Z for Zachariah

Chapter Twenty-three

August 4th (continued)

It was the next morning he shot me.

I woke at dawn as usual, moved my blanket and sleeping bag to the cave, and ate the rest of the fish for breakfast—cold, but cooked, not so bad. As I ate I cheered up a little, and thought possibly, just possibly, I had been too pessimistic about the padlocks. I knew that he had a compulsion for taking charge of things, for saving things, for rationing them out in an orderly manner so they would last—like the V-belt, the petrol, the fertilizer, and so on. A long-term view. And he did not trust me to do that (perhaps rightly)—hence the locks. I thought: maybe that was all it meant.

In any case I had to find out, fearful though I was of the answer, because the other alternative was that he had thought of a simple way to force me to come back. Starvation. I could, not help considering that, too. If it was his plan—what would I do? I had food enough in the cave for a couple of weeks, maybe longer if I did not eat much. I could fish. I knew where berries grew. I could possibly shoot a rabbit. But it was obvious that in the long run I could not live.

And what about the chickens, the eggs, the milk, the garden? Would he somehow lock them up, too?

There was little point in wondering. I had to find out.

So, feeling worried and quite depressed, I took my milk can and my sack and walked to the house, going the long way round. It seemed especially important now to keep him from finding where I stayed.

As I walked, I had another thought: perhaps, in a way, these new things he had done were my own fault. It seemed that the more I stayed away from him the more determined he was that I come back. Perhaps I could yield a little. There are people who cannot stand being alone; perhaps he was acting from despair. Why should I not, then, offer to talk to him, if he wanted me to, say for an hour or so in the evenings—he on the porch, I on the road? It could do no harm. There was no reason I should not be as friendly as safety permitted. It was a sensible plan, and made me feel better.

When I came in sight of the house I thought: should I just go about my work as usual, or should I let him know straight away that I had seen the padlocks, and ask for the key? I decided to ask, and get it settled. It was, in fact, time to bring him some more stores anyway. And at the same time I could suggest my new idea.

I know now that he was watching as I came up the road and was expecting me to come to the house. Not that it made any great difference to his plans. I would have had to ask eventually.

I remember now that my father once said that great events have a way of happening uneventfully. They slip up on you and are over before you know they have happened. This could hardly be called a great event, I suppose, but it was for me an important and terrible one, and it happened almost without my knowing it.

I stood there in front of the house as I had before, watching the front door, thinking I would go and knock if he did not appear. There was a sharp snapping noise. I was wondering what and where it could be when I felt a hard tug on the leg of my blue jeans and a stinging pain in my right ankle. The noise came again. Not until then did I look up and see the shiny blue rifle barrel, very thin, the upstairs window six inches open and his face behind it, hidden by the curtain.

The second shot missed, hit the tarmac a foot behind me and flew away humming like a bee.

I dropped my milk can and ran for my life; the can hit the road with a clang and rolled away; Faro, in the house, hearing the shots and the clanging, barked in a frenzy. I dashed for the trees beside Burden Creek, expecting each second another bullet to come crashing into me—because for the next thirty yards my back was still a clear target. But he fired no more. I even thought I heard the window shut, but did not pause to look.

In the trees I felt reasonably safe; I made my way, dodging from tree to tree on the far side of the road. At the bend, where I could look back and see that he was not following, I sat down to examine my ankle. The bullet had gone through the leg of my blue jeans, leaving two small round holes, and the sock underneath showed a narrow, straight tear through which blood was slowly oozing. I removed my sneaker and sock. It was a small, shallow cut, barely through the skin, bordered on both sides by a white area, very sore to touch, which was going to be a bruise.

As wounds go, it was not serious; in fact while I sat there looking, the bleeding virtually stopped. Still it brought to mind a lack in my supplies: I had no bandage, no disinfectant of any kind. There was some in the house, some in the store, both now out of reach. Then I remembered. I did have soap at the cave. I could wash the cut, at least, and put on a clean sock. I tied my shoe on loosely and walked on.

As I washed my ankle I thought, it was a most peculiar wound, and puzzling. He had fired two shots; if he was trying to hit me, both had been aimed much too low. He might just be a very bad shot. But more likely, he was not trying to hit me, but scare me away. With me standing stock still (for the first shot, at least), and him in a prepared position, waiting, with the windowsill for support—nobody could be that bad a shot.

And yet, in a way, that made him an even worse shot than before. Anyone, shooting, can miss when trying to hit something. But to hit when trying to miss it—

And then, sickeningly, the truth came to me.

The idea, the scene, the things that happened in the next minutes, the next hour, were so bad that I do not like to think about them because they come back to me like a nightmare and I am living them over again.

I am sitting beside the pond with my sock in my hand and my shoe beside me, waiting for my foot to dry. The piece of soap is on a stone at the edge of the water.

And I think: he was not trying to miss. He wants to shoot me in the leg so I cannot walk. He wants to maim, not to kill me. So that he can catch me. It is a simple plan, a terrible one. Starvation will force me to come to the house or the store. And the gun will keep me from going away again. He will try again and again.

And I think: why must he do it?

As I sit there by the pond I hear the tractor start. I know by some instinct before I see it what is going to happen next. I put on my sock and my shoe as fast as I can and run up the hill to the bushes where I hid before.

The tractor, looking bright red in the morning sun, comes out of the trees. On it, as before, holding his gun in his hand, rides Mr Loomis. The gun barrel shines like a tube of blue glass; it is the small rifle, the .22; he does not want to shatter my leg, only cripple it, because after I am caught he intends it to mend again.

The tractor comes out and behind it is hitched the tractor-cart. In the tractor-cart, tied by his leash, sits Faro. He is enjoying the ride. He has always liked to ride in the cart.

Mr Loomis stops at the store as before, climbs down, gun ready. This time he knows I am not inside, but this time I have more reason to shoot if I am hiding nearby. So he looks sharply.

He takes Faro down from the cart. It is the game they have practised. Holding the leash, he circles the store. Faro picks up my trail immediately—the freshest one, leading towards the house. Mr Loomis does not want that one.

He tries again, a wider circle, and this time it works. Faro starts retracing my morning’s route, tail wagging, backtracking easily. And suddenly this small friendly dog, David’s dog, is an enemy, as dangerous as a tiger, because I know what he is going to do. He will lead Mr Loomis a mile down the road; he will turn left and lead him up the hill and to the cave.

The nightmare lasts an hour. That is how long it takes Mr Loomis, who is not hurrying (but not limping either), to make the trip. Long before that I have run to the cave. My time there is up. I know it is. I have my cloth sack, the feed bag I brought from the barn. I throw into it what I can carry, not choosing very well because I am, stupidly, crying and because my ankle is hurting badly. I take tins of food, this notebook, a blanket, my knife, some water. That is all I can manage if I am to move quickly. That and the gun. I take the small rifle, the pump-action .22 and a box of shells in my pocket.

I have no place to go except higher up the hill and into the woods. I choose a spot overlooking the way they must pass as they approach the cave. There, waiting, ready to run again, I have the worst part of my nightmare. Because I suddenly see what I must do. Wherever I run, as long as Mr Loomis has Faro, he will find me. Therefore I must shoot Faro.

I load the gun, find a hummock for a gun-rest, and lie behind it. In fifteen minutes I see branches moving, still a quarter of a mile down the valley, still on my trail. My ankle aches worse than before, but the crying has stopped; I feel sick but my eyes are clear.

Now they are directly below me. Mr Loomis has Faro on a short leash; he is going very slowly now and limps a little; Faro is tugging. In clear view Mr Loomis stops to listen and I have a stationary target. I draw the bead, the gun is steady and I cannot miss. But at that moment Faro gives a small, impatient tug and a small bark which comes clearly up the hill to my ears. It is his bark of greeting, a soft pleasure bark for me—he knows the cave is just ahead. And at the sound, so gentle and familiar, my finger goes limp on the trigger, and I cannot do it. In the end I lower the gun barrel and they move on out of sight.

In a few more minutes they are at the cave. I cannot see them from where I hide, and I do not dare go where I can because he will be watching and if I can see him he might see me.

I smell smoke. I retreat further up the hill and look back. From the directions of the cave I see it: a thick column, rising fast as from a bonfire. I am feeling sicker—quite dizzy in fact. It is painful to walk, so I sit down and loosen my shoe.

For half an hour the smoke continues; towards the end it grows thinner and fades away. In the distance I hear the sound of the tractor engine starting. It grows fainter. Mr Loomis has walked enough for the day and is going home. When the sound has gone far away and has stopped I know it is safe, and I make my way, sparing my right foot, back to the cave.

It is hard to keep from crying again. In front of the entrance in a black and smouldering pile are the remains of all my things. My sleeping bag, my clothes, even the box I used as a table and the board I had for a bench, all are cinders. My fire-wall kicked down and scattered. My water bottles smashed. I see in the heap a part of the charred cover of Famous Short Stories of England and America. Only the few tins of food I left he has taken away—at least I see no signs of them in the fire. And the other gun is gone. Inside the cave I find one thing he missed. My half-chicken is still in its cranny.

That is my nightmare. I have been in it again as I have written it. The worst part of it is that I really did decide to kill Faro. I am glad I could not pull the trigger, but that does not alter the fact. It makes me feel as much a murderer as Mr Loomis. Now there are two of us in the valley.

And in the end I did kill Faro, though not with the gun.