Journal (4 page)

I
was so worked up from thinking about Anna, I decided to let the kid sleep
through his turn at watch. 

When
morning came, and just before I woke them to start our day, I took the last of
some dry oatmeal I’d scavenged from a house near where I found this journal,
mixed it with rain water to soften it up, and split it three ways.  At least Gabriel
thanked me.

This
second day of the three of us together was more of the same, lots of tough
walking.  This time no rain, though, just an oppressively gray sky with little
promise of better days.  I knew we were still on track when we angled ourselves
between two mountain peaks, one at 7000 feet and the other over 8000.  But
that’s when we hit our first real obstacle: a river too wide to wade across and
too fast to swim.  So we turned west, going upstream where I hoped we would
have a better chance of finding a place to cross.  We stayed on the south side
of the river, and in the late afternoon we encountered the ruins of a hunting
blind or maybe a small shelter that hunters had used during the season.

It
wasn’t anymore than maybe twelve by ten feet with stones for one wall and logs
for the others.  The roof was made of poles and had been covered with shingles,
but these were for the most part missing, except for on one corner.  There was
no door, but inside it was fairly dry, and just as important, some of the
original shingles were there on the ground and were burnable.  We’d be able to use
them to build a small fire.

We
used the tarp again to give us more of a roof and got the fire started.  I
can’t begin to tell you how good a fire feels when, in my case, you’ve been wet
and cold for three days.  I really wanted to sit there for a few minutes, I
surely did, but I had other things on my mind.  We were going to need food soon
because we were burning a lot of calories moving the way we were.  I didn’t
have much left, and I doubted that Anna had much either.  So I thought I’d try
my hand at fishing.  It wasn’t happening, though.  Maybe I just didn’t have the
patience for it.

I
ended up using a soft carrot, half of my last piece of dried meat, and a piece
of potato that Anna contributed, to make a soup that we all shared.  Afterwards,
I concocted some tea out of pine needles and boiled river water.  With that and
the fire, I finally felt warm.

I’m
tired of writing now, so I’ll finish catching up tomorrow, maybe.  There’s just
one more thing I want to mention because it helps explain why I have to get
away from this woman as soon as I can.  As I sat there by the fire, drinking my
tea, I took the time to wipe down my rifle and pistol.  I couldn’t afford to let
them get rusty.  After I was finished, I offered to clean Anna’s pistol as well. 
She looked at me like I’d just asked her for her left kidney or something and
told me, “No way.  I’ll do it myself.”  Why do I get the feeling that she doesn’t
trust me?  I just don’t get her attitude.

April
7, 2054
–

There
are a lot of things that have happened since I last wrote, three or four days
ago — crazy things.  I’ll do my best to tell them in the order they occurred
and in the detail that they deserve.

__________

On
the morning of April fourth, so that would be the beginning of our third day
together, we walked west for another mile and finally found a place where we
could get across the river and turned north once again.  At this point, I was
starting to feel pretty confident that we were safe from our pursuers.  We had
traveled on foot for over two full days, passed through several areas where it
would be hard for someone to follow our tracks, and crossed a good sized
river.  My worries now concerned food more than Mr. Ponytail and company.  So I
determined that if by evening we still hadn’t spotted anyone following
us, I would try to find a deer or
some other wild game to kill.

The
walking that day was still pretty tough.  Nothing was flat.  In the distance, I
could see two peaks that I figured, by my map, were Gardner Mountain on the
east and Mt. Logan on the west, so we angled between them.  It wasn’t raining,
thank God, but the air was still damp and cold.  It also seemed that each mile
we went, I felt weaker and weaker from lack of food.  Anna and Gabriel looked
just as exhausted as I was, walking a little bit slower and taking a little longer
to get over or around obstacles.

We
took a break at mid-day, and I heated some water for pine needle tea.  While we
were drinking it, Gabriel sat next to me and asked about the journals.  I told
him the story of finding them and my thoughts of continuing on with them.  He
seemed interested and asked several questions, so I read him a couple of the
entries written by Claire Huston.

“It
has become my habit each and every day to do something, anything, however small,
that will make a better tomorrow.”
  T
hen,
“
The thing is, if we are to matter
at all, we can’t permit what might go wrong or what others may think to give us
pause.  We must recognize these things for what they are and shake free of
their grip and do our best, without hesitation, at every turn.”

We
talked about it a little bit more, and since I had Gabriel’s attention (and
since Anna was well out of earshot), I asked him where he and his mom were
living before they were kidnapped.  I hoped that it would lead to other
subjects.

It
was a simple question, or at least I thought it was, but he took some time to
answer it.  Eventually he said, “Well, um, she hasn’t always been my mom.”  He
went on to explain that his real mom, along with his father, two brothers, and
a sister, died when he was ten.  He said, “She kind of saved me,” and “just
sort of took care of me” from then on.  They were all that each other had and
that’s why he called her his mom.

At
first I felt deceived to make surewot.  But given the context of his story, I decided he
probably really did feel she was his mother now.  I have to admit, I would probably
feel the same if it were me.

His
answer though didn’t come close to my question.  So after a while I changed the
words around and asked again where he and Anna were when they were kidnapped.  He
simply said they were in a field gathering food.  As his words tailed off, he
stood, mentioned he wanted to see if his mom needed his help, and walked over
to her, leaving me with the feeling that there was more to his answer than he granted
me.

I
should say that I like Gabriel a lot and feel he is an unusually sensitive and
intelligent kid.  But at that point, it seemed there was a struggle going on
inside his head.  There obviously were things he wasn’t telling me.  My guess
was he wanted to talk to me about them but that Anna had convinced him not to, at
least for now anyway. 

As
to Anna, she doesn’t trust me.  That much is clear.  Yes, that is annoying but
I guess somewhat understandable given what has happened to her.  Still, it
leaves me without answers to some very important questions:  How deep is her
mistrust of me?  Can
she
be trusted not to slit my throat when she
doesn’t need me anymore?  If Mr. Ponytail killed everyone he crossed paths
with, why didn’t he kill her, too?  And what’s so damn important about them
that they want to hide it?  Does the answer to that put me in danger somehow? 
I don’t like all this secrecy stuff at all.  Soon, though, we’ll split up, and
I won’t have to deal with it anymore.

We
spent the rest of the day walking, and, in the late afternoon, I chanced a shot
at a small doe we had surprised in a meadow of no more than an acre in size.  I
only wounded it on my first shot, and it took a second to finally kill it.  I
hoped nobody heard my shots.

While
I went about the business of gutting and skinning it, Gabriel and Anna took
some time to explore the area to try to determine by landmarks exactly where we
were.  About a half hour later, they returned and Gabriel told me that there
was a road not a half mile walk from where we were.  By the map, I figured it
was Highway 20, and by following it east we could hit Highway 153 and beyond
that 97 or even 155.

It
was perfect timing, I thought.  We could eat that night, split the leftover
meat in the morning, and go our separate ways.  I decided then and there that I
would bypass the 153 to reach the 97 in order to have a better chance of
avoiding a confrontation with Mr. Ponytail, when I turned back south.

After
stuffing ourselves with venison and sheep sorrel greens, Anna said she was
tired and asked if I would take the first watch.  She and Gabriel would take
the last two.  Now, since that was just about the first thing she’d said to me
all day, I guess I should have been a little suspicious of it, but I wasn’t,
and I agreed to the arrangement.  While she was standing there, I considered
telling them of my plan to go my separate way, but instead I decided to put it
off until morning.   My avoidance of anything even remotely confrontational was
at work again I guess.

After
my watch, I woke Anna, who as usual didn’t say anything to me.  As soon as my
head settled down onto mWhile so engagedwoty rolled-up poncho, which I was using as a makeshift
pillow, I was out.

___________

I
must have slept straight through because I awoke on the morning of April fifth
feeling pretty good.  However, when I looked over to see if Anna was still sleeping,
I discovered that both she and Gabriel, and their blankets, were gone.  A
search of our little camp revealed that all their gear was gone as well as all
but a little of the meat.

At first I was angry.  They snuck off in the dark without saying,
“Hasta la vista baby,” “It’s been nice but not that nice,” or even, “We have
plans and they don’t include you.”
 
They just took off.  It was like they were afraid I would try to stop them or
something.  Who does that sort of thing?  But the more I thought about it, the
more I calmed down, finally telling myself, what difference did it make?  I
wanted to be on my own anyway.  Who cares?

My
newfound attitude changed again, a few minutes later, when I discovered the
meat wasn’t the only thing that was missing.  This was missing; this very
journal I’m writing in, as well as another one in Claire Huston’s hand.  And
that made me angry all over again.  How’s the saying
go? 
“No good turn goes unpunished.”
  I helped them, and they stole from me.  I
wanted the journals back.  I don’t know why, but they were important to me.

Almost
immediately an entirely different thought settled in on me.  I remember
thinking that taking the journals had to be Gabriel’s doing.  Anna would never
have done such a thing.  She’d never shown any interest in them at all, and practical
ole’
Anna wouldn’t want to lug them around
either.  No, it was Gabriel all right, and I told myself he took them not
because he wanted them for himself, but because he wanted me to follow him and
get them back.  Maybe that’s what they had been arguing about.  She wanted to sneak
off and he didn’t.  This was his way of not directly defying his mother but
still doing what he thought was best — sneaky.  But as much as I may have
admired his cleverness, it still made me mad.  I was damn sure going to get the
journals back, tell them what I thought of them, and strike off on my own
after.

If
you’ve read these last three paragraphs, you of course have figured out that I
eventually regained possession of the journals.  The interesting part is how I
got them back.  I would never have imagined that a decision I made on April
first, an out of character decision, would have led me to the events I’m about
to describe.

Following
their trail was easy.  They walked straight to Highway 20, if you could call it
a highway.  It is really just a two lane road cutting through a forest of
ninety foot spruce and lodgepole pine, thick, and dark, and towering as far as
I could see.  After that, it wasn’t so easy.  I couldn’t tell if they went east
or west.

Well,
what now Einstein?
 
That’s what I was asking myself.  If I went the wrong direction, I’d not likely
ever find them or the journals again.  So I decided to search in both
directions; several hundred yards one way and the same the other.  Maybe I’d
find something=tif.  Maybe I’d pick up their track.  Nothing, though.  There wasn’t
a scuffmark, a discarded something or other, and definitely not a footprint. 
So I just took a chance and went west.  I figured she would think I would guess
east, so I went the opposite direction, knowing all the time I could be just
outsmarting myself.

A
half-hour into it, I heard something I never, ever thought I’d hear again.  It
was an airplane, one of those little ultra light, one-seater jobs; practically nothing
more than a pair of cloth covered wings and an engine but still a plane.  It
was making tight little circles, about five miles off to the east, hard to tell
exactly. 

My
first reaction?  Run for cover.  The months I’ve spent on my own have given me a
healthy suspicion of anything out of the ordinary; a noise, a shape, a movement,
anything unusual at all has to be interpreted as a threat unless determined
otherwise.  That is the only way to keep yourself healthy.  If you think about
it, animals do the exact same thing, right?  Dogs nose the air and circle growling
at something strange.  A deer will bolt at a sudden movement.  Birds take
flight at a sharp sound.  And an airplane circling overhead, when I hadn’t seen
one in years, definitely fell into that category.