“But?”
“But if Jimmy’s friends are really determined to take this place, they will … and any time they want to.”
The old man sat there looking over the farm he had invested a lifetime in and almost seemed in a spell as he stared off into the far horizon. “You don’t think I know that son? I might be a tired old farmer but I’m not dumb.”
“Then why are you staying? Why not just give them what they want and get out with your lives?”
Thomas answered him without deliberation, like he had already asked the question himself numerous times. “Where would we go? We don’t have anyone. All we got is this farm. I could hand over the rest of my stock and save myself a lot of trouble … but then what? We’ve got some food stocked up but it wouldn’t last long. Won’t be able to plant a big crop next season either, maybe a garden. Even with the rest of my herd our chances are small. Our only choice is to make a stand here and hope Jimmy and the rest of that trash aren’t willing to get killed over it.”
The man just continued to listen, knowing there was nothing new he could add to the conversation the old farmer obviously had with himself many times before.
“Whatever else happens I want thank you for helping. With Jimmy and them others, I ’bout gave up on you younger generations. I was wrong and you’ve showed me I was. The missus tried to tell me but I wouldn’t hear it. She said there was still lot of good in the world …”
He suddenly looked right at the man. “I don’t know what’s going to happen next. If you don’t want to stay I certainly don’t blame you, but if you want to stay I’ll be glad if you do. You’ve put a lot of work in here and I’ll give you part of this farm. You’ve earned it. But if you have to get going to see that brother of yours, I can understand that too. My brother’s been dead for a lot of years and I still miss him every day. I guess I’m kind of being longwinded here … what I’m trying to say is thank you for the help … and whichever decision you make there won’t be no hard feelings.”
The old farmer offered out his weathered hand and the two shook now as friends. The man told him he wasn’t sure yet what he would do but would tell them as soon as he knew himself.
On patrol that night he thought about his long journey to get to this point and realized finding the Godsends was the best thing to happen to him since all of this started. While he was grateful for all they had done, he couldn’t stay and he knew it. He had to find his brother and couldn’t live with himself if he gave up now.
As for the boy, originally he thought to leave the child with the couple but with further consideration changed his mind again. Even without their other problems they were just too old to start raising a child now. Thomas would be seventy next spring and his wife only a year younger. The man would just have to find someplace else for the boy before heading off for Wyoming on his own.
He told the two of them at breakfast that next morning. They were plainly disappointed but said they understood. They then asked him to stay until spring and the man promptly agreed. What was left unspoken between them was that leaving in the middle of winter would probably get him and the boy killed.
Every night the man performed his lonely guard duty not sure if this was the night the attack would begin, the one they all knew was coming. On the twenty-second, about 1:00 a.m., they received an early Christmas present. It started snowing heavily, the first decent snow of the season, and it continued falling until Christmas night.
Despite their circumstances that Christmas was a happy one. Thomas doubted they would be coming for a while as fourteen miles through the ice and snow was probably too much for them. He “reckoned” the bad weather would keep “the wolves at bay for a while.” After a Christmas dinner of steak, fried potatoes and biscuits, the Godsends gave the man and boy presents.
As he took the small package wrapped in plain brown paper, the man had to hold back the tears. The kindly couple reminded him of his own parents. The parents he couldn’t save or even give a decent burial to.
The boy got one large package himself. Inside was a wool cap, socks and scarf that she knitted for him. All made with love when no one was watching. On the top inside the box, sweetly wrapped in tissue paper was a large chocolate chip cookie, the very last one in the house. As she helped him open it and then showed him what was inside, a small, quiet “Thank you” came from the child. The man was startled when he first heard the unfamiliar sound. The boy hadn’t said a word since they met and by now he believed the child would never talk. The man began joyously laughing at the thought, the boy’s two small words the best Christmas present of all!
The man received some heavy wool socks also handmade with love and a card inside that said “I.O.U. One Camping Outfit – Thomas.” The old farmer would explain he had some camping gear and other supplies that the man and boy would need on their journey, and he would gladly give it to them to help them survive.
After chores the next morning they shoveled a path to the storage shed and Thomas started opening boxes, each carefully stored package a new gift of some kind. There was a small all-weather tent and heavy sleeping bag, a good canteen to replace the man’s cheap plastic water bottles, and a quality compass much better than any the man ever had. There was a pair of binoculars, and what the man would find to be the greatest gift he was ever given, fishing gear and small foothold traps.
Thomas had given him the tools he needed to stay alive and over the next two months would show him how to use them. When the man finally resumed his journey it wouldn’t be as a drifting vagabond relying mostly on luck but a woodsman capable of keeping himself alive.
Thomas’s gifts and knowledge became a guide the man would continue to use for the rest of his travels. He would make a quiet, concealed camp and do some hunting and fishing, then when they had enough provisions they would travel until they needed to stop and start it all over again.
The blizzard continued through January, a new blanket of snow would arrive every few days or week at most. While the tension had lessened, there remained a small unwelcome thought there in the back of their minds. Springtime would come soon enough.
But for a time they were happy there, the farmer and his wife, the man and the small boy. As long as snow was blowing they knew they were safe for a while, or at least could pretend they were. There were chores and guard duty of course, although for the time being they just watched inside from the windows. They spent a lot of time in that front room playing cards or just talking. After dinner it became a tradition to listen to Thomas reading his bible from the lamp light while the man watched from the window. The boy spent much of his time playing on the floor. He had his dog but would often find some household object to fill in for a real toy. To all of their delight the child was slowly starting to talk more and more.
The snow kept piling on and never did have a chance to melt away. But by the sixteenth of February the temperatures started getting unseasonably warmer and the three of them knew their dream world would soon be ending. By the twenty-seventh, spring had arrived early and the last of the snow melted, and with it the last illusions of their safety.
Mid-morning on March 1st, there came the long forgotten rumbling of a truck coming up the road. Thomas watched from the porch and the rest from cover as a single four-wheel-drive truck stopped on the highway in front of their home. It paused for one unbearable moment and then turned off the road and into Mr. Godsend’s field.
The vehicle slowly advanced through the cornfields heading right for the house. As the truck continued to plod along in the fields still muddy from the melted snow, the man made sure his rifle was ready and constantly checked both the window facing the highway and the other on the west side of the property.
Just as they planned, the wife carried Joshua and her rifle and set up at her assigned position, the corner facing the north and east pastures, but not before the boy went into their claw foot tub. The farmer stood on his porch and chambered a round into his old shotgun.
The tru
ck continued to slowly advance and now they could see four people inside, two in the cab and two in the bed. It approached the drainage ditch and at just the last moment made a U-turn and a quick stop, then backed up to the edge. A lone man got out of the passenger side door.
He was at least thirty-five and was wearing dirty, well-worn clothes. It looked like it had been a hard winter for their nameless caller. The man would soon learn this was in fact Jimmy McKee, the very same one Thomas constantly referred to in their talks as “that boy.” The man didn’t know what he was expecting except that he would be younger. Jimmy had no gun on him that he could see and from a distance didn’t seem the menace his friend painted him to be. In fact, watching from the front window Jimmy looked to him unassuming and wore an easygoing smile that made him appear quite friendly.
In contrast to Jimmy were the two men beside him in the pickup bed. They had rifles and from their harsh expressions most definitely wanted to use them. The laid-back looking fellow walked through the mud to the rear of the truck and leaned against the tailgate. Then he started to yell out across the ditch to his former employer. “Mister Godsend … how you doing?”
“Jimmy, I told you not to come back. You’re not getting anymore.”
“I was hoping after having all this time to think about it you would change your mind. I guess not.”
“Just go. I don’t want any trouble from you … but you’re going to get some if you keep this up.”
“I can see you’ve done some work on your house, nice. Think that’s going to stop us? Mister Godsend, why do you have to be such a hard case? Huh? Why can’t you be more civic minded? Share some of that wealth you have. You’ve got to remember very few people are as well off as you anymore. You’re the richest man in the county now. I bet you ate every day this winter didn’t you? I didn’t. A lot of my friends didn’t either and they’re mad at you. They all wanted to come out here and just shoot your place to pieces but I told them to calm down … take it easy. I told them you’ve had all winter to think about how you wronged us and you would make up for it. Now you have to go and make me a liar.”
“Jimmy just go! I don’t want to hurt you!”
“It’s all right. Nothing’s going to happen today. That’s why just us four came. We didn’t come to start shooting, we came to show you something … something that’s all your fault.”
Jimmy opened the tailgate and as it dropped open one of his men kicked something out the back. It looked like four human bodies, all wrapped in sheets and bound with rope. They dropped to the ground and tumbled into the ditch below.
“In case you’re wondering, those are the Morrisons. Remember them? Tom? Amanda? Little Becky? We didn’t have enough food for everybody so someone had to go. You’ll be happy to know they didn’t suffer though, put ’em out of their misery before they started starving. Oh, the fourth one there was Mister Schiffer, remember him … the butcher? Couldn’t keep him around with no work to do.”
Mr. Godsend was becoming angrier the more Jimmy spoke and by the end lost all control. “Jimmy! You murdering son of …” He brought his Browning to his shoulder and just started pulling the trigger as fast as he could, his shotgun throwing out green plastic empties bouncing off the floor of his porch.
Jimmy quickly scrambled back inside the truck and then it was off before he even shut the door, the back tires throwing a spray of mud and dirty water twenty feet in the air. In less than minute it was back on the road and roaring back towards town.
The two men dug them all a single grave on the side of the house close to the garden while Mrs. Godsend stood guard. Late in day they had a service for the four of them, this time the man took his turn watching while the farmer and his wife honored their murdered friends.
That night after the funeral there was only a light dinner as none had an appetite. Mary was playing with the child in the front room, the two men sitting on the front porch with their guns close by.
“Mister Godsend, I am so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault son … or my fault either. It’s that Jimmy’s fault. Him and that road trash he’s fallen in with. Did I tell you I’ve known that boy all his life? The missus went to his baby shower. His parents were a lot younger than us but we knew ’em from church. Both his parents were good people, godly people. He was too … when he was younger. At least I thought he was. Can you believe he used to sing in the church choir? He was so good that they let him have a solo. He had the sweetest voice. The Lord never blessed us with our own children … but, I guess I always hoped if I had a son he would turn out like Jimmy.”
Mr. Godsend seemed in his trance again and the man needed to talk about something much more important, and right now. “Mister Godsend … we should just all go, let them have it. This farm isn’t worth your life … or your wife’s.
But the old farmer wasn’t hearing him, “Now he’ll have to answer to God for what he’s done …”
The man grabbed his friend by the shoulder trying to pull him from his spell. “Mister Godsend, are you listening to me?”
Finally the old farmer’s daydream was ended, “What? What did you say?”
“I said that we should all just go. Let them have it. You can come with me and start a new life in Wyoming … or maybe you’ll find somewhere else you want to go.”
The farmer had a good laugh at the outlandish notion, “I’m not going anywhere, son.”
“If you stay here you’re going to die.” The man was trying hard to bring reality back into the conversation.
“Son, I’m more afraid of livin’ than dying, afraid I might turn into something like Jimmy. A starving man will give up anything to eat, even his own soul. I’ve made peace with the Lord and I’ll just take what comes.”
The farmer got up and walked back into his house. The man sat there knowing that no amount of arguing was going to change what they all knew was coming.
They kept guard all through the night and into the morning. No one ever did come. The boy slept in the tub while Mary watched that side of the house through the night. With the rising of the sun they took turns sleeping and watching through the afternoon, but still they didn’t come.
Late in the long day, as the sun was at last setting, they heard that distant rumble of a motor they recognized from the day before. Now it had arrived, after untold worried sleepless nights, that nightmare they all feared had finally come true.
From the front window they saw that same truck approach just it had before, but waiting, idling in the road. Their wait was short as the sound of several gun shots could be heard ringing out on the northeast side of the property. With that, the truck tore off through the cornfield again.
It was rapidly approaching, bouncing through the field, its bed filled with men with their weapons struggling not to fall out. As the truck quickly came into range, the two of them started firing from the front windows of the home, the man with his rifle and Thomas with his Winchester.
The two of them continued to pour rifle fire into the truck but it wouldn’t stop, but only slowed when two men dropped out the back as it was approaching the ditch. It then hit the ditch full throttle and bounded to the other side racing towards the house.
They continued firing. The man finally hit the driver and the truck came to a slow stop about seventy feet from the porch. The men inside went out the passenger door and the rest jumped out the back, all taking positions behind the truck.
Just then they both heard Mary firing from the bathroom and the man ran there to give her a hand. As he burst into the room, Mary was crouching there in the window, firing, the child cowering in the tub. She turned, noticing him there in the doorway.
“There’s a truck with five or six men inside! I think it’s stuck in the mud!”
“Ma’am, go help in front, I’ve got this side!”
Mary quickly got up and ran for the front room. The boy tried to follow, straining to climb over the high edge of the tub before the man’s shouting sent him back to the
bottom again. “Joshua, stay down! Get down!”
The man braced his rifle on the windowsill and took sight on his first target, a slow running fat man in a crouch coming from the truck’s left side. He fired, hitting the man right in the chest, the spray of blood visible behind him in the light of the moon. He then took steady aim on the driver and fired four times in a rapid string. The driver noticeably bounced back and forth before his head finally came to land on the steering wheel. The truck’s horn began to give out a loud steady growl.
Right after that three more men came around the back of the truck, yelling, running straight at the man, shooting but not aiming. He began firing, his rifle deafening as it jumped in his hands.
The child was at the bottom of the tub on his knees, his hands covering his ears, screaming, the boy’s small lungs making an unbelievable sound.
The man continued firing with the one on his far left finally going down when his chest ripped open. He immediately switched his aim to the one in the middle and fired, that one immediately dropped his gun and grabbed his stomach, then rolled to the ground dead not twenty feet in front of the man.
Now the third attacker was nearly on him, trying to reload his rifle and run at the same time. The man took aim on his chest but the gun wouldn’t fire. The bolt locked back, the gun empty! The man dropped his rifle and pulled his pistol with just enough time to shoot the intruder right in the head.
From the other side of the house the man heard a soft scream. “Help!”
He ran back to the front room, Thomas was crouched down by the window, his wife by his side. “He’s been shot!”
“I’m all right! Mary get down!”
The man cautiously approached as shots continued to ring out from outside, the bullets tearing through the once lovely home. “Ma’am, go back to the bathroom and watch the window! I think I got all of them but go watch just in case!”
The wife was reluctant to go, finally her husband, bleeding, became the voice of reason, “Go on Honey, I’ll be fine.”
Joshua (Book 1) Page 21