Marcus and Bodhi made their way through town. On the east side of town, between Main Street and the railroad tracks, large sheds held supplies and canned foods. The town was now growing enough fresh food from the fields in the summer, but canned goods still got them through the in the winter. Supplies and rations were distributed to those in need at the discretion of Mayor Coll.
Mayor Coll wasn’t an elected city mayor, but everyone began calling him that when he chased the last group of thugs out of town with the autographed Ken Griffey Jr. bat that had been hanging in the previously elected Mayor’s office. No one knew where the real Mayor was, he had been missing a long time. Mayor Coll was a big man and a former boxer. At forty-three, and with a booming voice, he was not afraid to meet violence with violence and run lawlessness out of town. Even though there was no real “law” to speak of now, the folks in Washburn knew the decent from the indecent, and the latter was not tolerated. Mayor Coll had setup and coordinated the efforts of watchmen, hunters, and the farmers. Planning was essential and participation mandatory, Coll was good at overseeing both.
Hunting parties, like Marcus and Bodhi, left town every few weeks to scour the surrounding area for anything they could find, including hunting game. The forests nearby had thriving wildlife. Most homes and buildings were stripped clean of useful items or had been burned to the ground during the winter months by someone trying to stay warm. But occasionally a farmhouse was discovered on some country road that the mobs missed. The rule was: the hunters could keep whatever they wanted from their non-food items and food items went into the community supply depot for distribution. From this trip, Marcus kept the ammo and the present to Tiffany. Bodhi kept some hiking boots and a satchel with a silver buckle.
Hunting was dangerous, often groups didn’t come back. The watchmen kept order in town and posted guard at night. Everyone but small children had to be a farmer, watchmen, or hunter. The only exception was medical; doctors and nurses, and there was only one of those in Washburn. Anyone that didn’t want to work for their keep, the watchmen would escort them from town, no freeloaders.
After everything was unloaded at the storage units and the vehicle parked nearby, the two men walked to the house on Bear St. where they had lived for the past few years. The town was dark and silent, with the first hints of autumn in the crisp air. Stars above twinkled brightly in a clear black canopy above the two tired men. The house was small with one bedroom, a bathroom, and the kitchen and living room shared a cozy common space. The cowboy disappeared into the bedroom. After putting the ammo in the box near the wall, Marcus tossed Tiffany’s gift on the counter and sat on the edge of the sofa that served him as a bed. The house was cold. His thoughts again turned to Charlotte. Memories of the day she left came back to him.
It was a year before the war began, on a summer evening just before rain………….
The house was quiet, which was strange. Charlotte was usually home before him. She finished volunteering at the County Library in St. Louis in the afternoon which was only a few blocks east of their modest home in Hillsdale. Usually when Marcus walked in the front door, aromas of BBQ chicken, homemade pizza, or lasagna filled the house. Charlotte was a great cook. But today that was missing. He knew something was wrong when he saw the letter taped to the mirror hanging quietly above the sofa.
Marcus,
I know this isn’t fair. I have been trying to tell you for months, but for some reason you wouldn’t listen. Maybe you couldn’t. I have to leave. It’s not that I don’t love you, but I can’t be around you without thinking about Lucy. It’s not your fault but the life we wanted can never be. Not without her. I have to go. Staying would make me resent you, maybe even hate you, and I don’t want that. Truth is, I have already started to resent you and I know that’s not right, it’s not fair. You are a good man, but it won’t work anymore. I have to go. I don’t expect you to understand. I will call, if I can.
– Charlotte
After reading the letter, Marcus sat on the sofa for hours and the night rolled in. The house grew cold; colder than he knew it could. He read and reread the letter. She didn’t even sign it ‘Love, Charlotte’ just ‘Charlotte.’ His mind raced all night with solutions. What could he do? How could he stop her? Thoughts of how he could get her back and make things right. But the truth was that there could be no making it right. Lucy was gone. He knew she was being kind in what she wrote. ‘You have been a good man,’ if that was true, those words would be reassuring, but he knew it wasn’t true. He was an average man at best. The words mocked him. The image of Lucy in the hospital slowly fading away and replaced by a gravestone was all he could see.
He grabbed book from the coffee table and threw it across the room smashing it into the wall, leaving a large hole. The sound startled him. He would have to fix that hole, he thought, but he didn’t care. Did anything matter now? The life he hoped for had fractured and the sound it made was deafening. His life was now a thing he never thought would be, and alone that night he began tracing the steps of how he came to this place, trying to understand why. Trying to understand the incomprehensible.
When Marcus was almost thirteen and Bodhi barely eleven, their parents divorced. Their mother moved from the ranch in Montana, which she despised, to Chicago. Marcus grew up in the city and worked at a local pizzeria during high school. His mother often talked poorly of his father and “that uneducated younger brother of his”. Marcus made friends easily but always wanted to see Bodhi more. Fond memories of time on the ranch were always on his mind, but he never mentioned them to his mother. The cowboy Bodhi, on the other hand, took after his father in every imaginable way: boot cut jeans, sideburns, facial hair, and cattle auctions. The boys saw each other only once during their teenage years and made a plan to meet at college. They were reunited at the University of Chicago as Bodhi began his studies and Marcus was in his second year. Marcus remembered seeing his younger brother the day he arrived from Kalispell. He sat on his bed underneath the same ten-gallon Baron cowboy hat he wore every day.
The hat was a high school graduation present from their mother, who in the same letter belittled him for being such an ignorant country boy like his uneducated father. During the years apart, they had grown into two quite different young men. She could not look at the lad without seeing that mistake of an ex-husband of hers, and in truth, the boy was a spitting image of his old man. Muscular and manly, tanned by the big sky sun. Marcus, however, had taken the looks of her father, dark hair, thin, scholarly looking.
The wholesome years of childhood together in Montana were not easily forgotten and both knew they were better as a team than going it alone. At college, the cowboy was clearly out of his element, but the reunion of the boys was a happy one. Marcus, like their mother, reverted to her maiden name, Wright. The cowboy, of course, kept the name of his father, Graves. They fought about it once, ending in a stalemate, and the subject was dropped, for good.
Like high school, Marcus had many friends, especially among the coeds. The cowboy on the other hand had trouble with the women and lived vicariously through his brother when it came to romance. Marcus dated a lot, rarely the same girl longer than a month. He figured with so many fawns in the forest, he had a duty to service as many as he could. But the girls never seemed to take to the Kalispell kid the way they did Marcus. Marcus studied business management, and the cowboy pursued biology, but neither of them liked school much.
During their final year at college, Marcus Wright met Charlotte Vega. Two years his younger, she had long red hair and big green eyes that grabbed his attention in the library like spotlights fixed on a fugitive. He took her out for drinks and billiards. She talked a lot, mostly about herself, but Marcus didn’t mind. She was beautiful, smelled great, and the way she moved intoxicated him more than anything he drank that night. He was with her constantly after that. Every other girl simply disappeared.
He worked the early shift at the lumber yard and hurried through his classes to meet up with her. They had a spot; they called it ‘The Dry Jacuzzi’. It was a natural feature in the earth, back in the woods where a small cavern tucked against a hillside would bellow out warm air from some unseen furnace deep in the earth. During the mighty Michigan winters, when the snow would fall for weeks at a time, they hiked to this spot. Here the ground was clear and dry. The warm air from the cave would shield the young couple. They would make love as the ivory flakes would drift down for hours, almost within reach, then the warm air would send them dashing into the trees, or even obliterate them completely.
Back in the house in Washburn, each night as he waited for sleep, Marcus would rake through those memories looking for answers he knew were not there. He felt alone; he felt it deep in his chest, like someone standing on him pressing the boot heel hard. There were no answers, only cold empty walls, in a small empty town, in a dying land that he once called home. Sleep eventually came, it always did, and Marcus knew tomorrow he would get up and regret again.