Journal (20 page)

After
a bit, I got her to her feet and told her to take off her wet clothes.  She
hesitated with her arms wrapped around herself, knees pressed tightly together,
shaking all over, and finally said she didn’t want me to see.  I promised her
that I would turn my back and she could hand me her shirt and then her pants. 
I would squeeze the water out of each of them in turn and hand them back.  I
would also do the same with my clothes while she looked away.  I explained to
her that it would help us warm up.

The
cold was our biggest danger at that point.  Our body temperatures had dropped,
and I had nothing to start a fire with.  We also had no food, no shelter, and
no weapon except for a pocket knife.  Everything we needed was in the boat with
Anna and Gabriel, and they could be miles downstream by that point and probably
were.  An ugly thought occurred to me. 
What if they capsized
?

As
I snapped up Petra’s raincoat to help retain her body heat, she asked me if we
were going to die.  She said it in such a matter-of-fact way, it gave me the
willies.  It was as if she expected her death dark brownwot.  It was as if she was waiting
her turn in a very short line.

It
makes me sad to think how she views her life as such a fragile thing; no next birthday
party to plan, no first kiss to hope for, no accomplishment to be had, no man
to dream of, no family to raise.  These things denied her by the worst of human
behavior.  We must find our way out of this sucking morass.  We must do it for
Petra.

To
her point, though, I didn’t know if we were going to live or die in the next
few hours or the next few days.  I certainly felt we were in serious danger.  From
our north a storm was fast approaching.  The wind was getting more aggressive
by the minute, and the temperature was dropping quickly.  We had nothing with
which to build a shelter.  I didn’t even have a coat.  If Anna and Gabriel were
able to bank the boat sooner than later, we would have a better chance, but I
wasn’t counting on it.

I
told her we were going to be OK.

And
as if a truth to my lie, thunder sounded in the north.  It made me feel small. 
It made me feel impotent.

We
started walking south along the river, and after a while the exertion made me
feel warmer, though not warm.  Because of the narrowness of the river gorge, we
were soon forced to move inland.  From there I could see a raised section of
what used to be Highway 97 off to the west.  This bothered me because I felt it
more likely Ponytail or his cronies would travel that route, so we stayed
hidden as best we could and as close to the river as possible in hopes of
seeing our boat.

Less
than an hour after getting started, I noticed Petra slowing.  It was clear she
was exhausted beyond encouragement, so I hoisted her up piggyback style.  It
has been a long time since I’ve carried a little one on my back that way and
felt those thin arms and small hands wrapped around my neck.  It brought back
good memories.

My
daughter’s name was Naomi, and I can right now remember with perfect clarity
the feeling of her arms around my neck as I carried her piggyback style to
bed.  We had this ritual, she and I.  She would lay just so, on her back in the
exact middle of the bed, with the blankets pulled up to her chest and her arms
outside and straight next to her body.  I would read to her then, for ten
minutes exactly.  Afterwards we would say her prayers together, butterfly kiss
our eyelashes, both eyes, hook our pinkies, and say “I love you.”  We did that
every night until she was almost five years old.

When
you remember the good things, though, they are sometimes served up with the
bad, right there on the same plate.  By the time Naomi was four, probably even
before that, her mother, Vicki, hated my guts.  I can’t say I didn’t deserve it
– lazy, ambitionless, uninvolved.  She, of course, found someone better.  The
details aren’t important.  She divorced me and moved to the east coast.  My
shame is that I didn’t fight harder to keep her from taking Vicki away from
me.  I just let her go.  I visited a year later.  The experience was so
terrible, I just never went back.  And now they are dead.

Just
before the rain hit, the wind increased in tempo so much that all other soundse people want you so bad?”

Over
these last two weeks we’ve always been blessed with a measure of luck.  But the
luck has always been accompanied with hardship, too, or vice versa.  For
instance when I got shot, I was saved by a can of tomato soup and a couple of
journals I was carrying in my backpack.  I still got shot, though, and it still
hurt.  When we were in desperate need of food, we happened across the mule deer
killed by the bear.  It was food all right, but it was something I would have never
otherwise eaten.  There was Gabriel’s fall, too.  He could well have been
injured beyond our skills of aid but he wasn’t.  And of course, there’s the
boat.  A lucky find considering how much faster it allowed us to travel but
then again, here we are.  And this time luck intervened again.

We
came to a road, that, to our west, intersected Highway 97 and to our east passed
over the river.  So we turned east across the bridge.  But where the luck came
in is that on the other side of the bridge, off the road a ways, we encountered
a dozen cars, in various states of decomposition, parked in a weed choked field
littered with old car parts, rusting farm machinery, and appliances of all
sorts.  I picked a four door Buick because all the windows were intact and in we
climbed.

I
may have written this before, and if I have I apologize, but wherever you are,
if you have the opportunity, you always, always check for things of use.  While
Petra sat shivering in the front seat, I climbed into the back and used my
pocket knife to cut the leather off the back seat rest.  From this I got a
piece that was maybe two feet wide and four feet long.  Underneath was a quantity
of foam rubber padding.  I removed as much of it as I could and stuffed it
under Petra’s rain coat for insulation and warmth.  I did the same for the back
seat cushion to similarly insulate my shirt.  As I’ve mentioned, my coat and
poncho were left in the boat, so I figured to use the leather seat material to
fashion a poncho long enough to at least keep the weather off my shoulders and
chest and to help retain some body heat.

I
proceeded to search the rest of the car; under the seats, the car door pockets,
and the glove box.  In the glove box was an owner’s manual for the car and in
the door pockets were some paper napkins and a few receipts all of which could
be used to help start a fire.  Under the driver’s seat was one of those plastic
butane lighters.  It was cracked and empty but the striker still worked, so I figured
I might be able to spark a fire from that.

I
then pulled the backseat cushion completely off and tossed it outside.  This
allowed me to access the trunk.  There were several things there that could be
useful.  First, the owner of the car kept a set of coveralls in the trunk, no
doubt to put on over his clothes when changing a tire or something.  They were
about two sizes too large for me but wearing them over my own clothes and cutting
the excess from the sleeves and cuffs worked nicely.  There was also a small canvas
tool bag.  In addition to the bag, I decided to keep a small roll of thin wire
and a long screwdriver.  Though not much, the screwdriver could be used as a stabbing
weapon and the wire could b Definitions */
tife used for shelter building or any number of other
things.  There was also an empty beer can I could use for a water carrier.  But
maybe best of all was an umbrella.  How perfect was that?  See what I mean
about luck?

After
that, there was nothing to do except rest and wait for the storm to play itself
out.  Petra went to sleep right away, and about an hour later, I finally drifted
off into one of those half asleep, half awake states.  You know, it’s where you
close your eyes, your breathing settles, you relax your body, but the sounds
and sensations around you are still there, registering at the very edge of your
consciousness.  It was during this time that I thought I heard the sound of a
gas engine with a bad muffler.  I remember turning the noise over in my head a
few times, feeling uncomfortable with it, holding it there for a bit, before
finally letting it go and dismissing it as just more thunder.

I
must have slept in this manner for several hours because when Petra later woke
me, it was so dark that I could only make out the faintest outline of her face less
than a foot away.

“I
have to go,” she said.

Outside,
the storm was still working us over pretty good, but it seemed the wind had
died down a bit.  I wedged the umbrella into the door of an old pickup truck
without wheels or an engine, so Petra could pee and be out of the rain at the
same time.  (I’ve forgotten how much work kids can be).  I stepped away so she
could have some privacy, and as I stood there waiting for her to finish up and
wash her hands with rain water, I detected the strong and distinct odor of wood
smoke.

My
first thought was of Gabriel and Anna.  Maybe they were nearby
,
I told
myself.  But just as quickly as that notion came into my head, I dismissed it. 
It wasn’t likely that they would build a fire unless it was a small one for
cooking.  Even then, this wasn’t the time they’d do it.  It would have been
several hours earlier and extinguished right away.

I
thought of Ponytail next.  The wind, and with it the smoke, was coming from the
northwest.  That’s also where I figured our antagonists were.  I should mention
it wasn’t just a little whiff of smoke either.  It was fairly strong, so my
guess was that it was from one large fire or several small ones.  I hated to
think of the implications of that.  Finally, I reasoned that whoever built that
fire wasn’t afraid of being found, which probably meant there were enough of
them that they felt pretty damn safe.

Back
in the car, while I was waiting for some small measure of warmth to return to
my body, I heard a whisper in the dark, “We aren’t ever going to see them again
are we?”

I
glanced over at her and could make out that she was looking down at her lap.  No
child should have her thoughts.

I’ll
get to my answer and the rest of our short conversation in a second, but first I
want to say her question was one I had been asking myself since pulling her
from the river.  Now obviously, since you are reading this and this journal was
in the boat, you’re probably assuming we found them alive and well, right? 
Well not necessarily so.  We could have ex-wife and daughter t,t just found the boat, or the wreckage
from the boat, and recovered my belongings.  They could easily have drowned and
been swept downstream.  That water was certainly rough enough and fast enough
for that.  So what seems obvious may not be so obvious after all.

Getting
back to Petra’s question and my thoughts at the time she asked it, I have to
admit to a considerable amount of worry on my part.  I hoped they were OK.  I
wanted them to be OK.  I missed them; yeah I admit it, Anna in particular.  And
while I’m making admissions, I admit to thinking about that unsettled business
between us that I hoped would be settled my way.  But the truth of it is, I
didn’t know if we really ever would find them again.

On
the other hand, I had confidence in them, too.  They were smart and resourceful
and determined, so in all probably I felt they did survive.  I guess the only other
consideration was that I knew she felt this incredibly strong obligation to
warn the town of Woburn of the planned attack.  So, the possibility existed
that she and Gabriel would have trudged on, hoping we had survived, and hoping
we would catch up.  Anyway, that’s how I felt at the time Petra asked me her
question.

As
for my answer, well I told her a half truth — the better half.  I told her that
I thought we had a good chance of finding them if we just kept close to the
river and kept a sharp lookout.

My
telling her that should have given her comfort; after all I’m the adult,
right?  She should listen to me; but what the hell do I know when it comes to
the minds of little girls?  Because instead of smiling, she covered her eyes
with her hands and cried.

I
rubbed her back and tried to reassure her that everything would be OK, that she
shouldn’t worry.  But once again my words had no effect.

After
a few seconds, and in even a quieter voice, broken by a breath deeply taken,
she said that she was sorry she had fallen out of the boat.  She added, “It’s… all…
my… fault.”

It
was just an accident, I told her.  She shouldn’t blame herself.  It could have happened
to any one of us.  I put my arms around her and we just rocked.  A while later
the crying stopped, she fell back to sleep, and I went back to my thoughts
about Anna.  Anna would have made it right with Petra.  She would have known
what to say or do.

___________

About
two hours before sunrise on April 13th, in a light but steady rain, Petra and I
started on our way again.  We stayed as close as possible to the river.  I was
afraid that if we didn’t, we might actually walk right on by Gabriel and Anna. 
Even so, there were still a lot of blind spots created by river debris or
natural obstacles, where they or the boat could have easily been hidden from
view.

Regarding
the area we were traveling in, it was essentially flat, yet not entirely so. 
At that particular moment, we were walking on a road, although it wasn’t recognizable
as such, so blemished was it with holes, checks, and growth.  The river was to
our west or right and still rushing south with great determination.  To our
east or dark brownwotleft were trees, sometimes numerous and sometimes not, and fields in
between and beyond — farm land I suspect, taken back.  On occasion we could see
some manmade artifact — a fence post, a wellhead, a power pole, a vehicle, all
looking as you would expect.