Finally Home, She Thought

The end

9

By late afternoon we were in the Oneota Valley.

“It’s a Meteor crater. Some guys digging for a deep well found some quartz thing that proved it. You can kinda see it, when you think about it. The whole thing north of town is like a half circle of cliff. I’m not sure how close we are to the highway anymore, but we are gonna end up right there.

“It’ll be hilly is all I know, Old man. A lot of up and down, thicket, more little streams you can about jump across. We’re basically there though.”

She was excited. I felt like a new man. I was fed and comfortable and easy. The sun was pretty strong and we were staying on the ridges when we could and crossing the valleys when we had to. We came into a long broad valley with short grass in the fields and a couple ponies.

There were fences up but there were three tred staircases built over them in the middle, out away from the slope at one end and the thicket that lined the creek on the other.

We proceeded out into the open weighted with our backpacks and bedrolls and guns.

I saw an oriole and a goldfinch. A red winged blackbird threatened us diving in from the treeline.

I went for my pistol with my right hand and Angie placed her palm on my bicep to stop me.

“You don't want to shoot in here.” She said.

I did want to, but the bird wasn't a real threat and I supposed attention might be, us out in the open in the sun. There were hills the whole way around us it seemed.

We listed over to the tree line and followed a creek upstream. I could hear water falling somewhere up ahead and before long the source of the creek showed.

Barely above head height in a notch on the hill, water poured out a hole in the limestone and splashed down over and washed the parch-white bedrock below it. At the edges of the spill the stones were mossy and dark.

“We can drink it.” She said. And we did. I filled my bottle. We sat and I pulled the last can of mini ravioli I'd brought from deep in my backpack.

We split that cold, left the can on a damp stone and ascended the steep forested valley nook to the ridge.

“This is the last one.” she said.

When we got to the ridge it was flat on top and planted in rows of Christmas tree pines that had never been taken and were as tall as big houses. The forest floor was barren but for pine needles and poison ivy and squill and the wind sounded like open mouthed breathing through the branches above.

I could smell wood stove on the breeze.

We came to the far side of the ridge and a wide round valley was all visible below us. There were hundreds of houses with smoke rising from each chimney and when it was still, I thought I could hear what might be music and voices like the sound of a bar.

I realized I was crying. I noticed when Angie took my hand and I looked right to see her. She put my arm between her breasts and placed her chin on my shoulder and raised her eyebrows and smiled.

“I told you.” Her chin bounced on my shoulder.

“How do we get down?” I wondered aloud not exactly to her.

“There's a road at the end of the ridge. It's old. There used to be a house up here way before the town.”

There was a well used walking path that passed some huge deep holes in the ridge that went straight down in. She kept saying, I told you.

We came down off the ridge onto a T intersection with empty stores across the road from us.

We walked on sidewalks with grass in the cracks along the side of a four lane street toward a bridge with streetlights over sidewalks at it’s sides. It was full daylight. The air was full of the sounds of singing birds and what might have been a bustle of people and chickens.

“There's a market down over there.” She pointed and we walked on past, the market never coming into view.

“Lets get to where my people are.”

The Ridge had forced our path around to the north and we were now heading south down streets with mowed front yards. I thought maybe I heard kids screaming and playing out of sight but near.

We crossed the fenced-in playing fields of the junior high where Angie had gone. The grass inside the fence was nearly waist high. The windows of the school were broken out, but it looked nice. It had bell towers.

Old cars lined the streets and sat in the back yards rusting and full of boxes. Some neighborhood four way stops had burn barrels out at mid intersection.

“The house I was raised in is right up here.” She pointed in the direction we were walking.

I have wondered if, when I was trying to find someone who was very successful at not being found, if there were creatures beside us in the world so bent on not being seen that people would never know about them. I figured there were.

We walked down the middle of what seemed like the memory of a quiet suburban street. There were big yards and old trees and regular looking houses with intact windows and sometimes open front doors. I could smell cooking and wood smoke and the familiar but unsavory smell of unwashed people near.

A kid ran out in front of us halfway across the street, noticed us, stopped, turned and ran scared away.

We kept walking maybe fifty more steps.

A man came out to the middle of the road before us and shouted from far enough away so it wasn't clear what he was saying. I noticed his eyes.

Angie already had her hand on my arm.

“I’m from here.” She shouted. “I’m Angie Larsen.”

As she shouted her name her rifle fell off her shoulder.

The first bullet struck her thigh. I was bent over to help her up.

Bullets were ricocheting off the cement of the road all around us then. I felt my body compromised in many places and I spun and fell, grabbing a pistol with each hand but immediately not strong enough to lift my arms from the cement where I lay continuing to be pelted with small arms fire.

I could hear Angie raspily continuing from where she lay near me.

“I’m Angie Larsen, and this is my man.”

It was harder and harder to breathe and soon we were surrounded by people’s feet.

“You know these two?”

“I never seen either of ‘em.”

I closed my eyes.