Skippy’s Worldby Frederick D. Rustam |
Table of Contents |
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| Chapter 2: The Outsider | |
Witch’s Wisdom
Bonnie hid her carbine in the forest before she and Skippy climbed up the trail to the cave home of Granny Pritt, a local witch.
A big red dog on a long chain announced their arrival in no uncertain terms. The visitors waited patiently for their presence to be accepted or rejected. Shortly, a hulking, slack-jawed young man carrying a sawed-off shotgun appeared in the cave’s heavy wooden doorway and gawked at the visitors.
“Hush-up, Red. Wha’choo guys want?!”
“We need Granny’s advice,” declared Skippy.
“Medical advice,” added Bonnie. “We’re just refugees. We aren’t armed.” They opened their jackets and raised their arms.
The guardian turned and shouted into the cave, “It’s a boy and a girl. They’s refajees. They ain’t got no guns.”
The scratchy voice of an old woman replied from the dark interior. “Bring ’em on in, Lem’yel.”
The boy-man hitched-up the growling dog’s chain but kept his gun pointed at the visitors with only a slight droop. “Go on in. Don’t make no sudden moves.”
* * *
The crone lacked a pointed witch’s hat to cover her scraggly gray hair. But dressed in witchy black, she played her role to a T. She relaxed in her easy chair, sizing-up Skippy and Bonnie with her rheumy blue eyes as the fatigued visitors sprawled on her ragged sofa. Lemuel stood by, cradling his beloved gun. The scene, illuminated by candlelight, reminded Skippy of the old movies about city folks discovering rural horror.
“That’s quite a story,” declared Granny, whom nobody addressed as ‘Mrs. Pritt.’ “I been wonderin’ what’s happenin’ in Duketown. Too bad ya’ll didn’t kill that bastard Duke in the dust-up ya had. We git lotta people runnin’ from him. So, whadaya y’all need from Granny?”
“I have the wasting disease, Granny.”
“I see that, girl. All I can do with my meds is treat yer symptoms. Sorry to say, what you need is a place where you’ll be comfortable in yer last days. You should go to the Sisters of Limited Charity. They don’t take just anybody, but I’ll put in a good word for you.”
“Thanks, Granny.” Bonnie wondered how Granny would do that... give her a handwritten note of introduction, maybe.
“Now, y’all come on and have lunch with me. We got ham hocks, butter beans, cornbread, and buttermilk. And apples for dessert.” She arose slowly from her chair, grasped a candleholder and led the visitors deeper into the darkness. “While yer chowin’ down, I’ll get my map to the Sisters’ place for you to memorize. It ain’t easy to find. Them Sisters don’t want a lot of people a’knowin’ where they are.”
* * *
The visitors tried not to take notice of Lemuel, who slurped his food. “Don’t mind him. He ain’t all together, but he’s a good boy. I take care of him and he protects me from the bad ones that comes here from time to time.”
“You seem pretty well equipped to endure the hard times, Granny,” chirped Skippy.
“Shore am. People trade with me — goods for help. People needs witches more’n ever, now. For healin’ mostly. Witches has been trusted by smart people since... I don’t know when. Ages.”
Skippy asked, “Do you cast spells, too?”
“Skippy... please,” cautioned Bonnie.
“Shore do. A good spell ’gainst an enemy can make a body feel lots better... for a while.” Granny cackled and the visitors chuckled.
* * *
Granny waved goodbye to the visitors from her doorway, then returned to candlelit darkness, followed by the faithful Lemuel. From a cabinet, she removed a radio transceiver and its rolled-up antenna. She carried it lovingly to a table near the doorway and handed Lemuel the wire. “Put this up, Lem’yel. I gotta do some talkin’.”
He pulled the far end of the antenna wire out to a tree and fastened the near end to an eyebolt in the door frame. Then he mounted an old bicycle whose rear wheel was belted to a generator.
“Stomp it, Lem’yel.” He grunted and began pedaling. Granny turned on her transceiver. It was tuned to a little-known network of amateur operators, one of which was Sister Michael. The net moderator called each member in turn and solicited any messages each might have for other listening members. When Granny was called, she dictated a message about Bonnie to the Mother Superior of the Sisters of Limited Charity. Receipt of the message was acknowledged, and Granny signed off. “You can let up now, Lem’yel.”
In the forest below Granny’s cave home, Bonnie was relieved to find that her precious carbine hadn’t been discovered and stolen. She strapped it over her shoulder, and she and Skippy moved on.
“I’d rather be a witch than a bitch,” mused Bonnie, bitterly. “It’s a shame I won’t have time to learn some witchcraft.”
“Yeah,” mumbled Skippy, avoiding comment about her remaining lifetime. “Witchcraft is good.” He belched. “Butter beans aren’t.”
Fare Thee Well
On the meadow’s upslope, Skippy turned to wave farewell to his might-have-been-lover. The Sisters were hustling Bonnie inside their fortified residence. She gave him an over-the-shoulder glance before she swept through the entrance with her hosts. A Sister who knew how to use it carried the carbine Bonnie had acquired in Duketown. Skippy wanted and needed that gun, but it proved to be the currency for Bonnie’s sanctuary.
The sharp sound of the residence’s hefty door slamming shut marked the finality of his friendship with the attractive young woman with whom he’d been traveling since they’d escaped from Duketown. The symptoms of Bonnie’s disease had worsened. She was in no condition to roam the cold, hostile countryside looking for temporary shelter. Most places would only accept strangers if they were healthy and agreed to do hard work.
Until they’d reached the Sisters of Limited Charity in their remote dale, Bonnie had despaired of finding sanctuary. After bad experiences with overcautious rural folk, they’d even considered returning to Duketown. But since The Duke, that benighted town’s gangster boss, had nearly been killed during their escape, returning was out of the question.
The Sisters weren’t a chapter of nuns. They were a group of wary, hard-bitten women who had been battered by the postnuclear world and who built a sheltering home where men weren’t welcome, except to trade goods and move on. Thanks to Granny Pritt, they’d taken Bonnie in, but they’d sent Skippy on his way.
Times were tough. Country people who had anything guarded it against those escaping from the ruined cities and suburbs. With so little of life’s resources available, strangers were rarely trusted or accommodated. The Sisters did give Skippy some bread wrapped in a sheet of newsprint. Then they pointed to a trail which climbed to a mountain pass through which a cold wind streamed.
After gaining the pass, Skippy sought the setting sun, veering southwest to avoid the worst of the approaching winter. He wanted to leave the eastern forests and head for the plains. He tried as best as he could to avoid roads, and he skirted towns and villages.
“Another wonderful night in the woods, with fallen leaves for a bed,” he groused. These days, no one knocked on a farmhouse door at night.
* * *
Skippy shuffled sleepily along a forest trail. Last night, he’d slept fitfully, although he was getting better at roughing it. He stopped to rub his tired, itchy eyes. As he enjoyed this small relief, a stranger stepped from behind a nearby tree and stood in his blurry view aiming a rifle at him. Skippy blinked, but the specter remained.
“Where ya think yer goin’, boy?!” The stranger’s voice was harsh, menacing. His words fogged the frosty air.
“Me?” exclaimed Skippy, foolishly. His youthful captor looked like a bandit — and he was. Skippy knew that guys like this roamed the land, taking what they wanted and hurting people they didn’t like.
“I mean you. Move.” He prodded Skippy with the barrel of his rifle, pushing him along the trail toward a bandit camp in the forest. “Yer a donkey-boy, now.”
Beast of Burden
Loaded to the max with heavy goods, Skippy stumbled along the trail at the end of the line of bandits. His captor, the rear guard, kept prodding him with his rifle.
“Hey, I’m running with you guys, now.”
“Shut up, kid,” snarled the bandit in front of him. “You ain’t runnin’ with us. You’re just somethin’ we caught, like a rabbit. Watch out you don’t get skinned.” The rear guard giggled in a squeaky, adolescent voice at this homely witticism.
Skippy shut up. He judged the threat to be a real possibility.
* * *
The bandits sat around a campfire, talking loudly. They didn’t seem to care who might hear them or see them illuminated by the leaping flames. They were roasting a raccoon who’d been foolish enough to forage in the daytime. Their captive sat at the fire also, but his hands and feet were tied with cotton clothesline. He wolfed down the meat, dry biscuit, and stale beer they gave him. He told them a carefully-composed version of his story. They interrupted with scoffing curses.
“That’s about it. I’m just a good old boy looking for a place in the sun,” said Skippy cheerfully, but without much sincerity.
“Shee-it,” commented the leader of the group, a man who looked like one of old Bill Quantrill’s more desperate raiders. His scarred face was masked by a full beard. His greasy hat looked like something supplied by a movie propmaster. His AK-47 automatic rifle had notches carved into its handle, a stereotype that was not to be laughed at in these times.
“You’re a boy, alright, but you’re a good-for-nothin’-much boy. What’s yer name, anyway?”
Skippy told them. He was too tired to fake a more acceptable one.
“’Melavitch’? What kind of name is that? You a Jew?”
“Polish Catholic.” Skippy immediately regretted admitting the latter. These guys probably hated Catholics, too.
One of the bandits was a joker. “Hey, Boss, if we can catch two more guys like him, we’ll have enough to change a light bulb.” His pals whooped and slapped their knees at this hoary jest.
Skippy hated Polish jokes. His parents had been good people who worked hard and treated others decently. They were hurt by such thoughtless humor. But Skippy followed up on the joke in hopes of learning something useful. “What light bulb? There’s no electricity around here.”
“There is where we’re headed,” declared the leader, pridefully.
“Where would that be, sir?”
“Bartertown. Where we can trade goods like you for what we really need.”
“’Bartertown’? Never heard of it. Where is it?”
“Ever hear of Prairie Junction, Kansas?”
“Nope.”
“Dumb city trash,” hissed another bandit, who spat into the fire. “You ain’t our kind.”
“Suburban trash,” corrected Skippy. “Give me some credit, will you. I’m totin’ your stuff okay, aren’t I?”
The young rear guard sneered, “The hell you are. How many times did I have to pick you up after you fell down? Huh?”
“Well, you loaded too much on me.”
The leader ended Skippy’s contribution to campfire talk with a curt order. “Shut up, boy, or I’ll put a boot on you.” This remark elicited laughter from the bandits.
From then on, Skippy plotted incessantly to escape. He had no intention of being taken as a slave to “Bartertown,” wherever that was.
The Ravine
Escaping proved to be easier planned than executed. The bandits showed their lack of trust in Skippy by hobbling his legs with a piece of clothesline just long enough to let him struggle with their goods over rough trails.
The day dawned chilly but sunny. The men made good trail time, marching single-file through the last of the woods. They were close to a broad river valley now. They had only to pass through a narrow ravine to get there. Its near-vertical slopes were covered with clinging shrubs. At the top, there were palisade rocks which could conceal rival bandits.
“Keep sharp while we’re in here!” reminded the leader. The bandits scanned the rocks above. They had little cover near the bubbling stream.
Skippy was too tired to look for ambushers. He was almost ready to collapse and not get up, even if they beat him. The trail crossed and recrossed the stony creek. Water soaked into his worn boots and made squishing sounds as he walked. All the sounds of their progress seemed loud in the quiet of the gully.
BAM!... BAM!... BAM!
The party had moved more than halfway toward the wide valley ahead when the first shots rang out from above and behind them. The bandits quickly aimed answering fire at the rocks. One man with a shotgun screamed curses as he wasted buckshot on the out-of-range attackers.
Skippy stooped when the gunfire began. He was too tired to react quickly. But when the man in front of him was shot, he threw himself painfully into the weeds. The baggage he bore covered his head and back. When he felt the shock of a bullet thudding into it, he shrieked and feigned death.
Soon, the yelling and confusion ceased. Voices from the rocks above proclaimed victory. Skippy lay low. He knew the ambushers couldn’t get down the ravine’s steep slopes. It would take some time for them to arrive and begin scavenging. In the welcome silence, he freed himself from his burden and got to his feet.
Around him was a tableau of death. Most of the bandits, save those few who had fled, lay where they’d been hit. The dying eyes of the mortally-wounded rear guard stared up at him.
“Help me, boy,” he rasped.
Skippy could see that the bandit was beyond help. He had to save himself now. He bent to the goods he had borne, stuffed some food into a knapsack, and threw it over his shoulder. He returned to the fallen rear guard. The guy was still alive and looking to him for succor. “Help me.”
“Help yourself,” Skippy sneered. “I’m not your kind.”
Summoning a new strength, he moved down the trail, passing dead men lying in their blood. Avoiding the gore, Skippy moved toward the mouth of the stream. As he passed the last bandit corpse, he noticed that the man had a holstered revolver. Skippy unbuckled the holster’s belt and wrapped it around his own middle. It was heavy, but he didn’t care about its weight. Having a gun made him feel a lot better.
“I’m armed and I’m deadly!” he yelled back up the gully, his impetuous words reverberating. Then he turned and rapidly moved on. When the victorious ambushers arrived at the scene of the carnage, the young, newly-armed gunfighter was long gone.
* * *
Skippy stood on a knoll, looking out at the rolling valley with its seemingly-prosperous farms. The corn had been harvested and the fields were yellow with tall, dried stalks. He recalled Granny Pritt’s hot, buttered cornbread and cold buttermilk.
“I’ll get what I need, now,” he confidently proclaimed to the valley. “And if you don’t give it to me, I’ll take it from you,” he added as he gripped his new weapon and flourished it at the world.
Copyright © 2010 by Frederick D. Rustam
