by Bryan W. Jones

He regretted causing his wife the confusion. Still, he realized that even if he could go back to that day in the kitchen and phrase things differently, the scene would have played out the same, with clenched fists and tears, and the same shattered ceramic serving tray. There was no gentle way to break the news that he had decided to become a militiaman. The next day, his wife had asked for a divorce.

He had prepared to be a militiaman by reading widely. He researched the necessary subjects: gunsmith lore, military history, survival skills, etc. He found history interesting and wondered if he should have gone that professional route. Had things been different, he sometimes speculated, he could have been a warrior philosopher to others who wished to defend their constitutional rights.

But he disdained the pathetic men whose real reason for joining militia groups was merely the promise of intense male bonding. No, in his broad chest, he realized, swelled the warrior soul. Philosophy aside, he alone understood the realization of his dreams would inspire others. He had to pave the way for the others. He possessed some instinct, some peculiar drive, that would allow him to write history.

His manager and co-workers, like his wife, did not believe him when he attempted to explain his need to go off and defend his constitutional rights. After quitting his job and divorcing his wife, he had set off searching for the patriot's paradise-- some isolated section of defensible property where he could train and organize. Once, a little too caught up in his cause, he had told a self professed gun enthusiast that he jumped the ship of his former life in order to infiltrate the enemy waters of political complacency. Reasoning that most militiamen didn't have the convictions to turn their backs on the amenities of a convenient, yet, compromised way of life, he concluded that his unconventional mind set him apart. He had to be a leader of his own soul before he could lead the masses. But everyone laughed at him. They said he was nothing more than a bad poet with no natural gift for a military command.

He fell in with a group of what he thought were deeply committed individuals and spent many nights driving into the desert, scouting training grounds. In the evenings they sat in lawn chairs and watched the skies for government surveillance satellites. But he found his compatriots insipid. What they took for simple TV satellites were actually the enemies of freedom. This bunch failed to discern when the stars were twinkling in code. At first he rationalized his companions' behavior and recorded himself on tape one night saying with obvious bitterness that true leaders needed to construct lies in order to provoke other people into discovering the Truth. He read Machiavelli and decided to strike out on his own and build a new militia.

How did he afford it? An aunt of his had set up a trust fund that provided all the resources.

For seven years he trained with more outcasts and lunatics. Too much depended on his ability to transform these broken human beings into ideal warriors. He became disillusioned and started treating anyone whose sacrifices had not been as great as his own with contempt. Even the few close companions he had chosen abandoned him. After a period of intensive training, he decided to give up on professional militiamen and decided that his only hope resided in the young.

That fall, he left to find a new training ground and headed for some old family property owned by his uncle on the border of Louisiana and Texas. Along the way he picked up young men, mostly run-aways and orphans. At least one had vision problems. Among the seven teen-agers he packed into his sport utility vehicle, none was older than seventeen.

The land was rural and swampy. An old shopkeeper who made his living off the hunters who came deer hunting in one particularly wooded section of the swamp told him on the day he arrived that every male member of the nearby town knew how to place a rifle bullet right between a squirrel's eyes at two hundred yards. After explaining the need to form a worthy militia of warrior souls, the shopkeeper looked at him and laughed, and then tried to short change him on canned goods.

For four months he and his seven recruits camped on his uncle's land and scouted locations. With groceries in his backpack, fresh batteries, and potable water, they practiced survival skills and attempted to grow closer to their warrior souls. Moving down well worn hiking trails until the trails ended and the thick vegetation began, they raised blistered hands to swing machetes at vines and ivies and branches in an attempt to blaze new trails. They stumbled for days through acres of swampland, camping in dry spots, watching the weather. He wondered about the choices he had made. With thorns sticking through their socks and the barbed wire and the muscle cramps--a thousand little crucifixions--he made them recite the U.S. Constitution and the tenets of freedom.

One day he almost twisted an ankle on a rotting tree stump. The very next day one of the boys was nearly maimed by a strand of barbed wire that was submerged in a bayou.

A moment of personal crisis came when they set up camp and decided they needed to hunt deer to save on their food supplies. The boys said they knew how to handle the extra rifle he had packed along. They trudged off to hunt a game trail and he circled back to find some dry wood for the evening fire. As he wound down a familiar looking trail, he suddenly found he was unable to locate key landmarks. He feared he was off his family property. He walked for what seemed like more than an hour through black, stinking mud that caked his boots and calves and made rude sucking sounds under his weight.

Somewhere deep in that depressing mess, he came upon a bayou's edge. He cleared a grove of trees and saw a blanket spread upon the sandy banks. A man with his back toward him stood at the water's edge, holding a rope tied to an aluminum canoe. The man stared at some distant point down the bayou. There were sandwiches wrapped in cellophane and a basket of bread on the blanket. A woman kneeled in the sand several yards away. She hugged herself and cried. He stepped closer and noticed the woman looked like Linda, his ex-wife. The resemblance was remarkable. He almost called to her, but the man she was with turned. Reaching down suddenly and grabbing a heavy stick, the man came at him, shouting: "Get the hell out of here!"

He turned from the man with the stick and retreated into the brush, almost sprinting along the overgrown trail. After moving quickly for several yards, he stopped and kneeled over to catch his breath. He listened for any sign that he had been followed. In the trees, squirrels barked at one another. The wind kicked up for a moment and then it was silent. Hearing nothing in the way of a pursuing threat, he gathered himself together, picked up his backpack, and started to follow the trail again, wondering about the woman. It had not been Linda, he decided. He could see no reason why she should be here. A trick of the imagination, he thought, and then he began to convince himself that with the physical exhaustion, the mind would play tricks.

Soon the trail ended. He entered a low marsh. Choking on the smell of the mud, his eyes darted between the black cypress trees that all looked the same. He realized his search was a mistake. This was failure in the woods for him again. In some dark recess of his soul, he feared a terrible truth was stirring: Guns were a mistake for him. Hunting was always a mistake for him. As a boy he had hunted on the property with his father and two uncles. How old had he been then, nine, ten? The men had given him a blaze orange hunting cap and an old army jacket that was too big. They had also given him the rifle when the deer walked out of the clearing. Standing there, the men had told him to point and pull the trigger. The animal fell with the first shot. He remembered not wanting to cry for the deer, not in front of the men, not while standing there, watching the blood run out of the deer's mouth. Later they had made him cut the deer open, reach inside the still warm body cavity and pull out the entrails. He remembered the taste of Venison and applesauce. He realized how hungry he was, despite the swamp smell, hungry for something.

Through the black mud, he trudged for another half-hour, till he came finally to some firm ground littered with fallen leaves. He walked up a narrow trail, between tall trees. On a bare branch near the forest floor, a bird twittered. Covered in mud, stinking and starving, he felt like an animal. His arms and neck were scratched and bleeding. He had no idea where he was or where to go next.

Stopping on the trail, he took off his backpack. He could not find his compass inside. For that matter, he could not find any of his supplies. Confused he slung his backpack on his shoulders again. He had had them earlier. He fumbled again in his pockets and felt the sides of the empty backpack again. It was getting dark now and he feared a cold, damp sleepless night. More uncertain than ever, he charged desperately along the trail till it ended in a thick grove of brush. Staring at tree trunks, prisons of bark and branches, he whirled round and started back along the trail until he came to a fork. He could not remember the way he had come, or if this was even the trail he had been on before. He took the left fork and followed it till he found himself fighting another thick barrier of branches and thorns and vines. This time he decided to just crash through, putting his boot out and stepping into the brush and moving forward. The branches tore at his clothing, scratching his face and nearly blinding him like horrible fingers trying to cover his eyes. But he pressed on, sensing a clearing just ahead. Fighting the brush for every gain, he finally crashed through to the clearing and immediately tripped on an exposed root and fell on his hands and knees.

Suddenly, to his right, from between two trees, he heard a shout: "A deer!" There was the crack of a rifle shot and the fatal bone-shattering impact of the bullet. He was on his back now trying to say, it's a mistake, there's been some . . . . But the blood in his mouth made words impossible. And above, for a moment, he saw the trees and the fading evening light between the bare branches. Then the shapes of his handpicked recruits crowded over him. The youngest one, Larry, held the rifle. Larry still had a scab on his chin where he had cut himself shaving early that morning.

Bryan W. Jones writes: "My short fiction has appeared in the Doorknobs and Body Paint, The Duct Tape Press, The Jacksboro Highway Review and placed in the 1997 Austin Chronicle Short Story Contest."