“Because Bull Dean was my uncle. He gave his life for this country, and he said you were to command after his death. And, sir, that is that.”
Ben knew when he was whipped. “Fine, Lieutenant, dandy. You have my orders. Carry them out. I’ll be in contact… sometime.”
He cut off the transmitter before Conger had the time to object. He looked at the radio and said, “I am not your commanding officer, son. Period. Good-by. Good luck.”
Ben prowled the base until he found the ordnance hut. He broke open the building and began picking through the explosives. He was too rusty to trust himself if he used any type of timer, so he chose several crates of incendiary grenades and began the job of filling five-gallon cans full of high-octane jet fuel and pouring some around the line of jets on the tarmac. He then began the job of destroying the aircraft.
When he had finished, he was covered with soot and hard of hearing from the booming explosions. This was one runway that would be a long time getting cleared and repaired.
He then drove around the base, tossing grenades into every other building, and setting the base ablaze. He drove out the main gate, smiling. He said, “Fuck you, Logan.”
Ben took highway 601 down to Orangeburg, then picked up highway 21. He spent the night in a home by the side of Interstate 95, about fifty miles north of Savannah. In the morning he would drive close enough to listen to CB chatter, then decide if he was going into the city.
The next morning, after reviewing the talk on the CB, he decided he most definitely was not going into the city.
He skirted the city, between Savannah and Fort Stewart, on Interstate 95. South of the city, he picked up highway 82 and once more began checking towns along the way, making notes into his recorder, and letting Conger and his band of reactionaries slip from his mind.
Just a few miles outside of Jessup, at a roadside picnic area where he had stopped to eat a can of C-ration, Ben heard a growling. He turned slowly, picking up the M-10 with his right hand.
At first he thought it was a wolf sitting in the bed of the truck, on a tarp-covered crate, and peering over the side at him. Ben took a closer look and could see its upturned tail. This was not a husky, he concluded, but a malamute, the largest of the breed. The dog looked to be about thirty-two inches high, about eighty to ninety pounds. Big. It was wolf-gray with a black mask area around its almond-shaped eyes.
The animal yawned, exposing teeth that could tear a man to painful chunks of meat very quickly. Then the malamute closed his mouth and looked at Ben. It was neither friendly nor hostile, just curious. Ben dumped what was left of his C-ration into a piece of paper and placed it on the ground beside him.
“Come on,” he said.
The dog jumped from the truck and walked to the food, eating it in two bites. He looked up at Ben, as if asking, but not begging, for more. Ben opened another can and dumped that on the paper. The animal ate, then walked to the ditch beside the small park and enjoyed a noisy drink of water. His thirst quenched, he walked back to the truck, jumped up into the bed, and lay down, closing his eyes as if he had been doing that, on this truck, all his life.
Probably belonged to someone who rode it around in a pickup truck, Ben thought.
“Well,” Ben said, “if you want to ride, you can damned well ride. I’m not going to tell you to move.”
The dog opened its eyes, looked at Ben, then went back to sleep.
Ben policed the area, dumped his trash into a container, and got into the truck. He opened the sliding glass of the rear window, cranked up, and pulled out. After a few miles, the animal stuck his head through the window, looked at Ben, who was holding his breath; then licked Ben on the cheek. Ben rubbed the animal’s head and the dog barked happily, then settled back on the canvas.
“Looks like I found a friend.” Ben grinned.
So Ben and his new friend, whose name, Ben discovered, when he checked the tags on the collar, was Juno (probably, Ben thought, a shortened version of Juneau, Alaska), spent the day and the evening getting acquainted. And Ben and the dog took to each other. He had not had a pet since his boyhood days in Illinois and, after spending a little time with Juno, he wondered why he had not. He found Juno to be alert, probably no more than three years old, and seemingly intelligent.
Ben’s sleep that night was deep and secure, for the animal was attuned to the night’s every noise. During the night, Juno had snuggled up to Ben’s sleeping bag, the closeness and warmth comforting to both man and beast.
Lost a girlfriend and found a dog. Ben smiled as he drifted off.
The next morning, however, Ben discovered he was crawling with fleas.
Juno met his new master’s reproachful scratching with a look of doggie disgust, as if saying, “What the hell? Lay down with dogs, what do you expect?”
At the first town they came to that morning, Ben picked up a supply of flea powder and spray, and several flea collars. Then he bathed both Juno and himself and that solved the problem of fleas.
Ben headed southeast out of Callahan, having no desire to travel through Jacksonville. He had seen a few people. They were, for the most part, silent and withdrawn, but some were openly hostile. He picked up talk on his CB, but none of it was friendly. He had stopped along the highway several times to look at bodies. They were all no more than two or three days old and they had been shot.
A few miles down the highway, Ben found a body hanging from a tree alongside the road. A crudely lettered sign hung around the neck read: NIGGER.
Further on, he found the body of a white man hanging from a tree. The sign around his neck read: JUSTICE WILL PREVAIL.
“Wonderful,” Ben remarked. “I am so happy to find our judicial system—inadequate as it was—is still flourishing.”
He drove quickly out of that part of the state. Even Juno seemed relieved to be on the move.
At Raiford, Ben followed the signs to the big prison, but long before he saw the wire and the walls he smelled it and turned around, heading back. A huge flock of buzzards circled in the sky.
He wandered the northern part of the state, all the way over to Hampton Springs, seeing a few people, some friendly, some hostile. He saw signs of looting and violence everywhere he went.
Then, while turning the dial on his portable radio, he heard the music. He was so startled he pulled off the road and turned up the radio. The music faded and a voice sprang out.
“Yes, sir, folks, it’s a bright, beautiful day here in the city with the titties. Temperature in the mid-seventies and you’re listening to the SEAL with the feel, Ike McGowen, watchin’ the records go ‘round. Are you listening, world? If so, and you’re the friendly type, just head on down to the coast to Yankeetown and be received. But if you’re hostile, just carry your ass on, brother.”
Ben laughed and wondered if SEAL meant Navy SEAL—sea, air, and land—or was just a nickname. He decided to find out. As he drove, he kept looking for a radio tower. He didn’t spot it until he got to the water’s edge, and it was the crudest looking tower he had ever seen, leaning precariously to one side, looking as if it might topple over at any moment. Ben pulled into the drive of the large, oceanside house and got out.
A gaggle of bikini-clad young ladies, bouncing and jiggling, came racing out to meet him. They were all armed with automatic weapons. Kind of took away from the beauty of their bare skins. A man with a CAR-15 walked behind them.
“I’m peaceful,” Ben called. “I really can’t speak for the dog—only known him for a few days, but I think he’s friendly.”
“What’s your name, friend?” the man called.
“Ben Raines.”
“I’m Ike McGowen. What’s the dog’s name?”
“Juno.”
“Well, Ben and Juno, come on into radio station KUNT and set for a time.”
Ben laughed at the old joke of call letters. “KUNT?”
Ike returned the laugh. “Yeah—it’s a little fuzzy around the edges but mighty fine, man. Mighty fine.”
In the sprawling house, Ike introduced Ben. “This one here is Tatter, and that’s June-Bug, and that one there is Space-Baby, and that one is Angel-Face. The blond is Honey-Poo. That dark one all sprawled out on the floor, too goddamned lazy to get up is Bell-Ringer. She claims to be a black person of the Negroid persuasion, but I think
