In the Shadow of Mordor

Chapter 33

The Shenandoah Valley, Virginia

This is what the old man knew.

Age strips us of our vanities and illusions until, like an oak in winter denuded of its autumnal glory, we stand naked against the bleak winter with all our faults exposed. But unlike the oak, there is no promise of quickening sap in the coming spring, no prospect of summer’s renewed vigor. Man’s cleverness has mauled the circle of life into a straight line, a mortal continuum with a definite beginning and an inevitable end. What happens in between is largely a matter of chance.

A hollowness had expanded inside him, like the empty, icy expanse of space, and it led him to decide that he no longer liked nor needed people, either as individuals or, more generally, as a species. There were those he had called friend, and two women he’d truly loved. But they were lost like stones dropped into deep, dark water to sink from sight forever.

People were best avoided. Perhaps this disdain always had been a part of him but temporarily overcome by youthful enthusiasms. The old man knew too much to retain those deceptions.

There were ideals worth fighting and dying for. He had met evil and vanquished it time and again, only for it to reappear in some other guise, sometimes springing from the same soil he thought he had salted. The lives of some who defended what had once been called an evil empire were snuffed out by his hand, but these had been only temporary, ephemeral victories. By taking sides, he also accepted a burden of responsibility that in the end was too heavy to bear. Evil would always be with us.

And so in the end, he abandoned mankind to its foolish devices and stopped caring if it repeated the same ancient mistakes. His participation was at an end.

He much preferred the company of dogs, a species he viewed as vastly superior to man in spirit, decency, loyalty, and truth. Dogs do not require a surfeit of conversation, and deception is unknown to them.

The smoke from a large Cuban cigar, a Partagas Lusitania, in fact, wafted toward the fire in the native stone hearth. A chocolate Labrador Retriever named Sadie rested her head in his lap. The furnishings in the log cabin were spare and solidly masculine. There was a lot of leather and heavy, oak pieces. The walls were adorned with a few oil paintings, identified as seascapes of the Irish coast if one were to examine the small, brass plaques affixed to the frames. A glass-fronted liquor cabinet with a copper top contained a collection of Islay single-malt scotches.

There were no photographs because reminders of the inhabitants of his former life evoked unfailingly painful memories.

Book shelves lined one wall. There were so many of the great books still to be read. There was a gun safe concealed in another wall containing a variety of weapons. Beside the door, a coat rack was mounted on the wall. It was currently inhabited by a hooded parka and several hats. A sturdy blackthorn walking stick leaned against the wall below beside a pair of fur-lined boots. If one were to enter the cabin, one would encounter the pleasant aroma of tobacco mixed with furniture polish and pine-scented cleaner, but there were never visitors.

The cabin was situated on fifty acres of unimproved, forested mountain land on Supin Lick Ridge, a part of the Appalachian range, overlooking Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. The old man paid a ridiculously inflated price to a delighted real estate speculator. The place had been abandoned decades earlier and sold at a tax auction before passing through many hands. He found the neglected cabin nearly in ruins and spared no expense in its restoration, which included a powerful generator to guard against frequent power outages, a state of the art perimeter alarm system, and a kitchen that sparkled with the most expensive and modern, stainless steel equipment. He also installed a sturdy gate at the entrance to the only access road. He added a garage on one side to house for the Land Rover.

There was no television and no computer, only an ancient but powerful, multi-band radio of German manufacture. A phone line was connected, but he kept the phone unplugged. There was no one from whom he wished to hear.

He was comfortable here, alone but for the dog, and isolated from the world by acres of forested mountainside. The cabin represented a return to beginnings, to self-sufficiency.

Once a month, the old man would drive with the dog to the nearest city to re-stock his supplies. He discovered Costco, which except for the scotch satisfied most of his needs.

An early frost already had begun to turn the leaves by mid-October leading Shenandoah Valley residents to predict a long, hard winter. The leaves turned earlier than usual, bringing in carloads of tourist gawkers who bought locally produced apple cider and colorfully decorated hand-carved whirligigs in the shape of roosters or other animals. In another month hunters would begin to move through the forests in search of deer, turkey, and bear. The prizes from these hunts would feed many families throughout the year.

It was time to top up the 500-gallon underground propane tank, assure a good supply of dry firewood, and stock the larder.

In the check-out line at Costco the old man noticed a man in a military surplus jacket with a woman in a hijab, not in itself so unusual, even in Harrisonburg, Virginia. The man was young and handsome. He and the woman ferried two loaded trollies piled high with bulk food items toward the check-out counter.

Shoppers avoided the line like scattering birds to head for other lines that promised a faster pass through. The old man, his own shopping cart heaped with a month’s supply of meats, frozen goods, and sundries, fell in behind the two.

It was a spur of the moment decision, his interest slightly piqued. It was not so much the fact that the couple aroused his curiosity, but rather the outline of a large caliber pistol traced through the fabric of the man’s jacket when he bent to the trolley to lift items onto the counter.

Virginia is a concealed carry State, but the combination of a Muslim couple and a large caliber weapon in a store full of shoppers flipped an interior switch which activated reflexes too much a part of his make-up for too many years to ignore. Entirely of its own accord his hand snaked inside his jacket to unsnap the safety strap that secured a Heckler & Koch .45 Tactical in a shoulder rig.

Nothing untoward happened. The couple paid for their purchases with cash and trundled toward the exit. Except that when the man spoke to the woman the language he used was Russian. This shifted the old man’s speculation geographically northward, toward the Caucasus.

The old man paid and pushed his own cart to the parking lot where he loaded his purchases into the Land Rover.

The couple was still loading their purchases into the bed of a beat up F-150 with sun-bleached red paint and a sagging rear bumper. The woman did the heavy lifting while the man stood aside lighting a cigarette. When she was finished, the woman headed back to the main building tugging both empty trolleys behind. After crushing his cigarette beneath his shoe, the man climbed behind the steering wheel and started the engine, which emitted a well-tuned purr that belied the trucks appearance. He waited for the woman to return and clamber into the cab before backing out of the parking space.

The old man filled the Land Rover’s tank with cheap Costco gas and headed for an ABC store to pick up a couple of bottles of single malt.

Some days later he spotted the F-150 again on the narrow gravel road that led up to Supin Lick ridge. It was stopped in front of a gate that guarded a narrow dirt road leading to a former turkey farm. On certain hot summer days when the wind was right, the stench of the old breeding barns drifted up the mountain over his fifty acres that lay just to the west.

As the Land Rover passed, the man opening the gate stared hard, his eyes following the old man’s progress until he was out of sight. In the Land Rover’s rear view mirror, the F-150 passed through the gate.

His didn’t like his new neighbors’ profile. The location was remote. Given the extent of the old man’s property it was possible that the new occupants of the turkey farm didn’t know he was even there. But he knew about them now in the way a man knows about a splinter in his flesh that is otherwise invisible; the irritation would fester.