Renewal 7 - When the Student Is Ready (6 page)

I was sitting there in early July, which should be marked by temperatures in the nineties, humidity in the same range, and an explosion of darkening green in the trees. The trees were smart. Somehow they knew the world was messed up, and kept holding their leaves in tight until it was safe to grow again. I was sure that many of them had simply frozen to death during the brutal winter months, but I hoped that most of them were simply biding their time, waiting for a version of spring they could recognize. I wondered if that would happen this year – or the next.

The sound of an air horn broke my reverie. It was the harsh wail of one of those little canister horns that we planned to use for a warning signal. We had never used it, and it took me a few seconds to connect the sound to the meaning. Arturo was faster. He sort of skipped across the barn floor below, heading for the tack room and its eastern view of the countryside. He took one look, ran back into the main barn, and yelled for everyone to grab a gun. He shuffled Jimmy and Tommy down into the third stall, which still served as our common room and kitchen. Tommy complained loudly that he was old enough to fight, but Arturo hushed him with one look. I couldn’t see it from my high perch in the barn, but I knew Arturo could make some scary faces. He hollered for Mom (she was on the back watch platform) and me to get down, and don’t be seen. He quickly pointed to a spot for my sister, Lucy, to set up with her rifle behind some rusty old farm implement that we used for a workbench. Arturo pressed himself up near the front door, behind a heavy support post, and peered through the gaps in the wall.

I heard feet trampling through the tack room door. I hoped it was Dad and Kirk. Then I heard Dad telling Kirk to pile up some materials we had set aside for the purpose. Kirk blocked the tack room door as effectively as he could before Dad sent him up to my platform. The two of us huddled below the jagged gap in the wall as Dad shifted some boards around to improve the cover situation for Arturo and himself.

The huge, jacked-up pickup crunched over the snow at the gate entrance. I could see it perfectly from my high position. It plowed through the drift along the fence, and rocked to a stop  at the gate. There were three men in the front seat, and another half dozen in the back. Rifle barrels jutted out everywhere. Crap. Three men jumped out of the bed of the truck. One worked the gate latch, while the other two stood watch with rifles pointed more or less directly at my head. If they could have seen me, they could have easily shot me. When the gate was open, the truck lurched through the opening. The two riflemen jogged out to the sides of the property, looking like it was a big effort. The one on the left could not go far before he hit the valley that had become a lake. I didn’t worry about keeping an eye on him, which was good since Kirk gave him to me as my assignment. Kirk was tracking the man heading to the right. Luckily he started to angle towards the barn long before he slid out of our line of sight.

Mom could hear the truck, and she was fighting the urge to turn around to watch. Her job was to look in the opposite direction, and it was clearly torturing her. My mom had become a face-the-danger person, and I was proud of that. I kept her apprised with hand signals to indicate the threats; one finger to the left, one finger to the right, and my entire hand slicing in the direction of the approaching pickup trucks.

The man who had opened the gate, trotted along behind the truck, close enough for cover, but far enough to serve as an overwatch for the men still in the truck. I tried to see everything at once. My man, as he came close enough to see clearly, turned out to be the skinny boy from the morning. He was splitting his attention between the barn and the truck. The driver was no dummy. He used our own well house as cover for his men. He stopped the truck behind the shed, leaving the truck idling, so that his engine and cab was well protected, and only a couple of feet of the truck bed showed. The men in the back were ducking as low as possible. Otherwise, I’m sure Kirk would have been taking their heads off by now. His rifle muzzle was perched in a gap in the wall, clear to fire, but several inches inside. Arturo had taught us early that cover meant not sticking out a telltale gun barrel for the enemy to target.

I couldn’t see Dad and Arturo without moving, and I was basically holding my breath, much less crawling around the platform. I assumed that they were ready to fire as well.  The intruders on the sides were advancing to the barn. If I didn’t have a whole truckload of bad guys in front of me, I would have been panicking over the guy on my side, who was about twenty feet short of disappearing around the corner of the barn.

A tall, rangy man in a gray cowboy hat stepped around the well shed. He was unarmed, unless you count the revolver slung low on his right hip. The man was seriously gaunt, to the point of looking almost inhuman. His eyes were sunk way back in his head, and lost in the shadow of his hat brim. His men were arrayed behind him in the best cover formation they could manage. The man stepped forward like he was preparing to address the city council. He stopped about forty feet from the barn doors, and fingered the weathered rope we had strung among the buildings. He looked up, almost revealing his eyes and said, “Howdy, neighbors! Name’s Eugene Curfman. We ain’t lookin’ fer trouble.”

Dad spoke up. “Looks like you came for trouble from here!”

“Pays to be ready, these days. Who am I talkin’ to?” Eugene asked the barn.

“David Carter. What can I do for you, Mr. Curfman?”

“Well, we was just looking around the neighborhood, seeing who’s still about, and who might need some help... Like that, Ya know?”

“Well, were doing just fine. You don’t need to worry about us, friend.” Dad said.

“I’d prefer to see fer myself. How about you open up them barn doors, so we can come in and check on things.”

“No, I don’t think I’m going to do that,” Dad replied. “I’d prefer if you and your men went back the way you came. Don’t worry about the gate. We’ll take care of it.”

“I’d like to take your advice, friend,” Eugene said, “But, ya see... I ran out of cigarettes a while back and it makes me kinda touchy. You not inviting me and my boys in, well... You’re hurtin’ my feelings. Why’d you hurt old Eugene’s feelings?”

“All right, Eugene. Here’s the thing. I don’t know you. I don’t trust you and your boys, pointing their rifles at me, and frankly, you’re just being rude. Bad manners piss me off.” Dad said. Kirk and I looked at each other like, what happened to Dad?

Eugene laughed in a dry, raspy hack. “Ya know, there used to be a thing called southern hospitality. But, hey, if you don’t want to be hospitable, that’s ok by me. We’ll just get in our truck and head out. Try not to shoot us in the back.” The man started backing away. He gave a little two fingered wave to the men on the sides and slipped behind the well shed. I could practically feel Kirk focusing his entire will on his trigger finger. He wanted to shoot that man. He really did.

I heard a bang on the sheet metal roof of the barn, followed by scrabbling footsteps. While I was watching Eugene, my guy had escaped from view and climbed on the barn roof. It was easy to do. Kirk and I had done it last summer, until we got tired of the adventure. The footsteps were traveling up the barn to the peak. Then, they were walking along the ridge in my direction. The boy from this morning dangled his legs over the roof, hung from his hands, and saw both of us lying on the plywood platform. I imagine he saw two little boys, and that triggered his foul grin. He took a quick swing out and landed, boots first, right between us. I remember just having time to register how bad he smelled before he kicked me in the face.

Well, he aimed for my face. I flinched to the side and he hit my shoulder instead. I could feel myself sliding off the edge of the platform, some eighteen feet in the air, and I grabbed for something to hold. The only thing in reach was the boy’s ankles. I had them, but my hands were slipping on the waxy leather. That was the first time I ever really saw Kirk move. I was busy watching my young life flashing in little strobe-light bursts, but it’s not like they say. I wasn’t seeing my past. I was seeing right that moment in broken instants. In one of those instants, I memorized everything there was to know about those boots. In the next, Kirk was not moving as much as he was flowing like gray liquid. In the instant after that, the skinny boy was impaled back-first on those jagged boards my dad had intended as camouflage. His ankles were horizontal now, making it easier to hold on. Another flash had me back on the platform, but I’m sure I didn’t do it. The final flash was the muzzle flash from Kirk’s automatic, blowing the top of the boy’s head off.

Old Eugene didn’t take too kindly to watching his son die in a few chaotic seconds. He also didn’t like the way his boy’s ragged remains were dangling out of the top of that barn. Eugene found his revolver in his hand and began firing wildly around Kirk and me. In a strange moment of realization, I discovered that his son made a pretty good shelter from gunfire, and I huddled close to the body. I tried to ignore the bits flying off. Kirk had forgotten the whole event. He was calmly aiming and firing, and men were yelling.

Eugene was too clever to throw his life away. He dove into the cab of his still-running truck, chucked it into gear and launched in a roar of engine and a spray of flying snow. He actually ran over one of the men taking cover under the truck. The other guy rolled out in time, but all of them made one fatal error. They knew they had bitten off more than they could chew, and they knew their leader was taking off without them. In the heat of the moment that equaled a mental command to run after that roaring diesel lifeline. In normal circumstances, the speed and chaos might have saved them. With Kirk pulling the trigger, nothing was normal.

I watched his face as he worked. I was still recovering from my near fall to the floor, but he was fully in the moment. The task at hand was clear to him. The rules of engagement had been crossed and he finally was free to do what he was born to do. Aim and fire, aim and fire. Eugene escaped. No one else did.

We all took a few minutes to gather our wits as we heard the truck fade into the distance. Dad seemed to have crossed some threshold where this kind of thing was business as usual. He took several deeps breaths and started putting our lives back in order.

“Kirk, you keep the watch. For today only, if anyone approaches, you shoot.” Dad said.

“Ok, Dad.” Kirk seemed at peace with himself. I imagined him as some kind of vampire who could only be cooled into satisfaction by the taking of blood.

“And Kirk,” Dad added. “Nice work.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

Dad rounded us up into a group below Kirk’s post. “Ok, folks. Kirk and I followed that kid to Eugene’s camp this morning. We watched the kid make his report and as soon as we figured that they were loading up to come here in force, we took off running. At the end, we were racing the sound of that damn truck.”

Arturo asked, “Where is the camp?”

“About five hundred meters from our treehouse, on the bluff above the river, opposite side of the road.” Dad replied.

“So, just under a mile from here, give or take.” Arturo used his fingers for the math.

“Yeah. We were lucky they are a lot hungrier than we are.”

“How many in the camp?” Arturo asked.

“At least forty, maybe fifty.” David answered.

“Shit! We need to move.”

“Yeah, it looks that way. Even with Kirk doing his thing, we can’t fight off that many. Even if we won, it would cost something we can’t afford.”

“Exactly. So, the big question is where.” Arturo looked around the barn, as if he could get an answer.

“I’m for increasing the distance between us and them. I thought we might try that road down to the northwest, just past that subdivision full of cheap houses. It looks like that road will cross Brewer Creek at some point. We may not have this well, but at least we’ll have the creek.” Dad said.

“Ok. I can’t argue with that. How are we going to get our stuff there?” Arturo asked, full of practical questions.

“Same way we got here.”

Chapter 7 – 8

Terry was wide awake in the dark room.  His eyes traced the two rectangles of moonlight on the opposite wall at least a hundred times. His mind tumbled and swirled, chattering endlessly and denying him the one thing he wanted; sleep and the end of this long day.

His brain dissected every word of Charlie’s statements, over and over. It replayed his encounter in Tullahoma at least as many times, and it fretted about the future, all of the future, starting with his intimidating meeting with Kirk in the morning.

Supper had dissolved after Charlie left. Bill had become quiet and thoughtful, and refused to discuss anything beyond the food on the table. Aggie and Sally went from glowing with incandescent charm to a distracted reflection of the weighty events that were flowing around them. Terry had probably looked just like Bill, lost in his own thoughts; thoughts that were still working overtime hours later. He alternated between serious attempts to sleep, which almost guaranteed that he would stay awake, and long periods of time when he just let his mind run wild. It’s not like he was thinking about trivial matters. Terry was feeling the weight on his shoulders. He could not believe how fast he had gone from total ignorance, to hitting the jackpot when he found this community in northwest Coffee County, to a state where the prize was as much his responsibility as anyone else’s.

It was safe enough in Teeny Town that he reacted calmly when his bedroom door opened partway and a slim white figure slipped in through the gap. He knew it was Sally before she crossed the moonlight and revealed herself in a long cotton gown. She startled when he threw back a corner of his covers, but recovered quickly and slid into bed beside him. Terry flipped the blankets back up to her chin and turned on his side to face her.

“You awake, Terry?” Sally asked just above a whisper, as if she didn’t know.

“Can’t sleep.” He replied in that same quiet voice.

“Me neither. I’m too worried.”