Part One
Leland came down hard on the heel of his left foot.
The floodlight, which was controlled by a motion sensor, didn’t ignite. The dark night air of 11:45 was dimly lit by the full October moon, but it was still dark enough Leland didn’t notice that stone.
He let out a quiet yelp, coming down hard on a stone just off the steps of his river home. Leland ran out of the front door at this late hour, wearing only his boxer briefs. Lucie-gal, his Anatolian Shephard, stood at the southernmost corner of his property and barked wildly into the darkness across the river. He feared his nearby neighbor just upstream would eventually lose patience with Lucie-gal and send a caravan of 12-gauge bird-shot pellets in her general direction.
He couldn’t have that.
The world was already unraveling with tenacious speed. The last thing Leland needed was an upset neighbor on the river. And a dead dog.
The unthinkable finally happened. Not since 50 years earlier during the Cuban Missile Crisis had the world faced the terrible threat of nuclear war. But the threats arrived, a war that could lead to the mutual destruction of all parties involved and the entire world itself. Like a hurricane tumbling over itself once it makes landfall, breaking into chunks of thunderstorms and tornadoes, the bombs were dropping clumsily over targets throughout the Western world. And, of course, all over Russia. Thousands of years of protected architectural marvels were disintegrated in mere seconds, along with the millions of people unprotected as their shadows evaporated. The warmongers and elite madmen who controlled and contorted the levers of the world finally got their way.
Negotiations between Ukraine and Russia never really happened. The United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, and NATO countries in general, made sure of that. The provocations and calamitous proxy miscalculations and dull-headed bluffs finally led to all out nuclear war. Both sides blamed the other for the first missile launch, but things happened so fast and the media had lied about all manner of issues so effectively over the past few years that it was hard to know what — or who — to believe.
Leland knew one thing: He had to get out of Jacksonville and get to his river camp in the deep woods of the Florida Panhandle as soon as possible.
He first worried the military bases in those areas would be targeted, but it was now clear, if they were targets, it wasn’t imminent. It was rumored the military bases cleared out, the soldiers and equipment commissioned to desert outposts, other places with strategic interests. One could probably loot the bases and get away with it, if there was still any gas to get to and from them.
New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., those were the kinds of targets of the first attacks. Where they would go from there was anyone’s guess, but the river camp Leland’s father left him seemed like a sure bet as a buffer of safety.
Back in Jacksonville, Leland used what bit of stale gas he had left in his workshop to fill up his Toyota SUV. He siphoned a couple gallons from his mowers for a reserve tank. He then loaded the dog, his weapons, a large bin of non-perishables, beef jerky, things he had preserved over the years, a big, metal bin of seeds he had saved, and of course, all the ammo he could find. He packed a few clothes, his pillow and some blankets. He even put three laying hens and two rabbits in a small pin. Along the ride, the chickens cackled with every bump. It was a small start, but if the world was starting over, he would have to get back to his roots, get those chickens to lay eggs, breed those rabbits and eat their offspring. Perhaps, once established, he could even barter with nearby neighbors.
These thoughts were surreal to Leland. But he had to snap out of the haze and take seriously the prospects of a very different future. He was raised a country boy, but left home after high school. After college, he moved to Jacksonville against his father’s wishes. He became a defense attorney there and for the next 10 years asked himself “why” when he stared in the mirror. He never married, never had kids. By the time he made it into his mid-30s he often felt sorry for himself for not hitching his wagon to someone, starting a family. Now, he just felt sorry for those who had people to care for, to protect. He had a dog, three chickens and two rabbits. It was a lonely but small type of relief that made him sigh at the thought of his unhinged life. Any morsels of selfishness were brushed away like crumbs on his shirt.
It was a dangerous thing hitting the open road at a time like this, but Leland knew it had to be done. He had old paper maps stuffed in the side door bin of his truck, detailing every backroad from Tallahassee to his river camp in the Panhandle. The Internet still worked but was spotty, and with conspiracy wheels turning, he wouldn’t use his GPS to get from A to B.
He could charge his phone in the Toyota, but wondered if there would be any working electricity along the river. He also worried what he would find when he eventually pulled into the driveway. He kept his .9 millimeter in his lap. Lucie-gal road shotgun and was a fluffy but formidable character. She panted and occasionally stumbled onto the center console to give Leland a slobbery lick on the cheek. He acted in disapproval but really loved the random affections of his gal.
The trip from the big city to the river camp would normally take about six hours during normal times. That was six hours heading west on Interstate 10, wide open nearly the entire way. This trip, under darkness of night and all manner of potential threats, would be very different, he thought. Leaving Jacksonville, he took a few dirt roads, perhaps being overly cautious. He knew these roads well, because despite being an asshole defense attorney he still liked to fish and hunt; over the years he developed a useful skill of foraging wild things from the woods. He made wine and jellies from wild persimmons and crabapples. Wild grapes were aplenty. He didn’t mind dandelion salads and he preferred Florida betony over radishes. He recognized wild edible yams and knew which ones to avoid. He knew the difference between the edible mushrooms called chanterelles and the poisonous Omphalotus oleariusso, also known as “Jack-O-Lanterns,” the latter having true gills rather than folds. Those would get you in trouble in a hurry. This hobby would prove to be a useful skill.
Leland was also an excellent marksman. Every weekend, his singleness exposed itself, allowing him to spend time on the range with all manner of caliber and arsenal. He wasn’t a war vet, but killed plenty of wild game and was skilled with weapons of all types. This would prove to work in his favor.
His trip started in the late afternoon. Leaving town, meandering through neighborhoods, proved to be a surprising spectacle. He envisioned and was prepared for all-out war with people he would normally greet with an amenable smile and hold open a door when entering the hardware store. What he found instead was a very different scene indeed. People sat in their front yards in lawn chairs, grills blowing, smoke billowing and the scents of charcoal, cooking meats and beer wafting through the air. The scene was similar to block parties preparing for the sun to set, waiting for the Fourth of July fireworks to begin. Had American life really become such a cartoonish spectacle? Was this the foolish doppelganger of a former generation forged in steely resolve? Were the masses in their Potemkin carbon cutout homes really entertained by the possible end of the world? Had their resolve sank this low? Whatever the case, Leland breathed a sigh of relief. However, he didn’t expect every town between Jacksonville and the river camp to act as foolish. Some would be prepared. And so would he.
Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks
You that never done nothin’
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly
Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain
You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud
You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins
How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I’m young
You might say I’m unlearned
But there’s one thing I know
Though I’m younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do
Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul
And I hope that you die
And your death’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand o’er your grave
’Til I’m sure that you’re dead
— Bob Dylan, Masters of War
Taking backroads, Leland meandered through the southernmost parts of Georgia, then dipped back down into the upper regions of rural north Florida. It was easy to stay off the beaten path but hard to know if the direction he was going was actually right. He knew it was partly right but feared it was mostly wrong, burning too much of the precious gasoline in his tank, forcing him to dip into reserves. Life in the rural deep South seemed to go on as normal. Small farmland lay either uninhabited, derelict or in meager straights. Farmers had a tough go at life in this age, even before the bombs started falling. The same kinds of people who were destroying the planet by nuclear detonation were also in charge of the national food and drug administrations as well as the agricultural departments. They decided long ago that if you wanted to farm for a living you either had to get big — which meant sucking on the government teat — or get bent.
People like these bureaucrats were busy destroying the world. Why was it so hard to believe they weren’t working for years to unravel local food supplies, create so much red tape and financial overhead that a regular man couldn’t make a living owing a local abattoir? This was the new song of the south. Poverty. Dependence. Disgrace.
Leland raced down the 185, cutting through a maze of narrow dusty roads, passing Altman’s Grocery, which was once a staple in the community but now sat abandoned. He stopped briefly, rifle in hand, to see if the store had anything of value. He figured, if it was abandoned, the owners were no longer alive or no longer around to defend themselves. He had a wad of cash in his pocket and was willing to give it to anyone who was willing to exchange, but he was pretty sure cash was as worthless as the paper it was printed on.
With his gun ready, he tentatively checked through the store, but it had been picked over. This was an old-school local mercantile store. They had a deep chest cooler up front that was normally filled with cold cokes, the classic glass bottles he remembered as a kid. The ones that still required a bottle opener. It was empty and smelly and lukewarm.
The floors, old as Moses, creaked. There were gaps in the decking and the unknown mysterious life below in the crawlspace probably remained active despite the absence of life in the store. Perhaps there were even people hiding down there. There would have been pallets of deer corn for the local hunters. There was an entire section labeled “Food plot mix,” and another end cap with a sign for garden seeds and bags of cover crops. It was all gone. One corner had a small cooking area where an old lady once dangled spent cigarettes from her mouth while making the best greasy burgers in the area, all on a flat-iron skillet. At least the general level of the locals’ cholesterol would most likely improve with the loss of this jewel of a corner store. Leland couldn’t even find a bag of rice or a pack of disposable razers. Discouraged and not wanting to linger too long, he left.
Lucie-gal sniffed the base of a fern-covered pecan tree. She peed at its base and sniffed some more. The screen door of the store slapped as Leland exited, his boots clacking on the old wooden planks of the big front porch. He called Lucie-gal to come on. She listened and ran toward him, desperately avoiding separation from her master.
Leland left the store, drove a few miles, then darted off through the splintered, unkempt roads of the Osceola National Forest, all the while racing while holding the wrinkled weathered map in one hand and guiding his vessel through the forest roads.
The forest workers no longer cleared the broken pines that hung crippled over the road. Just prior to the eruption of nuclear war overseas, a late season hurricane ripped through the region, felling many pines, snapping them off in uniform directions about 12 feet off the ground. The forest looked like God mowed everything down with a weed-eater as big as a skyscraper. Leland often had to drop his rig into the lower gears of four-wheel-drive. The chickens cackled and squawked. Lucie-gal hung on for dear life. The window was usually rolled down, which she normally loved. She’d hang herself out, tongue flapping and gaily lapping up the breeze. In this case, she tried to make herself as small as possible, kneading down into the floorboard like a batch of unrisen dough, flat in the bottom of a bowl. She looked at her daddy with the saddest eyes in the world. He tried to avoid her gaze but he felt it all over him.
“I know, baby, this won’t last long,” he said.
Leland would hit a deep bump, “I’m sorry, darlin’.” He hated the stress this stretch of road put on Lucie-gal, as well as the chickens and rabbits. He knew he would have a mess to clean up in the back of the 4X4.
Rabbits rarely make any noise, and when they do, you dream of earplugs. When they do screech, it is ear piercing. But Leland’s rabbits dealt with the abuse with a resigned submission, a vow of silence, occasionally oscillating in circles around the chickens since they were all trapped in the same small pen. If the chickens were the gossiping choir ladies, the rabbits were the monks of the pen.
For a short spell, Leland did catch up on some time, racing down Interstate 10, until hitting U.S. 90 near Greenville. It was a short but blessed release from the badgered roadways when he was off the beaten path. He worried about roadblocks and nefarious characters, but through this stretch there were none.
He was close to Monticello. He had a cousin there and wondered if he could count on visiting her to stop for the night. Would she still be home? Was the home he remembered and had marked on his map still her home? Is she even alive?
Many dreadful thoughts arose. It had been years since they spoke and it was unfortunately through an online post where there were a few “likes” and an even fewer number of shallow comments. So in reality, they hadn’t spoken in more than 15 years, and that was at their grandmother’s funeral, where no one seemed to know each other or to know what to say.
Would she even recognize him? He didn’t even know if she was married or had a family. It bruised his soul to think of how the concept of family and relationships had been so tarnished over the last decade amid the shallow dependence of online social media outlets — the very places that betrayed and silenced those who were so desperately trying to raise the alarm bells of nuclear war. She could shoot him in the chest before he ever made it onto her front porch and she might not even recognize him as he lay there bleeding out from the wound, gasping to call out her name.
For a moment, he reconsidered. Was this too much of a risk? He even looked at his map to observe an alternate route. But there was no turning back. Almost all of his family was gone at this point so he felt he owed it to her to check in. He checked the map to verify the address.
He took old roads toward the town. No resistance. The breeze was cooling as he entered into town. On the horizon was a smog of dirty brown, gray and orange colored clouds hanging over the town. As he drove closer to his cousin’s house on High Street, he noticed fires burning, but the town seemed vacant of people. One house after another was burning, fires quenching the olden pine plank structures, turning them bitterly into charcoal and steaming piles of ash.
Like so many of the homes in Monticello, the one where his cousin supposedly lived was burned out and smoldering. This was a very different scene from the one he experienced when escaping Jacksonville.
While leaving High Street, a roadblock awaited. A gaggle of misshapen vagrant looking characters stood behind what was once state-owned roadblock barriers. Some had shotguns and some held pistols, thugs, looking for their award in marksmanship.
Leland was an excellent marksman.
Part Two
“Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.”
Job 5:7
The Toyota slowly came to a stop and then an idle. Leland stared pensively at the five men who blocked the road. Lucie-gal let out a low growl.
“Easy, girl.”
Leland gripped the pistol in his lap. He had never killed anyone before.
Leland only smoked on occasion to bandage his soul; it was usually a kind of ritual that occurred with a glass of bourbon next to a fire pit. Not often. But for effect, he pulled a Marlboro from the breast pocket of his shirt, lit it, took a deep drag, and let the smoke drift through the crack of the window. The buzz, artificial as it might be for an occasional smoker, steeled his resolve.
“We’re not stopping here, girl,” he quietly said to Lucie-gal. He stabbed the half-spent cigarette into the cup holder of the center console.
He opened the door and stepped out, tucking the pistol in the front of his pants, obscured from the prosecutors beyond the door.
“Where we going?” a toothy, gaunt man asked, while rhythmically patting the thick end of what looked like a piece of steel pipe about one inch in diameter and about two feet long.
Nearly bald, his red and grayish hair that encircled the sides of his head puffed out and looked like one of those neck pillows people use on long plane rides.
Leland took a few steps toward the miscreants, but not before shutting the door so as to keep Lucie-gal inside. He shut the door gently, like trying to avoid alerting a sleeping passenger at a rest area.
Lucie-gal protested with aimless barking, telling her master, “Don’t go!”
“Quiet, girl. It’s OK.”
“I’m just trying to get to the river. What are you fellas up to?”
The gaunt, neck pillow toothy bastard in a sour, yellow-colored tank top stepped forward.
“Well, this is our road and no one passes unless they pay a toll.”
“So you guys are basically the revenue service your daddies hated and hid from when they were running moonshine stills in this part of the world just a couple generations ago?”
“Screw you.”
“Sorry, you’re not my type,” Leland quipped.
“You ain’t gettin’ through here. That’s the story. This is our town, our road, and we’re done with all you loafers passing through. You’re gonna turn around and go back to where ever you came from; but not before we get a look at what you’re travelling with. And not until you leave us that dog.”
Bad move.
Leland looked over the men’s shoulders at the road beyond. He let out a deep sigh and looked down at his feet.
He then asked his last and final question.
“Are you the same group who burned down all those houses on High Street?”
Neck pillow didn’t say a word but the tobacco-stained corner of his mouth rose ever so slightly.
A once-competitive shooter, Leland quickly drew his .9 millimeter from beneath his shirt, shot the gaunt toothy bastard in the forehead and was already drawn on the rest of the group before they could gather the flaccid tobacco spit in their mouths.
With his gun in their general directions, he waited for the next one to make a move. With their mouths open, some dropped their guns while two of the men moved the barricades and slowly backed up, submitting to Leland’s force over the situation.
“Kick those guns this way,” Leland demanded, nervously.
The men fumbled with their feet, attempting to move the guns closer to Leland.
“Fine! Pick them up and toss them this way. But don’t try anything or I’ll do to you what I just did to your friend. My God! What the hell is wrong with you people? All I wanted to do was get home and now I’ve gone off and killed a man!”
“He was bad news. We were all afraid of him,” said one of the men, a slow, portly bald spectacle. “You did us a favor getting rid of him.”
“Yeah, which one of you will take his place?” There was no response. Just more forlorn looks in their eyes. These were men who were bankers, accountants, contractors. Men who had a life before the fallout. They somehow became tangled up with a ruffian and acted like looters after a hurricane.
The men, with their heads held low, kicked the dust beneath their feet, like punished children after a schoolyard fight.
Leland, with a watchful eye on them, picked up their guns and clumsily tossed them into the back seat.
By experience, he knew by their weight some guns weren’t even loaded. He put the Toyota in drive. His hand holding the gun that killed the leader still quivered for a bit. Lucie-gal stepped on the center console while Leland gathered his thoughts. Her barking stopped when he re-entered the cab of the truck. She snuggled her snout on his shoulder and whimpered before removing it and began breathing heavily again.
He lay the gun in his lap and with both hands wiped away moisture from his eyes, as if trying to bring them into focus. He put the truck in drive and slowly drove past the mob. He watched carefully, his eyes darting back and forth as he passed them, training on the rearview mirrors, wanting to make sure no one would try to be a hero.
Leland drove hard and fast for a couple of miles. The engine revved and Lucie-gal even sensed things were going by too quickly. She whimpered and lay down in the floorboard. With Leland, paranoia set in. He kept looking into the rearview mirrors, wondering if a gang of thugs were on their way after him. Suddenly, Leland slammed on the breaks, the truck careening to the right and then the left, dust stirring past from the tires, before coming to a screeching stop.
He buried his head in the steering wheel and sobbed like a baby. “Oh God, help me!” He carried on a mournful soliloquy between God and himself. Though he knew his decision was the only way to survive, he was smothered in the deep throes of sorrow. He had second thoughts about shooting the man. He wondered what alternative could have made the situation better. What would his father have done, he thought. “I would have killed the bastard,” a voice said assuredly.
His father, being a vet from a different age when men were tested and weren’t often found lacking, found his way back home with enough medals to drown a wet three-legged cat. Leland often felt small in the shadow of his father’s war accomplishments and had no intention of joining the armed forces before or after college. His father was disgusted with his son’s decision to pursue law school rather than a stint in the Marines. But his disappointment was quickly interrupted with a short bout of stage 4 pancreatic cancer, which led to a quick and miserly death.
Leland was so busy with classes he hardly noticed the gap of time between the day his father called to tell him of his cancer diagnosis and the day of his death. The hospice nurse called one early Spring morning to let him know Leland’s father’s death was imminent.
Leland jumped in his little red Volkswagen Jetta, which posed its own problems because of his height, and headed home from Gainesville.
He didn’t make it in time to say goodbye. His father was gone, slipped away into the ether of eternal endlessness just moments before Leland made it to the front door. When Leland arrived at the home in Pensacola, he tentatively opened the door and walked up the stairs to where his dad’s body lay. The hospice nurse stood at the top of the stairs, dressed in a formal white nurses uniform that looked acquainted with a horror character from an old film. She quietly took Leland by the hand, her face sorrowful. She let out a gentle sigh and slowly opened the door to his father’s bedroom. Leland saw a dead man on the mattress but hardly recognized him. The last time he saw his father he was a Brutus of a man, hulking 6-foot-3 linebacker type quality with a buzz cut, a barrel sized chest and a flat stomach. Even for an older man, Leland’s dad fit the part of a war hero. But the cancer shrunk him down to a pulverized version of his former self. He was thin in the thinnest of places. His face was already grey. His cheeks were sunken and looked like they were processed through a meat grinder. His neck bare and wrinkled, the skin gripping the wiry muscles that led to the base of his skull. There was no heaving, no breathing, but Leland imagined his ribs protruding with every breath. Leland sat in a chair that was prepared for him next to the bedside. It was Spring. The windows were open. The cool breeze encouraged the gentle laced curtains to waffle back and forth. Despite death, the gentle movement of air could be felt throughout the room.
Leland held his father’s hand, which got colder by the minute. The hospice nurse was charged with certain decisions. There were no other family members and Leland was too “distracted,” in the words of his father, to handle such affairs.
Leland’s father left his life as neatly as he lived it. He had his “affairs in order,” as people often say. He left the river camp to Leland, and despite disapproval of his career choice, he left him enough money to finish school debt-free.
The two weren’t on the best of terms after Leland left home for college. His father helped pay for things, but quietly resented his son’s career choice over the military. It was personal for him.
The turmoil began years earlier.
Leland as a teenager without a mother, often found himself doing things that were not appropriate. He partied with friends and came home so drunk he banged on his dad’s window to let him in. His dad ran off girls who didn’t belong in the house after the late hours of the evening. Leland often challenged his father to hand-fisted duels. This was foolish. His father could have had both hands tied behind his back and still wrap his son in cellophane, stuff him in a cardboard box and mail him to the middle of the Mojave Desert. But Leland as a young, egotistical handsome man didn’t know just how pitiful and helpless he was. He was grieving in his own way. No mother, nothing sensitive or graceful in his life. He couldn’t explain it but he felt the lack of love reverberate all through his body, every day.
His father tried to teach him life lessons but they often devolved into verbal spats, abrupt breakups as the two separated and went their own ways.
There was one time when Leland’s father did have a soft moment toward his son. Leland was 19, in between semesters and home. The two had been fighting and cursing one another for the two weeks of Leland’s break.
His father sat on his deck looking out toward the deep endless Gulf and several fingers deep in his bourbon. He called out for Leland.
The young man opened the screen door. The noise of the rushing waters, ebbing and flowing, was an uneasy racket. The moon dragged the sea back and forth on the horizon.
“I want you to know something,” his father said, with a speech slightly slurred but familiar to Leland.
”I’ve never meant to hurt you. I love you. I love you like those waves love to move back and forth. It’s not something I can help; it’s just there. My love for you will probably end when I’m dead, but until then you’re stuck with it.”
Leland was surprised by his father’s one and only confession. Like a deathbed plea for God’s forgiveness, his father made his peace with Leland, whether he was prepared or not.
His father didn’t yet know he had a worm of cancer burrowing it’s way through his soon-to-be-devoured body. Perhaps in his soul, a premonition of sorts told him, a quiet Holy voice told him, “make it right.”
Leland’s dad slid the screen door open, went to the kitchen counter and dumped another glut of bourbon in his glass before climbing wearily up the stairs to his bedroom. His bedroom door shut quietly and slowly. Nothing was ever said beyond that night about that frail act of forgiveness.
In the gulf-moon light that plumbed the depths of the gulf waters, Leland lazily twirled his glass, the melting ice dinging the edges like muted bells. He nursed his glass and inhaled the salty sea air, knowing a thousand other personal pleas of forgiveness we’re being uttered across the broken world.
Months later, sitting next to the lifeless body, Leland finally accepted his father’s pitiful plea for forgiveness.
Turmoil and anxiety quickly set in. So much was not said that could have mended old wounds. Nothing seemed to be in its right place. Leland let go of his father’s cold hand and quickly fled down the stairs of the home, bursting through the door, the screen door slapping violently against the doorframe as he left. He entered the warm blanket of humid air and found the nearest bar and met his match with a half-dozen golden lagers.
Part Three
Leland limped around in the darkness, calling for Lucie-gal. Where was she? He knew the usual spots where she would roam. She was an Anatolian Shepherd, after all, a breed that prided itself on discovering the most distinct and obscure places of a property. And if there was a fence to evade, she would do so.
The river, however, was a different story. She loved the water but her connection to it was as intimate as her connection to Leland. Or rather, her connection with the river was linked to Leland, the place she enjoyed with him. The river, Lucie-gal and Leland were somehow bound together. In the two and a half short months they had lived in the river camp, she and Leland and the river somehow forged a bond that seemed older than time. Leland was new to this place; Lucie-gal aged him and grounded him in a way that only an animal can. Her time was measured in such a way that she seemed to go around the sun at speeds that lapped Leland.
She wouldn’t cross the river without his consent. She had a mysterious respect, but Leland couldn’t figure out the source. Was it for him, or the river, or both? As much as she could escape any other arrangement, she would stay, sit on the shoreline and watch with great focus on something, anything moving in the water, anything disturbing the stillness on the other side. And there was always something on the other side that stirred her attention. She would often bark at the other side, calling out for Leland to come and see.
Leland, with a gun in hand, would often come running. He feared the day the call would come to defend the property. In the short months since he landed on the property he tried his best to align himself with his neighbors. The bond of trust was a hard one to forge. So far, deep into a mild north Florida winter, there was no disturbance that caught Leland’s attention.
The journey from Jacksonville to the river camp in the Panhandle proved to be rather eventful, but nonetheless successful. Leland had no intentions of becoming a murderer, but he was. He pondered the morality of his decision to kill the man who blocked his way along the highway. He wandered if he acted too hastily. After all, he responded to a small smirk, rather than a yes or no response from the miscreant. He asked a simple question: “Did you burn down all those houses on High Street?”
The gang-leader didn’t answer with words but did let out as much as a plausible conclusion by smirking and letting the truth brighten a glint in his eye. Leland, on a hunch, really, decided he was guilty, and took his life. It was a formidable decision, one that haunted him, and continues to do so. Was he allowed to be judge, jury and executioner in such a brief moment in time? Would God permit his decision and allow it as part of His grand plan? Leland, after all, was raised believing in a sovereign God who knows everything and wasn’t surprised by anything. He was also taught, though not by his father, rather in Sunday School through the catechism, that God was full of grace and willing to forgive because God knew Leland would kill that man and was prepared for his confession before time began. He would forgive as long as Leland would repent, and that, too, was predestined. Was repentance required for the act of killing a man who threatened his life? Was his broken despair enough or was there more required of him to receive God’s grace? The thought sent a chill up his spine, like the feeling of a ghost entering a dark room through an open window on a windy night with rain and thunder and the racket of tree limbs clawing at the sides of a home.
Prior to arriving to the river camp in late October, Leland’s trip — besides the murder — was mostly uneventful. There were events that could be discussed here, but they are left out and would most likely find themselves in a larger volume of this story. Once Leland and Lucie-gal made it past Monticello, the roads were relatively free and clear. The western part of Florida is a vast, private, quiet place, where even the scourge of society hides in deep crevasses, like spiders in the darkest of places within a woodshed. There are details that could be discussed, but they aren’t exactly relevant to this story and can be revisited later.
After two long days of travelling, Leland made his way to the dirt road that led to the river camp. He pulled down the long, winding dirt path to find the place as deserted as ever. On his way down the path he noticed trucks at other river camps; driving along the winding dusty narrow one-lane road, with all manner of cypress, pine and water oaks hanging over the road, he couldn’t help but notice the isolation of the environment. There were porch lights flickering at two of the passing river camps. He wandered if they had generators running. He rolled down his windows but didn’t hear any noises other than the clatter of his own truck’s engine. He thought of stopping at one place to ask about the power, but was afraid there would be an altercation. He figured it would be best to wait for daylight to ask such questions.
Unfortunately, in the years since his father passed, he hardly took advantage of the river camp as a weekend getaway. He could count on one hand the times he visited the place. Pulling down the driveway, he questioned with a deep ebb of guilt if this was even the right place. But he saw the number on the front porch post — 8815 — and knew he was home.
It was an early cool December morning. The power flickered on and off at the most inconvenient intervals, but as daylight broke, the need for lights waned. The stove inside was powered by gas which was no longer available, but there was also a wood-burning stove in the living room Leland often used. Most of his cooking, however, was done outdoors. Leland developed a method for making charcoal and sat outside bare-chested and wearing flannel pajama bottoms, frying some wild pork belly from one he caught in a trap and dispatched. The flavor was intense. A boar pig lets off certain hormones during stress and generally stinks as a way to attract gilts (female pigs that haven’t had a litter) and sows (female pigs that have had at least one litter). He soaked the meat for several hours, doused it in salt and seasoned it generously. The damn pig still tasted like bad breath.
But he had to eat.
Lucie-gal didn’t mind. She sat faithfully, wagging her fluffy tail as if she would fly away if it went any faster. Leland gave her more bacon than he himself ate. He also had a couple eggs that went into the cast iron pan once the pork greased it sufficiently.
The chickens were busy in their little hoop house Leland made, scratching and cackling. Fortunately for Leland, his dad left a great deal of PVC pipes, chicken wire and various types of lumber under he crawl space of the river camp. He had all manner of half-inch and three-quarter-inch pipe stashed in the camp crawl space, as well as a lumber shed full of various wood sizes — 2X4’s, 2X6’s, — 2X8’s, — 2x12’s — you name it, there was a heavy stash of construction wood stored beneath the river camp. With all these resources, he decided to build the chickens a mobile unit that would fit nicely over garden beds and serve as a multi-use unit — provide chickens with shelter and encourage chickens to do their magic by fertilizing future garden beds.
It was a mobile setup that was about four feet wide by eight feet long and two feet high. There were also extra tin panels under the old home that Leland used as a roof over the chicken coop. He placed a long 10-foot panel on one side and a moveable shorter panel on the other and boarded up the gap with plank boards left under the house. He used a roll of chicken wire to secure the sides and in a few short hours the coop was ready and awaiting the chickens. It looked like a rotten single-wide in a derelict trailer park, but it would work to contain the birds.
Surprisingly, this was as excited as Leland had felt in months. He was about to release his chickens from their small, caged apparatus into something larger, something with purpose that would protect the chickens and also be a benefit to Leland and his attempts at survival in these strange times.
With all the clearing he was doing to provide firewood, he opened a canopy for the sun to pour its rays of fresh golden light over the newly turned garden rows. Leland parked the mobile hoop house over one of the garden beds and let the chickens do the work of tilling and fertilizing the soil. Being next to the river it was sandy, but there were collections of boggy marsh weeds that had rotted in the water and made for great soil amendments, as well as mulch. The chickens were safe in the hoop house to forage and to lay eggs. The egg laying was inconsistent, especially in the stymied daylight of December, but better than nothing. He added a few laying hens by bartering some ammunition with his nearby neighbor, Lloyd, a quiet man who kept to himself but was willing to barter with Leland when the need arose. He won neighbors’ hearts with his willingness to take their items in exchange for his. He also spent time foraging along the river banks for edible foods and delivered ripe wild persimmons to his neighbors.
The fall drought continued on into winter. The river was so low sand mounds diverted the flow of water so that it snaked around with a friction that made the flow more noisy than it would have been if the water was deeper. At night, in his dreamless, sleepless state, with the windows open, Leland imagined waterfalls. There were no waterfalls in this part of the world, but his fantasies eventually lulled him into deep, dreamless states of rest.
In this new era of need, a drought of life, soul, and earth, seemed to permeate everything. Leland began to wonder if this was why people in earlier generations did not live very long. Were they so overwhelmed and consumed by great depravations that they gave up on living? Were their labors so tedious they neglected their mortal bodies and found themselves sick with all manner of disease? Or was it simply that modern medicine hadn’t offered a pill or a remedy to their problems and they were victims of their circumstances and their times?
How would the future look as the land and its inhabitants sank back several generations into a dark past, due to the destruction of so many necessary procurements that made modern life possible? No pharmacies, no local doctors to prescribe the pills that kept hope alive in the most forlorn of hearts. Many would perish, Leland thought, simply because their drugs went dry and their taste for survival was inebriated and neglected.
Prior to the fallout, Leland hadn’t depended on many pharmaceuticals, but he did worry about the drought of good bourbon and the lack of electricity to light the house with warm music. Generations past took advantage of the zeitgeist of music that erupted in the 40s and 50s and continued for many decades later. Constellations of sound swirled through the heavens for decades and then suddenly stopped. Leland, on lonely nights, had the strange thought that if there were aliens, perhaps they didn’t invade this lonely planet because they heard the interstellar sounds of Buddy Holley, the Everly Brothers, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, and more modern tunes that echoed into the great farthest ethers — too many to name. Could the drifting soul of Ian Curtis touch the lonely heart of a dark galactic beast and turn his gnarled breath away? Did the quirky time tricks of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard throw the galactic wizards’ minds for a loop? Did Damien Jurado’s sad, yearning songs bring a tear to something’s eye outside of this galaxy?
“Tonight I will retire to the loving arms of my savior.
“And we will walk through his gates, through the skies of heaven.
“If I should taste fire, save me not, I deserve to die.”
This was all conjecture brought on by the willful spirits of persimmon wine, but, nonetheless, Leland wondered. He ached for a record player.
Early one morning while making his rounds, Leland heard Lucie-gal barking incessantly. The air was cool and clear, a little frost on the ground yet no fog, and the sun that broke through the veil of the lofty heights of the cypress trees on the other side of the river burned violently. Leland rose from his bed and achingly pulled on his worn, sweat-stained jeans and stuffed his feet into his boots. The one foot with the spur from the difficult jolt off the porch went in a little gingerly. He opened the screen door and let it whap against the door frame as he headed around the side of the home and down toward the river where he knew he would find Lucie-gal. She sat patiently, but barked as if her life depended on it.
“What is it girl?”
She looked his way but didn’t budge. The barking continued.
As he got closer, she began to pace along the dry river bank, as if sniffing for some deep artifact underground. She came upon a spot and began to dig with great fervor.
“Girl, what is it?”
She paid him no mind but continued to dig.
Leland approached her but didn’t interfere with her efforts to undermine whatever in the world she was after. The girl’s hair flung out in long spines, standing up on all ends as she feverishly hunted for something beneath the mostly dry, sandy soil. Eventually, she stopped, pulled hard on an object until she revealed a deep stake of rebar buried in the ground with a 10-gauge thread of welded wire attached and intertwined around the iron rod.
“What have you found, girl?” Leland asked Lucie-gal.
Leland swooped into action. He grabbed the cable and pulled at it. What he found was a cable buried but heading down toward the river bottom and seemingly crossing the river to the other side. The side that Lucie-gal had so often barked toward — the dark, wooded and mysterious crevasse beyond the river camp that robbed Leland’s imagination and so he failed to explore.
Leland, frenetic and growing with impatience, began to pull violently on the cable. It was buried along the river bottom and in normal times, no one would ever find the cable, trapped beneath well-placed rocks and languid, rotting cypress logs. But the river was so low and the water was so forgiving in its slow, lazy rhythm that Leland and Lucie-gal walked with little effort as Leland began to pull the cable out of the water. Barefooted, he didn’t even notice how cold the water was as it gripped his ankles. With each pull, the cable taut and rising just above the shallow water line, Leland realized it was heading straight to the other side of the river, somewhere beyond the mysterious bank Lucie-gal believed so strongly in but Leland never had the faith to explore.
His faith was restored.
He continued to pull until the cable came up short, taut and aiming downward toward something buried along the outer bank on the other side. Leland pulled hard but couldn’t make any headway. Leland, though, grew excited.
“Lu, come on, let’s dig!”
Lucie-gal, as faithful as ever, felt his excitement and dug like a mighty excavator undermining the very fabric of the earth.
Leland was on all fours, digging with his hands, while Lucie-gal hassled, her tongue waving madly outside her mouth as if she was caught in a fit of laughter while she plunged the mysterious depths.
Finally, they both hit something hard.
Leland cleared away the remained dry sand and gave one final heave on the cable that faithfully remained attached to a strong lag bolt attached to the artifact.
He pulled up a chest, one similar to those used by the military to carry ammunition. It was a rather large box, so heaving it out of the ground became a one-man job. Lucie-gal remained faithful and excited about the prospects of what was found. She bound around him as if to cheer him on.
With great effort, Leland finally got the entire box out of the earth and brushed away the soil to read words on the top that made his heart sink.
“For Leland. From you Father. I hope this finds you well.”
Leland fell back on his wet bottom, and felt his breath heave heavily within his chest as he wondered what he discovered.
His initial hope was for something unique, something old, something that would add excitement to the day-to-day doldrums that robbed him of his past life as a single, important defense attorney in a big city.
What he found instead was a war chest of gifts left behind by a father who knew his son better than he knew himself. A chest of important items that would help him survive, even if he and his father’s relationship had been so strained for so many years and felt devoid of any kind of love.
Leland pried open the chest and found a great deal of plastic wrapped around all the contents in a dry protective gauze. He began to unravel the drop cloth plastic to discover numerous items that would prove to save his life in the days and years ahead.
Leland’s father always had a conspiracy streak running deep in his blood. It drove Leland crazy because he thought his dad must have suffered some post traumatic stress disorder in past wars that handicapped him and made his mind wander off in the most disturbing of places. His father’s theories about the fourth turning awaiting the world always made Leland roll his eyes. He begged to change the subject anytime his father got on the topic of universal digital currencies, peak oil, the collapse of the U.S. or the impending prospects of nuclear war. In hindsight, Leland felt dumb but did his best to avoid the memories of his father being so right and he being so wrong and pig-headed.
The cache within the chest unfolded itself. There were tins of seeds — hundreds, thousands of seeds — that would help Leland survive, start his gardening prospects and perhaps eat a good meal on occasion. There were stacks of books on surviving a crisis, raising chickens, raising goats, butchering and preserving meat, catching fish in ways that were extremely unconventional.
Leland sat next to the box and felt a deep sense of gratitude and regret, mingling like wine and oil. He sat, breathless. Lucie-gal finally settled. Her work was done. Without her, he would have never discovered this treasure trove of supplies.
Tears began to mist up in the corner ducts of Leland’s eyes. He wiped them away and sat up once more to sift through the trove of items. Buried beneath a bag of rice and several seed tins, along with a guide to surviving this long emergency, Leland found an envelope scribed in a handwriting he recognized.
He pulled out the envelop, opened it and found a letter from his father. While it explained the purpose of the box, it meant so much more.
“Leland, my son, I love you. I hope you find this chest of helpful resources. I have faith in you that you will find it. You are smarter than me and I know you’ll discover this hidden treasure. I just found out I will be dead soon, eat up with cancer. As soon as I found out, I raided my seed bank, my library of survival resources and anything else I could think of that might be of help to you.
“While I knew I still had the energy, I drove to the river camp and went about the arduous task of burying this chest for your future survival. You have good neighbors. Lloyd to your right is quiet and will probably never ‘fess up to helping me, but he dug when I gave out.
“The items in this chest will hopefully help you start a new life if there is ever a need to do so. I fear a war — perhaps one that will displace all of modern life — is imminent. The people in power want to see this come about, even if it means the death of billions. I know, I know. Here I go talking crazy again about the future, a future you and I always disagreed on.
“Regardless of what happens, if you ever find this, please know I love you. I’m sorry for being so ignorant for so many years about how to love you. I never knew how to love you. I just failed you in all those ways and I’m sorry. I can’t make it up to you with my words and my pleas for forgiveness, but I hope you will accept this last final gift as my feeble gesture to show you just how much you mean to me. There were so many conversations, so many times over the years, when the words were on the tip of my tongue, but they never left my mouth. I’m sorry. Please know, eternally, I love you.
“Your dad.”
Leland wept as he read the final sentences of his father’s letter. Lucie-gal felt the pain pouring from him and inched closer, putting her soft, reassuring furry head in his lap.
The items in the chest were Leland’s future. The trip to the river camp was so uncertain, and even now, being on the river, he realized he had so much to learn, so many things his father wanted to teach him but he was unwilling to learn. He brushed away the guilt and embraced the future.
“Girl, we’re home.”