There was a rustle of movement in the crowd. Everyone was pressing forward. It was beginning.
Three men came out of the front door of the building right behind the gallows. They went up the stairs single-file and stood in a row at the rear of the platform.
Two were dressed in long black robes. Maybe they were judges. The third man was an Army officer in a black uniform. I guessed he was in charge of their prison.
I was close enough to kill all three of them with my pistol. They deserved to die. But I knew it wouldn’t save Jane. And if the soldiers with rifles on top of the buildings were any good, I would be dead before I could empty the pistol.
There was movement behind and below the platform. At first, it was hard to see because everyone around me was standing on tiptoe, and craning their necks this way and that. Then I saw her.
Jane wore a long loose gray dress. Her hair was cut short, shorter than I had ever seen it, and she looked tired and thin. Sick. Her hands were tied behind her.
She walked to the gallows. Then she took the stairs up to the platform, slow, one step at a time, with her head down to watch her feet. I had a feeling she didn’t want to trip, to fall, or to give the soldiers any excuse to carry her to the platform. She wanted to show no weakness. They hadn’t broken her.
When she reached the platform, she stopped and looked up and out over the crowd come to watch her die. She looked as though she had come onto a stage to sing a hymn or deliver a sermon. To give a performance.
She even had a little smile. But tears flowed down her cheeks.
A soldier took her by the elbow and gently guided her to a spot beneath the noose. She glanced up at it for just a moment, as if it held no special interest, and then looked at the crowd again.
There was a lot of noise, a sort of roar, coming from the crowd. But I can’t remember much about it. Perhaps some people were shouting angry things at her. That would be what the Government wanted. The only thing I recall clearly is her standing steady with silent tears.
The officer on the platform stepped forward and called for quiet. Then he began to read something from a piece of paper. It was all about how Jane had been properly tried for this crime and that crime. She had been found guilty and been sentenced “to be hanged by the neck until dead.”
Jane never looked at the officer, and he didn’t look at her.
The crowd cheered when the officer finished. He let it go on for a while before calling for silence.
I had expected them to give her a chance to say some last words. But they didn’t. By now, they knew she would say something they didn’t want people to hear.
Three soldiers walked over to Jane. One knelt, tying her ankles together. The other two stood on either side of her as if to steady her. But she didn’t need it.
Meanwhile, another soldier starting working the crank to lower the noose so it could go around Jane’s neck.
Jane just continued to look out at the crowd, the tears still flowing.
As the noose was lowered to Jane, I stood up straight as I could, and then went up on tiptoe. Look at me Jane, I thought. Please look at me. I’m here.
It was the least I could do for failing her, and for not telling her how I felt about her. I just wanted Jane to know I was here, to know she wasn’t alone. She had once told me that nobody ought to die alone.
Jane, I’m here, I thought. Look at me.
Please God, I prayed. Let her look at me.
Then, she did. I believe she found me in the crowd, and she smiled. As the noose was slipped over her head, I believe she smiled at me.
The soldiers made the noose tight around her neck. Two soldiers now worked the crank taking the slack out of the rope. Jane looked up from my face toward the sky and cried in a loud voice, “Oh, God!” Before she could cry out again, the rope was lifting her.
She was on her toes for a moment, and then she was lifted free of the platform. I remember the crowd making noise, shouting angry things, taunting Jane, enjoying her suffering.
Jane’s body began a long struggle against death. The rope made it impossible to breathe. Her body shook and jerked like a hooked fish drawn from the water.
I thought of pulling out my pistol and shooting her, ending her misery. I should have, but the plain fact is I did not want to die. I was afraid.
After several minutes of shaking, Jane appeared to grow still with only an occasional twitch. Piss and shit ran down her legs and splattered on the platform. Her face went from red to dark blue. At the end, it was almost black. Her tongue pushed out of her mouth, and her eyes seemed almost to pop out of the sockets. She lost all resemblance to the Jane I had known. The body twisted and swung in a light breeze.
I forced myself to watch it, to witness it all, to remember. Even now, many years later, I can close my eyes and see it. God help me. I can still see it.
Finally, the two judges and the officer left the platform. Some soldiers let Jane down, took off the noose, put her in a tarp, and carried her away into the building behind the platform. I wondered what they did with her. Maybe they just threw her in a hole or dumped her in a river. Maybe they doused her with fuel oil and burned her until there was nothing left. I’ll never know.
Then one soldier came up on the platform carrying a bucket and a brush. He scrubbed the spot where Jane’s piss and shit had stained the platform. When he left the platform, it was empty and clean, ready for the next hanging.
When I looked around, I saw I was the last to leave.
CHAPTER 34
I found my horse, mounted, and let it take me back the way I came. I didn’t pay much attention to where I was or where I was going.
It was already dark, and the moon had begun to rise when I got off the main road and started to make my way on the side roads to Mary and John’s house.
The horse noticed the sound first. It stopped in the middle of the road to listen. Then I heard it. It was the rumbling whine of an army truck. Coming our way. I pulled out my pistol and got the horse moving again. We crossed a little ditch to one side of the road and went behind some trees.
As the truck went past, I could hear the excited voices of the soldiers. They were all talking at once. I couldn’t make out any of the words, but I recognized the feeling. They were relieved. Something had gone better than expected, and none of them had been hurt.
For a moment, I wondered what they had been doing. Then I was kicking the horse into a gallop. I kept my pistol out, although I knew it was useless.
The soldiers had smashed the front door off the hinges. The house was dark. I jumped off the horse, tied it to the fence, and ran up the steps.
John was face down on the floor in the front room. There were several bullet holes in his back. To turn him over I had to step in the pool of blood surrounding him. I closed his eyes. He probably died thinking how I had betrayed them, how I had told the soldiers everything.
I went upstairs, leaving bloody footprints, and checked all the rooms. Mary wasn’t there. I went downstairs into the kitchen. She wasn’t there either. There was just one place left to look.
Before I went down to the cellar, I sat in a chair and gathered my strength. Maybe Mary was hiding in the chamber behind the shelves. Maybe she had been somewhere else when the soldiers came. Maybe she was safe.
Somehow, I knew she was not.
I lit a lamp and took it downstairs. I opened the chamber. Mary was seated, slumped against the back wall. Her eyes were still open, covered with the blood that had poured down from the big hole in the top of her head. She had killed herself before the soldiers got to her.
I sat down there with her for a long time. It’s hard to remember what I thought about. But I’m sure I thought about using my pistol to follow Mary wherever she had gone. I still don’t know why I didn’t.
Finally, I carried Mary’s body upstairs and laid her beside John. I found her violin, Mr. Jacob’s violin. I put it by her side and closed her eyes. I wondered again if she had ever taught her son to p
lay so the music could be passed on. Too late to ask.
I stood and looked down at their torn bodies. I wished I had known their real names so I could say goodbye properly. So I could tell them I had not betrayed them. But it was no good wishing for anything, not anymore.
I stood there until the desire to do the next thing came to me. I picked up the lamp and hurled it against the far wall of the room. The glass shattered, and the oil caught fire. In seconds, the entire wall was ablaze.
I walked out the front door. Still tied to the fence, the horse was frightened by the fire and smoke. I had to lead it down the road a little and calm it before mounting. Then I sat and watched the fire until roaring flames came out all the windows.
I turned the horse and rode toward the mountains. Toward home.
When I stopped to rest, I discovered I still had Mary’s book. I took it out and turned the pages, turning them gently as Mary had told me. Then I shut the book and put it back inside my shirt.
CHAPTER 35
It took me a week to reach the farm where I had grown up, but it was years before I was home.
The day I arrived, dirty, hungry, and leading the horse, which had gone lame, my parents and Maggie asked me what had happened. I told enough for them to know I didn’t want to say more. We left it there.
I don’t know how other people are, but my people will not pry. They know life is a hard thing, full of sorrow and everyone has their share. And some have more.
The hardest thing I did was writing a letter to Riley’s folks, telling them he was gone. I had promised him. I sent the letter, but I don’t know if they ever got it.
It would have been harder still to write to Jane’s family and tell them just how she died. I would have done it, if I had known where to send the letter.
I went back to work on the farm. That first fall and winter seemed to last forever. But spring came and with it the benefits of Winslow’s treaty with the Government. New things, such as radios and medicines, became common in our mountains. I still knew the treaty was a mistake for our people. I said nothing. No one cared what I thought.
After the fall harvest, I married Maggie. I was sad and angry in ways she couldn’t understand, in ways I couldn’t and wouldn’t explain. Yet, she stuck by me, and I seemed to get past the worst of it.
By the next harvest, we had a son. We named him after my dead brother. By the following spring, another child was on the way. I had gotten to the point where I didn’t have to shoulder my grief just to get out of bed in the morning. Then one day, I saw a thin gray-haired man walking his horse through my fields. I leaned on my hoe and watched him come. I watched him bring back everything I had tried to leave behind.
“Campbell,” I said. I didn’t offer to shake his hand.
“We need to talk,” he said.
I took him inside. Even though it was a summer afternoon, with plenty of work to be done, I got out my whiskey and poured some in two cups.
“What do you want?” I said.
“To talk about Jane.”
“Why? Jane is dead.”
“Did you see her die?”
“Yes. And Riley. Others too.”
“Tell me how she died.”
“They hung her. What else is there to say?”
“You know there’s more.”
“Do I?”
“Yes, you do.”
I glared at him and drank my cup of whiskey in one big swallow. I wanted him to go away. He had brought back Jane standing under the noose and smiling.
Pouring myself another drink, I began to tell him how it was. I didn’t tell him how Riley died. I didn’t tell him about Biltmore, or Mary and John. He wouldn’t care. So I told him about Jane on the gallows, her quiet tears, her final cry, her disfigured face and lifeless body.
He didn’t ask any questions. He just listened. Each time my cup was empty, he filled it from the bottle.
When I had run out of words, he said, “We’re going to need that story.”
“Need?”
“A new war with the Government is coming. We need her again.”
“Jane is dead. She can’t help anyone.”
“Her death was her final gift to us.”
I stared at him through the wall of whiskey in my head.
“Unless you tell her story,” he said, “she died for nothing.”
“God damn you,” I said. “God fucking damn you.”
“Come back. Tell her story. Jane’s story has to be told.”
I thought about what that would mean. Telling the story. Reliving her death. Seeing her face turn black again and again. Saying the words until they became just words.
“No, I can’t. I’d need this stuff every time,” I said pushing the cup away. “You know the story now. You tell some preachers. A good preacher will tell the kind of story you can use.”
He looked at the bottle. “You’re right.”
Campbell went away. I didn’t see him out. I just sat at the table for a while until the dullness of whiskey on a hot afternoon started to fade. I got up and drew a bucket of cold water from the well. I drank some and washed my face and neck. I went back in the house and put away the bottle.
Then I went to a trunk and found Mary’s book. For the first time since coming home, I opened it. I found my place in the story and read. I read it, turning the brittle pages gently, until it was finished.
The old man fought the sharks, fought with everything he had. Yet the sharks took everything, ruined everything.
I knew how that felt.
Still, when the old man returned home, he got ready to go back to the sea.
I had not done that.
Maybe, I thought, it’s not too late.
I took out paper and a pencil stub and began to write this. I decided to tell the story one time, all of it, all the way through. I would tell all the truth I knew about Jane, about Riley, about all the others, about myself, and even about God.
I was angry with God for the way He treated Jane, for the way He let her die. It took me until now to see God had not let her down at all. He had given her exactly what she had wanted.
I thought telling the whole story might give me some peace. And it has. Some.
Just as Campbell said, another war with the Government did come. Once again, I went to fight. And Campbell had preachers tell Jane’s story. So everyone knows her story now, and it is told often by our people. Just as we tell David Winslow’s story.
A lot of the story they tell is true. Not the whole truth, but true enough, I suppose. There’s no mention of me or Riley in the story. That is fine with me. I suspect that would be fine with Riley too.
I’m older now, but at night, I still sit at the fire with the other men. We cook our food and try to stay warm. We tend our wounds and clean our weapons. We tell stories, joke, and complain. We argue about the latest rumors. We try to hide our fears. Nothing, it seems, has changed.
And sometimes, I look out at the darkness and expect her to walk into the light of our fire.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
Justin Watson, Marching As to War: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel
Marching As to War: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel Page 21