The Last American Martyr (16 page)

“Just a minute,” I said as I grabbed a hold of Solace and whisked her off to the bedroom. “I’ll be right there.”

“Yes,” I said a moment later, after opening the door.

“Mister Frances, I just received a very strange phone call,” she said as if she’d just caught me breaking six of the campground’s most hallowed rules.

“Okayyy,” I said, pushing my hair back from my eyes.

“Someone, some strange sounding man, called and said I should give you a message. He said to give it to
Thomas Soles
in site 6-B. I knew I should have checked your driver’s license.”

“Hold on, I can exp—”

“I don’t want you explaining anything,” she ranted, “just take this damn message and get out of here. I don’t know who the hell you really are or what you’re into, but I don’t want your kind around here. I’ll give you thirty minutes, that’s it. Within thirty minutes you’re outta here,” then she yanked her tiny thumb.”

“But I…”

“Forget it, buster, if you’re not gone, I call the sheriff. As a matter of fact, I think I’ll call them anyway … right now. Take this goddamn thing.”

I took the envelope; she spun out of there, leaving small clouds of arrogant dust with her boots.

Back in the camper, I didn’t even sit down. Solace was still going crazy in the bedroom, but she could wait a minute. With adrenaline-fuelled, shaky hands I opened the white envelope. The message was short and to the point. It said, “If you’re still there at sunset, Soles, you and your dog won’t be around to see midnight. Leave Colorado now! You sorry son-of-a-bitch.”

With Solace still barking in the background, I shot right out the camper door to disconnect the hookups. I yanked the plug from the site’s power source and hastily stuffed the cord into its outside storage compartment. As I hurriedly unscrewed the water hose, my eyes clicked from one direction to the next. I hadn’t yet opened the awning, so there would be no need to screw with that. I dashed back inside; let Solace out of the bedroom and double-checked Elaina’s ashes. The Velcro was secured. I chucked the ashtray and my coffee cup in the sink and made sure everything else had been secured.

I did all that in less than five minutes. I also took the Glock out and placed it on the console, within reach. Then I pulled out of that site so fast, I forgot there was a dip where it met the unpaved road. When my front wheels bounced in and out of the depression, I heard a loud, disheartening crunch. I flung it in park, raced around the camper and saw that, in my haste, I’d forgotten to raise the side door’s metal entry steps. The bottom step was creased in the center, but luckily, I was still able to fold them up.

Crazed as I was, my forehead furrowed deep as plowed rows, I rushed out of there, casting hateful, suspicious stares at every camper I saw. When I reached the campground’s open gates, I fired up a smoke and headed toward the highway. It wasn’t easy, but I held back and forced myself not to speed.

Who knows, maybe there was no message. Maybe she made the whole thing up. Maybe it took her a while to realize who I am, and when she did she concocted this scheme. Maybe that’s bullshit, and some head case really did leave the message. Maybe he was dead serious. Maybe he actually was going to try to kill me. Maybe he figured he’d be better off waiting till after dark. I don’t know if he was a camper staying at the park or he followed me in there. Either way, he knew exactly which site I was in. He called in that threat. Who knows what somebody like that is capable of? My God, there are thousands just like him out there. Probably tens of thousands! I’m sure more than a few are nut jobs who’d jump at the chance to put a bullet in my head. Fifteen-thousand murders a year in this dumbed-down, berserk country. My God…what do I do now?

With that last question center-stage to all the others jamming my mind, my eyes shifted from the windshield to the pistol on the console. I realized then and there that I had no choice; wherever I went I’d have to start wearing my shirt outside my pants. I was not going to wait for death or accept it peacefully.

Chapter 15

Fighting valiantly to maintain a semblance of composure, I headed north on Interstate 25. I mean, how much could one human being take? Just three years earlier, I could have been the poster boy for this country’s obscure masses. An inconsequential doorman from Queens, New York, I had about as much notoriety as a discarded cigarette butt smoldering outside a rush hour subway entrance.

Would I, you might ask, have still written the book had I’d known my life was going to devolve into such a hellish existence? You may think I’m farther over the top than I really am, but even as I was high-tailing it out of Denver, I would have said yes. I’m one of those fools who would die for their principles. I hate more than anything living in a world full of half-truths and lies. No citizen or society should be subject to that. But the only way I’d write that book again, is if I knew Elaina would remain alive, and only if she agreed to it. Sure, if she said yes, and I knew what I did now, I would have handled things differently. I’d have taken her straight to Maine. We’d have bought that little place deep in the North Woods and hopefully grown old together.

Tragically, it was too late for twenty-twenty hindsight. Nothing could bring Elaina back. All I could do at this point was try to keep myself alive, and that wasn’t going to be easy. It seemed everyone in America with a stock portfolio or hundred-thousand-dollar income had their sights set on me. But ironic as it is, what scared me even more than those barracudas were the Soles-haters who’d never had an extra twenty bucks in their lives. The same poor unfortunates who’d been brainwashed since first learning the Pledge of Allegiance were the ones who worried me most. And to think they were the exploited, neglected unfortunates I’d most wanted to help. Unfortunately, they were, and still are as I write this, part of the growing, misinformed herd that’s constantly bamboozled by hokey, TV-propaganda machines, masquerading themselves as “news shows.”

Before making it out of Denver that harried morning, I encountered yet another of those misguided souls. A big, burly Bubba type driving a beat pickup with a serious muffler problem pulled alongside me. With my window closed and the racket his truck made, I couldn’t hear what he was yelling, but I sure could read his lips. What he said wasn’t pretty, neither was the plump, wingless bird he kept pumping at me.          

Still, this frazzled, moving target pushed his Winnebago north—at speeds that would have earned me a reckless-endangerment charge, had I been caught. With all the panic-induced clutter pinging inside my head, I wasn’t thinking of the possible consequences. I just wanted out of there. Had my mind been coherent I might have envisioned the very real possibility of being thrown in some small town pokey—with an angry mob and plenty of tar and feathers waiting outside for my release. But that didn’t enter my mind. All I knew was I wanted to keep driving. It was the only thing that made any sense.

After clearing out of Denver, Solace and I made it over the Wyoming border in less than sixty minutes. I not only logged eighty miles that hour, but shot hundreds of backward glances as well. My eyes constantly ricocheted from one rearview mirror to the next. If it had been possible to transform fear into heat, the terror in my eyes would have shattered or melted all three of them.

I was living in, no,
fleeing in
a combat zone where the enemy wore no uniform. Any adversary with killing on his mind could simply walk up to me and fulfill his mission. Sneaking up would not be necessary. With no way of identifying him, and my inability to read dangerous thoughts, I was an easy bull’s-eye for any overzealous vigilante that happened along. The end could come at any time; while I was driving; filling my gas tank; walking Solace; stocking up on groceries; even sleeping. It was much the same feeling as patrolling a tree line in Viet Nam. Over there I never knew if or when a sniper’s bullet might find me. Now, here in my own country, I was carrying that same frightful dread. As I write this, it still weighs heavy on me.   

As we made our way across Wyoming and Montana the next two days, I calmed down somewhat, allowing my frayed defense mechanisms a well-deserved respite. You see, in both those states, you can drive one, two, three-hundred miles and more between sizable towns. And each time we made our way across one of those seemingly-endless stretches; I actually slowed down rather than sped up. With traffic all but nonexistent, I wanted to savor every mile of this most welcome solitude. If I was going to hold onto what was left of my sanity, I needed those extended opportunities. Each long, straight, solitary road was yet another chance to simmer my anxiety and heal my perspective. It didn’t matter whether the landscape was a flat, desolate prairie or an absolutely astonishing, chills-up-the-spine mountain range, I took my time. And that’s why, at the end of that second day, it was already dark out when Solace and I neared our final destination in Western Montana.

At about seven o’clock I exited the highway for a pit stop in Missoula. I needed a pack of Carlton cigarettes, and Solace needed to relieve herself. A lighted digital sign outside a bank on Broadway Street flashed a temperature reading of twenty-seven degrees. Missoula had a population of 62,000; but on this night, it seemed most folks were at home, cozying up in front of their woodstoves and fireplaces. There was nary a soul in sight. A faint dash of fine snow breezed through a streetlight’s glow, as I pulled the camper alongside a convenience store. After I ran inside and Solace took care of her business, overtired as we both were, we slogged right back onto I-90.

I didn’t know that a nearby campground was actually open year-round, but I darned well did know I was nowhere near ready to check into a motel. All I wanted at this point was to find a quiet place—outside of town—where I could pull over for the night. Cold as it was, I knew Solace and I would do just fine with the camper’s propane heater working as well as it had been.

About forty minutes later, I pulled off an exit that put us smack in the middle of Lolo National Forest. There I followed a dark, deserted road that plowed deeper and deeper into an eternity of towering pines. Fifteen minutes passed and I hadn’t seen the lights of a car, truck, house or anything. The Bitterroot Mountain Range and the Idaho border were close by, but I couldn’t see a thing other than the road in my headlights and the black trees engulfing me. Exhausted as I was, out there in the middle of nowhere, I could not find a single place to pull over. With the trees so close to the road, there wasn’t even a shoulder to park on.

Finally, after crossing over what looked like a narrow river, I saw a possibility. There was a small clearing to the right of the road, surely where fishermen had parked their vehicles. Of course, it was empty now.

I hit the brakes after passing it, backed up slowly, then got out and accessed the area. As I backed further into it, I had to get out three more times to make sure the camper didn’t wind up in the shallow river. One quick cigarette later, Solace and I went to bed. In no time at all, we were both in a deep sleep, so deep that neither of us heard the pickup truck stop in front of the camper.

A sharp rap at the door awoke us. Tired as she was, Solace immediately went into one of her high-pitched, terrier barking fits; and she sprung out of bed. Still dressed in my driving clothes, I rushed to the front, grabbed the pistol. Slowly pushing aside a living room curtain with one finger, I peered out with one eye.

The intruder was standing in front of the side door. From my high perch inside the camper, I couldn’t make out his face. Looking down the way I was, I could only see the top of a wide-brimmed cowboy hat—a black cowboy hat at that.

Solace was attacking the door, barking, scratching—just going plain loco.

Three more raps at the door. It may have been pitch black outside, but I was now close enough to see that the knocks were being made with the business end of a shotgun.

“Yeah?” I finally said in a tone as firm and deep as I could muster, “What do you want?”

Then, in a tone not nearly as deep as mine but just as firm, the intruder said, “What I want is you off my property, right now. What gives you the right to…”

Now realizing the gun-toting culprit was a woman I shouted above Solace’s barking, “Give me a minute! Let me put the dog away!”

After wrestling Solace into the bedroom and closing the door, I flipped on the outside light and opened the entry door.

Then, with an intonation that was still less than friendly I said, “Look…” but before continuing my verbal defense I was forced to do just that—look.

Standing out there in the cold, beneath that black Stetson, was one of the most striking faces ever to grace my eyes. Just looking at her would make any red-blooded cowboy howl like a coyote. Whether he was a rodeo cowboy, an urban cowboy, a space cowboy, or even a garden-variety vegetarian there’d be no looking away.

She was not a young woman; probably in her late forties, but maturity had yet to lay claim to her rare beauty. If anything, all the dawns and dusks she’d witnessed may have actually added to her appeal. Her sleek, no-nonsense eyes didn’t ask for my attention, they demanded it. They were dark, every bit as dark as the long hair she’d stuffed beneath her coat collar. The coat itself was really a heavy jacket, and what it revealed below her waist—wrapped tight in faded blue jeans—would have made women half her age jealous and kept all those cowboys a howling.

Her shotgun was now pointed down, but with the stock under her arm and a finger on the trigger it was still at the ready. She was visibly perturbed and breathing quite heavily. Angry streams of mist flowed from her cold, delicate nostrils as well as her mouth. She didn’t say a thing. She just stared me down like a cross school teacher would a defiant student.

“Look ... I’m sorry,” I said, switching the tone of my appeal to a more diplomatic one, “but I’ve been on the road for five days. I thought it would be easy to find a place out here where I could spend the night. But it wasn’t. I was almost falling asleep at the wheel and…”