aaron_the fall of america_chapter_43

Chapter 43

I remember a canoe-trip Geoff and I had. We drove all day to get to a town call Brant. Population somewhere around a dozen. We loaded our canoe and started our journey. After paddling for a few hours we came to our first long portage. Because the canoe was so heavy and we brought a fair sum of food and equipment, we had to make two trips on every portage. On the first portage we managed to get the equipment and food to the end of the portage, set up the tent and have a nap. By the time our nap was over, it was raining and we had no desire to get out of the tent to deal with making food. We hung whatever had to stay out of reach of bears and went to sleep.

The next day we were well rested and very enthused about food. Because it wasn't our first canoe trip, we knew to bring as much food as possible with limited nuts and raisins. For the next few days we ate and canoed and portaged and had the odd run in with a mosquito.

After each portage, we would get away from shore and roll a cigarette, referred to as stoge time. If there weren't loons to listen to, we might yell to hear our echo against the rock hills.

On the forth day, we didn't move except to sit in the canoe in the middle of the lake. At night we did the same, to call on lake monsters and stare at the unbelievably clear night sky. There was no sign of humans other than us. Just wilderness and the sounds and an endless sky saying nothing at all.

On the sixth day, we discovered what could be worse than mosquitoes: black flies. We were still enjoying the beauty of our trip and the moose sightings and moose visits to our sight but the early evenings were now unbearable with the advent of the black fly. They were numberless and relentless. We spent that night cowering in the tent, determined to cut the next two and a half day trip out into one.

The next day nearly beat us but we were still on our feet at the last portage. We only had to paddle to the end of the river then across Brant Lake to get to Geoff's truck.

We took our time down the last bit of river. We had some dry food and water. We both agreed we could go for a Coke and a smoke. In fact, it was mentioned a few times. Geoff took pictures of a young moose that wasn't bothered by us. When we decided we could hear the sound of bubbles in a sugary caffeine drink, we moved on. We sighted a large bull moose before seeing Brant lake. The sun was beating on us a little but it was late in the afternoon and there was a bit of a breeze.

A bit of a breeze.

The bit of a breeze gradually increased, as did the cloud cover. The waves started to grow. We had to alter our route across the lake to go against the waves for a while so we could go with the waves and reach the shore where the truck, our deliverance to cheap, legal drugs, awaited us. The waves were too high to travel anything but straight into them or with them.

We reminded each other that it was good to have life jackets and a big heavy wide and stable canoe. We agreed a shitty canoe wouldn't do in waves as these.

The wind blew harder and brought with it a light rain. Neither one of us remembered how exhausted we were at the beginning of the lake, for it was time not to drown. We paddled hard to keep the canoe straight through the waves. Anything but straight through would have us under water in seconds. The wind was too strong to paddle into it by the time we had turned to go with the wind. We used a few four letter words, the most important one being Coke. It was the religion we had fell upon in desperation, to get us across the lake. Geoff was in the front of the canoe, which gave him the advantage of not noticing that the waves were starting to go over the sides. Each wave would add a little water. The shore was getting closer but it seemed to be taking the odd step back. The waves became big enough to surf on. It was hard to keep the canoe straight and my paddle cracked from the strain. With the help of our temporary religion, we stayed strong and eventually, with a canoe full of water, bounced up on land, blown about a kilometre or two from the truck.

I remember on a different trip, Brian and I had spent five weeks in the mountains before we went to Vancouver Island. The first night we camped in an old graveyard and were woken in the early morning by a strange noise. The sprinkler system. We quickly got up, took the tent down and threw everything over the wall to a garage parking area.

After drying out and having breakfast, we went to the main road to thumb a ride to the west side of the island.

On the third evening, after two sleepless nights in fast food restaurants and donut shops, we received a ride. We had been finally hitchhiking separately. I had gone up ahead and was just comfortably lying my head on my backpack when a red van pulled up to me. A most frightening face looked down at me. Beside the face, in the passenger seat, was Brian.

I climbed in the back with the goat and we went as far as Combs. There we stayed nearly a month. Audry took us in and after teaching us how to milk the two goats and gather chicken eggs, she often left us for two days to go visit her dying husband.

Everyday, Brian and I would go to the country store after the Muppet show. I almost always bought a chocolate ice-cream. Brian tried various flavours.

I'll never forget coming back in early one morning after feeding the goats and chickens. Brian was still sleeping in Audrey's husband's room and Audry was in the kitchen. She was in her underwear. She didn't have running water. There was a pump for the kitchen sink. Outside was the outhouse. For her morning piss, Audry didn't like the trip to the outhouse.

"Just going to the bathroom," she said.

To me, it looked as though she was pissing in a big white bucket in the middle of the kitchen.

Some things are easy to remember. I'm remembering a few things in the last few days. Mostly I think of Shelly and if I made the right decision in letting them bring me here. Zizith always appeared worried when he sees me. He told me that it's not good to try to kill my brother. I can't see why Zizith would lie to me so maybe it was my brother that lies recovering somewhere in the near where I can't get to him.

I can't get to anyone. I'm not strapped down but my room door is locked to the hallway. I'm free to go out the balcony door to the pool but there is a high wall, with broken glass masoned on the top, surrounding the court yard. I get the feeling they don't want me leaving.

I remember a commercial Shelly and I saw on television. The theme was similar to many other commercials. First it shows a garbage dump with sea gulls sifting through the freshest loads. Amongst the gulls are two down trodden, alcoholic, unhealthy and dirty bums. One of them finds a bottle with a few drops of liquid left. He drinks a couple drops, wipes his chin and give the rest to his friend. They look at each other and smile. They decide to walk out of the dump. As fate would have it, as they say, they chanced upon a beach. It was a beach lined with mansions, big shiny boats and women. The most beautiful and shapely women of all America were waiting on this beach for our special visitors. The two bums were quickly adopted by four nearly naked women, who took off the bums' old clothes, bathed the new men and put them in comfortable chairs where these bathing beauties could properly tend to their men's every wish. It was Hope Aroma for men. With Hope you get it all.

The door opened and in came Zizith and two of his companions.

"How are you doing Aaron?"

"I'm okay.

"I'm not sure, Aaron. You've been here almost a week and you look like you are in the same trance."

"I was remembering a little of my training. In those pretty mountains, what where they called?"

"Adirondacks."

"I'd like to go back and visit."

"And visit your old teacher."

"Yes. I'd like to see him again and thank him for his help in rehabilitating me."

Zizith wasn't amused. He was being stern but I believed he was trying to help me. He wasn't like my teacher in the mountain resort who taught me how to kill people at night without waking up their cat. He taught me many things about the art of brutality. I was suited for combat and just about nothing else. Zizith knew that and I suspected he had a use for me.

He explained the political situation to me a few times. He told me about the underground newspaper that my brother contributed to. He told me that things were going to change. People wanted the president to step down. The military was divided amongst itself as to who's orders they should follow. The president knew of the unrest and had had people hanged for crimes against the country. On and on Zizith explained these things and more about American trained terrorist in South America and so much horrendous misuse of power.

To me, it all seemed quite normal.

One thing I learned after an afternoon of lessons from Zizith was that I didn't enjoy lessons. Zizith's were exceedingly dull. Though it had cost several people their lives, at least my other lessons were exciting.

I understood enough to know that my teacher had taught me that. I wasn't so brain dead as to think it was a good thing to kill people. Good thing or not, it was the way the world was. I used to think I was above that sort of conduct but I was one of them now. Zizith said I shouldn't harbour guilt for what I did when I wasn't in my right mind. I believe him. I also believe that I will have to kill again. Not because I think it will help anything, not because I believe their is an evil that has to be stamped out, simply because that part of me has been opened up by my teaching and it's such a primal thing that it's hard to bury again. It isn't so much that we have to learn to kill, it's more that we have to believe there are reasons that we don't kill each other. I can think of many but none of them are convincing for me now. Sometimes I even want to kill Zizith. I won't though. I'm going to try very hard not to kill people I like. That's pretty normal, I would think. It's funny I should want to kill my brother. I think I might have to ask my old teacher about that.

Zizith had brought me an evening meal and talked to me some more before he left me for the night. I rested when I was alone until the middle of the night when I woke up knowing that I could not stay in their comfortable prison any longer. They wanted to help me. It was normal that people should want to help me. I didn't care for it any longer.

Zizith should have known that when I decided to go, that short of being strapped down, there was no way to keep me. My training included escaping from a straight jacket underwater in an iron box. At least that's what I remember. I sometimes think my memories might be of something other than reality. I know the military and secret government organisations have virtual reality far beyond the scope of what we could understand. I sometimes think that some of what I did there wasn't real. Even if Zizith says I was never hooked up to such a thing. It is not likely that he knew everything that went on in there.

I smelled the lock hole of my door to discover if someone was guarding it. There was at least one person there. I decided to climb up to the room where Zizith slept. It wasn't too hard. There was enough space between the stones to get my fingers in so that I could scale the wall.

Zizith left his window opened and apparently had no fear that I was dangerous to anyone but myself now. He likely thought his magic drugs where having an effect on me.

I climbed into bed quietly with Zizith so as not to disturb him. All I wanted from him was that he told me where I could find my old teacher. I could have forced it out with torture but that was no adventure. I wanted him to want to tell me.

I gently brought him to a conversation without him waking. He was glad to talk about his old job and how beautiful the mountains were. He was still talking when I left out his door and down the steps past the sleeping guard by my door and out a street level front window.

I had no idea where I was but I knew north was Florida and that would be my goal.



read on. book_04 chapter_44



by Joanne B. Washington

© 2001 | the jose wombat project