Marching As to War: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel (23 page)

It took me a week to reach the farm where I had grown up,
but it was years before I was home.

The day I arrived, dirty, hungry, and leading the horse,
which had gone lame, my parents and Maggie asked me what had happened. I told
enough for them to know I didn’t want to say more. We left it there.

I don’t know how other people are, but my people will not
pry. They know life is a hard thing, full of sorrow and everyone has their
share. And some have more.

The hardest thing I did was writing a letter to Riley’s
folks, telling them he was gone. I had promised him. I sent the letter, but I
don’t know if they ever got it.

It would have been harder still to write to Jane’s family
and tell them just how she died. I would have done it, if I had known where to
send the letter.

I went back to work on the farm. That first fall and winter
seemed to last forever. But spring came and with it the benefits of Winslow’s
treaty with the Government. New things, such as radios and medicines, became
common in our mountains. I still knew the treaty was a mistake for our people.
I said nothing. No one cared what I thought.

After the fall harvest, I married Maggie. I was sad and
angry in ways she couldn’t understand, in ways I couldn’t and wouldn’t explain.
Yet, she stuck by me, and I seemed to get past the worst of it.

By the next harvest, we had a son. We named him after my
dead brother. By the following spring, another child was on the way. I had
gotten to the point where I didn’t have to shoulder my grief just to get out of
bed in the morning. Then one day, I saw a thin gray-haired man walking his
horse through my fields. I leaned on my hoe and watched him come. I watched him
bring back everything I had tried to leave behind.

“Campbell,” I
said. I didn’t offer to shake his hand.

“We need to talk,” he said.

I took him inside. Even though it was a summer afternoon,
with plenty of work to be done, I got out my whiskey and poured some in two
cups.

“What do you want?” I said.

“To talk about Jane.”

“Why? Jane is dead.”

“Did you see her die?”

“Yes.
And Riley.
Others
too.”

“Tell me how she died.”

“They hung her. What else is there to say?”

“You know there’s more.”

“Do I?”

“Yes, you do.”

I glared at him and drank my cup of whiskey in one big
swallow. I wanted him to go away. He had brought back Jane standing under the
noose and smiling.

Pouring myself another drink, I began to tell him how it
was. I didn’t tell him how Riley died. I didn’t tell him about Biltmore, or
Mary and John. He wouldn’t care. So I told him about Jane on the gallows, her
quiet tears, her final cry, her disfigured face and lifeless body.

He didn’t ask any questions. He just listened. Each time my
cup was empty, he filled it from the bottle.

When I had run out of words, he said, “We’re going to need
that story.”

“Need?”

“A new war with the Government is coming. We need her
again.”

“Jane is dead. She can’t help anyone.”

“Her death was her final gift to us.”

I stared at him through the wall of whiskey in my head.

“Unless you tell her story,” he said, “she died for
nothing.”

“God damn you,” I said. “God fucking damn you.”

“Come back. Tell her story. Jane’s story has to be told.”

I thought about what that would mean.
Telling
the story.
Reliving her death.
Seeing her face turn black again and again.
Saying the words until they became just words.

“No, I can’t. I’d need this stuff every time,” I said
pushing the cup away. “You know the story now. You tell some preachers. A good
preacher will tell the kind of story you can use.”

He looked at the bottle. “You’re right.”

Campbell went
away. I didn’t see him out. I just sat at the table for a while until the
dullness of whiskey on a hot afternoon started to fade. I got up and drew a
bucket of cold water from the well. I drank some and washed my face and neck. I
went back in the house and put away the bottle.

Then I went to a trunk and found Mary’s book. For the first
time since coming home, I opened it. I found my place in the story and read. I
read it, turning the brittle pages gently, until it was finished.

The old man fought the sharks, fought with everything he
had. Yet the sharks took everything, ruined everything.

I knew how that felt.

Still, when the old man returned home, he got ready to go
back to the sea.

I had not done that.

Maybe
, I thought,
it’s not too late
.

I took out paper and a pencil stub and began to write this.
I decided to tell the story one time, all of it, all the way through. I would
tell all the truth I knew about Jane, about Riley, about all the others, about
myself, and even about God.

I was angry with God for the way He treated Jane, for the
way He let her die. It took me until now to see God had not let her down at
all. He had given her exactly what she had wanted.

I thought telling the whole story might give me some peace.
And it has.
Some.

Just as Campbell
said, another war with the Government did come. Once again, I went to fight.
And Campbell had preachers tell
Jane’s story. So everyone knows her story now, and it is told often by our
people. Just as we tell David Winslow’s story.

A lot of the story they tell is true. Not the whole truth,
but true enough, I suppose. There’s no mention of me or Riley in the story.
That is fine with me. I suspect that would be fine with Riley too.

I’m older now, but at night, I still sit at the fire with
the other men. We cook our food and try to stay warm. We tend our wounds and
clean our weapons. We tell stories, joke, and complain. We argue about the
latest rumors. We try to hide our fears. Nothing, it seems, has changed.

And sometimes, I look out at the darkness and expect her to
walk into the light of our fire.