CW2, D.R. SMITH [little readers .TXT] 📗

the election” Brandon pointed out. “Wouldn’t that pretty much be the same thing?” A milk dripping spoonful of Wheaties stopped just before it was shoveled into Daryl’s mouth. From his ‘bent over the counter’ position, his head turned in Brandon’s direction with an expression of warning smeared across it. He stood up straight, dropping the spoon and its content into the bowl, and then turned to completely face his son.

“You need to watch your mouth boy”, his father said threateningly. “You know damn good and well that last election was conducted exactly the way an election should be conducted” Brandon shook his head slightly along with an obvious eye roll as he started to walk away. His father’s hand jutted forward, latching onto the teen’s shoulder. With an abrupt pull, the young man spun around, confronting his dad once again. Daryl’s free hand was now a fist, with only the index finger breaking form and it was jabbing into Brandon’s face.

“You know where the Rogers family stands politically and unless you have a second home to go live in, you embrace that same ideology” Following that announcement, the two male members of the household stood staring at each other for several uncomfortable moments. It was pretty clear that Brandon wasn’t necessarily backing down and Dad was determined to eyeball his child into submission.

Suddenly, a feminine form slid between the two, Mick’s face moving up close to Daryl’s and her hand reaching behind her in a swooshing motion to signal Brandon to move on. In a somewhat frustrated manner, the young man reached around his mother and grabbed the paper towel that bore the balance of his cinnamon Pop-tart, and strolled off in the direction of his bedroom.

“Dee… calm down” she lovingly pleaded. “You are going to chase that boy away if you don’t start talking to him like he’s an adult. He has opinions and views of his own now and the only way you two should converse about these things is to TALK about them… not you screaming your ideals in his face” She could sense that somewhere deep inside, he wanted to give in and say, “You’re right. I need to go apologize to Brandon”. But as had become the case on some many occasions as of late, Daryl stood his ground, yielding to the idealism of Left Wing politics over the love and concerns of family and home. There was a pause while Daryl took time to calculate what he felt he needed to say, what he should avoid saying, and what the right thing to do and say was… which were all different.

“This isn’t your fight” Daryl blurted out, which was most certainly the wrong thing to say. He pushed himself gently away from her. Likewise, McKenna stepped back from him with a confused and incensed look on her face.

“No… you’re wrong Daryl. It’s very much my fight” she expressed with a touch of grit in her voice. “I seem to be the only one trying to hold this family together while you…” she paused and then backwardly flipped her hand in his general direction “… you have decided you’re a major general for the insane Democrat party and we’re your troops. Well I for one am not signing up, SIR!” She finished with a salute.

Daryl spun around, rushed at McKenna, and grabbed the wrist of the hand that had been brought to her brow. Daryl’s mouth quivered in a way that displayed a person holding back words they know they’ll regret saying. Mick didn’t flinch in the least and in fact, raised her chin in indignation essentially making an unspoken statement to Daryl… GO AHEAD, take that aggression up one more level… I dare you. They both stared into each other’s eyes for a moment. It was then that her mind crowded with thoughts of… What in the world are we doing?!? Don’t we love each other anymore?? I still love you, Dee. Without changing that line of thinking, she softly spoke what her heart was feeling.

“I only hope you’re thinking what I am, Dee” Sadly, his next actions betrayed his feelings and thoughts and they were anything but loving and caring. With eyes full of fury and still locked on hers, he tossed her hand from his grip, turned, and then stomped off, swiping his ‘not-quite-finished’ cereal bowl from the counter, sending it clattering into the sink.

Mick was now left standing alone in their kitchen, her hand slowly lowering to her side and a tear rolling down her cheek. McKenna Rogers was now fearful that she had lost her husband and felt a heartache well up that would probably never heal.

CHAPTER 3

 

Chapter Three

 

 

 

 

 

The sun had reached above the mountains and mesas by the time he pulled the travois containing the two wrapped bodies of the children over to the Indian woman’s gravesite. Shane felt it would be appropriate to bury them near their mother and, as he had been the one who ended her life, he felt it his duty to take the time to do this. Once the adolescent corpses had been laid to rest and a marker firmly placed in the ground for the three of them, he disassembled the travois and spread its components around to prevent it from drawing too much attention to the area. He then picked up the 30-30 belonging to the Indian woman. A loud metallic click rang out as he cycled a round, ejecting an unused bullet onto the sandy ground. Although the weapon was in good condition and had a full cache and an extra box of shells, there was no way Shane could lug another rifle with him.

In the past few months, Shane had developed a rather random system for dealing with these illicitly acquired weapons. Sometimes he would destroy them for fear that leaving them behind might come back to haunt him by way of he himself being shot by someone who had found it. Other times he had hid them and placed a marker of sorts to indicate its location, giving him a possible backup weapon should his be lost, damaged, or confiscated. He had decided to hide this Winchester as it was far too magnificent a gun to destroy. He wrapped it in a blanket he had pulled from the woman’s pack and buried it at the base of the tallest Saguaro cactus nearby. Shane figured most intelligent people stay as far from these prickly beasts as possible. He then took a piece of a dry, nearly white Juniper branch and lodged it in the fork of the cacti in order to distinguish it from the hundreds of others surrounding it.

After a prayer of dedication for the tiny, deceased family, Shane stood staring straight ahead allowing his thoughts to drift from this place. For a moment he imagined these three playing together in a grassy field, the children running and screaming with joy and laughter. Or sitting in a tiny circle around a fire, talking and smiling at each other. Once again, his face crushed into tear filled pain. His hands now moved up behind his head, with fingers intertwining, he squeezed his forearms tight against his temples. It took tremendous will power not to cry out in anguish. He fell to his knees murmuring, Why God why?!?

After wiping the muddy tear trails from his face with his sleeve and regaining his composure, Shane decided it was time to graze the outskirts of a town for supplies. He unrolled a map against a large smooth rock and calculated his position. The sun was beginning to do its dirty work and began cranking up the desert thermostat. Several drops of perspiration splatted onto the lower edge of the paper causing it’s colors to bleed. He procured a bandana, rolled it, and knotted it around his head, replacing his cap atop the paisley do-rag.

“15 miles to Rough Rock” he spoke out to himself. “You’ve got enough water to make it there, Bud. Let’s do it”

After several moments of contemplated motivation, Shane donned his pack and other equipment and continued his endless and aimless trek. At least right now he had a destination. He could endure up to 10 miles in a 9 hour period. But traveling in the middle of the day was a whole ‘nother ball game’ and this one was ramping up to be a real broiler.

After only eight or ten steps he paused and looked back at the makeshift cemetery.

“God receive your souls and forgive mine” he said quietly and then turned quickly and continued toward Rough Rock. His boots crunched down into powdery dry dirt and sand, puffing up little dusty clouds with each impact. The grit clung to everything and crept into any available crevice and crease. Eyeglasses, rifle scope, and binoculars all collected inhibiting films of powdered clay requiring rinses and wipes to make them operational. Drawing on past experiences, Shane resisted stripping down to deal with heat as it created an even more serious health issue… sunburn. Having lost his hair in his 40’s, a hat was an absolute necessity, in spite of its sweat producing qualities.

 

Utter silence and isolation spawned uncontrolled direction of thought. Yesterdays of complete joy took turns flashing on the screen of his mind like a slide show clicking through images of the past. Sometimes these ‘reminiscences’ imbued feelings of elation while on other occasions, longing for their return became mentally and even physically disabling. In the end, it was he himself who would allow them to manifest. But he had convinced himself it was for the sake of sanity in spite of their questionability.

Staring down at his feet in order to keep himself from stumbling over a rock, a log, or just mounded sand had other benefits besides navigating obstacles. Not watching his moment-to-moment progress seemed to make time and travel slip by faster and unnoticed. It was a take on the “a watched pot never boils” saying. Although he would have it no other way, it was becoming evident that the time taken to bury the young family had put him behind enough to possibly cost him his life. He didn’t have enough water to make it through another day and because he had spent the coolest part of the day digging and hauling, he was now consuming two or three times more water having to trapse beneath a blazing sun across a scorching desert terrain.

It seemed impossible, but he was sure he was feeling the heat of the desert floor burning through the bottoms of his hiking boots. Cracked splitting lips prevented him from changing the position of his mouth in the least bit and running his now sandpaper-like tongue over them did nothing towards relieving this condition. Just blinking his eyes became a reminder of how far along his dehydration had progressed. His eyelids felt as though they were sticking to the pasty surface of his corneas and any dust or sand particles in them were untouchable as rubbing his fingers or any other part of his hand, only exacerbated the problem as they too were coated with granules of every form of earth nature could procure.

Being 61 was dealing its card as well. Although he could’ve been imagining the whole thing, Shane