Speaker 1: This is an audiobook that I recorded three years ago.
I think it is. It's not a bigfoot story, not
a dog man's story. It's just a normal story set
in the Civil War. Centers around a man who deserts
the Confederate army and he becomes a hermit in the woods,
and it's about his life in the woods. And it's
pretty good. It's a pretty good story. The author is
Jeff Crawford, who is a fantastic writer, has a great imagination.
This audiobook's been laying around gathering dust for three years,
and I thought I would share it with my audience exclusively,
at least for now, exclusively on your podcast out. It
will not be on YouTube for now, so I thought
it uploaded for everyone to listen to. If you just
want to listen to a good, relaxing story, here it is.
I'm going to upload it in four different parts, four
consecutive days. It's a pretty good book. You guys enjoy one.
It came as a shock and it frightened him. He
thought himself long past being frightened anew, but he'd been wrong.
It was the sadness of the quiet that threatened to
undo him. For two days, there had been noise, horrible, terrible,
unrelenting noise, And then it was no longer pounding in
his ears. It was still going on because he could
feel the reverberation shaking in his body with each blast,
with each pop, his body jumped a little, but he
no longer heard the dreadful noise. He briefly considered the
possibility that he had gone deaf, but that wasn't the case.
Little things like a branch snapping or a bird winging
its way to perch in a tree that loomed above
him still registered, but all the other was gone. No,
not exactly gone. It was still there, but now it
was as if it had been wrapped around and around
with swaths of cotton and placed underwater. It could be
heard if you were listening specifically for it, but you
really had to try to hear it. Now. He didn't
want to try. He didn't want to hear it. He
never wanted to hear those sounds again, but he knew
that they were out there, just beyond him, waiting. He
would have thought that it would have been the screaming,
or the pleading, or the crying that would have bothered
him the most, but it wasn't. At some point he
had numb to almost all of that, never all of it.
There was no way a person could set himself apart
from all of that, Even when it wasn't going on
beside and near, it would always be there, And he
believed this more than believed. He was certain of it.
There was so much of it, nearly all the time
that it had soaked through his clothing into his skin,
and it kept going. The sounds of wailing and weeping
was hard set into his bones. Now he would never
be able to distance himself from it. But it was
the other that threatened to tear him from his frame. Constantly,
seemed as if it would separate his muscle and sinew
until he fell completely apart, never to be rejoined. The
sounds that had been the precursor and cause of all
the screaming and wailing and weeping, That was what was
still there, only now for a moment it had been
mercifully muffled for a time. What was the need for
all the terrible sound? He asked himself, as he held
hands cup tightly over his ears. What was the need
of any of it? Some part of him understood, or
at least understood as much as he knew about it
had understood before, else he would have never come The
reasoning behind all of this awfulness had been just, But
that had been before. Now it just kept going, long
past the point where it should have had a halt called.
Now it was all just senseless, senseless, relentless, continuous, and
he was right in the middle of it. He tried
not to make mistakes. He had been brought up to
try not to make mistakes. They had spent hour upon
hour training him not to make mistakes. Everyone was going to,
but the goal was to try not to. If you
did that which they had taught you, then the number
of mistakes would be significantly lessened. So he had done
as he had been brought up, and he had done
as he had been instructed, and it had worked since arriving.
The mistake, however, had been in coming at all. Early on,
before it all became real, he had been questioned he
was sure that his decision to do this thing wasn't
a mistake. He had smiled back in a knowing sort
of way and walked on. It had been a huge mistake,
and he had realized that as soon as it all
began in earnest. He wanted to go back, return to
where he had been before all of this, admitt that
he had made the mistake, and be safe where it
was quiet. That was impossible. Some things can never be undone,
and some mistakes can be apologized for, but you still
have to live with and through them. He was sure
that coming here was one of those type mistakes, and
as long as he lived, he would know that this
was the biggest mistake he had ever made. But the
problem was that by making the mistake, his time to
live would undoubtedly be severely lessened. This was no way
to live. On the contrary, it was good for nothing
other than dying. He shuddered and tried to make himself
smaller as the noises returned. They hadn't actually returned, because
they had never actually gone away. They were always there.
Sometimes they were far away, and sometimes they were right
there beside you. But they were always somewhere. That was
the problem with them. They were relentless and never ceasing.
There was never a stopping, not even for a moment,
it seemed, obviously, there were times when it was once
again quiet, but the echoes of those sounds, the pounding,
the sizzling, the horrendous thuds, the screams. They were all
embedded into his memory and played over and over. When
the actual sounds were at rest for a moment, he
looked over and the man beside him that he did
not know, was mouth wide open, screaming in agony and terror.
But no sound was there to be heard. He was
not holding the pose until his breath could be caught
so that he might start again. He was frozen that
way for time eternal. His release from all of this
horror had finally come, But it had come in the
way that so many here feared. Everyone was afraid of
going the way that man beside him had gone. All
but the most insane were afraid to stay, just like
he himself was afraid of staying. There was no in between,
no place in the middle to think and evaluate. There
was only fear of staying in the fear of going.
So many had gone since his arriving, and they had
all gone badly. He took the man's water, and he
drank it greedily. His own had run out earlier, and
the man had no further use for his. It was
the way things were done in this place. It was
another of the things that he had not been adequately
prepared for when he was being adequately prepared, The fact
that it was acceptable to steal the last morsels of
food and the last drops of water from the dead
and dying. He had seen those things being taken from
the alive and not nearly dying. But he had not
gone so far himself, and he had passed no judgments
on those that had. They had been here and at
places just like here, longer than he had. You could
read the days and months in their eyes. You could
read the months and seasons they had been here and
at the places just like here, in their gaunt frames.
He had looked away when he had borne witness to
these things, not because he was full of disgust, but
because he wished to induce no further shame than what
the looters must already be feeling. Ask him again in
a month, if he had acted as those he had
watched it acted, He might tell you a different story. No, no,
he wouldn't. He would not be here, nor would he
be in another place just like here to ask such questions.
He would either be gone or he would be dead.
He was close tonight caring, which he could not remain
not in this place or another just like it. His
mind and his nerves would betray him if he remained,
and he could feel them trying to even now. That
is why death would be considered a relief. He had
not been raised to think of death in those terms,
but neither had he been raised to ever expect himself
to be in the position he now found himself. He
had been raised to want to live at all costs,
to squeeze every ounce of life from each day, not
to go running headlong to death so that death could
find him without any bother. Or he would to help
someone across the way find death just that much sooner
than he should have. That is what you do in
this place or another place just like this one. You die,
or you insist that someone from across the way take
your place on death's tally sheep. He could see no
reason for either. That only left leaving, and he was
afraid to do that, almost as afraid of doing that
as he was of dying, or seeing to it that
someone did in his place. There were only three choices
for him, and he feared all of them. Two of
the choices were merely temporary. The other would mean a
hardship of a very different nature. If he left, he
would be alone, after being surrounded by so very many.
He feared being alone. He thought about the quiet, and
how he would relish and treasure it, But it would
come with a cost. It would be quiet where he
wanted to go, and it must remain so else he
would be brought back to this place or a place
just like it, quiet, always quiet there? How long before
that began to weigh on him and prey upon his
fractured nerves the way that the sounds were doing. Now
would he become accustomed to the quiet, the way that
he had not been able to do with the opposite
of quiet. He didn't know. He could not hazard a guess,
but he believed he must find out. There seemed to
be no ending to all of this to be foreseen.
He would not last. He would not endure, not to
the end, if there ever was to be an end,
maybe not even until this time tomorrow. Nothing had ever
seemed so wrong to him as this place and the
one that would come after it would be no better.
He would understand it, no clear, and adjust to it
no better. He knew that much. At least. He raised
his head and looked around as much as he dared.
It came as no surprise, but it was disheartening to
see that all looked as it had the last time
he had observed all around him, some were running, some
were hiding in earthen depressions as he was. Most were
lying as they had fallen. A few were crawling or
pulling themselves along, but most were lying very still. The
still ones were the ones who'd had the choice made
for them. It was easy in this place to believe
that they had been the lucky and fortunate ones. He
lowered himself again and drank more water. The vessel was
almost empty. That didn't concern him. There was plenty of
water that would never be used lying around. The fact
that they would never again take a drink of their
own water was what concerned him. It should not be
that way. That was what he did not want for himself.
If he stayed in this place, soon someone would be
checking his water container. They would take it with no
more thought than he had given when he had taken
the water from the man beside him. He did not
want to end up like him. He would not allow
himself to end up that way. It was wrong to
end up like that. The light around him was changing
slowly and subtly, but it was changing, changing in that
way that it does every day. A day's in. It
would be dark soon if he could hold out, if
he could will himself to exist until dark, he would
leave this place and return again. Never. There should be
annoying deep inside him for leaving, but there wasn't. When
they had trained him, they had talked repeatedly about protecting
those on either side of you, because those on either
side of you were protecting you. He had seen none
of that, and neither did he feel any obligation. If
everyone would do as he was planning to do, then
there would be no need for anyone to be protecting anyone.
It was that simple. But if mine's wiser than his
could not figure that out, then they would stay and die.
He was not responsible for all of them. He was
only to ensure his own survival. He remembered being told
that before leaving home to come here. This was not
a place of brotherhood and loyalty, as they had said.
It was a place of death, and he intended on living.
He laid himself beside the man beside him and refused
to move even an eyelash. While he waited two the
men on top of the hill sat rigidly upon their horses.
The sun was sinking behind them. He used that scene
as his gauge, so as long as they didn't move
and he could accurately measure the coming dark. They hadn't
moved for nearly two or so hours, and he was
betting much on the fact that they would remain as
they were for a while. Yet, when he had started
watching the men, they had been merely dark outlines against
the bright and intense sun. But now as the sun
was sinking, details could be made out. He knew who
most of them were. He didn't know them, but he
knew who they were. They were the men that he
and all those around him were supposed to give their
all four simply because those men had said for them too.
Those men had promised to lead them all and deliver
under them victory followed by victory. He looked all about
and saw the numbers of the dead and dying exceeding
the numbers of those still moving forward. He felt no
obligations or allegiances to the men atop their horses. At
one time he did, but no longer they had not
handed him a victory as promised, they had led him
and so many others into a valley of death. He
watched as the sun sank even lower. He knew enough
to know that all the blame he wanted to place
could not be laid at the feet of those men,
but some of it could. Right now. If he knew
where even a little of it could be laid, then
he would lay what he could and feel better. There
was so much fear and anger insight of him that
he had to cast at least some of the blame somewhere,
just to relieve the burden that was weighing on him.
When the sun finally sank, he would feel better. Still,
he was readying himself to do what he knew he shouldn't.
It was the thing that was despised most by the
men that sat on the horses, and by the men
that were crawling ever forward, inch by treacherous inches. Well,
the shadows were no longer lengthening, they were disappearing, and
the falling darkness a secession was taking place. Also. Not all,
but most of what made all the terrible noise and
destruction found it difficult to carry out their assignments in
the dark. It was much quieter now because of it.
Now the moans and the begging for either help or
death could be plainly heard in every direction. It was
the knowing that those men were lying out there in
the black, pleading to die, and doing so while all alone.
That was what seamen in his decision to leave this place.
The noise had been all but his undoing, but it
was these sounds that he could no longer bear to hear.
He would breathe the absolute quiet if need be, and
he would do it willingly if it meant that he
never had to hear the agony voiced by so many
men again. Darkness continued to fall, slowly but steadily. It
was falling. As far as he knew. His rifle was
still in good working order. He had fired it very
few times. He had not acted as everyone else. It
made the noise that he detested so very much, but
he would need it with him if he was going
to survive. Killing something to eat was different than what
most men on horses atop the hill had intended him
to do with it. He had been raised using a rifle,
but not in the killing of men, and to his knowledge,
he had not killed a man since arriving. He wanted
to leave before he could no longer say that honestly,
It crossed his mind to take the rifle from the
man lying beside him as well, But then he remembered
that the man's weapon was as broken and useless as
its owner. It had been an eight pound ball fired
from a cannon that had been the undoing for both
of them. He had heard the ball whistling as it
flew through the air. For the briefest of instances, he
had seen the ball coming toward them. Maybe there had
been time to grab the sleeve of him who had
been standing alongside and pull him out of arm's way.
Maybe there had been, but he had chosen instead to
drop to the ground and cover his head with his arms.
He had not seen the ball make contact with the man,
but when he had uncovered his eyes, he had seen
the aftermath. For nearly two hours, he had lain in
what was generously being called a ditch and stared at
what was left of the man that he had been
talking with earlier. The patch that the man had sewn
into his pants to cover a terror was recognizable, but
that was the only way he could have told who
the man was. After the ball had found him, he
lay there for the longest, thinking about who might be
at home, wondering when they might get a letter from
him saying that he was still doing well and fighting
the good fight. He supposed it might be quite a
while before those at home finally gave up hope of
ever hearing from him again. Maybe they would resign themselves
to thinking that, after all the battles, he had simply
decided to continue his life somewhere else. It would be
easier believing that he was alive, just in a new place,
but down deep, they would know the truth, even if
they never allowed themselves to think it. The man's weapon
was useless, but he had other things that could be used. Slowly,
he went through what was left of the man's pockets,
and possible bag. Shot and powder were there, as was
a knife. He had lost his own somewhere, and he
greedily took this new one from the dead man. He
did not know the man's name and did not want to.
It was easier stealing from just a corpse than it
would have been if he had been compelled to grief
for him first. The man had nothing else of use.
No one in this field had much of use, and
hadn't for some time, as they had less each day,
but were still being told to move forward. The glory
and honor they had been promised seemed tarnished and unreachable.
It was that, along with the noise, that made him
decide to do as he had Dying nobly is still dying,
and no one knowing who they were pushing into a
grave with a hundred other mangled and unknown men was
a future he could not willingly allow himself to be
a part of. He did not harbor plans for greatness
in his mind or heart, but he did intend on living.
There was too little chance of that happening if he stayed.
Men carrying stretchers were coming in pairs. He could hear
them talking. They were searching for the wounded. Most of
those that they found would not be alive this time tomorrow,
but the effort had to be made out of decency,
if for no other reason, those collecting the dead would
come later. He pulled what was left of the man
beside him atop his own body and lay very still
and barely breathing. He heard them as they neared, He
listened as they passed by him. He breathed easier when
they had walked on. They could not see so well
in the darkness. They were searching for men by sound, too.
Many were everywhere pleading for help for a merciful release.
They were concentrating their efforts on getting to those men.
The men that would come later could worry about those
that no longer made any sounds at all. Intended to
leave before that later group arrived. He listened until it
was all finally so quiet that nightbirds could be heard
singing their songs. All of those near him that had
been pleading for help had been found or they had died.
Either way, they had gone silent, and now he could
hear nothing. He looked up and saw that what moon
was there was as high as it was going to
get that evening. Every minute he waited now was just
a minute closer to the eventual sunrise. Now was the
time he had been waiting for. He could not afford
to wait any longer. He checked to make sure that
he had everything he intended to take with him. The
list was a short one. He rolled over to his
knees and began to crawl in the opposite direction of
where sporadic flickers of firelight could be seen in the distance.
He crawled quietly but rapidly. Isn't that what deserves and
cowards do? Don't they crawl? He didn't care. Each foot
of distance he put between himself and all the horrendous
and never ending wreckage made him feel safer and more
in control of his own life than he had felt
in so very long. Nettles pierced his palms, and he
continued to crawl. Rocks broke the flesh of his hands
and knees, and he continued to crawl. Where a face
had once covered the front of a skull, now there
was just a cavity full of cool, soft jell, And
because of the darkness, into this he placed one of
his hands, and with disgust, he flung the remnants of
some poor soul's mind from his fingers, and continued to crawl.
Only when he left the field and duck quickly behind
a tree did he stand and breathe deeply and slowly.
It was dark in the trees, but no voices could
be heard, and no flickers of firelight were detected. As
softly but as rapidly as he could, he darted from
tree to tree, always stopping with his back against it
so he could listen for a moment before continuing on.
When the spider leapt from the bark of the tree
to the area between the back of his neck and
his collar, he stifled a scream and through the creature
as far as he could once his hand had closed
around it. He did not think he had been bitten.
If he did not fall down, sick, or begin to swell,
then he would know that he had been correct. He
moved deeper into the trees. Now that he had made
the decision to run away and had taken the first
steps toward that end, he wanted to be as far
away as quickly as was possible. He had walked and
darted from tree to tree, and then just darted. Eventually,
in spite of the darkness, he began to run. He
ran even while the stitch grabbed and burned in his side,
and he ran with one hand out in front of
him to push away vines and limbs and webs. He
ran until he was halted by his hand colliding with
a tree. He used the same hand to push himself
away from the tree, and then he continued to run.
He ran until there was no more ground beneath his feet,
and he rolled. The hill had been an impressive one.
He had descended it quickly, but not without a cost.
Now everything hurt. He did not think that anything was broken,
but he was sure that everything was bruised and tender.
Several times he spat, but the taste of dirt and
leaves remained inside his mouth. He was not sure if
his rifle had survived the fall intact, and wouldn't know
until there was again light to see by. He wished
he knew now he would appreciate not worrying all night
if it still usable, and if it wasn't, he would
like to have thrown it aside. It was heavy and
cumbersome to run with. He spat again and started to
run once more, in the same general direction that he
had been traveling before the tumble. He was scared. Running
toward a future that he had no preconceived notions about
frightened him. How he was going to survive and where
he was to survive was an unknown. Simply running in
the dark frightened him. Trip over a log, or step
in a hole, and run off the edge of a
ridge or ledge, and all of his worrying days would
soon be over with. Not running fast enough frightened him.
He knew what those men on horses would do to
him if he didn't run far enough or fast enough.
He knew because they had told him, had told all
of them. It was bad enough that those wearing the
blue coats want to kill him simply because he was
wearing a gray coat, and the men on the horses
with cleaner gray coats would kill him also, just because
he had run away from a fight that he did
not want to be a part of. He was frightened,
but he was no coward. It would have been hard
to explain the difference. He wasn't even sure he could
make a reasonable or rational separation of the two in
his own mind. But there was one. He had known
what it was earlier, as he had laid among the
dead and dying, But he could not recall the right
words now as he was running away. He just knew
that he had to keep running. That was his only thought.
He knew that if he slowed or stopped, they would
find him, and they would execute him after making an
example out of him in front of everyone. They would
not be gracious to allow him time to reclaim the
difference between running away and cowardice from his memories, even
if there was one. Three. When the blackness began to
morph into grayness, he feared traveling onward as he had been.
The ones that sat on the horses were keen on
dispatching and posting snipers, as did those from the opposing
view as well, or so he had to assume. Running
by himself through the forest made him an immediate target
for either side. He searched in the ever lightening woods
until he found two fallen trees, not so far apart
from each other. A wind sheer ahead of an oncoming
storm sometime in the recent past had toppled the trees,
or at least that was his guests. He laid himself
between the two and gathered as many leaves and small
branches as he could reach to pull over himself like
a blanket. He wasn't cold, He just wanted the concealment.
He could only I hope that he had done an
adequate job. He would not know if he had until
someone passed him by without noticing that he was lying there,
as still as those men he had left lying dead
in that field. Miles behind him. He lay, He could
see nothing, aside from the darkness around him, turning less
and less dark. He would not allow himself to move
until the black had swallowed everything once again. For how
many days he would have to do what he was
doing now he had no idea. Today, he would rely
on his hearing instead of his eyes. He would lie
and listen for any sound that would indicate that he
was no longer alone. It wasn't enough that someone walked
near to him without noticing that he was there. What
if someone from a distance saw something peculiar and chose
to wait and watch. If they were good at what
they did, then they might sit still for hours watching
the unusual looking pile of leaves between the two fallen trees,
just to see if there was more to it than
immediately met the eye. Walking up and poking at the
pile of leaves with a rifle barrel was a good
way to get shot, and the one doing the watch
and would know this. Instead, he would bide his time
and watch. Then if the pile moved wrongly, or if
a man emerged from it, then he would put a
ball through the until recently concealed man's chest. No, it
was too dangerous to try moving it all before night
fell again. He'd like to sleep, but he needed to listen.
If nothing else, it gave him the time that he
needed to think, not to think about what he should
have done. That had already been decided and there wasn't
any going back. Now was the time for thinking about
what to do next. As far as surviving, the correct
decision had been made. Least in his mind, it had
been correct. Now the decisions concerning living lay ahead of him.
It should have been thought through already, but it had not.
He had been raised to be a planner. His father
had been a tenacious one from the time. As far
back as he could remember, his father had all the
time been explaining why he was doing a particular something
in a particular way. Do this thing in this certain
way because it gets you ready to do this other
thing six months from now. He had been raised to
think about life in those terms, but he had not
done any of that. During his time of making the
decision to run. All he had thought about was getting away.
What to do next and where to live and how
to live would need to be considered and considered thoughtfully.
But as he lay under all those leaves and twigs,
a different thought concerned him, the father that he had
just been remembering, the father that he was so very
proud of. What would he think of the decision that
his son had made. He didn't have to wonder. He
knew what his father would think. Too. Many years growing
up under the man's roof had taught him to honor
his word when he had given it. How many times
his father had said something along the lines of, once
you give a man your word about anything, it doesn't
matter what it is. You keep your word. It matters
not how hard you have to work to do it
or how much money you lose doing it. If you
say that you will do a thing, then you must
do the thing. That was why he knew what his
father would think if he knew of the decision he
had made. It was also why he knew now he
could never go home again. Showing up maimed or dead
would be preferable to showing up a disgrace. His father
had always told him that he would be loved no
matter what he did or had done, but his son
being a deserter from a war had never crossed the
man's mind as a possibility. Now he knew that he
could never go home again. He simply could not force
an honorable man like his father into a lie. His
father saying that he still loved him even after hearing
how he had abandoned the men that he was serving
with and fighting alongside, would be a lie. Much better
that the man never became aware of what really happened
to his son. Allow the old man to live out
the rest of his days in dignity. Let him go
to his grave believing his son had stood without faltering
when the time came for him to stand. Let him
never know of how his brave son had hidden beneath
corpses and then slunk away in the darkness. The day
passed agonizingly slow. He was spent from lying perfectly still
and listening with earnest and as a result felt complet
deletely exhausted, more than he had ever been during the
forced marches or running from ditch to stump in order
to avoid being shot. He supposed that not eating anything
for two days had something to do with that, and
even though no one had ever made mention of it
to him, he was fully aware of how worry and
anxiousness can tax the body. Just because he had escaped
the battlefield, did not mean that he had left his
troubles behind him. He had simply traded them for a
different batch of new ones. He did not believe that
he had veered very far from the direction he had
chosen when leaving the battlefield. He didn't know exactly where
he was, but he had an idea. More or less,
he knew that he hadn't traveled as far as he'd
like to allow himself to believe that he had. Running
for your life in the dark, while trying to hear
every detectable sound that wasn't native to the deep woods,
not to mention, work quite hard, not to trip and
fall over every fallen branch, or stumble on every depression
in the earth. All of these things exhausted you enough
so that it would be easy to convince yourself that
you had gone considerably farther than you actually had. He
knew where he had been when the fighting started, and
he was still in that same place when the running began.
Some had called it one thing, while others used a
different name. It didn't matter. They were one and the same,
that dreadful place, and he never wanted to hear either
name for it mentioned again. Most of those he had
been fighting alongside called the place Sharpsburg, while those they
were actually fighting called it a Teetum, and Tetum had
been the name of the pretty fair sized creek that
wandered through the hills peacefully. He supposed it still did,
but now it was littered with bodies of men from
both sides, and the water that had been so clear
before now ran red in the aftermath. They had been
in Maryland when the fighting began that morning. He was
well aware of his proximity to West Virginia. It wasn't
so far away from the sight of the battle, and
they had traveled through the state to get the Antietam.
He didn't think that he had run so far as
to be in West Virginia yet, but was almost positive
he would be by dawn tomorrow, assuming he lived through
the day. He didn't especially like West Virginia. It was
too dark and shadowy for him to warm up to,
but he had only seen a narrow portion of the state,
and he was being pushed and rushed the whole time.
At that He didn't think that he wanted to spend
the remainder of his life there, but he would be
satisfied for the time being if he could find a
place that offered a measure of safety so that he
could rest and think about the days in years that
lay ahead of him. The more he thought about what
all he would need just to survive, the gloomier it
seemed the struggle would be real, and every thought led
him to the conclusion that the struggle would be no
short amount of time either. The men he had been
fighting alongside had been doggedly resilient and almost fanatical in
their persistence, and those on the other side, while maybe
not quite so enthusiastic about the whole thing, made up
for it in numbers that never seemed to lessen. What
that told him was that all of this horrible nonsense
might not be over with anytime soon. As long as
it was going on, someone would be looking for him.
They had people that did just that. One thing. He
knew because some of those that sat on the horses
had told them so as a way of discouraging actions
like he had taken the evening before. So it wasn't
as if he could just wander into the nearest town,
find himself a job and house, and begin the blending in.
He had no money to even live on until work
started paying up. He had no clothes other than the
gray uniform that so many in the country now recognized.
A broke drifter in uniform away from his troop and
in no hurry to get back, was going to stick
out like a sore thumb. If he went near a town,
it wouldn't be but a short time until the searchers
were hot on his trail. He knew that they would
be on the lookout for him when he didn't appear
in formation and nobody matching his description could be accounted for.
Maybe West Virginia was the best place he could be,
after all. The darker and more shadowy the better, as
far as he could tell for now. Anyway, it was
getting late in the afternoon, and he just knew that
if someone even as close two ridges away listened, they
could hear his stomach growling. He had a biscuit in
his pocket that he had saved from the day before.
If it wasn't crumbled into dust by now, he was
sure that he could get it out of his pocket
and into his mouth without disturbing the blanket of leaves
too very much. But he also wondered if he might
need the ration more later on. Than he did now.
His hand closed around a couple of acorns, and using
his thumbnail, he managed to remove all of the shell
glacially slow, he moved his hand until he could drop
one of the acorns into his mouth. As he chewed
on the grainy but not terribly unpleasant tasting fair, he
began the slow process of stripping the second acorn. There
is a time that comes each day when the daytime
birds and the small animals become quiet, and the night
creatures began to stir listen. As he heard this take place,
he knew that it wouldn't be long before he would
be able to start running again. He was dreading the
night long adventures of getting slapped in the face with
limbs and eating mouthfuls of spiderwebs and bumping into things.
But he was ready to do more than just lie
still under a pile of leaves with the same precise
movement that those men in the Orient used when they
moved one varied grain of sand at a time to
create those displays of art. He began to move leaves
from his face so that he could observe his surroundings.
He needed to be absolutely sure that no one was
near enough to notice his leaving. He waited until it
was full on dark, and then forced himself to wait
a few moments longer. Perhaps all he was doing was
too much, but he knew that he would never feel
safe about moving if he didn't take every precaution he
would need to be always looking forward. There was no
time for looking over his shoulders and wondering if he
had missed something. Only after he was as sure as
he thought he could be that no one was in
the neighborhood watching him. Only then did he rise himself
from the tomb of leaves and branches to stand very
still and listen before proceeding. South was all he had
ever known, so that was the direction he started in
four Sometimes there were rocky overhangs to be found and
crawl up under, and twice there had been catastrophic deadfalls
of trees to weave his way inside for protection. But
mostly each day during those first ten or so days,
he did each day as he had done the first day.
He lay motionless under whatever he could gather to cover
himself until darkness came once again. Reuben Miller was beginning
to wonder if there would ever again be a day
when he could sit with a full belly and take
his ease without worrying if someone was watching him from
the shadows. It was beginning to feel as if there
wouldn't be the near constant running in near constant fasting
had begun to show on his frame. But he had
been lucky and had been able to run across solitary
farmsteads every couple of three days. It was wartime and
no one had much of anything, much less plenty to spare,
but he had taken from the smokehouses and root sellers
only that which would keep him alive, instead of all
that he wanted. Reuben hated that he had been forced
into thievery, but he would not allow greed in selfishness
to be heaped among his misdoings. What he was going
through now was of his own making, and he could
not allow others to support it. He was thinking about
that very thing when he felt himself began to fall.
He had not become entangled in anything, nor had he
tripped over something. The ground was simply no longer beneath him,
and he began to fall quickly, roughly, and in near
complete darkness. He fell outside. It had been dark, as
he had run and then fell. Now, as he lay there,
there was nothing but blackness. Everything hurt, but he lay
very still, taking mental stock of himself and evaluating his condition.
He could not see, but as near as he could tell,
nothing was broken or cut severely. He was aware that
there were some scrapes and minor lacerations, but nothing to
be concerned about. He didn't think, well, that was fortunate.
He had no way to address a major injury and
couldn't see to do it if he'd received one. That
didn't mean that he wasn't going to hurt for a
few days. Though. The fall into this place had not
been on clean sandy ground. It had been over rock
strewn ways, and they had done damages he had fallen.
He held his breath as he forced his eyes to
take in every ounce of light that was available. A
faint lightning revealed how he had entered this place. It
was still much too dark to know any details about
where he was, but he could at least tell that
his fall had seemed much longer than it actually was.
The opening that he had fallen through was not directly
above him, and for that he was grateful. The fact
that he had fallen down an incline as compared to
falling straight down a hole, probably meant that the way
out would be easier than it could have been. He
started to force himself to sit up, but numerous points
of injured soft tissue screamed and outraged at him. He
lay back down and reminded himself that he had been
nowhere in the past twelve days where he had been
so safe from discovery as he was now likely he
would have been forced to lay still for a day
or so to recover from the fall. But now he
lay with a contented smile on his face as it
dawned on him that he need not bother with running
again until he wanted to. He would not be found
in this place. He slept soundly for the first time
since deserting. As Reuben Miller snored softly and his dreamless
sleep began to restore him, he had no idea what
finding this place was actually going to mean for him,
not entirely sure if he had been feeling the growling
in his stomach that had awakened him or the sound
of the growling that had but one of them had
there were both symptoms of the same affliction that needed remedy.
Hungry as he was, though he still smiled. He had
expected to wait, being sore as arising, but his first
thoughts had been of eating, and that told him that
he likely wasn't going to experience the pain he had
been preparing himself for. He sat up and winced. He
was definitely sore and stove up, but only at a
tolerable level, especially considering how he had entered this place.
The sun was up a while already, and he could
make out more of his surroundings now. Where he was
at wasn't spacious enough to be considered a cavern, but
it was much more than just a hole. It wasn't
a cave either, or at least not one like he
had ever heard about. It wasn't a room, but that
was how he saw the place and would refer to
it often as that. The room was almost round or
circular in shape, with some sort of gritty covering along
with the rocks on the floor. The walls were almost black,
like everywhere that he could see. Not black because of
the darkness, but black because the room was not a
hollow inside of a rock formation, black because the walls
were made of coal. He walked all around the edges.
It took twenty nine steps to travel at all. He
ran his hand across the surface of the wall and
thought to himself that until he knew what he should do,
this place offered security from the weather as well as
those who might be looking for him. It was well concealed,
but had plenty of fresh air available. Not to mention,
there was a nearly inexhaustible source of fuel for heat
and for cooking. Now all he needed was a water
source and some food. His stomach was still growling, but
he laid down once. He had used the toe of
his shoe to kick some of the larger stones away,
and he felt safer than at any time over the
past nearly two weeks. He wanted to sleep and didn't
care if he didn't wake until this time tomorrow. He
was up before the sun was Even though he felt
safe and secure in this new place, he made a
point of not abandoning the measures of caution he had
adopted since deciding to leave the war behind him. With
calculated motions, he emerged from the coal mine and stood
outside listening. The sky was just beginning to lighten, and
he had to stare for long moments at things to
be sure what he was seeing. But aggravating as that was,
it was still smarter than just walking around in broad daylight.
He heard nothing unusual, and in truth, he had not
expected to hear anything out of the way, but he
had to make sure. Food was a priority, but water
was a must. It had been more than twenty four
hours since he had had a drink, and he was
feeling the effects. Reuben was still thinking clearly, but he
could feel hazy, the walls closing in, and he supposed
it would be partly due to the tumble he had
taken into the coal shaft, but it didn't feel like
an injury related effect. It felt like if he could
just have a cool drink, he would feel completely himself again.
And he stumbled as he tried to turn, but kept
his balance and continued in his search. Unless he just
happened up on a spring, the chances of him finding
water up on this ridge were almost nil. The coal
shaft was ideally located for his purposes. He gave him
a clear view of everything around him, aside from directly
behind him. The opening was overgrown and unless you knew
to look for it, the eyes would never see it.
But so far, it didn't seem as if water was
close to hand, and that was a problem. He had
his canteen as well as the one he had taken
from the dead soldier that had fallen beside him, so
if he found water, he could carry it back with him.
But if the water ended up being too far away,
he would have to evaluate whether the effort was worth it.
He guessed that it would have been too much to
ask for the perfect place to hide to also have
a water supply. Nothing is ever perfect in this world,
he thought to himself as he walked. Reuben walked slowly
and methodically for two hours, stopping every few feet to
listen for any sounds of running water. The more he
tried to hear in e, the thirstier he found himself becoming.
He couldn't understand how everything could be so thick and
lush and green without adequate water nearby. Maybe it was
because of the shape of the land. The coal shaft
and everywhere he had been walking was on sidling ground.
It was all part of a high hardwood ridge that
he had been skirting back and forth. And maybe all
the foliage took its moisture from the rainfall that slowly
bled its way down the ridge and dispersed itself evenly
among every bush and tree. Maybe there wasn't any water
to be found. He was becoming dizzier with each step
and was about to sit down in the hope that
some rest would help clear his head. When he saw
the movement from the corner of his eye. He jerked
his head in that direction and studied the landscape for
any sign of something moving. He was beginning to think
he had imagined it all when further away he finally
saw a pair of raccoons chasing each other. They scampered
as if they were enjoying themselves, just having the best
times playing with each other. He followed them and refused
to allow the pair to escape his sight. He knew
that where there were coons, there was water that didn't
stray too far from it. If he kept his eyes
on them, then eventually they would lead him to it. Patiently,
he followed them while they chattered and rustled. Twice, he stopped,
leaning his head against a tree until the world stopped spinning.
Then he continued on while all the while he kept
as precise a track as he could of where he
was in relation to the coal shaft until he discovered
that it simply wasn't logical or practical. He would continue
to consider the coal shaft as the center from which
he would function. The two raccoons looked up and stared
at him as he laughed out loud. The sound startled them,
but they apparently didn't see him as a threat. They
continued swishing their front palls in the cool water, while
Reubens sat on the ground chuckling. The raccoons had led
him on a merry and quite exhaustive march through the woods,
only to land him less than a couple of hundred
yards from where he had crawled out of the shaft.
There was no corner to the ridge, but if there
had been, then just around the left one and just
down the way lay the pool of water, fed by
a narrow creek and emptying into a much more narrow one.
The pool was neither wide nor deep, but it was
full of clear fresh water. The raccoon's bark before scurrying away.
As he approached, they sat and watched as he fell
to his knees and lapped at the water. They tilted
their heads as he thanked them for showing him the way.
It was the first time that he had heard the
sound of his own voice in nearly two weeks. He
told himself that though he must remain cautious and vigilant,
he must remember to speak on occasion, lest he fall
deeper and deeper into that place of isolation from which
there may not be any way to escape from once
fully there. It was bad enough that he must be
physically isolated, to be mentally isolated from the world was worse.
It would be easy to just stop speaking as he
went about his life do all that was required of
him so that he could stay alive and do it
in silence. Would be an easy trap to fall into,
but he could not allow himself to do that. He
would not allow himself to do that. Just to be
alive had cost him too much already, maybe even his soul. Absolutely,
it had already cost him his pride, his honor, and
his dignity. Not to mention his family and the honor
that came with the name as part of his birthright,
he would not permit his sanity to be lost as well.
It was something that he would have to always be
on guard against. But there would always be the concern
that insanity could sneak up on him and know his
every move as easily as he had sneaked up on
the raccoons. Five There were several meals of roasted frog
legs and several failed attempts before he finally figured out
how to make a snare function properly. Now, though he
was eating more or less regularly, and had been for
some time, at some point every day the pool was
visited by a wide variety of small animals, and he
caught something for his supper. Almost every time he laid
a trap. Often deer came, and he knew this because
he watched them come and go. But because he had
damaged his rifle during the initial fall into the shaft,
there was little he could do about the larger animals
other than watch them drink and then leave. He had
been living in the shaft for more than a month.
While he couldn't honestly say that the days were pleasant,
they had fallen into a routine that he found acceptable.
The stock of small game that came continually to the
pool somehow managed to keep replenishing itself, so there were
very few days when he went without something to eat.
In the hands of a gun smith, his rifle could
have been made functional again with a little bother, but
since that was very much out of the question, he
put it to use in a different, but just as
beneficial way. It bothered him to do it, but crashing
the weapon against the wall so that he could dislodge
the barrel from the stock was the only way he
could get the heavy barrel loose. Starting the first fire
had not been accomplished easily, but once it had been burning,
he discovered that living in a room made of coal
did not mean that fuel for the fire was always
ready at hand. He needed a way to chip the
coal from the wall, and the knife he had was
too useful to take a chance of chipping or breaking it.
By using it as a chisel with a hard stone
from the pool, he pounded the steel barrel against the
coal wall until pieces for him to burn broke free.
It didn't take many sessions of doing this before he
learned how to read the grain lines and veins and
the coal. Chipping it away from the wall became easier
once this had been learned. After that, he refused to
allow the fire to go out. There wasn't any reason
for him to let that happen. There was abundant fuel,
and it had been too hard to get started in
the first place. Now, even if it was a small one,
a fire was all the time burning in his new home.
Now he sat there, sat there, looking into the fire.
His legs were criss crossed, and his back was against
a section of log that he had slid into the
shaft for just this purpose. He had grown tired of
wanting to sit near to the fire, but having nothing
to support his back while he did. Maybe he would
start giving some consideration to trying to fashion a piece
or two of usable furniture. He didn't know how he
would accomplish that, having no tools and no experience, but
he would think about it some. He could use the furniture,
but if nothing else, then the thing thinking of how
to construct it would fill several hours. This is what
he mainly did now. Reuben looked for ways to fill
the endless hours. Then he slept and awoke to begin again.
Maybe he would think about the furniture tomorrow. He had
already decided earlier to spend today thinking about what he
was missing out on the most by living the way
that he was. It was a dangerous thing to do,
and he was well aware of it. A couple of
times already he had allowed his mind to drift away
to the life that could never be, and the mood
it had left him with had not left him as
easily as the tender thoughts that had played out in
his mind. There was his father, of course, not that
he had grown tired of remembering his father, just that
he had thought extensively about all that he was doing
was as much for the man as it was for himself.
That sounded as if he were trying to make himself
to be charitable in giving. That was a direct falsehood,
and he would not allow himself to delude himself in
that way. Bastardizing his reasons for living as he was
into something other than his fear of being caught was
a road that led to nowhere. Yes, he'd had his
father in mind when he had found the place and
decided to stay. He would not be the cause of
any shame to be reigned on the man or the
family name, but full no one. He was staying out
of cowardice, afraid of what they would do to him
if they caught him, and how the ridicule would pain
inwardly while their punishments pained outwardly. The physical would be brief,
for he was sure that he would be put to death,
but it would still hurt. Of that, he was certain.
But he had thought about all of this until he
was tired of thinking about it. He was safe and
secure here as far as he knew, and likely his
father was grieving a son who had died with dignity
but was buried in a mass grave somewhere. It was
time to allow his mind to linger elsewhere for a time.
Often he chied at himself when he caught himself wishing
for things that could never be. It was a fruitless
way to waste time that only led him into darkness
that was sometimes very hard to escape from. Were he
still back in the real world, then if he had
a wish that stayed with him until it became a goal,
then he could do something about it. He might try
and subsequently fail, might even tried numerous times with no
better luck. But out there, at least he could try.
In this place, where he had chosen to hide himself
away from everyone and everything, he could do nothing to
help a wish come to pass. So it was better
not even to think along those lines. He had found
this out in what some might call the hard way. Still,
there was that one thing that was impossible to think
about or even remember without wishes tagging along, so he
allowed them to without protestations. She was strong, but so
very delicate. She was a well of opinions that never
seemed to dry up, but she always wanted to hear
your thoughts first about everything. She was elegant, even when
there was an acre of dirt under her fingernails from
where she had been planting flowers or vegetables all day.
She was soft spoken, but she could cut your throat
with her words if she chose to. Never once had
he ever heard her say anything in an attempt to
be hurtful, But her words carried emotion and passions that
fell on you resolutely and with impact. She was the
woman he had wanted to marry, the only woman he
had ever wanted to marry, and she was the woman
who wanted to be married to him. She was the
only daughter of a moderately successful tobacco and pecan farmer,
and her name was Story Storry Henderson. Although mister Henderson
had done reasonably well for himself and his family, he
wasn't wealthy by any measure. Every member of the family
had been expected to pitch in, and Storry was not
exempt simply because she was born a woman. She had
grown up working alongside her two brothers and could hold
her end of any detail. She wasn't an anomaly. Most
women around the area where Reuben was from had grown
up as Storry had, as girls and young women. They
had done their part just as she had. But story
was different from all the others that Rumind had ever known.
At least she was to him. There was something that
up until now had been unidentifiable about her, something that
raised her above all the others he had ever known.
He was well aware that his being in love with
her caused him to see her differently than he saw
everyone else. He had fallen head over heels for her
the first time he had seen her, and she was
only eleven at that time, but even his twelve year
old mind knew that she was special, at least to him.
She was at nineteen, he knew that he wanted to
spend every day of his life with her, and he
told her plainly. It came as a relief and a
little bit of a surprise to hear that she felt
the exact same way about him. But then the war
came along, and his feelings became muddled between wanting to
never ever leave her side and doing what he believed
at the time that he should. That one decision had
changed everything, and now there was no going back to
repair the damage. The war that was still raging somewhere
without him had completely altered his life. He supposed that
a great many would be able to make the same statement,
but not for the same reason. But if there was
a positive in any of this for him, it was
that he now had the time to think about and
understand those qualities that made stories so different from everyone else.
Forever he had known that they existed, and now he
would know what they were, even if he was never
again to experience them firsthand. Though he would undoubtedly absolutely
never again know the touch of her hand or the
sound of her voice upon his ear, it was important
to have clear in his mind why she had left
her mark carved so deeply on him, Perhaps more important
now than if he was right beside her for the
remainder of his life. It would be one thing to
be there and to appreciate her, but to be displaced
from her. It was necessary for him to know what
it was about her that caused him to miss her.
So he missed his family, he missed the life he
once had, He missed those he thought of his friends.
But there wasn't a word that he knew of that
told how he felt about being apart from her. He
needed to know what it was about her that made
him feel that way. He supposed poets since the invent
of the written word, had been trying to capture these
things with ink and parchment, but they didn't have the
time to focus on it that he now had. He
afforded himself a drink of water from the canteen and
sat back against the piece of log, and he closed
his eyes. Closing them didn't help him see her better.
It allowed him to see himself better. He saw the
conversations they'd had when he was a better man in
a better place, and with his eyes open, he could
still hear her words and see her face. But he
saw in this place where he was no longer the
man that he had tried to be for her. When
he closed his eyes, he was standing beneath those large
trees that grew near to the pool of water, not
far from where she lived. They often met there and
sat in the cool of the shade and watched the
water as they talked. They had stayed too long during
one of those conversations. It was on a Thursday. They
had known it was getting late. How could you not
know when you were outdoors in the light fading by
the minute, Yet they stayed and watched as they talked.
The light began as a thin golden ribbon outlining a
part of the opposite bank of the pool, and quickly
it grew until the small pool seemed to be filled
with the reflection of the moon. For some reason, the
image in the water was more appealing to stare at
than the real thing. The moon above was hanging, as
it does on occasion, so clearly and so golden brightly
that it seemed as if you could walk to the
top of the nearest hill and just reach out and
touch it. But the one in the water was the
one that they could see, the one that only they
could see. For a time, the moon and its light
belonged only to them, And he didn't know if she
felt the same way about what was in front of them.
He hadn't mentioned his thoughts. It wasn't the type of
thing that men are supposed to say, he didn't think.
The following morning, he had stepped outside to begin his
work for the day, and he found a note addressed
to him, affixed to one of the porch posts. It
said that all night long she had thought of sitting
beside that pool forever, with her head on his shoulder.
She wanted to spend the rest of her life hearing
him say that he loved her while they watched their moon.
He had carried that note and one other inside his
uniform for the longest. He read each one daily, but
nine straight days of rain had eventually destroyed them. The
rain destroyed the only words he had of hers. The
war had destroyed everything else. She hadn't wanted him to
go away. It wasn't that she disapproved of his decision.
It was just his being gone that she disapproved of.
She had promised to wait for him, But he guessed
that she had changed her thinking by now about that
she was smart. Storry was she would realize how fruitless
it was waiting for someone that would never return. Perhaps
she had grieved, though for a time it was as
much as he could have expected from her or ask
of her. Considering what he had done