Marching As to War: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel (9 page)

As you came upon them, you always heard a child or two
crying with hunger, or sobbing with some grief deeper than words. But the
others were silent. They were too hungry and too weary to talk.

At first, here and there, we saw handfuls of our people on
the trails and the roads. But soon crowds of people were on the move, plodding
toward somewhere they might have kin, or just away. A few had horses and carts
for their things. Some had an old wheelbarrow. Most carried what they could in
a sack thrown over a shoulder or dragged on the ground. Many had little more
than the clothes on their backs.

We couldn’t do much for them. We had no food to give them.
We had no medicine. Jane talked with them, prayed with them, but then moved on.
Riley and I helped how we could, mostly
digging
graves.

What we had seen in that village happened again, here and
there in the mountains close to the big road. Soldiers slaughtered children and
old folk, raped women, and burned homes. In a few of the larger towns, or where
folks fought back, the soldiers dropped bombs and used artillery.

It was plain what the soldiers were doing. They were trying
to drive our people away. The people fed us, hid us, and nursed our wounded.
Our people watched for the soldiers and told us what they were doing. We
couldn’t fight without their help.

The soldiers were going to drain the pond to get the fish.
If they had to, they would kill us all. Kill women and children like they were
lice. Not a trace of mercy. Until I had seen that village, I would have thought
it impossible. I mean, I had read old history books, and those books are full
of stories of blood and slaughter. But to me, those stories were always just
words on a page about other people in another time. I suppose those folks
didn’t believe it could happen either, not to them. Now it was happening to us.

I thought about the prisoner Jane had let go. Lieutenant
Hobbes. He was the only soldier I had ever heard say more than a few words. I
wondered how he would explain this. He had talked about “law and order.” What
had he said? “Law and order make everything possible.” I wanted to tell him
that “law and order” had made the slaughter of my people possible. I wondered
if he had known about all this back when we had him. Maybe his army had done
this before.
Maybe not.
Hobbes said he had seen things
as a boy, terrible things, things we couldn’t imagine. Maybe he had. I just wanted
show him what he had done to us for a stretch of road.

What had happened, what could still happen, lay heavy on all
of
us.
But for Jane it was worse. She had told us God
wanted us to fight, and if we fought, God would bring us victory. But for all
our fighting, killing, and dying, the Government’s army kept coming. More
soldiers, more weapons, and more supplies kept arriving. We were neither
winning nor losing. So in the end, we would lose. If Jane had been wrong, all
the blood and suffering was for nothing. This burden was on her from the start,
of course, but back then, she could still smile, still laugh. She had come a
long way since then. We all had. The path didn’t seem to lead where God had
promised.

Then one day, Jane put her finger on the map and said,
“There.”

She was pointing to Canton.
It was the first big town the Government soldiers had taken when they had
rolled out of Asheville. It was
east of us, a five or six day walk, and beyond where any of our units operated.

Riley and I waited, hoping she would explain.

She said nothing.

“The Spirit?”
Riley said.

She nodded.

It was a hard trip. We had bad luck with the weather. But
there was more to it than that.

On the second or third day, I can’t remember which, it
rained all day and into the night. We camped in an abandoned cabin and built a
fire in the old stone hearth. All three of us sat, crowding the flames, trying
to get warm and dry. Sitting there, I could look at Riley and Jane. I watched
their faces in the firelight. As the heat worked its way into him, Riley’s face
relaxed, and he closed his eyes. He fell asleep and from the little smile that
came and went on his lips,

Jane just looked into the fire, her face blank, her mind
somewhere else. I was looking at her when she glanced up at me. But I didn’t
look away, embarrassed, as I once had.

She smiled. But her eyes didn’t smile.

“Fire feels good,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Getting dry?”

She nodded.
“You?”

I nodded. “I’ll add some wood before long.”

She looked back into the fire and went back to wherever she
had been. I wanted her to tell me what she was thinking. I wanted to know why
we were going to Canton. I wanted
to help. But I let the moment pass.

We walked east in a steady rain all the next day. To make
better time, we ran the risk of using roads. People trying to get away from the
soldiers were moving west, the opposite direction, on the same road. As we
passed them, most gave us no more than a glance. They were too miserable to
take much notice of three wet travelers going the wrong way.

Just before sunset, the rain quit, and we passed a small
bunch of folks who had camped on the roadside. They had a few wagons and some
cook fires going. The smell of their food made me hungry, but I knew we
couldn’t stop. So I paid them no mind until we heard a voice behind us calling,
“Janie!
That you?
Janie?”

I wheeled around and saw a boy, maybe fifteen years old,
running toward us, splashing through puddles on the road. He was grinning and
shouting, “Janie! It’s you! It’s you!” When he got to Jane, they wrapped their
arms around one another.

I looked at Riley. He had one eyebrow raised, the way he
always did when he found something interesting.

“Is everyone . . . OK?” she said.

“Yeah,” he
said,
a big grin on his
face. “We got out before any soldiers came around. We’re all here. Come on.”

Jane, remembering Riley and me, told us this was Ricky, her
little brother. He was so happy to see her that it was hard not to smile along
with him.

Jane was grinning too until Ricky said, “Papa didn’t believe
it. He said you couldn’t be here. Just wait till he sees you.”

We went back along the road to the little camp. Jane’s
family had a wagon with a rain cover rigged on one side. They had a good fire
going with a cooking pot hanging over it.

As we approached, a man and a woman sitting by the fire stood
up. The man had only one arm. The other had been cut off above the elbow. He
had to be Jane’s father, but his face was blank and hard.
Angry.

The woman, Jane’s mother, looked surprised, putting both
hands to her face. She glanced at the man for a moment before letting herself
smile. Then she came out and embraced Jane real tight, whispering something in
her ear.

Finally, the woman drew Jane over to the fire. The man just
continued to stand there, still and silent as an old tree.

“Hello, Papa,” she said.

“Janie.”

“How you been?”

He gave a little shrug.
“You?”

“Good.”

Without taking his eyes off Jane, he gave a little jerk of
his head toward where Riley and I were standing. Jane told him our names.

The man did not even look at us. It wasn’t hard to tell he
wished we weren’t there.

Jane’s mother had us all sit down, and her father said a prayer.
Then we ate. It was the first warm food I had eaten in a while. But Jane’s
father never said another word. Her mother and brother kept glancing at him as
they talked about how they had packed up and left, how bad the weather been,
what was happening to this relative or that neighbor, and such things. They
didn’t ask Jane anything about Winslow or the war. They didn’t even ask why she
was walking east when everyone else was going west.

As soon as we finished, Riley and I thanked them for the
meal and excused ourselves. We needed to find a place to bed down. There were a
few other folks camped here and there, their small fires flickering in the
darkness.

We heard a voice call out of the darkness, “You boys are
welcome at my fire.”

I looked over and saw a man toss some wood on his fire. He
waved to us. Something about him was familiar. We went over to the man.

When I got closer, I recognized him and said, “We met you a
while back.
With Jane.”

“That’s right,” he said and put out his hand. “John Darcy.”

We shook his hand and gave our names. He invited us to have
a seat. Then he sat down on a log, but with considerable effort. He laughed and
said, “Old age has its blessings, but comfort ain’t one of them.” Riley and I
smiled and sat close to the fire.

Uncle John said, “You know, back at that camp I didn’t want
to send her off with strangers, but she was so determined to go. I want to
thank you for taking care of Janie.”

I thought of Jane running down that slope to the wounded man
on the road, bullets kicking up dirt all around her. But I said, “You’re
welcome, but for the most part we just try to keep up with her.”

“Well, Janie was always like that,” Uncle John said, “always
in front.
Stubborn about it.”

“You’re her uncle?” Riley said.

“Her Papa’s older brother. But he won’t talk to me no more.”

“Because of Jane?”
I said.

“Yeah.
He was angry when I believed
in Janie.
But when I helped her leave home that just tore it.
We ain’t
spoke
since.”

“Sorry to hear that,” I said.

“We just had dinner over there,” Riley said. “The whole
time, he barely said a word to Jane.”

Uncle John nodded and said, “Now, I don’t want you boys to
think he’s a bad man. He ain’t. He’s not some whiskey drinker with a mean
streak. He’s just reached his limit. You saw his arm?
Lost
that in the militia when he was your age.
About five years ago, lost his
oldest boy to that winter fever that went through the militia camps.”

“Jane never mentioned that,” Riley said.

Uncle John continued, “The youngest boy, Ricky, will have to
serve soon. And now with this war. . . .” He shook his head. “Anyway, my
brother reckons they’ve given enough. He told her not to go . . .” He shrugged.

Riley and I exchanged a glance. We both knew what Jane did
when she was told not to do something.

“Believing in Jane is a hard thing,” Uncle John said.
“Especially for the folks who knew her before . . . before all
this.
But that’s to be expected. Matthew
13:57
,
‘And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not
without honor, save in his own country, and in his own house.’ So it was for
our Lord, so it is for Janie.”

“Yeah, I see what you mean,” I said.

We just sat there, quiet, letting the fire warm us and dry
our clothes. After a while, Riley said he was going to find a spot to bed down
for the night. “You coming?” he said to me.

“Not yet.”

Riley thanked Uncle John for the hospitality, said
goodnight, and went off in the darkness.

I said, “I reckon you want to talk to Jane. Should I tell
her you’re here?”

“No need,” he said. “She’ll find out and be over directly.”

We were quiet again for a while.

“Son,” he said, “can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Are you a Christian? Saved and all?”

“I am,” I said, remembering the man was a minister.

“Do you believe God sent Janie?”

I paused, considering what to say. “I’m not sure about that,
Sir. But I believe she believes it with all her heart. And I believe in her.”

“I’m sure she can count on you.”

I felt like crying, but held it back. “I won’t let her
down.”

“Good,” he said. “I worry about Janie. She knew God had
called her long before she was able to tell any of us. Looking back, I can she
how she kept herself away from what most girls do.
Lonely.”

I said nothing.

“I wonder if she’ll ever get to have the ordinary joys of
life, marriage, raising a family, and all. But Janie has a calling from God,
and such folks often don’t have ordinary lives.”

“You’re right, but maybe when the war is over.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But I wonder if a calling from God, her
kind anyways, is ever over.”

I said nothing and hoped he couldn’t tell what was on my
mind. But he could.

He put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s hard for a man not to
think about what he thinks about. But don’t be worrying on the future. I know
what it’s like in the militia. That’s how I got this bad leg. The only future
you got is right now. Best keep your mind on that.”

“Reckon so,” I said. And I knew he was right, but doubted it
would make any difference.

I was thinking about this, staring into the fire when Uncle
John stood up. Jane came out of the darkness and walked into his open arms.
Neither said a word. They hugged, and he patted her back as if trying to soothe
her.

She said, “I need to visit with Uncle John a while.” Her
cheeks were shiny with tears. This surprised me. I had never seen her cry.

I nodded, thanked Uncle John, and left. When I was sure they
couldn’t see me anymore, I stood in the darkness and watched them. They were
sitting side by side. She was talking, but I couldn’t make out what she said.
He was nodding, listening hard.

Her cheeks were still shiny with tears, but she also looked
happy.

I found Riley and laid out my bedroll. He was still awake,
and we talked for a while about Jane’s family, especially the way her father
treated her.

“I just don’t understand that,” I said. “Don’t understand
that at all.”