Journal (22 page)

Petra
had been awakened by all this and grabbed my upper arm.  I assured her that
whoever they were and whatever they were about, wouldn’t, at least for now,
concern us; we were safe where we were.  I lay down next to her after that to
show my lack of concern.  Before going back to sleep, I heard two or three more
shouts — a single voice and a single word each time, as if one person was
calling out another’s name.  After that, no more was said.

__________

April
14
^th
came to us on a morning breeze that gently brushed the branches
beneath which we lay, back and forth, and bathed us with its chilly breath.  I
snapped the top button of my coveralls and balled my fingers against the cold
and gave over my first conscious thoughts to Anna and Gabriel.  The day was starting
out no better than the one before.  I still grieved for them.  It was hard to
find something to hope for, except maybe a meal and a clear path.

I
looked over at Petra and saw that she was on her side, facing away from me, rolled
up like a puppy in a box with her hands tucked between her thighs.  Because of
the raincoat, I couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not and stared for more
than a few seconds, like the parent of a newborn, until I saw her eyes move
beneath her lids.  I realized after, that I had been holding my own breath while
waiting for hers.  I went back to my thoughts after that, gathering the will to
get up and get moving, and wondered what I would do if I lost her, too.

Cold,
sore muscles, a desire to get to Woburn, and, well, maybe more than a little curiosity
about the strangers from the night before, prodded me to my feet.  I would need
to deal with that issue before anything else.  I had heard no more from them
the rest of the night, but I had heard enough to know I didn’t want to have
anything to do with them.  They were dangerous, unstable people and had to be
avoided.

After
a while, I woke Petra.  I hated to do it; so innocent, so sweet, so peacefully sleeping. 
If only the world had the heart of a child, it would be a better place.

Once
she had her wits, I told her that I needed to check to make sure we were safe
to le dark brownwotave.  I explained that I would go out a short distance by myself to see if
I could locate the men we heard during the night.  Find them or not, I would
return and determine what our next step would be.

She
grabbed my sleeve at that point and begged me not to go.  I could see that she
was afraid to be left alone, and I couldn’t blame her for that.  Too many
adults in her life had not come back.  I almost gave-in to her pleadings but
knew it was best I do this by myself.  After a moment, she just dropped her
head and her hand and said no more.

So
that’s what I did.  I first crawled out to the edge of the tree line and
checked to see if anyone was in view.  Seeing nothing, I advanced west toward
the river, a few yards at a time, looking for anything that would tell me where
the men were or had been.  After perhaps thirty or forty yards, I went back and
got Petra and moved her forward that same distance.  That I came back seemed to
reassure her.

When
she was safely hidden in this new location, I repeated what I had done before,
slowly advancing another forty yards or so.  Just as I was about to turn around
and go back, I saw a disturbance to the ground just a few yards beyond.  I
crawled to that point and discovered scuffmarks in the dirt that led into the
trees.  These tracks gave the impression of someone slipping and falling and
dragging perhaps the toe of a boot or shoe.   I also saw what appeared to be a
fair amount of blood on the ground.

My
conclusion from all this was that one of the men from the night before had been
injured in the argument and was now somewhere nearby in the trees.  I was
tempted to explore further and try to find him, but I was afraid that if I
didn’t return to Petra soon, she might come looking for me.  I went back and
assured her that I was all right, but that she needed to stay concealed and
quiet while I explored a little further.

Once
again reaching the location of the blood and scuff marks, I took my only weapon
to hand, the screwdriver, and crept into the trees parallel to the track and
several yards away.  Not ten full paces in, I saw the sole and outside ankle of
a booted foot.  It was sticking out from a jumble of branches and brush on the
ground.   By its awkward position, I knew its owner was either dead or unconscious.

The
other party to this violence was forced to mind at that point.  I felt if the
incident as I envisioned it was accurate — argument, fight, this one running
off, the other shooting him, this one stumbling into the trees and finally
going down — it probably meant the other party was still ambulatory and still
dangerous.  But the morning was well advanced by this time, and I thought that
if the other man were indeed able, he would have already searched out his
companion.  But there was no evidence another man had been this way.

Death
made it hard to judge his age, but he was a young man, I can tell you that.  He
wasn’t very big either, maybe only five foot six or seven, and there was
something odd about his proportions, too.  It seemed his legs were too short
for his upper body.  As you would expect, his clothes showed wear from much
travel and were muddy on the front from crawling the last few feet.  His boots
were so noticeably ground down on the outsides that it made me wonder if he
wasn’t bow legged, too.  The wound he suffer;
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4tifed was to one of his legs, and by
the amount of blood present on the ground, my guess was that his femoral artery
had been severed and he just bled out.

He
was wearing a brown leather jacket that appeared to be intact, so I stripped it
off him, thinking it might be another layer for Petra against the cold.  There
was a gold chain in one pocket and a cloth rag in the other.  On his belt was
an empty leather sheath for a hunting knife.  I took this from him and slid it
on my own belt, pushing the screwdriver down inside.  In his pants pockets were
nothing much of use; a broken comb, a three foot length of heavy twine, and a
vinyl wallet that only held a photograph of a woman I would have guessed was in
her fifties.  I left him at that point, acknowledging him with just one more
thought — I wondered if he had been a good man or a bad man?

I
re-emerged from the trees, dropped the jacket on the ground, and followed his
footprints further west toward the river, cautious as before.  Ten yards along,
in the dirt, was the man’s hunting knife covered in blood.  I picked it up and
wiped it off on a clump of grass before throwing aside the screwdriver and
replacing it with the knife.  It wasn’t a vast improvement, but at least now I
had a tool that I could use for more than just self-defense.

Not
quite to the west end of the tree line, I found their camp.  I also found the
other man.  He was sitting on the ground with his back supported by the trunk
of a large tree that had these long, thin strips of grey-green bark hanging
loose from it.  His legs were spread wide, straight out in front of him, with his
toes pointed right and left.  His head hung down revealing a crown just
starting to show through thinning brown hair.  There was a stab wound to his
chest that still trickled blood, which, over the last few hours, had thoroughly
soaked his clothing to the waist.

Much
to my surprise, he was alive.  And when he became aware of my presence, he
looked up at me with dark hooded eyes.  I saw his right hand fumble about on
the ground next to his leg before coming up with an ugly, black, short barreled
revolver.  So I quickly side stepped behind a different tree, to give myself
some protection, and peeked out at him, showing only the edge of my body.  “I
won’t hurt you,” I said, and added “Maybe I can help.”  I want you to know, however,
I had no illusions about his condition.  He was well beyond anything I, or
anyone else for that matter, could do to save him.

He
motioned with his pistol as if pointing at me, and when I didn’t respond, he
motioned again.  Finally, I figured out that he was indicating the knife
strapped to my hip.  “Oh this,” I said tapping it.  “I took it off the body of
a dead man back there in the brush,” and pointed back the way I had come.  He smiled
and dropped his hand as if he no longer had the strength to support it.

I
asked him if the other man had stabbed him, and he bobbed his head ever so
slightly, answering in the affirmative.

I
took a chance at that point and stepped out from behind the tree and started
toward him.  My mistake because the man suddenly raised the pistol back up and
pulled the trigger.  Twice it clicked before he dropped his hand, looked at me,
gave a faint smile, and somehow mustered the strength to shrug his shoulders as
if to say, “Oh well, am I doing this because deifI tried.”  I continued forward, madder than hell at myself
for being so stupid, my face burning, stepped on the pistol and his hand, and
grabbed it up.  It was a .44 revolver with a full cylinder, but the bullets had
all been fired.

As
I write this out, I’m wondering to myself when it is that I’m going to make
that one bad decision that will finally do me in.  This could have been it.

I
squatted down to eye level, to call him the son of a bitch he was, but there
wasn’t much point.  His eyes were just slits, his skin opaque and sagging, and
his breaths so shallow they were impossible to count.

“Are
there more of you?” I asked.

He
didn’t answer.  I can’t even say for sure he heard me.

I
poked him a couple of times hard on the shoulder and saw his face register
pain.  “Are there others like you nearby,” I asked again

His
eyes opened a little bit, and I thought I saw him nod, but that might have only
been my imagination.  It’s also possible that it was just his neck muscles
struggling to keep his head upright.  He was failing fast.  I could see it.

All
of a sudden I was anxious to get the hell out of there.  The man in front of me
stunk of death.  It was thick and oily.  I could smell it.  I could taste it.  It
was coming from his pores, his mouth, everywhere.  He was rotten with it from
the inside out, and it made me want to get away from him before it invaded my
body, too, and took over.

Despite
this feeling and the urge to just turn and run like hell, I needed bullets for
his pistol, so I took the knife, now my knife, and cut open his pockets.  Even
just one cartridge would be better than what I had now.  I didn’t find any,
though.  Apparently the last he had were fired into the body of his companion. 
I kept the pistol anyway.  I remember thinking I might be able to bluff with
it.  It was an ugly enough looking piece.

Next,
I turned my attention to their camp.  It was in a hollowed out area where the
trees were not so close together.  There were a couple of blankets, still damp
from the night air, wadded up on the ground.  There was also a canvas bag with
a single strap and a water bottle tucked in an outside pocket.  There was
another water bottle on the ground but the liquid in it didn’t look anything
like water, so I picked it up.  Once the top was off, the odor jumped out at me,
making me turn my head — hooch, made at least partially from fruit.  I poured
it out on the ground.  God it smelled awful.  It was another piece of the
puzzle, though.

I
now figured they were drunk last night and that’s what sparked the argument. 
But one answer gets you another question.  Where’d they get it?  It’s something
that takes several days and a warm environment to make.  You aren’t going to
make this stuff while on the road, walking in the rain.

I
then went through the canvas bag.  Inside was some dried meat wrapped in cloth,
two spoons, two metal cups and half a dozen carrots with flecks of dir;
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4tift still
clinging to their end root.  It was something.  The dried meat would give us a
little protein.  We needed protein.

I
gathered everything up and headed back to Petra.  As I passed by the man I
spoke of, I felt his eyes on me, but I didn’t look at him …I didn’t want to
look at him.  There was nothing else about him I wanted to remember.  I refused
to make him any more of me than he already was.

I
know this isn’t a very compassionate thing to say, but I thought “to hell with
you.”  He killed his companion, no doubt others, too, and the bastard would
have done the same to me if he could have.  I had no compassion to spare his
kind.

When
I got back to Petra, I put the leather jacket around her shoulders and gave her
a piece of the dried meat to chew on while I rolled the blankets and tied the
ends together with the wire I found two days before.  I also ate a piece of the
meat, slipped the strap of the canvas bag over my head and onto one shoulder,
one of the blankets onto the other shoulder and pulled Petra to her feet.  I
arranged the other blanket onto one of her shoulders, in a similar fashion as
mine, and we started off looking like we are — a couple of refugees in search
of a home.

I
figured that we had roughly one hundred fifteen to one hundred twenty miles to
go before we reached Woburn.  I based this on my initial assessment that we
were nearly two hundred miles away when Anna first pointed out our destination
on my map, the same day we found Petra, and estimating how many miles we had
traveled since.  If we could get at least twenty miles a day from now on, even
if we had to walk past dark, we could make it in a little over five days.  I
didn’t know if that would be in time to warn the town of the attack or not, but
we’d do our best.