Journal (13 page)

She
asked me what my plans were once we were safely away from Mr. Ponytail.  Her
question was posed in a most conversational sort of way.   There was a tone
there, though, that hinted her inquiry was more than just a casual thing.  At
the time, I figured her intent was to see if I was going to stick with them all
the way to Woburn, or if I was going to strike off on my own at some point
prior.

I
told her about my sister in San Antonio and how I would like to find out if she
were alive or dead, and if alive, perhaps make my home there.

After
that, we lapsed into silence for the next several minutes, just walking along. 
But with her eyes looking off over her shoulder, away from me, I suppose to
make her next question appear as inconsequential as possible, she said, “You
could always stay with us in Woburn.”

I
wasn’t expecting that one, so I didn’t answer her right away.  Instead I sort
of soaked-in her offer a little bit first.
 
To start off, the thought of wandering like I’ve
been for the rest of my life is just flat out depressing.  It is a lonely
existence.  My focus is always on shelter, water, food, and weather, not to
mention avoiding danger.  There are no discussions like I had a few nights ago
with Gabriel.  There is nobody to turn to when you need help, say, “wotor a better idea,
or to just hear a human voice.  So having a place to belong to, a safe place,
or at least as safe as any place can be nowadays, and with people to talk with,
was very appealing.

On
the other hand, while mulling all this over, I remembered that she told me that
to be accepted by the town you had to have a useful skill.  What exactly does a
part-time card dealer … no, wait, a lazy part-time card dealer with a degree in
business have to offer?  Plus, the way I saw it, this relationship we’ve formed,
her and I, was based on situational need, not close personal bond; I saved them
and they saved me.  Remember it wasn’t that long ago that Anna was poking me
with a stick to let me know it was my time to go on watch.  So I figured that when
we got to this Woburn place, when we didn’t need each other anymore, her feelings
toward me would change, and I didn’t think she’d want to know me anymore.

So
I told her that I appreciated her offer, but if my sister was alive I should find
her.  “Family, you know?”

Upon
delivering my answer, she kind of made one of those humph sounds and said,
“Well, suit yourself.”  And that was that, the end of our conversation.  She
just dropped back behind me and didn’t say anymore.  She obviously didn’t get
the answer she was expecting.  I don’t know how to figure that.

The
uncomfortable silence that followed only went on for a little while because
shortly after this exchange between Anna and I, Gabriel stopped in his tracks,
stood still for just a couple of seconds, and dropped to his belly.  Anna and I
immediately followed suit and, without saying a word, moved to locations about
ten yards apart, both with our rifles out and ready, looking in all directions.

At
this particular moment we were on the edge of an orchard to our left.  Like the
others, it hadn’t been pruned in years and so the branches intertwined into a
solid mass of green dotted with tiny white blossoms.  Beneath, the weeds were
thick and green and wet, not at all easy to maneuver through.  The orchard
ended just a short distance ahead and beyond that it appeared there was a field
thick with brush.  To our right was another field of similar description.  This
one, however, had a small wooden structure in it that I assumed used to be a
pump house for irrigating the property.  It was about fifty yards or so in
front of us and another twenty to the right of our line of travel.

We
watched Gabriel crawl back toward us, partly on his stomach and partly on his hands
and knees.  His progress was slow, and he kept looking back behind him.  When he
reached us, we grouped up.  He whispered that he smelled something and told us
that he thought it was pot (marijuana) being smoked.  He also said that up
ahead, a little ways from where he stopped, was a pretty good sized road, at
least two lanes wide.

Living
like we are, our sense of smell has become pretty keen.  So I thought it was a good
possibility that the wind could have carried the odor of marijuana quite a
distance.  Pot has a pretty distinctive, strong aroma to it.  When I offered up
this theory to Gabriel, he shook his head and said no, the source was
definitely close by.

I
looked back in the direction he had come from and asked him how far from the
for an hour or sotifroad was the pump house, the one I described earlier.

He
told me that it was practically right next to the road, maybe only a half a
dozen steps away.

That
had to be it.  Somebody, probably a lookout, was concealed in the pump house trying
to spot people traveling at night.  I remember wondering if that was how
Michael Bass and his companions were caught.  I also thought that there were probably
other lookouts on other roads all around Turnbull.  If true, that meant leadership
and organization, which made me think of none other than Mr. Ponytail.

Our
first order of business was to get into the orchard and out of sight, which we
did.  Then what?  I didn’t want to turn back the way we came.  We needed to put
Turnbull behind us, not hang out there.  We couldn’t go to our right, west,
because the town was that way.  So the only logical solution was to go east a
little bit further into the orchard, turn south once again and eventually try
to cross the road unseen.

That
was the goal, not to be seen.  As far as we knew, our pursuers weren’t aware of
our presence in the area.  Hopefully they were looking for us on the other side
of Highway 97.  So if we could just get past the sentries they had posted, we
might have a chance of getting completely away.

We
crawled on our hands and knees for about twenty or thirty yards, far enough that
we couldn’t see the pump house anymore, meaning whoever was in there couldn’t
see us either.  After that, we walked for another hundred yards or so before
turning south and moving to the edge of the orchard, stopping a very short
distance from the road.  From there, I crawled on my stomach, clear of the
trees, and checked in both directions.

From
this position I couldn’t see the pump house to my right because it set back
from the road so the trees were still blocking my view of it.  But I did see
that the street we were trying to cross was laser straight in both directions. 
I could also see that maybe fifty yards or so to my left, at the other corner of
the orchard, were two abandoned cars.  The way they were situated, there might
have been a third one as well.  I just couldn’t tell at that point.

I
also couldn’t tell if there was anyone inside these cars.  That was because of
the way the moonlight reflected off their grimy windows.  It made the glass to
be impenetrable squares of opaque white, darkening to gray at their edges, and framed
in sheet metal.  Still, I watched them for several minutes, looking for any
sign of occupancy.  Though I didn’t see any overt indication there was someone
in-residence, I did notice that one of the windows, of one of the cars, had a pie
sized dark spot in it that I took to be a place where someone had rubbed away
the dirt.

I
stared at this dark spot a good long time.  As the seconds ticked, I began to
imagine the eyes and face on the other side of the glass staring back.  My
field of view narrowed to that one spot such that everything around hazed from
focus.  At that point, I began to get the strangest sensation centered where
the bridge of my nose intersects my eyebrows.  It was a tingling of nerves much
like you would get if you were to put the tip of your index finger there, a
hairs thickness from your skin.  This tingling became so intense I was telling the truth.tifand unnerving,
that I was overwhelmed with the desire to scrub it away, but I didn’t.  At the
same time, I wondered if the person who I imagined to be inside that car was
possessed with the exact same feeling; sensing my presence yet without seeing
it.

I
took this situation to be a serious problem.  We had to get across the road to
continue south.  If there was someone inside the car, there was no way we were
going to safely get to the other side without moving a considerable distance
east.

I
inched my way backward, out of view, and told Anna and Gabriel to stay where
they were.   I next worked my way closer to the cars to see if I could
determine if anyone was actually inside.  If not, that’s the point where we’d
cross.  The cars would shield us from the pump house.

It
turned out there were three of them: two cars and a pickup truck.  So I lay
down next to a tree trunk, about ten yards away, well hidden in the tall weeds,
to watch.  I told myself I’d give it a half hour.  It didn’t take that long.

I’ll
bet you I wasn’t there five minutes when I was startled out of my socks by the sudden
appearance of a man.  He came from the direction of the pump house.

By
the looks of his face, I would guess he was in his twenties, with wispy chin hairs
that hung down like loose threads on a frayed shirtsleeve.  He had on a black
bowler hat, blue jeans that were short enough they showed the tops of his boots
when he took a step, a medium dark plaid suit coat over a hooded sweatshirt,
and carried what looked like a single shot shotgun, casual like, slung over his
shoulder.  He made quite the sight.

He
walked to the driver’s window of a Chevrolet, the one with the wiped windshield,
and leaned one arm on the roof before bending down and saying something low.  I
heard another voice answer him back, also just mumbles to my ear.  After a
minute of talking, he straightened up, set the shotgun on the ground, leaned it
against the car, and pulled what turned out to be a joint from his coat pocket
and lit it.  He took a deep pull and passed it off to the person inside the
car.  After a couple of seconds, I smelled the marijuana.  This went back and
forth for a few minutes until the joint was apparently gone.  Eventually, I saw
the man pull the door open, as if he was going to get in, but the person inside
pulled it shut again.  At the same time I saw a hand come out the driver’s
window and push the man away.  A woman’s hand, if I saw it right, which I did. 
The man laughed, stuck his head through the open window, laughed again as he
backed out, and then started the return trip toward the pump house, which of
course was also toward Anna and Gabriel.

After
a couple of minutes (enough time to make sure the man was a good distance away)
I backed up a few yards, got to my feet, and turned toward Gabriel and Anna.  I
was thinking this was a serious problem.  How were we going to get across the
road and continue our way south?   I was worried that we would have to go back
the way we came and circle all the way around to the east before finally going
south again.  It could waste precious hours of nighttime travel.

I
just started back when I heard the car door open and a woman shout, “What do
you got?” emotional connection he fsep

I
froze and dropped to the ground, my heart beating with alarm.  As happened
several days ago, I was forced to take a series of deep breaths to calm my
body.  And as it happened several days ago, it only somewhat had any affect.

From
my position, I was able to see the woman walking on the road, taking these big,
heavy-footed steps back toward her companion, which of course was also where
Gabriel and Anna were.  The obvious came to mind; they had been spotted.

After
a second or two of indecision, I moved closer to the road.  I figured that if
they had found Gabriel and Anna, the quicker I did something about it, the
better.  My plan was to come out on the road behind the woman and, if necessary,
shoot the male sentry first and then the female.  After that, we’d run for our
lives.  It was the only plan I could come up with in that short of time.

When
I gained the edge of the orchard, but still in the trees, I started moving in
the direction back toward Anna and Gabriel.  I heard the man say something, the
words beyond my reach, followed by the woman saying, “It was probably just a
deer.”

The
man said something back to her to which she replied, “OK, a fox or a coyote. 
They’re all over the place.  It’s the pot.  It’s made you paranoid.”

When
I had gone about twenty yards or so, the earth suddenly sloped down and I
stumbled.  It was a drainage ditch.  I was so intent on moving along and getting
closer that I didn’t see it.  My misstep didn’t make much noise, but it still made
some.

“There
it goes,” she said.  “It’s already behind me.  See, it’s just an animal of some
kind.  Ain’t no man going to run quiet like that.”  Those were her words as
best I can remember.  She also told him that he was too jumpy and that he
should come back to the car with her and she would settle him down a bit.

I
still couldn’t hear what he said, but he must have been agreeable to the idea
because in a minute or so I saw the two of them pass on by, going back to the
car.  He had one arm hung around her shoulders and was carrying the shotgun
with his other hand.  She was leaning into him.

As
they passed, I heard her ask if he had another joint.  He said that he had one
left but they should smoke it after.  It was a delicate negotiation.