Ever Onward

by Wayne Mee

  They sat in silence for several minutes before Og, deciding to chase an upstart seagull from ‘his’ beach, tore off after the offending bird. The gull took to the air and hovered in the wind a dozen feet above the frantically barking pup.

  Flame laughed deeply and leaned against Josh. “Isn’t that just like a male? Always wanting something that he can’t have.” She smiled. “Even if he did get it, he wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

  Josh, conscious of her hand still on his arm, faced her. “You don’t give us males much credit for brains, do you?”

  “Why should I?”, she asked, continuing to lean against him. “I mean, look where it’s got us. For thousands of years men ruled the world, made all the decisions, pushed all the buttons.”

  “Even if that’s so,” Josh put in, “do you think that’s going to change now?”

  Her deep laughter pealed across the beach. “Hell no! We women were just starting to gain some ground when some asshole, probably a male, fucked up bigtime. Now we’re all back in the bloody Stone Age. Survival of the fittest and all that shit.”

  “Darwin would be pleased you agree,” Josh said dryly.

  Flame laughed some more. “Don’t try that teacher-shit on me, Josh. I know who Darwin was, and I agree with him. But who says the fittest always has to be a male? I’ve know plenty of men in my time, and most of them were assholes, but they still thought they were big shots just because they carried around a third leg.”

  Now it was Josh’s turn to laugh. “Does all this male-bashing have a point?”

  Tossing back her wet hair, she turned to face him. “Sure it does. I spent most of my life looking for someone who would accept me as I am. Not try to change me or make me stand in his shadow. Whenever I thought I’d found him, somehow he’d turn into a shithead.” There was a long pause before she continued. “With you, I think it might be different.”

  Josh was taken back. “Me? I thought you and Brad ---”

  She took his hand in hers. “Brad’s a nice guy. A friend. I can talk to him and he listens, but ---”

  “You’ve slept with him.”

  Anger flashed quickly across her face, but was just as quickly gone. A knowing smile took its place. “Yes I have. Twice. He seemed to need it and you didn’t. But that’s just sex. I’m talking about something more.”

  Josh sighed, deciding such frankness deserved a frank response. “I’ve had a wife, Flame. I loved her deeply. Part of me always will. I don’t want another one.”

  Again her deep laughter rang out. “Christ, I don’t want to replace your wife, and I don’t give a shit about how many women you’ve had or will have. I told you, I want something more than just sex.”

  “What then? Love?”

  She held his gaze. “Respect. A kind of equal partnership.”

  He reached out and gently touched her hair, sliding his finger down her upturned cheek. “My wife was my partner. I don’t want another one.”

  She turned and faced his squarely. “Then tell me, Josh, what do you want?”

  He looked at her for some time, the sounds around them stilled by the intensity of his gaze. When he did speak, his voice was heavy; not with desire, but with a distant longing. “I want everything to be as it was. I want a world where Snakes’ and Chisolms’ exist only in books and on TV. I want a world where my son won’t be forced to grow up killing others just to stay alive.” He smiled, holding her gaze with his own. “Beyond that, I honestly don’t know.”

  She sat there in silence, looking at this quiet man that drew her like no other ever had. In the course of her life she had had many lovers. A few times she had even thought herself in love. But this was different. Strangely different, and she wasn’t quite sure she liked it. Always before she had called the shots. Her looks and her personality had always put her in the driver’s seat.

  Until now.

  She dropped her eyes. It was not a gesture she had made too many times in her life. Feeling suddenly like a schoolgirl, she groped for words she had used so easily in the past. They came awkwardly to her tongue.

  “Do...do you want me?”

  Josh waited so long to answer she was unsure if he was going to. Then he spoke. The answer both delighted and confused her.

  “Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don’t. Most of the time I’m too busy to think about it.”

  Her voice caught in her throat. Part of her wondered what the hell was happening. It had never been like this before.

  “Do you want me...now?”

  This time the answer was quick in coming. Shockingly quick.

  “No.”

  She moved closer; wanting and angry at herself for wanting. “Why not? The others do. Brad. Jimmy. Even Eddy. He still doesn’t trust me, but I’ve seen his eyes follow me. If they can feel desire, why can’t you?”

  This time it was he who took her hand. “Perhaps because its just too early. Too much has happened. I guess I’m just not ready for any more...complications.”

  “And that’s what I’d be for you? Just another ‘complication’?” There was a hint of anger in her voice.

  He grinned, his hazel eyes sparkling. “You already are a complication. I’m just not sure how to deal with it yet.”

  Her anger faded. ‘Don’t push it, girl!’, a little voice said inside her. ‘You’re on to something good here, so don’t screw it up! He said he was interested; well, sort of. He just needs time. What do you want him to do, take you right here on the beach?’ The answer to that came back at warp speed. ‘You’re bloody right I do!’, but she pushed that thought away. Instead, she smiled sweetly.

  “Fair enough. But you’ll let me know when you do?”

  “You’ll be the first to know.”

  Og’s little dog growl suddenly drew their attention. The pup stood with its hackles up, staring at two strangers walking towards them along the beach. A large dog trotted out ahead of them.

  Josh instinctively checked his Beretta, then pulled the .22 Backup from his ankle holster and slipped it to Flame.

  She covered it with her towel and stood up. The strangers were a couple of hundred feet away. “Looks like a guy and an old lady. The guy’s carrying something. Could be a rifle.”

  Josh stood up and called Og. The pup obeyed, but reluctantly. “Watch the old woman. And look happy.”

  “I’d be a hell of a lot happier if this pop gun of yours was bigger!”

  Josh waved at the odd pair. Both waved back. They looked like a young man taking his grandmother out for a stroll along the beach. Josh saw that the man was carrying not a rifle but a shovel. The old woman had a large sack. Both dogs were busy sniffing each other --- then Og wanted to play.

  “Hi there!”, the young man called, his tanned face breaking into a grin. He looked to be in his early twenties. A headband held back long, brown hair. “I’m Buz. Me and Granny here are out digging clams.”

  “Having any luck?”, Josh asked, his eyes watching the shovel.

  “Got enough Pissers here for a real clam-bake,” the old woman put in, eagerly showing the half full sack. “You and your misses are welcome to share. Come along back to the Lighthouse and I’ll fix us up a batch.”

  The old woman’s smile showed a poor set of false teeth, but was open and friendly. Buz nodded agreement.

  “You folks live near here?”, Josh asked. He had relaxed his guard somewhat, but not completely. A part of him wondered if he ever would.

  “Just around the bend,” Buz replied. “Six of us have moved into the York Lighthouse. It’s sort of a commune. We live off what we grow and what we take from the sea. You know, like they did back in the Sixties!”

  ‘Christ!’, Josh thought. ‘A bunch of third generation Hippies!’ Looking at Granny, he revised that to the second and third generation. ‘And why not?’, the voice inside continued. ‘Peace and love are a hell of a lot better than what Snake or Chisolm had been offering!’

  “We’d be pleased to,” Josh said. “But we’re not alone. There�
�s another six of us camped back in the dunes.”

  “Far out!”, Buz grinned.

  Granny agreed. “Bring them along. There’s plenty for all. Myra’s been baking bread since sunrise.”

  Josh said they’d talk to the others and probably drop by on their way out of town. Granny told them to stop over anytime they liked, then called her dog and started off down the beach. Buz shot them a peace sign and trotted after her.

  Josh and Flame watched them go, shrugged at each other and headed back to the others. Og, reluctant to leave his newfound friend, barked twice, then raced after his master.

  As it turned out, they not only dropped by the Lighthouse, they stayed several days. Besides Buz and Granny there were three women, two men and a young boy about four or five. There were also three dogs and at least a dozen cats. They had a large garden planted and the sheltered bay provided an endless supply of fresh fish. Also, Myra’s bread was the best any of them had ever tasted.

  It did them all good to see that there were people left who were attempting to build something worth while, instead of just living off the carcass of a dead world. Gus took the boys fishing in an old boat he ‘borrowed’ from the York docks. Buz and Bobby would play guitar and Granny accompanied them on a harmonica she swore Bob Dillon had given her mother at Woodstock. Og seemed to enjoy the company of the commune’s dogs, though Princess acted regal and refused the eager males company --- something Flame was quick to notice.

  When they left a few days later, it was with full bellies, warm hearts, a bag of fresh vegetables and several loaves of Myra’s bread. Granny had packed a tin of Toll House Cookies, her own specialty, for the boys. As they drove away, Josh was pleased to find that he had left the sour taste of Bar Harbor far behind as well.

  They stopped at the Kittery Trading Post to stock up on camping gear. This was the store Jessie had talked about as being the ‘most rad place in the world!’ Josh secretly agreed. It was a large, multi-leveled building, with each floor devoted to a specific outdoor sport. Once inside, everyone, including Gus, felt like a child let loose in a candy store. Trina, Flame and Bobby headed for the clothes section, Josh and Brad for the camping gear and Gus for the fishing department. Eddy wandered around trying on several pairs of hiking boots. Jessie and Kenneth headed straight for the archery department.

  Josh soon found himself in the antique gun section. He knew all these ‘ancient’ weapons were just replicas of the originals, but being a history teacher and more than a little in love with the past, these well crafted representations of days long gone drew him like a magnet. He had always loved the sleek, graceful lines of the Kentucky longrifles. The slender, hand-polished Tiger-Maple stock, the delicate brasswork of the patchbox and half-moon buttplate, the hand forged hammer and frizzen. His mind ran backwards through the centuries as he lifted the graceful weapon to his shoulder. Hawkeye, Chingagecook, The Last of the Mohicans! Daniel Boone had carried such a creation, as had Davy Crockett at the Alamo. Lewis and Clark as well as they forged their now legendary way across a much younger continent. A gun, yes, but also a tool to help build a new world! The fact that it looked and felt like a work of art only added to its allure!

  But in this ‘Brave New World’ there was no place for such a delicate creation. Semi-autos with laser scopes and squat, ugly machine pistols now ruled the day. The one-shot muzzle-loader was truly a thing of the past.

  “Screw it!”, Josh said out loud, and gleefully helped himself to a beautiful flintlock .36 caliber Kentucky Squirrel Rifle. Within minutes he had located powder, shot and all the other necessities, including a 300 page book on Black Powder Shooting --- and was more content that he’d been in weeks.

  A half-hour later they all met at the front door. Each one was so laden down with things that Brad laughingly said they’d need another van just to carry it. Bobby piped up that he’d seen a Volkswagen dealership across the street, and so while Josh cooked up a freeze-dried feast on his new Peak III hiking stove, Brad and Bobby left to pick out a new camper.

  Billy, being a mechanic, suggested changing the oil on all the vehicles as well as checking the tires, brakes, ect. Eddy and the two boys helped Billy while the rest sorted though their gear. It was late the next afternoon by the time they loaded up and headed back to Mount Hawthorn. Brad’s new red Westfalia now added to the convoy. All felt good to be on their way home.

  Chapter 25: ‘ONE ARM’

  Upstate New York

  Lake Champlain

  August 5

  While Josh and his group were wending their weary way home from their adventures in Maine, a large motor yacht was moving steadily southward along the western shore of Lake Champlain. On board was a motley crew of survivors, alike only in their lust for violence and united by their common goal; take what you want and to hell with anyone that got in their way!

  Six men of varying ages and dispositions, bound together by one man, James Phinious Tibbs, better known as One Arm. In his checkered career Tibbs had been everything from a logger to a pizza deliverer, a truck driver to a night watchman. He’d driven a taxi, slung hash and shoveled shit. Christ, ol’ One Arm had been a butcher, a baker, a fucking candlestick maker --- and during each and every one of these short-lived jobs he’d also been a drinker. Not just your average liquid-lunch kind of drinker mind you. Oh no sir-eee! Not our good-ol’ boy James Phinious Tibbs! He was the honest ta Gawd REAL THANG! A dyed-in-the-wool, bad to the bone, good-to-the-last-drop kind of drinker. The kind that started with his first piss in the morning and ended with his last piss at night, driven by a never ending dedication to stay totally pissed in between.

  Such single-mindedness had been the main reason for him having lost hi arm. Tibbs had been working at Billing’s Sawmill in Raquette Lake, a small, nowhere little berg in upstate New York. After every three or four pulls on the large band-saw lever, Ol’ James Phinious had taken a pull on a bottle of Captain Morgan’s Dark. Drunk as a skunk, however, is not advisable while working a heavy band saw. Gravity eventually got the better of him and he slipped. Cursing royally, he felt something like a beesting just above his left elbow. Reaching over the swat the little bugger, his hand came back red. Looking down he was surprised to see his arm lying in the sawdust.

  This little piece of trivia had taken place over seven years ago. Since then James Phinious Tibbs had been on a downhill side and picking up speed. Arrested several times for drunken driving, he’d lost his license and drove anyway. After the workman’s compensation ran out he turned to robbery. Nothing big, for our boy James, though a mean son-of-a-bitch, was not the brightest of lights. Just your average mugging and a little B & E now and then, with a little rape and sadistic beatings thrown in for good measure. Enough to keep him in cigarettes and booze.

  It was while doing a two year stretch in the Utica pen that he picked up both his tattoos and his nickname. While there he also took crash course in killing on the side. Word was that if you wanted a fellow inmate offed, One Arm was the man to see. He’d been out six months and was wanted for parole violation and three counts of armed robbery when the World took one mutherfucking turn for the worse.

  In June, just before the shit really hit the fan, he’d been hiding out with some bikers in a run down farmhouse outside Dannemora. They were having a little party late one night, when all the good ol’ boys suddenly started choking and puking and turning a rather ghoulish shade of green. At first he thought it was the shit they’d been smoking, but when the green turned to grey and Boots McHanan crumpled in on himself like a balloon with a hole in it, One Arm started to get the Big Picture. The only part of Boots that was left was his fancy tooled cowboy boots on one end of his jeans and the Golden Eagle belt buckle on the other. There was a torn T-shirt as well, sporting the ever popular Hallmark saying: Mother? Fuck-her!

  One Arm had gone tearing round the place looking for someone, anyone left alive. All he found was carbon copies of Boots. Thirteen bikers and their assorted ladies lay scattered about like last years as
hes.

  That’s when he’d flipped out completely. Jumping into a pick-up, he drove through the suddenly silent town of Dannemora, honking the horn and screaming at the top of his lungs. In the end all he saw was one lone old dog taking a shit in the middle of the road. On a whim he swerved and ran the dog down, taking out a fire hydrant in the process. Somehow the mindless violence acted like Grandma’s tonic, flushing the fear from his veins. Without looking back, he left Dannemora and headed on for bigger and better things.

  In Plattsburg he found a number of survivors. The first two were an old man sitting on his front porch and a middle aged woman wandering around a park clutching a doll. He’d beat the shit out of the old man, rapped the woman and tied her up in the back of his pick-up.

  The next day he’d come across a young man with hair the color of moldy straw. The youth was busy smashing store windows with a baseball bat. One Arm drove up and casually asked the youth if he’d like a go at the woman. The look the kid gave back had One Arm tightening his grip on the shotgun he’d picked up at C. J. Penny’s. Then the youth’s beady eyes had shifted to the near naked woman tied in the back of the truck. When they flicked back, One Arm saw a baleful light burning deep within his gaze. The youth was close to drooling.

  “Go ahead, son,” One Arm smiled. “But watch out for her nails.”

  After he had finished in the back of the truck, the straw haired youth hopped in the cab, grinning from ear to unwashed ear. One are handed him a fifty dollar cigar. Introductions were short and to the point: “I’m Boss, you’re The Kid. Got it?”

  “Got it, man.”

  On the truck’s sound system Johnny Cash was riding the Orange Blossom Special. One Arm cranked up the volume, fired up their cigars with a solid gold lighter he’d helped himself to back at the cigar shop and the two high rollers set of to find others of their ilk.