Tears of Abraham

CHAPTER FOURTEEN Everybody Dies Sometime

THE PLAINS

It took weeks to cross Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri. Traveling in a Titan quad-cab truck, they took state highways over the snow-swept plains and open spaces. The small farming towns they stopped in seemed to be faring better than most of the country. When they ran out of fuel, they walked.

The people they encountered were mostly generous and kind.

In Elwood, Nebraska, they spent an evening with an entire extended family. The patriarch was an eighty-year-old man named Abraham with a flowing beard and penetrating blue eyes. They’d encountered him at a feed store outside of the town, and he’d invited them to dinner.

Hungry for more than just food, Henry had swayed his companions. There was something about Abraham, something true and good that tugged at Henry, drew him toward the man. A kind of moral gravity.

At a long oak table, the adults dined by candlelight on roasted chicken and potatoes, and Henry ate voraciously. The children sat at two smaller tables, and the atmosphere was like a family Christmas dinner Henry had only imagined as a child, where generations laughed together and were bound by stories, time, tears, and blood.

Abraham’s children and their children lived on adjoining land that had been in the family for a hundred and fifty years. Abraham had served in Vietnam, and two of his grandchildren were active duty, one in the navy, the other in the army.

“Lord, we thank you for this bounty thou hast provided. Please watch over our young men and women,” Abraham prayed before they broke bread. “Give them strength and wisdom. And Father God, please heal our great nation.”

They did not talk about politics, and they did not talk about the war. There was no mention of race, and Carlos and Martinez loosened up within minutes of being inside the farmhouse with the white wooden porch, the sound of children laughing, and the smell of fresh bread in the oven.

Henry was enthralled by the family and he wondered what it would have been like to be raised in a family like this, surrounded by love and a kind of unity and acceptance more rare than diamonds, more precious than gold.

“Remember that time Daddy went out to the lake too early in the season and fell through the ice in that old Ford…”

“What about Harold and that wasp nest up in the barn…”

They were stories everyone had heard before, and there was continuity in them, a shared love and history and commonality. Henry laughed so hard he cried, seeing the old man plunging through the ice, but pulling the fish he’d sought for years out of the sinking car with him, trudging back home through the cold, only to have his wife give him a tongue-lashing when he walked through the front door for his stupidity. That fish hung over the fireplace.

“Was it worth it?” Henry had asked Abraham.

“Well of course it was. Look at that fish. He’s beautiful!”

Abraham said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and everyone laughed. His children and grandchildren knew the story, and they hadn’t forgotten it. Some things are worth fighting for and some things are worth living for, and they’re not necessarily the same things. Abraham knew the difference, laughing and wise with his family and the fish mounted on the wall.

Henry slept on the floor next to the fireplace, and it was the best rest he’d had in months. When they said good-bye the next morning, Henry was sorry to leave. Abraham handed Henry the keys to his truck.

“You boys need this more than I do,” he said. “I’ve got another one.” Abraham was that kind of man.

As they traveled across the plains, they saw evidence of the war. Fighter jets screeched overhead on a regular basis, but there were no columns of troops, no towns on fire. From what they heard from townspeople in various places, the most intense fighting was still in Colorado and Tennessee, where federal forces were engaging rebel troops.

This was not good news for the Wolves, because they were now heading toward Nashville.

Sergeant Martinez reasoned that if they could make it to Nashville, they could find more men to help them, men they knew and trusted. They had a clear sense of mission now, and the only way they could accomplish it was with additional information and assets.

“It’ll be a trap,” Carlos said when Martinez finally told them where they were actually going.

“Yes.”

“Why would we do that?”

“Because we have to have more information.”

“Couldn’t we go about it another way?”

“They’re going to find us one way or another. Maybe we can find them first. I know we can get to the Air Guard base, get word to some of our people. They’ll come through for us. I’m certain of it.”

“Then what?”

“Then it’s a trap. Only it’s ours, not theirs.”

“I don’t know, Sarn’t Major,” Henry said.

“We’re going on the offensive,” Martinez said. “We’ve been reacting so far, and we’re losing, and the country is going to hell. I’m sick of it.” He was quiet, intense, and persuasive. “We’ve got to get the word out that some really evil people are pulling the strings. And then we’re going to hunt those fuckers down and kill them.”

“These guys are smart.”

“They’re not as smart as they think they are. Look at this war. They couldn’t have wanted this. Not the guys at the top. It’s bad for business. We’ve got to know exactly what’s on this drive, but we need more than that. We need to have a chat with one of their operators who knows something.”

“How are we going to do that, sir?” Henry said.

“I’m still working on that part,” Martinez said with a rueful grin. “Something will present itself. We’ll recon the base. If we can make contact with one of our guys, we’ll try to slip in. If it looks like we’re burned, then we’ll move on to plan B.

“I’m all warm and fuzzy inside again, Sarn’t,” Carlos said. “You really know how to motivate.”

They cut through the rolling hills of Kentucky, where patches of snow lay on brown fields and the trees were gray and leafless, and finally entered Tennessee, staying well west of Fort Campbell.

They traded the pickup truck for a battered panel van and three Tennessee driver’s licenses, which they altered enough that they might pass a casual inspection at a checkpoint.

In Tennessee, the military presence was obvious. Even in small towns, men and women in uniform stood at street corners beside armored vehicles.

Helicopters churned through the sky, drones buzzed close to the deck, and at night, there were flashes far to the north like a distant lightning storm.

The people were tense and suspicious, and had a feral look about them. Food was scarce, gasoline next to impossible to come by. Civilians armed with hunting rifles stood watch at crossroads over makeshift barricades and signs reading “No entrance,” or “Go away,” or “If you’re not from here, you’ll get shot.”

Henry drove slowly through a tiny community of tobacco farmers, an African-American hamlet of old wooden farmhouses dotting the hills, and a mom-and-pop feed store that doubled as a gas station. Henry had been through the town once, and had eaten a fried baloney sandwich at the old store; he remembered the floor being a bit slanted and that the sandwich was so good he’d ordered another. Everything was burned. The homes, the store, the gas station, and the bodies.

“What the hell?” Carlos said. “Pull over.”

Henry stopped in front of the remains of a farmhouse. The barn and home were still smoldering.

Carlos bolted from the truck and walked toward the ashes. Henry kept the truck idling while Carlos paced around the dead farmstead with his hands on his hips.

When Carlos came back to the truck, Henry saw tears in the big man’s eyes.

“Go,” Carlos said. His voice was almost a whisper.

They never talked about it. Henry would never know exactly what happened in that hamlet. Growing up in the South, Henry had run into plenty of racist bastards, secret racists who assumed he was one of them because he was white, and they’d launch into a casual discussion which had nothing to do with race, and then they’d use a word Henry despised and somehow make a conversation about pickup trucks or lawnmowers or beer out of it. Thinking about it now, seeing his friend hurt in a way Henry could never understand, he wished he’d knocked a few more fools who’d used that despicable word off barstools.

Henry and Carlos were like brothers, yet there was no way Henry could really know what it was like to be a black man, judged and weighed and deemed lacking by an ignorant and pervasive few, based merely on the color of his skin.

Coming at Nashville from the west, they waited at a checkpoint on the outside of Bellevue, an affluent suburb of brick homes and rolling hills. Traffic in both directions was at a standstill, and there was nothing to do but wait. They’d learned from other travelers that there was no good way into town, so they’d settled on the most direct route.

Some vehicles overheated, some ran out of gas. Civilians helped each other out, pushing cars to the side of the road. Whoever was making the logistical decisions clearly either did not give a damn, or they were blatantly inept. While Henry drove in the eastbound lane, he passed the checkpoint going the other way. There were two separate checkpoints. It made no sense.

“They don’t want people coming or going,” Martinez observed. “They don’t want to stop traffic entirely because then it’ll look like they’re the bad guys. Maybe that’s what this is. Either way, they’re strongly discouraging travel in or out.”

The rain was cold, misting, and gray. It was the kind of winter day in Nashville Henry had come to loathe. He longed for the sun on his face, Suzanne at his side, and a band playing reggae music by the ocean.

The people leaving Nashville carried their lives with them. There were cars and trucks and vans loaded with children, mattresses, grills, boxes, bags, toys, and hope, and the people had a way of shaking their heads at Henry, as if to say “What are you thinking? You’re going the wrong way!”

It was almost midnight when the crash happened, although the collision itself was hardly a wreck, a slight smack between a van and a pickup truck going the other way. What happened afterward wrecked lives.

KEY WEST, FLORIDA

Mary’s death cast a pall over the group. Suzanne felt guilty, sweaty, sticky, despondent, angry, claustrophobic, and frightened. Her friends were worse off than she was.

Bart retreated into a gloomy fortress of silence and stone. He seemed to never sleep, and paced the house and grounds like a wolf in a zoo, until he wore a path around the perimeter of the grounds. His communication was a monosyllabic, a word or two at best.

Bobby found a bottle of rum, and then another.

Ginnie smoked a whole lot of weed, but she did not get the giggles or the munchies. She was lethargic, weepy, and cracked. She talked about her parents and her childhood, and sometimes she would follow Suzanne around until Suzanne would snap at her.

“Ginnie,” Suzanne said, “shut up.”

“What? I’m sorry; it’s just that I keep thinking about, you know, my folks, and whether they’re okay, and Miami without power for so long and stuff.”

“I know. Now leave me alone.”

“All right, dude.”

“Don’t call me dude again. Ever.”

“Well, damn.”

“Get a grip, Ginnie. I need you. But I need you to be you. Not this vapid dingbat you’ve decided to turn into. You’re smart and capable. Be that girl. No, be that woman.”

“Okay,” Ginnie said. And then went off to smoke a bowl somewhere. There was no water, food, or electricity, but somehow, there was still plenty of marijuana.

Greenburg thought trying to make a run for Cuba was a good idea.

“We can all go on either my boat or Bart’s. We’ve got the fuel.”

“Nobody is stopping you,” Suzanne told him. “If you want to try, go for it. You might be better off. It’s a day trip. I’m not leaving. I’m not leaving my home for someone to burn. I’m not leaving because this is where Henry is going to try to go. I’m not risking the pirates that are out there preying on people, and we’ve all heard the stories now, and I’m not going to take my child out there with them.”

“Henry’s dead, Suzanne,” Greenburg said. “Face it. We can get off the island and go to Cuba and be there tomorrow. Hot showers, electricity, no bands of thugs shooting at us.”

“Have at it, Greenburg,” Suzanne said. “You should go.”

“I meant only we should all go—”

“Got that. Not happening. If you want to make the run, by all means, go for it. I’m not going.”

“You’ll get your ass shot off,” Bobby said from the couch, curled up with a bottle of Jamaican rum. “And even if you don’t, you’ll be in Cuba.” He snorted.

Greenburg left the next morning, just before sunrise, and Suzanne never saw him again. She hoped he made it to Cuba, and that he was welcomed there by salsa and ceviche and cigars.

Taylor was the perpetual optimist, the sweetness and light that kept Suzanne going.

“When’s Daddy coming home?”

“Soon,” Suzanne said more times than she could count. Sometimes they were fishing at the dock, other times Taylor was going to sleep with her softie-soft, and other times just eating a piece of grilled fish.

“And he’ll bring me a present. ’Cause he does when he comes home and maybe he’ll get me some ice cream. With sprinkles.”

“Yes, baby.”

“Is Miss Mary in heaven now?” “Yes.”

“Is she happy there? Are there unicorns and ice cream? Miss Mary liked them. She’s happy, right? You’ll see her again and you’ll still be friends in heaven?”

“Yeah, honey. We’ll still be friends in heaven.” “What if you die?”

“What do you mean, child? You know we all die. Just not for a long, long time.”

“But Miss Mary wasn’t old. You said she died. She’s in heaven.”

“Right.”

“So what if you die. What if Daddy dies? Will we be friends up in heaven?”

“We won’t die. Not now.”

“But you said everybody dies.”

“Yes.”

“But you wouldn’t leave me, right?”

“Well,” Suzanne said, feeling overwhelmed and underprepared and inadequate and untrue, “someday, I’ll die. And someday, so will Daddy, because that’s how it is. But not for a long time, okay? Don’t worry about it.”

“But you can’t die! You can’t be in heaven and leave me here by myself!”

“Baby, not for a long time. Please, don’t get all upset.”

“Promise!”

Suzanne gazed into the eyes of trust and earnestness and faith absolute and she did what any parent would do. She made the promise and felt like a traitor.

What do I really believe? I do believe in heaven, and a God that cares about us. It’s hard to remember that sometimes. But look at this child. She’s my leap of faith, my proof in a higher power.

“Yay!” Taylor said, and then scurried out of the room, the problem solved. That Taylor believed in Suzanne so much that a mother’s love could defeat death with a single word made Suzanne want to smile and weep at the same time.

By the time Suzanne had made it back home that morning, Mary was already cold. A hollow-eyed doctor at the hospital looked at Suzanne like she’d lost her mind while she begged him to come with her.

“Are you nuts?” he’d said.

“No. I’ll give you anything. A car, money, whatever. Please help us. This woman is going to die.”

“She’s already dead,” the young doctor in green scrubs stained with blood said. “I’ve got to go.” And he’d turned and left Suzanne in the hallway of the hospital, one crammed with sick and dying people and the stench of corruption and death. “I’m sorry,” the doctor said as he pushed Suzanne away with a lack of bedside manner he’d had to practice over the last month.

The doctor had been right; by the time Suzanne got home, Mary was dead.

Suzanne chaffed at her inability to control and contain the violence and death around her, and she felt burdened by her responsibility to her friends, her child, and herself in the face of this hopelessness. She struggled to put on a smile and brave face, yet the weight pushed down on her and made her want to sink to her knees. It was too much to bear alone, and even though she knew her friends were fighting to survive, struggling to cope, Suzanne felt the burden was more upon her.

When there was a question about food or water, everyone looked at her. When she insisted that they dispose of corpses, Bart, Ginnie, and Bobby acted like resentful employees. They wanted to postpone it, but there could be no procrastination, and they should have known that. There is no putting off the moving of a dead body outside your door, inside your home. It must be done, and someone has to do it, and if it’s just you, then you do it.

Bart abandoned the projects he’d been working on and became obsessed with attackers. He constructed a miniature fortress on the roof, made of concrete blocks and palm-fronds and plywood, and he started spending nights up there. During the day, he’d walk the perimeter, shirtless, wearing flip-flops or boat shoes, with the AR in his hands, a knife strapped to his belt, and at least one sidearm on his hip or thigh.

They needed security, along with food, water, and hope. Bart was on overwatch with an assault rifle, and he neglected everything else, leaving it to Suzanne.

When Bart told her they were being watched, she dismissed it as paranoia at first.

“There are at least two teams,” Bart said. “Across the canal, there are two operators, and they’ve been in four different houses on different days. The same guys, different places, tourist clothes, never seeming to look our way, but they’re the same guys, and the homes are vacant, or should be. And the water guy? The guy selling water from a cart? Nope. He’s not an entrepreneur. There’s a corn-fed man with a beard always somewhere thirty yards behind him. The thing is, the guy with the beard has changed his clothes and his hair. But it’s the same guy, I promise you.”

“I’m listening. What are they doing?”

“Watching. The better question is why.” “The hell if I know.”

“Bullshit.”

“Bart,” Suzanne said in a dismissive, exasperated tone she realized she’d been using too often of late, “Why would—”

“Right. Now, look, Suzanne, I know what Henry did. Does. He’s black ops, and we can stop pretending now. I’ve known all along. Henry and I are friends. Brothers. There’s some shit you can’t talk about and some that you pretend you didn’t talk about, and that’s how it is. Some vodka and some rum, and then you know things, stuff maybe you didn’t want to know. So, yeah, I’ve known about that, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out there’s a connection now, in light of the civil war and whatnot, and these spooks watching us. There’s a thing, and I know that much, I just don’t know why. But we’re being watched by professionals, your husband is some kind of a spook, there is a war happening outside your front door, and you know more than you’re saying. Now’s the time. Spill it.”

“You’re right.”

“Never thought I’d hear you say those words. Go.”

“My father told me some things. Said he’d done some favors for some powerful people. Bad people, maybe that’s what he said. I should’ve told you, but I didn’t want to believe it, not like it mattered. I should have said something, but I didn’t want to besmirch—”

“What the hell?”

“I didn’t want to stain things. Life. I didn’t want to say the words. Because they hurt too much. That my father is a traitor, and his choices are still screwing me over. I didn’t want to say the truth. I didn’t want to speak it because then it might be right, and I’ve been dealing with everything else and I’m sorry.”

Because sometimes you can know a thing is true and still lie to yourself. She’d done it, and denied it, perhaps an even worse sort of lie. Lies are easy at first. It’s later that they come back to betray you. Lies we tell ourselves with the best of intentions are the ones which wreak the worst havoc.

“The admiral is a traitor? Your father? What the hell?”

“He admitted he’d done some things he shouldn’t have. He warned me I was in danger. He wanted me to leave the country with him. I couldn’t go with him. I just couldn’t. When Henry comes home, he’ll come home. I couldn’t abandon you and Mary—”

“You could have told me about this! Suzanne! What were you thinking?”

“I’m sorry.”

“They’re watching us for a reason, Suzanne. These kinds of people don’t do that unless they’re planning something. We’ve got to leave. Lose them.”

“I don’t want to leave.”

“I don’t care! That’s the right move now. Don’t you get it? If we were targets, and there’s no reason we should be, then we would have been dead a long time ago. You’re bait. They want something or someone, and it’s got to involve either Henry or your father. Do you have any idea how dangerous these kinds of people are? They are not in the business of failing. We’ve got to go.”

“You’re running around in flip-flops and not sleeping, and you’re saying we should leave? Come on, Bart. You’re not exactly the voice of reason.”

“I’m right and you know it. We leave now. Stop arguing and start paying attention. You’re proud, you’re scared shitless, and you’re stubborn. I’m a bit frayed. Doesn’t make me wrong. This also means you might well be right about Henry being alive.”

“All right, Bart. I get it. I don’t want to, but I get it. We can’t risk staying. Damn. How do we do this?”

“Good. I’ve been thinking. Do you remember Coyote McCloud?”

“Oh God. The hermit in the Glades?”

“Yep. Now, he’s got a little fish camp, completely off the grid. Henry knows about it ’cause he’s been there with me a few times. If we can leave word for Henry, he’ll know how to get there.”

“McCloud is insane.”

“Yeah, no arguments there. But right now, he’s our best bet. We’ve got to hole up somewhere and ride out the storm, away from prying eyes.”

“Maybe we should have gone to Cuba.”

“They would have captured us before we got out of the channel.” “They could just pick us up now.”

“I’m guessing they will, anytime. Use us for leverage. I don’t know what they want, why they want it. If they think we’re going to make a run, you can be sure they’ll stop us. We’ve got to keep this between us, load the boat over the course of the day. Maybe load two boats. One they don’t know about. In the middle of the night, we’ll make a try.”

“I’ll have Bobby leave a message at Captain Tony’s for Henry. He might stop there if he knows we’re at risk. Bobby going there won’t look unusual,” Suzanne said.

“Right. Just make the message ‘Coyote.’ Henry will know what that means. I can maybe carve that into the dock, too, in case he does something dumb like try to come straight here.”

She thought about the maze of islands, sandbars, shifting channels, and mangroves that surrounded McCloud’s shack. If they wanted to get off the grid, the Everglades was the place to do it. Getting there without being seen was going to be hard. Putting up with Coyote McCloud, Bobby, Bart, and Ginnie might be even harder. She’d never been to the shack north of Hells Bay, but she’d heard plenty of stories. McCloud was a former operator who was convinced the government had him on a kill list. He claimed to be ex-CIA. Bart and Henry believed him.

Suzanne felt a sense of relief. At least they were going to do something other than sit around in this house. And Henry was alive, she was more sure now than ever. She spent the rest of the day putting on a show for the surveillance teams; she sunbathed topless by the pool, strutted around the front of the house in a bikini picking oranges and grapefruit from her trees. Bobby went off to find a second boat.

Maybe, we’ll all get a second chance.