The Country by Ken Baumann

Author:Ken Baumann [Baumann, Ken]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781091807549
Published: 2019-04-25T22:00:00+00:00

I killed a man for knowing me. We were in the camp together. I know this because I remember perfectly a guard knocking out the man’s teeth with the stock of his gun.

I shot this man in the chest twice when I knew he had seen who I was then. I don’t know why. The only thing I felt when I pulled the trigger is shame. All before delivering the letter, a piece of paper I was told would help fewer of us be killed.

No one owes me anything.

8

Thomas saw the hulking Walmart from the raised highway and doubled-back to walk down the onramp. A big white block sitting heavy on the land, the blue of its front-facing letters competing with the sky.

He’d scavenged the big stores when he could, looking for cans of food hidden beneath aisle dividers, guns, matches, clothes that fit. There were always batteries, computers, televisions, and the blank black boxes that connected to the TVs. No one needed those.

He walked by the Walmart on the sidewalk, scanning the empty parking lot for movement. A rusted car sat near the Pharmacy entrance with its front window busted out. The driver’s side door was open and the hood was popped open. Thomas expected parts of its engine to be stripped out—they could be remelted—and the battery to be sitting there, another dead square.

He felt an impulse to walk to the car but then turned and saw the church.

Small, beige, a building people who passed by wouldn’t even see. That’s why it was the chosen place.

Thomas stopped and looked at the church across the street, looking as precisely as he could at what surrounded it: on the right a row of tall potted plants which separated the church’s parking lot from the wrecked fast food restaurant next door; on the left a street perpendicular to the

Walmart feeding into parking lots for low and hollowed out buildings; in front of the church, nothing. Nothing separated Thomas from the church. Its double doors were white. He only had to cross the street.

Thomas thought again of the man he’d shot. He imagined a vulture picking at the hole in the man’s face.

He walked across the street, then walked down the street parallel to the left side of the building. The church’s parking lot was fenced off on this side. He stepped towards the fence as quietly as he could, listening. He heard the wind pass over him.

The fence was covered on the other side a brown plastic stamped through with little holes. He looked through and saw what he could: the church’s backdoor, a single door with a pushbar. And beside it a parked and empty diesel truck.

Thomas’ stomach turned.

He stood at the fence and conjured up reasons: the people Thomas was working for had stolen it, or government men had figured out he was heading here with the document. In which case the person to whom he was supposed to deliver the letter was dead.

Thomas thought about the man who had tried to stab him in Philadelphia.

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