Naked in the Winter Wind

by Dani Haviland

  The blare of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ ala Woodstock was deafening to me, and I was off to the side of the speakers with rock amplifiers, not getting the complete effect of the full-tilt volume like those in front of me.

  My plan worked. Everyone in the mill arena was covering his ears and looking at the wall that seemed to be the source of the alien noise, the sound of an electric guitar being put through its paces by the master musician and former US Airborne paratrooper, Jimi Hendrix. Even the captain had loosed his grip on Jenny and dropped his knife away from her neck, at least for a second.

  Jenny hadn’t been distracted, though. She had been expecting a sound like she had never heard before and had taken advantage of the captain’s diversion—she was now running, hauling butt away from the area at top speed.

  I looked up and saw Clyde running in to intercept his little sister. Talk about mixed emotions. I was glad she had a protector, but the sight of him still made my stomach churn. It was a gut reaction I had to shut down. I was not willing nor wanting to deal with those feelings now or ever. I scanned the area and saw Jody and Wallace running for the soldiers’ horses. My men each had a rifle, and it looked as if they were planning on cutting off the captain’s retreat.

  Master Simon had wasted no time in leaving. He was already heading back down the road we had come in on. I didn’t see anyone else I knew, though, and that worried me. Then again, if I didn’t see them, nobody else did either.

  But it was too good to be true. One lone soldier was leading Mac and Julian in at gunpoint. Or I guessed that would be at musket muzzle. Either way, they were captured and definitely in harm’s way. I didn’t recognize the soldier, and then realized that this must be the one who was inside with Captain Asshole and had disappeared to take a leak while on watch. One of Sergeant Betz’s men came up beside him to share the captors’ duty, so now they each had a prisoner.

  At this point, I decided to turn off the noise and listen to the proceedings. Everyone stopped at the sudden sound of silence and looked around, but no one commented. I couldn’t help but wonder if they all thought that they had been hallucinating.

  Sergeant Betz straightened his shoulders and walked up to the prisoners. “Who are you?” he asked of Mac first.

  “Mac Donaldson, sir. I was just here to pick up some flour, when this man,” he turned his head back to indicate the first restraining soldier, “and this, this thing in a uniform,” he nodded at the captain, “detained me and my neighbors without cause.”

  Sergeant Betz let a minor smile sneak across his face at the description of Captain Asshole. The prisoner had enough smarts not to call the captain a derogatory name in front of his vanquisher. “And who are you?” he asked Julian.

  “My name is Julian Hart, and I am visiting friends and family in the area. I, too, have been detained without cause.” Julian’s hands were still tied, and it looked as if they had been bound for a long time. They were swollen and deep purple, and if someone didn’t remove the bindings soon, it looked as if his hands would fall off.

  The sergeant saw his hands, too. “Cut him loose,” he commanded the errant soldier. The soldier just looked at him as if he had heard a noise, but wasn’t sure what it was. I didn’t think he wanted to take orders from him.

  That didn’t sit well with Sergeant Betz. He huffed and strode over to Julian, unsheathed his own knife, and cut the bands off of Julian’s hands himself. He looked Julian in the eye—to make sure he was okay, I think—and then flashed recognition. I noticed he recovered quickly, and if Julian had seen it, he didn’t react to it. The sergeant looked at Mac’s hands and saw that he wasn’t bound. He continued with his interrogation.

  “By what right are you detaining these men, soldier?” he asked.

  The still-nameless soldier looked to the captain for direction. The captain, his child-bitten and bloodied hand held close to his chest, strode over, eyes afire as if he was going to enjoy this confrontation. “This man, sergeant,” he spat out the title with intense disgust, “is a deserter from His Majesty’s Service. He is to be brought in and tried for treason.” His smug smile was more tactless than scary.

  I had the distinct impression that he was bluffing. Julian certainly didn’t look threatened by the accusation. He turned to face the captain with an incredulous look on his face. “What?” was all he said, but with complete innocence. Julian was making his accuser squirm and fidget with his complete lack of distress and fear. Even though his face didn’t show it, I was sure Julian was enjoying his captor’s backfired ploy. Now I was positive that the captain was bluffing.

  The sergeant saw the accusation as a sham, too, and came to the rescue. “I don’t think that good manners and proper speech are an indication of either enlistment with or desertion from His Majesty’s Service. Are you a deserter, sir?” the sergeant asked Julian with a gleam in his eye.

  “No, sir, I am not,” replied Julian.

  Julian wasn’t lying. I remembered him saying that he had just chosen his own retirement time, not deserted. He was answering like the honest and respectable gentleman he was.

  “And are you a deserter?” he asked Mac, not even trying to hide the capricious grin on his face.

  “No, sir, I am not,” replied Mac, using the same words and intonation as Julian had. I could just hear him not saying the words ‘I wouldn’t be a part of your stinkin’ army, no way, no how!’ but the insinuation of the sentiment was flashing like a neon sign in his eyes.

  The sergeant looked as if he was getting ready to dismiss the two prisoners when Captain Asshole spoke up, very dryly. “Then you wouldn’t be interested in the reward for catching their friend, the Big Red, then?”

  Sergeant Betz glared at him, almost daring him to try and pull a fast one on him, but the captain remained stoic.

  None of us in our little community had ever heard of a reward for Jody. He was sometimes a nuisance, but the few British soldiers who were left in the area had pretty much turned a blind eye when Jody took to his patriotic preaching. The British were employing the divide-and-conquer tactic, fighting two distinct campaigns. Most of the battles were being fought either further south or far north of us. That left North Carolina as an area of little interest. The local civil disobedience was so minor that it was easier to ignore it than to respond to it.

  The sergeant looked to Julian for his reaction to the reward rumor. I was beginning to believe that these two had a history. Julian’s eyes made the slightest twitch indicating the falsehood of the captain’s accusation.

  The sergeant had seen and believed the answer in Julian’s eyes and decided to run with it. Now it was time for him to spin his own web of deception. He walked in a circle around the prisoners and the two soldiers, as if he were pondering his next chess move. “Oh, that reward,” he deadpanned. “Yes, I did hear that they were paying for the capture of seditious traitors. However, they stopped having any interest in them quite a while back. They are more interested now in catching that scoundrel wearing a British officer’s uniform who has been traveling through the area, illegally collecting taxes, and then keeping them for himself. Come to think of it, you fit his description. What unit did you say you were attached to, sir?”

  Captain Asshole squirmed, chewed his bottom lip, preparing his answer, but before he could reply, Wallace walked out of the woods. All eyes were on the tall, striking young man entering the field of fallacies and fabrications. He stopped ten feet away from the thief who had not only misrepresented himself as a British captain and tax collector, but who had also held him at knifepoint in front of his fiancée.

  “Have you turned over the taxes that you extorted from us,” Wallace asked as he sauntered in closer, his eyes squinted in an intimidating scowl, until he was two feet away, “or have you decided to keep them for yourself?” Quick as a rattlesnake, Wallace reached out and jerked the gold nugget necklace from around the captain’s neck that had been hidden, tucked under his stock, but had fallen out and become visible during his skirm
ish with Jenny the biter.

  The captain lunged forward to take back the necklace, but Wallace took a step to the side, and the thief stumbled forward, landing right in the middle of Jody’s chest. “Ach, taxman, are ye?” Jody asked. “Here,” he said, and launched an uppercut, landing his fist squarely on the bottom of the captain’s chin, knocking him to the ground, senseless. “That’s fer hittin’ the lass.”

  Jenny ran up to the prone, momentarily incapacitated molester, and kicked him hard in the head. “Yeah, and this is for hitting Big Red.”

  “Here, here,” the sergeant said, arms spread out defensively, trying to bring order to the mini melee and keep more blows from being struck. “Miss, don’t kick a man when he’s down, verstehst? It is very unladylike. Besides, I think he’s had enough.”

  Sergeant Betz called over four of his men, and then turned his attention to Wallace and Jody. “Is this the man who has been taking goods from the local residents under the guise of a tax for His Majesty?”

  Before Wallace could give an affirmative answer, Captain Asshole, flat on his back, sprawled out like a snow angel on a dirt canvas, screamed, “He’s lying.” He rolled over and scrambled to bring his knees beneath him, so he could stand and face his accuser with some trace of dignity.

  But it was too late for that. A quick scan of the gathering crowd showed that all the soldiers were disgusted with him. It was time for a plan B. Captain Asshole looked over and saw that his quick-thinking cohort had come from the back of the group and grabbed little Jenny, and was twisting her arm up behind her back.

  “Well, I think I’ll leave you all to finish this party by yourselves,” the captain said as he picked up his black silk-trimmed tricorn hat from the ground, knocking the dust from it onto his britches. He walked tall, full of self-assurance, toward the little beauty, and the beast who had her contorted into submission.

  Well, sort of submission. He was controlling her like a marionette by her left arm, but he couldn’t control her mouth. “Let go of me, you rotten pig fornicator! I’ll have my brothers cut out your liver and eat it for supper, you no-good privy dweller!”

  Captain Asshole walked up to her and, without even pausing, swatted her across the face, and continued his trek to the horses. “Let’s go, Ronald,” he said, “and for God’s sake, keep that little bitch quiet!” Then he stopped, waited a moment as if he were making a decision, and turned to face all the soldiers who were standing with the sergeant.

  “Any man here who is tired of not getting paid by His Majesty, you’re welcome to come with us. There’s a lot to be had out there in the way of taxes. Just grab your horse and follow along.”

  I noticed two of the sergeant’s men looking at each other, eyebrows raised, silently deciding to take the offer. I didn’t know times were tough for the British, too. I thought the Americans were the only ones starving. They both shouldered their muskets and walked toward their horses.

  “Ain’t someone gonna do somethin’?” a voice shouted from the back of the mill. It looked like a two-headed monster rushing in to the commotion. It was Clyde, and he was holding up Clayton—or they were holding each other up. Panicked, they were running up to the sergeant like two men in a three-legged race.

  “Halt!” the sergeant called to the deserters and the kidnapping thieves who were hauling away Jenny. The erstwhile soldiers ignored his command. They kept walking, not even turning around, confident that they carried the ‘get out of trouble free’ ticket.

  “Take aim, men,” the sergeant ordered his remaining squad. They fixed their rifles on the captain and his crew, and waited for their next command.

  Captain Asshole stopped and turned to face the militia. Ronald stopped too, his fist held high, still wrapped around Jenny’s wrist, controlling her by her dislocated arm. She was in pain, had to be by the way she was almost turned upside down by her captor. Her jaws were clenched in hatred, and tears streaked through the dirt on her face, but there was no sobbing. Her eyes—squinted tight and thin—glared at Private Ronald. She was a time bomb ready to explode.

  I was still watching the proceedings from the patch of woods across the way. Wallace, Jody, and Julian were gone—or at least weren’t visible. All I could see was the standoff between the sergeant and his loyal men, and the cowards, ready to mount their steeds to unimpeded freedom and larceny. Captain Asshole grabbed Jenny from Ronald. “Go ahead; I’ll catch up with you in a minute. This won’t take long.”

  The captain had grabbed Jenny’s uninjured arm. He was holding it up and back high behind her, her other arm now hanging limp and useless at her side. “If you want to see her again—alive that is—you’ll let us go and not follow.” His grinning, greasy face reflected the bloated pride he had in his blank check. He was going to have his freedom and be able to do whatever he wanted with the little girl.

  Bang! Bang! Bang! I changed my focus from her to the shots being fired. Evidently the sergeant didn’t take too kindly to his men deserting. His remaining soldiers were shooting at the deserters as they tried to get to their horses. I turned back and saw the captain running to join them, dragging the uncooperative and cursing Jenny behind him. He stopped, though, when he heard a voice call out.

  Wallace’s voice boomed, “Runnin’ away like a sissy, are ye?”

  I noticed that he had assumed the Highland accent, and then realized why. He was in warrior mode.

  I didn’t want to think it was vengeance, but it could have been. I preferred to think that it was the fighting Pomeroy blood rising in response to the stimulus of the battle. His fathers and an innocent—weren’t they all at that age?—little girl had just been attacked. That would be enough to call up those hormones—or whatever they were. If it had only been pride calling, and he was still angry about being humiliated when the taxman had come to call… Well, I just couldn’t believe that’s what it was. I knew he was more of a man than that.

  Wallace and the captain were the center of everyone’s attention now. But what were they going to do? Fight hand to hand? Neither one was armed, as far I could see. The captain’s boot knife was still lying on the ground where he had dropped it earlier, when Jimi Hendrix had come to Jenny’s rescue. I scanned the trees and saw the flash of a rifle barrel, then another one. It appeared that Julian and Jody had Wallace’s back. I’d have to remember later to tell them to put soot on their sights and barrels so they didn’t reflect light.

  “Did your wife let you go out all by yourself? Or is she back there,” the captain asked, cocking his head to where I was, “making sure you don’t do anything to embarrass her? Oh, she’s a pretty one, all right, but a little old for my tastes.”

  He had to be bluffing about knowing where I was. I doubted that he knew I had left our house, much less that I was anywhere near here.

  Wallace was grim, and hopefully he wasn’t letting the taunts get under his skin. “Let the lass go,” he said, his voice low, slow, and commanding. Then he suddenly growled, “Now!” startling everyone.

  All but the captain. He was too sure of himself to heed the order from the young, apparently non-military male. “Oh, you want a little of this, do you?” he taunted as he pulled on Jenny’s arm, causing her to let out an unintentional squeak. “I don’t think so. She’s mine, and she’s coming with me. And if you try to get her, I’ll let you have her, all right. You can have her a little bit at a time.” He sneered as he tilted his leg sideways to show off the knife in his other boot. “She won’t need all her fingers or toes for what I want her for. Which end do you want me to start on?”

  It was now time…time for the second, and hopefully the last, act of this drama. I had no way of knowing whether this would be a victory or a tragedy, but I couldn’t stand by and let him take her. A finger slide, a couple of taps, a fast forward, and then the sky was singing, “And I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free,” voiced by 21st century singer Lee Greenwood.

  This time there were words, very loud, clear, passionate, and meani
ngful words, and not just strange noises, coming from the side of the mill. Jenny took advantage of the captain’s momentary shock and slackened arm, and did a pirouette to face her captor. She pulled back, and with every pound of her body and ton of her anger, head-butted him right in the crotch. He reflexively let go of her hand and grabbed his jewels while she ducked and ran like a rabbit from a fox.

  At first, she headed toward the sergeant and his men. Then she saw her brothers pointing towards an opening in the woods. She veered left and took off in that direction, her green calico smock twisted and flying loose, like the tail of a kite.

  The words ‘God bless the U S AAAay’ were now blaring, but the captain was oblivious to everything and everyone around him. He was determined that he would have the little spitfire, Jenny. He gingerly regained his posture and, with eyes focused on his target, began half-limping, half-running toward the fleeing girl. He was obsessed with her, and not even the presence of muskets, men, and loud music distracted him. Jenny tripped on the front of her frock and stumbled, slowing her pace in order to find her feet. “Stop right there,” he yelled at her.

  Yeah, right, as if she would even consider listening to what he told her to do. I reached over and turned off the music, which was now distracting me in a negative way, and put the smartphone/media player contraption back into my pocket.

  I saw the whole scene opening in front of me. The captain was zeroing in on her, like a hawk on a field mouse. She was back on her feet and shifting her weight, side-to-side, trying to decide which was the best escape route. Jody was coming in with nothing but his dirk from the left, and Clyde was running interception from the right. Jenny didn’t see Clyde, so ran towards Jody.

  Captain Asshole stopped, coolly and vindictively, pulled his silver pistol from his belt, held it over his forearm. Aimed. And fired.