After and Again (2 page)

  He reached the treeline still at a dead run, the palm of his right hand bloody from a fall that he had taken a few minutes before when he had slipped on some damp leaves. He stopped at the edge of the treeline and looked down at the valley in shock. From what he could tell, most of Payne’s Station was on fire. Thoughts of his mother filled his head and he started straight down the hill, the deer trail forgotten.

  It was about three miles from the treeline to the town and Zack was at an all out run downhill. The inevitable happened, and with his speed and the slope, inertia took over and he was running out of control when he came upon a cluster of large rocks half buried on the hillside. Unable to stop, Zack tried at the last second to leap over the rocks but came up short. His left foot caught one of the rocks and he fell hard, hitting his head on another rock. Stars filled his vision, then the world went dark.

  He awoke with a start; it was dusk and he was confused for a moment as to his whereabouts. His head ached and he touched it gingerly, his fingers coming away sticky with blood. Everything came back in a flood; his leaving Payne’s Station in the morning, his breakfast under the tree, the cave and the treasures that it held, his town burning.

  Pushing himself up to a sitting position caused a wave of dizziness, he closed his eyes for a moment and waited for it to pass. He opened them and looked down the hill. There was still some smoke but it looked like the fires had mostly burned themselves out. He looked for his house and was unable to see it as the angle of the hill obscured a good portion of the town at the end where his house stood. He could see that the church, Miller’s Tack, and Brodie’s Trade—which would have been called a store in the old days but there was no money now so it was just called a
trade—
were burned almost to the ground. Most of the houses and farms that he could see from his spot on the hill were burned out and smoldering as well. He couldn’t see any people.

  Fear took hold of him. He knew that there was no way that the fire had spread from the town proper to all of the outlying houses and farms on its own. Fear for his mother drove speculation away and he continued on.

  He walked quickly but fought the urge to run again. His head ached horribly and he’d decided that it would be better to walk into town under cover of the approaching darkness anyway. He was unsure of exactly what had happened but knew that it was not simply an accident. As he walked he imagined every horrible thing that could have happened to his mother, he thought of his friends Santiago and Michael, who were supposed to be helping Santiago’s father build a new horse corral that day. He thought of Emily Hodgkins who he had kissed for the first time at the harvest dance the previous fall. It had been short, dry, and wonderful. She was the prettiest girl of his age in town, with long, thick hair as black as midnight. Zack had liked touching her hair as much as had liked the kiss. Her parents owned Brodie’s Trade and her father always cast dark looks at Zack when he shopped for his mother.

  Payne’s Station was really just a main street composed of compacted, oiled dirt. There was about a dozen buildings on the  street; the church, Brodie’s Trade, Miller’s Tack and Stables, the Sheriffs office with the jail that never had anyone in it except for the occasional drifter that came to town to steal. There was the blacksmith’s that was run by Theo Olsen—who was also the seldom-needed sheriff and judge—the meeting hall, the school, the Doc’s.

  It was full dark when Zack stepped onto the main street. He had come into town at the north end by the community kitchen, which was where all of the big meals for the summer fair and seasonal festivals were prepared. The moon was waning but it shed enough light for Zack to see that nearly every single building on the street was burned. The church had completely collapsed, and the town was completely silent except for the crackle of still smoldering wood.

Zack’s house was at the south end of town set back off of the main street. He couldn’t see it as it was obscured by the two-story tack house which was smoking lightly but still standing. The walk was short and he caught the first glimpse of the smoking ruin that had been his home when he cut between the tack house and the stable. All thoughts of caution forgotten, Zack broke into a run. He reached the picket gate at the front yard and slammed through it, running up the short stone walkway to the front porch. The porch was partially scorched but still intact, the rest of the house was a burned out skeleton of charred timbers.

  “Mom!” Zack yelled, “Mom where are you?” Silence; “Mom!” crying now, he stepped off of the porch and walked around the back of the house. He mounted the steps to where the back door still hung partially off of the burnt frame and stepped into what would have been the kitchen. The floor cracked and threatened to give way under his weight and he stepped back out onto the small landing outside the back door. He could see all of the way through the house to the front yard but could only make out shapes inside. “Mama!” Zack shouted again at the very top of his lungs. He was again greeted only with silence. Shocked and exhausted Zack slumped down on the steps and cried. Eventually he slept.

  He was startled awake to the sound of a rooster crowing the dawn. He had apparently slipped down the steps in the night and was lying curled up in the dirt below them. The rooster crowed again and he sat up and craned his neck around to look at the house. It was worse in the light of day.

  He stood up and mounted the steps to the landing at the rear door. He could see everything in perfect detail with the dawn light. The woodstove in the kitchen was the only thing that was still intact, everything else was either burned beyond recognition or reduced to ash. He turned and looked at the rear yard and noticed that the gate to the pigpen was standing open and their four pigs were gone. Well, he thought to himself, mama must have let them out because of the fire. With the whole town burning he thought that maybe she had headed out to the Sanderson ranch. It was only five miles, she could have walked it, and the pigs would have followed her the whole way.

  Zack decided to take a walk through town and see if there was anyone about before heading out to the ranch.

  He walked through the alley between what was left of the tack house and the stable, the smell of burned flesh and hair so strong it nearly made him gag. When he reached the main street he turned and walked to the front of the stable, which was burned but completely intact outside of the roof, which had mostly caved in. The door was a double, with a thick plank of wood hung between two steel brackets to keep the doors closed. He lifted the plank out of the brackets and opened the doors. The charred remains of half a dozen horses lay in front of the doors, with partially burned roof timbers on top of them. The interior of the stable itself was completely blackened, and Zack thought it a wonder that it hadn’t burned to the ground.

  Turning from the stable he walked back toward the north end of town where he’d come down from the hill the previous night. The town was a burned ruin. “Hello?” Zack called out. “Anybody here?” not a sound, in fact Zack had become acutely aware of just how quiet it was. “Hello?” Zack yelled again. He was becoming increasingly upset as he just couldn’t understand where a whole town of over a hundred people could have gone. On top of that, he simply wanted his mother. “IS ANYBODY HERE?” he shouted out, growing more and more frantic by the moment.

   “In here, help me”, the voice was faint, a girls, coming from what was left of Brodie’s Trade. He ran the short distance to the building, which was in about the same shape as his house and called out again.

“Where are you?” he called, scanning exterior of the building.

“Down here, in the basement. Oh help me, please hurry, I think my legs are broken!”

“I’m coming, keep talking, or bang on something so I can find you.”

  Zack ran up the steps to where the door would have been and entered the building. A good portion of the roof rafters had collapsed and were littered about the floor along with other timbers and some large metal racks that had held goods. He heard a weak thumping noise from the interior and thought that it was coming from underneath some of the metal racks that had fallen over. He reached a point inside where the thumping was the loudest, removed his pack and began to move debris looking for a trap door. After pushing aside some fallen timbers Zack could see what had happened. One of the timbers had fallen from the roof and struck one of the heavy metal racks, which in turn broke through the floorboards and landed on the girl below. He could see a vague shape down in the shadows through the rack and the broken floorboards.

  “Hold on, I’m going to get you out.” Zack said.

  “Zack?” a weak voice, sobbing.

  “Yea, it’s me….Jenny Sanderson?”

  “Yes, Zack, please hurry.”

  Zack continued clearing debris from the metal rack so that he could pull it back up through the floor. Jenny Sanderson was the daughter of Brent and Holly Sanderson, they had the ranch that Zack was planning to walk to. She was also best friends with Emily Hodgkins.

  Pushing the last of the fallen rafters from the rack, he could see the part that had broken through the floor was on top of Jenny.

  “I am going to pull this rack off of you now, Jenny, are you arms free?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay then cover your face and eyes.”

  “Alright”

  Zack took hold of the end of the rack and pulled with all of his might, the veins in his neck bulging with the effort. The rack broke loose, and Jenny let out a wail. Zack fell backward and a splintered plank of wood raked up his back removing a fair amount of skin in the process. He ignored the pain and regained his feet, running around the rack to the hole in the floor. Jenny was lying on the earthen floor of the basement about six feet beneath the floorboards. The first thing that he noticed was the amount of blood that was pooled around her.

He was accustomed to animal blood from his hunting, but seeing all of it from this girl that he had known most of his life caused his gorge to rise. He fought the urge to vomit and peered down at her. She was wearing a cotton dress that was hiked all of the way up her thighs and both of her legs were twisted underneath her at impossible angles. She had apparently passed out but he could still hear her labored breathing. Zack dropped to his hand and knees, grabbed the end of the metal rack and lowered himself until he was hanging. He let himself drop the last foot to the basement floor.

  Zack thought frantically about what he should do. He couldn’t run for help as there didn’t seem to be anyone left to lend it. He needed to get her out of the basement anyway. He leaned over her and spoke her name.

  “Jenny? Jenny, wake up.” He put his hand gently on the side of her face.

  Her eyes fluttered momentarily and then opened.

  “Oh, Zack, they took everyone.” she said.

  “Took everyone? Took everyone where, Jenny? Who took everyone?”

  Crying again she said “Riders, lots of riders. My dad and Mr. Hodgkins were out front taking a smoke while I was in here looking at apples. One of them bullwhipped daddy over and over, I was so scared that I hid down here. I knew where it was cause Emily and me used to play down here when we were little. A bunch of them came in the store and were in here for a long time. They wuh-wuh-walked right on top of me,” she began to sob. “They talked about taking all of the whiskey, meat and blankets, and anything that they could find that looked like it was from the old days. Is my dad okay?”

  “I’m sure he’s fine, now you be quiet and rest Jenny, I am going to get you out of here.”

  Zack didn’t like how white Jenny’s face looked, and he didn’t know what he was going to do once he got her out of the basement. He just knew that he couldn’t leave her there.

  “Jenny, I’m going to go and find a ladder, then I can piggy back you out, okay?”

  “Okay, Zack, maybe you can bring my dad.”

  “We’ll see, Jenny. I’ll be right back, you just rest.”

  Zack turned and walked back to the end of the opening where the rack was and jumped up and grabbed one of the legs. The rack slid back toward the hole a little and then held his weight. He pulled himself up and out and ran out of the building back toward the stable. He knew that Mr. Miller kept a ladder hung on the side of the stable; Zack had borrowed it to do some repairs to his own roof that last spring. He just hoped that it was still there.

  Grabbing the metal ladder from the hooks where it was hung on the scorched but still standing stable wall, he broke into a run back to the Trade. The world had taken on a strange feeling to him, he felt detached and tried hard to focus on the task of helping Jenny when all he really wanted to do was stop, curl up and cry. He heard his father’s voice in his head, “I didn’t raise you to be a weakling, Zackary, so do what has to be done and don’t whine about it.” His father had dealt out a great deal of love but had always been a tough taskmaster and possessed little patience for anyone shirking his or her duties.

  He mounted the steps of the Trade with the ladder and was aware that the ladder would have been too tall had the roof not caved in. He dropped the ladder into the hole and quickly climbed down. Jenny was dead. It only took one glance at the staring, already glazing over eyes too see it.
Dead
. The reality of it reverberated in his head. She was never going to smile, laugh, or even cry again. She was never going to go to the harvest dance, she wasn’t going to fall in love, and she was never going to get married and have a family of her own.
Ever
. The enormity of what had happened made Zack feel an emptiness that he could have never imagined possible. He suddenly felt very tired. He sat down on a ladder rung and put his face in his hands.