The old man started coughing then, a harsh sound that I could feel deep in my own chest. He fumbled for a sip of water, but it seemed to make the coughing worse. I noticed that both of his hands were shaking now and his face had gone pale.
I was just getting up from my chair to call for help when Elizabeth hurried into the room. “Here, try this.” She held a baby blue breath-inhaler to his mouth. He immediately closed his lips around it and she pushed the button. There was a hissing sound, and when she pulled the inhaler away from his mouth, the old man’s coughing had stopped. He sat in his rocking chair, eyes closed, taking slow and steady breaths. After a moment: “Thank you, darling. I needed that.”
“You need to rest. I knew all this would be too much. You need to—”
“You know who you sound like, don’t you?”
She smiled in spite of herself, and I think that is the moment I fell in love with her. “I sound like Mom.”
“Right as rain. Spitting image.”
“Don’t try to sweet talk me, mister. It’s not going to work this time.”
“Ain’t sweet talking anyone. Just telling the truth.” He turned in my direction. “Right, friend?”
I was still smiling at Elizabeth. I couldn’t help it. “Right.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “Dad, I really think you should—”
“What I need is for you and my new friend here to help me out onto the porch so I can finish this story and eat me some supper.”
So, that’s what we did.
It’s not easy to kill a man. But that’s what we did that night. All six of them.
My plan all along had been for Joseph and me to start intercepting their raiding parties and to return what they had stolen to the folks they had taken it from. If those folks couldn’t be found, and quickly, then we would bring the supplies back to town for ourselves.
That first time was an accident the way it happened.
The next dozen or so times were not.
We learned how to set up an ambush; how to flank an enemy with superior numbers and firepower; how to booby trap a trail; how to strike fast and disappear into the wilderness without leaving a trace of our passage.
And we learned how to kill without mercy when necessary. It never got easier and I never learned to like it, like some men did, but for a school teacher, I found that I was extraordinarily good at it. I had a steady hand and a true aim.
Joseph and I learned to trust each other with our lives—and to believe that what we were doing had purpose and meaning.
We took back food and water. We took back weapons and ammunition. We took back hope. And, all of this, we either gave to others in need or we hauled it back to town for our own.
It was months before the higher powers at Camelot figured out what was happening, and by then, it was too late.
“So that’s when the stories started? That’s when they started calling you Robin Hood?”
There was a nice breeze on the porch. The setting sun felt warm on my face.
“Some folks started with that nonsense, yes. But that’s all it was.”
The old man was propped up on a straight back chair, ankles crossed on the ground, a thick blanket thrown over his lap. Most of the color had returned to his face.
“’Course, the fact that it was nonsense didn’t stop me from calling Joseph ‘Little John’; just to get a rise outta him. It worked, too.”
“The two of you became legends…”
He scowled at that. “For a lot of survivors, we represented hope and maybe some goodness left in this world. But that’s all it was. Yes, we took from the haves and gave to the have-nots. But that’s where any comparison stopped.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, looking up from my notebook.
“The Robin Hood in the movies and books never did much killing. He fought with the evil sheriff and he stole from the rich to give to the poor and he got the beautiful Lady Marion and all that business; but he did it all with a swashbuckling smirk on his face and a fancy little kick to his step. Errol Flynn in green girlie tights.
“But this was real life. It was dirty and bloody and just plain ugly most of the time.”
I didn’t say anything. Just stared at him.
“Sure, we made a lot of people happy, even saved some lives, but it cost us. I wasn’t there the night my Annie passed on. Elizabeth held her hand as she drew her final breath, but her other hand was empty. Instead, I was running around in the valley helping strangers I would never see again. I still have nightmares about some of the things we saw and did. And we lost a lot of good men ourselves. Some of them died in my arms.”
I looked down at my feet. “I’m sorry.”
He waved a hand at me. “What do you have to be sorry for? You weren’t there.”
“I just meant that—”
“I know what you meant. What say you hush and let me finish now?”
After the first half-dozen or so raids, it became too difficult to keep what we were doing a secret.
First of all, we had to keep coming up with stories to explain why we were leaving town and then even more stories to explain where in the heck we were finding all the supplies we were lugging back with us.
Secondly, there were too many people running their mouths by then. After awhile, any stranger that crossed our path was more likely than not to be blabbing about this mysterious Robin Hood fellow and his giant of a companion.
When we finally explained the truth, my wife didn’t speak to me for three straight days. Annie was a sweet old girl, but nastier than a pack of yellow jackets when she was angry. And, boy, could she hold a grudge.
It was Joseph who finally convinced her to forgive me. To this day, I don’t know what he told her, but whatever it was, it worked, and I was forever grateful. Six months later, I would lose her to the sickness. One week Annie was fine; the next, she was gone.
That was just like Joseph, too. He was always keeping the peace in town. He went out of his way to be kind and helpful to folks, and they loved him for it. Especially the children. We called him the Pied Piper, because he always had a line of happy kids trailing behind him wherever he went. He was also the first to step up and volunteer for any job, and he worked twice as hard as any man in town. People respected him. And not just because of his size and strength and willingness to work. He was a good man, with a good heart, and we learned a lot from each other.
As the next few years passed, Joseph and I, along with other men from town, continued the missions—always giving some of what we captured to those less fortunate than us—but over time, we saw less and less of Camelot’s guns-for-hire. We ran across other bad guys now and then, including the group who had ambushed us at Tanner’s cabin all those years earlier, and we took care of them with the same swift and merciless efficiency.
But Camelot remained a quiet mystery.
“Why didn’t you just go to Camelot and see for yourself? Joseph knew the way…”
“We were days away from doing exactly that, Mr. Smartie Pants,” the old man said, adjusting himself in his chair. “When the answer came to us instead.”
On the last day of Spring, a group of nineteen survivors approached town from the Northwest. They carried with them enough supplies for a small army. They said they had been held captive inside a walled city for a number of years and made to work as slaves; but that an uprising had taken place and the soldiers had been overthrown. Much of the city had been burned to the ground, but the warehouses storing food and water and medical supplies had survived. Some folks had decided to stay and rebuild. Others left to find a new place to start over.
We welcomed these newcomers into town, and within a week they had decided to stay. Joseph, as usual, was one of the first to make them feel comfortable in their new home.
Now I reckon I’ve rambled long enough about my life after the bombs, and I doubt you’ve heard what you came for. So, now, I will try to help you, my friend.
The years from then until now
have mercilessly been quiet ones. Very few moments of bloodshed or violence. It seems that people are finally getting tired of fighting each other. Now, we fight only to live. Death and sickness still blanket us like a dark cloak, but there is nothing we can do about that. Each sunrise is a gift. We live or we die. The dirt no longer yields fresh crops the way it once did. No one understands why it suddenly stopped last spring. But the world is like that now. Full of dark mystery and more questions than answers. Some give birth to healthy babies now. Others to monstrosities. Some animals have returned in great numbers. Others have disappeared. One evening, I sit by the fire and my eyes are tired but fine. The next morning, I awake with the sun and I am blind. Again, there seems no reason for any of it.
Your father Joseph died three years ago. He went peacefully on a Thursday evening not far from here. I held his hand and together we stared at the setting sun; Elizabeth held his other hand. The sunlight touched his face one final time, and he smiled that wondrous smile of his and closed his eyes.
I stared at the old man in shock. Tears in my eyes.
“How did you—?”
“I knew from the moment you walked in and sat down and started talking.”
“But how?”
“I lived and breathed with your Daddy for a lot of years. I knew the sound of his voice as well as I knew my own. You sound just like him, son.”
I wiped the tears from my eyes.
“He talked about you, you know. It took him awhile to trust us with your name and your memory, but once he started, he never shut up. He had a favorite story that he told over and over again. I used to love to listen to him talk about you…”
He told me your name was Noah and that your Momma had died when you were just a baby. So, it had always been just the two of you. He said you took care of each other; you and him against the world.
You lived in Baltimore. He was a police officer during the day, a security guard at a factory after you went to sleep each night. He worked hard to earn enough money to send you to a good school outside of the city.
He told me you were away on a field trip with your school the day the bombs fell. A field trip to Washington, D.C. The city had been leveled. He thought you were dead. He’d searched for you for years, just in case, but he’d never found you.
He said you came to him in his dreams, and I believed him. I used to hear him cry out for you in his sleep sometimes when we were on the trail together. It was one of those dark nights, sitting by the fire, that he told me this story…
He said one of your favorite things to do together was watch baseball games before bedtime. Sometimes you would fall asleep, your head on his chest, and he would carry you to bed and kiss you goodnight before heading off to work at the factory.
He told me that for your ninth birthday he surprised you with box seats for the Orioles game. Right behind home plate. He described to me what your face looked like when you walked up the ramp and saw the field in person for the first time.
“It’s so green!” you said. He would always laugh and laugh at that part.
And then he would tell me every single thing you ate during the game. Peanuts and hot dogs and pretzels and ice cream. He remembered everything you said that night. Everything you did.
He said the game went into extra innings and that one of the players fouled off a fastball into the stands and he stood up on his seat and caught it and gave it to you. And you smiled so big and hugged him so tight.
The Orioles beat the Yankees that night, 4-3—and the two of you walked home holding hands and singing silly songs. He said it was the happiest day of his life.
Tears were streaming down my face now, and I made no effort to stop them.
“He remembered…” I said.
The old man leaned forward in his seat, his face drawing close enough to mine that I could smell his breath. “He remembered everything about you, son. He said you were his compass in the night sky.”
I reached down to my side and took something out of my satchel. Placed it in the old man’s hand, so he could feel it. He closed both his hands over it.
“The baseball,” he said with a beautiful smile. Tears slid from his eyes.
He reached over and placed a rough hand behind my neck and pulled me closer until our heads were touching. I felt his tears on my face. I closed my eyes and remembered my father.
We were still sitting like that, the old man and the black giant, when Elizabeth came out onto the porch.
I looked up at the sound of her footsteps and had to smile at the surprised expression on her face.
“Are you two okay?” she asked.
The old man laughed through his tears. “We’re better than okay. Set another plate for supper tonight.”
He took my hand in his and placed the baseball back into my palm. “Joseph’s long lost son has finally come home.”
LAST WORDS
I was alone with him when it happened. Sitting by the window in a shaft of lazy September sunlight reading a paperback. It was after lunch, and the day nurse had just gone downstairs with a plate of fruit and a cup of pudding, both of which were barely touched. He had been dozing most of the morning thanks to his pain meds and hadn’t bothered to wake up enough to eat much. He wasn’t eating much these days even when he was awake.
I marked my page and watched two boys walking on the sidewalk outside, fishing poles perched on their shoulders like rifles, when I heard him whisper something.
I turned to him. “What did you say, Pops?”
His eyes were slits. He could have still been sleeping, but his lips were moving. I got up and walked closer. “You need something?”
A barely perceptible shake of his bald head and then his eyes opened. Cloudy and dull. A snapshot of memory flashed in my mind: this same man leading a conga line at my wedding reception, shirt untucked, tie loosened, those same blue eyes twinkling with mischief and scotch.
“Treasure…hunt,” he whispered.
I smiled through sudden tears. “I remember, Pops. Of course, I do.”
Another shake of his head. A little harder this time.
“Find the map.” He started coughing, his entire body shaking with the effort.
“Here…drink this.” I lifted the cup to his lips.
He took a noisy sip of water and closed his eyes. After a long moment, I thought he was asleep again and started to move away when he whispered, “Find the map. Before they do.”
I stood there and watched his chest rise and fall, rise and fall.
Fifteen minutes later, he was gone.
My mother and father died in a car accident on I-95 the weekend before my seventh birthday. They were on their way home from buying my presents at the mall, and the guilt I felt because of that at age seven is something I have never entirely outgrown.
My grandfather, widowed himself only two years earlier, raised me and my brother. Like many veterans, he was a complicated and proud man. Prone to long stretches of silent thoughtfulness and restlessness, he was also a wonderful storyteller and a man with an amazing and generous heart.
It was my grandfather who gifted me my love of books and the outdoors and classic movies. He was the one who taught me how to fish and swim and throw a curveball. Everything was a lesson to be learned to Pop, but he made it interesting and fun. He was the best teacher I ever had.
I remember one night after a drenching rainstorm, he handed me a flashlight and led me outside to catch nightcrawlers in the back yard. We filled a coffee can and you would have thought he had revealed the secrets of real magic to me that night.
In a way, he did.
And then there were the treasure hunts…
They were my absolute favorite when I was a boy.
My brother, Lee, and I would wake up to find a hand-drawn map on the nightstand between our beds. We would hurry up and get dressed, rush through breakfast and our morning chores, and slam out the screen door into a brilliantly blue summer day to follow the map’s instructions.
The first time we found the map Pops denied involvement and swore that someone else must have snuck into our bedroom under the cover of darkness and left it. Pirates, maybe.
By the time I was ten and Lee was nine, we knew better. But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was the hunt.
The treasure maps would lead us across golden fields and grassy hills, into deep dark woods and along shade-cooled creeks where trout and frogs would chase bugs. We would cross those creeks on moss-covered rocks and follow crumbling stone fences until we eventually spotted the towering oaks or weeping willows or fern-choked gullies that marked our destination.
Soaked with sweat and bursting with excitement, we would set to digging and when our shovels clanged on metal, we would drop to our knees and finish with our hands, racing to unearth our treasure.
Our “treasure” usually ranged from new John D. MacDonald paperbacks to carefully wrapped bags of candy to piles of nickels and dimes and pennies. But sometimes more exotic treasures awaited us: a pair of pocketknives, foreign coins from Pops’ Army days, one time even a genuine Japanese bayonet from the war.
Eventually, as we got older, Lee grew bored with the treasure hunts and disappointed with our findings, and he stopped going. Not me. I never cared what I found buried in the ground. For me, it was the thrill of the hunt.
It wasn’t until I was almost a man that I understood what Pops was doing with these hunts of his. What a gift they were to us. What he was teaching us…
When I called Lee and a handful of other living relatives—a couple of cousins and one sister too far gone senile to remember she actually had a brother—to tell them that Pops had passed away, the conversations were short and devoid of many details. Pops had been sick for awhile, so it wasn’t unexpected news.
Only Lee asked if Pops had said anything on the day he died.
A Long December Page 8
