The most important thing for me in those days was Maggie. I don’t remember when or how it happened, but Maggie and I, and everyone around us too, stopped wondering if we would be married. Instead, we knew. That knowing was the warmth in the heart of that winter. It was the newness of my new life.
Now and then, I would have a restless night filled with thoughts of the past, with the tangle of things I had done and failed to do. I would sit in the dark, thinking of Jane and Riley, and all the rest of it. I couldn’t make the thoughts go away. But I could stand it because I knew if I held on, dawn would set me free. And that was how it was until a cold gray day in March.
I was chopping wood when Riley came around a corner of the house. For a moment, I wondered if he was real. Then I leaned the ax against the house and went over to him. I was so surprised I didn’t know what to say or do.
“Hey,” he said and stuck out his hand.
I shook it and said, “Hey.”
Then happiness pushed everything else aside. My friend was alive. He had come through. I threw my arms around him and pounded him on the back. He did the same, but with only one hand. The other still held a rifle.
It wasn’t till I had him inside, getting warm at the fire, that I remembered where Riley lived. He couldn’t be on his way home. It was in the opposite direction. He could’ve only come here to find me, to tell me something. And the thought of what it might be frightened me.
I sat down facing him. He was looking into the fire. For one long strange moment, I was sure he had come to tell me Jane was dead. In that moment, I was back on that dark street, the soldiers shooting at us, Jane going down, and I was waiting to see if the world would keep on turning.
Then I was just as sure Jane was alive and that she had sent Riley to get me. No, not this time, I thought. I’m not coming this time.
“Tell me,” I said.
“Jane wants you to come back.”
“Come back? What for? The war’s over. The soldiers are gone.”
“No. Not over. Not gone. It just stopped for a spell. Jane says the war will start again in the spring.”
“So that’s what Jane says. What about Campbell? What about Winslow? What do they say?”
“Don’t know what they say. But Jane says--”
“Jane says?! I’ve had enough of what Jane says. I don’t give a damn what she says anymore!” By the time I was finished, I was standing up, shouting at him.
Riley didn’t get angry. He just sat there and took it.
“I’m sorry,” I said, sitting down again. “I didn’t mean to . . .” I trailed off, feeling foolish.
“I know. I told her you’d feel this way. Told her it was a waste of time. But she wanted me to ask. So I asked.” Then he looked into the fire.
“I’m getting married in the spring,” I said, trying to get us talking about something else.
“Good. What was her name? Maggie?”
“Yeah.”
We were quiet for a while. He looked into the fire, scratching his beard.
I told him about seeing Weber, and about Stokes and Harris. Riley said he knew and told me Carl was dead.
“Soldiers?”
“No, his heart just gave out. He was too old to go running around the mountains. I don’t know how he lasted as long as he did. He was more than sixty.”
I nodded. I knew they had likely buried him in some forgotten hole. I wondered if, at the very end, he still thought helping Jane was the best thing he had ever done. Too late to ask.
We were quiet again for a while.
“If they call up the militia again,” I said, “I’ll go but . . .”
“I know,” Riley said. “I’d do the same in your shoes.” Then he stood up and walked over to his hat, bedroll, and rifle.
I realized he was getting ready to leave.
“Come on,” I said. “Stay a while. Have dinner with us and sleep in a real bed. My father will want to break out the whiskey.”
Riley smiled at this, thanked me, and said he had to go, started toward the door.
“Don’t go,” I said, feeling bad about the way I had shouted at him. But I realized that had nothing to do with it. The bad feeling was from the choice I had made.
“Wish I could,” he said, already at the door putting out his hand. We shook hands without saying anything more, and he went out. I stepped outside and watched him walk away and go around the corner of the house. He didn’t look back.
After a while, I guess I went back to chopping wood. I don’t remember. Work had always made my tangled thoughts go away. Not this time. I was walking about, doing chores, and eating the evening meal with my parents, but all the while listening to gunfire and shouts, seeing blood, smelling smoke.
That night, I didn’t want to go to sleep. I knew who would be waiting for me there. Ever since I had started for home, he had been close. He was stalking me, staying just beyond the edge of my thoughts. So I sat in the dark and looked at my bed, wondering how long I could stay awake. But I realized that was foolish. The dead have no need of rest. The blue-eyed man had all the time in the world. He could wait.
So I lay down and closed my eyes, trembling with the fear. But finally sleep came. Then the dream.
I was alone, walking through piney woods at twilight. The trees were immense, thick, tall, and very old. There was no undergrowth, just a thick layer of needles covering easy rolling ground. It was a beautiful soft summer evening.
Twilight faded to darkness. But I kept walking. It was too dark to see which direction I should go. But I realized--as if I knew this was a dream--any direction would take me where I had to go.
At first, I could hear all the sounds of the woods at night, crickets, and birds, now and then the soft scurry of something four-legged getting out of my path. But all the sounds went away when I caught sight of the fire. Someone had made a camp and built a fire. That’s where I was going.
As I moved toward it, the silence of the woods, of the whole world, deepened and swallowed me. I couldn’t hear my boots on the pine needles. I couldn’t even hear my own breathing.
The fire was in the center of a clearing. As soon as I stepped out from the trees, I felt afraid. I moved forward in a crouch. But no one was there. No camp, no bedrolls, no cooking pots. Just a big fire, set in the middle of a perfect circle of stones, burning in absolute silence. It gave no heat, only light. Cold silent light.
I squatted by the fire until I saw movement on the other side. It was a man carrying a rifle in the crook of his left arm. As he moved into the light, I realized it wasn’t a man. It was Jane--Jane just as I had first seen her. The same baggy britches. The same chopped up hair. The fire reflected in her eyes.
I stood up, and we looked at each other across the fire. Then I felt she was asking me for something, asking with her eyes. And I answered without words. I couldn’t, or just wouldn’t, give what she was asking for. She appeared to understand this, but it made her sad. She nodded and turned to go back into the darkness. Before she disappeared, she stopped and looked at me again. Then she was gone.
I started to turn away, but I saw someone else coming out of the dark. Expecting it to be Jane’s uncle, I smiled. But it wasn’t her uncle. He looked at me, his blue eyes steady and calm. For a long time, we didn’t move. Then he stepped into the fire and nodded. An invitation. I nodded and stepped into the fire as well.
It was cold in there, colder than any winter night I had ever known. The cold didn’t surprise me or even bother me. But the silence was replaced by a storm of sound, a maddening roar that swept away everything, but hatred and rage.
The blue-eyed man and I stood still for a moment, gathering our strength. And we leapt at one another.
Then I was sitting up in my bed. My blankets were on the floor and I shaking with cold. After the light and roar of the fire, I was shocked by the darkness and silence of my room. I grabbed a blanket and wrapped it around my shoulders.
My hands were shaking as I put on my boots, loa
ded my rifle, and gathered other things I would need. My hands were still shaking when I wrote the note to my parents and to Maggie. Leaving a note, of course, wasn’t right. But I knew they would ask me why I was going. I had no answer. And they would talk me into staying. It would be easy because I wanted to stay and was afraid to go. I had to leave. The note just said that I was sorry and that I hoped to be back soon. I left it on the kitchen table and went out the back door into the cold an hour before first light.
I didn’t stop shaking until the sun was well up, warming me as I climbed the trail, a steep trail that would take me back to where I would find Riley. And Jane.
CHAPTER 24
It took me almost two days to catch up with Riley. I found him just before dark. He had heard someone coming and waited behind a tree. When he saw it was me, he stepped out and smiled. We shook hands.
He never asked why, and I didn’t say. I guess he thought it enough that I had come. Talk didn’t matter. But as we bedded down that night, I asked him a question.
“Riley, what’s if she’s wrong?”
“Jane?”
“Yeah.”
“Wrong about what?”
“The war. The Government. God. Everything.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time, but I could feel he was still awake, thinking about it.
“Don’t matter none,” he said. “I made a promise.”
Maybe I should’ve told him it wasn’t that simple for me, but there was no use talking about it. So I shut up and let Riley drift off to sleep. After a while, I could hear that familiar soft snore of his. But I lay awake for a long time and watched the stars wheel past the treetops.
Jane was sitting next to a fire at Central Camp, eating some stew, when we found her. She looked up, saw us, and smiled.
I was expecting we would talk about why I had left and why I had come back. God knows I had thought about it enough, making up little speeches on the long walk from home. But when we actually looked at each other, I knew, knew for a fact, we would never talk about any of that.
Jane just pointed to the stew pot. “Help yourself.”
Riley, who was already at the pot, filling a plate with stew, looked up at me and winked.
I didn’t know what to say. But I was hungry. So I got some stew and sat down to eat.
And that was that.
The next morning I went to talk to Campbell.
He didn’t look well. Sitting in a small shed, he had a blanket draped over his shoulders. There were dark circles under his eyes.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he said.
I told him Jane had asked me to come back.
“Why?” he said.
“She thinks the war’s not over.”
“I know. Don’t you think she’s told me that?” He sounded angry.
“Yes, Sir. She’s likely told you a dozen times.”
He snorted. “A dozen? More like a hundred.” He sat back in his chair and readjusted his blanket. “Sorry to be sharp with you. Not your fault.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“I know why she wants you back. What I want to know is why the hell you came.”
I didn’t have an answer to that. Anything I said about the dream and the blue-eyed man would just sound like foolishness to Campbell.
“Well . . .” I said, stalling, trying to think.
He leaned forward in his chair.
Then I remembered what Riley had told me.
“I made a promise,” I said. It was as true as anything I could think to say.
“All right,” he said, leaning back and resettling the blanket, “you made a promise. But I hope you know some promises are damn hard to keep. And some are best not kept.”
I knew. Or thought I did.
The next day, Jackson and a few men came into camp on horseback. I hadn’t seen Jackson since the beginning of the war when he had been so angry about Jane. Now, he looked pretty damn pleased with himself. At least he did until he caught sight of Jane. Then there was a flash of trouble in his eyes. After a moment, he turned away and went back to being pleased with himself, or at least trying to look that way.
I glanced at Jane. She was watching Jackson with hard eyes.
Later that day, Jane got word to come and see Campbell. She told me to come along.
“You sure?” I said.
“Let’s go.”
We went into Campbell’s shed. Seated on the other side of a table were Campbell, who did not look happy, and Jackson, who did. Jackson was sitting in a bigger chair at the center. Campbell was sitting to one side. He didn’t have the blanket over his shoulders, but he still looked tired and sick.
Jane said hello and took a chair at the table. Jackson gave me an annoyed look. I guess he was still wondering why I was there. I stood at the wall, behind Jane.
Jane spoke first. “Where’s Winslow?”
Campbell looked down at some papers on the table and let Jackson answer. “General Winslow is busy with other matters. He asked me . . . and Colonel Campbell, of course, to discuss a few . . . a few matters with you.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
Jackson smiled. “As you know, the Government has offered a peace treaty on very good terms, and General Winslow, with the advice of the Council of Elders, has accepted. I am here, on his behalf, to ask your support.”
“Peace treaty? Victory is the only peace.”
“Well . . . I can understand why you might feel that way, but General Winslow has to consider what is best for our people in the long-run. And that’s very complicated.”
“What terms?”
“The Government is offering us many things that can make the lives of our people better. Think about our people being able to sell the things we grow and make. Think about the things the Government has. Medicine and doctors, trucks, electricity, and even radio. Think about what having even some of these things could mean for us.”
Jane said nothing.
“Let me show you something.” Jackson put a black box on the table and worked a crank that stuck out of one side. Then he turned a knob on the front. There was a click and then music came out of the box. It was a radio, just like the ones from before the Plague. Jackson let the radio play for a minute and then turned the knob again. A click and then silence.
I was amazed, and I felt the pull of my old daydreams of the life people had before the Plague. Jane’s voice jerked me back.
“What do they want from us?” she said.
“The Government wants the big road, I-40.”
She looked at Campbell. “But what about what Carl did? They can’t use the road anymore, can they?”
Campbell looked over at Jackson. It was clear enough then that Jackson was running things now.
“Yes,” Campbell said, “right now the road is useless. It will take time, but they can definitely rebuild it.”
“So they can attack us again.”
Jackson held up his hands as if to calm Jane down. “We keep control of the high ground surrounding the road and, of course, they guarantee our security and independence.”
“Guarantee?”
“Yes,” Jackson said. “The Government promises not to attack us. And, of course, we promise not to attack them.”
“You believe their promises? After everything they’ve done? After all the blood? You must be fools.”
Jackson looked angry and then seemed to get hold of himself. “No. We’re not fools. So here it is, plain and simple. We can’t beat them. We’ve slowed them down, for now. But if we keep fighting, they will just bring more men and better weapons until they destroy us. They’ll slaughter every man, woman, and child in these mountains, and take the road. But if we make a deal, right now, at least we can get something. We have to do the best we can for our people. We can’t win.”
“You’re too ready to quit.”
“You’re too ready to gamble the lives of our people,” Jackson said. “If we fight and lose, we lose everything.
Everything.”
Jane did not say anything for a while. Jackson and Campbell just sat waiting for her to speak.
“I don’t know much about the time before, but I do know this,” she said. “The Indians once had all this land. Then the Whites came and wanted the land. They gave the Indians gifts. They made promises—”
“What’s your point?” Jackson said.
“But the Whites forgot the promises and took what they wanted. The Indians were fools to believe the Whites, and you are fools to believe the Government. They want our land. They’ll take it. And you’re letting them.”
Campbell looked down at his papers, silent. Jackson stared at Jane.
“I want to talk to Winslow,” Jane said, standing up. “When can I see him?”
“I speak for General Winslow,” Jackson said. “And the decision has been made. He wants your support.”
“No.” She turned and walked out of the shed. I stood and gave Campbell a hard look. He didn’t seem to notice. Then I followed her.
She was waiting for me. I walked up to her. Before I could say anything, she grabbed my collar and pulled my ear close to her mouth.
“Now we fight,” she said.
A few days later, Jane, Riley, and I were sitting, staring into our fire when Campbell walked out of the darkness.
“May I join you?” he said.
It was the first time I had seen him since that meeting, and I wasn’t going to miss my chance to tell him off. I rose to my feet. “You know she’s right. Why don’t you help her?”
Both Campbell and Jane ignored me.
“Have a seat, Colonel,” she said.
He nodded and sat on the ground. I sat down too, feeling foolish as well as angry.
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