Roman Wolfe's Adirondack Ordeal Part Four

Chapter  12

                                                                 ****

                                                            Edge of Night

            “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here,” were the words that inexplicably came to my mind.  Those words are from Dante’s Inferno, a reminder of hell, pain and anguish.  What Grace and I saw was terrifying.  For me, it was as if all hope had completely drained from my body.  I could feel my heartbeat thumping wildly and coupled with Grace’s trembling, my whole body shook and caused me to stumble in the shallow creek.

            My constant vacillation between self-doubt and hopelessness, and self-assurance and hopefulness was keeping me off balance, both mentally and physically.  I hated that feeling and fought desperately against it.  I didn’t know why it was happening.  Nam wasn’t like this.  In Nam my confidence was stronger and more consistent, nearly unshakeable.  Maybe in Nam I was really overconfident and was just lucky not to have been killed by it.  Perhaps I was in denial about the true cause of my inconsistency and unusual self-doubt.  It had to be Grace, I thought.  I was faced with protecting the life of my own child and that scared me, especially when I valued her life more than my own.

            I stared at it as the deadly silence surrounded us and threatened to drown us in its ugliness.  No squirrels protested loudly against the blue jays that approached their nests, nor did I see squirrels jumping from limb to limb in the trees.  No birds were twittering from their lofty perches.  The air was so still it smelled stagnant.  Silence was an Army General in full command of this area.  Silence, in a forest─or jungle─is a grave warning of some disturbance, of some danger whose unseen presence has frightened the animals and birds into a wary, noiseless fear.

            I stood motionless, listening and staring with horrified disbelief.

            I stumbled on a slippery rock while crossing the creek.  I caught my balance and tried to clear my mind, my ears riveted on the crazed animal’s growling, while my eyes saw something out of a Stephen King movie.  What the hell was I looking at?  All I could see was a slow moving lump on the ground.  It wasn’t moving forward, but twisting, turning, arching it back like a prostrate person dying in agony.

            I asked myself, “Is it a timber wolf, coyote, coydog, or was it a fox?  No, I thought, not a fox.  It’s too large and the wrong colors.  A wolf?  No.  Wolves are larger than coyotes and darker in color.  Wolves also carry their tails in a very distinctive position, almost horizontally─a mental message from Wolf confirmed that what I was seeing was not one of his species.  Also, I noticed that the animal that we were facing was smaller than I would expect of an adult wolf─though I couldn’t tell age─and its fur was light in color.  Its tail was carried low, near the back legs.  So, Grace and I were staring at a discolored, dirty and mangy coyote or coydog . . . a crazed coyote.  One with full-blown rabies. It was “mad” in the very worst, psychatric sense of the word.

            I knew that rabies is an awful disease that attacks the brain and spinal cord, creating tremendous pain which is radiated throughout the body by the spinal cord.  It also slowly ate away at the brain, eventually causing madness and unstoppable viciousness.

            My next thoughts raced through my mind like a cluster of comets racing across the night sky.  It’s strange how thinking sometimes seems as fast as the speed of light, but using words to express those thoughts seems to take forever.  Amongst many Native American tribes, the coyote was a spiritual animal, like the wolf but not nearly as powerful.  Those Indians thought of the coyote as a Trickster who loved to play pranks on humans.  The Indians were fearful, suspicious and leery of the Trickster’s presence an believed the Trickster could communicate with all living things, in their own special language, and thus was able to play devious, dangerous and often fatal tricks on people.  And what made him especially dangerous to children was that children were naïve and innocent, whereas the Trickster was a charismatic sycophant, a master charmer, posing as a kindly and flattering friend who could easily lure children into tragedy or death by tricking them into doing something or saying something that might have grave consequences.

            I faced directly into the snarling face of Trickster as he lifted his head higher and increased the force of his growl.

            Slowly I bent down and gently placed Grace’s feet on the ground.  I released my grip on her as I kept one eye on the ferocious growling that was coming from the slowly moving lump of ragged, matted, filthy fur.  Then I realized that I couldn’t straighten up because Grace hadn’t let go of my neck.

            I saw the beast rise as if from a fresh grave, the leaves, dirt and twigs stuck to its matted fur having camouflaged it so well that it could hardly be seen as it blended into the forest ground and surrounding area.  But it was standing now, so I had a good look at it.

            When the coyote started snarling louder, Grace pleaded, “Daddy, please . . . I’m scared!  Chase it away, Daddy!”  Her emotions, coupled with tears made her words come out as if she was being choked.  Still close to my ear, as I was bent over her, she tearfully begged me to make the ugly beast go away.

            I quickly placed my hand over her mouth and whispered, “Don’t say anything, no talking, no noise.”  I said it in a harsh whisper and stern facial gesture that couldn’t be misunderstood.  I had to keep her quiet so her loud, panicked voice wouldn’t trigger an attack.

            I pulled her hands free of my coat, then used my straight index finger, placing it perpendicular to my lips, a silent indication for silence.  I whispered, “Take out the knife that I gave you.  Open it till it locks and stand behind me.  Move very slowly.”  She whimpered, so I had to whisper, “Stop crying.  The noise will upset the coyote.”  She did as she was told, getting the knife and being silent.  She did it very slowly as if the fear she felt was a pair of shackles that hindered her movement and was immobilizing her.

            My mind was reeling as it tried to process too much information.  I stood on the edge of panic, my heart feeling like it would explode at any second.  My thoughts slowly became crystal clear as I felt Wolf leap from a hidden crevice in my brain and spread himself, as of by osmosis, to all areas of my body.  Immediately, I felt his strength, speed and cunning.  Then I felt something in each of my hands, a combat knife in my left hand and the throwing knife in my right hand.  I don’t remember taking them from there sheaths, but it was the same phenomenon that often happened in Nam.  My heart was still racing, but not racing as it had been a short time ago.  Wolf was no longer dormant.  In my mind, the feral Wolf in me bared its teeth, snapping his jaws viciously.

            When my pale Wolf stood with me, there was always hope.  In a life-or-death situation, fear wasn’t a weakness, but rather a strength because adrenaline surges through your body, producing the instant energy, speed and strength needed for a desperate fight for life.  Also, who would know better how to fight a coyote, than a wolf?  Wolves are not only more fierce fighters than coyotes, they are also much smarter.

            Wolves are often said to be the smartest of all the wild animals.  They will not attack a human, even a child, contrary to popular belief, unless cornered,  injured, or if they think their young are in danger.  They live in an organized society, with strict rules and positions of dominance and work.  They also care for their young until their young can take care of themselves.  Wolves, like well trained soldiers, or woodsmen, demonstrate complex hunting tactics and understand how to use strategy and cooperation.  Wolves have a bad reputation and for hundreds of years may have been the most misunderstood of all the wild animals, simply because they kill the weakest of the animals that man keeps in herds, even though that kind of killing will improve the breeding results of all those herds due to the fact that only the strongest and brightest will survive to breed.

            I understood wolves better than most scientist because Wolf was part of me and communicated with me.  We lived together in harmony.

            The Native American Comanche believed that a wolf had the soul of a man, a fierce, strong, courageous man, a warrior.  When a wolf’s spirit found such a man it would inhabit his soul and become that man’s spiritual leader.  Roamin’ Wolf, thus, inhabited Roman Wolfe in a symbiotic relationship.

            I felt Grace’s hand on the back of my leg, the other hand, hopefully, had a knife in it.  I could feel her trembling hand, but couldn’t attend to her needs.  Our lives were at stake and it wasn’t just any animal that confronted us, it was a life-threatening, vicious, rabid animal.

            In my initial, startling fear, the coyote seemed to grow larger.  Fear makes things larger than life; fear tends to make your senses exaggerate what you see and hear.  But Wolf and I had no time for that now as we recognized the beast for what it was, a severely diseased killer . . . an extremely dangerous animal that I desperately wanted to walk away from.

            But the coyote took a couple more threatening, unstable steps towards us.  I wondered if it was injured, in addition to having what, certainly, had to be a full-blown case of rabies.  The growling increased in intensity, a deep throated, primal growling accompanied by eyes that resembled red hot coals in a midnight campfire.  Its stiff, mangy fur stood straight up, like the spines of a frightened porcupine and pinkish, frothy saliva dripped from its lips and canine fangs, another classic indication of well developed rabies.

            I didn’t know what the incubation period was for rabies.  But I knew how Jake thought.  If one of us were bitten, Jake would hold us both captive for the incubation period, then force whichever one of us wasn’t bitten to watch the horrible, lingering death that the rabies disease would cause in the other person.  If both of us were bitten, Jake would still hold us captive so he could enjoy watching our slow, agonizingly and torturous demise.  But he wouldn’t enjoy it this way as much because he wouldn’t get the ultimate pleasure of watching the healthy person suffer the terrible agony of watching the diseased person’s death after the prolonged, advanced stage of the brain and spine-eating, rabies disease.

            I stood perfectly still and as I did this, Grace must have realized that she must do the same because I could sense no movement behind me.  I raised the throwing knife slowly up to my right ear.  Time slowed down as my senses, Wolf’s senses, became hyper-sensitive.  I could see the rabid coyote better, magnified, as if I was using binoculars.  I could see the coyote’s matted fur embedded in it’s filthy skin and patches of fur missing where it fell out in clumps.  I could smell the foul odor of disease, filth and infection, and I could sense that their was still a primitive, crazed strength in this dying beast.

            I whispered to Grace to move when I move.  We moved sideways, two short steps, trying to exit this area, to get away.  The coyote’s growling grew more threatening and its teeth started gnashing, so I stopped moving.  I would have to use my throwing knife.

            The throwing knife accidentally pressed against my ear and it’s coldness caused me to be even more alert.  My cold fingers gripped the handle of the balanced blade, my wrist and arm ready to snap forward with both power and speed.  I held this position, waiting to see what the rabid coyote would do, but hoping that it would walk away.  It didn’t appear to have that in mind.  It’s posture was extremely aggressive, confrontational, with its head held low, body leaning forward and back legs bent.  The attack posture.

            There are probably only a couple of dozen men in the world that can successfully hunt small game with a throwing knife.  I was one of those skilled few.  But this wasn’t small game.  This looked like a large sixty to eighty pound coyote, or coydog, and my ten inch, ten ounce throwing knife probably wouldn’t stop it in its tracks.  But it would start the death process if I could get an accurate hit that had great velocity and deep penetration.  The rabid beast was facing us, thus, I had no shot at all at any soft body area.  The head was too boney; the blade would bounce off the hard bone.  To hit an eye socket would take a miracle and, if a miracle occurred, that boney orifice was probably not big enough to allow the knife to penetrate deeply into the brain─the width of the orifice being smaller than the width of the knife.  So a head shot was a thoroughly wasted shot.  Plus, even in a slowed, diseased state, the coyote’s reflexes might still allow it to move out of the way of the hurled blade.  To get a good shot, I needed to have the animal’s body turned sideways so I could have a clear shot at the soft rib area, hoping to penetrate between the bones of the rib cage and hit the heart, or a lung, or anything that would immobilize it.

            I turned my head slightly and whispered over my right shoulder, “Grace, slowly pick up a rock and throw it as far as you can over my left shoulder.  Don’t talk.  Poke my back just before you throw the rock.”

            I could hear Grace’s rapid breathing and could sense her bending down to pick up a rock.

            The animal’s growling became more forceful and intense.  It stepped forward aggressively, jaws snapping violently.  It stopped its forward movement and I saw its back legs flex, again, becoming tense as it prepared to thrust off of them and lunge at me.

            The growl of my own internal Wolf rang in my ears.  My legs and arms flexed and I felt a surge of animalistic power grow rapidly in my limbs.  My sense of touch, sight, hearing and smell were already acute.  I could feel Wolf take control of my body, as my mind gave the commands.

            My right hand was still cocked to thrust the throwing knife toward the rabid animal.  I wished that I had a Bowie-axe type of throwing-knife made by a knife-maker named Harry McEvoy.  This particular hunting and throwing knife was thirteen inches long and a full pound of sleek, deadly, and finely sharpened steel.  Thrown with force and speed, its sudden and penetrating impact could knock a large dog, like a German Sheppard, right off its feet.  This rabid coyote, or coydog, certainly looked like a large dog, but, like I said before, fear has a tendency to exaggerate things.

            My senses were synchronized with Wolf’s senses.  I had Wolf’s speed, strength and cunning, but the karate combat skills and knife fighting skills were those that I had been taught by martial arts experts.  However, I doubted that martial arts skills would have anything to do with this confrontation.

            I was looking with Wolf’s eyes and staring at our mortal enemy when I felt Grace poke my back.  A couple of seconds later, Wolf’s ears detected the noise from the rock as it bounced off the earth, then rolled across the ground, finally crashing into a bush to our left.

            Despite her fear and anxiety, Grace had made a nice throw.  Nice because it startled the coyote and caused it to wheel around sideways, to its right, to face the sound.

            I quickly took aim at its left side rib-cage area and snapped the blade forward with every ounce of strength that my right arm possessed.  Not a sound came from the blade as it sliced its way through the cold air like a silent, heat-seeking missile homing in on its target.  The coyote didn’t have enough time to react defensively until the blade plunged deeply between its ribs and into its chest cavity, with only a couple inches of the handle sticking out of its body.  It was nearly a perfect hit, with very deep penetration . . . but not perfect enough.

            Incredibly, the coyote spun around, toward me, as if unhurt, like mortally wounded people and animals can do sometimes, it charged, in spite of the deadly, steel sliver that was now deeply imbedded into its left rib cage area.  I gave a loud, panicked yell for Grace to say behind me and to use her knife to protect herself.  As I yelled, I was acutely aware of switching the combat blade from my left hand to my right hand, then holding it at waist level, slightly out in front of my right hip, with the razor-honed edge facing downward.

            Before it even happened, I could envision the beast leaping up into my face and neck area.  It was the same sort of vision that I had had so often in Nam when I was able to clearly picture, in my mind, how the enemy would act and react.

            Roamin’ Wolf and Roman Wolfe were one, like two sides of the same coin, a unity defined by desperate circumstances.

            Wolf was keenly aware of how a coyote would think, act and react and those thoughts became my thoughts.  Therefore, I could anticipate the coyote’s actions and position my body and my blade to counteract that movement, which I did.

            The next thing I saw was a blur of fur as the feral beast sprang off its muscular hind legs, from a running start, its jaws agape in a maniacal snarl, its eyes as black as tar, as its frothy fangs sought my throat.

            My gloved left hand came up instinctively under the animal’s mouth and clamped into its throat securely, like a vice-grip tool─I was thankful for all the finger and forearm strengthening exercises that I had regularly performed in my karate training─as my right hand thrust the deadly blade swiftly upward and deeply into the solar plexus area of the fierce beast.  The blade sank about six inches into the solar plexus cavity and then the breast’s weight pushed down on the blade and I felt the blade sink to its full length, all the way to the double, protruding finger guards.

            The forest seemed to come alive with noise from the thunderously loud and agonized scream that came bursting from Grace’s mouth.  She screamed with each breath she took, as the weight and momentum of the beast bore down on me, causing me to free-fall backwards on top of her.

            As I was toppling backwards I forced the blade to cut deeply from the chest area to the stomach.  Then I felt the sharp claws of one of the beast’s paws rake across his right cheek.  I wasn’t yet conscious of any pain, just the warm sensation of blood welling up to the surface of my skin, then feeling the downward flow of a scarlet rivulet.  I held onto the beast’s throat as the weight of him forced its Adam’s Apple deeply into my iron grip.  I took advantage of this fortuitous stroke of luck and squeezed the coyote’s Adam’s Apple more securely and then strained to grip it so tightly that I thought I’d tear a muscle or tendon in one of my fingers or in my wrist.  I felt like my grip was a powerful, mechanical clamp that wouldn’t let go, like a pair of vice-grips or a C-clamp from my tool box.

            I heard the coyote’s front and back legs shredding my coat, and I hoped that they would not penetrate my coat and rake my chest and abdomen.

            I rolled off Grace forcing the coyote onto the ground beneath me as I continued to squeeze its throat with my straightened, elbow-locked left arm.  I continued to twist and slash with the combat blade inside the beast’s chest cavity, hoping to slice or puncture the heart and end the struggle immediately.  I couldn’t cut his throat because my hand was in the way and I wouldn’t release the secure grip that I had on his throat.  Now totally focused on the coyote, I wasn’t aware of Grace’s squirming movements.

            I withdrew the blade, then thrust it deeply back into the beast’s chest cavity, each probing thrust containing my full strength . . . but the maniacal animal continued to struggle, twist, turn and snarl at me as it sought to sink its teeth into any soft, fleshy area that it could reach.  Blood and raw, pink flesh were abundantly exposed.

            Though staring into the terrifying mow of this rabid coyote, with bloody mutilation and horrific disease only inches away from me, my iron-will and grip, for the moment, was prevailing.

            Instinctively, I knew that I had to keep the mouth and teeth of this fiend away from my cut right cheek because the rabies virus it carried in its saliva is passed into another animal, or human, by biting and getting the virus into the other animal’s, or human’s, bloodstream.

            Suddenly and very fearfully, I realized that I was starting to lose my left hand grip on the slick fur of the coyote’s throat.  I knew that if I lost that grip I would no longer be able to prevent this maniacal monster from biting me and Grace.  I had to control its head or it would be almost certain death, though a delayed death sentence─much later, I found out, after our ordeal that rabies has an incubation period of four to six weeks─for Grace and myself.

            This frightening thought sent a new surge of energy to my cramping arms and hands and, in desperation, I pushed the blade deeper into the chest cavity by pushing against the animals soft underbelly area.  The blade penetrate, so deeply, in fact, that my fist sank into the warm moistness of the animal’s internal body cavity.  Steam-like vapor rose, like thin wisps of smoke, from the coyote’s body as the cold air and the warm, moistness of the animal’s internal body joined together.  The stench was nauseating.  I immediately repositioned the blade and drove it, again, into the animal’s left side chest cavity.  I heard the animal gasp and realized that I had finally punctured its heart.

            Suddenly all the coyote’s muscles slackened, like the rubber of a punctured balloon.  Its eyes rolled up into its head, its tongue fell out of its mouth and continued to drip bloody saliva.  I felt, with relief, the last spasms of its body.  Nevertheless, I took this opportunity to quickly withdraw the blade, push upward with my left hand to expose the neck and, as a precaution, I immediately cut the animal’s throat.

            After I cut its throat, very little blood flowed out because the pump─the heart─that would have forced the blood out of the coyote’s arteries was no longer working.

            Finally I knew that the coyote was dead.  I moved off the coyote and sat next to it, terribly exhausted and breathing heavily.  I dropped the combat blade to the ground, then drew deep breaths into my burning lungs.  My wrists and fingers ached from the strained effort of choking the wolf and gripping the combat blade.  When I tried to open the fingers of either hand, the curved fingers popped as if they were frozen or rusted into those fist-like positions.  My head felt like a drum being beaten upon viciously, as if a migraine was developing.  I was out of breath and felt dizzy, but aware enough to feel Wolf’s presence fade into a safe place in my mind.

            I felt an incredibly deep exhaustion, like none that I had ever felt before and I closed my eyes.  When I heard a loud noise, I opened my eyes and was startled to see Grace furiously, like a demonic child from some horror movie, repeatedly and violently stabbing the inert coyote’s body with her three inch, lock-back, Ka-Bar pocket knife.  She vented her rage as she repeatedly stabbed the coyote, saying, in an angry voice, “Die! . . . Die! . . . Die!”  Slowly, cautiously and gently I used my aching left arm to take hold of her stabbing right hand at the wrist.  I pulled her hand toward me and, using my right hand, gently tried to pry her fingers off the blade handle.  But she too had a vice-like grip on the handle that belied her age and strength.  It surprised me just how much pressure I had to use to release her fingers from the bloody handle of her knife.  Once released, I let the blade drop to the ground, near my combat knife, then pulled her trembling body toward me.  I hugged her closely and tenderly for a long while, rubbing her back and whispering soothing words of comfort to her as she melted into me as if I were her security blanket.  She didn’t talk, didn’t cry, didn’t move.  For awhile, I didn’t move either, despite the fact that in some distant crevice of my brain, I could hear Wolf telling me that I was losing time and needed to get moving.

            I recovered my strength slowly.  I welcomed the added extra strength and endurance that I received from Wolf, but seeing Grace’s rage and furious effort at survival gave me added determination to stay focused and to get home for Thanksgiving.

            I looked at Grace.  Her mittened hands were covered with blood, fur and intestinal gore.  She had stabbed the animal so many times, in one small area, that the animal’s intestines were not only protruding, like purplish, coiled snakes, they were severed in many places.  In her shocked state, she couldn’t see the leaking, intestinal gore, nor smell it, but I could and my nose rebelled against its overpowering stench.

            I stood, then bent down and picked up Grace.  I carried her as I walked a short distance into the forest, where I laid her down, facing away from the coyote, placed my back pack under her legs, to lift them and get more blood to her brain, then covered her with a blanket.

            I returned to the dead canine to skin it.  I was sorry that it was rabid─the word “rabies” is a Latin word meaning “rage” or “fury”─because I wanted to cook its hind legs over a campfire and eat the meat, but I couldn’t take the chance of doing that since I wasn’t sure what the consequences would be (Would cooking it kill the rabies?).

            I knew the difference between a poison and venom.  A poison had to be swallowed to do its damage, but venom must enter the blood stream to do its damage.  That’s why a healthy person─no ulcers─could drink a cup of rattle snake venom and have no ill effects from it.  But I was too damn exhausted to try to think about how the rabies virus acted, though I assumed that, like venom, it must enter the blood stream to do its damage.  But I would take no chances.  Better hungry than dead or immobilized by sickness, I thought.  However, I couldn’t help thinking how good the cooked meat would have tasted, especially since the constant diet of gorp and jerky had changed from being very tasty to what was now a boring chore to eat.  The thought of roasted meat inundated my mouth with saliva and I spit it out.  Unfortunately, my mind pursued the thought and I ended up spitting or swallowing several times before I could focus on something else.

            Much later I was to find out that coyotes are now prevalent in the Adirondack mountains because their natural prey, the timber wolves are gone.  According to the New York State Conservationist magazine, wolves were extirpated from New York State approximately by the year 1910.  This was mostly due to expanding civilization and its resulting conflicts on the wolf’s way of life.  I also found that coyotes are much more successful at adapting and living close to civilization because, whereas the wolves normally hunt in packs and need bigger game to eat, such as coyote, deer, moose and caribou, coyotes will hunt individually and can survive and proliferate more easily due to the availability of foods, the variety and quality of foods, and the size of the prey that they will eat, such as rodents, fowl, snakes, frogs, toads, carrion and even fruit, which are all plentiful in the Adirondack mountains.

            When I finished skinning the coyote, I used the frigid creek water to wash the combat blade, the throwing knife that I pulled out of the coyote’s rib cage and the folding pocket knife.  I dropped them all into a shallow, clear part of the creek, used a twig to move them around in the water so the current would wash off the blood, gore and fur, then pulled them out using two twigs as tongs. I dried them off with some of the toilet paper that was in my backpack.  I cleaned Grace’s mittens and my gloves the same way.  Once dry, I placed the combat knife and throwing knife back into their sheaths, then walked to Grace and put the pocket knife into her pants pocket.  She said not a word, just stared off into space.  I picked her up, then carried her to a clearing where I built a fire to warm her.  I also pounded four, two-feet long sticks into the ground, close to the fire.  I pushed a glove onto each stick to let them dry.

            I cut two saplings, each about three feet long and, using my combat blade, I dug holes into the ground─I was now too tired to worry about dulling the blade─far enough to push the sharpened end of the saplings into the ground about four feet apart, in back of the fire, but only about a foot away from the fire.  I washed the coyote skin in the creek, then scraped it─I scraped off the blood, fat and gore from the skinned side.  I placed the coyote skin between the two saplings so that it hung, fully stretched out, with the fur side away from the fire so that the side where the blood, fat and gore was, could be dried-out by the heat of the fire.

            I felt ecstatic when I heard Grace’s voice about an hour later.  She said, “I’m hungry, Daddy.”  I grabbed her small, blanketed body and quickly drew her to my chest.  I hugged her and she hugged back as she buried her head into my neck and whispered, “I love you, Daddy.”

            I was afraid she might be mentally incapacitated by the horror of my life an death struggle with the rabid coyote.  To survive that incident, and move on, I needed her help and cooperation.  If she had gone into emotional shock, I wouldn’t be able to get her cooperation, plus I’d have to carry her.  We ate handfuls of the gorp, we looked at each other and smiled often.  I was so very thankful that she was okay.  I could feel Wolf smiling within me.  We were both feeling relieved.

            As I looked around the area, it seemed vaguely familiar.  I shrugged it off as wishful thinking.  But the instinctive feeling persisted and I knew that, just as in Nam, I should listen to my instincts and Wolf’s growls.

            Wolf’s growls were intelligible language to me.  Those growls spoke to me, rather than being simple unintelligible varieties of noises.  Wolf’s growls now made me pause and look around more carefully.  I thought I recognized a widow-maker─a blown down tree─lying on the ground, just inside of my visual range.  Suddenly, a burst of unforeseen hope inflated my chest.  I hurriedly put out the fire, picked up the dried gloves and coyote skin, put the gloves on mine and Grace’s hands and shoved the coyote skin into my backpack.  I placed the backpack onto my back, then scooped up Grace in her blanket and walked toward the widow-maker.  It was late afternoon, but not dusk yet, and as I walked closer and closer I could see the blown-down tree much better.  I especially noticed the pointed stump─where the trunk had snapped off─with its wooden shards, of various lengths, standing straight up, as if they were wooden, micro missiles preparing to launch skyward.  I set Grace down next to the stump so she could lean her back against it.  I then walked along the fallen trunk of the tree, hoping that I was right, but with every footstep I vacillated between elation and fear.  I circled around to the north-facing side of the fallen tree and saw a flat rock about the size of a silver dollar wedged into the bark of the tree.  That rock was right where I had left it, at the end of Long Lake, where the Gibsons had hidden the canoes.  It was my marker.  This was the tree that Grace and I sat on while we all stopped to eat, after finishing the long, fifteen mile canoe trip.  That meant that the lake and the canoes were close.

            My head started spinning with joy.  I was so exuberant that I felt like screaming just to listen to the elation in the echo.  I restrained myself, however, and smacked my right fist into the palm of my open left hand, then smiled with self-satisfaction.

            Now, back to reality.  I had been withholding so much fear and anxiety from Grace because I was fairly sure that Jake and Tom would catch up to us tonight.  Like blood hounds on a fresh trail, they knew they were close, so they might try to travel by moonlight to raid our camp, catch us unaware, and kill the both of us.  I had to decide whether to make camp and prepare a surprise, counter-attack, or to travel by moonlight, without rest, which meant taking the chance of tripping and breaking a leg or arm, or having an eye poked out with a sharp, unseen and low-hanging tree branch, or any other accidental injury.  Also, I asked myself, “Could Grace travel through the night with only that one hour of sleep?”  I seriously doubted that.

            But now that I had found my marker, and knew where I was, I didn’t have to think of any of that.  I knew I could easily paddle the Long Lake in one of the two hidden canoes.  Naturally, I would destroy the other canoe so that Jake and Tom couldn’t follow us.  And since canoe travel would be so much faster than hiking through thick forests, then every paddle of the canoe would increase our lead over the Gibsons, as long as they were still on foot.  As a matter of fact, I thought, once they knew that we were traveling in the canoe, and they couldn’t use the other canoe to chase us, Jake and Tom would be forced to give up the chase altogether and take their chances avoiding the law by returning to the wilderness.

            I could see that daylight would run out on me soon, so I told Grace about the canoes and the news created an instant source of energy in her.  We raced, feeling giddy, for about two-hundred yards westward until we saw the lake through the nude arms of a copse of tree limbs.  Beyond the copse of trees I recognized the shoreline and, filled with hope and joy, we walked along it to where the canoes were hidden.

            I was in such an unrealistically happy mood that I couldn’t help getting side-tracked by the beauty of this Adirondack Forest Preserve.  I knew that President Teddy Roosevelt had something to do with setting this land aside so Americans, especially New Yorkers, could enjoy it forever, and I silently thanked him for being such an insightfully, great conservationist.

            The beauty of these dense forests, azure ponds, crystal lakes and rugged mountains was astounding.  There was a unique and harmoniously symbiotic relationship between these elements of the Forest Preserve and all the wildlife that inhabited it.  No other Eastern mountain range, of any Forest Preserve, can boast of more plentiful, more remote or dazzlingly beautiful natural elements.  It was truly Mother Nature’s eastern treasure chest.

            Standing on the shore at dusk, I looked out at Long Lake.  While holding Grace’s hand, I walked quickly toward the canoes, but my eyes were constantly lured to the beautiful lake as I was mesmerized by the peaceful, mirror-like quality of the water, with the various fall, forest colors and shapes.  Even the color of the sky was exquisitely reflected in this pristine, liquid mirror.

            But, as I broke out of these thoughts and looked at where the canoes had been hidden, I suddenly felt sick, literally sick.  All the childish joy and excitement drained from my body, like a cadaver that has been drained of its blood by a mortician.  I could feel the cold embrace of devastating and terrible disappointment as I noticed that the life-saving canoes were gone.  I was horrified . . . and now I was unable to hide my feelings.  My mind shut down and clouded over, shorting-out the electrical and chemical synapses of human thinking.  Mentally, I collapsed.  I was a robot without a source of power.  My brain was unplugged.

            Slowly, I emerged from that overwhelming and demoralizing dark cloud and after the initial shock I remembered that on that night that we all camped here, Jake and Lester left the camp to gather firewood, while Tom was left to guard us.  I realized, now, that when they had said they were going to get firewood, it was only a ruse.  They had been gone for nearly an hour, but I hadn’t been overly suspicious of the length of time that they were gone because they both came back with arm-loads of firewood.  Of course, now I knew what had actually happened.  They had left camp to go hide the canoes in a different spot or, perhaps, they had knocked holes in the canoe bottoms, then floated them out into the lake to let them sink.

            Reluctantly, I had to admit that Jake, though in many ways a misfit miscreant, was a good General, a good tactician to have thought of that─the brilliant, Greek military strategist, Aelianus Tacticus (from which the word “tactics” and “tactical” come from) might have smiled upon him.

            So, I suddenly realized, that’s why they were still following us and not giving up.  That’s why they seemed so determined that they’d catch us, in spite of our long head-start, in spite of the fact that we’d probably reach the shore of Long Lake before them.  They must have figured that Grace would slow me down tremendously and, if that wasn’t enough, then the physical and mental shock of not finding the canoes would act as the final blow to our thoughts of a successful escape.  They probably figured that that’s when I’d finally panic and lose control.  But, abruptly, and to the contrary, I felt an inner strength beginning to grow . . . a strength whose source came from the forceful howl of Wolf.  That up-lifting and motivating howl filled my mind like an orchestra’s music fills a concert hall.

            Grace tried to hold back her tears, but couldn’t.  Her color, energy and hope drained from her small body simultaneously as she collapsed to the ground in a small, sobbing bundle of despair.

            I knelt and gathered her limp body into my arms and said, “Don’t you worry, Sweetheart.  Daddy will still get us out of this mess.”  As a confirmation of this statement, Wolf’s howl, again, echoed off the walls of my mind, like any wolf’s howl would echo off the mountains and through the valleys.  And, as always, it provided me with an elastic inner strength . . . one that made me bounce back with hope, confidence, self-assurance and a staunch determination to save Grace.

            “Grace,” I whispered, “We’ll make it home safely.  I promise, Honey.”  I hoped that I was correct, and it wasn’t a lie if I made it come true.

            It was nearly dark and the only choice I had now was to make a camp and try to surprise Jake and Tom, for they would surely catch up to us some time tonight.  If my calculations were correct, they would be in the camp, ready to kill us in just a few hours, in the dark, early hours of the next morning, November 20th.

            Something caught my attention.  I looked at the base of the distant trees and saw a pale wolf.  I knew now that it was definitely time to stop running and take the offensive, my and Wolf’s, specialty.

                                    /.- -./…./../.-../.-../../.- -./- -/.-/…/.-../.-/.-./

                                                            Chapter  13

                                                                 ****

                                                           Edge of Doubt

            I didn’t have the choice of attempting to travel through the night.  Grace was thoroughly exhausted; on the verge of collapse.  We could trek no farther.  I had to set up an ambush and, like Nam, I knew that the best ambush would be a normal-looking campsite.  I’d start on that soon.

            The crescent moon looked like a lighted fingernail and not offering much light compared to a full moon which takes command of the sky and all its heavenly objects.  The stars competed with the dim crescent moon for dominance, each of them determined to wrest control from the other and become victorious over the ominous cloak of darkness.  But it was of little importance to me, since my night vision has always been unusually acute.  No doubt that was a gift from Wolf, the ability to see into the bowels of darkness.

            I told Grace to rest.  She needed it.  I kept busy, though I felt Grace’s steady gaze on me.

            Grace sat very still, leaning her back against a tree; quietly observing me.  Her love and admiration for me seemed boundless and, sometimes unwarranted.  However, it made me feel completely happy, satisfied that I was performing well at my fatherly duties, though, when in darker moods, I wondered if I really deserved such admiration.  I told her that I loved her and that my love would never end as long as I lived.  She responded with a joyful countenance with brilliant, dancing sparkles in her eyes and a grand smile.

            A minute later, when I gazed at Grace, her countenance turned sad.  I wondered what she was thinking.

            Grace was thinking about death.  She wondered if she and her dad would really escape.  She agonized over the thought of her dad being hurt or killed.  She dreaded the thought of either one of them being seriously injured or killed.  She wanted them both to live for a long time.  Then, as if those thoughts weren’t bad enough for an eight year old child, she thought that if they both survived, she’d still lose her dad in the future.  Everyone dies and some day her dad would die.  What an awful day that would be, she thought . . .and mommy will die, too, was her follow-up thought.  Those thoughts depressed her to the point that she had to erase them from her mind, but the deeply sad, residual effects of those thoughts left a painful mask of sadness on her face.

            Grace turned toward me and caught me looking at her.  She smiled at me, but the smile looked strained and didn’t reach her eyes.

            Grace was very much aware of my problems with depression.  She knew that I’d started seeing a doctor and was taking medication.  She’d seen the effects of my depressed moods, sometimes personally, when I would lash out verbally, in anger and frustration.  But it didn’t affect her love and admiration for me─I was very lucky.

            Grace’s mom told her that I had been in a war and some bad things happened that I couldn’t forget and didn’t want to talk about, things that I was not proud of, things that made me feel shameful and guilty.  It was pretty hard for me to deal with it, Sam told Grace.

            I saw Grace peek at me and wondered what she was thinking.

            Grace was thinking: I’m glad he’s my father.  He’s so brave.  I wish I could be that brave.  He told me he would gladly die if it would save my life.  I don’t want him to die.  I’m scared.  Really scared, but I don’t want to get in Daddy’s way.  Papa’s changed.  He hates those Gibsons.  It’s like he has fire in his eyes.  It makes him look really mean.  I shouldn’t think like that.  I don’t like those thoughts.  They scare me, too.  He’s working so hard to save me.  I can’t be brave because I’m too scared.  Maybe this was what it was like for him in that war.  Look how busy he is.  He lets me rest while he works hard.  I feel good when he’s near me.  I feel safe.  He’s my dad.  I love him, but I don’t know how to help him.  It feels good just to look at him.  He promised to get us back to mommy.  I wonder what mommy’s doing and thinking.  I have to stop thinking like that.  It makes me too sad.  I better wipe my tears away so Papa doesn’t see them.  When I look at Papa, I feel safe.  Mommy says that fear does not stop him from doing what needs to be done.  I’m not sure what she meant by that.  Was mommy talking about war or just regular life?  How can fear not stop somebody?  Isn’t Papa afraid?  He looks afraid, sometimes.  He worries a lot.  I wonder if I can stop being afraid.  I don’t know how to do it, though.  Papa’s looking at me.  It makes me feel good.  What’s that white stuff behind Papa?  Not snow.  It’s moving like a walking cloud.  Where’d it go?  It’s gone.  Am I seeing things?  Must be ‘cause I’m tired.  Seeing things, I guess.  Whatever it was, I feel better, but I don’t know why.  I know Papa doesn’t believe in God, but if there really is a God, I hope he helps us.

            She knew her father didn’t believe in God, anyone’s God.  She didn’t understand most of what he said, but he did tell her that, when she was an adult, she’d have to decide for herself.  But, to him, it was all frayed threads of legend, myth, exaggeration, contradictions, impossibilities and superstition all weaved into a rug called religion.  But it was a rug that was so believable to so many people that they thought it was a magic carpet that would take them to a mythical place in the sky called Heaven.  But, did that make him a bad man?  Grace knew that he was a good man.  He just used different rules of goodness.  She thought how he often told her that good atheists are just as good as good Christians─and bad atheists are no worse than bad Christians─who try to guide their lives with religious rules of goodness, honesty, caring and charitable consideration for and towards others.  Good atheists are equally as good by following the secular rules of a civilized, orderly and lawful society.  Steven Weinberg summarized it best when he said, “Religion is an insult to human dignity.  With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things.  But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.”

            Grace recalled his saying that believing in a God isn’t necessary for being a good person and that it also wasn’t necessary for explaining the beginning of the universe.  He said that religious organizations have just as much criminal activity within them as most other organizations in any society.  Religion is not exempt from evil activity, and, in fact, religious doctrine, especially Christian religious doctrine, has been responsible for most of the evil, horrendous, and torturous deeds in the history of mankind.  Think for yourself, he often told Grace.  Don’t let other people do your thinking, especially concerning religion.  Be a skeptic, ask questions, demand rational answers before you believe.  Think, research, then decided what you believe to be true.  If you decided to believe in any particular God, of any particular religion, and you feel that your beliefs are justified, in your own mind, then be religious.  If it all appears to be non-sense, then be something else.  Belief in God, he said, just like atheistic beliefs should not be a family obligation or tradition, as if it were some inherited physical trait forced onto them by the structure of their DNA.  Rather, it should be a thoughtful and responsible choice for adults to make, like choosing to be a Democrat, a Republican, an Independent, or something else.  Grace didn’t know much about religion, just that it was pretty complex and confusing stuff.

            She loved he dad without reservation, accepting his strengths and weaknesses.  She observed her dad working.  He was tall, of medium build, and unbowed by evil men.  He was a man who almost always took the side of the underdogs in life, a man who fought bullies all his life.  He was a man who loved her and her mom more than he loved his own life.

            After a few minutes of thoughtful rest, Grace bravely got up to help me─she had appeared to be lost in serious thought, but I had no way of knowing what thoughts they were.  I didn’t want to invade her privacy, so I did not question her.  I allowed her to help me instead of resting because I wanted to show her a few things about how to survive in the forest, just in case she survived and I didn’t.

            “Grace,” I said, lovingly, for I knew this night may be a nightmare for both of us, “I want you to watch everything I do so you’ll know how to do things to help save us, just in case I get hurt.”  I couldn’t mention the possibility that she and I may be killed.  Why scare her any more than she already was?

            Suddenly she grabbed my hand in both of her hands, then glanced up at me, saying, “Daddy, you won’t die, will you?”  She said this with tears filling her eyes and her lips trembling.

            My own eyes burst open with sudden shock.  “Of course not, Sweetheart.  That’s not going to happen.  But, Grace, you must understand that I’m probably going to have to kill those men before they kill us.”

            “Shit!” I silently exclaimed to myself.  I just got done thinking that I didn’t want to scare her any more than she already is, then I start talking about killing.  “Damn dummy!” I chastised myself, again.  I shook my head, angry with myself, but deep within me I knew I couldn’t protect her from the reality of this situation any more, so, reluctantly, I continued.

            “Grace, please listen to me.”  She was looking at the ground, hiding her face.  I gently lifted her chin with my left hand so that she was looking into my eyes.  “Grace, I love you very much and I want us both to live so we can go back safely to Mommy.  But in order to do that, I will have to do things that may seem awful mean and terribly cruel.  We can’t run any more and we can’t hide.  It’s time for me to fight back, which means that I’ll probably have to kill these men.  If I don’t, they will surely kill us.”

            “You’re not supposed to kill people, are you Daddy?”

            I took a deep breath.  “Grace, usually killing is bad, but sometimes it’s good, especially when it’s necessary to save your own life from a bad person who’s trying to kill you.  But, Sweetheart, it’s never heroic or thrilling or exciting, not if you’re a good person, anyway.”  I hesitated to explain my thoughts to her, not knowing if she’d understand, but I felt that I must clarify some things for her.  “Grace, when you kill someone, you will feel good if it saves your life, or someone else’s life.  But later on you feel guilty because you took away the most valuable thing in this whole universe, someone’s life.  And the fact that he deserved it, and that killing him saved other people’s lives, is the only thing that allows you to live with yourself.  Killing isn’t like you see it on TV, or in the movies.  It’s much, much uglier than that and if the killer is a good person and kills for a good, lawful reason, he’ll probably still view it as an ugly, regrettable action and dislike himself for doing it, even though, if he hadn’t done it, he wouldn’t be around to feel the guilt or shame that he has to live with.”

            I paused to let Grace think.  Racing through my mind were many different thoughts.  One thought was like a fishhook that caught a particular line of my thinking.  As I thought of this kill-or-be-killed situation, a list of knife fighting books raced through my mind, such as: KILL OR GET KILLED  by Col. Rex Applegate, COLD STEEL  by John Styers, DO OR DIE  by Col. A.J.D. Biddle, and KNIFE SELF-DEFENSE FOR COMBAT  by Michael D. Echanis.  I didn’t need to study them any further.  I learned what I needed to know from those sources and had practiced for many hours.  They were now part of my reflexes and my mind and muscle-memory.  I could move with speed and coordination so that my movements appeared to be automatic, blurred and without thought, a partnership between self-preservation, instinct, skill, muscle-memory and sharp reflexes.

            I looked down at Grace as she stared up at me, studying me─what could she be thinking?  Something made me lift my eyes and look around.  Something in the air had changed.  The chemistry of the air?  The smell?  The color?  It was something subtle; something a woodsman would notice.  Then I spotted it.  It was Wolf.  I looked into the blanket of darkness that covered the forest and saw Wolf’s hazy, white shape.  It was a familiar ghostly, pale shape; a shape that I saw often in Nam, but only when I went out to kill the enemy at night.  I stared at Wolf who looked back with eyes that turned bright yellow, like the fiery glow of the devil’s twin lanterns.  Wolf stared back, silently communicating with me.  His ghostly body looked as if it was made of fog or, perhaps, white gauze.  He was silently drifting from tree to tree.  Wolf turned his head away from me, then slowly turned it back to face me and his face had changed to mine.  My face on the body of a white wolf.  Our eyes locked together, our thoughts mingling and it seemed as if I was talking to myself: “Born for violence, shunned by many, yet desperately needed by many.”  I was a paladin by nature.  I heard a voice.  Wolf’s voice?  Words saying: “You’ve always known your nature, though it was concealed cunningly, deceptively in a body almost the opposite of what one thinks of as a warrior.  You fooled all others, but not me, my brother.  You felt the violence, you felt the strength and the power when no one else could see it or feel it.  You felt it in your quick reflexes, your unusual speed, your need to assist the underdog and the helpless to fend off bullies.  And it was constantly confirmed in clashes with older, stronger boys who couldn’t see your hidden strength, then had to pay the price for their blindness when they pushed you into combat.  They felt your strength, saw your speed and feared your rage.  They thought, when they saw you turn pale, that it was a sign of weakness and fear.  They couldn’t understand that you had just transformed yourself into me, the pale wolf.

            Native Americans saw this transformation as a rare, mystical, magic power, and he who possessed it was shielded from defeat (though not meant literally) and, thus, destined to be a reluctant leader.

            I heard a growl, deep throated, menacing, but friendly to me.  If Death rode a pale horse, then death was the business of my friend, the pale, roamin’ wolf.  He wasn’t threatening me, just warning me that death was eminent, that the killings weren’t far away.  Another growl seemed more like laughter, then came the words, “Death is a breath-taking experience.”  I could only shake my head at the “black humor.”

            Grace was hugging me and did not notice Wolf.  I didn’t think he let anyone else see him so I didn’t have to worry if Grace noticed or not─later I found out that I was wrong.  The sight of the pale wolf calmed me.  The feeling made me think of a brick of C-4, plastic explosive.  I could squeeze it, fold it, twist it, even pound on it and nothing happened to its calmness, but if the calmness is disturbed with an electric current, then that calmness gets replaced with a highly destructive explosion.  That’s the type of calmness I was feeling now.  I was the C-4 and the electric current was Jake and Tom.

            Once, in Nam, a scared, young soldier asked me how I could be so calm and why I was so quiet and didn’t brag about my stealthy, night time killings.  He said he thought it took more courage than anything he’d ever seen or heard of to leave the safety of my position and crawl out, alone, into the jungle, at night, so that I could kill the enemy using only the darkness, stealth and a knife.

            The scared kid was thrown out into Nam like so damn many other teenage boys.  I talked to him kindly, treated him like a friend and told him that, “You have to know yourself, know what you can do and can’t do well, the extremes that you’re capable of and what conditions need to exist to provoke you into going to extremes and using deadly skills”.  I told him that my calmness was only superficial and that it only prevails until something triggers the explosion that catapults me into action.  I told him that bragging isn’t necessary to know who you are and what you can do and what you believe.  “You should already know that,” I said, “so why should you need to advertise it by bragging?  I have nothing to prove to others, nothing to demonstrate, no need for pats on the back and no desire for verbal applause.”  I paused in thought, then continued, “If left alone, unprovoked, I can remain calm, smiling, even jocular.  Hopefully, I won’t be provoked because all it does is scare people around me, especially friends, though I have very few of them, who make the mistake of thinking that they know me quite well.  If they only see the calmness in me, then they only know one small part of me and, like naïve weathermen, they entirely miss the darkness, the cloudiness and the storms that thoughts of the enemy builds within me.

            “And before you ask, I don’t have many friends because I don’t want to get too close to the other guys.  It hurts too much when they get injured, maimed or killed.  I’m quiet because I’m thoughtful.  I live inside my head a lot.  It’s peaceful there.  And I’m not as brave as you think I am, nor as courageous.  I don’t want to die.  I want to return home in one piece, not in a body bag and a closed coffin.  You might see bravery or courage, but it’s really fear that motivates me and makes me determined to survive Nam.  A friend told me that death is a breath-taking experience.  He meant it as a joke, but I’ve taken it seriously.  It’s an experience I’m determined to avoid.  And if I need to stalk and kill the enemy during the blackness of night, then, in spite of my fear, that’s what I’ll do.  That’s what I am doing.”

            The kid smiled at me, said thanks for talking to him and being friendly to him.  After that we talked most evenings, before I crawled beyond our camp to kill the enemy, until he was reassigned about two weeks later.  Less than a week after that he was killed when he stepped on a land mine and bled-out minus his two legs.  The medics couldn’t stop the bleeding.  Exsanguination, I think, is the million dollar word for it, death from lose of blood.  Anyway, that nice kid died on the dirty, smelly, scorched ground of South Vietnam.  If he hadn’t been transferred I might have been able to watch over him, but then, if he got killed, his death would have demoralized me like other friend’s deaths had done.  So, no close friends is best.  The death of an acquaintance, or a name on a personnel list, doesn’t hurt nearly as much as a close friend’s death.  When I was informed of the kid’s death, I was sad.  I walked away and didn’t ask for more details.  I didn’t want to know.  His name was Phillip.  I never knew his last name.  I did shed tears for him that night.  I killed more enemy than usual that night, too, and I didn’t just cut their throats, I decapitated them and jammed their heads on sharpened stakes for the enemy to see in the morning.

            I ached for that kid.  He was only eighteen or nineteen years old, just out of high school, but still just a boy.  A teenage boy with a long life ahead of him.  A whole world of opportunity.  A whole life-time of opportunity.  All dead now.  Vanquished by presidents, politicians and military leaders.  Now he’s just bones in a casket that lies in a hole in the ground, like the hole in the hearts of everyone close to him.  All their tears will wet the ground around his grave so that the government can send flowers and have them flourish.  All for nothing, especially when governmental assholes start a war, send young boys to fight in it, then make rules and regulations that won’t allow those boys, and the men who lead them, to win the war.  The kid died for nothing, just like more than 58,000 other boys, an incredible, unforgiveable waste of life.

            Damn ass-wipes in Washington sending America’s babies to war.  Old bastards staying nice and safe in their comfortable houses, with their safe and loving families, in safe neighborhoods, going to work in their safe offices, then sending thousands of teenagers to die in a land thousands of miles away from their own safe and loving families and safe neighborhoods.  Damn them!

            I brought myself back to my present situation and thought that my doctor would be happy.  I was fairly calm, even though I hadn’t been able to take my medications, and in spite of some nightmarish memories of Nam.  I didn’t have time to stop by the house and get my pills after becoming a hostage.  A smile bent my lips at that personal, but inappropriate bit of humorous sarcasm.  This was far from a humorous situation.

            I felt Grace pulling on my jacket, saying, “Daddy . . . Daddy . . . Daddy.  Are you okay?”

            I looked down at her with hope in my eyes.  I felt confident again.  I smiled warmly at her, thinking, it wasn’t going to be an uneven battle, the two Gibsons against Roman Wolfe and Roamin’ Wolf.  I looked into the forest.  The pale wolf was gone, if it had been there in the first place, probably just my imagination.  Still, I smiled, feeling surprisingly well.

            That feeling of wellness, hopefulness and confidence rushed through me as I kneeled on the ground and embraced Grace.  I told her that I was fine and that I needed her to be very brave and to trust me.  I told her that I certainly wouldn’t leave her and that I’d protect her, but that she must do whatever I asked of her as I prepared to deal with Jake and Tom Gibson.

            Grace recognized the feelings of hope and confidence that radiated from my voice and eyes, and that, in turn, revived the same feelings in her.  She embraced me, wrapping both arms around my neck and rubbing her cheek against mine, then kissing my cheek ever so gently, just like her mom often did.

            “Are you feeling good enough to help me,” I asked.

            “Yes, Papa, I’d like to help you,” Grace said, happily.

            Then Grace and I got busy.  There was no more time for my wasteful, daydreaming.  I needed to concentrate on action; violent, deadly action to save Grace . . . and me, though I’ve always had this strange feeling that death didn’t scare me.  If my dying saved Grace, I’d actually be very pleased, although dead people can’t be pleased.  I figured it would be an excellent trade-off, though Sam would be violently upset with me for that line of thought.  Damn!  I’d rather face Jake and Tom than Sam’s wrath.  Funny, huh?

            It was dark now and we would have to do everything by firelight─as soon as I built the fire─and by moonlight─there was only a crescent moon allowing dim darts of light to shoot through the bare trees.  That, combined with my excellent night vision, however, would do nicely.  I noticed that the moonlight shone on some larger rocks which were jutting out of the earth, making them look like bone-white, tombstones planted in the ground of the black, shadowy forest.  I wondered if Wolf hid behind one of them.

            First, I quickly built a teepee fire─I was in too much of a hurry to use the Dakota Fire Hole method─with dry twigs and loosely wadded toilet paper placed at the base, under the twigs that formed a teepee shape.  I told Grace that, if she had to build a fire, she could also use strips of white birch bark like we had seen on some trees, yesterday, or she could use dried grasses, or the dry inside of a piece of tree bark.  Then I showed her how to find dried twigs on the ground, at the base of evergreen trees or under bushes where they would be protected from the rain, or even abandoned bird’s nests, if they were accessible.  But, best of all, I showed her how to break off dead twigs from underneath pine trees, about a foot or two off the ground and still attached to the tree.  These were the best fire starters because they were almost always absolutely dry because they were so well protected by the upper branches and didn’t touch the wet ground.  I showed her how to strike one of the waxed matches on my flat rock to make it light, how to hold the match in cupped hands to protect it from the wind and how to stick it under the base of the teepee of twigs so it ignited the toilet paper, birch bark, grass, fine twigs or whatever was used for kindling.  We had various sizes of larger, dead branches ready and soon we had a medium sized fire.

            With the fire started, we had warmth and light.  I gave the remainder of my waxed matches to Grace; I placed them into her coat pocket along with the flat rock.  “Hold these for me,” I said with a reassuring smile, “so I don’t have to worry about losing them.”  I checked to make sure she had the pocket knife.  She did.  She looked at me, suspiciously, but didn’t say a word.  I could tell from her expression that she knew why I gave her the matches, stone and knife.  Though she was silent, she knew what I was doing; what I was preparing her for.  Her lips curved downward, misty eyes glowing with reflected fire light, but no falling tears.  I’d asked her to be very brave.  I’d asked the nearly impossible of her, at such a young age, but she was attempting to obey, though every emotion she had rebelled against her.  I asked her to be brave; she was.  I assumed she would trust me; she did.  I told her I would protect her; I will . . . or die trying.

            I added larger pieces of wood to the fire and soon campfire light splashed across our faces with long, flickering fingers of red, yellow, gold and orange.  When I looked at the fire, I imagined fiery phantoms dancing wildly at the top of each finger of flame.  Grace’s eyes, like miniature, circular mirrors, reflected the images of the camp fire.

            Soon there were red hot coals, so before I forgot, I placed four flat rocks half-way into the fire so they could get hot.  When they were hot, I’d use sapling tongs to pick them up.  Grace would be warm tonight, though I doubted that she would get much sleep.  It’s quite difficult to be brave when you’re too scared.  I was hoping that her extreme exhaustion would force her to sleep through the night . . . so she would miss the killings.

            Wolf howled.  Usually he appeared only to me and could be heard only by me─though there were rare exceptions.  That was also the way it worked in the killing fields that I walked on in Nam.  The howl sent an icy chill up my spine.  I looked at my hands and remembered the feel of the dark, sticky blood, remembered feeling it drain from a sentry’s body as I held him tightly with a cupped hand over his mouth.  Sometimes I saw the flame of life vanish from an enemy’s eyes and wondered what it felt like, though I wasn’t anxious to find out.  I thought about my kills in Nam.  It was nothing to be proud of, except that maybe those killings saved American lives and/or prevented other killings of innocent people, including, perhaps, some of the local population.

            Killing is a huge burden, unless you’re without a conscience and remorselessly sadistic.  You don’t need to believe in God to feel the guilt, the shame, the regret for having killed someone, even in wartime.  But some men are born protectors, born to help the weak and helpless, and in that act of assistance and compassion, they are born to violence, which is quite ironic.  I’m one of them.  I only kill to protect relatives, friends, or comrades in times of conflict like war.  I’ve killed a lot and by doing so, I’ve saved many more lives, like the Atomic bombs dropped on Japan during World War II.  Thousands of Japanese died from those bombs so that hundreds of thousands could be spared by ending war with Japan.  Were those bombs justified?  I think they were, just like I think my killing was justified in order to save American lives.

            I didn’t notice the cold, although the temperature must have dropped into the high teens and would probably drop into the low teens, or lower, as the night progressed.  The cold would be a minor issue with me, however, just like the humid inferno of Nam was.  I put the cold out of my mind, didn’t let it touch me, my intense concentration blocking everything except Grace and surviving the final conflict with the Gibsons.

            I remembered the compass.  I told her that she should keep it for me, also, because I didn’t want to have anything in my pocket that might get in my way, or that might restrict my movements, or have something in my pocket that might make an inopportune noise which might give my position away.  I told her that, if she had to do it herself─tears threatened, then retreated like a tide on a beach─all she had to do was follow the lake southward and if, for some reason, she walked too far away from Long Lake, she could travel southwest by lining-up the red needle in the compass with the capital letters SW printed on the compass.  I’m not sure she understood this, but I wanted her to have every chance for survival.  I told her that if she did wander away from the shore of Long Lake and if the compass got lost or broken, then in the morning, if the sun was out, she was to keep the sun over her left shoulder as she walked.  She could then rest when the sun was almost directly overhead between noon and two P.M., and when she resumed her walking, the sun should then be over her right shoulder as she continued to walk.

            “Do you understand what I’m saying,” I asked.  I could see some wetness dripping from her nose.  Her eyes, however, were still dry because she was trying so desperately to be brave for me, to control her emotions for me.  But the tears had to go someplace, so her nose was the outlet.  She sniffled frequently and brushed away the moisture with her sleeve.  I knew then that before she could ever fall asleep tonight there would be a bucket of silent tears, shed in private, because I had asked her to be brave.  She was such a smart girl.  She made the connections.  She knew that I wouldn’t have needed to ask her to be brave unless I thought that something bad might happen.  I just hoped it didn’t happen to her.  But logical chain-thinking pried its way into my thoughts.  For nothing bad to happen to her, I had to survive.  For me to survive, I had to kill both Jake and Tom.  To kill Jake and Tom, I had to walk in the killing field, again.  It wasn’t just necessary that I kill tonight, it was absolutely mandatory, if I wanted Grace to survive this terrible ordeal.

            My comely daughter stared up at me and said, “Yes, Daddy,” and I could hear her voice crackle with growing fear as another droplet of wetness, from her nose, stopped momentarily at her upper lip, then following the contour of her upper lip, rolled leftward until it reached the corner of her mouth and suddenly dropped down to her chin.  She took a deep breath, wiped the wetness from her chin and stammered, “I . . . yes . . . I will try to remember everything, Papa.”

            The sound of the word “Papa” brought a sudden surge of tears to my own eyes.  I hugged Grace.  I thought about how strange my tears must look to Grace as she was trying to hold back her own tears.  I wondered what she thought about it, but didn’t have the time to formulate an answer.  I did, however, know that Grace only used the word “Papa” when she was extremely happy and excited, or extremely sad and disappointed. There wasn’t any doubt as to which occasion this was.

            I was trying to be subtle about teaching Grace a few independent survival lessons.  It wasn’t just “independence” for survival in the forest; independence was preparation for life.  That was one of my chief complaints about our modern school system.  It didn’t breed independence in our youth, it bred conformity, the needs of the group, the collective.  As Frederick Nietzsche said, “The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”  Now-a-days its practically a social sin to think differently, both in and out of school.  I shook myself vigorously, forcing myself back to the present situation.

            In order to control our emotions and prepare ourselves, I grabbed Grace’s hand gently in mine; squeezed it lovingly.  Grace’s hand seemed cold, almost lifeless.  But then she squeezed my hand with a strong, confident grip that uplifted my spirit and transferred what felt like hopeful rays of warm, comforting energy throughout my body.  Then we got busy making our campsite preparations.

            I didn’t know how much time we would have, so keeping busy was of the utmost importance.  We needed to build a lean-to, but in the dark, away from the fire light, we would only stumble around, especially when the clouds started blocking the moonlight.  So I decided to make a tent out of one of our large wool blankets.  I took out my combat blade and cut three thicker and sturdier saplings that I could see at the periphery of the campfire light.  Then, using my knife and a digging stick, I dug two holes in the ground, the first one only a yard away from the fire and the second one five feet directly back from the first one.  These saplings were only about four feet off the ground so that the blanket would cover a larger ground area.  Grace helped me as much as she could.  Actually, she was doing very well now that her mind was on preparations for living instead of thoughts of dying.  I noticed that her nose was dry now.

            The third sapling, the six feet long one, I lashed securely with dental floss and horizontally to the other two upright poles so that there was about a six inch overhang at each vertical pole.  I knew the floss would come in handy.

            Then, with Grace’s help, I placed one wool blanket over the horizontal pole and, with a rock, I drove short, sharpened stakes, that I had cut previously, into the ground-level edges of the woolen blanket so it was fastened, as securely as possible, to the nearly frozen ground.  The open end of the tent that was farthest away from the campfire was then closed off from the wind using thick layers of overlapping pine boughs which, more importantly, negated any possibility of viewing the inside of the tent from that direction.  The fire and the general darkness of the forest wouldn’t allow someone to see very far into the open, front end of the tent either, especially when the campfire had burned down to coals.  With no flames there would be little light.

            It was about nine o’clock and we still weren’t finished.  Grace dragged the backpack, from beside the fire, to the tent and we placed our sleeping bags into the tent.  The sleeping bags were longer than the blanket so about a fourth of them stuck out of the tent.  This made it look like sleeping bags should really look when they stick out of a makeshift tent that was built a little too short for the long sleeping bags, especially one that would contain a long adult body, mine.

            Grace looked a little puzzled at the sleeping bag arrangement.  Then she said, “Can you make the hot rocks for me, again, Daddy?”

            “Yes, Sweetheart,” I replied.  “I’ve already put the rocks near the fire to get them ready for you to sleep on.  But we won’t be sleeping inside this tent tonight, so we’ll have to put the rocks and the balsam boughs, grasses and leaves in a different spot.  I’ll look around and decide where to put them.”

            Grace looked at me in an even more confused manner than before and said, “Then why did we do all this work, Daddy?”

            “To fool the Gibsons into thinking that we’re sleeping inside the tent.”

            “Why do you want to fool them?”

            “Grace, it’s difficult to explain because I don’t want to scare you any more than you already are.  It might also make me look like a bad person doing bad things, so if you still want to know, I’ll tell you, but I would rather not.”

            Grace looked at me with intensity in her eyes.  She was curious, just like her mom always was.  She needed to know things.  Her mom believed that the more she knew, the better decisions she could make and those better decisions would result in a better life for her and us.  I agreed.

            Grace’s eyes were beautiful, like her mom’s.  I knew what she would say before she even parted her lips.  She’s certainly her mother’s daughter.

            “You’re not a bad man, Daddy.  But I want to know no matter how awful it is, okay?”

            “Okay, Sweetheart, but I hope you won’t hate me, or become afraid of me if I tell you how I plan to kill Tom and Jake.  If I didn’t have to do it, I wouldn’t, but, in order to save our own lives, I’m sure that I’m going to have to kill them before they kill us.  Do you understand what I’m saying?”

            “Yes, Papa.  I understand.  I still want you to tell me.”

            There was that word “Papa” again.  My heart bled in sympathy for her as I prepared to tell my eight year old daughter how I planned to kill, and in so doing, I was telling her that, in Vietnam, I killed many times, over and over, night after night.  Would she see me as a vicious, crazed murderer, or forever fear me and my special martial arts and knife-fighting skills?  I hoped not.  I said, “I think I know what Jake and Tom will both do as they enter our camp tonight.  We can’t out-run them any more.  I’m sure they’ll be here tonight, Grace.”  Then as we ate, I explained to her what I had planned to do.

            I got up and found a patch of moss, pulled it up, leaving an indentation in the ground, and waited for the water to fill the indentation.  I let the water settle for a minute or two, then, very gently placed the metal cup into the water, being careful not to stir up any more sediment than was necessary.  I scooped up half a cup of water for Grace to drink.  Then I repeated the procedure until we both had our fill.

            Grace was getting extremely tired very quickly and I was glad.  I was afraid she wouldn’t be able to sleep and would stay awake all night.  I hoped she would fall asleep quickly.  Sleep would be so good for her─and me, knowing she was safe and out of harm’s way.  In a few minutes she became so completely exhausted that she walked with a wobble and sometimes staggered.

            I also hoped that she’d fall into a deep sleep, quickly, because I needed time to make further preparations, and I needed time to concentrate on martial arts techniques, both defensive and offensive.  I also needed time to psyche myself up, to meditate prior to battle, like I used to do for my formal karate katas and for sparring classes.  But most of all, I wanted her to sleep so she wouldn’t have to witness the senseless brutality of men trying to kill each other.  When I defeated them─never go into a fight with a negative attitude─I was afraid that I’d look like an insanely furious creature of death─sometimes I do dream about myself riding a pale horse─to Grace.  That’s where my fear was planted.  What would my daughter think of me?  But there couldn’t be any thoughts of losing.  I will defeat them.  I would meditate and see victory in my mind before it even happens.  Think positive, do positive and positively win.

            Joyfully, I saw Grace drift off to sleep after she sat down, leaning her back against a tree.  I picked her up and laid her down on half the blanket then folded over the other half to cover her.

            I proceeded about seventy-five feet westward, toward the lake, toward some thick bushes, which were a few feet outside the perimeter of light from the campfire.  Those thick bushes would conceal Grace’s sleeping area.  I went westward because I figured that Tom would approach the campsite from the northern direction and that Jake would circle the camp prior to Tom’s entrance and approach the camp from the south in order to prevent an escape into the forest from that direction.  The tent was slightly east of the campfire and since either Jake or Tom might easily attack from that directions, I figured that the safest place to hide Grace was to the west of our camp.  But even if they came into camp from the west, Grace would be well hidden and unseen in the dark, if she didn’t move or talk in her sleep.

            I used a thick, sturdy branch to dig a shallow trench on the far side of the thick bushes.  Then I gathered dry leaves, dry grasses and the balsam boughs to use as softer, warmer bedding for her to sleep on.  The cotton-like, fluffy cat tails inside her coat would also help to keep her warm.  She hadn’t been cold since I placed them there.

            I cut two long, but thin and very flexible saplings.  I bent them in a U-shape and picked up a hot rock like a nut in a nutcracker, but with the rock hanging downward.  One at a time I carried the hot rocks to the trench and placed them in it until all four hot rocks were safely in the trench.  Then I buried the rocks with four to six inches of dirt.  I went through the same procedure as when I made this same kind of bed for her before.  After the trench was covered, leveled and the moisture was allowed to escape via steam, I collected, then covered the trench area with the warm balsam pine boughs, then added leaves and grass.  I transferred Grace to a sleeping bag, then used the blanket to cover the pine boughs, leaves and tufts of dry grass.  With that done, I walked back to Grace, picked her up, inside the sleeping bag, carried her to the warm blanket and set her on top.  I could feel the warmth from the rocks coming through already.

            On top of the sleeping bag, I placed delicate pine boughs, twigs and a fine layer of dirt.  The camouflage worked wonderfully.  From six feet away I couldn’t tell she was there.

            I walked back to the campfire, misty-eyed.  I looked back at the bushes, toward my precious daughter.  The darkness and the bushes totally concealed her.  I blocked my emotions and went about my critical, unfinished work.

            I picked up the backpack, took a container of floss out of it and placed it into my pocket.  I carried the backpack to where Grace was and gently placed it next to her and covered it so it wouldn’t be seen.  If she needed it, it would be there for her.  I wished that I could believe in prayer, but this was no time to be wasting time fooling myself with fantasies.  When reality viciously bites you in the ass, there’s no use pretending it’s a gentle kiss.  It was me and only me that could save her, so wasting time with irrational ideas, empty words and soporific platitudes is something I simply couldn’t afford to do.

            I walked over to the blanket-tent and picked up two of the extra stakes like the ones I used to pound the blanket edges into the ground.  I worked quickly, whittling one end off to make the one inch diameter wood into a shorter piece only about four inches long, just about the width of my fist.  I whittled one more in the same manner.  Then all the way around the middle of each smooth stub of wood I cut a shallow V-shaped groove, about one-eighth of an inch deep.  I whittled the ends of each piece of wood so they were blunt.  Next, I took out approximately a twelve feet length of dental floss, doubled it over on itself twice so it was four strong strands that were three feet long.  I tied the ends together, then securely tied each end into each grove with a series of square knots.  Now I had a garrote with two solid, smooth, handles and four strands of tough dental floss that measured between two and two-and-one-half feet long─the double knots used up a few inches of dental floss─between each wooden handle.  I held onto each handle of this garrote with my fists together in front of me, then yanked my fists violently apart to test its strength.  It felt very secure, solid, and the fineness of the floss wouldn’t only strangle, but would also cut into a victim’s neck and, maybe, the jugular vein or one of the carotid arteries.  So death by strangulation, or death by exsanguination or both would be the result.  I preferred strangulation.  It’s not as messy, nor sticky, nor as unpleasant and sickening as the coppery smell of a large fountain of spraying blood.

            However, I hoped I wouldn’t have to rely on the garrote.  I was hoping my knife would end their lives quickly.  But with the large size and strength of both Jake and Tom─the Vietnamese enemy was short and usually very slim, not muscled─major arteries or veins in the neck, arms or legs had to be penetrated, or major organs in the chest cavity.  A deep knife wound in the abdominal area would cause death, if unattended, but death would be much slower in taking effect─no major, vital organs─compared to a violent tearing thrust or slash in any area where major arteries or organs are located.

            Death with a garrote was a relatively slow process, but I viewed the garrote as a last-resort weapon, in case my blades and martial arts skills failed me, although they had never failed me before.  Looking at the garrote, I thought: “Better to be over-prepared than under-prepared.”

            I felt good knowing the garrote would be in my back pocket, just in case I needed it as a back-up weapon that would be easily accessible, and very deadly─the wooden handles could also be used to slam into the eyes, nose, teeth, Adam’s Apple and temple.  It was a specialty weapon with a lot of uses that most warriors didn’t give the credit it deserved.  Maybe it was because the garrote took special handling and a special technique to master.  The garrote, once mastered, is such a deadly weapon because once it’s wrapped around the victim’s neck, the more he struggles, the deeper it cuts into his neck, and the quicker he will bleed-out.  Of course, at the same time that it was cutting into the neck, it was also compressing the esophagus and slowly strangling the victim.  After the deed was over, it was often hard to tell if the victim died by strangulation or by exsanguination, but that didn’t matter, death is what mattered, not the exact cause.  The garrote, like the knife was a silent instrument of death that I valued, even if it did cause a comparatively slower death than that of a knife.  I held the garrote in my hands as if it were a hundred dollar bill.  I caressed it, then smiled and tucked it into my back pocket.

                                                /…././-./.-./-.- -/- - -/.-./-…/.-/-./-../

                                                            Chapter  14

                                                                 ****

                                        Do Not Go Gently Into The Night

            I looked at my watch.  It reminded me of my wonderful wife, Sam.  She had gotten the watch for me a couple of Christmases ago.  How I longed to embrace her, to feel the warmth and pleasing scent of her body, to press my lips to hers, to run my fingers through her fragrant, auburn hair.  And her eyes?  Gorgeous, light green orbs with golden flecks embedded in them.

            I closed my eyes.  I could see her face smiling at me and the melodic sounds of Roy Orbison singing “Running Scared” in the background.  The lyrics to the song reminded me of when we were young lovers.  Like Roy said in the song, Sam really did turn away from other guys and walk away with me.  Feelings of triumph, joy and enduring love engulfed me.  “I will be home soon, Sam,” I whispered to my vision of her . . . “very soon, my dear wife.”

            I opened my eyes and shook myself out of that enjoyable daydream.  I knew that I must concentrate all my efforts and all my remaining cunning and strength on the upcoming struggle because this enemy was deadly.  Instinctively I knew that Jake wouldn’t stop to make camp tonight and try to catch up to us tomorrow afternoon.  He’d come at us in the very late night hours or the very early morning hours, probably the latter.  I could feel it in my gut.  He’d be here in a few hours.  He’d push himself and Tom, hoping that we had made camp and had not expected them to be so close.  He’d relish a dead of night attack.  But what he didn’t know was that I preferred the night, especially the “dead-of-night”─I even like the sound of it─with its brotherly darkness and its friendly, black shadows that prowled the darkness with me.  That’s where I fit in, where I was at home, comfortable with my blade and garrote, a dark, lethal and destructive force, when the situation called for me to be that way.

            Yes, I thought with certainty, Jake and Tom would be here soon.  I felt a feral chill in the air, a coldness in my spine, as well as a putrid smell, as if Jake was close enough to breathe on me.  Jake and Tom would naturally think that they were the substantial threat that lurked in the darkness.  However, on this night the superior force that lurked in the night wasn’t them, and they would soon be hunted by me and Roamin’ Wolf.

            I peered into the vast blackness of the forest, in the direction from which Jake and Tom would most likely come.  My vision was sharp and focused into the blackness of the forest where I saw the pale wolf prowling, on guard, waiting to warn me of the Gibsons approach by giving a piercing howl.  Then Wolf changed until he blended into the chilly darkness, like a white marble slowly changing to black as it rolls across a black velvet cloth.

            Something on the ground grabbed my attention.  I squatted and reached for it.  I held a piece of dried, hardened bark that must have come from a mature, but small tree.  The bark looked like it had a 180 degree curve to it that spanned only about three or four inches in width and was about eighteen inches in length.  I stared at it as my mind wondered about the possibilities for its use.  There was an idea that lingered concealed in my mind, but I couldn’t put it into focus.  If I stopped straining to think about it, it would probably come to me, I thought, so I stayed busy and very alert, until midnight, with no warning signal from Wolf.

            The final preparations inside the tent and around the camp were completed.

            I cut in half the fire-dried and thoroughly warm coyote skin.  I took off my boots and placed one piece of coyote skin on the ground, the fur side up, then stepped on the center of it with my right foot.  The fur felt soft and warm against the sole of my foot.  I bent down and used the point of my knife to poke holes into the four corners of the skin, then brought up all four corners against my upper ankle area and tied them securely, making sure that I left plenty of loose coyote skin around my feet.  Then I bound all that loose coyote skin to the shape of my foot by wrapping many feet of floss around my feet many times and tied it securely so that the final result was something that looked like an Indian’s moccasin.  I did the same with the other foot─in Nam, I actually wore hand-made leather moccasins.  Why?  Because the thick, somewhat stiff soles of boots dig into and crunch objects that are on the ground.  They also leave obvious tracks.  This usually can’t be prevented because the thick soles of the boots don’t allow the foot to feel objects on the ground, until it’s too late.  The noise that boots make as a person walks through a forest─or jungle─can cost a person his life.  The American Indians knew that wearing moccasins allowed them to feel objects that are under their feet as they stealth-walked, thus, they could feel the ground with their feet, detect an object that will make noise, then place their foot elsewhere to prevent that noise.  I’ve removed my boots and made crude moccasins for that same reason.

            Next, I removed the chunk of charcoal that I had taken from last night’s dead campfire and had stored in my backpack.  I used it to blackened all the exposed skin areas of my face, hands and wrists.  I probably didn’t need it on my hands because my gloves covered them up, but, I thought, there’s always the unexpected chance that I may need to remove the gloves.  I threw the charcoal into the fire and put my gloves back on.  I still didn’t feel cold, probably partly due to the lack of wind that couldn’t penetrate this thick forest, even without the leaves on the branches.  Also influential was the fact that I didn’t have time to focus on the cold because my concentration was almost totally on survival.

            It seemed like a Halloween kind of night, spooky, with the bare branches brushing against each other and acting like ghostly arms that were reaching skyward, as if reaching for and worshipping the moon.

            I checked my watch again; 11:56 P.M., November 20th.

            “Do not go gently into the night,” I mumbled to myself.  I couldn’t remember the remainder of the poem, nor the author.  It didn’t matter.  I sure wasn’t going to recite it to the Gibsons.  The words I remembered were the only words I needed to remember because as an ex-Marine, a loving and protecting father, and a human being who was in a life or death situation, I certainly had no intentions of accepting and going gently towards death.  There would be nothing gentle about this night.  Violence would dominate this night before it gave way to the radiant calmness of dawn.  “Semper Fidelis,” I thought and smiled.  The Marine Corp. motto floated in my mind, as well as its meaning, “always faithful.”

            I was proud to have been a Marine; to fight for my country.  I would have been proud to serve my country in any of the military branches.  However, I wasn’t proud of all the killing I performed, nor did I believe that U.S. fighting troops should have been sent to Vietnam especially if the political Rules of Engagement were going to prevent American soldiers from winning that war.  The lives lost, the years wasted, and the billions of dollars squandered on a war that was ruled by politics and indecisiveness was, in my mind, unconscionable.  That thought reminded me of the connection of those politicians with an idea expressed by Gerald Massey when he said, “They must find it difficult . . . those who have taken authority as truth, rather than truth as the authority.”  Unfortunately, cunning, deceitful political and military minds know that authority can manipulate the truth.  This made me wonder what addendum Massey may have wanted to add to his often quoted words.

            But, while in Nam, I did my job and tried to help my country and the democratic way of life.  I’m a staunch believer in democracy, but I do make my share of errors.  Once Sam and I had a political disagreement and she said to me: “You seem always clear about where you stand on issues, always self-assured, always certain, but you’re not always right.”  It made me realize that “certainty” about something is often no more valid that an unsupported “opinion” about something.  It also made me realize that I’m not as smart as I’d like to think I am.

            I thought that my biggest internal conflict wasn’t due to my feelings that the Vietnam War wasn’t a just war for America to be involved in─though I had initially agreed with the war effort.  My biggest conflict was focused right here in America, with Americans who treated our returning soldiers like dog shit on a sidewalk, harassed them spit on them as they spewed their hatred onto the soldiers and even called them “baby killers.”  Those soldiers went from hostile, life-threatening, dangerous action in Vietnam, to hostile mental and emotional pain at home.  Many Vietnam Vets, even in their own home towns and neighborhoods, were subjected to verbal abuse, scornful looks and ostracism coming from repugnant strangers, and even more hurtfully, from friends and relatives.  And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the Vets were then abandoned by their own government and refused medical and emotional medical treatment.

            I was one of the lucky ones to come home with only moderate depression and much bitterness for the way the Vietnam Vets were treated─the actress, Jane Fonda, was particularly vicious toward America’s part in the war.  She never lacked for a string of stinging insults about Vietnam Vets.  Her unpatriotic and infamous trip to Hanoi demoralized American soldiers and American prisoners of war, but pleased the enemy greatly.  She became known, with anger and bitterness, as Hanoi Jane.  To this day, I can’t help disliking that woman.

            So many Veterans came home to so much worse, especially the amputees and the many other returning with serious physical injuries.  I wished that my country and my fellow citizens had been as faithful to me and my fellow Vietnam Vets as we had been to them.  My Vietnam buddies were the closest friends I ever had, and possibly, that I ever will have because those friendships were forged and hardened in the fires of combat; often in life or death combat.

            I’m still glad that I passed-up the opportunity to join the Marine or Navy Special Forces groups.  It wasn’t that I disliked the Special Forces, per se, or disrespected the type of people involved in them─they deserve immense respect─I just didn’t feel that it was the place for me.  Actually, I didn’t feel “special,” that’s all, though I had great faith, admiration and respect for those who were tough enough to make the grade and become members of our various superior Special Forces units.  Luckily, for me, I’d have had to volunteer and then be approved in order to gain a chance to prove my skills and become a Special Forces member.  But I didn’t want to join, so I chose not to volunteer, though there was some pressure for me to do so.  I made a lot of friends, saved many more lives than I took, and was proud to be an ordinary Marine Grunt, with ordinary Grunt friends.  I’m not sure if I did the right thing by staying out of the Special Forces.  At the time, I thought I was doing the right thing for me.  But, as I said, I am very proud of the American Special Forces Units, especially their toughness, dedication and sacrifices.

            I placed the last of the dry logs onto the fire and then on top of those logs I placed a couple pieces of green wood.  Because they were green, they would burn slowly, dimly throughout the night, plus, they would create more smoke, which would help me use my planned subterfuge on the Gibsons.  Then I circled the camp in an ever widening, silent-spiral, thinking, concentrating, letting my eyes and mind adjust to the night while trying not to look towards the fire which hindered night vision.  Time to clear my mind and focus, to be self-assured, to be certain and to forget about what might be right or wrong.  My task was survival, by any means, whether it was right or wrong in the view of civilized laws.  For me and Grace, it was right to survive, so it couldn’t be wrong to use any means, method or tool to kill Jake and Tom.

            At a Marine combat school I’d learned, and perfected in the jungles of Nam, the technique of “unfocused viewing.”  That’s where someone deliberately unfocuses their eyes so they can see a large, general area instead of focusing on one specific, small area at a time.  This technique allows them, once they’ve perfected it, to detect almost any movement that occurs within their total field of vision, which is about 180 degrees, while their head remains stationary.  Therefore, I started using this type of viewing, in spite of the darkness, because it afforded me a big advantage over an enemy who was using focused vision and, thus, had limited detection of movement due to his focusing on one object at a time or one small area at a time.  For example, if you look into the night sky and try to focus on a faint star, it will disappear from your view, but if you unfocus your vision and look to either side of where you thought that star had been, you’ll see that star again, and that’s basically how “unfocused viewing” works.  It has something to do with the “cones” and “rods” which are light-sensitive cells in the eye’s retina.  An added advantage, for me, was the fact that I’d been born with excellent night vision.

            More useful, however, especially at night is the technique of “focused listening” which I also learned at that combat school.  Focused listening enables someone to detect, locate and amplify sounds.  As a matter of fact, it’s like unfocused viewing in reverse.  A person normally hear sounds that come at them from all directions.  To focus-in on just one particular sound, all they have to do is place cupped hands behind their ears, or use one hand, if the other hand is holding a weapon, and push their ears slightly forward with theirr thumb and cupped fingers.  It’s the same action that you see a cat, dog and deer perform when they move their ears in order to get a better sense of direction from a particular sound that it’s trying to focus on.  Of course, you’ll need to turn your head while cupping your ears in order to best zero-in on the particular sound that you want to listen to.

            I didn’t see or hear anything, yet, but I was certain that I would hear them soon.  It was the same, nearly faultless feeling that I had in Nam when I detected the approaching enemy, even though they were a mile away─with Wolf’s help─well out of my sight and hearing range.  More likely than not, my acute senses, except the better-than-average night vision, can be attributed to Wolf.

            About 12:30 A.M., November 21st─thanks to my watch, whose face could be lighted by pushing in the stem─I heard Wolf’s low, warning growl, an indication that the enemy was detected, but that they were still far away.  I had been walking around the outer periphery of the campsite so quietly that I couldn’t even hear myself.  My confidence got a boost.  I was instinctively using the “ghost walk,” which many hunters know about─though they may have a different name for it─and which I perfected during myriad night patrols in Nam.  This is a technique that enables a soldier, or hunter, to walk so carefully and quietly that he seems to be a ghost, noiselessly floating over the ground.  I guessed that Jake and Tom would know this maneuver, being woodsmen who frequently stalked game─but Wolf’s senses were too keen to be fooled.  It’s an entirely different walk that takes much getting used to, but probably saved my life many times.

            I circled past Grace one more time.  She was still sleeping and well concealed.

            My thoughts returned to the ghost walk.  Most people are used to walking on flat, unobstructed ground, and thus, have developed a somewhat awkward and unnatural stride that is too noisy for silently approaching the enemy.  On paved or smooth ground, where most of us usually walk, we step on the broad flatness of our footwear, with the heels of our shoes striking the pavement first, our bodies bent forward slightly, and our heads tipped downward.  This type of carelessly, noisy walking can be heard very easily, from many yards away by anyone using the focused listening technique.  Actually, it can be heard from a great distance by anyone not using the focused listening technique, which shows just how noisy a human’s normal walking style is in the woods, where their feet constantly come into contact with rocks, loose dirt, twigs, branches, bushes, roots, dry leaves and other obstacles and debris.

            Therefore, to be as quiet as possible, the ghost walk technique is necessary.  During the ghost walk, I take a shorter, smoother step, and when I touch my foot to the ground, toes first, then I gently roll the pressure from the outside of my foot to the inside of my foot. while, at the same time, keeping my body and head straight.  Thus, the ghost walk, instead of using the smaller calf muscles, uses the larger thigh muscles, as well as the buttock muscles.  Furthermore, the ghost walk emphasizes the lifting of the legs rather than the sliding, or shuffling of the feet forward, thus having the ability to pass over obstacles instead of sliding into them.  It’s very similar to the American Indian style of stealth-walking, though, if wearing moccasins instead of boots or shoes, the excellent tactile sensations on all sides of the feet make you much more aware of where you can step silently and where you can not.

            I could hear owls hooting and nocturnal scavengers searching for food.  They didn’t hear me.  If they had, they would stop moving and stop making noise.  As long as I heard these animal sounds, I knew Jake and Tom weren’t close and, like I stated before, the ghost walk, or stealth-walking, wouldn’t fool most animals, anyway, their sense of hearing being so much more sensitive than human hearing.  Also, an animal’s sense of smell, especially with the aid of the wind, is super sensitive compared to a human’s sense of smell.  If the wind is right, Wolf would be able to smell Jake and Tom from a couple of miles away.  Many other animals can do the same thing.  So, since I could still hear animal noises in my area, I knew that Jake and Tom weren’t real close, yet.  Wolf’s growl would let me know when they were about half-a-mile away and that would be anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes of ghost walking..

            The thought of the Gibsons being only a couple of miles away was unnerving, but only because of Grace being with me.  I was limited in some of the things I could do.  I couldn’t be as offensively bold because of the necessity of protecting Grace.  So at the start of the encounter, I had to act mostly defensively, then, if the opportunity presented itself, I could act offensively.  A sudden surge of mingled emotions wrapped its muscular arms around me, squeezing me until I felt panic.  I had to force myself to cut off the head of that emotional monster, killing it, then calming myself.  I settled down by convincing myself that there was no cause to panic.  I railed disapprovingly at myself for my constant mixture of emotions, then thought, “Shit! Maybe I am the wimp that they think I am.”  I was very capable of killing and willing to kill the enemy without hesitation or remorse.  I distracted myself by focusing on thoughts of hand-to-hand combat techniques; what attacks may occur and how to counter them.  Such thinking was like meditation; it took the edge off my nervousness.

            Naturally, since I have the ghost walk perfected, I very seldom trip over rocks or tree roots that are protruding from the ground and, by keeping my body straight, instead of leaning forward, I posses much better balance.  This enables me to move slowly, stop, or even change directions as smoothly and as quietly as a floating phantom.  Furthermore, with my back and head straight, instead of leaning forward and looking downward, I can use the ghost walk while, at the same time, using the unfocused viewing technique which allows me to be much more alert to the movements, which occur in my 280 degrees range of vision, by steadily and slowly sweeping my head from shoulder to shoulder─where my eyes can look over and past each shoulder, thus allowing me to see much more than 180 degrees.

            I paused to listen carefully.  I still heard the nocturnal animals.  I was about fifty feet from the campsite and decided not to go any farther, but rather, to circle back and await the enemy from dark concealment.  The woods were pitch black, but my eyes had adjusted well.  When I arrived, the campfire was burning low, almost to flameless, red coals.  The sky had cleared, so now the crescent moon and the clear, starry sky offered some dim light.  It was better to stay closer to camp and wait like an unseen shadow in the darkness.  Darkness, like a best friend, put its arm around my shoulders and pulled me into the black shadow of its cloak.

            I wondered if Jake and Tom would use the ghost walk.  Then I wondered if they would use the “approachment” technique during the last hundred feet to the center of camp.  If they used the approachment technique successfully, I may not hear them, but I would see them with my night vision.  But even if this were not true, there was no way they’d fool the Roamin’ Wolf.  Wolf had been tracking them via smell from a couple of miles away, then by their smell and sounds from a mile away.  Wolf would give me plenty of warning of how far away they were and the direction from which they were coming.  Basically, the Gibsons were walking into a deadly trap, if all went as expected.  The trouble is, I worriedly thought, that quite often things don’t go as expected or as planned.

            The “approachment” technique was a natural extension of the ghost walk, only much slower, more deliberate and controlled, and, basically, noiseless.  The approachment technique, is used when you are trying to silently get extremely close to your enemy, or prey.  This is how it should be done.  You bend your back forward slightly, but keep your eyes on the enemy.  Your upper arms should be bent in close to your ribcage and your hands should be folded in front of your chest or stomach area.  If carrying a weapon you should follow the same procedure, trying to keep the weapon close to your body so that as few body appendages as possible are sticking out away from your torso.  This makes your body outline less distinctive to the enemy, offering a better chance of not being visually detected.

            However, you need to be very cautious, with this approachment technique, making sure to lift, not slide, your feet high in order to avoid any obstacles.  Your balance should be so controlled that you can stop in mid-step, and freeze in that position until it’s safe to move forward.  Your feet need to be brought down very carefully and slowly by first touching the ground with the outside of the foot, near the toes, then gently rolling the pressure of your step to the inside and back before pressing your toes firmly onto the ground, or applying any weight to your step.  Then you should relax your toes and try diligently to feel whatever may be under your foot and, if nothing potentially noisy is felt, apply more weight so you can get a better feel for what may be under your foot.  However, if you feel an obstacle, you should lift your foot and set it down elsewhere, being careful to use the same technique.  If no obstacle is felt, then you apply slow, steady pressure to your forward foot until your back foot naturally lifts off the ground.  You wouldn’t, however, slide your back foot forward due to the noise that this would make as the foot glides too close to the ground, possibly hitting various objects that lie on the surface, or are sticking-up above ground level.  Each step should follow this procedure, being very slow and deliberate and even if no obstacle is felt under the foot, that foot is still pressed to the earth slowly so it can gently and quietly press any vegetation onto the ground.  The Native Americans were experts at this stealth walking (ghost walking).  Noise is one of a hunters primary enemies, so, ghost walking is a friend.

            I could feel anxiety building within me, so I did some deep, controlled breathing that I learned while taking karate lessons.  I also performed a self-hypnosis form of meditation that heightened my senses─Wolf growled, thinking that I had just done something unnecessary.  When I finished, I felt better, more calm and much more confident.  As I relaxed, I mentally raced through some martial arts combat techniques as well as combat knife fighting strategies.  Actually, I didn’t need to do this.  Those techniques would come instinctively when I needed them, but the thought process helped keep me alert, so I continued further with thoughts of my knife-combat strategies.

            The very first thing any potential knife fighter needs to know is that, if he’s in a knife fight, with an experienced opponent, they are both going to get cut.  It is extremely rare, no matter how good he is, or even if he’s victorious, to have a knife fight end without getting cut─unless the opponent is lacking in training and experience, and even then the possibility of getting cut is high.  It’s simply the nature of close-combat knife-fighting.  In knife combat, cuts are a “given.”  A knife fighter must simply expect and accept that fact and hope that the cuts he receives are only in non-lethal areas of his body.  More than likely, it’s the forearms that will get cut because the arms, by necessity, are in front of him and the knife-hand must extend outward, making it vulnerable, in order to strike the opponent.  Plus, the forearm with the empty hand is often instinctively and reflexively used to block downward at waist level thrusts─not a good idea, but the conscious mind seldom has control over instinctive and reflexive muscle reactions.  It takes much mental effort and physical practice to conquer those instinctive and reflexive actions.  Unless the knife fighter is extremely quick with the thrust and flick of his blade, his forearm will almost always be vulnerable.  Experienced knife fighters know and accept that they will get cut, that they will see their own blood and that the victor will be the person who inflicts the most serious cuts on his opponent, especially in the torso area.  That’s why very few civilians, and soldiers as well, are interested in learning knife combat skills─some of those basic skills I had already learned in my civilian martial arts classes.  I learned more advanced techniques from the specialized, knife fighting, military instructors.

            In a knife fight, holding the blade, cutting edge upward or downward, at waist level, is a matter of preference, depending on how you plan to use the knife and what your favorite techniques are─my preference is usually cutting edge downward, though, on rare occasions, depending on my opponent or my particular situation, I have held the knife cutting edge upward.

            Putting the handle of the knife in the hand like a hammer and stabbing downward is normally a mistake because it limits you to downward strikes.  It’s much easier to counter a downward stab than an upward thrust.  Also, by stabbing downward toward the upper torso you are much more likely to stab bones that will deflect the blade.  Unless a man is extremely lucky, with the knife in the hammer position, stabbing a vital area, in his constantly moving opponent, is improbable─to be accomplished the knife would have to strike the neck area.  So holding the blade low, cutting edge pointing upward, an experienced knife fighter can strike at the soft parts of the body, the groin, stomach and possibly the solar plexus area, where few bones can deflect his blade and he can find the soft, vulnerable flesh where the blade will penetrate easily and deeply.  Of course, there is a time to aim for the boney head area since your opponent will probably have his back bent forward slightly.  With his posture bent forward, you make a feint to stab or slash the stomach area, but when the opponent attempts to block your strike, you withdraw your knife hand with speed, raise the blade and slash across his forehead.  This will send a flood of blood into his eyes, disrupting his vision.  Instead of slashing the forehead, you can also poke into the throat or, perhaps, an eye.  Slashes to the side of the neck, where the large veins and arteries lay is not advisable at the beginning stages of the fight.  Slashes to the neck force you to reach too far, to extend your arm too much.  Save this kind of strike for a weakened, slowed opponent in the later stages of a knife fight.  The best areas, though at first it seems illogical, are the abdomen, solar plexus areas.  From the waist upward, the higher you go, the more movement there is until you reach the head where the most movement of all occurs.  More movement means more risk to you and less chance of striking your target.  In the beginning, you target the opponent’s abdomen area where he is most vulnerable.  And if your opponent stabs downward or upward at you, he must extend his arm.  In this case, don’t retreat backward─It seems illogical, I know, but if you move backward you move away from the opponents arm and lose a good opportunity to slash that arm.  Instead of moving backward, swiftly move right or left of his arm and slash it with as much force as you can.  Try for the bicep because a deep cut to that muscle with render his arm partially or totally disabled.  A more cautious choice, however, is to slash the forearm and wrist areas, although much less disabling.  And some inane advise that one of my humorous instructors used to constantly joke about was that: You should never take a knife to a gun fight.  It dramatically increases your chances of getting seriously injured.  I chastised myself for the ill-timed attempt at humor, and focused on the present danger.

            My coyote-skin footwear and coat might slightly hamper my mobility and flexibility, but, then again, so would Jake’s and Tom’s coats and, I thought, I’ll bet they’re wearing heavy, noisy boots that’ll hamper their movements; make them less quick to react.

            The throwing knife, which worked well in Nam, where very little clothing was worn, and when it was worn, it was very light and easily penetrated with any blade, wasn’t likely to penetrate the Gibson’s heavy, winter coats.  To be useful at all, the throwing knife would have to be aimed at bare skin areas and that would be the neck and face areas.  But head areas aren’t a good area to aim at due to their boniness and curved shape, the bones being very hard surfaces to penetrate and the curved nature of the head usually causes knives to glance off of it.  The only hope there is if you can make the knife penetrate one of the eye sockets, thus allowing the correct sized blade─thin, like a dagger─to enter the eye socket and penetrate deeply into the brain.  However, this is not recommended because it basically requires the enemy to assist you in killing him.  The eye socket is so small that it would be nearly impossible to hit with a thrown knife, even at a still target, let alone with a moving target.  Also, a slim, dagger-like blade would have to be used because the boney eye socket would prevent a wide blade from penetrating into the brain─though the eye itself could certainly be penetrated.  This eye penetration strategy is best used in close combat situations.  So my throwing knife would probably not be useful to me, but one never knew what would be useful until the situation and circumstances presented themselves.  I’d keep the throwing knife handy, the garrote, too.

            That leaves the throat area and the back and sides of the neck to consider.  These areas are excellent stealth-attack spots, at close quarters, but much too risky for a throwing knife, unless one has a tendency to believe in miracles.  However, like the philosopher, David Hume, I didn’t believe in miracles.

            As I thought of the probable uselessness of the throwing knife, I pictured the dull, silver blade spinning threw the air.  The image was so real that I thought I actually heard the gentle flutter of it, like a hummingbird’s wings.  It was that vision that reminded me that, for silent killing, when you don’t want others to hear you, a throwing knife would be a very foolish weapon because even if you strike your target, he will probably still be able to yell and give a warning.  Also, the blade may hit an obstacle before reaching the target and create a noise that will also warn the enemy.  So, for silent killing, it’s a regular, long-bladed, military style knife that’s most useful.  I would save the throwing knife for close quarters emergency use.  Also, if, somehow my combat blade got dropped or lost, then the throwing knife could be substituted, even at close quarters.

            I looked at my watch, 1:09 A.M.  I was alert and as prepared as I’d ever be.  I was used to waiting due to my Nam experiences.  To kill the enemy only takes a short time, but waiting for him to approach your area, and then waiting longer for the right moment to stalk him can take a few hours.  No, the waiting didn’t bother me.  But Grace’s safety did.  In Nam it was just my life at stake.  Now there was something more valuable than my own life at stake, Grace’s life.  I wasn’t some egotistical, maniacal fool who thought he was invincible.  No one is invincible.  It doesn’t take a big mistake to get yourself killed.  The biggest mistake I could make right now is to try to capture the Gibsons and bring them back for a trial.  In this situation, that was a very foolish option.  My choices were to kill or be killed.

            I’ll kill.  Did choosing to kill make me uncivilized?  Civilized and, supposedly, law-abiding people often hide behind their advanced culture, snobbish art, deceitful politics and hypocritical religions, then make laws that, quite often, do not dispense justice.  Those are the real people to be feared.  They are some of the meanest, cruelest inhabitants of the earth.  They have high-tech disguises to cover up their murderous thoughts and actions.  When unmasked, they can be much more dangerous that I am.  They are the manipulators of their culture, religions, politics and laws so that these things can all work for their own benefit.  Me?  I’m not pretentious.  Sure, I’ve killed for my country, during war, and I’ll kill again to save Grace.  So all the moralistic, ethical criticisms─more accurately and appropriately called “bullshit”─will have little effect on me.  There was no law here and very little civilization, so “bullshit criticism” doesn’t really bother me.

            If, after Grace and I get back to civilization, some one questions my decision or motives, so be it.  I will not risk Grace’s life for anyone’s laws, morals or ethics, and justice lay in my own hands while holding a combat knife, throwing knife, garrote, martial arts skills and a few traps in my fake campsite.

            I climbed a large tree that had a fairly thick trunk and sturdy branches.  I wanted to blend into the tree as well as I could.  As simple as it sounds, hiding in a tree is good a strategy─a lesson I learned quickly from American and Vietnamese snipers─because man, as a hunter, almost always looks at the ground or straight ahead or side to side when hunting his prey.  Even grouse and pheasants are initially spotted on the ground and not shot at until they are airborne.  A hunter rarely, if ever, needs to look upward, unless he is hunting something with wings or something that lives in trees, as squirrels do.  Therefore, without realizing it, man has trained himself to ignore the space above his head.  This fact makes hiding in a tree an excellent choice, especially if Jake and Tom are aware of the focused listening and unfocused viewing techniques.  I’ll be above their normal viewing level and I doubt they’d expect that from me.

            It would definitely be an uncomfortable wait, but that’s the way it had to be.  So I set my mind to the task.  I was set and ready for action with my only obstacles to absolute confidence being my constantly nagging thoughts about Grace’s safety.  I desperately hoped that she wouldn’t wake-up until the ugly deeds were done.  How would she view me, if she witnessed me killing Jake and Tom Gibson?  Would I lose her to emotional trauma?  Would she then fear me?  Would that cause her to emotionally and physically withdraw from me?  Those possibilities bothered me much more than I wanted to admit.  Even worse than bothering me, it was distracting me.

            So I forced myself to concentrate even more.  I eliminated the distracting thoughts from my mind, concentrating on Jake and Tom, karate and my fisted blade.

            I scanned the area carefully and felt the blackness of the night engulf me, making me part of it.  I was pleased with the feel and fit of it, like a black-clothed ninja, because that was an excellent, comfortable camouflage for a stealthy, unheard and unseen killer like me.

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