“Thanks. I’ll treasure that knowledge forever, I’m sure. What do I know from barns? Anyway, it was scary. There were rats and snakes up there at first. How do snakes get up that high? I don’t know. Anyway, I killed them with a handle off some kind of tool. It was broken when I found it.
“Then the men came prowling around. They were looking for whiskey and women. Not necessarily in that order. The first group of men-I don’t know whether they were black or white or green-had a little boy with them. They did … disgusting things to him. I don’t want to talk about it. Then they left, took the little boy with them. Then some white men came in and looked around. One of them even climbed up the ladder to the second-to the loft-and looked around. But I was hidden really well in the hay and he didn’t see me. This bunch said now would be a good time to get together and kill all the niggers. They left. Then some drunk black men came around and I overheard them talking about how would it was a good time to get together and kill all the honks. But first they wanted some tight white pussy. They left and some guys came in and had this woman with them. Woman isn’t correct. She was a young girl, maybe fourteen or fifteen. I never saw her, but I could hear her begging them to stop… what they were doing. It got pretty … perverted. They raped her-among
other things. Took turns with her. It was awful.
“When they finally left, they took the girl with them-said they could swap her for guns, maybe. I was alone for two or three days. I don’t remember; the days kind of all ran together. Maybe it was longer. Then it got real quiet, like I was the last person left on earth. You know what I mean?”
Ben nodded, remembering his feelings of being alone when he finally left the house after being so sick for so long.
It was his birthday. It was a Sunday. 1988. It was a day the survivors would remember all their lives. Ben had started a new book, writing for three hours. It was the first time he’d felt like writing after being stung repeatedly by a swarm of yellow jackets. The stings had dropped him into shock. He did not know at the time how long he’d been out-days, surely. But now he felt fine. The mood was not to last.
He drove into town. Just outside of the small town in Louisiana, Ben cut his eyes to a ditch and jammed on the brakes.
There was a body in the ditch.
Ben inspected the dead man. Dead at least a week-maybe longer. The corpse was stinking and blackened.
He tried his CB. Nothing. He turned on the radio, searching the AM and FM bands. Nothing.
With a feeling of dread settling over him like a pall, Ben drove into town.
There, he found the truth.
“Yes,” he told Gale. “I know the feeling quite well.”
“I guess maybe you do,” Gale said. “But you’re tough. With me, it was different, believe it. Anyway, I finally ran out of food. I went through it like Grant took Atlanta.”
“Sherman,” Ben said automatically.
“Who’s telling this story, anyway?”
“Sorry.”
“I had eaten like a starving person. Ate from fear, I suppose. Gained about ten pounds, at least. I had to leave to find more food. And, I guess, even though I was still scared, I wanted to see what had happened. I just couldn’t believe there had really been a war. Well, my damn car wouldn’t start. I lifted the hood and looked in. Talk about a shock. There wasn’t any motor. I finally figured out the motor was in the rear. I am not mechanically inclined, believe it. What I knew then about engines and stuff was nothing. But I could see where the rats had chewed a lot of wires and things. I sat down by the car and bawled and squalled.
“I finally got it together and stepped out of the barn. The sunlight blinded me for a few moments. Gave me a headache, too. Then I stepped right on a body. Talk about freaking someone out. I almost lost control at that point. Maybe I did lose control for a time. I ran. Boy, did I run. But it didn’t do any good. There were bodies everywhere. Like in a movie, you know, after a big battle? And animals and birds were eating the dead people. It was the worst thing I had ever seen in my life. Period.
“Well… I stopped at this house-fell down in the front yard would be more like it, collapsed. Then I went inside. Luckily, the shape I was in, emotionally, the house was empty. No people, I mean.
“Ben, I know how you feel about liberals, and my mother and father were liberals, the whole bag. Gun control, civil rights, opposed to capital punishment, everything, you know?”
Ben nodded his head in agreement.
“OK, so they were liberals. But they taught me how to think. They taught me to sit down, be calm and rationalize things out. So that’s what I did. I sat in a chair, calmed myself and thought. I thought myself right into a headache-that’s all I accomplished.”
Ben laughed at the mental picture of her doing so, then he apologized for it.
She smiled. “No, it’s all right, Ben. I feel better finally being able to talk about it. And I understand, really, I do. Looking back, some of the things I did were funny-but not at the time. So I went looking around in this farmhouse. It was set way back from the road, in a bunch of trees, and had been left alone by the looters. I found a rack full of guns. I took out a shotgun and then found a box of shells that said twelve gauge. The double-barrel gun was a twelve gauge-said so on the metal. So I thought: By God, there isn’t anybody going to rape this kid. I’ll get tough.
“I finally figured out how to open the damn gun-that thing was heavy-and loaded it. I went outside to fire it. Damned thing knocked me down. When I hit the ground the other barrel went off and almost took my foot with it. I decided right then I’d better find me some other kind of gun.
“There were some other shotguns in the rack. I got the smallest one. A 410, it said. Wonderful. Personally I found it all rather confusing. It was smaller than the twelve gauge, but it had a bigger number, so thinking
logically, it should have been more powerful, right? I mean, there’s three hundred and ninety-eight things difference between the two, right?”
Ben was trying desperately to maintain a straight face.
“Go ahead, laugh, you big ox. I know, I know, klutzy little girl from the city trying to figure out how to work guns. But Ben, my parents wouldn’t even let my brother play with toy guns when he was little. Me? I had Ken and Barbie. Fantastic. Really helps a girl prepare for disaster. Doesn’t help you prepare for anything. Ken had been neutered and Barbie didn’t have nothing. It was a big disappointment.
‘The 410 was OK. It kicked, but not much. The keys to a pickup were on the kitchen table. The electricity was still working. I took a long, hot bath. I mean, I was gamy. I washed my clothes, fixed something to eat, and slept in a real bed.
“The dreams were kind of bad.”
She was silent for a few miles, gazing out the window at the barren landscape, at lands that were once among the most productive in all of America.
Gale said, “When I got up the next morning and dressed, I looked out the living room window. There were some guys walking up the gravel road. I loaded both guns and walked out onto the front porch. I just knew bad trouble had found me. The twelve gauge was as big as me. The men laughed at me. I told them to stop and to go away. They laughed and one of them asked me what I was. I told him I was an American. He said that wasn’t what he meant. I knew what he meant. Then he said some things I’d rather not repeat. Finally he said he’d never had any Jew pussy.
“Ben-was she glanced at him, her eyes seeking support
and condonation of what she was about to say-“I got so mad I lost control. I became so angry I didn’t even feel the shotgun kick, and it didn’t knock me down when I fired it. I shot the man right in the stomach. Then I fired the other barrel and hit a man in the leg. There was maybe thirty feet between us. Took his leg off at the knee. Just blew it off. I dropped the big shotgun and grabbed up the 410. I fired both barrels of it. I don’t think I hit anyone, but the other two men were really running up the road. I heard a car or truck start and never saw them again. I went in the house, packed my stuff, and put it in the pickup, along with both shotguns and all the shells I could find. I walked out to where the guys were lying on the ground. One was dead. The other one was bleeding really bad. I vomited on the ground.
“I stood right there and watched that man die, Ben. I felt … I felt lots of things. But Ben, I didn’t feel any pity for him. I… felt like he deserved what I had done to him.”
She sighed heavily, as if the telling had lifted a load from her slender shoulders.
