The Last American Martyr (26 page)
Chapter 24
As I write this today, the first snowfall of the year seems to be coming to an end. The afternoon sky is still gray, but everything beneath it is coated white and this small piece of the world looks so pristine. The wind has let up, and the hush outside is only interrupted by a solitary chickadee at the birdfeeder. It keeps calling out the name of its species as it seeks out its friends.
Chick-a-dee-dee-dee, chick-a-dee-dee-dee
, it calls over and over. As I sit here typing these words, I can only envy the small bird. How I wish I, too, could mingle with my kind. Oh, sure, I’d be particularly choosy about whom I associated with in this jaded twenty-first century, but I wouldn’t have to hide anymore. Unfortunately, I am who I am, and circumstances in my life do not permit me to interact with the rest of this planet’s inhabitants. All I can hope is that this memoir will go to print, and that some readers will be enraged at the price I’ve paid for speaking out. Please forgive me. When I sat down to write today I hadn’t intended to get into all this. I am sorry. It’s just that that bird outside has led my thoughts in a melancholic direction. It’s time to turn them around. Such musings could be harmful to someone in my delicate condition. All I can do is remain vigilant and fight to steer my thinking away from such emotions.
It’s now been five days since that gun went off on the logging road. Nobody has come up Split Branch Road, and there haven’t been any incidents since. Yesterday, I had to make a trip down to Presque Isle, but that went as smoothly as I could hope. I brought Solace with me this time. I wasn’t about to leave her here, alone. At both the stores I went to, I parked as close to the front doors as possible. Once inside, I kept checking out the windows, making sure she was okay. Had anybody been watching me, they’d have surely thought I was more than a little peculiar. Despite all my covert efforts, particularly with my dark glasses on and watch-cap pulled low, I must have looked like a hyped-up bank robber who’d just passed a note to a teller.
Other than that trip, and when Jake has stopped over for a few minutes, these past days have been filled with an endless stream of fear and depression. As I wait and wonder if each day will be my last, I feel like an imprisoned man awaiting his turn at the gallows. It’s again becoming increasingly difficult to ward off thoughts of suicide. Every morning, when I wake up, that option seems a little more viable. Is it better to sit here waiting for my executioner? I’m beginning to think not. On top of all these life and death concerns, I am heartbroken about what I had to tell Julie. When I’m not contemplating my demise, I constantly worry about how my decision is affecting her. What have her days been like since I let her down? How is she coping? Is she coping? Had I totally ruined the life of yet another very special woman? Is it possible she could someday bounce back from this? What is going through her mind this very…Shit, excuse me; Solace has suddenly become highly agitated. She’s about to tear down the back door in the kitchen. Something’s out there. I have to go see.
* * *
Thomas Soles’ memoir ended there. Those last words were written on a Sunday, and since there was no mail delivery, I did not stop over to check on him that day. God knows I wish I had. The date of Tom’s disappearance was November 2
nd
—exactly two years from the day his wife, Elaina, had been shot dead in the Great Smoky Mountains.
When I delivered Tom’s mail Monday afternoon, he did not answer the door when I knocked. His Subaru was parked in the driveway, so I went around back to see if he might be out there. But he wasn’t. The only thing I found were footprints in the melting snow. One set came out of the woods, from the side of the backyard, leading directly to the porch door. Investigators from Portland said they were a man’s size 13. Tom wore an 11. His prints, along with Solaces’s paw prints, went from the porch straight to the
back
of the yard and did not continue into the woods because there was no snow cover on the forest floor. Just behind their prints was the size 13’s again. The authorities concluded that whoever it was had come out of the trees—on the side of the trailer—and snuck onto the porch. He was obviously armed, and when Tom came out to investigate, the perpetrator ambushed him.
There was no sign of a struggle by the porch, but there was on the far side of the backyard. Right where the snow cover and prints ended at the tree line, there was snow flailed all over. There was also a mixture of both men’s footprints as well as paw prints. It was concluded that just before being forced into the woods, surely at gunpoint, Tom grappled with the bigger man. A few drops of blood were found at the scene, and tests proved they were, without a doubt, Tom’s.
The investigation lasted eight days. Every law enforcement agency from local constable Curtis Bass to the Maine Bureau of Investigation was involved. The one thing that stumped them all was why the man who’d come for Tom hadn’t ended his life right there and then. After all, there wasn’t a living soul within two miles of the trailer.
With the help of their dogs, investigators were able to track the threesome’s path through the woods for quite some distance. Their trail went about two hundred yards back from the trailer, and then it ran parallel to Split Branch all the way to State Route 5. It is presumed that, at that point, all three got into a waiting vehicle and drove off. To where, nobody has a clue. Were there other people involved, possibly waiting in the getaway vehicle? Nobody can answer that either. Five months have now passed and the general consensus around the globe is that Nobel Laureate Thomas Soles is a dead man.
Though they have since ended, when news of Tom’s abduction was first released, there were even more marches and protests than when the book had first made its mark on the world. Denise Solchow has published his memoir, and its sales have already surpassed those of the first book. Since Tom had never given it a title, Denise did. She called it
The Last American Martyr
, and it was
released just two weeks after Tom was officially declared dead. The truly ironic thing was that, before the book came out, Broadstreet International did everything they could to get the publishing rights. The same company that had whisked Tom’s first book off of so many store shelves, and fired Denise, was down on its pinstriped knees begging and bribing her in every way imaginable. Of course, she wouldn’t have anything to do with them.
As for myself, I’ve been going on the best I can. For these past few months there has been nothing left in my heart but an overwhelming sense of loss. Happiness, hopefulness, even contentment have become alien emotions. My dank spirits hit an all-time low last Tuesday when I finally gave in to one of Tom’s last requests. I sprinkled Elaina’s ashes amongst the trees behind his trailer—right near where I’d saved him with that ladder. No, I haven’t been myself since the moment I found Tom’s open laptop sitting on his recliner that day. When I went inside his trailer, after seeing those footprints in the yard and read those last few lines, I knew it was all over. I knew a horrific tragedy had taken place. I knew that not only had I lost my closest friend, but that the world had lost one of its finest inhabitants.
Yes, I was sure of all that, until yesterday afternoon, when my cell phone rang. I had just finished making my last two deliveries, wouldn’t you know it, at the beginning of Split Branch Road. It was Tom. He was calling from somewhere in Alaska. He didn’t tell me exactly where, and I know well and good why he didn’t. It had more to do with preserving my safety than it did his own. At any rate, he did tell me that he was up there with Julie Dubois. They had bought, in her name, a small homestead in a remote part of the forty-ninth state. He told me that she had sold her Montana place before they enacted Tom’s plan. Yes, that’s what his disappearance had been—a plan. For the last few months he’d been here in his trailer, Tom and Julie had been working out all the details during their phone conversations. Then, on November 2
nd
, three days after Julie had driven her pickup truck all the way from Missoula to Maine, they enacted those plans.
After Julie spent two days in a Bangor motel room and a third in Millinocket—waiting for that first snowfall—Tom called her and told her to head up here. As soon as he hung up the phone, with close to the predicted four inches on the ground, Tom went to work.
First he put on a pair of second-hand, size 13 boots he’d bought in Presque Isle. Then, leaving Solace in the trailer, he went out on the back porch, picked up several slabs of firewood for added weight, and headed for the woods beyond his yard. Once there, with those tracks behind him, he walked through the pines to the side of the yard and left another trail leading
to the porch
. After putting the wood back on his pile, he went inside and got Solace leashed up. They then walked back toward the tree line, alongside the first set of tracks, so it appeared the owner of the larger boots had coaxed Tom at gunpoint. Just before they stepped out of the yard and onto the forest floor, Tom kicked up and stomped some snow to simulate a struggle. He then cut his thumb with a Swiss army knife and scattered a few drops of blood.
After that the rest was easy. There was virtually no snow in the woods, so with Solace on the leash, the two extra boots in his other hand, and his gold Nobel medal in his pocket, the two of them made good time all the way to Route 5. Tom’s only fear was that before reaching his and Julie’s rendezvous spot, he or Solace might get nailed by a careless deer hunter’s bullet. But that didn’t happen. And it was only a matter of minutes after reaching deserted Route 5 that Tom was in Julie’s truck and in her arms.
Just before Tom and I hung up our phones, right after he promised to call back soon, I asked him how he was holding up.
He said, “Jake, for the first time in a very long time I can honestly say I’m glad to be alive.”
The End
About the Author
Tom Winton was born and raised in New York City. During his working career he has done everything from working on a railroad gang in the Colorado Rockies to driving a taxicab in Manhattan. Now retired, he has also been a mailman, a salesman, an entrepreneur and more. He lives in Hobe Sound, Florida, with his wife Blanche and their ill-tempered but loveable Jack Russell terrier, Ginger. They spend part of their time in Carmel, Maine.
Tom’s first novel,
Beyond Nostalgia,
is an Amazon (four lists at once) Best Seller. He is now seeking an agent or publisher for it and his recently completed second novel,
The Last American Martyr
. As
Beyond Nostalgia
was in 2011,
The Last American Martyr
is now a finalist for Random House’s 2012 Book of the Year.
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