Z for Zachariah

by Роберт C. О Брайен

  I cut a sapling for a pole, found some worms under a log and went fishing. I would have chicken for dinner and, with luck, fish for breakfast.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  August 4th (continued)

  By four o’clock I had caught and cleaned three middle-sized fish. From the pond as I sat I could look down on the field of wheat, a darker green acre in the pasture that stretched towards the gap. It was not, after all, vitally important that it be fertilized today—or at all. We were not trying for a real wheat crop, but only a harvest of seeds, and it would surely produce that, at least. I put the fish on a string and walked to the house. I placed his share, one and a half fish, on the back porch, hoping he was watching so he would know to pick them up. The cow was waiting to be milked and fed, but gave only half a can of milk—less each day, but better than none, which was what it would be soon. I turned her back out to pasture, closed the barn door, put the top on my can and walked back to the store, through for the day.

  I had reached it and was debating which way to go when I heard the tractor engine, faint in the distance. It was earlier than he had used it the other times, and I wondered why. It sputtered slowly for a couple of minutes, and then suddenly smoothed out and was running fast. It got louder very quickly. He was on the road, and was coming this way at top speed.

  I debated no longer, but made a dash up the hill, to the right of the pond, to reach the woods behind it before he turned the bend. I slopped a bit of my milk, but I made it. Once in the woods I circled to the left as I ran to reach a spot from which I could watch. I did not worry about crashing noisily through the brush: the tractor engine was getting louder all the time. I found a vantage point behind a bush, set down my milk, crouched and waited.

  The tractor had come out of the trees and ran in plain view down the road, covering the last half mile to the store. Mr Loomis sat astride, steering with his left hand. In his right, to my amazement and horror, he held his rifle. He looked like an Indian on horseback in an old western movie, attacking a wagon train. I stared, at first not comprehending at all.

  About a hundred feet from the store he turned the tractor halfway round and stopped it, leaving the engine idling. He climbed down on the far side, keeping it between him and the building. He stood there watching for a minute or two. He cut the engine and put the key in his pocket. Holding the gun in both hands, he moved towards the store. His eyes were on the windows and the door.

  I remembered how he had acted once before, when he fired two shots into the house. I thought, he has suffered a relapse, he is back in his delirium. But no, it was quite clearly different. That time he had been dreaming. There was nothing dreamlike in the way he moved forward, alert as a cat, to the door. He paused, listened, and backed away. He looked to the right, to the left, behind him; moving more quickly, he circled the building, disappearing from my view, reappearing, staring at every window, upstairs and down. Back at the door, he opened it with the greatest caution, then pushed it wide and stepped inside.

  I stayed motionless behind my bush, watched, and wondered. Why was he storming the store? “Storm” was the word I thought of, because that was really how it looked—like a surprise attack. Why the gun? Did he intend to shoot something? To shoot me? Why else does one carry a gun?

  For ten minutes or so all was quiet. I stared at the building and the tractor. A movement caught my eye—a curtain pushed aside in an upstairs window, and his face looking out, pale in the dark frame like a ghost in a haunted house. And I knew part of the answer.

  He was not in the store proper at all. He had gone up to the Kleins’ living quarters on the second floor. He was, of course, looking for me.

  I had deceived him too well. Each night when I left the house I had walked towards the store. In the morning, when he had watched, I had appeared suddenly beside the store. That same morning I had gone to get his water from the pond—in the same general direction as the store—and reappeared carrying things of mine, milk can and knife. So he had, quite sensibly, decided that I was living in the store. He had, I supposed, the first time he went into it, discovered there were living quarters upstairs—perhaps he even went up and looked.

  But in fact I had only been in the Kleins’ apartment one time since they drove away that day with my parents. It was on a rainy Sunday, after I had been to the church. Since it was Sunday I did not want to work; it was too rainy to fish or to take a walk as I sometimes did, and by then the radio stations had all gone off. So I had decided to read, and as always, was wishing I had some new books. It occurred to me the Kleins might have some.

  Their apartment was shadowy, being heavily curtained on a grey day. It was entirely clean, as Mrs Klein, a small and tidy woman, would have left it, but it had a stale smell from being shut up. I felt quite uneasy, though I had been there once or twice before; it was a private place, and all in it belonged to two dead people. I knew as soon as I entered I was not likely to find any books, and there were none—not even magazines—with two exceptions: a dress pattern book near Mrs Klein’s sewing machine, and some account and inventory books in a room Mr Klein used for an office.

  I even looked in their bedroom, feeling guiltier than ever, but there was nothing but the usual furniture and some pictures on the walls. The only thing in the whole apartment that was out of place was a photograph of a young man, smiling, dressed in a dark suit and tie, in a stand-up frame. It looked quite old. It lay on the bed faceup. I wondered who he could be. Either Mr or Mrs Klein had looked at it one more time before leaving and left it lying there. A son? But I could not recall anything about their having a son. It might have looked a little like Mrs Klein when she was younger, so perhaps it was a brother. I never found out, of course. I left it lying on the bed.

  The point was, however, that Mr Loomis was sure to know at a glance that I was not living there. That was why he had looked out of the window; if I was not there, he was thinking, I must be somewhere in the vicinity.

  He came out of the front door again, looked around, and went back in. He reappeared about thirty seconds later from behind the store—he had walked straight through it and gone out of the back door, which I could not see from my vantage point. He had left the gun inside. He walked a few yards away, turned, and appeared to be studying the building, tapping his chin with his hand. He disappeared again—I could guess he had gone in through the back door—and for fifteen minutes or so I could not see him.

  I thought of the gun again. It was frightening to see. But I thought, perhaps not so frightening as it seemed at first. I was beginning to get used to the way his mind worked, the way he thought about things. There was a pattern that kept repeating. In the case of the gun it meant—or, I thought, it might mean—not that he was planning to shoot me, but that he thought I might shoot him. I still think that might be correct despite what happened later. He was certain I was in the store. He had waited until I left the house, carrying my milk, heading that way. Waited until I had time to get there and go inside. On the tractor, sped after me.

  And thought, if I was encamped there and saw him coming I might be frightened, and might try to drive him away. But what made him think I had a gun at all? My guns had been at the cave all of the time since his arrival, and I was quite sure I had never mentioned them.

  He had had plenty of time for thinking. And during the past two weeks he must have recalled his first days here, the day he came over the hill in his safe-suit pulling his wagon, and went to the house. He had seen, thanks to my carefulness, that it was empty and had not recently been lived in. Thinking back on that, he would realize that I had, even then, another place to live.

  He would know, too, that in a country household, where people hunt, there are always guns; so he would assume that if I had moved out of the house I would have taken them with me. All this he would have thought of, sitting by himself in the house day after day, and of something else as well. And that was, if I had a place reasonably comfortable and well set up (not just living in the wood
s), I was not so likely to give up after a few days and move back to the house—to stop the “stupidity”, as he called it, unless he did something to force me to do it.

  The sun was getting ready to set when I saw him again. He came round from behind the building; he must have gone out of the back door again; and he carried something in his hand. In the waning light, without the binoculars, I could not see what it was; only that it was small; it was not the gun.

  He walked to the front door and stood before it. Because he was under the porch roof, in the shadow, it was hard to see just what he was doing. But he seemed to be examining the door itself, and even reached out and touched the frame with his hand. He put down whatever it was he was holding, went inside, and came out again almost immediately, now carrying something else. For the next fifteen minutes he stood there working busily, at what I could not see but only guess.

  At the end of that time he made one more brief trip into the store and emerged with the gun; he started the tractor and drove off towards the house. When I heard the motor fade in the distance and finally sputter and die, I stood up and came out from behind my bush, not forgetting my milk and fish. It was getting dark.

  I considered going on to the cave, but I was too curious. I wanted to see if what I guessed and feared was right. I walked down to the store to look, and it was. He had put padlocks on both front and back doors, and both were locked.

  That night, back at my fireplace, I changed my plans and cooked the fish. I wrapped the chicken in a piece of paper and put it in a cool place in the cave. I was thinking about the padlocks without any keys and the tractor without any key. At first I thought: to go into the store, and to use the tractor, from now on I will have to ask permission each time. But then I had a worse thought:

  He was not going to give me any of the keys at all, to anything.

  So I ate the fish, which would not keep, and saved the chicken, which would, for a few days at least.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  August 4th (continued)

  It was the next morning he shot me.

  I woke at dawn as usual, moved my blanket and sleeping bag to the cave, and ate the rest of the fish for breakfast—cold, but cooked, not so bad. As I ate I cheered up a little, and thought possibly, just possibly, I had been too pessimistic about the padlocks. I knew that he had a compulsion for taking charge of things, for saving things, for rationing them out in an orderly manner so they would last—like the V-belt, the petrol, the fertilizer, and so on. A long-term view. And he did not trust me to do that (perhaps rightly)—hence the locks. I thought: maybe that was all it meant.

  In any case I had to find out, fearful though I was of the answer, because the other alternative was that he had thought of a simple way to force me to come back. Starvation. I could, not help considering that, too. If it was his plan—what would I do? I had food enough in the cave for a couple of weeks, maybe longer if I did not eat much. I could fish. I knew where berries grew. I could possibly shoot a rabbit. But it was obvious that in the long run I could not live.

  And what about the chickens, the eggs, the milk, the garden? Would he somehow lock them up, too?

  There was little point in wondering. I had to find out.

  So, feeling worried and quite depressed, I took my milk can and my sack and walked to the house, going the long way round. It seemed especially important now to keep him from finding where I stayed.

  As I walked, I had another thought: perhaps, in a way, these new things he had done were my own fault. It seemed that the more I stayed away from him the more determined he was that I come back. Perhaps I could yield a little. There are people who cannot stand being alone; perhaps he was acting from despair. Why should I not, then, offer to talk to him, if he wanted me to, say for an hour or so in the evenings—he on the porch, I on the road? It could do no harm. There was no reason I should not be as friendly as safety permitted. It was a sensible plan, and made me feel better.

  When I came in sight of the house I thought: should I just go about my work as usual, or should I let him know straight away that I had seen the padlocks, and ask for the key? I decided to ask, and get it settled. It was, in fact, time to bring him some more stores anyway. And at the same time I could suggest my new idea.

  I know now that he was watching as I came up the road and was expecting me to come to the house. Not that it made any great difference to his plans. I would have had to ask eventually.

  I remember now that my father once said that great events have a way of happening uneventfully. They slip up on you and are over before you know they have happened. This could hardly be called a great event, I suppose, but it was for me an important and terrible one, and it happened almost without my knowing it.

  I stood there in front of the house as I had before, watching the front door, thinking I would go and knock if he did not appear. There was a sharp snapping noise. I was wondering what and where it could be when I felt a hard tug on the leg of my blue jeans and a stinging pain in my right ankle. The noise came again. Not until then did I look up and see the shiny blue rifle barrel, very thin, the upstairs window six inches open and his face behind it, hidden by the curtain.

  The second shot missed, hit the tarmac a foot behind me and flew away humming like a bee.

  I dropped my milk can and ran for my life; the can hit the road with a clang and rolled away; Faro, in the house, hearing the shots and the clanging, barked in a frenzy. I dashed for the trees beside Burden Creek, expecting each second another bullet to come crashing into me—because for the next thirty yards my back was still a clear target. But he fired no more. I even thought I heard the window shut, but did not pause to look.

  In the trees I felt reasonably safe; I made my way, dodging from tree to tree on the far side of the road. At the bend, where I could look back and see that he was not following, I sat down to examine my ankle. The bullet had gone through the leg of my blue jeans, leaving two small round holes, and the sock underneath showed a narrow, straight tear through which blood was slowly oozing. I removed my sneaker and sock. It was a small, shallow cut, barely through the skin, bordered on both sides by a white area, very sore to touch, which was going to be a bruise.

  As wounds go, it was not serious; in fact while I sat there looking, the bleeding virtually stopped. Still it brought to mind a lack in my supplies: I had no bandage, no disinfectant of any kind. There was some in the house, some in the store, both now out of reach. Then I remembered. I did have soap at the cave. I could wash the cut, at least, and put on a clean sock. I tied my shoe on loosely and walked on.

  As I washed my ankle I thought, it was a most peculiar wound, and puzzling. He had fired two shots; if he was trying to hit me, both had been aimed much too low. He might just be a very bad shot. But more likely, he was not trying to hit me, but scare me away. With me standing stock still (for the first shot, at least), and him in a prepared position, waiting, with the windowsill for support—nobody could be that bad a shot.

  And yet, in a way, that made him an even worse shot than before. Anyone, shooting, can miss when trying to hit something. But to hit when trying to miss it—

  And then, sickeningly, the truth came to me.

  The idea, the scene, the things that happened in the next minutes, the next hour, were so bad that I do not like to think about them because they come back to me like a nightmare and I am living them over again.

  I am sitting beside the pond with my sock in my hand and my shoe beside me, waiting for my foot to dry. The piece of soap is on a stone at the edge of the water.

  And I think: he was not trying to miss. He wants to shoot me in the leg so I cannot walk. He wants to maim, not to kill me. So that he can catch me. It is a simple plan, a terrible one. Starvation will force me to come to the house or the store. And the gun will keep me from going away again. He will try again and again.

  And I think: why must he do it?

  As I sit there by the pond I hear the tractor start. I know by some instinct
before I see it what is going to happen next. I put on my sock and my shoe as fast as I can and run up the hill to the bushes where I hid before.

  The tractor, looking bright red in the morning sun, comes out of the trees. On it, as before, holding his gun in his hand, rides Mr Loomis. The gun barrel shines like a tube of blue glass; it is the small rifle, the .22; he does not want to shatter my leg, only cripple it, because after I am caught he intends it to mend again.

  The tractor comes out and behind it is hitched the tractor-cart. In the tractor-cart, tied by his leash, sits Faro. He is enjoying the ride. He has always liked to ride in the cart.

  Mr Loomis stops at the store as before, climbs down, gun ready. This time he knows I am not inside, but this time I have more reason to shoot if I am hiding nearby. So he looks sharply.

  He takes Faro down from the cart. It is the game they have practised. Holding the leash, he circles the store. Faro picks up my trail immediately—the freshest one, leading towards the house. Mr Loomis does not want that one.

  He tries again, a wider circle, and this time it works. Faro starts retracing my morning’s route, tail wagging, backtracking easily. And suddenly this small friendly dog, David’s dog, is an enemy, as dangerous as a tiger, because I know what he is going to do. He will lead Mr Loomis a mile down the road; he will turn left and lead him up the hill and to the cave.

  The nightmare lasts an hour. That is how long it takes Mr Loomis, who is not hurrying (but not limping either), to make the trip. Long before that I have run to the cave. My time there is up. I know it is. I have my cloth sack, the feed bag I brought from the barn. I throw into it what I can carry, not choosing very well because I am, stupidly, crying and because my ankle is hurting badly. I take tins of food, this notebook, a blanket, my knife, some water. That is all I can manage if I am to move quickly. That and the gun. I take the small rifle, the pump-action .22 and a box of shells in my pocket.