The Final Day (After, #3)(20)
The long-ago paintings of the Founding Fathers gathered in debate made them always look all so clean. He now understood far better why old films would at times show an effete French or English nobleman daintily holding a scented handkerchief to his nose. With the onset of winter, even the weekly bath had become a laborious chore. Makala was one of the few who still insisted upon a Saturday-night bath for both of them, and during the summer a skinny-dipping jump into Flat Creek on a near daily basis, even though it was freezing cold throughout the year. But at least in the summer they could lie out in the backyard to sunbathe and wistfully talk about a day to come with electricity restored when they might even scavenge up an old Jacuzzi and somehow get it running again.
Most had reverted back to the nineteenth-century practice of putting on long johns when the cold weather set in and not taking them off until spring arrived.
John often wondered if the Founders had smelled as bad; hard to picture the brilliant Jefferson or Washington himself smelling like those gathered in the room, even when at Valley Forge.
He tried not to breathe deeply, but Makala, who was impervious to such things, noticed his discomfort and cracked a window open, letting a gust of frigid air into the room. A few shifted uncomfortably, but others nodded a thanks.
“I’ve reached a decision as to what I think we should do—or, to be more precise, what I should do,” John said, “but we are no longer under martial law. It will require significant resources; therefore, it is up to you.”
“It’s precious little information to make any kind of decision on,” Reverend Black said, starting off a debate that John feared might run for hours. “A stranger who you think you recognize wanders into our region, claims he wants to talk with you regarding something that involves an old army friend of yours.”
“Yes, that’s basically it.”
Black sighed. “When a man’s time is drawing to a close, he often drifts back years, decades. A good friend of mine, a colonel during the Second World War, climbed out of bed the night before he died and started to wander about the hospital corridor, yelling at the staff to put their helmets on and get ready because a banzai charge was coming in. The poor guy had to be restrained. He kept yelling and cussing at everyone, this from a man who until his final days you never heard a foul oath from.” Black smiled wistfully. “It was good old soldier cussing at its best.”
Forrest chuckled softly. “I can teach some new ones any time you want, Preacher.”
Black gave him a bit of a baleful glance but then smiled.
“Even the way he was talking, the turns of phrases sounded like something from an old movie rather than the way we talk today. My point, he was back in 1944 up until the moment his last breath slipped out of him with me holding his hand and praying by his side. His last words, though…”
Black’s voice faded to a whisper, and he was obviously struggling to hold back on his emotions. “His last words: ‘Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.’”
That put a lump in John’s throat. “Stonewall Jackson’s last words,” he said softly.
“Precisely my point,” Black replied. “He was in a different time and place, perhaps remembering that quote from a class in West Point when he was still a plebe. I think it might be the same with this poor tragic Quentin. Therefore, John, I have serious doubts as to anything he said.”
“Tell A. P. Hill he must come forward,” Lee Robinson interjected.
John looked over at his friend and nodded with understanding.
“What?” Ernie asked.
“Some of the last words of both Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson,” John said. “They were back on the battlefield calling for a trusted general to bring his troops into the fight.”
“So the whole thing could be a hallucination?” Ernie asked.
“It could be,” John replied.
“Then take it as such, John. We’ got way too many other things to worry about—that report that a new band of marauders is camped in what is left of Charlotte, the chatter we’re picking up from BBC and other sources that the Bluemont government is officially ceding all territory west of the Mississippi to China and Mexico, the fact that we have to face the reality that as we incorporate more isolated communities into our state, food supplies through spring are coming up short. Let’s stick with what we know.”
There were nods of approval from several others gathered in the room, including Makala.
“Wish I could agree,” John said, looking out the window, a light flurry of snow swirling down outside. First a blizzard and then this so early in the year. He hoped it was not a portent of a hard winter to come. Before the Day, such winters were a source of pleasure for a college professor, usually resulting in a relaxing day off to play with his daughters or just sit by the fireplace and read. Now it was a reinforcement why not too long in the past, hard winters were referred to with dread with names such as the freezing time or starving time.
“John, there’s nothing new on the BBC,” Ernie announced. “Actually, something of a shutdown with their reporters, all foreign reporters being expelled from Bluemont—or, for that matter, anywhere else within areas controlled by that government.”
“Precisely why I am worried, really worried. After we beat the hell out of Fredericks and then the far-too-public announcement that we were forming a ‘State of Carolina’ until such time as the nation came back together, you remember the BBC report just a few days after we took Fredericks out, that this entire region was being declared as a ‘Level Five,’ meaning in control of terrorists and rebels? But then after that? I thought they were going to hit us hard and fast as an object lesson. Instead? Zero response from those who claim to be the central government.”