I stood in the dark feeling confused and angry. And lost.
Looking up at the sky again, I saw a small gap had opened in the clouds. For a moment, I could see one bright star.
Then the star disappeared behind the clouds.
CHAPTER 19
The fire kept getting bigger. After the first fuel truck had erupted into flames, the ones on either side went. Then every few seconds something new exploded, expanding and feeding the fire. It had been a quiet night, the first chill of fall in the air. Now there was only glaring light and a roar that filled your chest. It was as though Hell had broken through the crust of the earth and was free to rage.
It was our doing. We had set Hell free.
And it was Jane’s idea.
We had ambushed a convoy of trucks on its way to a big camp north of Waynesville, where the soldiers kept their trucks and supplies. We pulled down a tree, blocking the road. When the soldiers stopped to move the tree, we started shooting.
But this time we shot at them from only one side of the road. We wanted them all to be looking one way because one of our men was hiding in the brush on the far side. When he was sure he couldn’t be seen, he crawled out and put one of Carl’s bombs underneath a truck. The bomb had a clock. We hoped it would go off only when the truck reached the camp. When this was done, we pulled back, letting the soldiers think they had run us off. After they had cleared the road, they drove on to Waynesville.
We were miles away on a mountainside, looking out at the town, when the bomb went off. Then other explosions and fires followed. I knew soldiers had to be dying down there, torn apart by explosions, roasted alive and devoured by the flames. That was as terrible a way to die as I could imagine. I told myself they deserved this, and worse. I tried to feel nothing for them. But I knew most of them were not the soldiers who raped and killed. Most dying in the flames just cooked meals, fixed trucks, or handed out supplies. They had been forced into the Government’s army, forced to come to our mountains. They probably just wanted to go home.
With each new explosion, each roaring expansion of the fire, I had to force myself not to flinch. But when I looked at Jane, I saw a kind of joy in her face as the Government’s tools of war were consumed, as its power to hurt our people was weakened.
It was her triumph. But it was not her only triumph.
Campbell had gotten the explosives, and other things Carl needed, from soldiers trading for whiskey and gold. That had taken almost a month. Carl used the time to teach a handful of men about explosives. A couple times a day, you would hear a loud “Whump!” sound come out of woods, and then the sound of a tree crashing to the ground. That was how Carl had them practice, putting some explosive on a tree and setting it off, shattering the trunk. Then one day Carl and his men were gone. They had gone to strike the big road. And they did it right. Bridges over the Pigeon River and other streams were shattered, collapsing into the water below. In a few places, huge mounds of rock, earth, and trees were knocked from the mountains, blocking the road.
The damage meant the government trucks couldn’t come up the road anymore, so a lot of the soldiers went back to their camps. Their airplanes circled overhead looking at what we had done. You could almost feel the whole government army stopped in its tracks, like a bear surprised by a skunk, considering, puzzling about what to do next, and thinking about scuttling backward. That’s what we hoped.
This was all Jane’s doing. If she hadn’t found Carl, nothing would have changed. But Jane wanted to do more than make the soldier stop, or even retreat. She wanted to make them pay for what they had done to us. She said the Spirit had told her that we must attack the Waynesville camp. The bomb was a way to scare the soldiers, to let them know even in their big camps, with fences and machine guns all around, they weren’t going to be safe. Not as long as they were near our land. Jane just hoped the bomb would explode, destroying that truck. She didn’t expect other explosions. She didn’t expect anything to catch fire. She didn’t expect it to spread. Not that she told us anyway.
The fire grew until it reached boxes of ammunition, bombs, and shells. The bullets went off like popping corn over a campfire, the tracer rounds going in all directions. Then the bombs and shells started exploding, throwing burning debris high into the air.
“It’s like the fireworks Grandpa used to talk about,” Riley shouted. “Fireworks for Independence Day.”
“This is our Independence Day!” Jane shouted to the men with us. She held David Winslow’s rifle above her head, and they cheered.
The cheering died when the flaming debris, spread by a wind, came down on Waynesville. Fires started on roofs and in trees. The wind spread the flames to more buildings. Some debris hit a big church with a tall steeple in the middle of town. The steeple caught fire. A finger of fire pointing at the sky. Then it collapsed, falling onto another building, spreading the fire.
In the time before the Plague, there would have been men to fight such fires. Now, there were none. We could do nothing. The soldiers could do nothing. The fires would just burn. Most houses, of course, had been empty since the Plague. But some people still lived there. Their homes were on fire. Some were dying. And no one would help them.
After a while, the explosions stopped, and the fire settled down to a steady burning, roaring and sending up a vast heaving cloud of black smoke, pushed southward by the wind. The stink of it made me feel sick, and I sat down. I tried to close my eyes and shut it out, but I couldn’t. I had to look at it.
I looked until I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Riley. “Come on,” he said.
I nodded and got to my feet. I saw our men had already turned away and were making their way up and over the mountain. Riley, Jane, and I were the last to go.
Jane was still standing, her back to us, looking out at the fire and smoke.
“Jane?” Riley said.
As she turned toward us, I expected to see tears of grief. But she was smiling. She looked at us for a moment and nodded. After one last look toward the fire, she started making her way up the slope toward Riley and me. I stepped in front of her, blocking her path.
“What about those people?” I said. “We just burned their homes. We’ve taken everything they had. Don’t you understand? Winter’s coming. Did the Spirit show you how they’ll stay warm till spring? Did the Spirit show you what they’ll eat? Did the Spirit show you that?”
I didn’t realize I had taken a step toward Jane and was shouting at her until Riley put a hand on my shoulder.
I shrugged off his hand.
“God has a plan,” she said.
“Plan!? You’re saying God did this?”
“God has a plan, and I’m His instrument.” Then she just stepped around me and went up the slope. I watched her go. That was all the answer I would get from her.
Riley stood with me for a moment. “Come on,” he said and started to follow Jane. But I remained. And watching the smoke boiling up toward heaven, I wondered what else God had planned.
CHAPTER 20
It took us three days to get to Campbell, to tell him about Waynesville. Of course, he already knew some of it. News like that travels fast.
Campbell sat with his back against a tree while Jane told him about the ambush, the bomb, the explosions, and the fire. Even then, days later, she was still excited, happy about it. What we had done to those folks in Waynesville still didn’t bother her.
Now and then, Campbell would ask a question. Mostly, he just nodded, letting her talk. When she was done, he thanked her and promised to let Winslow know.
She stood up and told him that she was sure the soldiers would leave us alone now.
“Hope you’re right,” he said. “We’ll see.”
They looked at one another like traders striking a deal. From the beginning that was how it had been between them. Campbell always had taken her serious. But he had never treated her like someone who had walked off a page of the Bible. Too many of us, me included, had made that mistake.
Jane walked away. Riley got up, stretched, and followed. But after a few steps, he saw I was staying. He stopped and raised one eyebrow in that way he had. I nodded to him. He understood I would explain later.
I turned back to Campbell. He looked more worn down, older and thinner, than I remembered.
“Something on your mind?” he said, putting his head back against the tree.
That’s when I told him about wanting to do something else, anything other than following Jane around.
“Why?” he said.
“Rather not say.”
“Not good enough. Tell me.”
So I told him about Waynesville, about how Jane had been. I didn’t say anything about what I was thinking about God. He might understand. He might not. But that was between God and me.
“Fire was an accident,” he said. “War’s full of accidents.”
“That’s right, Colonel. We didn’t plan on burning out those folks. She just didn’t give a damn that it happened. All she could see was what we did to the soldiers.”
“So?”
“So that’s crazy. And I’ve had enough of crazy.”
“I see,” he said. “Does Jane know this?”
“We ain’t spoken since Waynesville, and I don’t care. If she can’t figure it out, let God tell her.”
This seemed to amuse him.
“What do you want to do?” he said.
“Anything. Send me to another unit. Put me on guard duty here. Anything.”
“How long since you been home?”
I was surprised by the question. “My whole time in the militia. Three years.”
“So you’ve done your three years.”
“Just about. But I didn’t think that mattered anymore, not with the war and all.”
“True enough. If the war goes on, we’ll need every man. But we can spare you for a bit. How about a month?”
I was stunned, but I managed to nod. From what I had heard, there hadn’t been any trouble near home. It was too far away from the big road for the soldiers to bother. But I didn’t know, not for a fact.
Campbell had someone fetch him a pencil and paper. He wrote out a note giving me leave and signed it. He handed it to me and told me to get going. I thanked him and started walking away.
“Now, if the war ends,” he said, “no need to hurry back.”
If the war ends? I thought.
I explained all this to Riley. He scratched his beard and said, “Well damn, I’d like to go up home. Maybe I oughta get pissed at Jane too.”
“Hate to be running out on you,” I said.
“Don’t matter none.”
It did matter, but it was too late to be changing my mind.
We didn’t say anything as I packed my things and retied my bedroll. Riley just leaned against a tree, looking down. He said, “Gonna say anything to Jane?”
I shook my head. I had that hollow sick feeling you get when you know, know for a fact, what you ought to do. But you just won’t goddamn do it.
Riley looked like he wanted to talk me out of it, but that wasn’t his way.
“Anything I should say to her for you?” he said.
I thought about this. Part of me wanted to say something hard and mean. But I couldn’t put that on Riley.
“Tell her to be careful,” I said.
Riley laughed. “Oh yeah, that’ll do a whole lot of good.”
It was time to go. I stuck out my hand. He shook it. We nodded to one another. Then I turned and walked off.
A few minutes later, I was picking my way down a slope through the trees. I heard a noise behind me and turned. It was Jane. She was standing up the slope about twenty yards away looking down at me. Her face didn’t give anything away. I just had that hollow feeling again. But I was set on not going to her. Let her come to me.
She raised one hand and held it still. I did the same. Then she turned and headed back uphill. I stood, watching her go. She soon disappeared in the trees. For a little while, I could hear her, the sound fading until all I could hear was a light wind in the trees. Only then did I realize I still had my hand up. Feeling foolish, I put it down and started walking home.
CHAPTER 21
It was strange waking up for the first time in my old bed, in the room I had shared with my brother back when we were boys, back when he was alive.
There was a lot of sunlight in the room. That meant my parents had let me sleep well into the morning. I had arrived late the night before, and both of them had stayed up making a fuss over me and feeding me. But I knew they had been up since dawn, working. That was their way. Tomorrow, I would be up at dawn too.
Sitting up and putting my feet on the old wood floor, I looked around. I had been too tired for that last night. The things of my boyhood lay about, dusty and half-forgotten: A collection of rocks and rusting machine parts that I had found. The claw of a black bear my father had killed. My Bible, a dictionary, and a few other books.
Tacked up on the wall was a picture cut from an old magazine. Curling at the edges and fading, the picture showed the Earth, the whole thing, hanging like a blue and white ball in the blackness of space. The picture had been made when my grandfather was young, when men had traveled out to the moon.
I sat there for a while, my feet getting cold, looking at my things. I tried to recall who I had been before the dust had settled on everything. I couldn’t do it. Whoever I had been was like a person in a made-up story that I didn’t remember well.
I got up and began putting on my clothes. As I buttoned my shirt, I looked across the room at my brother’s bed. My mother kept it neater than my brother ever had. Little trace of him remained in the room. I tried to picture him sitting on the edge of the bed, playing that beat-up old harmonica he had found, but I couldn’t get his face clear in my mind. I hadn’t seen him for a long time, since before I had gone to the militia.
While I was away, he married Maggie, and they moved into a little cabin just up the road. The cabin where he was buried. It would be my cabin when I married her. If I married her.
I would have to visit Maggie. Soon. The thought of it made me nervous. It didn’t help, of course, that I had never been with a woman.
I had come close once. Sort of. Well, not really. A few months before I went to the militia, there had been this one time with a girl at Saturday night dance. Even though folks kept an eye on the boys and girls our age, we each managed to slip out into the woods. We kissed, and she rubbed up against me, pressing against my thing until I was near crazy. But then she pushed me away and ran off, laughing, back into the dance. I guess it was a kind of game to her. I couldn’t follow, of course, not the way I was sticking out just then. It took me a while to calm down, and by then it was about time to go home. When I saw the girl in church the next morning, she acted like nothing had happened.
So that was my experience with women, with girls anyway. That and the confused daydreaming I had done about this one and that one, including Jane. Of course, I knew what men and women did when they were married. When you grow up on a farm, breeding animals, how babies get made is no great mystery. But knowing what’s done is one thing and doing it is another. And doing it with your brother’s widow is yet another.
I looked up at the picture I had tacked to the wall and wished I could be that far away from this old world.
The harvest was already in, but there was plenty to do to get ready for winter. Mostly, I chopped and hauled wood. As I worked, I couldn’t help thinking about the things I had seen, about Jane and Riley. It was strange not being able to turn to Riley and say what was on my mind. For all I knew, Jane or Riley could be dead now. I thought some about the blue-eyed man too, even though I tried not to. The old dream of him still hadn’t come back, but somehow I felt him close by, waiting for me.
My parents only asked about the war in a general way, not what I had done, or about Jane. I’m sure they had heard things and wanted to know. They figured I would talk about all that when I nee
ded to, when I was ready. And if I was never ready, then that was how it would be. It wasn’t their way to push me about the past, only the future.
After two days at home, my clothes were clean and patched up nice, and I had made a good pile of firewood. At dinner, my mother asked when I was going to see Maggie. And my brother’s grave. I tried to put it off, talking about all the things to be done before the winter. All of that was true enough, but my mother was no fool.
“Nonsense,” she said, pushing back from the table and standing up. She looked down at me. “You’ll go tomorrow.” Then she started clearing the table.
My mother was a reasonable woman. She tended to hear folks out before making up her mind. But when she got that certain tone in her voice, you knew she had drawn a line, and you had best toe it.
It was strange to find myself back in my old seat at the kitchen table, getting scolded. It made me angry. I sat forward and put my fists on the table. “I’m not a boy anymore,” I said.
“Then don’t act like one,” she said, her back to me as she cleared off the dishes into the slop bucket.
This made me even angrier, but the fight went out of me when I looked over at my father. As he loaded up his pipe, he just gave me a wink.
I leaned back in my chair and folded my arms across my chest. The matter was settled. I would go tomorrow.
When Maggie opened the door, she said, “You expecting trouble?”
I was puzzled. Then she pointed to the rifle in my right hand. Carrying it had become as much a habit as wearing my britches. But Maggie wasn’t used to such things.
“Sorry,” I said, embarrassed.
“Come on then. You can leave it by the door.”
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