Journal (16 page)

When
he was quiet, I shot the two men who were already on the ground, one more time
each, just to make sure they were dead.  (OK, and maybe also because it made me
feel good to do it.)  In response, the man on his knees let his bladder go.  It
pooled on the ground between his legs, and I could smell it strong and biting.

I
heard Anna and Gabriel running, coming up behind me.  When they arrived, Anna blew
right on past and hit the kneeling man on the shoulder with the butt of her
carbine and kicked him two good ones in the leg.  “You shit,” she shouted. 
“You bastard.”  Other than leaning away from her a little, he did nothing to
defend himself.

She
spun around on me and said, “You’re doing it again.  This is stupid.  These
aren’t chances we should be taking.”

I
ignored her challenge.  I had momentum, and I wasn’t going to slow it down for either
an explanation or an argument.

I
first looked at Gabriel and said, “Watch for any others who might be coming
this way.”

Next,
I turned to Anna, who was still staring at me.  “Watch this asshole, and don’t
shoot him, understand?”

I
admit I was pretty direct in the way I said it, but I really was afraid she’d
kill him, and I needed him alive.

For
her part, she just stared at me with an,
I hate your guts
look on her
face, so I had to tell her again that I was serious.  “I mean it, Anna.  I
don’t want you to shoot him unless he tries to run off.”

If
anything, repeating myself like that just made her angrier with me because she
squinted her eyes, turned the corners of her mouth down and leaned in, aiming it
all   right at me.  Close up the way we were, I could even see her nostrils
flaring with the breaths she was taking.

 When
I turned away and walked over to the three people on the ground, I wasn’t
convinced I wouldn’t hear a gunshot, just out of spite.

Dead
on the ground was a man of about thirty-five.  He had a hooked nose and a full
but trimmed beard.  One eye was about three-quarters open, lifeless, and his
navy blue knit cap was soaked with blood from a bullet wound to his temple.  He
also had a second wound.  This one was to the side of his neck and looked as if
it could have been made by a machete. emotional connection he fsep

Next
to the man, resting on his right side, was a boy a little younger than
Gabriel.  He was hatless, and his light brown hair bristled at all angles like
a well used paintbrush.  His otherwise clean face was streaked dark red from
his head wound, a hole the size of my little finger punched through his
cheekbone.  The impact of the bullet also caused his head, on that side, to be
grossly misshapen.  His knees were slightly drawn up and one of his hands was
balled and curled at the wrist.

The
third body was that of a woman, although I might not have known it but for the
fact that her pants were around her ankles, pulled inside out, and her heavy
wool plaid shirt was ripped open exposing her breasts.  She had thick eyebrows
and had apparently rubbed soot on her cheeks and under her nose to make it
appear, from a distance anyway, as if she had beard stubble.  Her death wound
was through her left eye, and it showed as a black hole about the size of a
quarter.

Seeing
them like that, people who by all appearances were unarmed and offering no
offense, just stoked my hate for their murderers, all the more.

When
I got back to the man on his knees, Anna looked up at me again with that same
expression.  I continued to ignore her.  Instead, I faced the man and asked him
why they had killed those people.  He didn’t answer my question.  He only again
pleaded with me to spare his life.

He
was a pathetic looking creature, maybe in his late twenties with medium brown
hair that looked like it had been hacked short with a pocket-knife because it
hung down uneven like, all the way around.  His right eyelid drooped, and the
left corner of his mouth kind of hung open, giving his whole face a lopsided,
jack-o-lantern look.  He had on a pair of those half gloves with the fingers
sticking out of them and a brown canvas coat with the elbows worn through and
held together in the front with string instead of buttons.

I
told him that I would let him live if he answered my questions.  I saw Anna
stir out of the corner of my eye.  I asked him the question again, “Why did you
kill those people?”

He
said they were just following orders.

“Orders?”
I said.  “What do you mean orders?”

He
said it was, “what we were spose to do.”  They were sent to find a woman and a
boy and kill them.  He stopped, his eyes shifting back and forth between the
three of us, perhaps realizing for the first time that Anna and Gabriel were
probably the ones they were looking for.

“We’re
you also supposed to rape the woman, you shit?” Anna asked as she kicked him
near his hip.  I slid sideways between the two of them before she could deliver
another one.  “We’re those your orders, too?” she continued from behind me.  I
could feel one of her hands pushing on my back.  Of course these questions of
hers really weren’t questions at all.  They were more accusations.

He
told her the rape wasn’t his idea.  “I dint want nothin’ to do with it.”  And
he added emotional connection he fsep that he “don’t hold with stuff like that.”

I
told him he was doing OK so far and asked him, “Whose orders were they?”

He
hesitated a moment, looked over at his two dead companions and said, “A guy
named Eric.  He’s the one who gives the orders.  He’s serious bad, he is.”

Anna
swore out loud at that one.

I
asked him to describe Eric for me, and when he said long red hair, I was sure
it was Mr. Ponytail.  He also said that Eric was a “mean son-of-a-bitch” who
would “gut you clean with a rusty knife” if you crossed him.  I suppose the
last was added to hopefully explain why he had no choice but to go along with
the murders.

“Why
does Eric want these people dead?” I asked.

He
told us, “Eric don’t give no reasons, he just says what to do and you does it. 
If you don’t, you dead, too.”  But he added that he figured it had something to
do with this “big deal” that was going to take place in two weeks.  It was
supposed to happen in about a month, but it had been moved up just about the
same time the orders went out to find Gabriel and Anna.

So
we only had two weeks now to get to wherever this Woburn was.  That changed
things considerably.

I
asked him what the big deal was and he told us they were going to raid this
town because it had food and guns and women.  Eric promised booze, drugs, and
women to those who fought, but when he said the part about the women, you could
hardly hear him.

I
told him I had one more question for him, and if he answered it, he could go. 
His eyes searched my face to see if I was telling the truth.  I asked him if
Eric was the big boss, the one in charge of everyone.  To this he said that he thought
so because he “don’t know no other boss.  There are capums but they not
nothin’.  They just follow hims orders, too.”

I
told him he could go, as long as he promised he would deliver a message to Eric
for us.

Anna
interrupted at this point and said, “Don’t do this.  Kill him.  Letting him go is
a big mistake.  It could get us killed.”

I
told her we weren’t going to kill him, that I needed him to deliver a message.

I
looked the man in the eyes and told him to tell Eric that if we saw any of his
people looking for us we would kill them outright, just like we did this time. 
I also told him there was no way they were going to find us, but if we had to,
we’d find them.  He nodded his head in understanding and asked if he could go. 
I didn’t answer him at first.  Instead, I had him repeat the message.  Once he
did, I told him he could go.

I
should mention that at this moment we were positioned so we were facing south
and he was facing north.  I’ll tell you why this is important in a say, “wot second.

The
man stood up and looked down at his machete.  I told him to leave it and that
he should just worry about keeping his part of the bargain and deliver my
message to Eric.  We were keeping our part of the bargain by letting him go, so
he needed to keep his.

He
steepled his fingers as if he were praying, bowed at the waist, and thanked us.
 Keeping his eye on Anna, he moved around us and did this walk-run thing
north.  We turned and watched him go.  When he was about twenty feet away, Anna
started to raise her rifle, but I grabbed it by the barrel and shoved it down. 
That damn sure made her mad.  So she two-handed pushed me with it, shouted “It’s
my life, too,” and stomped off east toward the orchard.  When the man was maybe
a hundred feet away, he was still going north and well settled into a steady
walk.  He looked back at me once, and I waved him on and bent to pick up the
bullet casings I had ejected from my rifle.  But as soon as he turned his back to
me again, I stood up and shot him in the spine.

Anna,
who had just reached the orchard and disappeared from sight, popped back out
and stood looking at me.  I ignored her, told Gabriel to search the other two
for anything useful and started toward the man I’d just shot.  I left him
staring at me, too.

When
I reached the man with the droopy eye, he was still alive.  I shot him again,
in the head this time, picked up my empty brass and reloaded.  I went through
his pockets and found a good folding knife I later gave to Gabriel, a couple of
carrots wrapped up in cloth, a small amount of marijuana (which I put back in
his pocket), and a small box of wooden matches.  When I opened the box, I saw a
woman’s gold wedding band inside, along with the matches.  That had to be what
he took off the woman and showed the others before I shot them — asshole.

The
orchard was closer to the road than the river was, so I slung my rifle, picked
up the man’s legs by his pant cuffs, and dragged him into the trees out of
sight.  Before leaving him there, in a ragged pile, in the tall weeds for the
insects and animals to devour, I cursed him silently, kicked him twice in the
side, and spit on him.  It didn’t make me feel better, though.  I wanted to do
more, but there was no more to do.

Anna
and Gabriel were searching the other two men and laying out what they found on
the ground, when I got back to them.

Anna
immediately stood up and said, “What the hell was that all about Alan, huh? 
Why’d you put me through that little game of yours?  You were going to shoot
him all along, weren’t you?”

I
told her to calm down and give me a chance to explain.  I said it was important
to know with as much certainty as possible if Mr. Ponytail was in front of us
(south) or in back of us (north).  In fact, it was the most important thing I
wanted to learn from him, I told her.  I couldn’t just ask the man that
question, because I’d never really know if his answer was a lie or the truth. 
So I conceived a plan to get him to show me, by asking him to deliver a message
to Eric.  To make that work, I had to convince him that I would really let him
go and the reason I was letting him go, the only reason, was to deliver this
message.  I told Anna that, as ita breakfast of canned fruit and with t turned out, I thought our argument in front
of him probably convinced him of my sincerity more than anything else.

He
still could have deceived me, though, I had to admit.  My plan wasn’t
foolproof.  But there were a few things that we had going for us.  One, he was
really scared as evidenced by him peeing his pants.  Two, he seemed convinced
that delivering the message was important to me.  Again, I referred to our
argument in front of him.  Three, when he left to deliver our message, he took
the more uncomfortable route, meaning walking past us.  And four, I watched him
long enough to be convinced he wasn’t going to turn a different direction, east
for instance and circle around.

After
all that, all Anna said was, “Humph.  Well, you should have still told me what
you were doing.”

Gabriel
smiled briefly and turned back to work.

Just
to make her feel better, I told her maybe I should have.  I didn’t really feel
that way, though, because she didn’t seem to have any problem with keeping me
in the dark about our eventual destination.  I let that one go.

Now
back to what we found.  Let me deal with the weapons first.  The assault weapon
was definitely military and would have been good to keep except that it only
had about ten rounds of ammunition.  It wasn’t worth the effort to carry it for
ten shots and the hope of finding more bullets of that caliber.  Eventually, we
threw the rifle in the river.  The revolver was another .38 and in fair
condition.  It had only eight bullets to go with it, three left in the cylinder
and five that came from its owner’s pocket, but both my weapons were compatible
with it, and I had more bullets, so we kept it and I gave it to Gabriel.  We
also had the machete.  I kept this, too, because it would be of great help
constructing shelters.

There
was also a small amount of food that included a little bit of salt, two raw
potatoes, and a small tin of canned ham with a two-year-old expiration date on
it.  We kept all this as well.  There were three water bottles, too.  One was
plastic but two were metal, which meant they could be used to heat liquids. 
One of the men also carried a small first aid kit.  Inside it was a little
square tin of aspirin, some butterfly bandages for closing wounds, and a tube
of antibiotic ointment.  It wasn’t much, but it was more than we had before. 
Additionally, one of the men was wearing a pair of cotton gardening gloves. 
They were too small for me and would have fit Anna nicely, but she didn’t want
to wear anything “those animals” had worn.