His idiot tenacity was getting on my nerves. He was on all fours when I turned around and I shook my fist at him and shouted at him to go away. I waved my arms at him to emphasize my point.
On his hind legs now, the bear gave the impression of waving back at me.
He seemed not to understand or at least was refusing to acknowledge that he did, shaking his head and looking abashed. Whatever was going on with him, he made no move to shorten the distance between us.
I took a few quick steps and then turned abruptly around to catch him off guard.
He was still approximately the same distance away. When he noticed that I was facing him, he did an almost graceful 360-degree turn.
Hard to explain what got into me, but the bear’s antics amused me unreasonably—perhaps it was the release of tension—and I broke into a near-hysterical laugh, which he mimicked in his bearish way almost to perfection.
I decided not to be afraid of him—he had probably wandered off from a traveling circus—and I invited him, gesturing my intent, to join me. To my surprise, he refused and we continued walking in single file as we had before.
Weary of my long-running private dialogue, I tilted my head to the right and talked to the bear over my shoulder. I told him that after losing Molly, a loss that seemed to recapitulate itself, I had found it difficult to respond to other women. He acknowledged my lugubrious remarks with the occasional grunt.
Eventually we reached a clearing. Ahead in what seemed like a stage set for a town was a compound made up of institutional brick buildings. There was no immediate sign of life, but I thought I noticed a machine gun emplacement on the roof of one of the two-story buildings.
Though I had never seen the place from the outside before in daylight, I had no doubts as to where I was.
Clapping me on the shoulder as he went by, the bear scampered into the deserted clearing. I called to him to come back moments before a machine gun serenade welcomed him to the neighborhood.
I watched him lurch awkwardly into the woods, a howl of surprise preceding him. There was nothing I could do for him. Aggrieved at the loss of my companion, I veered off in the direction I had come, seeking other options.
97th Night
The world teetered on the brink of light when I woke. The others were already going about their morning routines, Bobby chopping firewood in the yard, Mina boiling water, wrestling with encroaching nature in the kitchen. I felt imprisoned in their routines.
I dressed in a black t-shirt and faded jeans, the clothes alongside the bed, and put on my old New Balance running shoes, which were showing signs of erosion.
I had a crust of bread with honey and a cup of herbal tea before announcing to Mina that I was going for a run. She said nothing, wore a ragged smile.
It was a partial lie for which I felt the barest whiff of guilt. I was going for a run, but I had, you see, no intention of returning.
I took the southern path this time, the one Mina had warned me against, noting that it could be dangerous while making a point of offering no particulars.
“How do you mean dangerous?” I asked.
Her answer was to roll her eyes.
“No, please,” I said, “tell me what you mean. What’s so dangerous about the southern path?”
“I’ve only heard rumors,” she said. “It’s the way things are, you know that. The world wherever you go, it’s a dangerous place.”
We kissed goodbye. I took Bobby’s broomstick with me as protection against the unspeakable.
The sun came through the scrim of leaves, dappling the path making it all but impossible at times to see directly in front of me. When blinded by the sunlight, I tended to slow my pace until visibility returned.
Despite these periodic slowdowns, I felt I was making good time as if some kind of standard needed to be met. The only worry I had was that I was not the least bit worried. I knew from a history of such experience that exhilaration carried with it promises of comeuppance.
Sometimes it seemed to me that during my periodic moments of blindness there had been something or someone there, haloed by the light, standing in my way, though when the glare passed whatever I had sensed was gone.
I put it down to a susceptibility to delusion perhaps set off by Mina’s warning.
But this time when the sun receded there was clearly someone there, a smallish woman in a black dress, perhaps a nun’s outfit, standing in the center of the path some ten feet away.
I was pleased to see another human being and I greeted her in a friendly manner and asked her where she had come from.
At first she said nothing, smiled nervously, then frowned. Then she mouthed the word “food,” though it could just as easily been the word “fool.”
I had some food and water with me in a ratty backpack, but hardly enough to satisfy my own burgeoning hunger. As a way of changing the subject, I asked her if she lived nearby. Perhaps she was actually some kind of nun and there was a monastery not far from here.
She smiled slyly, pointed again to her mouth, meaning whatever it meant, that she was hungry, had taken a vow of silence, was unable to speak.
I tore off a crust from the chunk of bread in my pack and held it out to the woman, who made no response.
“It’s good bread,” I said. “I assumed when you pointed to your mouth you were telling me you were hungry.”
When I least expected it, she grabbed the crust from my hand and shoved it in her mouth.
In seconds, the crust, which she disposed of as if she were grinding mortar, was a memory and she pointed to her mouth again.
So I broke off another piece of bread and handed it to her and then another after she obliterated the second piece with even greater dispatch than the first.
In short order, she had consumed the sizable chunk of bread I had been saving for my lunch but she seemed unsatisfied, pointing once again to her mouth, her gloved hand, which she held out toward me, trembling with expectation.
“That’s all there is,” I said, holding out empty hands.
“You’ve been so kind to an old woman,” she seemed to say. “Still, I know there’s more.”
Reluctantly, I produced the hardboiled egg which had been nesting at the bottom of my pack, pretending to be surprised at its presence. She disposed of the egg without removing the shell.
And still she was unsatisfied, her hand pointing again to her mouth.
“I’m sorry,” I said, shaking out the pack to show her there was no more food.
She picked up one of the books that had tumbled out and squeezed it into her mouth, disposing of it in three chomping bites.
The other, which was one of mine, she sniffed at, nibbled at the edges and then returned.
“Didn’t we once dance together?” I asked her.
“That was my sister,” she seemed to say.
Licking her lips, her tongue black with ink, she studied me for a protracted moment and then in apparent slow motion pirouetted. I didn’t see her disappear. One moment she was there and the next she was gone.
I had a carrot in the pocket of my jeans, but I hesitated reaching for it. It seemed to move about restively as if it had a life of its own.
I had the path to myself again, but I hesitated moving on.
My first impulse after the hungry woman had disappeared was to return to Mina and Bobby, whom I suddenly missed or imagined I missed, abruptly aware of being alone in the world.
As a matter of will, I continued in the direction I had been going.
I made a point of shortening my stride so if I decided to return, which I promised myself was not going to happen, there would be a less demanding trip back.
I hadn’t gotten much further when I arrived at the southern path’s end, came to a crossroads in the woods. Having no basis for choosing right over left or left over right, I stood in place for the longest time, weighing the pros and cons of my next move, glancing one way then the other.
98th Night
“What do y
ou think you’re doing, honcho?” a voice called to me from behind a bush. “Didn’t you see the signs? There’s a dress rehearsal of a war going on at this site.”
I had heard explosions in the distance, which I had attributed to thunder.
When the speaker in a major’s uniform—his name tag read Grope—appeared from behind a bush, I recognized him (allowing for the alterations of aging) as my childhood friend, Lenny.
We had a brief reunion before returning to the business at hand.
“You better get out of here pronto, Honcho,” he said, pulling me over to the side of the road—the bushes dense with troop life. “I’m under explicit orders to take no prisoners.”
“Which way should I go?” I asked.
He thought about it, surveyed the scene in all directions.
“With all this random rocket action going on, there’s no absolutely safe place to go. You may be best off hanging out in the bushes with the rest of us.” At that moment, a missile exploded about twenty feet from the brush where the major’s troops were hunkered down.
“Is that live ammo?” I asked.
“War is serious business, Honcho. You can’t train one way and fight another. If you don’t use live ammo, if you just go through the motions, the troops will think war is some kind of pussy picnic. You see what I’m saying. You got to practice the same way you play the real game. Don’t worry about us—we’re punishing the enemy shitloads more than he’s punishing us.”
I decided to go on. “Good to see you, “ I said.
“Watch your ass,” he said, hugging me while looking over my shoulder. “Believe me, the other side will not be as gentle with you if you get in their way.”
I headed in a direction that with any luck would circumvent the troop activity of the other side.
A helicopter seemed to follow overhead and occasionally dumped what looked like sandwich wrappers in my direction. They were actually notes, warning me to move somewhere else unless I had no objection to being strafed in the next 10 minutes.
The notes offered no specific information as to the appropriate direction to go so I continued where I was heading though at a somewhat brisker pace.
At some point, a jeep cut me off and someone coming up behind me shouted “hostage,” which is how I got taken prisoner by what I thought of at that point as the enemy.
I was frisked, blindfolded, my hands tied behind me, and dumped into the back of the jeep. “Where are you hiding your weapon?” someone asked.
“I’m a civilian,” I protested.
“There are no civilians in war,” another someone said, though it might have been the same voice.
I was briefly imprisoned in what smelled like a latrine—they let me out when someone of consequence insisted on coming in—then delivered me, my blindfold slipping over one eye, to what I assumed was the command tent.
The commanding officer, Colonel Field, looked on as his Adjutant interviewed me. Before the questions came, my blindfold was removed, my hands untied and I was offered my choice of coffee or tea.
I appreciated their kindness and asked if the coffee was fresh brewed before accepting the tea.
“We’re the good guys,” the Adjutant said, to which the Colonel nodded his approval, “but we’re losing the war and we had to do something that we might otherwise disapprove of to increase our leverage. So by democratic vote among the senior officers, we decided to take a hostage from the other side to pressure them to release the officer class soldiers of ours they’re holding prisoner as leverage against us. When our men saw you they knew right away from the way you were dressed—no ordinary person walks around in clothes as blatantly ratty as yours—that you were someone of consequence among the enemy. We hope that you’ll be as frank with us and I have been with you. Who is it we have in our possession?”
“I’m a civilian,” I said.
“The Colonel told me you would say exactly that,” he said.
“I can understand your not wanting to betray your side, but what we’re doing here is trying to end the bloodshed, not extend it. So by helping us, you would also be helping your friends. Our only goal is to establish a fair and lasting truce. Is that something you oppose?”
“Of course not,” I said, “but...”
“I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “You look like a civilized man. We’re not asking for information on our enemy’s troop movements, which you would be in your rights to deny us. All we want from you, in effect, is your name and rank.”
I repeated my claim, told them that I had been walking in the woods and stumbled on their dress-rehearsal maneuver.
“So you say,” the Adjutant said. “What if I told you that several of our men saw you embrace Major Grope, who is reputed to be second in command on the other side? Do you also want to deny that you embraced Major Grope?”
After that, I saw that there was nothing I could say to change their minds about me. “Look,” I said, “you can tell Major Grope that you have his childhood friend, Honcho, in custody.”
The Colonel and Adjutant shared knowing looks whose implications passed over my head. Before I was escorted from the command tent, the Adjutant thanked me for my cooperation and shook my hand.
For much of the next day, I was kept prisoner under armed guard in an adjoining tent.
I should mention that while this questioning was going on we were under almost continuous bombardment, most of the missiles exploding at a relatively safe distance.
I was using the latrine when a bomb fell just outside my box, shit flying about in the next few minutes as if it had wings.
When I let myself out—the door to the box had already fallen off—I discovered that my armed escort had been killed, half his head blown away. Also, the tent I had been staying in was a few flapping shreds of its former self.
Explosions lit up the sky and I saw through the trees perhaps a half mile away the gleam of paved roads. It may have been a mirage but I lowered my head (to make myself a smaller target) and ran a jagged path toward freedom. There was no point continuing in my role as useful hostage while the side that had captured me was being wiped out.
Along the way, I stumbled over what might have been the mangled body of the Adjutant—there was no time for mournful thoughts—as I hurried through the woods toward the paved roads of civilization.
99th Night
At long last, I was out of the woods, moving along the collar of a wide two-lane road with a snaky double line at its center. As a car neared, I would hold up my thumb half-heartedly in time-honored gesture. Repeated rejection soured my mood.
It was only after I decided not to raise my thumb that I got my first ride. It was from a middle-aged couple—a long married couple it seemed—in the throes of what might have been a twenty-year argument.
I didn’t know how tired I was until the moment my rump met the back seat and I drifted off.
Even asleep, the voices of contention penetrated my cocoon and joined forces with whatever fragmentary dreams were playing on the same wave length.
“How far are you going?” the wife, who was in the driver’s seat, asked whoever she thought she was talking to.
I might have answered but if I did it was with intention rather than speech. “As far as you’re willing to take me,” I might have said. I was in the business of creating distance between myself and the circumstantial domestic compromise I had taken pains to escape. When the game is escape, distance is the measure of accomplishment.
While accumulating distance, I felt oppressed by the ongoing dispute in the front seat that was my responsibility to resolve. They had chosen me as their audience and I had fallen asleep on the job. Couldn’t I do anything right?
“When you can forgive yourselves,” I said to their stand-ins in my dream, “you will be able to forgive each other.” I was of course talking to myself.
“That’s just the problem,” the stand-in for the woman said. “He’ll never forgive himself because he knows at the bottom of his
soul that he’s unforgivable.”
“You know, sweetheart,” the stand-in for the man said, “you can be a sanctimonious bitch. I suppose you’re forgivable, right?”
“At least I can forgive myself,” she said after an intake of breath, offering an icy laugh that sounded like glass breaking.
There was a moment, a measure, of silence and the car swerved to get out of its own way.
“Isn’t one lane wide enough for you?” he said, addressing his remark to me.
“People with low self-esteem tend to be cruel to those closest to them,” she said. “It’s not his fault—he can’t help himself.”
“I won’t dignify that with a reply,” he said.
“You already have,” she said.
“We need your help,” the man said, nudging me with a rolled-up newspaper. “Are you awake?”
I blinked my eyes open and was disturbed to discover that we were parked at the side of the road. “What’s going on?” I said.
“We need you to settle an argument,” the man said. “You must have heard most of our argument. Tell us who you think is right.”
“Right about what?” I asked.
They talked over each other in strident voices and what filtered through made little sense to me.
“Uh huh,” I said, playing my part.
“We’re not always like this,” the woman said. “Zach needs an audience to express his...”
“Just shut up,” he said, shouting her down. “Will you shut up, for God’s sake.”
At this point, the woman slapped her husband, a resounding blow, which he answered after a pregnant pause of outrage with a closed fist.
After he hit her in the eye, he apologized, but there were more blows to come, punctuated by apologies, curses and cries of pain.
Sensing they had forgotten me, I slipped out the door on my left and trotted off wearily in the direction the car was pointed.After awhile, my breath coming in echoes, assuming there was no immediate danger pursuing me, I slowed to a feverish stumble.
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