Journal Read online

  JOURNAL

  By

  Craig Buckhout

  COPYRIGHT 2011

  By

  Craig Buckhout

  December 12, 2051

  I got no idea how to start this. Words don’t come easy to me, especially if I’m trying to think them out. Give me something to fix and you can know it’ll get done, but to write something down, that was always Claire’s job. She’s the one who always hand wrote the cards and letters and such. She’s also the one who wrote down her thoughts on things in these journals of hers. She loved doing that. I think it was herperspective f up ahead favorite part of the day.

  I remember there was this one time that I asked her why she made writing such a habit and why by hand instead of with that computer I got her. She told me that writing stuff out helped her understand it better and doing it by hand let her feel the words. I never really got what she meant by that, or by a lot of things she said, ‘til now. You see, when I run my fingers over what she wrote on these pages, it’s like I can feel her right through the letters. And when I pick up one of these journals, it’s almost as if — I don’t know — it’s almost as if I’m holding her hand.

  About these journals, like I told you, they belonged to Claire. I hardly ever touched them. They was real special to her. But considering everything, I figure this one time I can write something down in them, too. That’s because I want to make sure I get my say about her and about the way things turned out. So if anyone ever finds them and reads this, he’ll know that my Claire was a good, decent woman, maybe too good for this world. I’m thinking that’s what did her in, too.

  Claire Huston was my wife. We was married for thirty-three years and we went through every kind of thing you can think of together; now this, too. She died today. She just slipped away from me in her sleep. And I feel so God damned useless about it because I didn’t know what else to do to make her better. I tried as best I could. I swear I did. We stayed when we should have been gone. I kept her warm and hid good. I made sure she got most the food, too. But none of that helped any; she just kept on getting weaker and weaker and weaker until there was no changing it.

  She knew what was happening to her, too, but she never once cried, or got cross with me for not doing more, or asked God why he let the world get so bad off. Instead, she kept on telling me that things would be all right, that I’d be OK, and that good people would make everything better again. That was just like her, though. That’s why I loved her. She saw the good in everything and everyone when there wasn’t no good to see.

  I wish I could feel about things like that, too, but I can’t. She was a fine woman. I didn’t deserve her.

  Anyway, so when it gets dark I’ll bury her in the backyard there, by that peach tree she loved so much, and deep down so the dogs don’t get at her. They’ll still get their meal though because I’ll be joining her soon enough. See, the way I figure it, there’s not much point in continuing to live in this world the way it is without her here to keep things right. And for whoever finds this journal, if you take the time to read her words, they just might lift you up and help you know her the way I have these many years. Chester Huston __

  April 1, 2054 (Fools Day) –

  My name is Alan Trent. I’m thirty-nine years old and originally from San Antonio, Texas, USA. I say USA because I’m not sure there is a USA anymore, or, if there is, where its borders are. Up until about three, three and a half years ago I was a part time blackjack dealer in Reno, Nevada with a Masters in B emotional connection foatjusiness Administration. How’s that for a combination? It makes sense if you know another thing about me; I’m not particularly ambitious. I admit it and accept it about myself, even if others don’t. Anyway, my part time work turned into no work at all when the lights went out and people stopped showing up at the casinos. I hung around for a year or so after that, at least until the cops and fire fighters and garbage collectors and undertakers, we mustn’t forget the undertakers, stopped showing up for work, too. That’s when I hopped on my thirty-six year old Honda motorcycle, with all I could carry, and rode north to Washington. See, it was rumored that up near the Canadian border there were still functioning governments, but I found only the same; plenty of people willing to take my life for what little I had. Now I’m on foot, my motorcycle broken down about a hundred miles back on what used to be Highway 97, and headed the other way, back toward San Antonio.

  I have a sister in San Antonio, and she has a husband and three kids: two boys and a girl. Only thing is, they’re probably all dead now, but I haven’t a better idea of where to go. She’s the only blood relative who may be left; parents, brother, ex-wife and daughter all long gone from the sickness, sicknesses actually.

  That’s not exactly what did us in, though, the sickness. It’s much more complicated than that. In the beginning, you didn’t even know it was happening — warming, flooding, drought, fire, starvation, refugee camps, war. That’s because it was happening to the same people it always happened to, not us. First it was Asia, next Africa, and then even Europe. So you just kicked down a few bucks to the Red Cross, turned off the evening news, and forgot about it. At least that’s what I did.

  There came a time, though, when even I, as practiced as I am at ignoring the unpleasant, couldn’t do it anymore. People here were losing their homes and even entire cities to the oceans — Miami, New Orleans, Virginia Beach. Our southern border became a war zone. Hundreds of thousands of people, starving people, poor people, tried to push across. We fought them of course, them and their armies.

  Our old enemies saw opportunity in this. First, they attacked our computer network with these viruses, super viruses they called them, and that shut down our power grid. Well, of course everything was run by electricity — our computers, our cars, our factories, our communication systems, everything. Suddenly I was out of work, sitting at home in the dark, talking to myself. Because nothing moved and little worked, food and water was rationed and medicines ran short. After that it was disease and quarantine, one virus right after the other, and people started dying in large numbers, faster than they could even be buried.

  Next, we must have been attacked with something that wiped out all remaining electronics because even battery operated radios quit on us. They were bombs of some kind, set off miles high above the earth, just a flash and boom in the sky. So the federal and state governments became ineffective, too. They couldn’t communicate with us, they couldn’t reach us, and they certainly couldn’t help us. In Reno, martial law was declared and eventually no law at all. Neighbor stole from neighbor, murder became commonplace. Nothing was the same.ball cap and dark glasseswot

  So for almost two years now I’ve kept moving, hiding, and avoiding all but a very few and still suspicious of even them. I know that somewhere there must be people who have risen up and gathered not only for their mutual safety but for some common good as well. I just haven’t found them yet.

  Three days ago, I discovered this journal, the one you’re reading. It was in an abandoned house on the outskirts of a ghost of a town called Mayfair, in central Washington. It, along with two others already written-in, and yet another blank, was in a kitchen cabinet where I was searching for food. At first, my thought was it would make good tinder for fire and perhaps be of use after taking care of my business, but after reading a few pages, I changed my mind. This woman, Claire Huston, and her husband seemed like good, decent, caring people, the kind of people I’d liked to have known. The kind of people a society should be built around. So I got to thinking that maybe as long as someone carried on with her journal, her humanity will somehow stay alive, too. Which brings me to why I decided to start writing today of all days.

  I saw some p
eople earlier, just a couple of hours ago in fact, near a town with the unlikely name of Okiedoke. There were two men and a boy of about fifteen, and they were gathering wood maybe a hundred, a hundred and fifty yards away from me. One of the men was older than the other, or seemed so anyway. He was bald on top, with a ring of gray hair that hung down on the sides and back. He was dressed in dirty overalls and moved about as if he’d suffered a leg injury of some sort. The other was a redhead with a long pony tail, wearing what looked like a black, knee-length overcoat. He seemed to be the one in charge because I could see him pointing and the other two moving off in one direction or another to pick up wood.

  The boy now, he’s not like them. In fact, I don’t think they’re related at all. The reason I say that is he’s tall and skinny, with a milk chocolate complexion, so my guess is he’s maybe Mexican or American Indian. Both the men are definitely fair skinned. But there’s another reason I don’t think they are related.

  A moment passed there when I thought the kid saw me. I mean he stared right at me for at least three or four seconds, maybe more, causing me to move further behind the tree I was standing next to. When he finally turned away, he looked at Mr. Ponytail who was busy picking up a tree branch and apparently unaware of this whole exchange. Then this kid did something totally unexpected. He purposely dropped his load of sticks onto the ground.

  I guess that must have really ticked Mr. Ponytail off because he put his own load on the ground and stomped his way over to the kid, where he proceeded to kick him several times in the butt and legs until the kid finally went down. The man pulled what looked like a pistol out of his coat pocket and pointed it right at the kid’s head. I thought for sure I’d hear a shot and that would be that, but he ended up putting it away, yelling at him, pointing at the sticks on the ground, and stomping off the few yards to pick up his own wood. As I continued to watch, the kid got up to his knees and picked up what he’d dropped. And while all this was going on, the other man, the one with the limp, didn’t move to intercede or even offer comfort afterwards. In fact, he actually captured or stolen or shot or torn apart. It can’t be buriedtiflooked pretty disinterested about the whole matter.

  After they left, I went down to where all this happened. See, sometimes it’s a good idea to recognize the shoeprints of a group like that. They’d definitely be a bunch to steer clear of, if at all possible. Well I found their shoeprints all right, but I also found something else. On the ground, right where the kid had dropped his armload of wood, the word “help” was clearly scratched in the dirt. My guess is that the kid must have written it there when he was on his knees and Mr. Ponytail had his back turned. Smart kid I guess, but I wonder if he would have done it if he knew he was going to get a beating like that.

  Well anyway, that’s the reason I decided to start writing today. I’m going to see if I can help the kid and get him away from those two. I know it’s a foolish thing to do. There’re a dozen good reasons not to get involved. Believe me, I’ve told myself ten times over that it would be much safer to just stay invisible and pass on by. I’ve certainly seen worse these last couple of years and done nothing. So, why the change? Why not just play it safe and look the other way? If I get hurt on this foolhardy enterprise, there are no emergency rooms to go to or medicines to take. I’ll be pretty much on my own. I don’t owe that kid anything either. He’s nothing to me.

  Still, I’ve made up my mind to help and can only speculate as to why. To myself I say it’s the right thing to do, that no human being should be treated like that. Also, if I don’t help this kid, if I turn my back on him, I’m no better than his tormentor. I can’t help but wonder, though, are these my words and my feelings or those of a woman who now lies buried under a peach tree in a little town three days walk from here?

  About ten months before her death, Claire Huston wrote something in her journal that has occupied my thoughts much these last couple of days. She wrote, “If I can keep but a single tear from a trembling cheek or offer up a tick of will to a wasted spirit or make a gift of hope to one given up, my time here will not have been idled.”

  So I guess the question is, am I doing this because of my own need to see things right, or am I doing this because this woman, who I don’t even know, has shamed me into living a life not idle? I truthfully don’t know the answer to that. I hope it’s the former rather than the latter but whichever the case, man or mouse, I’m committed now and feel better for it. So you see, I have to write now if I’m to write at all because this may end up being both my first and last entry. April Fools Day.

  Well, enough for now. If I’m to pull this off, there’s much to do before it gets dark. So maybe I’ll write some more later — or maybe not. We’ll see.

  April 3, 2054 –

  This is the first chance I’ve had to write and, as you can tell, I’m still ali emotional connection about shoulderve. As far as the boy goes, well, things didn’t turn out exactly as I thought they would.

  ____________

  I started out just before dark on the evening of April 1st, in one of those thick, heavy drizzles that seems to soak right through your pores, freezing your insides until you shake from one end to the other. I stashed my pack, food sack, and rifle under a rusted-out flatbed and followed their path through the trees, carrying only my pistol and a few lengths of nylon cord. I hadn’t gone far before I smelled the smoke from their fire and soon located them in a cluster of rundown buildings that must have once been a farm.

  It was situated on a flat piece of land bordered on one side by a row of giant cottonwoods, a bulwark holding off the strong north winds common to the area. There was a main house, small and square with a shingled roof and a wooden porch that sagged on one corner, a moderately sized metal barn with an open door, and a long, three-walled shed. There were also several pieces of farm equipment in the yard surrounded by high weeds and an old faded blue pickup truck missing its back window.

  Though smoke was coming from the house and a vague light flickered in its windows, I wasn’t convinced they were all in there. Given the way things are, I figured one of them had to be somewhere outside looking for intruders. That’s certainly what I’d do, and have done. So I decided to wrap myself in my poncho and settle down to watch.

  Quite a while passed before I saw a man wearing a baseball cap and a plaid coat come out of the house. He walked to one of the pieces of farm equipment, some sort of machine that sat tall on big tires and with a partially glassed-in cab. He slapped the side of it with his hand, hard enough for me to hear, and I saw a head pop up above what must have been the seat. After more movement from within, a man got out, the one with the limp I’d seen earlier, holding what looked like a pump shotgun. The man with the ball cap took the shotgun from him and said, “You’re crazy man. You know what he’ll do if he catches you sleepin’,” as he climbed up into the cab. The one with the limp started toward the house but was stopped when his companion told him he was supposed to bring some wood back with him.

  The man hobbled over to the barn where I could hear the sound of more conversation, but not the words said. A minute or two later, he reappeared cradling some firewood, followed by the kid carrying still more. They walked to the house, and the kid started to follow the man inside, but he was forced back from the door. The kid dumped his load on the porch and remained there a moment longer, looking through one of the windows, angling one way and the other before finally heading back to the barn.

  So that told me that there were at least three men in their party, and they had at least two firearms between them, a pistol and a shotgun. It also raised an interesting question. If the kid was in the barn by himself, why wouldn’t he just sneak out and run off? Why did he need my help? Maybe there was someone else in there with him who would shout a warning. Or maybe they checked on him every couple of hours. Or maybe he just figured that if he did run off, they’d only track him down and give him a real thrashing or battery operated radio with t worse. At the time, too many maybes t
o know, but it also didn’t matter. In my mind, I was going to try to help him nonetheless.

  I let things quiet down for about an hour and used a corner of the barn to shield my approach from the man in the ball cap. That got me to within about ten feet of the door, where I used the weeds to hide me while I crawled another six feet or so closer. I laid there in the shadows and grass until I was sure the lookout was turned the other way before drawing my pistol and slipping into the barn.

  I must interject here that even to me these words make me sound like a man of action — I “used the corner of the barn to shield my approach,” and “I crawled another six feet closer” — but that’s so far from the truth, it’s not funny. I avoid trouble just like I avoid poison oak and all other things uncomfortable. I hate confrontation. So strong is my aversion to it that in the old days, before things fell apart, if I bought something defective I was more likely to just keep it than to go back and argue with the clerk for a refund. That’s how much I dislike difficulty. So I’m no man of action, I’ll tell you that. And as I think about it now, it simply amazes me how a few written lines in an old woman’s journal was cause enough for me to act in the manner I’ve described.

  Anyway, getting back to it, it was pitch black in the barn, so I put my back against the wall next to the door until my eyes had a chance to adjust to the lack of light. Standing there in the dark, essentially blind, I felt completely vulnerable to whoever else might be inside. I steeled myself for a shout or even worse, a shot. For the hundredth time that night, maybe the thousandth, I told myself that this was one of the stupidest things I’d ever done and I should just turn right around and get the heck out of there. If there was someone else in the barn with the kid, and he was awake, all he’d have to do is yell out and the guy with the shotgun would be there. My pistol against his shotgun wouldn’t be much of a fair fight.