If He Hollers

All through a sleepless night, James listened to the sound of fighting. No lights burned in the house, and the flash of exploding shells flickered time and again like lightning strokes across the cracked, bare walls of his bedroom. They were close now.

Several times during the endless evening he crept through the darkness and descended to the basement where Julia slept. Each time, incredibly, he found her in peaceful slumber, undisturbed by the fast-approaching hell.

As the first rays of dawn appeared to the east, stillness replaced the chatter of small arms fire and the thunder of shells. James welcomed the silence, but he could almost feel the invaders gathering breath for the final push through the city. How far now? Two miles?

He walked softly down the basement stairs again. Here, where vigilant eyes could not detect its flickering, he lit a candle and stood by his sleeping daughter, stroking her hair. Only ten, she mirrored her mother's copper-skinned beauty. In the close air of the basement, the candle illumined a thin sheen of perspiration on her brow.

"Julia?" he whispered.

She sighed and turned on her side, and the candle's flare caught and sharpened the angle of her cheekbone. Sudden despair gripped him as he realized how thin she had become.

"Julia."

Flickering eyelids, then recognition, and a smile.

"Daddy."

"Better get up now, honey. I'll fix you some breakfast."

She sat up in the cot, letting the sheet fall to her lap, and rubbed her eyes.

"Can I help you, Daddy?"

"Thanks, honey, but why don't you finish our time capsule?"

She made a face, but swung her legs over the edge of the cot and stepped into her sandals.

"OK."

"That's my girl. I'll light the lantern and you take the candle with you. "

He pulled the Coleman from its shelf on the wall beside the cot, adjusted the mantle and lit it from the candle end. Julia took the candle and walked cautiously through the flickering light toward the far corner of the basement.

The time capsule. That's what he had decided to call it, for Julia's benefit. It was nothing more than several tins of various sizes and shapes, filled with the detritus of his life with Elizabeth and Julia: photographs, wedding and birth certificates, favorite books, newspaper clippings, report cards, Julia's dolls, and anything else that his daughter deemed worthy of inclusion. Three weeks ago, roving Nationalist militia bands had made excursions from the house increasingly dangerous. It was then he had first spoken to Julia of the time capsule, telling her they would bury these valuables and retrieve them one day - after the fighting, after the madness. Perhaps he had half-believed the idea himself. But there would be no return, no happy reunion with the treasured artifacts of their lives together. The Regular Nationalist Army had closed an iron ring around the city; survival, much less escape, looked a dim prospect.

James carried the lantern to a table topped by a small propane stove. He lit one burner and placed a small iron skillet on the glowing gas-ring. In a wicker basket by the stove lay two eggs, the last food items in the house. Two nights ago he had ventured into the neighborhood, desperate for rations of any sort. Electric power still functioned sporadically, and in the storage locker of an abandoned cafe he discovered a dozen eggs and a half-empty container of a powdered fruit drink. Now he took the remaining eggs, cracked them on the edge of the skillet, and stirred them in the pan with a worn, wooden spatula. Behind him, he heard the clink of metal as Julia stacked the tins in the box in which they would be buried.

"Julia?"

"Yes, Daddy?"

"Your breakfast is ready. Are you about done?"

"Yep. The box is full."

"Good job. You come eat your eggs and I'll put the box in the ground for us later."

James pulled a paper plate from a stack on the table. He scraped the sizzling eggs into the plate, then poured the powdered fruit drink mix into Julia's "special cup" that stood next to the wicker basket. She had molded the white ceramic cup at a summer camp three years ago and embellished it with an ornate "J."

Although without running water for several days, James had prepared, and several five-gallon buckets of clean water lined the basement walls. He poured from one to the top of Julia's glass. When he turned, cup in hand, his daughter stood in front of him.

"Aren't you going to eat, Daddy?"

"No, honey, I'm not hungry this morning. Take your juice and your eggs and clean your plate, OK? While you're eating, I'm going to take a quick look around from upstairs."

She nodded wordlessly, and took the cup to the table, setting it beside the scrambled eggs and the lantern. James took the candle and walked to the stairway. As he reached the top, Julia called out.

"Daddy, are we going south today?"

He stopped as if shot through the heart. South!

"No, honey, not today."

When she didn't respond, he blew the candle out and opened the basement door. Sunlight rimmed the drawn window shade in the kitchen. He crossed quietly from the basement door to the arched opening of the home's small living room. At the front window he stopped, sat heavily upon the floor, and listened. Nothing: no voices, no tread of feet, no gunfire. The stillness of the tomb.

Julia's question mocked him. Weeks ago he had talked with her of going south to escape the madness. Mexico, he told her, or maybe Cuba. Rumors of an underground, an escape route to the south, had flown for more than a year. He had hesitated, doubting his chances of making it through with Julia. Now it was too late, even if the rumors were true.

As the growing light pierced the window's thin shade, the floor's debris took on detail. In the near corner of the room he spotted a familiar oval shape. Staying crouched beneath the level of the window, he made his way to the object, picked it up, and studied it in the dim light. Elizabeth, his favorite photograph, and somehow missed by Julia in her "time capsule" search. He marveled again at how much Julia favored her mother.

A sense of infinite loss flooded him, and he replaced the picture upon the floor. Two years ago, when it started, Elizabeth had been visiting her mother in the small Michigan town where she had grown up. The first "unofficial" militia activities had taken place only a few miles away. There had never been a word from Elizabeth, not so much as a hurried phone call. Her end must have come quickly. He almost envied her.

Even now, it still seemed dreamlike. How did it happen? When had the nation abandoned sanity? Decency? The end of affirmative action programs had even been applauded by some minorities. Yet from there to the establishment of the "Nationalist Party" and their rise to power seemed an impossible, a nightmarish leap. Not in America!

But the nightmare was real. He need look no farther than his surroundings, the skeletal remains of Atlanta, for his reality.

The rumbling of a truck startled him from his reverie. Heart thudding, he sat plastered to the wall, straining to locate the direction of the sound. He heard gears grinding as the vehicle lumbered forward. James listened intently as the rumbling grew louder, then subsided beneath the metallic squeal of brakes. Voices, followed by the rhythm of running, boot-clad feet and the clatter of infantryman's gear brought him to his feet. The sound of splintering wood and breaking glass announced the presence of the troops next door. Militia or regulars, he wondered, but it made little difference. He must get to Julia!

He had not started for the kitchen when he heard the basement door open, and Julia stepped through the archway and into the living room.

"Daddy? Aren't you going to help with the time capsule?"

"Julia, no! Be quiet!"

He started for her as a burst of automatic weapons fire erupted through the window, slamming into the young girl's chest and hurling her down to the littered floor. James screamed, but his daughter was dead before he reached her.

"Come on out, nigger! Give up and we'll see that you're treated right!" A chorus of laughter followed.

Sobbing, James cradled his daughter's head, stroking her black hair. So much like her mother.

He lay her head gently upon the floor and stood. He walked to the front door, toward the sound of laughter.

"I'm coming out!"

Opening the door, he looked up from his blood-stained hands, from the rich red and coppery brown, and walked out into a monochrome world, turned radiantly, brilliantly, hideously white.

Copyright 1997 Larry W. Van Guilder

In his own words: I began writing full-time about two years ago after two decades of professional pursuits which ranged from accountant to district sales manager with a large forest products company, and a brief, penultimate sojourn as a teaching assistant in a large state university. I am at work on my first novel, tentatively titled "Tattooed On the Heart," which I hope to have ready for the merciless eyes of publishers by year-end. My short fiction has appeared in about a dozen small press and electronic publications. Most recently, my online work has appeared in Slumgullion, EWG Presents, AfterImages, Pegasus and Aphelion. I have work scheduled to appear in Knightmares, Eternity Magazine and Blue Penny Quarterly. I live in Knoxville, Tennessee with my wife, Becki, and our cats, Hobbes and Dilbert, both of whom are less forgiving critics than my supportive and patient spouse.

You can e-mail Larry lvg@sprynet.com