The Savage Boy

18



ONE NIGHT, AS the wind howled through the high pines, he took Sergeant Presley’s bundle out of his pack.

He stared at it for a long moment, listening to the wind and trying to remember that autumn morning when he’d found it next to the body.

Take the map and go west, Boy. Find the Army. Tell them who I was. Tell them there’s nothing left.

In the bundle was a good shirt Sergeant Presley had found and liked to wear in the evening after they had bathed in a stream or creek and made an early camp. That was the only time Sergeant Presley would wear the good shirt he’d found behind the backseat of a pickup truck they’d searched in the woods of North Carolina.

Red flannel.

This my red flannel shirt, Boy. Shore is comfortable.

The shirt would be there.

The map. Sergeant Presley’s knife. The shirt.

He undid the leather thong on the bundle and tied it about his wrist.

The soft cloth bundle opened and out came the shirt, and within were the knife and the map. And there was a leather thong attached to a long gray feather, white at the tip, its spine broken.

He laid the knife on his whetstone.

He laid the map on another stone, one he ate on by the fire. He left the broken feather and its thong in the bundle.

He held the shirt up and smelled Sergeant Presley in a draft coming off the fire.

He took off his vest and put on the shirt.

It was comfortable. Soft. The softest thing he’d ever felt. And warm.

He sat by the fire.

When he took up the map, he stared at it. He had seen the map many times, but always when it was laid out, Sergeant Presley was making a note, or muttering to himself.

The Boy unfolded it, laying it on the ground. It was large. It was both hard and smooth. In the light it reflected a dull shine.

He stared at the markings.

Above Reno he read:

CHINESE PARATROOPERS. DUG IN. BATTALION STRENGTH.

Over Salt Lake City, in the state of Utah, he read:

GONE

Over Pocatello, in the state of Idaho, he read:

REFUGEE CAMP FIVE YEARS AFTER. OVERRUN BY SLAVERS.

Above this, across the whole of the northwestern states, was a red circle with the words WHITE SUPREMACISTS written in the center.

Across Omaha in big letters was the word PLAGUE, and then a small red face with X’s for eyes. There were red-faced “X eyes” listed over place names all the way to Louisville, in the state of Kentucky.

At Washington, D.C., he found an arrow that led into the middle of the ocean. Words were written in Sergeant Presley’s precise hand.

MADE IT TO D.C. IT’S ALL GONE. BUNKER PROBABLY HIT EARLY IN THE WAR. NO REMNANTS OF GOV’T AT THIS LOCATION. TOOK ME TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS TO MAKE IT HERE.

On the back of the map the Boy found names.

CPT DANFORTH, KIA CHINESE SNIPER IN SACRAMENTO

SFC HAN, KIA CHINESE SNIPER IN SACRAMENTO

CPL MALICK, KIA RENO

SPC TWOOMEY, KIA RENO

PFC UNGER, MIA RENO

PFC CHO, MIA RENO

PV2 WILLIAMS, KIA RENO

And . . .

LOLA

THERE WAS NO mention of Escondido’s “Auburn” on the map. The Boy traced the highway marked 80 as it crossed the mountain range and then fell into Sacramento in the state of California. After that, the road ran straight to Oakland. Written over Oakland, the Boy found I CORPS. Across the bay in San Francisco, circled in red, he saw the word CHINESE.

He stared at the broken feather and experienced the fleeting sensation of a memory. Which one, he could not tell.