Previous Chapter ...
Nancy’s leg
and hard choices.
Fatalities
The next morning, in the common room, the old lady was dead, blood all over her stomach and hips. We figured this was was bound to happen and as Nancy had said there was nothing we could do. Parts of her intestines were exposed.
Nancy was just waking up. Bill was snoring. The dead man was still laying half-way up the steps, with another outside. I told Miranda to make breakfast while I handle the three dead bodies. Jane was still asleep, having cried late into the night. Once again, I just drug them a few hundred feet into the woods and left them there, out of smell range. They'd be a heap of bones within days as we had wolves and foxes in these hills. The woman I buried.
Once back we had rather burnt, half-scrambled eggs, toast not quite done with splotches of cold butter on it, but good coffee, Nancy and Bill were spoon fed by Miranda with loving care. Everyone was in better spirits, and Jane still asleep. Nancy said that Bill’s wounds were not serious and that he should be able to sit up in a few days. His side wound was just flesh, barely missing his kidney. But he'd have to take it easy for a few weeks, not to tear his stitches. Nancy claimed she'd recover too but had two broken leg bones and be in bed for a few weeks and needed two casts. The damage to her rear just needed care from infection, a flesh wound.
After breakfast, Miranda cleaning up, Bill asked me what I’d done with the dead. I told him the story and that our assailants were just dragged into the trees, a few hundred feet away.
“What about the guns”, he asked. I told him that since they were dead I dragged those with them. I wasn’t thinking at the time and just wanted everything to be gone.
“Well go get those now. We can use them, and check every pocket they have, and their belts and clothes, for ammo”.
It was a smart suggestion. Bill was always right on top of everything. He made me look stupid by comparison. But I left right away on this mission, admiring his focus.
I went to the three nearest his place, collected the rifles and found two handguns in the men’s pockets and plenty of ammo. But I also found on them, in an inside pocket to their jackets, a sheet of paper, a map crudely pencilled out, and they were the same. I went to all the other bodies, the three to the right of our house and the three from the road, and on each one found the same maps. Only the dead boy didn’t have one.
With two trips I brought the heap of weapons and ammo into Bill’s apartment. Then I showed him all the identical maps. He examined them for several minutes. Then he turned to me and said: “Now I see exactly what happened”.
‘Rick and I left on a Saturday, didn’t we? And we returned Sunday night”.
“Well someone trailed us Monday morning, maybe two, in a small truck. They must have seen the gate, backed off and snuck around through the trees and made this map.”
He called me over. “Look here. It tells you everything. They came in from the right side. Here’s the house marked out, the solar array behind it, the barn, the fields and livestock too. They must have stayed for hours with their binoculars as they have everything accurately, the porch, the windows and then the people they saw. Here’s Jane and Nancy and Miranda in the vegetable field, and there’s Rick and young Eric just beginning to gather logs in the front yard to make firewood. You must have stepped out on the front porch at some point because they show you too. They also made a detailed sketch of the fortified gate and the barn and sheds.”
“What they failed to note, and this was their one fatal error, was my building and me.
“There’s a faint square here out of all proportion, mostly hidden in the trees and marked, ‘another shed’. I remember I was in my room midday and all afternoon cleaning guns, my own and those from the bunker. I’d collected them early that morning, before they arrived, and they never saw me.
“So they went back that night with their map and spent Tuesday planning their attack. With the solar panels and the livestock and long dirt trail, which they could cover up, they figured this would be the perfect hideaway for them. And with only two men, two women and two children in sight, and no guns, they figured this would be an easy target.
“That’s why they showed up Wednesday morning when the assault began. That’s also why they drove straight up to the gate and stepped out. When you appeared, apparently unarmed, they figured this place would be a pushover.
“They probably meant to kill you and the other man, keep the women and maybe the children too, depending on our food supplies. When the shot rang out and killed their leader, they had no idea where it came from but probably figured it was Rick behind a window in the house with a rifle. They retreated, thought for a few minutes and decided on the all-out assault, still easy against such few, maybe loosing another person or two in the fray.
“That’s when their plans went all to hell. They moved in slowly, placed their four best riflemen behind the closest trees to shoot anyone in the windows and sent the other six to rush in the house and kill anyone with a gun.
“But I was at my station with the first sounds of the trucks, with all those weapons at my side. When the rush began, I easily knocked off the the two women past the gate, but the men were quicker and the one behind the woodpile I couldn’t see. The others were firing at the house. But with my second shot, the two behind the trees on this side noticed me, and two of the men heading for the house veered off towards mine. They were already past the point where I could see them from my window.
“Just then, one of the riflemen behind the trees winged me in the shoulder. I fell backwards, out of sight to make them think me dead, crawling to the next window. Then I heard the other two rushing towards the door below. I shot one in the yard but the first made it in, rushing up the stairs. I shot him with a handgun almost point blank, but he got me in the gut. I knew there were still two in the woods and feared for my life. Then I heard your shots ring out and with a peek saw them fleeing away. I fell on the floor and could barely move. But I did manage to crawl over and kick the dead man halfway down the stairs, out of my room, and to block the passage. I still thought there were more assailants in your house, with just Rick and Eric there, about to attack me any minute. So I just lay and waited, my handgun pointed at the top of the stairs.
“But then the firing ceased and you showed up. It must have been a terrible firefight in that house, three men against Rick and his boy. They died bravely, killing those three men off, two right in their room. The boy must have shot one while wounded, and Rick too, riddled with holes.
"What a fine shot that was to hit the man behind the woodpile right in the forehead as he peeked out. I wonder if Rick or the boy made that shot. They were the real heroes of the day."
But you saved the day, nailing the four in the woods. This battle deserves to go down in history. We were so lucky”.
What he said made perfect sense. And I too, after that account couldn’t stop thinking, ‘we were so lucky’.
Over the next few days Bill improved to the point where he could sit at the table, with the pain killers and glass of Vodka at hand. Miranda too was of great help. She made us sandwiches and did all the chores she could. She was a close nurse to Nancy and Bill, getting them everything. He started calling her his 'little mermaid'.
Jane, after she woke up that first afternoon, was not in good shape. She was depressed, remote and worst of all, speechless. Nancy tried her best to talk with her, Miranda too, sitting in her lap and hugging her. But she sat at the window all day, on a plain wooden chair, vacantly staring out at nothing, her mind not there. Miranda managed to get her to sip water and eat a few bites of sandwich at dinner time, stuffing the pieces in her mouth which she slowly chewed and swallowed. Later she walked to the bathroom, much like a zombie then straight to bed where she lay, eyes wide open and starring at the ceiling, still speechless until she fell asleep. We thought we’d give her time to get over the trauma, so we didn’t interfere.
But the next day she repeated the same pattern, sitting on the hard chair all day long, in the same clothes, at the window in Bill’s bedroom, her eyes vacant. The fact that she would accept a few morsels of food gave us hope that time would bring her back, out of the deep state of shock she'd fallen into. We left her alone that day too, even shutting the door to Bill’s bedroom. That was Nancy’s advice. She’d had patients like this before, just one step above comatose.
It was while I was walking Miranda back to our house to get some supplies and a cot for me to sleep on at Bill’s, all of us huddled together, that she came up with a solution for her mother.
She asked me where I’d buried her father and brother. I knew exactly the spot and showed her. But it was unmarked and she asked me in a plaintive, pretty voice if we could do something more. So together, that afternoon we carried in a wheelbarrow some smooth rocks I had set aside, piled up beside a shed.
This was from two years ago when the workmen were clearing the fields, and I at my last book most of the day. They were in a cart behind the tractor and as I walked by I noticed an unusually beautiful one, perfectly symmetrical and streaked with veins of red and white and yellow, just as they were being thrown in a ditch.
For some vague reason, (probably because I collected rocks as a boy) I told the two men to stop. I went through them and picked out all the best, the smoothest and most unusual ones and had them saved. I even went into the ditch for more and soon had a stack two feet high the length of the shed. Maybe they could help landscape the front yard someday. But now they came to mind and had a far better purpose.
She unloaded the smaller ones, and we made two mounds, one six feet long, the other four, carefully arranging them to fit and show off their best sides, perfectly marking the graves. We were quite content with the resulting look. This took all afternoon.
As we admired the work, I said there was one thing missing, gravestones, with the names and dates of the souls underneath. I told her Bill could probably carve some pretty ones out of the mahogany pieces we had left over from the shelves.
She ran like the wind to his house and with the same plaintive eight-year old’s voice which no one could resist, he agreed to make them right then, at the kitchen table, if she would run to the workbench in the barn and get him all he needed, which she did.
I cooked dinner that night as she was busy, sitting close to him, watching every stroke of the chisel, and handing him each one he wanted, learning the sizes, "Thee eights, half-curve" he would say, and have it without looking away, while she put the others back in their proper pocket. Then she'd be running off again for other items, like nails and glue.
He worked until dawn, so late, she fell asleep on the chair around three a.m. She was his partner, directing the carving of the names and the curlicues around all the edges, front and back. I’d never seen her so fascinated with his skill and the task at hand. I put her to bed beside her mother, just as deeply entranced at the scene.
In the morning she woke me, so I could pound the two crosses into the soil. Then she woke her mother, asking if she'd like to see Eric and Rick's grave. Jane's eyes opened wide at the thought and out they strolled, hand in hand, a little way into the woods where they lay. It was a beautiful day and just by chance beams of sunlight penetrated through a small gap in the trees, illuminating the two crosses and then as it traversed the sky, it shined on the rocks, which sparkled back with their quartz veins like mirrors, in many colors, bedazzling their eyes.
Jane stood there mesmerized and motionless. Then she shed a few tears, perhaps the bright glints of sunlight striking her eyes helped in that. To her it must have been a religious experience, a sign from heaven, reconciling her grief to the fact that they were gone to a far-off, better place than this one. The unreal beauty of the stones and crosses in that light hinted at a better place.
She knelt as the sunbeams passed and started petting the warm rocks. Her daughter knelt beside and started mimicking her. I viewed this curious scene from a distance off, at the edge of the woods. They had no idea I was there. Jane returned with her daughter at lunch and sat with us at the table, both silent, but eating a full meal, after which she looked up to me and Bill and said: 'thank you'.
From then on, every day, she improved by degrees and was soon her old self again, a mother to Miranda and a useful part of our diminished group, cooking and nursing Ted and Nancy alongside her daughter.
She took up managing our small vegetable plot each day, with Miranda's help. But there was one new ritual. They'd planted some flowers months earlier to brighten our house and now they were in bloom. Before starting their outdoor chores each mid-morning, they would gather up two small bouquets and lay them on the graves together, then sit in contemplation, when the sunlight was at its most resplendent. They knew exactly the time it would pass above the space in the trees and never missed that moment, as if it were a magic hour, a call to mass, some quiet call, beyond our ken. Bill and I just watched the ceremony silently from the window, as they passed the front of the mansion with the two bouquets.
How do you question 'adoration'?
Jane Unwell
Jane recovered, but Nancy’s one leg didn’t. We made plaster casts for her, but she lay on the couch the next few days, pathetically limping to the bathroom on a crutch, sleeping sixteen hours a day. After two weeks of this she told us something was seriously wrong and we cut that cast off.
Sure enough there was a large, red, swollen protrusion of bone and skin where the bullet had struck her leg below the knee. I thought it might be an infection. But after carefully feeling it, with winces of pain, she told us that wasn’t it. The Tibia had been split in two by the bullet.
She tried to set it right, even taking a shot of morphine for the painful re-alignment, all of us standing around her like children, unable to help, wincing as much at the sight of it and the agony it must be causing. We made her a second cast. But she was just as weak for the next five days, much more than she said was normal, and the pain, despite Valiums was too localized and constant. That’s when we cut it off again and she realized a segment was shattered, missing. Without surgery and shunts it would never properly heal, a surgery, she said, that would require a good doctor and hospital equipment.
I thought about what that meant, pacing the floor, fully convinced we were now living in a world without doctors or hospitals.
She told us it wouldn’t kill her, but she’d have permanent discomfort and a bad limp, perhaps a crutch the rest of her life, and with the pain probably become addicted to the pain killers. In other words, as my mind raced, she’d be an invalid.
I couldn’t accept that image, my Nancy, a model of health and strength, an athlete to my mind with a perfect body, now permanently debilitated, weak and in constant pain, half of her former self. Much less than half I realized, as my thoughts raced on, as most of her favorite activities would be out of the question, horse riding, growing crops, tending the animals, and that’s all she did. It was her whole life and happiness. And now it was shattered, just like the bone.
I couldn’t live with that.
I slept on this dilemma that night, or rather, didn't sleep at all but tossed and turned, revolving every possible option for a cure, if there was one. The next morning, I made an announcement at the breakfast table that surprised everyone.
“Were driving to the city, to your old hospital, tomorrow morning. Bill, Jane, you’ll have to fend for yourselves for awhile. I’m sure you can do that. You won’t have a car but you won’t need one”. I bent down and gave Miranda a kiss on the forehead.
“I can’t tell how long we’ll be gone but we’re not coming back until she has her operation. This has to be done”.
I surprised all of them with these statements. I surprised myself with this sudden resolve. I wasn't used to making decisions. I'd always let others make them for me as I sat at my desk. But this situation changed me. Life was hardening me.
I cared nothing for what dangers it might involve. And those I left behind also needed help. They could make do for a while, but a wounded old man, a little girl and a delicate woman would never survive for long. I had to find help and bring back Nancy fully restored. She was my other half. I had no other option.
