Eighty Years To Hell

It took me eighty years to get to this day and I'm tired, but go ahead sit down. I will tell you my story if you want to hear it.

****

The man in a police uniform sat on his horse in my front yard.

"Ward... Hal Ward?" he shouted, "Get your old ass out here!"

I monitored him from my front window with my .45 in my hand. I would prefer the shotgun but at eighty years old the kick is too much for my old bones. The deputy, or whatever they called them these days, had spent more time inside the jail than out before the collapse of our society and I didn't trust him or anyone.

"Ward? I'm not waiting any longer." He called out.

I eased out the door with my pistol at my side.

"What do you want Gerald?"

"Deputy Hines to you, Ward," He said.

"What do you want?" I repeated.

"I have an order to read to you and you will comply."

He held up a piece of paper and then read.

"By order of the Provincial President all gold and silver, in the form jewelry, bullion, grain or coin must be surrendered to the provincial government, Saturday, one week from today at the town hall.”

He smiled.

“The penalty for the retention of precious metals will constitute treason. The penalty for treason will be death by public hanging."

Hines looked up from the paper.

"Do you understand, Ward? Do you hear me?"

"Yep, my ears work fine. I hear your crap! Treason against whom? Our elected government failed, and we've had no voice since then. This government is not legitimate." I said.

The Bay horse's head jittered at the sound of my craggy voice.

"I don't care what you think, them there are the orders. See you next Saturday or that tree over yonder is going have a Christmas decoration hanging from it." Hines said as he spat of stream of tobacco juice on the overgrown lawn."

He turned his horse and trotted away and I didn't move until he rode out of sight.



I shuffled back into the house, locked the door, and sat in my recliner.

“What goes around, comes around!” I said aloud.

Exhausted, I napped for an hour.

For dinner, I popped the top off the last can of Vienna sausage. The fat-filled meat tubes slid down my throat with ease but left me hungry. Hunger, an old normal, had returned. It seemed the last years of my life would be a repeat of the first ten years having been born during the depression. My remaining rations consisted of a can of pork and beans for tomorrow.

The time had come to make the long and treacherous trek to the school playground that had become the barter center of the neighborhood. I hoped to find food.

****

In retrospect, it is not clear what caused the collapse of the economy and then the government six months ago. A dollar wouldn't buy much now except a laugh and there were no goods to buy anyway.

It started the day I went to the bank and requested a thousand dollars withdrawal. The teller informed me of a three hundred dollar daily limit per the Federal bank regulators. I took the money and left and went directly to the grocery store and bought canned goods. When I returned to the bank the next day and the doors were locked.

I passed the grocery store on the way home but didn't stop. Two men in the parking lot fought, threw fists like two kids on a playground, while their wives played tug of war with a bag of goods. Society crumbled when food and drugs became scarce.

Two weeks later, the power grid failed and all communications ceased. Consumer goods like fuel and food became non-existent and transportation came to a halt.

My car ran out of fuel and I couldn't ride a bike, and a hip replacement limited my ability to walk very far. My only source of news came second hand from the amateur radio network that I monitored every night. I missed all the town hall meetings due to my lack of mobility.

****

After my dinner, if you can call it that, I walked to my radio room for the evening amateur Ham radio network check-in. Information grew more limited every day with fewer Ham operators checking in.

My homemade solar panels channeled enough power to run my Ham radio and the lamp that illuminated the small room in the corner of the garage. The twenty-member amateur network had diminished to three check-ins the night before. George in Orangeburg and Tom in Florence and myself.

My radio room ritual never changed.

I took a two-inch wide, heart-shaped gold locket from my pocket, opened it to the photo, and hung it from the shelf over the transmitter. Kat, my wife, gave it to me sixty-four years ago for our first wedding anniversary. While in the Air Force, when we were apart, I carried it in the cockpit of my fighter jet on combat missions.

When I retired, she sat beside me as I called out the SC Ham network. She had a heart of gold and kept the log when we assisted FEMA for the Katrina disaster for fourteen days straight. Kat died two years ago and I miss her every day. I don't know why I am still here on this earth, but I'm glad Kat isn't here for what our world has become.

I rotated the dials to the preset frequency and clicked the mike button and said,

"This is WYY4 calling the SC Ham-net check-in. Over" I repeated the call, waited, and when I received no response I powered everything down. George and Tom were in trouble, or they would have checked in.

I limped to my bedroom with the help of my cane, put the locket on the pillow beside mine, and went to sleep.

The next morning I woke with the sun and prepared myself for the long trek to the school a half-mile away.

Dressed in thick socks, sneakers, and my best button-down shirt I went to the garage and checked the wheels on my walker. I tightened up the bolts and lubricated the axles. Last, I patted my shirt pocket and felt Kat's gold locket there. It was time to go.

With ten 1964 Roosevelt silver dimes, twenty rounds of .22 caliber long rifle, a bottle of water in my fanny pack, and my .45 on my hip, I set out for the school under clear but cool skies.

I cleared the steps without incident and paused to catch my breath. I set my pace at twenty steps and then would rest for one minute. The trip took an hour with my weak left leg. I arrived first to the playground, sat on the edge of a flower bed, sipped my water, and waited.

A few others arrived and I made a deal with a man for two cans of tuna for ten bullets. I traded with another man the remaining ten bullets for two cans of beanie weenies. Nobody wanted the ten dimes, one troy ounce of silver, because of the imminent confiscation decree. The traders all left and I sat down to rest before my journey home.

A disheveled, thirtyish-looking, woman entered the playground and approached me and I rested my hand on my pistol.

"Sir, I haven't eaten in two days. Could we trade for a can of those beans?" She asked.

"Ma'am, this is all I have, and they're not for trade,"

"I can trade you for some hair spray."

"Miss, I'm bald, what good will that do me?"

I heard a horse and turned to see Hines gallop into the playground on his Bay horse. He pointed at the woman.

"I warned you not to run away again Rachel. This time you are going to pay. Get on the horse." He said.

The woman's voice, fearful, pleaded with me,

"Please sir, please help me, he hurts me. I can't go with him. Please." She said and moved to my right to put me between her and Hines.

"Ward, this is none of your business, so just move out of the way and let me have what's mine," Hines said.

"Hines, everyone knows what kind of dirtbag of a man you are. Leave her alone."

Angry, Hines raised his rifle, pointed at my chest, and pulled the trigger. The bullet hit me in the chest and I fell backward into the flower bed.

Hines charged his horse forward and grabbed Rachel by her hair. She screamed in pain.

"I told you to stay out of this old man." He said.

The bullet had slammed into my chest like a hammer and I couldn't breathe. I wasn't dead, but I thought I should be. The lead round had struck Kat's gold locket in my pocket and ricocheted away without blowing a hole in my chest. My lungs sucked in shallow bursts of air. The pain in my upper body radiated into my shoulders, arms, and legs. The flower bed had prevented injury to my head.

Hines punched Rachel when she tried to pull away.

It took every bit of focus and energy to slip my .45 out of its holster. My unsteady hand wavered but I finally aimed it at Hines and squeezed the trigger. He died before his body hit the ground.

Rachel helped me on the horse and led me home. Over the next several weeks she helped me recover from the massive bruise and only left in search of food. She took the gold and silver to the town hall and received the new currency issued by the provincial government, for the precious metals confiscated. She bought some rations from the civil market they established.

No news or investigation came of Hines death. The new world we lived didn't care much about a low life like him or life in general.



I knew we had saved each other that day and that's a bond that's hard to break. Rachel, with each passing day, became like the daughter I'd never had. I learned her parents had died in the early Atlanta riots and she had no other family in this world

The holidays came, such as they were, and one small paper-wrapped package lay under the tree I had cut from the backyard.

Rachel picked it up and handed it to me and said,

"Merry Christmas old man."

I ripped the paper and Kat's heart-shaped locket fell into my hand. The locket, no longer gold, had been painted white.

"I couldn't surrender it, Hal. Kat saved both of our lives." She said.

Tears welled in my eyes as I hung the locket on the tree and said,

"What goes around, comes around! Merry Christmas, Kat."

****

Well, that about it. I don't know how many days I have left on this earth, but at least I won't die alone.