Taboo

Keywords: Fugitive,

I used to be a fairly wealthy man. I designed and sold improved parts for cars, my company was doing pretty well, too.

Enough so that I bought a small ranch, a nice house with stream frontage that had been part of an estate.

The old man that owned it had split it into two sections, several acres in each, giving one half to each of his two sons.

I bought the lower half from the one son, the other lived up above on a newer home he had built, we got along fine.

Then one day there was some bad news, he had been nailed broadside by a drunken driver and didn't make it.

The upper property sold as part of his estate, the new guy and his fat wife were a bit of a pain in the ass.

Still, I could ignore them and all was fine, until a survey report arrived in the mail.

It seemed that the new guy had his property lines surveyed, no big deal, one would think.

Except the old man had paced off the property, and called his paces each three feet, then recorded the property lines in feet.

He had long legs.

He hadn't considered the differences between hillsides and flat land.

The surveyed property lines in accordance to the recordings went right through the middle of my living room!

Then began the court battle, it went on and on and on. I put up a fight, but the law goes by the exact letter of the law, not common sense or what some old man long dead intended.

It was years later before I found out about a little known law called "Adverse possession" and my attorney wasn't smart enough to know about it, either.

It seems that constant and continuous use over 7 years is enough to imply legal ownership. I had been there over 12 years, with an established fence line.

Without the attorney citing the law in court, the established propery lines as indicated in the recordings applied.

Stupid, of course. But it happened. I lost.

My business, bled of all assets. My house and land, whittled down to a fraction of what it was before.

I got drunk that night, I was sitting in my house drinking the last of a full case of beer when the phone rang.

It was the asshole up the hill, getting his digs in, laughing at me.

I hung up.

He called back, telling me he wanted me out in 30 days or he would have me dragged out.

"I got you, you stupid cocksucker!" was his exact last words to me.

Yes, those were his last words.

I went into my den, picked up my doublebarrel 12 gauge shotgun, loaded it with two buckshot rounds and walked up the hill.

I rang the bell, he opened the door.

He had time to look me in the eyes, and glance down.

I tripped both barrels, almost cut him in half.

I just turned and walked back down the hill, threw some gear into the back of my old truck...

and vanished.

There is a place owned by the government, it is wild and remote. Literally thousands and thousands of acres.

That is where I went, after disposing of the truck off the end of a launch ramp. I knew the current ran fast, the water was very deep. The old truck would end up a long ways away, perhaps one day discovered but it would be a long time if ever.

I carried what I could and walked for days to a spot I had seen years before while out hunting. Some of the gear I hid off the trail where it would not be found.

I knew I would need several trips to bring what I needed in.

I found a huge mound of blackberry bushes, I chopped an opening and cleared it out inside. I had some camouflage tarps that I used to cover the mound.

I dug ditches for drainage, in a month or so of hard work I ended up with a pretty good camp, it was warm and dry inside.

I had a stove I made of rocks, I fashioned a shroud to catch and direct the smoke out, running some pipe I had salvaged at night from a scrap yard down by the river to direct the small amount of smoke away and dissipate it.

No point in attracting the attention of the forest service.

The woods are full of food if one knows where to look, I happened to know. I grew up on a ranch, I knew about wild plants, how to catch animals with snares.

Rabbits and Squirrels were easy. Once I even caught a wild Turkey. Deer were harder to catch, but I got one or two every year or so.

I knew enough not to shoot, that could attract attention, even though I was many miles from anyone.

But I still had that shotgun, and a small pistol.

The creek nearby was full of Trout, they eagerly came to a bit of bait. They were small, less than 8 inches except in the Fall when a few Salmon came.

I made a spear and took several, drying the meat for later.

Several years went by, I saw no one except for my rare trips out to gather up beer bottles and cans for a dab of cash. Sometimes I would find small amounts of metal, I sold that at the scrap yard.

Salt and sugar was what I bought mostly, sometimes a sack of flour.

If there was enough, I would buy one of those red licorice whips, I liked those.

No one recognized me now with the hair over my shoulders and a full beard. They weren't even looking, I knew.

I had simply vanished.

I even had a small garden, a bit of a risk if a helicopter happened to go over and look down.

That almost never happened, though.

One day I was checking my snares and I heard voices. I hid as three men and a young woman went by, speaking quietly in what I knew must be Spanish.

I followed them to an opening, they had Marijuana plants growing. They were traveling in to tend the plants. I watched as they went about their work.

That worried me, their crop was only a mile or so from my camp.

Far too close, and the risk was they could attract attention to me.

The woman was young, perhaps 25 or so. She went down to the creek, squatted down. Then she stood up, pulled her clothes off quickly and slipped into the cold water.

It took her some time to adjust, the water was very cold.

Her breasts were full and sagged a bit, she had a bit of a soft roll across her abdomen. There was a mass of black natural pubic hair, her buttocks were slightly large for her frame.

I found her beautiful, I sat there in the bushes and watched her from less than 20 feet away. I knew I could not be seen, the clothes I wore were just like the brush around me, I had laboriously used charcoal from the fire and different plants to stain everything I wore.

Most of what I wore were skins of animals I had harvested with the snares.

She couldn't stay in the water for long, I watched as she turned and walked out onto the bank, driplets of water sliding down her brown skin.

I realized I wanted her, I felt the growth and my penis filled with blood.

It had been a very long time since I had even thought of that.

I managed to fight off my instinct to leap out and grab her, just take her. So many years I had simply taken what I wanted, but this was different.

I knew it would expose me.

Soon I heard the voices again as the men came down the trail. The woman hurriedly dressed.

I followed them as they walked on down the trail. At the highway, they waited, soon a van came by. They all climbed in and left.

I began to watch for them after that. They came every few days, sometimes just 3 or 4 days, sometimes 10 days. I knew they were trying to not develop any pattern.

Several times I went up to their field, the plants were growing rapidly, getting big.

They had carried in bags of fertilizer, I stole one, hoping they would not notice. They didn't seem to. I used that on my own garden, it really helped.

Several times I watched the woman bathe, each time was the same. She would work, then walk to the small pool and strip down and bathe. The men would come soon, and they would leave.

I knew that after the harvest they would be gone and I would be safe again.

Then came the disaster.

One of them stepped off the trail onto a side animal trail to urinate. I could see him reaching for his fly.

He stepped right into one of my small animal snares, it tripped and jerked his foot out from under him as the branch snapped back. He was too heavy for it to hold him, but he let out a loud yell as he fell.

The rest came running, one of them almost stepped on me as he went by.

There was a flood of discussion in Spanish, I knew they now knew someone was nearby.

I stayed completely still, knowing I was as close to invisible as it was possible to be.

Then the woman appeared. She was looking around, then her eyes fell on me. She squinted, I saw her expression change, then she looked away.

Finally they all left, and moved on down the trail. I didn't follow, I waited for a long time, then returned to my camp.

They were back the next day, and the day after.

I stayed hidden, quietly waiting. I knew they could walk right by the huge blackberry patch that hid my little room and never realize, it was fully grown up and over the tarp I had placed so long ago.

They seemed to give up looking for me, everything went back to that same abnormal pattern, every few days they would appear.

They were starting to get in my way, I needed to be putting in stock for Winter.

One day the woman came down to the pool to bathe, she was earlier than normal. Sensing a possible trap, I moved up the hill to the opening, all three men were harvesting and bundling their crop.

I moved back down to the pool to watch.

I had just settled into my spot.

"I know you are there." she said in perfect English, not turning to look.

I simply stepped out of the bushes.

"Yes, I am here."

She turned and looked at me and smiled, completely unashamed of her nudity.

"I see why you are so hard to spot." she smiled.

"Why didn't you give me away the other day?"

"They are not my friends, they force me."

"Oh."

I thought I understood.

"You can hide me, yes?" She gave me that dazzling smile again.

"Yes, but you must move quickly." Crazy to try to do this, but it was an impulse.

As she dressed, I moved downstream a ways, turned a rock over just where the water picked up speed to a furious rush down the mountain, then into a waterfall. It would be a full mile long walk through heavy brush to reach the pool below, I was hoping they wouldn't bother.

Keywords: Fugitive,