Out of the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  Ben knew, but he remained silent, letting Jerre tell it all, her way.

  “Finally, he hit me. Boy, did he pop me! When I came out of it, he was ripping my panties off me and talking really wild stuff. Said I was gonna be his private pussy. All kinds of stuff. I got really scared then. Not only because he was trying to rape me, but because I knew then he was really bonkers.

  “We were by the fireplace, on the carpet, and when he stood up to take off his pants, I rolled away and grabbed a poker.” Again, she gazed at him. “I think I killed him, Ben. Something popped when I hit him. I don’t think he was breathing. But I wasn’t about to stick around to do any nursing; I’ll tell you that for a fact! I just took off. Got in my dad’s car and left.

  “And do you know where I went? Where the damned car quit on me? Smart me! To Wheeling. Talk about a case of the dumb-ass. There was a mob of thugs roaming around. And you know they spotted me. You ever seen one little blond-headed girl trying to break the four-minute mile while being chased by fifty guys, all with their peckers out?”

  Despite the gut-wrenching fear Ben knew she must have experienced, the panic within her at the time, he had to laugh at the way she told her story.

  “And one of those guys was huge, man! What is it with men, Ben Raines? I mean, sex is good—terrific, when everything is right—but I don’t go around thinking about it all the time. Men do, though, don’t they? Sure they do.”

  “I don’t know that we think about it all the time,” Ben said slowly. “But a man is damned sure ready at a second’s notice.” He felt a little ashamed of himself, for he had already mentally undressed Jerre. He rose from the bank and held out his hand. She took it, her small hand soft in his. He pulled her to her feet.

  “We’d better get on the road, Jerre. Find us a place to spend the night. Fix us some dinner.”

  “All right,” she said quietly, her eyes studying him.

  Ben had fixed a tub of water in which she could soak her ankle, and then had set about cooking dinner. She had eaten as if she had not had a morsel of food in days. Ben then shooed her off to bed.

  He lay in his bed that night, and had to smile at all that Jerre had said that afternoon and evening. She was, Ben concluded, a teen-age character. Purely one of a kind, with the open honesty that Ben liked in people. He remembered how she had looked at his weapons, then at him.

  “You really know how to shoot all these things?” she had asked.

  Ben admitted that he not only did, but had done so, and he told her of the things that had happened to him since leaving Louisiana.

  She shuddered as Ben told her of the men in Cairo and what they had planned for him. “That’s gross, Ben!”

  He recounted his search for his family, described the men and women in Cairo who would not fight for their lives or property, and his experience with his brother in Chicago, and what he and his friends were planning to do.

  She had replied, “It wasn’t just blacks chasing me in Wheeling; some of those guys were pretty decent-looking men. But I think I can understand how your brother and his friends feel.”

  “Oh?”

  “Sure. That doesn’t mean I agree with them—I don’t; I think they’re wrong. But I don’t believe blacks and whites will ever get along. I mean, it’s too late, now. But that’s the way I feel.”

  Ben thought of Kasim, and agreed with her. Then he thought of Cecil and Lila and Salina, and silently disagreed with her.

  “Why do you think that, Jerre?”

  “That we won’t get along? Because we’re two different peoples, that’s why. That’s the main reason. Hey! I’m not a bigot, Ben Raines. Don’t think that, because you’d be wrong. Let me tell you this, Ben. In high school, my best friend, and I mean my very best friend, was a Chinese girl named Sue Ling. From grade school up, all the way to graduation, we were inseparable. Then we went to different schools, but we kept in touch. I tried to find her after ... after it happened. But I couldn’t.

  “Then in college I had friends of different nationalities, lots of them: East Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Arabs, American Indians ... oh, you know what I mean ... lots of different people.”

  Ben waited for her to drop the other shoe.

  “But I never had a black friend. Do you know why that is, Ben Raines, big-time-author-of-some-importance? And a general, to boot.”

  He laughed. “You tell me, Jerre Hunter, girl-who-broke-the-four-minute-mile-while-being-chased-by-fifty-guys-with-their-peckers-out.”

  She giggled, then laughed, then put her hand on his forearm. She sobered. “I’m leveling with you, Ben—I don’t know. Lots of reasons, I think. One: I don’t like to walk down the halls of my school and have half a dozen black guys say, ‘Hey, baby! You wanna fuck?’ And that’s happened, Ben. All over this country. But the newspeople, oh, they wouldn’t report anything like that. Or maybe it’s because when one of us is asked out by a black guy and we say no, we’re automatically accused of being a racist. Well, a little of that goes a long way. Does it ever occur to people that the choice of dating is up to the person being asked? That chemistry has a lot to do with it? But Ben, I’ve seen black guys I’d go out with—but they never asked me. It’s like the one bad apple, I guess. I don’t think you’re a racist, but what I’ve said sure makes me seem like one, and I’m not. I guess ... I don’t like to be pushed. I choose my friends—they don’t choose me.” She shook her head. “I’m not saying this right.”

  “No, Jerre, I don’t believe you’re a racist. You’re not the type.” Is there a type? he silently questioned.

  “My daddy wasn’t a racist; neither was my mother. They both worked with black people and the word ‘nigger’ was not in their vocabulary. I said it once and got slapped for saying it. So it wasn’t my home life that made me feel . . . however I feel.”

  “Tell me about your friends of other nationalities, Jerre. You don’t mind if I record this? Good.”

  “Well ... Sue was just like me—like you—in the way we think. That’s not right. In the way we act. So was Rajah, and Mark Little Bear. They were ... were ...” She looked at Ben.

  “Western?”

  “Yeah! That’s it—kind of, but not quite. They acted ...” She again looked at Ben.

  “Like us?”

  “In a way. They still had their identities, but they didn’t try to shove their culture down my throat. What am I trying to say, General?”

  “Probably that they conformed to our level of acceptance, but still maintained their own culture. We think alike, Jerre.”

  She gazed at him, her eyes serious. “But is our thinking right, Ben? Correct?”

  “I don’t know, babe.”

  “I think we were a nation of bigots, Ben.”

  Ben thought of his brother in Chicago, and of the hate of Kasim. “Still are,” he said. “On both sides.”

  He opened his eyes at the sound of her footfall, and looked at her as she stood in the open doorway to the bedroom.

  “You’re not like any man I’ve ever met, General-author Ben Raines. I think you’re a tough man, and I think you’re also a sensitive man. Funny combination. You’re a warrior, I guess. But a good one. That woman, back at the motel—the one who kissed you. She was black, wasn’t she?”

  “Half and half.” Ben spoke from the bed. “Kasim called her a zebra.”

  “Hell with Kasim.” She had not moved from the doorway. “I liked the way you described Cecil and his wife. Lila. They sound like nice people and I believe you liked them. I think I would, too. But just as our race has rednecks and trash, so do the blacks. So that makes Kasim a nigger. But not Cecil and his wife and that other woman. That’s what I was trying to say this afternoon, Ben. No matter what race a person might belong to, there are classes of people. Good people and bad people. I just don’t believe everybody is equal, Ben. I think people—all people—need education. I think education is the key to solving almost every problem.”

  “So do I, Jerre.”

  She moved closer
to the bed. Ben could smell the clean, fresh soap scent of her.

  “I’m confused, Ben. If the war hadn’t happened, would the race problem ever have been solved?”

  “Not in our lifetime.”

  “You sound so certain.” She limped to the bed and sat down.

  “I guess I do.”

  “I said education is the key to solving problems, Ben. But ... I don’t believe you can have one set of rules for some people and another set for other people.”

  “Like I said, Jerre, we think alike.”

  “But how do you make someone learn?”

  “Not constitutionally, I can assure you of that. But short of separate nations ... well, let me ask you this: if a baby won’t eat, and will starve unless something is done, what does a doctor do?”

  “Well ... I guess ... hell, he force-feeds it. But, Ben, no one can force a person to learn if that person doesn’t want to learn.”

  “You can if you have access to the home.”

  “Is that what you want to see happen, Ben?”

  “No. That would be the ultimate totalitarian society.”

  She put her hand on his chest and felt his heart beat against her palm. “I sure would like to sleep with you, Ben. But I sure don’t want to get pregnant.”

  “I will sure do my best to see that doesn’t happen, Jerre.”

  So she came to him, all soft and young and full of fire and excitement and very little experience with sex.

  Ben opened the shirt she wore to sleep in and kissed her breasts, his tongue tautening the nipples while his hand stroked her belly and slipped downward to the center of her. His fingers found her wet and ready to receive him.

  Young slender arms around his neck, she cried out as he entered her, and she met his thrusts with powerful upward lunges as the tight heat of her encircled his swollen maleness. She yelled as her first climax shook her and then they settled into the ageless rhythm of the game with only victors to signify the coming of Omega.

  And while the world tumbled in chaos about them, two were not alone.

  NINE

  They spent two days in the house, allowing Jerre’s ankle to heal and talking of many things; learning of each other. They played little sex games that enabled Ben to learn when she was ready to receive him: the half-closing of her eyes, grown cloudy with passion; the shallow breathing that turned into hot huffs of anticipation.

  “You’re really a hot little number,” Ben kidded her. “Must have had a repressive childhood.”

  “Either that, or I just like to screw.” She smiled. “You dirty old man.”

  When they pulled away from the house by the side of the road, Jerre said she wanted to see Chesapeake Bay. So Ben cut east to Tappahannock and then to Reedville. Then, like a couple of kids (one was), they walked the beaches, pounded by wind and sea, holding hands and playing. They built a sand castle (not a very good one, for the wind blew it apart), and spent the night on the beach, in a large double sleeping bag, huddled in each other’s arms. Just before dawn, a hard rain drove them into a Bayside cabin.

  In that cabin, for the next three days, they forgot the world existed (not much of it did). Jerre complimented Ben, his chest swelling with pride when she told him he was amply endowed in the male department—she’d never seen one so big. Then, giggling, she told him she’d only seen two before his and he chased her out of the cabin onto the beach. When he had caught her, and they had made love, Jerre allowed as to how if he had any more in that ... certain department, she probably wouldn’t be able to take it all.

  Then she told him she lied a lot and raced him back to the cabin.

  The winds turned cold and Ben cast a thoughtful eye at their surroundings. “This cabin’s not made for winter occupation, honey. I think we’d best be moving on.”

  “Haulin’ ass,” she said with a smile.

  And it was with sadness that they left. Kind of like a travelogue, Ben thought. And so, friends, it is with a sad heart filled with fond memories that we now leave the quaint village on the tropical isle of Bonda-Bonda.

  Ben remembered those travelogues from Saturday afternoon matinees. Jerre hadn’t even been born when those were discontinued.

  Ben sighed, feeling his age.

  By now, much of the stench of death had left the land. More than a month had passed, and the rains and the winds and the passing of time had softened the odor. But a faint sickly sweet smell still clung to the earth.

  Packs of dogs roamed the countryside, quickly turning wild, reverting to the survival instinct, never quite fully bred out of them: the German shepherd, the Doberman, the husky, the malamute, the pit bull, the boxer, the chow.

  Lesser, smaller breeds died for the most part: the little poodles, the Chihuahuas, certain breeds of collie— almost all toy breeds were no more. Working breeds lived.

  “Be careful and don’t get too far away from me or the truck,” Ben cautioned Jerre. “Dog packs are running wild.”

  “What else can they do?” she typically asked.

  “Nothing. They have to survive. And they will survive. I just don’t want them surviving on us.”

  She was thoughtful for a moment, her eyes looking at but not seeing the passing landscape as they drove away from the bay, heading inland. The land had a sameness, an emptiness.

  “Will you shoot every dog you see with your guns?” she asked, jaw set, ready for an argument.

  “No, Jerre—of course not. But I will shoot any rabid animal we see, and I’ll shoot to survive.” He told her of the incident in Morriston. “In a few months, rabies will be a problem, I think. Then I should imagine it will taper off, more or less back to normal, like most animal diseases.”

  “I’d like to see your home in Louisiana, Ben Raines. But I don’t think I win—at least not this time around.”

  He looked at her, more than a glance, for he had not tired of seeing her: the shape of her face, the smoothness of her skin, the wild tangle of her blond hair.

  “When I feel I’m getting too attached to you, Ben, I’ll leave. Walk away, and not look back, even though I’ll want to look back—not go. I’ll survive, General—’cause you’ll teach me that. If I had any sense, I’d stay with you, despite the difference in our ages. But right now, I’m cute to you. I don’t talk like you and I’m young and kind of have a bad mouth. Cute. But that cute would get frayed around the edges pretty quick, I’m thinking.”

  Smart kid, he thought.

  “So what I want you to do, General, is teach me to survive. ’Cause ... well, I have some things to do after a while. We won’t talk about them now. For now, we’ll stop along the way and you pick me out a gun, teach me how to shoot it; teach me how to spot those who are going to hurt me—if you can, and I think you have that instinct built in. Then . . . when the time comes, I’ll cut out. I’ll tell you about it, Ben—when the time is right.”

  Ben wondered what she had up her sleeve; he had felt all along she was holding something from him.

  “All right, Jerre. I’ll teach you what I can, in the time left us. But I’ll be honest. I’m going to miss you when you decide to leave.”

  She nodded. “I’ll miss you, too, General. Believe that.” She touched his arm. “You were dreaming last night, Ben—have for several nights. What were your dreams?”

  “Strange dreams, babe. You’ll probably think me an idiot.”

  “No, Ben. I’d never think you that. But I do think you have a destiny.”

  Worry clouded his features for a few seconds. He sighed. “Funny you should say that. That’s what the dreams are all about. I’ve been dreaming of a land that has mountains and valleys and beautiful plains; of cattle and crops and a people living free, under simple laws, a government formed—really formed—of the people and run by the people. The dreams have bothered me.”

  “You’re going to do something fine and good, Ben. I really believe that.”

  He smiled.

  “What you thinking about?”

  “Stopping t
his truck and the two of us going over to that picnic table and making out.”

  “Then what the hell are you waitin’ on, General?”

  At a sporting goods store outside of Richmond, Ben found a cache of illegal pistols, just as he had in every sporting goods store at which he’d stopped. Obviously, as could have been predicted (and was) not too many people really paid much attention to the gun-control act of Hilton Logan.

  He picked out a nine-shot .22 magnum revolver and a belt and holster for her, then handed her the gear. “Get the feel of this. Point it, cock it, dry-fire it, and go boom-boom. If you can point your finger, you can fire a pistol. I’m going to put together a pack for you: ground sheet, light tent, sleeping bag. I’ll fix you a stash of dehyd food later on ... when I sense you’re ready to pull out.”

  He left her going “boom-boom,” and prowled the store. He took all the .45-caliber ammunition (which wasn’t much), then opened a compartment in the gun vault, stepped back, and smiled at his discovery.

  “Well, now,” he muttered. “Just look at that. I’ll just bet that old boy wasn’t supposed to have those.”

  A pair of Ingram submachine guns, M-10s, 9-mm. There were extra clips for both of them, thirty-two-round clips. Ben looked around the store and smiled gleefully when he found, hidden under a counter, two cases of 9-mm ammo. He picked up, from the same compartment in the safe, two Browning 9-mm automatic pistols, and the leather to go with them. Saying nothing to Jerre, he took the gear to the truck and stowed it. Back in the store, he chose a 7-mm bolt-action rifle that had been drilled for scope, a good scope, and went looking for ammunition.

  “You planning on starting a war, Ben Raines?” Jerre asked him.

  “No.” He laughed at the seriousness on her face. “But a thought just occurred to me: when is the last time you had a fresh steak?”

  She smiled and licked her lips. “Not since all the trouble began.”

  “We will tonight,” he promised her.