by Darrel Bird
Part 3
Marta
Marta and Tom Burke had it made; they had a house worth over half-million dollars, a fat bank account and an insurance business he had inherited from his father who had inherited it from his father; the insurance business had been running in Denver since 1902. A real rocky mountain high, then the economy started to slide. The insurance company paid off claims with paper by the wheel barrow load, until there was no more insurance business left.
The people spread out from the cities like locust looking for food and if the farmers tried to hold them back they were killed and in some cases, eaten for their trouble. Like a crimson tide, the people rolled over that land until an exceptional hard winter stopped them, then death and disease took over, and people starved to death and froze to death by the droves. Come the spring thaw the buzzards and crows had their own rock mountain high. They got what the coyotes and the wild dogs left, then the neighbor hood pooch became dangerous as a wolf and people hunted them for food.
Tom and Marta held out as long as they could, then they left too, and they nearly starved to death on the plains of America before they finally staggered back to their home in Denver. Much of Denver was burned to the ground; people tried to build fires in their houses, and the houses burned to the ground; overgrown yards caught fire and more houses burned to the ground, but all they found living in their half million-dollar house was a squirrel and a feral cat.
They had locked the house up tight and boarded the windows before they left, and for some reason known only to God, the house was left alone.
They cleaned the house, caught and ate the squirrel and the cat left for a safer neighborhood. Tom left the house the next morning, and he came back that evening carrying a calf he had found and killed over his shoulders; he gave the prearranged knock on the door, and Marta opened it for him. He dumped the calf on the shiny marbled floored entry way.
“Couldn’t you have taken the head off it?”
“Huh, I never thought of it.”
They took the calf into the kitchen and cut off enough for dinner, and then he hung the rest in the garage where it would stay cold that night.
“How is it out there Tom?”
“Its just down right medieval is what it is out there; maybe we shouldn’t have come back here.”
“We’re eating tonight aren’t we? We would have starved or froze to death if we hadn’t”
“Yeah, I know.”
He looked over at the fire place at the little wood that was stacked there, “I thought I told you to get some wood up today.”
“Wood is getting hard to find Tom.”
“Well darn it cut the neighbor's trees; they're dead, and they are not going to need them.”
“I just never thought to cut George and Anna’s trees Tom.”
“Yeah, I know honey; I'm doing lots of things I never thought I would be doing, but they are gone honey; we have no laws. They would have wanted us to have them anyway.”
“What do you think happened to them?
“Perhaps they died the first winter…or the second, they were getting up in years and so many things could have taken them.”
“I’ll cut them tomorrow.”
After a hard winter in the house, Marta and Tom left Denver in the spring bound for the Columbia Gorge and points north. 20 miles west of Cheyenne they found a house a little way off the road. They helloed the house but no one answered; they opened the door and there was a young girl about six years old curled up in the corner asleep.
Tom walked over to the girl and touched her on the shoulder, and the girl came out of it and lit into him with her clawed fingers leaving him bloody; she hit the floor running and ran into the woods a few yards away.
Marta felt terrible about it, but the girl never came back that night. The next morning they split a rusted tin of peas between them.
“We’ve got to wait her out Tom; we can’t leave her here.”
“What are we going to do with her if we catch her?”
“Take her with us; we have to do this Tom.” Marta’s mothering instincts had taken over and Tom knew there was not a thing he could do about it, even though it meant another mouth to feed.
“Ok, but I don’t think I can catch her; she's fast.”
Marta looked at the scratches on Tom’s face and grinned, “I’d say she is a little fast.”
“Then what are we going to do? Trap her?”
“Not that way Tom, I think this is her home, and she’ll come back on her own today if we just wait, I have a little of that old hard candy we found.”
“Do you think you can catch her with that?”
“I think so if we don’t make any sudden moves, we’ll just sit here and wait.”
They sat outside the door of the house and waited until around noon then the girl appeared out of the trees. Her hair was matted with pine needles as she stood in the tree line staring at the house.
Marta held out her hand with the candy and hunger drove the girl to take a step or two, Marta began humming in a soft voice. The song her mother had sung to her when she was little.
The girl looked at Marta, then the candy and then back at Marta. Marta stayed stock still, and the girl began inching her way toward Marta and the candy.
It took the girl ten minutes to make the twenty feet, when she got close enough for Marta to see into her wild eyes, she could see how utterly filthy the girl was. Eventually, the girl took the candy and popped it in her mouth, and her eyes went wide when she tasted the candy. She held out her hand for more and grunted, then made mewling sounds.
Marta fed her the last piece she had then held her hands open wide; the girl looked questioningly at Marta then popped her thumb in her mouth and began sucking it. Marta made motions for the girl to come close; the girl hesitantly stepped closer.
Marta kept humming softly until the girl hesitantly reached out and felt the soft skin on her face, then the girl started mewling again; Marta took her hand and pressed it to her lips and kissed them gently, then the backs of her arms and the girl laid her head on Marta’s shoulder and began crying.
Tom watched in amazement as Marta claimed that girl for her own, “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.” He said softly. At that the girl looked at him a little wildly, but Marta pointed at him and hummed softly.
They fed the girl that night and slept in the cabin, and the next morning Marta motioned the girl to come with them, and the girl followed along about ten feet behind.
Two days later Tom took sick and they stopped in an empty house to rest; Tom shivered with chills that night and was unable to stand the next morning. Marta bathed his face with water all that next day, but by night fall, he was deathly sick and a day later he passed on.
Marta found a bent shovel and began to dig a grave between the house and the road for her Tom; she scraped the hard ground feeling nothing, and her plan was to kill herself and the girl as soon as the dirt was over her husband’s body.
She got the hole about two feet deep, and in her grief, she didn’t hear the cart stop on the road or see the man and the boy standing there watching her.
She jumped as the man walked up and gently took the shovel out of her hand and started digging, Marta stood in shock just watching the man dig; the girl had taken off around the house then had come back to stand close to the wall. He got the hole about five feet deep then looked up at Marta and motioned for her to hand him the body.
The man laid the frail body gently on the ground then crawled out of the grave and began shoveling the dirt over him, and Marta noticed then that he was sweating profusely. When he was done he gently patted the mound with his shovel and stood up.
He took off his cap and said, “Is there words you want to say ma’am? I don’t know the proper words.”
“No, there’s nothing to say except he was my love, my protector and my life. What can I say but that?”
”I know; I had to bury my wife not long ago, but then life goes on some how.”<
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“Does it?”
“Well, yes it does; it has too.”
“We better be going, my boy and I; we have a long way to go.”
“Where are you going?”
“We’re heading a little north of the Straights of Juan De Fuca.”
“Isn’t that around Seattle?”
“Yes, only we’re going further north to try to stop on one of the inner islands hoping to be able to live and survive there.”
The man twisted his cap in his hand, “We’ll be going now.” And he turned and walked toward the road where the boy waited with the cart.
Marta motioned the girl to come and for no reason that she could think of, fell in behind the man and the boy as they started up the road.
The man looked behind him at them, but said nothing. Later on, Marta introduced herself to the man, and then introduced the girl as Mary.
“But we don’t know the girl’s name.”
“No, but everybody should have a name, so from now on, her name is Mary.”
“So it is.” Said the man and they plodded on together.