After and Again Read online

  Zack’s house was at the south end of town set back off of the main street. He couldn’t see it as it was obscured by the two-story tack house which was smoking lightly but still standing. The walk was short and he caught the first glimpse of the smoking ruin that had been his home when he cut between the tack house and the stable. All thoughts of caution forgotten, Zack broke into a run. He reached the picket gate at the front yard and slammed through it, running up the short stone walkway to the front porch. The porch was partially scorched but still intact, the rest of the house was a burned out skeleton of charred timbers.

  “Mom!” Zack yelled, “Mom where are you?” Silence; “Mom!” crying now, he stepped off of the porch and walked around the back of the house. He mounted the steps to where the back door still hung partially off of the burnt frame and stepped into what would have been the kitchen. The floor cracked and threatened to give way under his weight and he stepped back out onto the small landing outside the back door. He could see all of the way through the house to the front yard but could only make out shapes inside. “Mama!” Zack shouted again at the very top of his lungs. He was again greeted only with silence. Shocked and exhausted Zack slumped down on the steps and cried. Eventually he slept.

  He was startled awake to the sound of a rooster crowing the dawn. He had apparently slipped down the steps in the night and was lying curled up in the dirt below them. The rooster crowed again and he sat up and craned his neck around to look at the house. It was worse in the light of day.

  He stood up and mounted the steps to the landing at the rear door. He could see everything in perfect detail with the dawn light. The woodstove in the kitchen was the only thing that was still intact, everything else was either burned beyond recognition or reduced to ash. He turned and looked at the rear yard and noticed that the gate to the pigpen was standing open and their four pigs were gone. Well, he thought to himself, mama must have let them out because of the fire. With the whole town burning he thought that maybe she had headed out to the Sanderson ranch. It was only five miles, she could have walked it, and the pigs would have followed her the whole way.

  Zack decided to take a walk through town and see if there was anyone about before heading out to the ranch.

  He walked through the alley between what was left of the tack house and the stable, the smell of burned flesh and hair so strong it nearly made him gag. When he reached the main street he turned and walked to the front of the stable, which was burned but completely intact outside of the roof, which had mostly caved in. The door was a double, with a thick plank of wood hung between two steel brackets to keep the doors closed. He lifted the plank out of the brackets and opened the doors. The charred remains of half a dozen horses lay in front of the doors, with partially burned roof timbers on top of them. The interior of the stable itself was completely blackened, and Zack thought it a wonder that it hadn’t burned to the ground.

  Turning from the stable he walked back toward the north end of town where he’d come down from the hill the previous night. The town was a burned ruin. “Hello?” Zack called out. “Anybody here?” not a sound, in fact Zack had become acutely aware of just how quiet it was. “Hello?” Zack yelled again. He was becoming increasingly upset as he just couldn’t understand where a whole town of over a hundred people could have gone. On top of that, he simply wanted his mother. “IS ANYBODY HERE?” he shouted out, growing more and more frantic by the moment.

  “In here, help me”, the voice was faint, a girls, coming from what was left of Brodie’s Trade. He ran the short distance to the building, which was in about the same shape as his house and called out again.

  “Where are you?” he called, scanning exterior of the building.

  “Down here, in the basement. Oh help me, please hurry, I think my legs are broken!”

  “I’m coming, keep talking, or bang on something so I can find you.”

  Zack ran up the steps to where the door would have been and entered the building. A good portion of the roof rafters had collapsed and were littered about the floor along with other timbers and some large metal racks that had held goods. He heard a weak thumping noise from the interior and thought that it was coming from underneath some of the metal racks that had fallen over. He reached a point inside where the thumping was the loudest, removed his pack and began to move debris looking for a trap door. After pushing aside some fallen timbers Zack could see what had happened. One of the timbers had fallen from the roof and struck one of the heavy metal racks, which in turn broke through the floorboards and landed on the girl below. He could see a vague shape down in the shadows through the rack and the broken floorboards.

  “Hold on, I’m going to get you out.” Zack said.

  “Zack?” a weak voice, sobbing.

  “Yea, it’s me….Jenny Sanderson?”

  “Yes, Zack, please hurry.”

  Zack continued clearing debris from the metal rack so that he could pull it back up through the floor. Jenny Sanderson was the daughter of Brent and Holly Sanderson, they had the ranch that Zack was planning to walk to. She was also best friends with Emily Hodgkins.

  Pushing the last of the fallen rafters from the rack, he could see the part that had broken through the floor was on top of Jenny.

  “I am going to pull this rack off of you now, Jenny, are you arms free?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay then cover your face and eyes.”

  “Alright”

  Zack took hold of the end of the rack and pulled with all of his might, the veins in his neck bulging with the effort. The rack broke loose, and Jenny let out a wail. Zack fell backward and a splintered plank of wood raked up his back removing a fair amount of skin in the process. He ignored the pain and regained his feet, running around the rack to the hole in the floor. Jenny was lying on the earthen floor of the basement about six feet beneath the floorboards. The first thing that he noticed was the amount of blood that was pooled around her.

  He was accustomed to animal blood from his hunting, but seeing all of it from this girl that he had known most of his life caused his gorge to rise. He fought the urge to vomit and peered down at her. She was wearing a cotton dress that was hiked all of the way up her thighs and both of her legs were twisted underneath her at impossible angles. She had apparently passed out but he could still hear her labored breathing. Zack dropped to his hand and knees, grabbed the end of the metal rack and lowered himself until he was hanging. He let himself drop the last foot to the basement floor.

  Zack thought frantically about what he should do. He couldn’t run for help as there didn’t seem to be anyone left to lend it. He needed to get her out of the basement anyway. He leaned over her and spoke her name.

  “Jenny? Jenny, wake up.” He put his hand gently on the side of her face.

  Her eyes fluttered momentarily and then opened.

  “Oh, Zack, they took everyone.” she said.

  “Took everyone? Took everyone where, Jenny? Who took everyone?”

  Crying again she said “Riders, lots of riders. My dad and Mr. Hodgkins were out front taking a smoke while I was in here looking at apples. One of them bullwhipped daddy over and over, I was so scared that I hid down here. I knew where it was cause Emily and me used to play down here when we were little. A bunch of them came in the store and were in here for a long time. They wuh-wuh-walked right on top of me,” she began to sob. “They talked about taking all of the whiskey, meat and blankets, and anything that they could find that looked like it was from the old days. Is my dad okay?”

  “I’m sure he’s fine, now you be quiet and rest Jenny, I am going to get you out of here.”

  Zack didn’t like how white Jenny’s face looked, and he didn’t know what he was going to do once he got her out of the basement. He just knew that he couldn’t leave her there.

  “Jenny, I’m going to go and find a ladder, then I can piggy back you out, okay?”

  “Okay, Zack, maybe you can bring my dad.”

  “We’ll
see, Jenny. I’ll be right back, you just rest.”

  Zack turned and walked back to the end of the opening where the rack was and jumped up and grabbed one of the legs. The rack slid back toward the hole a little and then held his weight. He pulled himself up and out and ran out of the building back toward the stable. He knew that Mr. Miller kept a ladder hung on the side of the stable; Zack had borrowed it to do some repairs to his own roof that last spring. He just hoped that it was still there.

  Grabbing the metal ladder from the hooks where it was hung on the scorched but still standing stable wall, he broke into a run back to the Trade. The world had taken on a strange feeling to him, he felt detached and tried hard to focus on the task of helping Jenny when all he really wanted to do was stop, curl up and cry. He heard his father’s voice in his head, “I didn’t raise you to be a weakling, Zackary, so do what has to be done and don’t whine about it.” His father had dealt out a great deal of love but had always been a tough taskmaster and possessed little patience for anyone shirking his or her duties.

  He mounted the steps of the Trade with the ladder and was aware that the ladder would have been too tall had the roof not caved in. He dropped the ladder into the hole and quickly climbed down. Jenny was dead. It only took one glance at the staring, already glazing over eyes too see it. Dead. The reality of it reverberated in his head. She was never going to smile, laugh, or even cry again. She was never going to go to the harvest dance, she wasn’t going to fall in love, and she was never going to get married and have a family of her own. Ever. The enormity of what had happened made Zack feel an emptiness that he could have never imagined possible. He suddenly felt very tired. He sat down on a ladder rung and put his face in his hands.

  Only a few minutes had passed when Zack suddenly had the feeling that Jenny was staring at him. He looked up and she was exactly how she had been, but he suddenly had the overwhelming urge to get out of the basement right away. His caring nature however would not allow him to just leave her lying there, exposed and staring out at nothing.

  He quickly scanned the basement and saw a large wool blanket on top of some fruit crates in the corner. It was dusty and threadbare but would suffice. He briefly entertained the thought of burying her but quickly convinced himself that he may find her father. Zack covered Jenny Sanderson with the blanket and climbed out of the basement.

  He picked up his pack and started walking north again. He had a strange sense of foreboding, and the further he walked, the heavier the feeling got. He smelled them before he saw them.

  The charred bodies were piled on top of one another inside the church. The picture was a grislier version of what he had seen with the horses at the stable. People were piled up at both ends of the large building, where both the front and rear doors would have been. The scene was obvious; they had been locked in and burned alive. Zack staggered backward a few steps from the church and vomited.

  Zack was sitting on the steps to the small schoolhouse, covered in soot, when the group appeared from behind the community kitchen, the very same place where he had come down from the hill the previous night. There were a dozen or a little more, dirty, tired and disheveled looking. He scanned the group for his mother, she was not there although he recognized everyone. The man in the lead spread his arms to stop the rest of the group when he spotted Zack sitting across the street, a wary look crossed his features that quickly turned to recognition when Zack stood up. It was Tal Miller of Miller’s Stable and Tack House, his stable boy (who was really a man) Jonus, and several women and children; Tal’s wife Martha and three kids, Mrs. Lanhope the schoolteacher, others. Emily Hodgkins was not there. Nor were Santiago and Michael, his best friends.

  “Zack, boy, good to see ya son, is there anyone else here?” Tal Miller said striding toward Zack. He was a short, barrel-chested man of about forty-five with a beard that nearly reached his waist.

  “No sir, Mr. Miller,” Zack replied. “I found Jenny Sanderson this morning but she….” He glanced toward the rest of the group and lowered his voice “died sir.”

  “Goddamn this is bad business, son.” Tal Miller said, shaking his head and rubbing his beard.

  “Sir, did you see what happened to my mother?” Zack asked, hopefully, but steeling himself for the worst.

  “No, son, I didn’t, everything happened so fast. Anyone else see Zack’s ma?” Tal Miller asked, turning to the people behind him. They hadn’t.

  Mrs. Lanhope said, “They were gathering up everyone and taking them to the church. I was hiding in my privy and watched them take both Loren and Lacy Sturgess from their house. Two went around the back and took all of the chickens out of their coop and put them in a burlap sack, then one of them killed their poor dog Roy with an arrow for barking at them. Later we heard screams…” She trailed off, bursting into sobs.

  Tal Miller looked to his wife who was fussing with their youngest son’s bootlaces. He turned to a red-haired woman wearing a thin cotton nightdress.

  “Lisa, why don’t you take everyone over to the common there an’ just sit in the shade while we men discuss a few things?” Lisa Mccarron and her husband Ted had a farm just outside of town. Her two boys were with her but Mr. Mccarron and their daughter Rebecca were absent. She gave a nod and turned to the group.

  “C’mon now everyone let’s go sit awhile while these men get things worked out,” Lisa said. Mrs. Miller briefly touched her husband’s hand before leading their kids away.

  “I’m a man, I should stay,” said Henry Mccarron, a boy of about ten, while puffing his chest out and throwing back his shoulders.

  “You will come with us, Henry Louis Maccarron,” said his mother, in a voice that brooked any argument. Most of the town figured that Lisa Mccarron wore the pants in her marriage, She was a plain, strongly built woman who was a tough trader and a hard worker. She often seemed short-tempered but was considered by all to be both kind and fair and was therefore well respected.

  The group moved away leaving Zack, Tal Miller, and Jonus Hemphill standing alone in the street.

  “What say we go over to the Doc’s where we can sit a spell seein’ it was one of the only places not burned.”

  Tal Miller said to Zack and Jonus. Without waiting for a reply he turned back up the street and walked toward the town’s combination doctor and veterinary office.

  Doc Forrest was not really a doctor. There were no schools to teach such things like in the old days, at least that’s what Mrs. Lanehope had told Zack anyway. The Doc’s grandfather had come into town with his young daughter years before and set up shop as a healer. He had had a great deal of herb knowledge, and some books from the old days. Later his daughter, and then her son Doc Forrest, continued the practice. Doc Forrest had already been old for as long as Zack could remember. There had been talk amongst the town folk about who was going to do the doctoring when he could no longer do it.

  The door to the one-story, three-room building was wide open. The Doc used one room for people, one room for animals, and the other was his apartment. What had happened was obvious upon entering; there was a partially burned torch on the floor. Apparently it had gone out before they could catch the building on fire. There was no sign of the doctor.

  Tal Miller gestured to a row of chairs against the wall. Zack and Jonus walked over and took seats. Tal Miller grabbed a chair of his own and set it so as to face the other two. He reached into his shirt and pulled out a small metal flask and offered it to Zack. When Zack reached out to accept the flask Tal Miller held it back just out of reach and asked, “How old are you now, son?”

  Zack answered, “I will be sixteen in two months, sir.”

  “Have ya had whiskey before, boy?” Tal Miller asked.

  “Once sir, with my father on my eleventh birthday. Just before he…. I just had a swallow sir.”

  “You look like him,” Tal Miller said handing over the flask.

  “Yes sir,” Zack replied opening the flask and then taking a small drink. It burned like fire
going down his throat, and more when it hit his empty stomach. He was vaguely proud of himself for not coughing like he had when his father had given him whiskey. He held out the flask to Tal Miller who just nodded his head toward Jonus. Zack handed the flask to Jonus who took it and drank deeply, ending with a loud exhalation of air and a shake of his head.

  “Can’t say I have ever needed one more than now,” he said, handing the flask back to Tal Miller, who made the flask disappear back in his shirt without taking any himself.

  They sat in silence for a minute and it appeared to Zack, who had always been perceptive to what others were thinking, that Tal Miller was measuring what he was going to say carefully.

  After a moment he spoke. “Have you been to the church, Zack?”

  Zack nodded, and Tal Miller nodded in return as if he had known as much already.

  Tal sighed and said, “I come down the hill from the place we had hid overnight at first light, to scout it out ya see. I seen the bodies in the church, and there was three more lying in the street by the ‘smiths, one of ‘em was Theo Olsen, an he was all cut up. Both the other one’s worked the ranches, Vern, was one of ‘ems name I think. I drug the bodies up behind the ‘smiths. The murdering cowards locked up everyone in the church, leastways all of the men, old women, and young kiddies. Then they burned ‘em up inside. That was the screamin’ that we heard last afternoon.”

  “Jesus wept.” Jonus said, all of the color had drained from his face.

  “Sir, what did you mean by just the men, old women and young kiddies?” Zack asked with both dread and hope.

  “You can quit on the sir now boy…. er, Zack, you have drunk from my flask and I count you as a man in my company now just as I do Jonus here. You call me Tal, I call you Zack. And as man to man I will answer your question. There was a traveling trader through here not six month ago an’ he said there was horrible things being done away down south. He said these no good lowly worms will take boys your age and turn em into thieving murderers like they are, an’ if they don’t do what they’re told they kill ‘em. The women they make slaves of, and….well, other things. They’ve no use for the rest of ‘em and can’t risk the men organizing and coming after ‘em so’s they murder ‘em. Well now, I just thought the trader was just jawing me a yarn ya see, an’ I didn’t pay it any mind, but here it all is right in front of our very faces.