No Direction Home (Book 2): Eastwood

by Mike Sheridan

  After breakfast, she rummaged through a large supermarket bag, the one Fred had filled up in a gardening store in Maysville. She pulled out several seed bags and placed them on the kitchen table.

  “What you got there?” Fred asked suspiciously. “Remember, it’s June. Not everything is going to germinate in this heat.”

  Marcie grabbed the seed bags and tossed them onto his lap. “Take a look for yourself,” she said curtly.

  Simone struggled to contain a smile. She couldn’t help but think how similar in nature Fred and Marcie were, like two cantankerous twins that had been separated at birth.

  Fred sifted through the bags. “Carrots… broccoli… beetroot… turnips. Hmph, I suppose they’ll do.” He looked across the table at Eric. “Come on, Eric, take me to the garden.”

  The garden wasn’t a garden at all, but the large field to the side of the house in which Simone and Marcie had originally spotted Eric. About half an acre in size, it was covered in lush green grass, and had an apple orchard in one corner.

  “I’d prefer to work at the back of the house where we can stay out of sight,” Fred explained while Eric wheeled him down a narrow, rutted path that ran along one side of the field, “but I don’t think the land is good enough.”

  “It isn’t. I checked it out this morning,” Marcie agreed, walking behind Eric. “It’s too steep, and the bottom is one big swamp. No good for growing anything; not without a lot of hard work.”

  Getting Eric to stop halfway down the path, Fred pointed toward the middle of the field where the ground was slightly elevated. “Right about there. That’s where we should dig our beds. Someplace they’ll get plenty of sun.”

  “No.” Marcie pointed over to the far corner of the field. “We’ll dig the beds over there,” she said firmly. “They’ll still get plenty of sun, but with less wind. The shrubbery line and that stand of apple trees will protect them.”

  “It’s thick with weeds there,” Fred protested. “I can see them from here. That’ll only make our job harder.”

  “And why do you think those weeds are over there and not your patch?” Marcie retorted. “Good soil and good drainage, that’s why.” Spade in hand, she set off across the field before Fred could reply.

  Grinning, Simone exchanged glances with Eric, forgetting for a moment he was blind.

  Perhaps reading her mind, he broke out into a smile too. “Now, Fred. Stop jumping down Marcie’s throat. Maybe that way, she won’t jump down yours either.”

  “She jumps down mine a lot farther than I can ever go,” Fred grumbled disconsolately. “All right, eighty degrees right and full ahead!” he yelled. “Chop, chop, Eric, get after her. Don’t make me have to use the whip!”

  All three laughing, Eric turned the wheelchair hard right and pushed it off the footpath and into the field. Carrying a large canvas bag full of gardening equipment, Simone ran after them.

  By the time they reached her, Marcie had already dug a large divot in the ground. Bent over, she inspected the topsoil, deeming it to be of decent quality. After further inspection, she declared the drainage to be good as well. With Simone’s help, the two marked out the designated digging area with wooden stakes and twine.

  The team formed into a production line. Perhaps not the most efficient one in the world, but one that kept the four busy, and gave them all a sense of satisfaction that they were contributing to the effort.

  At the top of the line, Eric led off, turning the earth with the spade Marcie handed him. Simone came next, using a garden fork to break up the rich black soil, picking out weeds and thistles and chucking them to one side. Next came Marcie, who carefully planted the seeds into the tilled earth. Last, but not least, Fred bellowed out instructions, keeping Eric in a straight line and pointing out any weeds Simone might have missed.

  “Just as well I’m half deaf,” Marcie grumbled to Simone, five yards in front of her, as Fred barked out yet another command in his harsh guttural voice. “Otherwise I’d have tipped his damned chair over by now.”

  When they completed the first row, Marcie looked back along the seed bed with satisfaction. “Not bad. I don’t think we’ll win any awards in Fine Gardening, but we’re getting there.” She looked over at Fred. “All right, Sergeant Major. Get the troops back in line, I want these carrots planted by lunchtime.”

  ***

  At 1 p.m., they went back to the house and ate a lunch of pasta, tinned tuna, and pickled beetroot. Afterward, Marcie stood up from the table and made coffee.

  Grabbing a pot, she went over to the sink and filled it from the hot water tap. None of them had any idea how much was still left up in the water tank. Back at her farmhouse in Clemson, Marcie had had an eighty-gallon tank. She knew that because she and Dan had recently taken out the old galvanized tank from the attic, replacing it with a larger, more efficient one that served both the cold and hot water systems.

  She took the pot over to the island and lit a ring on the tiny camping stove Fred and Eric had brought with them. “Fred, how do you feel about lending me and Simone your station wagon for a couple of hours?” she asked, dumping several spoonfuls of coffee from the mason jar into the pot.

  Over by the table, Fred gazed at her suspiciously. “What the hell for?”

  “I want to see if any farm animals have survived in the area. If we find any, no reason why we can’t hitch a trailer and bring them back here. In fact, if we find an unoccupied farm with good facilities, maybe we ought to consider moving to it.”

  “I’m not moving anywhere. I like it here,” Fred said firmly. “But if you want to go rescue some animals, knock yourself out.” He gestured over to one of the cabinets by the far wall. “Keys are in the drawer. Just take it easy with her, she’s old. Used to belong to my next door neighbor.”

  “Don’t worry,” Marcie assured him. “I had an old station wagon that me and Dan had forever. Always treated it real good. Broke my heart to leave it on the highway yesterday.” She cracked a smile. “But every cloud has a silver lining, they say. If I was still riding around in my own vehicle, most likely I wouldn’t be here right now.”

  “Right,” said Fred dryly. “And that would be just the darnedest shame.”

  CHAPTER 27

  At the corner house in Old Fort, the afternoon sun beat down hard on the living room window. Without air conditioning, it was hot and stuffy inside, and a trickle of sweat ran down the side of Ned Granger’s face. However, the insufferable heat was the least of his problems.

  He sat on a high-backed kitchen stool in the center of the room. Stripped to the waist, his hands were bound tightly behind his back, both ankles tied to the legs of the stool. One of his guards was sprawled on the living room sofa, while the other stood by the window browsing a glossy magazine.

  Russ stood in front of Granger. “Seriously, Ned, I don’t want to do this,” he said, opening up the conversation. “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? The blood, the broken bones, the terrifying screams. To be honest, I’m squeamish about that kind of stuff.”

  “Sounds like Mason gave you a bum deal,” Granger replied. “If it makes you feel better, we can swap places. I don’t mind.”

  Russ chuckled. “Why Ned, you got a sense of humor after all. Don’t think I noticed it before. All right, down to business. Like Mason told you, we need information on Camp Benton’s perimeter defenses. How about we start off with how many guards will be posted tonight, and where they’ll be placed. After that, we’ll move onto where you think is the best point for us to attack.”

  Granger snorted. “You’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to tell you that.”

  “Why does something tell me it’s you that’s going to be out of your mind pretty soon?” Russ paused a moment. “I wasn’t kidding about being squeamish. Bearing that in mind, I thought we might go about this interrogation in a less violent manner.”

  He walked across to the far side of the room and picked up a plastic watering can and a large piece cloth, h
olding them up for Granger to see. “You have any idea how easily these two household items can be used to extract information from a person?”

  Granger stared at him, frozen faced. He knew exactly how effective the form of torture Russ referred to was. It had been used for centuries all over the world. Long before 9/11, US soldiers in Vietnam had used it to extract information from the Viet Cong, and vice versa.

  “It’s called waterboarding,” Russ continued, walking back over to him. “Funny thing is, back when I first read about it during the whole Gitmo thing, it fascinated me. So I spent time researching it on the Internet. You know, the way you do.”

  “The way sick puppies do, you mean.”

  Russ chuckled. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Point is, never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I’d get the opportunity to waterboard somebody myself one day. Yet look at me, look at you, in a world gone to hell. Funny isn’t it?”

  “Hilarious,” Granger replied.

  “Did you know Sheik Mohammed, al Qaida’s 9/11 mastermind, lasted only two minutes when the CIA used this technique on him? Bawled like a baby, begging to tell them everything.” Russ stared at Granger. “It’ll be interesting to see if you cry like a baby. You don’t seem the type. Then again, neither did the sheik.”

  Granger stared at him contemptuously. “You wouldn’t last ten seconds. If you were in my shoes, you’d already have wet your pants by now.”

  Russ leered at him. “Unfortunately for you, that’s never going to happen, is it?” He waved over to the guards. “If my two assistants could join me please?”

  The two guards stared at each other, annoyed frowns on their faces. They came over to stand on either side of Granger.

  “Tip his chair all the way back,” Russ ordered them. “Slowly now.”

  The men gripped Granger by each shoulder and lowered him to the floor while Russ walked over to the sofa and grabbed a couple of cushions. He brought them back and placed one under each stool leg so that Granger’s head tilted back at an angle. “Works best this way, if I remember right.”

  Everything went dark when Russ placed the cloth over Granger’s forehead so that it covered his eyes, nose, and mouth. Somebody held the other side of it firmly while another pressed down on his chest. A moment later, water ran over his face and rushed up inside his nostrils.

  He held his breath for as long as he could, leading to a feeling of being smothered. Finally, he was forced to breathe, and immediately sucked water into his lungs. A feeling of terror enveloped him and he felt himself drowning. Desperate, he tried to expel the water, but was forced to inhale even more.

  On his next breath, he started gagging when food material traveled up his esophagus. It was how many victims of waterboarding died—from aspiration of their own vomitus.

  The cloth was removed and the hands holding him lifted off him. Coughing and spluttering, Granger leaned over and heaved up water and vomit onto the floor.

  “Holy shit!” Russ exclaimed.

  Seconds later, before he’d even had a chance to recover, Russ nodded to the guards and the two men pushed Granger down again. “All right, Ned. Ready for round two? Ding, ding!”

  “Stop, I’ll tell you everything!” Granger cried out hoarsely. His mind raced, trying to remember exactly what he planned on divulging to Russ. “Just don’t—”

  Russ grinned wickedly. “Sorry, but they say you should do the procedure at least twice if you want to get the real truth from a person. Besides, I need to see this one more time.”

  Granger had just enough time to collect a deep breath before the room went dark again. The next moment, the water poured over his face. Soon his lungs would burst, and he would be forced to inhale it once more. His entire body shuddered.

  Behind him, there was the sound of footsteps in the hallway. Granger heard the door slam open, and immediately the hands that held him down lifted.

  “What the hell!” Russ cried out.

  Several pistol shots rang out in quick succession. Lying on his back, Granger shook his head vigorously from side to side until the cloth slid off his face. Sucking in a mouthful of air, wild-eyed, he looked around the room.

  To either side of him, the two guards lay motionless on the floor. Standing next to them, an open-mouthed Russ held both hands in the air. “Please…don’t shoot,” he whimpered.

  Granger turned his head to see the lanky figures of Henry Perter, Kit Halpern, John Rollins, and two other men step into the room.

  “Ned, you all right?” Perter asked, rushing over to him. He knelt beside him and, with a knife, began to slice off the nylon ropes that bound him to the chair.

  “I’m fine. Never happier to see you, old friend.”

  Perter stared down at him, relief flooding his face. He grinned. “I believe that’s what they call ‘just in the nick of time.’” Offering a hand, he lifted Granger to his feet.

  Granger turned to face Russ, who wore a look of complete shock. “What was that you said about how you would never be in my shoes?” he asked. He leaned over and picked up the watering can. “Come on, Hank, let’s go. I want to see how many seconds it takes for this weasel to bawl like a baby. Not long, I suspect.”

  CHAPTER 28

  By now, Billy had become used to his solitary existence. Most days passed by fine, so long as he didn’t dwell on things too much, especially the day he dragged his parents up to the ditch and set them alight. God, how he wished he hadn’t turned around that one last time to gaze down at his mother’s ravaged face as her hair crackled in the flames. It was an image etched indelibly in his mind.

  It was nighttime, though, that brought the terrors, when his defenseless mind became besieged by nightmares and he would wake up from his own screaming, covered in a thick film of sweat. Often, he would sleep under his bed, his shotgun beside him, until the first tendrils of a new dawn crept in through his window. Sometimes it was the only way he could deal with things, and stop himself getting spooked by the loneliness of it all.

  ***

  After lunch, Billy strolled up the garden path and made his way through the fruit bushes to where the chicken tractor sat parked in the shade of an apple tree. It was built out of old pallets, plywood, and chicken wire. In it were three roosters and fifteen hens. There were Welsummers, Orpingtons, and Plymouth Rocks that between them laid beautiful brown, pink, and speckled eggs.

  He unlatched the mesh panel door and stepped inside. After several efforts, he managed to grab a twelve-week-old Orpington, a breed his father liked to select for eating. Although there was still some meat left in the pantry, it was better he kept what remained for emergencies. Today he would take the step that he’d always known he would have to take.

  Although he had never slaughtered an animal before, he’d watched his father do it many times. His father felt that Billy should be exposed to the realities of life at an early age, and a few days after his tenth birthday, he’d brought him into the shed where the farm’s livestock was butchered.

  “People have become too removed from the food chain,” his father told him as he expertly killed and gutted a rabbit for dinner that evening. “It’s led to disgraceful practices at factory farms where the animals are treated terribly. Here at Willow Spring, we raise and slaughter our livestock humanely, and know that the meat we put on the table is clean and healthy.”

  Today, Billy wouldn’t kill a rabbit. A rabbit displayed fear far too similar to that of a human for him to bear. Watching his father chop a chicken’s head off, however, didn’t affect him nearly as much. Besides, roast chicken was his favorite dinner.

  Locking the tractor door, he wrapped his arm tightly around the chicken and strode across the garden to the butchering shed. Inside, the water he’d put on earlier was coming to a boil, and he switched the propane burner off.

  He grabbed a plastic feed bag and put the chicken inside it, thrusting its head out through a hole cut in one corner. That way, it was easier to hold the bird still, and it wouldn’t flop aroun
d and bruise the meat while he killed it.

  He took it over to the corner of the shed where a tree stump, which served as the chopping block, sat on the floor. Lying the bird’s head down on it, he picked up the axe resting against the stump and mumbled a few words. Words he was never entirely sure what his father meant by. Something about asking forgiveness for taking the animal’s life, and that its body would go to good use.

  It was part of an ancient Cherokee ritual. The Cherokee were woodland Indians who’d controlled vast territories of Georgia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas. They’d hunted a variety of different animals: deer, fox, rabbit, turkey, even bear, his father had told him, and respected nature, using every part of an animal’s body after they killed it. At Willow Spring Farm, Billy’s father had liked to do the same.

  Holding the chicken firmly with his left hand, Billy raised the axe. The axe head was sharp. With one deft stroke, he severed the bird’s head, then dropped the axe to the floor. Grabbing the bird firmly with both hands, he held onto it until its reflexes finally stopped. He let go and breathed a sigh of relief. That had gone better than he’d expected.

  He pulled the chicken out of the bag by its legs, walked over to the pot, and dropped it into the scalding water, dunking it several times before testing a couple of feathers. After the fifth dunk, they slid out without resistance.

  He strung the bird up from a nylon cord that hung from one of the rafters. Placing a metal bucket underneath it, he began the process of plucking it. The feathers all came off easily and it took no more than a few minutes. He rinsed off the carcass and placed it back on the block for evisceration, as his father called it.

  At the joint of the leg, he cut off the feet with a narrow-bladed skinning knife, then cut around the opening of the neck, pulled out the vent-the part where the chicken held its food. Turning the carcass around, he made a larger cut and pulled out the intestines and organs, dropping everything into the bucket.