Journal

by Craig Buckhout

  Back in Woburn, there were men who came sniffing up to her all the time. I guess you couldn’t blame them. Husbands had lost wives, wives had lost husbands, so there were a lot of people looking for new match ups, and she had a lot to offer — smart, pretty, a hard worker, and still young enough to have babies. But she just wasn’t interested in any of that or any of them. Oh no, her and me, that’s all she cared about, and she was pretty mean about it, too. Read back to some of Alan’s thoughts on her in those first few days after he rescued us to see how she came off to men in particular. That’s pretty much how it was all the time. They even had a name for her back then, Iceberg Annie, though nobody dared say it to her face …or mine. She’s not like that now, at least not with Alan she isn’t.

  I saw it coming before they did. It started when we were coming down out of the mountains. Her attitude on the outside stayed pretty much the same, but I could tell it was put on, as if she didn’t know how to stop acting toward him like she was, even though she felt different about him inside. Alan putting that man Michael Bass out of his misery, the one who was so tore up, was probably the point where she gave it up. She felt bad for Alan because of that, and she showed it. That’s all it took. I know they were doing it.

  The point is, she wasn’t going to leave him behind no matter what, even if it was the smart thing to do.

  Maybe falling in love isn’t such a good idea.

  As I said, we kept on walking, I’d say at least a couple more hours total. The terrain stayed pretty much the same, kind of scrubby, a little up, a little down. The weather wasn’t bad, either, although the sky behind us was darkening up.

  Eventually, we came to a creek or small river that had, over time, carved a wide channel about five or six feet deep into the landscape. The water in it was only about twelve inches deep, so it normally wouldn’t be a problem crossing. In this case, though, the rocks were slimy, so hard to walk on without falling, and with Alan’s bum leg it took forever for him to get across.don’t know whytif

  Mom went with him while I stayed back at the bank’s edge watching for the people after us. But Alan made it, and they were just getting into position behind a bleached out, twelve foot log to watch while I crossed, when it sounded like we had been attacked by a whole army. I’m exaggerating of course, but there must have been a dozen shots fired off at mom and Alan. Both of them dropped down behind the log, out of my line of sight, and I was stuck in the river channel.

  The good thing about being where I was, was that I was out of view of those doing the shooting. The bad thing was that if I stayed there, I was dead meat. All they had to do was get up to the bank and pop me one. So I started running to my right, along the bank, with the plan of crossing the river and climbing up the other side, away from all the action. So that’s what I did, started running, doubled over, with shots occasionally being fired off overhead.

  About thirty or forty yards away, I crossed the water without trouble. Once on the other side, though, I took a headlong tumble, my second of the day, landing on the same shoulder I’d dislocated about a week or so back. The pain was so bad I thought I was going to pass out right there. I think it was even worse than when I first hurt it.

  I sat there a bit, one butt cheek on a rock about the size of a football, so cockeyed, tears in my eyes, and for just a moment, only a few seconds, considered just giving up and letting whatever was going to happen, happen. But the pain started to go away, or at least ease up, and my thoughts returned to helping mom and Alan and, of course, saving my own neck at the same time.

  So after I got my wits more about me, and was working up the will to climb the bank to see what I could do to give mom and Alan a hand, I saw something move on the opposite side of the riverbank. It was the same side where our attackers were. First the bushes shook, then some gravel was kicked loose, followed by three men, one right after the other, kind of sliding low down like over the edge into the river bottom.

  To give you a picture of how things were at that moment, Alan and mom, the three men, and me formed a triangle. The three men were on one side of the river and the rest of us were on the other. The men were obviously trying to sneak up on mom and Alan from the side, only they hadn’t moved down the river as far as I did when I crossed. Because their attention was on mom and Alan’s position, they didn’t notice me, even though I was sitting right there in plain view, not that far away. They should have had me for sure, three against one.

  Well, I got my butt off that rock I was sitting on and onto flat ground, and shot the first guy. The buck from the shotgun sent another wave of pain through my shoulder, not as bad as I felt after the fall but bad enough to cause me to suck in a breath and miss my next shot at the second man.

  At that point, the remaining two turned back to where they’d come from and were practically climbing over each other to get up the bank on their side of the river. This time I was more careful with my aim. I shot the second one square in the back and saw him slide down the bank and rollover onto his side. I was too slowagreementwot to catch the last one, though. He made it up and disappeared from sight.

  I didn’t waste any time sitting there waiting to see if that last guy was going to come back. I went up and over the bank on my side of the river and crawled away from the edge, into the brush. All the time this was going on, I could hear guns going off. It gave me a creepy feeling because I didn’t know if one of those bullets fired was going to hit me or not.

  After crawling a few yards and rising up a bit, I could see mom and Alan lying behind the log. Alan was shoving rocks up against it. I think he was trying to fill in the gaps and provide some extra protection from the bullets that were still coming in ones and twos their way. While he was doing that, I saw mom had rolled up on one side looking at her left hip area. Even from where I was, I could see it was awful bloody.

  To see her hurt like that, deep down scared me something bad. For just a second there, I once again let-in the thought we were done for. I mean, all three of us were hurt at that point. They’d zeroed in on us, and we were caught pretty much in the open. So I started thinking it was only a matter of time before they got around behind us and finished us off. It was just so, so tempting at that point to think all hope was lost and change our goal from escape to Woburn, where we could give warning, to take as many of them with us as possible, before we die.

  Somehow, someway, I pushed those thoughts out of my head long enough to hit on an idea. It was a good lesson for me; one that I’ll do my best not to forget. If you give-in to those kind of thoughts, you’ll just make your own ideas come true.

  I crawled toward Alan and mom.

  Alan saw me coming first and tried to wave me off and mom then did the same. No doubt they wanted me to be on my way toward home, maybe to get help but probably just to save myself. I ignored them.

  As I neared, I started to gather-up brush, weeds, blown down tree branches, any dead vegetation that was on the ground and push it out in front of me. I also made sure to pull up some green stuff, too. By the time I got to them, I had quite a pile going and deposited it at one end of the log they were hiding behind.

  Alan said, “What the hell are you doing” and chewed me out good for not getting away when I had the chance. I just ignored him, there wasn’t time to talk at that point, and I started to crawl out and around our position gathering up more dry and green plants, coming back and bunching it around the log.

  After I had a good three foot high pile on either side of us, I asked Alan to get me the alcohol stove out of his pack. That’s when he caught on to what I was up to and gave me a big old smile that was better than any pat on the back or good word he could say.

  The stove was an amazingly simple device. It was a quart-sized paint can with lid, stuffed with fiberglass insulation and filled with alcohol. The insulation acted as a wick of sorts that could be ignited to produce a flame over which a pot with food could be hung to stay where with t and cooked. (I’ve since made one for myself.) I pried off t
he lid and poured some of the alcohol onto the gathered brush, here and there, along its length and lit it.

  The fire started slow but, as it grew, it began to produce a good amount of white smoke. That’s what the green stuff was for. When it was big enough and smoky enough that it completely hid our location, I half stood up, drug over more brush from further away and threw it on. While I was doing that, mom and Alan were getting to their feet, gathering up the gear and limping away, using the smoke to hide their exact location. I could see they both were hurting. Again those negative thoughts began to creep in. Were we just putting things off that were going to happen anyway? It seemed we were losing at every turn.

  Of course the men who were after us weren’t just sitting around. They were taking shots from time to time, some of which came pretty close, but what choice did we have? No doubt they were also moving toward us, using the smoke to their advantage as well.

  About mom’s injury, it looked like a bullet had cut a pretty good notch in her hip right below, I don’t know what you call it exactly, I guess the pelvic bone, the big one that sticks out on the side. There must be some pretty important muscles in that spot, and they were damaged, because it made it hard for her to swing her leg forward. It was also bleeding pretty badly. Unfortunately, we couldn’t wrap it while on the move like we were, so the best she could do was take another piece of the blanket and hold it against the hole. I was worried about her. It also made me mad. I wanted to get even more than ever.

  We limped along for God knows how long, twenty or thirty minutes I guess, with the walking getting harder and harder. If I had to say, there had been volcanic activity in this area at one time or another because the rock was black, or at least blackish, where it wasn’t covered with brown dirt. The trees probably topped out at no more than twenty feet and were twisted from their base right on up like some wrung out rag. There also were these bushes with tiny blue-green leaves. They were the worst. They sprouted up from their roots in the shape of an upturned bowl, three feet tall, and with spindly branches as thick as my big finger that seemed to go out of their way to grab and poke at you as you passed.

  As you can maybe picture, mom and Alan were having a tough time of it at this point. I could see it in their fixed looks and tight jaws as much as in their struggles to walk. If it wasn’t so serious, it probably would have seemed funny to see the two of them, both limping, helping each other to walk; the blind leading the blind, the crippled walking the crippled, that sort of thing. It was serious, though; so bad at that point, that I had to face the truth, we needed to find a hole to hide in. There was just no way getting around it. I remember admitting it was probably the worst thing we could do, but I excused all that away by telling myself, “We’ll just rest for an hour or so.”

  Off to our west, the earth shot straight up, and I could see these great big black rocks that stretched north and south for at least half a mile, kind of like a giant fence in the middle of nowhere. Here and there I saw shadows in those cliffs that I hoped meant cracks or caves that would make for good hiding and protection from the ex-wife and daughter y point people chasing us. It could also make for a trap, though. Once they found us, there would be no getting away.

  I told them of my thoughts and plan, expecting an argument back but got none, which kind of tells you how much they must have been hurting. They just nodded at me and turned to our right and marched on like robots. At this point, I saw them holding hands before the uneven footage and their injuries caused them to pull apart. I wonder what they were thinking. I wonder if they’d given up. I wouldn’t blame them. It would have been so easy to do

  In another fifteen minutes, we were there and soon found a place to hide out. It was in a spot where the cliff had been split from top to bottom as if whacked with a giant chisel, making an opening fifteen feet deep and maybe six to eight feet wide. Huge rocks, the size of cattle trucks, had tumbled down from above and stuck in this opening. It made a roof that was twenty feet tall and so gave protection from above.

  I thought it was a good place to rest, care as best we could for our wounds, and, if we had to, fight from. The bad thing about this place was that it was so far out of the way, I doubted anyone from Woburn would be coming to our rescue. Just to make things worse for us, a pretty wicked wind kicked up.

  While Alan went to work on washing and bandaging mom’s wound, I began to stack rocks across the entrance to the opening of our hideout. It was hard work in my condition, but I only stopped long enough, here and there, to look over at mom. I won’t tell you how bad the damage to her hip was, I’ll just say that I’m amazed she got as far as she did. I think if there had been time, I would have cried.

  After we made her as comfortable as we could, using our packs as cushions, she touched my sleeve and told me I had to go on by myself. She said I had to warn our friends and bring back help. I didn’t argue with her. It was the smart thing to do. I just felt sad about leaving them because I was suddenly filled-up with the feeling I’d never see either of them again. It caught in my chest, but I never let it out for them to see. I left carrying only some water, mom’s cut down rifle, and the bullets for it.

  I cut back into the trees and bush and, once more, turned toward Woburn. I rough figured that I was less than ten miles, but more than five miles, from the outskirts of our town. I thought that if I jogged it, I could make it in maybe two or three hours. I also wondered where the heck Eric and his crew were. They should have caught us by then.

  I got my answer to the last question only about five minutes into my jog when movement to my left caused me to spin and drop to one knee. It turned out to be just a deer running, a doe actually. I guess I hadn’t heard it because of the wind. It hadn’t heard me either, for the same reason.

  As I watched, it stopped for a second and looked back behind it. A few seconds later, it was off again, going my same direction. That told me that they were behind me and not too far behind either. So I also started off, faster this time, trying to increase the distance between us. I was afraid, and for the first time that I can remember, felt very, very alone. What a have only been my imagination6it strange feeling that was. It messed with my head. It made me doubt myself.

  Ten more minutes of running, so maybe another mile and a little more, and I was not only breathing hard, but my legs felt as if someone had taken razorblades to them. Those bushes were nasty. On top of that, my shoulder wasn’t feeling great either. All the bouncing up and down was a hurt to it. It was about then that I heard a couple of shots behind me. I hoped that it was just a signal they knew which way I went and not a sign they found mom and Alan.

  I stopped for a few seconds to get an idea of where I was. It was then that I saw a group of them cross an open space that was a little bit higher than where I was, about five hundred yards behind me. They were moving right along, too. I remember doubting that they knew where I was, feeling it was more a matter of trying to get out ahead of us, me.

  I started out again, and as before, at as fast a pace as I thought I could keep up. It was going to be a foot race with the loser dying.

  After maybe another ten minutes, I came out from the trees onto this flat area that at one time had been a parking lot for ten or fifteen cars. I knew that because the railroad ties, used as tire bumpers, were still in place. A road, or what remained of one anyway, connected to it and shot off to the west. Where this road and the parking lot came together, there was a cement block building of maybe twenty by twenty, painted tan, with a peaked, brown metal roof and two metal doors, also painted brown. Next to that were three cement picnic tables that looked like they had just been built, but of course they weren’t. Weeds were all around and under them.

  I walked to the edge of the parking lot, next to the road, and read a sign bolted to a square wood post that was leaning off to one side — “Welcome to Bolton County Regional Park.” I knew where I was. I’d been there as a little kid. If I remembered right, which I did, continuing on would bring me to the field
s where we grew our food. Woburn would be after that. I remember the feeling of relief that came over me. I remember thinking we were going to finally make it home.

  Suddenly, I had hope. Before, I was thinking there wasn’t any. But Eric’s men were still close behind and trying to catch me, so I told myself I couldn’t start taking it easy now.

  I took off again and, as I passed the cement block building on my right, out stepped Eric and another man, each holding a gun pointed right at me. Mine was hung over my shoulder, so there was no way I was going to make a fight of it and have any chance of winning. I swore at myself for that mistake. How stupid could I get? I waited for the bullets to hit me. The skin on my chest pricked all over. No bullets, though. No shots. No final thought of helplessness. But what did come my way, was almost worse. It was the look I saw on his face. It said, “I win. You Lose.”

  As I sit here now, writing down what happened, I can remember seeing that snotty, stinking smile on his face and wishing I could put one right dead center in the middle of it. It was just a hollow thing to think, though. That’s how it sounds to me now anyway. It’s like threaten after the rain had stopped22iting the wind or, better yet, like telling the big guy picking on you that ‘someday I’ll be big and strong, and you’ll be sorry.’

  Eric kept his pistol and his smile pointed right at me while the other man, a guy of about forty, with greasy black hair and a missing front tooth, took my rifle away and punched me a good one in the back of the head. I wasn’t expecting it, so it made me stumble forward a little. It didn’t hurt much, though. It probably hurt him worse.

  Eric told him to “Knock it off,” and added, “There’ll be plenty of time for that later.”

  Toothless pushed me forward, until I was face to face with Eric. It briefly crossed my mind that maybe I could make a grab for Eric’s gun and turn it on the both of them. But he was just out of my reach, and besides, he was stronger than me, so I wasn’t sure I could even get it away from him anyway. At least I was thinking again.