by Foy W Minson
Charlie wiped a hand across his eyes that had taken on a wet glisten. He peered around at the sea of grins and still nodding heads, turned back to Jason and responded, “Yes, sir. I would be truly honored. Thank you.”
Dangling Olen like a marionette, Billy Ray danced him around to face Charlie. The Claymore, still coated with wet gore from the recent battle, had not been wiped clean or sheathed in anticipation of pending use.
After a long moment, Charlie spoke. “Olen, you have brought more pain and death to our home than any people should be expected to tolerate. But, like Jason said, we shouldn’t be too eager to go back to the old world ways of executing prisoners, as much as they may deserve it. I’m sure we will one day, but not yet.
“One possibility might be to just exile you from our village. I doubt if you’d last a month before you either starved to death or got yourself eaten and finally gone from our concerns. I think I saw a pack of either dogs or coyotes across the river a ways back while going upstream earlier today. Either one’d be ready to strip your carcass to the bones if they was to catch you, and I can’t see you out-running ‘em. And, of course, there’s bears and lions and tigers out there, too, and they’ve all got to eat.
“But, we thought we were done with you once, and look what that got us.” Charlie glanced about at the devastation. “Even if we marched you out past the bend, you’d probably come slinkin’ back in a day or two, and we’d be right back here trying to figure out what to do with you. So, I’m not going to waste anyone’s energy running you out of town. I’m gonna let you stay.”
The greatest reaction was from Billy Ray, who, in his spin towards Charlie, almost lost his hold on the prisoner. From the crowd came a communal intake of air followed by murmurs with harsher tones than had greeted the nomination of the new judge.
Without glancing about at what sounded like derision, Charlie remained standing straight and glaring at the prisoner. “But, Olen Johnson, hear this — you’re going to learn just what a value a community is, one that you were so willing to betray. You may stay in Wolfehaven. Hell, you can even go back to your house. I doubt if anyone else would want it. However, you are banned from the community kitchen, storerooms, and dining room. You can provide for yourself — if you can find something to eat without stealing it, and if you can figure out how to get a fire going and to cook it. I know you’ve been lacking in those homey skills in the past, or at least never contributed where they might have been appreciated. Now, some of these good folks may come to feel pity for you and toss you some scraps, like a bone with a bit of meat tossed to a starving dog in the street, but don’t count on it. They’d probably be more inclined to kick you in the face or cut your throat. And, you know what? I doubt if Jason would even scold them for it. I sure won’t. And my court will not find any man guilty for administering what may be deemed nothing more than delayed justice. Oh, and Olen, I’d be careful about turnin’ that velvet tongue of yours loose on anyone. You might get it cut out and fed to you.”
While the prisoner stood with his mouth agape and digested the full implications of his sentence, Charlie turned to Jason and asked, “Is that okay?”
Jason’s smile was tired but genuine as he answered, “Charlie — Judge Dickerson, you are the judge. And, like Judge Woodall said, at the present time, and probably for a long time to come, there is no higher court. I think he’d be very proud of you. I am.”
CHAPTER 28
Using the same logic they had followed after the battle of Petaluma, that with the large number of bodies to be disposed of, both friend and foe, burial was out of the question. The only sure method of eliminating the hazard of deadly pathogens breeding in the un-embalmed corpses and contaminating their air, ground and water, was cremation.
Jason didn’t bring it up, but he was pretty sure how it would be received by the rest of the village to allow the raiders’ ashes to mingle with those of their friends and loved ones. There had to be two pyres, so even finding and gathering enough firewood would be a challenge.
Once Lila had attended to everyone that needed it, with Emmie and Rachel taking some of the load, Jason asked Billy Ray to pick as many men with axes as he might need and head into the forest to gather combustible wood. While that was going on, he asked Charlie to begin the transport of the bodies to a clear, level area between the road and the river about a quarter mile downstream. The off-shore wind blowing in recent days would carry the smoke westward to the sea rather than through the village. He couldn’t bear to think of the smoke particles of his deceased friends, and even their enemies, settling over the homes of those waiting to return from Riverhill. He didn’t know if they would be detectable, either by feel or smell, but just knowing they were there, or might be there, was unacceptable.
Charlie managed his task by constructing several simple travoise, each to be pulled by two men and large enough to carry three or four bodies per trip, five if they were small. He made sure Olen assisted only on those with the bodies of the raiders he had led to slaughter his previous neighbors. Boats full of men from Riverhill arrived less than an hour after the fighting ended to relieve Charlie’s need to rely on battle maimed and exhausted men. They were devastated by the deaths that greeted them and each one readily pitched in to pull a travois or whatever tasks were asked.
By early evening, about the time everyone retired to their homes for dinner in better times, the piles of wood and bodies accumulating at the twin cremation sites pretty much destroyed any hint of appetite.
Jason put off one task for as long as he could. He finally acquiesced when Erin urged him to get word to those waiting at Riverhill for news of who among those left behind had survived and who had not. With a silent nod, he walked over to the table and benches near the pier where he sat alone and began making his list. After twenty minutes, he called Sayeko over and asked her to return upriver with it. He knew he should go with her, but he also knew he had to be there when the fires were lit. He settled with asking Erin to go in his stead.
With the sun seeming to pause over the tops of the western mountains and with shadows settling into the forested hillsides on both sides of the river, torches touched the kindling around the bases of the twin pyres; twin, but not even. The one for the raiders, down nearer the water’s edge, dwarfed the other. But no one commented on it. No one remarked about how it had cost the raiders more than Wolfehaven, comparing the losses as though it were the score of a game. With curls of smoke darkening the still golden, western sky and early stars winking on in the indigo east, heads hung low.
After what seemed like ages, Jason, with his arm draped over Emmie’s shoulders and her arm about his waist, turned with Dagar to follow Raven and Woody and the others on the long walk back to the shambles of their blood-smeared village, and the cloudless sky was full dark. A spray of stars gave it life like a promise of a better future. To the east, a gibbous moon perched in the vee between mountains and reflected off the slow moving river like a sparkling band of gold. Charlie mumbled that he would stay behind for a while, just to make sure no embers floated into the dry forest. Billy Ray stayed with him, both gazing silently into the smoking ashes.
◆◆◆
With the moon straight overhead, there was no need for a flashlight, even if such a thing were still available. The maze of the village with its haphazard layout of houses amidst a generous sprinkling of redwoods on both sides of the road was no deterrent for someone with years-long familiarity. Still, he stepped lightly and with caution. Even in exhausted sleep, vigilance among the defenders of the village had become second nature, and the snap of a broken twig outside a window could bring his spur-of-the-moment and without-a-lot-of-thought mission to a quick and probably painful end.
Olen laid his armful of twigs and branches at the base of the outer wall of the house, just as he had observed when they were finishing off preparing the pyres with kindling. He paused while he contemplated, but such operational planning and participation was too foreign to him. He was pleas
ed with himself that, visualizing the probable results, he had come up with the idea. He turned and walked back into the shadows.
A few minutes later, he returned to lay a second load of kindling near the first. He hummed to himself as he worked but was careful it was not loud enough to be heard by others. Wearing a smile, he made several more trips into the shadows until he had good-sized piles of dry and brittle brush, branches, and anything he could find that should ignite quickly. He walked around the house, noting there was no space wider than three feet between piles, and with larger piles in front of both doors and beneath every window.
“Too bad you left your brats up-river, bitch.” His words were hushed, but he didn’t really want her to hear them, anyway…just that they were spoken, and that he heard them. “But, that’s okay. You and Woody will have to be payment enough for what you cost me. Be sure to scream nice and loud so I can hear you, ‘cause I’ll be movin’ on down the road.”
His grin widened as he knelt. He had prepared his torch before-hand, a knobby branch with rags tied around the end and smeared with pitch from the boat-patching bucket before dumping the rest of the bucket into the kindling piles. He pulled his flint and steel from his pocket; a treasure of a find Jackie had made on one of his excursions with Jerry. They had found three sets in the ruins of an outdoors and camping supplies store. The boys each kept one, and Jackie gave the third one to him. Olen recalled how it had hurt him when, just as his son handed it to him, he had slapped himself on the forehead and remarked, “Oh, shit! What’s wrong with me? I should have kept it for trading.” Shrugging it off as a now moot issue, he glanced over at the house Charlie lived in.
“I may not know how to cook much, but I do know how to start a fire. Too bad I don’t have time to do your place, too. Maybe I’ll come back some day and take care of the little omission.”
It took him four strikes, but then he got a good spark that quickly had the torch ablaze. Without wasting time, he circled the house, touching his torch briefly to each pile of kindling before going on to the next. By the time he completed the circuit, the first was already licking up the wall. He tossed the torch into it, turned and disappeared into the shadows.
◆◆◆
“You know, Charlie,” Billy Ray said, turning his eyes skyward to peer at the parade of stars in the Milky Way just visible against the glare of the moon nearing its zenith. “…The Judge was all right. He made my life hell back in the old days, but, like you mentioned once or twice, it’s what he was supposed to do. I guess I just liked raisin’ hell too much. But, he was all right. Wish I’d a known sooner all he had done for me with gettin’ a job and all. I’da liked to have bought him a beer or two.”
Charlie smiled at the difficulty his old friend was having expressing his feelings. He had never been one to do so, at least not where anyone else could witness it. He and Charlie had laid his souls bare to each other a few times, but they had an unspoken understanding that those words never went any further. And, although his words now might seem crass coming from anyone else, Charlie knew they were from his heart. “He would have enjoyed it, too, and probably bought the next round.”
Billy Ray nodded again. He wiped at his eye with a thumb and mumbled, “Damned ashes’r flyin’ everywhere.”
“Yeah, they are.” Charlie smiled and let it go, aware his own eyes had been moist for some time. “About ready to head home? Lila’s probably wondering if you fell in the river.”
They stood and turned toward the road. Billy Ray said, “Naw, she didn’t want to be alone with Carlene still at Riverhill. She’s spending the night with Raven and Woody.”
They were still closer to the pyres than the road when they each stopped and cocked an ear. The sound was unmistakable. Someone was running on the road, westbound away from the village. They continued toward the road. Other than someone running down the road late at night, something that definitely called for an explanation, there was really no need for them to rush…yet.
The bright moon overhead made for clear viewing, and, from no more than a hundred feet away, they both recognized the portly form of Olen Johnson going past the cremation site at a fast run — at least one that was fast for him.
They looked at each other with unspoken questions and continued out to the road and then east, feeling an urgency that grew more uncomfortable with each step taken. They had not gotten far when, at the same time, they both pointed at the glow of flickering, orange light from somewhere among the houses of the village. Within three more steps, as the glow grew brighter, they didn’t have to guess what was causing it. They had just spent the evening watching flames consume the remains of dear friends, an image burned into their memories, and not one to be soon forgotten.
“Fire!” they both shouted as they broke into sprints. “Fire! Wake up! Fire!”
By the time they had reached the burning house, their shouts had roused everyone else.
“Woody! Raven! Wake up! Fire!”
Charlie ran to the front door, but it was blazing from top to bottom, the flames already licking at the eaves. Fire blocked every window, and the back door. When his shouts failed to get a response from inside, he feared the three within had already succumbed to the heat or smoke. It was impossible to tell if the fires had spread to the interior, but if it hadn’t, it wouldn’t be long.
He ran back to the front door to find Billy Ray kicking and hacking at it with his Claymore. Blazing kindling flew left and right under his onslaught, but the door remained closed. He charged to within striking distance, whaled on it a couple of times, but then had to back away from the intense heat. Without taking time to even cool off, he charged again with his blade flailing.
But Charlie knew the thickness of both the door and the bar across the inside that functioned as latch and lock; he had helped Woody install them. And, although the Claymore was unequalled in combat, it was just the wrong tool against two inches of oak.
When he and the others heard a scream from within, either from Raven or Lila, the response was as quick as it was futile. Billy Ray threw himself bodily against the blazing door and pounded with his fists as well as his shoulder, but it still held. Shouting Lila’s name, he continued to throw himself against the door until Charlie grabbed him by the arm to interrupt his rhythm and to beat out a couple of spots of clothing starting to spout flame.
“You can’t break it open, man, it’s —”
But the big man would not be restrained. With a flick of his arm, Charlie went flying and he charged again to ram the door.
“I’m coming, Lila!” he shouted in answer to another scream from beyond the door. “I’m coming!”
But it was useless. Even with flames burning into the wood, it was still as solid and strong as the day they hung it.
Charlie backed up to get a look at the roof and bumped into Jason and Erin. But he didn’t have time for gab. He spun about to the men, some crowded as close to the burning house as they could get as they worked to beat out the flames. “Maybe I can chop through up there. Who’s got an axe?”
As he peered up at the shingled roof through which smoke was making its way, it suddenly exploded upward. Singed, smoking and burning boards, shingles, and sheetrock flew up and outward as though a bomb had gone off, although there had been no sound of explosion.
Even Billy Ray backed off and gazed at the now topless house. And then, before he could move back to the burning door, it and the front wall began moving sideways — in opposite directions. They pulled apart with sounds of creaking nails, cracking sheetrock, splintering studs and shattering timbers. The wreckage continued to split, separating from top to bottom in a line on the right side of the blazing door that extended up through the eaves to the gaping space where the roof had been. Like drapes on a rod, the wall pulled apart until a gap of five or six feet divided the halves. From within the smoke filled structure, three figures emerged though the cleared space, past reaching flames on both side to the cool air of the night.
As they
stepped down to the ground, Raven stumbled and fell, but only as far as Woody’s arms which swept her up. Beside Woody, Lila stepped carefully over fallen debris until she was clear, and then she ran into Billy Ray’s reaching arms in which she, too, was swept up.
“My God!” Erin said as he closed in on them. “Are all of you okay? Is anyone hurt? How did you…what…?”
“Did something in there blow up?” Jason asked. “Or was that you, Woody?”
“Yeah, me and Lila.” Woody turned and looked back at the burning wreckage of his house. “If it keeps burning, it’s gonna spread to trees and other houses.” He looked about the crowd ringing the front of the house and said, “Emmie, Vonnie, let’s see if you, Lila and I can collapse the rest of it in on itself. No point in trying to save anything inside, now.”
Everyone else moved back and let the four powerful movers do their thing. Within minutes, the house he had shared with Raven, the house where their children were born, was a burning pile of rubble, but the flames were small and with the air spaces eliminated, diminishing.
Raven stepped forward to wrap her arm around her husband’s waist. He draped his arm about her shoulders and drew her close as they gazed into the ruins of their home. No one spoke until he turned toward Charlie and asked, “Was I mistaken or were there piles of kindling around the bottom?”
“You weren’t mistaken.”
“So, it was something besides carelessness.”
Charlie nodded. “Yeah, I’d say it had a good start by someone, all right, and I’ll bet I can put a name to him, too.”
Jason turned to him. “Do you know something?”
“Don’t know as I can say I know it, but I sure got good reason to suspect. Billy Ray and I stayed down at the cremation after everyone left — you know, just to think and remember. Then, when we finally did start back just a few minutes ago, before we got to the road we heard someone running from the village. When he got closer, we recognized Olen Johnson. He was really pickin’ ‘em up and puttin’ ‘em down. Didn’t know he could run like that. I doubt if he even saw us. We didn’t have any reason to stop him, and he just kept going west. We no sooner got to the road, ourselves, when we saw the glow and came running.”