Journal

by Craig Buckhout

  Climbing to about 6500 feet or so, we came upon a large flat area that had apparently been dozed years before, maybe for the parking of logging vehicles or to stack timber for pick up, I really don’t know. At the far eastern end of it was a creek, and parallel to that was what used to be another single-wide dirt road that went north. More interesting, though, was that on the north edge of this same flat area stood a small wood shack with a metal roof. It looked unoccupied but in good condition.

  We watched the shed from the safety of the trees for about fifteen minutes or so before I told Anna and Gabriel to remain where they were, and I would check it out. I really didn’t want to go down there. The safe thing to do would have been to just bypass it because I didn’t really know where our pursuers were. Maybe they had somehow managed to get ahead of us and were waiting inside. But we were headed into some pretty miserable conditions, and there could easily be something inside the building that could help us survive. =tif

  I approached from the west end because there were no windows on that wall, and if anyone was inside waiting for us, they wouldn’t be able to see me. From there, I took a tour around the building to see if there were any footprints on the wet earth. Not finding any, I felt reasonably certain nobody was inside and went in.

  It was just one room, no dividers, with two bare bunks and a sheet metal stove for heat. A table was in the middle of the room, turned over on its side. A couple of folding chairs were next to it. On the east end of the building was a long counter with shelves above. On the counter top were a few empty plastic containers such as might have been used for food storage, three or four coffee mugs, and some flatware. On the shelf above was a can of tomato soup, a can of pork and beans, a package of ramen noodles, mostly mouse eaten, and a half empty jar of instant coffee. I took off my pack and stuffed the two cans and coffee inside.

  On the other wall was a small cabinet about the size of a nightstand, only taller, crudely constructed out of plywood. Inside that was half a box of .38 caliber ammunition and a couple of pencils. I took all of this, re-shouldered my pack, grabbed my rifle, and went out the door, closing it behind me. The next rainstorm through would erase all evidence of my presence.

  When I stepped outside they shot me. I don’t remember it of course. That’s the way it works when you lose consciousness. It’s like somebody snips out a little portion of your memory, maybe to save you the experience. And when they do the snipping, they always take a little extra along with all the bad stuff just to be sure they got it all. I say that because the last thing I remember is closing the door to the shack, though apparently I wasn’t shot until I was halfway back to Gabriel and Anna. I don’t even remember the shot — hearing or feeling it. In fact, I don’t even have any sense of being unconscious at all. Strange experience.

  The first thing I remember after the last thing I remember was the sensation of my butt being dragged across that flat area I described earlier. When I finally opened my eyes, I stared up at a canopy of green with a million little fingers pointing, as if in accusation, toward a hostile sky, marbled black and grey. I next saw the worried and somewhat frantic faces of Anna and Gabriel, looking down at me as they pulled me toward the trees by the straps of my backpack. Finally, my muddled brain discovered the hurt between my right shoulder blade and spine. After that, I got scared.

  Once I was well back in the tree-line, Anna told Gabriel to “go watch.” She rolled me over on my stomach and took off my backpack. I must have asked her “what happened”, or something like that, although I have no such memory of asking the question. Her answer, though, I remember perfectly. She told me I’d been shot, and she needed to see where the bleeding was coming from. I felt her pulling on my clothes. I felt the cold from my skin being exposed. I felt her rocking me first one way and then the other. I heard her going through my backpack. Finally she said, “Get up, you’re not hurt.” Nice bedside manner, huh.

  I heard Gabriel’s voice next. He said, “He’s OK? He’s not shot?” the Author

  As I was sitting up, she asked me if I had a can of tomato soup in my pack. Things still weren’t making sense to me, though. I was stuck on this being shot business. So I asked her why she shot me. I guess she was the first to come to mind on the list of all the people who might want to shoot me. I know I’m making light of it now, but believe me, it wasn’t funny then.

  She smiled just a tiny bit and said I had to get up because we had to get moving, and there might be more of them coming.

  Well, my back hurt (despite her saying otherwise), I didn’t understand what happened to me, and she was telling me what to do again, so I yelled at her to explain what was going on. I wasn’t going anywhere until I knew what had happened to me. At that point, and I’m being honest here, I really did think she had shot me for some reason. That’s how confused I still was.

  So she let out one of those, ‘I’m frustrated with you, but I’ll accommodate you just this one time’ sighs, and told me that as I was headed back, two men stepped out of the trees and shot me in the back. When they approached closer to check on me, Anna shot both of them dead.

  Apparently the bullet that hit me went through my backpack, traveled through two of Claire Huston’s journals, the can of tomato soup and finally stopped, just dimpling my skin. The impact caused me to fall and hit my head, which is probably what really knocked me out. What she thought was blood, was just tomato soup. I wondered if maybe she was disappointed about that.

  I got to one knee at that point and went through my backpack — not that I didn’t trust her. One of the journals apparently was at an angle to the bullet so was pretty much destroyed. The other one was a through and through hole. Everything else seemed OK except the tomato soup can, that I chucked. I kept the destroyed journal because the paper could be used as fire starter.

  I wiped the mud off my rifle while Anna reminded me a couple dozen more times that we had to get moving. I ignored her, though, and walked out to the two dead guys. I removed their shoes, went through their pockets, and in the case of one, a shoulder sack, and took several items such as matches, a knife, a nub of candle, and extra ammunition for the weapons. I would have taken their jackets, too, but Anna was a good shot. I carried all that stuff back to our spot after that.

  Anna’s rifle was the same caliber as that of one of the attackers but was in better shape, so I stripped out his bullets and gave them to her. The other weapon was a rusty .38 revolver. I kept that ammunition and threw the pistol into the nearby underbrush. Earlier I had noticed that one of Gabriel’s shoes had a small hole worn in the side of it, so I tossed him both pair and told him to try them on. To get rid of the remaining weapon, I wedged it into a decomposing log and shoved a piece of bark over its exposed end.

  Gabriel thanked me for the shoes, Anna looked at me in silence, and we left heading north again with my back hurting like hell. In fact, it hurt so bad I wondered if maybe I had a broken rib or something. 4 2 2 2 2 2 4;} @font-face {font-family: with t

  The next couple of hours were more of the same — walking, banging into stuff, being cold, getting wet, and hurting. Though I was miserable, to say the least, my mind was elsewhere, bouncing wild like, from one thing to the next.

  First, it was the near death experience. No making light of it, those two guys almost did me in. Even if they hadn’t killed me outright, under the circumstances a wound of any nature would be terminal. The pictures that summoned up weren’t pleasant ones, I can tell you that. In my travels, and even before that in Reno, I’d seen many bodies left to nature, and I now couldn’t help but put my face on them. I also got into that whole afterlife thing: was there, wasn’t there? If so, had I earned my wings? I’m no Claire Huston, which led to a little self-analysis about how meaningless my life has been up to now. See how my brain kept swizzling thoughts around? But there’s more.

  I also started thinking about Anna. Trying to figure her out, though, is like trying to get a grip on water. Here’s a woman who is so cold-blooded practical
that she executes a guy because we can’t take him with us, and because if we leave him he’ll tell the others which way we went. (I wondered if she has since reconsidered that decision given the fact that they found us anyway.) Using that same reasoning, when she thought I had been shot, she should have just left me there and run off. That would have been the practical thing to do. But she didn’t take off, did she? No, she dragged me to cover and tried to help. Plus, she felt bad about killing the pilot. It was plainly there on her face. I definitely saw it. She also rescued a ten-year-old boy and raised him as her own. She charged a man who was armed with a pistol, too, when she saw Gabriel was in danger. Where does all that fit in with her psychology?

  Just when I was starting to think I may have misjudged her (a little) and she wasn’t such a cold-hearted …human being after all, my thoughts took off in the other direction. If my wound had been bad, I’ll just bet she would have put me out of my misery. She would have placed her pistol to my head and pulled the trigger so I wouldn’t tell those who follow us which way she went. I’ll bet. Jeeze. Would she have at least felt bad? “Sorry I have to do this but …” or “I’m sure you understand why ….”

  This whipsaw conversation with myself, along with imagined visuals, went on the rest of the afternoon until, due to mutual exhaustion, we stopped for the night where the thick forest gave suddenly to a deep cut valley of green, bordered by ridges of steel gray, pushed up on end.

  Using the tarps, we made shelter under one of these granite outcroppings, providing fair protection from the elements. We even found enough dry wood for a small cook fire and ate half the remaining venison and half the pork and beans in a concoction somewhere between a watery stew and a thick soup. Afterwards, I made a tea that hinted of lemon from some Sheep Sorrel growing nearby, and despite the pain still stabbing deep into my back, I began to relax.

  Since the walking had been so treacherous, I felt that even Mr. Ponytail wouldn’t try following us in the dark, so I suggested that we only keep watch in the first few hours and the last few hours. Anna =tifreadily agreed and volunteered to take the first shift.

  After she was out and while Gabriel and I were laying pine boughs for bedding and insulation, he told me how frightened he had been earlier in the day when he thought I’d been shot. We talked about that a little bit, and he described how his mother had killed the two men who shot me. After a short pause, he asked, “Is it wrong to kill someone?”

  The first thought that went through my head was to wonder how Claire Huston would answer that question. I suspected that she would say yes, any killing is wrong. But he asked me, not her, and it was a fair question that deserved my answer.

  I told him that it seemed to me that sometimes it was wrong and sometimes it wasn’t.

  Every human being has the right of self-defense. It may be the only one true basic human right we have because it’s not given to us; it’s ours naturally, instinctively. So to kill to protect yourself isn’t wrong. I went on to say that, by extension, it would also seem justifiable to take the life of another to protect the life of a loved one. However, to take someone’s life for what he possesses, or for something he says that makes you mad, or maybe for the sheer pleasure of just doing it, would definitely be wrong.

  He asked me if it would be right to kill in order to protect the life of someone who wasn’t necessarily a loved one, as I had done for them. He went on to say that I really hadn’t known them at that point. We were essentially strangers.

  I told him that it was an interesting question and I guessed killing under those circumstances was OK if it was to save even a stranger’s life. It seemed to me the value of one life is no less than that of another. So if my life was worth defending, why wouldn’t another’s life be worth defending? If I just stood by and watched a life unfairly taken, wouldn’t I be devaluing mine as well inviting the same on me?

  He was quiet for a moment and eventually asked, “What if someone just threatened to kill you and you believed he would really do it? Would it be wrong then?”

  At this point in our conversation I was starting to get the feeling my neck was in a noose and Gabriel was tightening it a little bit at a time, with each of his questions. I also got the feeling that my answers were possibly intended more for my benefit than for his.

  I told him that I thought it would again depend on the circumstances. For one thing, how can you really know what’s in another person’s mind? What if you were wrong about his willingness to kill you? People say things they don’t mean or intend all the time. You would have killed him unnecessarily.

  He seemed to take that in and agree with it, although he didn’t really say one way or the other. We continued to prepare our sleeping area by spreading out our ponchos over the top of the pine branches. The temperature was dropping rapidly and we were going to need all the insulation we could get. After completing that particular task, he asked something to the effect of, “OK, but what if yWhile so engagedwotou were sure this person was serious? What if, say, this person had already tried to hurt you once, would it be wrong or right to kill him before he tried again?”

  Now another thought came to my mind. Had what at first seemed like a spontaneous conversation, really been planned by him all along? Had he sensed my objection to his mother killing the pilot and engineered this little exchange to explain her justification when she wouldn’t? If so, clever kid.

  All of that aside, the answer to Gabriel’s question was complicated. Before, when there were cities, governments, courts, police, the answer to that question would have been you’d go to the authorities and let them handle the threat. That’s because for the privilege of living in society and sharing the benefits of order, justice, and protection, you agreed to follow society’s rules. So if someone had threatened you or your loved ones, that person had broken the rules and must be judged and punished by society. Otherwise rules of conduct would have had no meaning; people would have acted as they wished, there would have been no society and, therefore, there would have been no order, no justice, and no safety. In the simplest terms, it would essentially have been every man for himself; kill or be killed.

  That’s what we have now, though. There is no society. There is no one to report a threat to. There are no rules. There is no expectation of group consequences. In every sense of the phrase, it’s every man for himself; kill or be killed. So once again, given the world’s circumstances, is it wrong to kill someone who has threatened your life and has in some way demonstrated a willingness to carry it out?

  I didn’t have to think it through to see the position my own reasoning had put me in. Oh, I could argue it just ain’t right, and I don’t care what anyone else says. But this is a real life question with real life consequences, and it would be wholly illogical not to act preemptively. It is especially so since there is no group to protect you. It’s you and you alone. To say otherwise would be to place yourself in a position where you’d have to wait for the other fella to advantage himself and essentially pick the place and time of your death. That would be insane. It would also be giving up your right of self defense.

  So, I told him it would not be wrong to kill such a person if you knew with all certainty that he intended to kill you. To make a mistake about that, however, would be a terrible thing, and to use it as an excuse to kill would be just as bad.

  As I said those words to him, though, I pictured the moment of the pilot’s death, him sitting there on the road one second and his brains all over the place the next. That image made my answer feel all wrong, and so my words were given without authority, even though on re-examination I could find no fault with my reasoning. I asked myself, does anyone in this world, as we now know it, have the luxury of compassion over pragmatism in such matters?

  Gabriel nodded his head and, for the third or fourth time in our conversation, lapsed into silence. I took that to mean that he was contemplating yet another crafty question and began trying to anticipate where he was going with it, given the thread of
his inquiry so far. 4 2 2 2 2 2 4;} @font-face {font-family: with t

  I figured he had led me to the door he intended, the real truth he wanted me to see, which could only be one thing — his next question had to concern the threat that Mr. Ponytail and all his buddies posed to us and the town of Woburn. It would likely go something like this: Since it’s justifiable to take the life of someone trying to unjustly kill another, loved one or not; since it’s justifiable to kill someone you know for sure is intent on doing you harm; and since it is clear that Mr. Ponytail and his friends are intent on killing not only us, but all the people in Woburn, isn’t it justifiable to take their lives without mercy? Even if from ambush, wouldn’t it be a justifiable act to kill every one of them we encountered along the way until we no longer believed they posed a threat?

  I asked myself, what if I rejected the position of killing them? Let’s say that when I came across them, I simply took their weapons and sent them on their way. Well, they are hunting me – us - for a reason aren’t they? They don’t have to, do they? They could simply sneak off in the night and be done with their murderous intent, but they haven’t, right? It is a choice they made. We didn’t put it upon them. So there is no good reason to believe that if I let them go, they wouldn’t simply get other weapons and come back.

  So what’s that leave me with? Let them go and we will just have to fight them again later. Kill them now and their threat is over. But under those rules of engagement, it would mean that when I came up behind the pilot, I should have just shot him without warning. Does this make sense? Yes, of course it does. Can I do it? I don’t think so.

  As I waited for Gabriel to ask the question, or another I didn’t see, I continued to think about it and to examine it from every possible angle. Still, I came to no other conclusion. I didn’t feel right about it. I couldn’t picture myself doing it. But there didn’t seem any other alternative answer if Anna, Gabriel and I were to survive.