“No. I think it’s time. It’s not all that great, anyway. I mean, as compared to what happened to a lot of other people.”
Ben let her gather her thoughts.
“I was sixteen,” Gale began. She cleared her throat and spoke louder, firmer. “Sixteen. I didn’t know crap about the real world. I was still going to a damn summer camp when I was fifteen years old. That summer I didn’t go to camp. Raised so much hell with my parents they finally threw up their hands and told me I was impossible.
“On the day … the day it… happened, I was out driving with a girlfriend. We went into a panic. We just couldn’t believe it was happening. We were way out in the country, miles out of the suburbs. But when we tried to get back into the city, all the highways and streets were blocked for miles. I tried shortcuts, got lost. Then I
calmed down some and pulled an E.t. Managed to call home. My mother said my father was at the hospital, working. I remember she was very calm. She told us not to attempt to enter the city, but to drive into the countryside-even further out than we were-get miles from St. Louis. She said to get food and bottled water and clothing-if I didn’t have the money to buy them, steal them. I was shocked. Really. This was my mother telling me to steal. She said to find a sturdy house or barn, hide the car, and hide ourselves. Don’t come out for anything or anybody. She said it might take days for this thing to wind down. Something like that.”
“Your father was a doctor?”
“Yes. A surgeon. A very good one. My mother was a psychologist. I still remember how incredibly calm she was over the phone. Anyway, the girl I was with, Amy, she became unglued. Said she wasn’t going anywhere except back into the city. She jumped out of the car. I tried to stop her. I yelled at her and screamed at her. She just kept on running. I never saw her again.
“I drove … I guess maybe thirty miles from the city. Then I stopped at a country store and got gas. No one was there. It was eerie. I mean, the place was deserted. I rummaged around and got all sorts of food and bottled water and pop and clothes and stuff. I felt so … so guilty about just taking it. So I put all but five dollars of my money on the counter and left.
“I drove. Just drove aimlessly. Ben, to this day I can’t tell you how long I drove, but it was fifty or sixty miles further from the city. And I can’t tell you where I finally hid. It was terrible, though, I can tell you that. I hid like some animal in this barn. I mean, I never left that place. I had hidden my car, a little Chevy, in some kind of stall
thing and covered it all up with straw and hay and stuff. Except to go to the bathroom and to wash my face and hands, I stayed the whole time up in the second floor.”
“The second floor of a barn?” Ben questioned, looking at her.
“Whatever you call it.”
The loft.”
“Thanks. I’ll treasure that knowledge forever, I’m sure. What do I know from barns? Anyway, it was scary. There were rats and snakes up there at first. How do snakes get up that high? I don’t know. Anyway, I killed them with a handle off some kind of tool. It was broken when I found it.
“Then the men came prowling around. They were looking for whiskey and women. Not necessarily in that order. The first group of men-I don’t know whether they were black or white or green-had a little boy with them. They did … disgusting things to him. I don’t want to talk about it. Then they left, took the little boy with them. Then some white men came in and looked around. One of them even climbed up the ladder to the second-to the loft-and looked around. But I was hidden really well in the hay and he didn’t see me. This bunch said now would be a good time to get together and kill all the niggers. They left. Then some drunk black men came around and I overheard them talking about how would it was a good time to get together and kill all the honks. But first they wanted some tight white pussy. They left and some guys came in and had this woman with them. Woman isn’t correct. She was a young girl, maybe fourteen or fifteen. I never saw her, but I could hear her begging them to stop… what they were doing. It got pretty … perverted. They raped her-among
other things. Took turns with her. It was awful.
“When they finally left, they took the girl with them-said they could swap her for guns, maybe. I was alone for two or three days. I don’t remember; the days kind of all ran together. Maybe it was longer. Then it got real quiet, like I was the last person left on earth. You know what I mean?”
Ben nodded, remembering his feelings of being alone when he finally left the house after being so sick for so long.
It was his birthday. It was a Sunday. 1988. It was a day the survivors would remember all their lives. Ben had started a new book, writing for three hours. It was the first time he’d felt like writing after being stung repeatedly by a swarm of yellow jackets. The stings had dropped him into shock. He did not know at the time how long he’d been out-days, surely. But now he felt fine. The mood was not to last.
He drove into town. Just outside of the small town in Louisiana, Ben cut his eyes to a ditch and jammed on the brakes.
There was a body in the ditch.
Ben inspected the dead man. Dead at least a week-maybe longer. The corpse was stinking and blackened.
He tried his CB. Nothing. He turned on the radio, searching the AM and FM bands. Nothing.
With a feeling of dread settling over him like a pall, Ben drove into town.
There, he found the truth.
“Yes,” he told Gale. “I know the feeling quite well.”
“I guess maybe you do,” Gale said. “But you’re tough. With me, it was different, believe it. Anyway, I finally ran out of food. I went through it like Grant took Atlanta.”
“Sherman,” Ben said automatically.
“Who’s telling this story, anyway?”
“Sorry.”
“I had eaten like a starving person. Ate from fear, I suppose. Gained about ten pounds, at least. I had to leave to find more food. And, I guess, even though I was still scared, I wanted to see what had happened. I just couldn’t believe there had really been a war. Well, my damn car wouldn’t start. I lifted the hood and looked in. Talk about a shock. There wasn’t any motor. I finally figured out the motor was in the rear. I am not mechanically inclined, believe it. What I knew then about engines and stuff was nothing. But I could see where the rats had chewed a lot of wires and things. I sat down by the car and bawled and squalled.
“I finally got it together and stepped out of the barn. The sunlight blinded me for a few moments. Gave me a headache, too. Then I stepped right on a body. Talk about freaking someone out. I almost lost control at that point. Maybe I did lose control for a time. I ran. Boy, did I run. But it didn’t do any good. There were bodies everywhere. Like in a movie, you know, after a big battle? And animals and birds were eating the dead people. It was the worst thing I had ever seen in my life. Period.
“Well… I stopped at this house-fell down in the front yard would be more like it, collapsed. Then I went inside. Luckily, the shape I was in, emotionally, the house was empty. No people, I mean.
“Ben, I know how you feel about liberals, and my mother and father were liberals, the whole bag. Gun control, civil rights, opposed to capital punishment, everything, you know?”
Ben nodded his head in agreement.
“OK, so they were liberals. But they taught me how to think. They taught me to sit down, be calm and rationalize things out. So that’s what I did. I sat in a chair, calmed myself and thought. I thought myself right into a headache-that’s all I accomplished.”
Ben laughed at the mental picture of her doing so, then he apologized for it.
She smiled. “No, it’s all right, Ben. I feel better finally being able to talk about it. And I understand, really, I do. Looking back, some of the things I did were funny-but not at the time. So I went looking around in this farmhouse. It was set way back from the road, in a bunch of trees, and had been left alone by the looters. I found a rack full of guns. I took out a shotgun and then found a box of shells that said twelve gauge. The double-barrel gun was a twelve gauge-said so on the metal. So I thought: By God, there isn’t anybody going to rape this kid. I’ll get tough.