swear she moved closer to me.  I also
thought that she started to lift her arm around my back, but stopped herself
short and dropped it back to her side.  Yes, I’m sure of it.  Neither of us
said anymore.

By
my estimate, we had two hundred miles of walking to do in two weeks.  Piece of
cake — you can’t see me laughing.

We
finally started on our way again with only four or five hours of sunlight
left.  My hope was that we could reach the little town called Sheep Rock, still
about ten miles away.  Normally I’d say no problem; with a seven year old along,
I wasn’t so sure.

There
wasn’t much to the next few hours.  We just walked.  I stayed on the point,
which was OK with me, and Gabriel and Anna switched off in the middle walking
with Petra.  At one point, I looked back and saw Petra with her hand gripping
Gabriel’s pants pocket, as natural as you please.  She gave her trust to them
quickly, Anna and Gabriel.  To me, it will take much longer.  We did reach Sheep
Rock, though.

Sheep
Rock wasn’t much of a town really, just a collection of a dozen or so structures
next to the river and a short walk from Highway 97.  Even though it was getting
dark and it would have been nice to have a building to rest in, I didn’t like
the fact that anyone traveling this same route and looking for shelter (or
worse, looking for us), might naturally stop here.  So after a very short rest
and a nose-around, we pushed on.

About
three or four miles outside of town, in near darkness, we found a four by four
post lying close to the road we were walking, in a tangle of weeds.  I picked
it up and discovered that it was the post to which a set of house numbers and a
mailbox had been affixed.  We also noticed the vague outline of a driveway through
the trees and weeds, going off to the east.  It showed as a slight rise in the
ground contour, between a widening of the trees.  I suggested to the others
that they stay where they were and rest while I checked it out.  Anna said that
she’d go with me.

This
driveway I spoke of curved off to the right and was about a quarter mile in
length.  At its end was a white two story, wood sided house with a pitched,
green metal roof and matching colored trim around the windows and doors.  It
had a covered porch that wrapped half way around, the posts and railings also
painted green.  There was a flower garden below the porch, in the front, but it
had gone to seed.  Further back, it was surrounded with trees, again either
apple or pear along with a handful of cottonwoods, and together they completely
hid the house from view of the road where Gabriel and Petra waited.

We
did a quick check of the ground around the entrances to the place, saw no
evidence of foot traffic, and decided to go inside.  Amazingly, the house was
locked-up.

I
broke a small pane of glass in the door, reached through and unlocked it.  Just
before going in, I took the nub of candle I had found several days before and
lit it.

Except
for the dust and a few cobwebs, the front room looked as if someone was still
in residence: couch with embroidered throw pillows, two chairs, claw footed
rosewood coffee taba breakfast of canned fruit and with t le with seven-year-old magazines carefully arranged, a
pasture scene in oil on one wall and a mountain view on another.  Over the
hardwood floor was an oriental rug in reds, browns, and whites.  It was the
type of room where visitors sat with their knees together, sipped tea from delicate
white cups on saucers, and talked about the Friday Grange Social and the weather. 
It felt like a home.