“Eat up boys,” he said. “Don’t let it to go to waste.”
Carl knew he was leaving that house for good. He spent hours going through his possessions, deciding what to bring. Mostly, he had tools. But he said he only needed a few of them for working with explosives. The rest, a room full of fine saws, wrenches, hammers, and such, he would have to leave. And then there were personal things—pictures of his family, letters, and other keepsakes. He couldn’t bring much. The rest, like the tools, had to be left behind.
It was strange that he would just up and go off with strangers. While he was cleaning up after supper, I asked him about that.
“Yeah,” he said, “don’t make much sense. Sitting around here, waiting to die alone, makes even less.”
“But why get mixed up in our fight?” I said. “I mean, the Government’s not doing anything to you, is it?”
“No. Not yet. They’ll even make some things better around here. It used to be pretty dangerous around here. That’s why I built that hiding place. It was for my wife and daughter in case anyone got in the house when I wasn’t here. Now the soldiers have run off the thieves and other scum that used to hang about. Because the Army is here, the local traders already have food I haven’t seen since before the Plague. And someday, the Government might bring back indoor plumbing and electricity. Telephones. Maybe even radio.”
“So if the Government’s doing all that, why fight them?”
“This Government ain’t like the old one. Sure, the old Government sometimes pushed people around, but you could say whatever you damn well thought about it, and about the folks who ran things. It was supposed to work for us, and we could raise hell when it didn’t. Plenty of folks did.”
“And this Government?”
“From what I’ve seen, do what you’re told, you’ll be fine. But get in the way, you’re nothing. They want us to be afraid. Everything comes down to pointing a gun.”
I told Carl about what the Government was doing to our people, about what I had seen in that village. I didn’t tell him about the woman on the table, or the soldier Jane had shot. I didn’t tell him, but I couldn’t help remembering those things.
“You saw this with your own eyes?” he said. “It wasn’t something you just heard about, a friend-heard-it-from-a-friend kind of thing, was it?”
“I wish I hadn’t. But I did. With my own eyes.”
He sat down in a chair, folded his arms across his chest, and said, “Then I’m doing the right thing. Maybe the best thing I’ve ever done.”
CHAPTER 18
“Damn,” Carl said. “That girl’s gonna kill herself.
Jane was up ahead, leaning against a tree, winded from the last climb. I went to her, put a hand on her shoulder, and said, “Don’t make yourself sick. Sit down. Have some water.”
She turned, knocking my hand away.
“No!” she shouted. Her eyes seemed hard, crazy. For a moment, I was surprised. Then I got angry. But I knew better than to say anything. Since leaving Canton, Jane had pushed us to go faster, to get to Winslow sooner. She had gotten it in her head there wasn’t a moment to lose, and nothing would change that.
“Come on. Come on. Let’s go,” she would say, and wave us forward, like we were little boys dawdling at our chores. I was tired of this, tired of being pushed around, tired of her.
She started up the trail again. Slowly. Each step a heaving act of will.
Riley and Carl came up and stood next to me. The three of us just watched her.
She stopped, turned, and saw us standing there.
“Come on. Come on. Let’s go,” she shouted, waving us forward.
Going up the last hill to Central Camp, I thought she wouldn’t make it. But she walked into camp on her own, head up, back straight, and carrying her own rifle—putting on a real show. When our men saw her, they cleared a path for her.
She wanted to see Winslow right away, but she was told he wasn’t around. Campbell was. While someone ran to fetch him, she stood quietly, holding her rifle in the crook of her arm, just as she had when I first saw her. She swayed a little, and a trickle of sweat came down the side of her face. The muscles in her jaw were bunched tight. I expected her to collapse any moment.
Finally, the men around us made way for someone.
“Jane, you’re alive,” Campbell said. He didn’t look happy or unhappy. He didn’t even look surprised.
“Yes,” she said and turned to look at Carl. Just then her eyelids fluttered and closed, and her knees buckled. Riley and I caught her and let her down to the ground. Campbell knelt by her. Her eyes opened, and she reached up and grabbed him by the shirt. Then she passed out.
We carried Jane to a shed where the wounded were tended. An older man named Simpson was in charge. He was taking off her coat to look at her shoulder, when her eyes opened a little, and she said in a weak voice, “Papa? Papa?” Then she was out again. Simpson pulled away the bandage and looked at the wound.
“She gonna be OK?” Riley said.
“Don’t look infected,” Simpson said. “But she must be all wore out from losing blood. We’ll have to wait and see.”
Campbell took Riley, Carl, and me outside and said, “What the hell’s going on?”
We explained. Carl did most of the talking. Campbell just stood there listening to him, nodding now and then, but not saying anything. When Carl finished, Campbell still didn’t say anything. Instead, he looked like he was thinking real hard and ran his fingers through his hair several times.
“Follow me,” he said.
We walked for a bit until we reached a wagon covered by a heavy canvas tarp. Campbell had Riley pull back the tarp, and he climbed up amid the crates. After poking around for a minute, he pulled out something shaped like a brick, but wrapped in dark green paper. Tossing it to Carl, he said, “Can you use this?”
Carl caught it and turned it over in hands and peeled back some of the paper. It looked like clay. Carl touched and sniffed it.
“You’re damn right I can use it,” he said. “This is a plastic explosive, C-4 or something like it. What else you got?”
“Take a look,” Campbell said.
Riley and I boosted Carl up into the wagon, and he began looking through the crates.
Campbell climbed down and gestured for us to follow him. We walked about ten yards, and he said to us, “Can we trust him?” He kept his voice low so Carl couldn’t hear us.
“I think so.” I told you how we found him, how he hid us from the soldiers, and left everything to come here.
“But why would a man do that?” he said.
“Jane,” Riley said.
“She can have that effect on some,” Campbell said, laughing.
I almost said, “But not on you?” I had no business asking a Colonel such questions and was glad I held my tongue.
Just then Carl started calling for us to come back. He was excited about something he had found in the wagon. We all started that way, but Campbell told us that he would see to Carl. He said our job was to take care of Jane.
So Riley and I turned and started walking to the shed where Jane was resting.
“Let’s see,” I said, “since we’ve been taking care of her, Jane’s been shot at, wounded, almost captured, and now she’s near walked herself to death.”
“Well,” Riley said, scratching his beard, “I think we’ve done a damn fine job. Considering.”
Jane came to on the second day. She looked up, blinking slowly at Riley and me. Her first words were, “Where’s Carl?”
“We’re just fine,” Riley said. “Thanks for asking.”
“Where’s Carl?” she said.
“He’s with Campbell,” I said.
“Good,” she said and closed her eyes.
I started to tell her more, about the bricks of explosives, and how excited Carl had been, but she was already asleep, a little smile on her face.
The next day, Jane was awake, sitting on her bed and leaning against the wall of t
he cabin, when Campbell came to see her. There were dark circles under her eyes, and she was pale.
“How are you Jane?” he said.
“Tell me. What’s happened?” she said.
Campbell stood on one side of Jane’s bed. Riley and I on the other.
“The soldiers hold the road all the way to the tunnel at Snowbird Mountain,” he said. “We hit them, but they just keep coming. More men. More trucks.”
He paused like he didn’t want to tell us.
“Tell me,” she said.
“Massacres. At least two. Maybe more. We don’t know for sure.”
“Damn!” Riley said.
“Riley,” Jane said, real gentle. “Don’t curse. Please.”
“Sorry,” he said, looking down. “Couldn’t help it.”
None of us said anything. For a moment, I was back in that house, smelling the woman’s blood, hearing the flies.
“What about Carl?” Jane said.
Campbell nodded. “He says we can collapse sections of the road and make landslides big enough to block it. But we need to get more explosives. A lot more.”
“How?” Jane said.
“We got this batch from soldiers. Some will trade equipment, ammo, you name it, for whiskey, for gold and jewelry. But that’s a tricky business. It might take some time.”
“How much time?” she said.
Campbell shrugged. “Could be weeks. But if we don’t get it trading, we’ll have to find a way to take some. And that could be . . . hard.”
“Is Carl here?” Jane said. “I want to talk with him.”
“He’s with some our men scouting the big road for the best places to attack. He’ll be away a few more days.”
“What about Winslow?” Jane said.
“He’s someplace where the soldiers won’t find him. Do you need to send a message to him?”
Jane just shook her head.
Campbell said goodbye and was turning to go when I said, “Hey, Colonel,” He stopped and looked at me.
“Until all this happens,” I said, “what’re we supposed to do?”
“Wait.”
So we waited. Riley and I sat with her and fed her. At least once a day, Simpson checked her wound, which was healing fast, and changed the dressing. The circles under her eyes went away, and she got her color back.
Every morning, she would wake early and pray for an hour or more. She did the same at night. Once she started feeling a little better, she would get dressed and walk around camp, carrying her rifle. Each day she walked a little more and seemed stronger. She always spent some time talking and praying with the wounded. Campbell came by now and then. He didn’t have much to say. He was still waiting for news.
Jane rested, but she seldom appeared relaxed, except when Riley got her laughing with one of his funny stories. Jane and I didn’t say much when I sat with her. I felt a kind of wall between us, a wall that hadn’t been there before going to Canton.
Instead of talking, I read to her. I had borrowed a Bible from someone in camp. Though she couldn’t read, she knew many of the stories from listening in church and asked me to read certain one. Stories with fighting and wars were her favorites. In those stories, the Jews were always in terrible trouble, getting conquered and enslaved by their enemies. But God would not abandon His people and He would raise up a Judge or a Prophet to lead the people to a great victory.
One night she asked to hear the story of the Prophetess Deborah in the Book of Judges. I read the story and came to the last verse, “So let all thine enemies perish O LORD: but let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might. And the land had rest forty years.”
When I finished, I looked up. Jane seemed happy, lost in the story’s promise of victory and peace. I watched her for a long moment until she turned to me and smiled.
“Jane,” I said. “You believe we’re just like the folks in those stories, don’t you? God delivered them and He’ll deliver us.”
“Don’t you?” she said. Jane had a way of turning things around. I had asked her a question, but ended up trying to explain myself.
“Well, I don’t know,” I said. “They’re God’s chosen people. That’s why He worked miracles for them. But we’re just people. God wants us to have faith, to be good, to go to heaven, and all, but I don’t know if He’s fighting the Government for us.”
“Then why are those stories in the Bible?”
I stared at her. I had no idea what she was talking about.
“God put all those stories about war in the Old Testament,” she said, “didn’t He?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“So, what’s He trying to tell us?”
“Up home, our minister said the whole Old Testament showed how God worked to bring forth Christ and His salvation to the world. It shows how much God loves us.”
“That’s true. But the Bible also shows us how to be God’s people. In peace and war. In good times and bad.”
“But we’re not like those people in the Bible. They were called to great things . . . I mean--”
“And we aren’t important to God? Just backward hillbilly trash? Is that it?”
“Well . . .”
“Compared to Egypt and Babylon and Rome, the Jews weren’t powerful or important. And think about how it must’ve been for people back then. They didn’t know they was in the Bible. They was just living their lives, like we are. Put yourself in their shoes.”
“I think they wore sandals. Not shoes.”
“Oh, be serious,” she said, punching me on the arm.
“So we’re just like the folks in the Bible?”
“Yes.”
“So . . . we’re the chosen people?”
“No. Not the chosen people. But I believe . . . . I know God will be with any people who have faith and keep the commandments.”
“So . . . God will beat the Government?”
“No. We have to fight. We have to have faith. And God will --”
I said, “‘What then shall we say to these things. If God be for us, who can be against us?’ Paul to the Romans, Chapter 8.”
“Yes,” she said, nodding and smiling. “That’s it.”
“But . . .”
“But what?”
“We’ve been fighting for months, and the soldiers just keep coming. And what they are doing to our people . . . How can--”
She cut me off. “How can God let that happen?”
I nodded.
“I don’t know. But I do know God is with us. Without God’s help, the soldiers would’ve already beaten us. Think of all the times we’ve seen God’s hand at work.”
I nodded. I had seen Jane do amazing things. So part of me was willing to say that God was behind it all. But another part of me wondered if Jane had just had an incredible run of luck. I didn’t know much more about luck than the next man. Nobody can tell you where luck comes from, how to keep it, or how to get it back. But I knew, knew for a fact, one thing about luck. Sooner or later, it runs out. Always.
I had to be there when her luck ran out.
“And now God has given us a way to win,” Jane said. “Carl.”
“Win? Maybe he can stop them for a while. But remember, the Government wants everything, from ocean to ocean. They’ll be back. We’ll have to keep fighting.”
“Of course, we’ll have to fight on. The war against Evil goes on till Judgment Day. You know that.”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
We sat for a while. Silent. I could feel her watching me.
“Do you remember the story where Jesus was sleeping in the boat and a storm came?”
I nodded.
“Do you remember what Jesus said to them? He said, ‘Why are ye so fearful? How is it ye have no faith?’”
“I do. I have faith,” I said, but I looked away.
“You’re a good man,” she said. “You do God’s will even though you don’t understand. I pray for you. I pray you find your way.”
“Thank you,” I said, forcing myself to look at her.
“I’m tired now. Before you go, could you read a Scripture for me?”
I nodded and picked up the Bible. “What did you want to hear?”
“It’s in Romans, after what you said before. It begins, ‘Who shall separate us . . .’ Know the verse I mean?”
I turned to it and read, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”
I stopped, thinking that was what she had wanted to hear. But she told me to keep going. So I read, “As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”
I stopped again and looked at Jane. I understood then I wasn’t reading this to her. She was reading it to me. Sheep for the slaughter, I thought. Killed all the day long.
I closed the Bible.
“Much obliged,” she said.
I nodded, stood up, and turned to go. But at the door, I turned back and told her it was a shame that she couldn’t read the Bible herself. I offered to teach her how.
“Once all this is over,” I said, “you can learn. It won’t take any time at all.”
She didn’t say anything. So I wondered if I had offended her by being too proud of my schooling.
“I only know how to read because there was a school up home,” I said. “I’m not trying to show off or anything.”
“I know. You just want to help. But we ought not count on anything after this is over.”
She was talking about more than reading. Her Uncle John had told me the same thing.
“I understand,” I said. “I’ll let you rest now.”
She wished me a good night. I went outside and looked up at the sky. It was cloudy, and I couldn’t see any stars.
I had spent every waking moment for months with Jane. I had listened to her, followed her, and believed in her. I had risked my life for her, and she had saved mine. I grieved for the things she had to see and do. I knew it to be rank foolishness, but still I had little daydreams about a future with her, not with Maggie. Sometimes I thought I understood Jane. Other times, she was as much a mystery to me as the very first time I saw her walk out of the darkness.
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