Items related to Paper Trail (Laurel-Leaf Books)
Someone was calling his name. The boy stopped wriggling. His mother. No. She was supposed to be running in the other direction, decoying the Soldiers of God away from him. The boy’s father was the one who was supposed to circle back, and he wouldn’t do so unless the woods were clear. The boy edged up to the knothole. He blinked against the light. And the distinctive crack of a Sako TRG-21 sniper rifle shattered the glassy stillness of the April morning.
A 15-year-old boy, while hiding inside a hollow log, witnesses a violent antigovernment group, the Soldiers of God, murder his mother. His family joined the militia group when he was five and it’s the only existence he’s known. Today, both the boy and the Soldiers of God make a startling discovery about the boy’s father. The boy, unaware of his dad’s secret, tries to piece together clues from his childhood and must somehow find the strength and courage to escape and survive.
A 15-year-old boy, while hiding inside a hollow log, witnesses a violent antigovernment group, the Soldiers of God, murder his mother. His family joined the militia group when he was five and it’s the only existence he’s known. Today, both the boy and the Soldiers of God make a startling discovery about the boy’s father. The boy, unaware of his dad’s secret, tries to piece together clues from his childhood and must somehow find the strength and courage to escape and survive.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Barbara Snow Gilbert is an attorney, mediator, and writer. She is a member of the mediation panel for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
Voices in the Woods
The fifteen-year-old boy crawled on his elbows, wedging himself tight inside the fallen hollow tree. His jeans were some protection but his flannel shirt was not, and as he inched forward, the wood scraped his belly.
His goal was a window of light, a knothole, several inches ahead. The boy pushed the deep pocket of air out of his chest and collapsed his ribcage so that he breathed from only the top of his lungs. To narrow himself, he stretched his right arm up the crumbling insides of the log, then pulled his body after it. If he could make it to the knothole he would be able to see and breathe and, he was pretty sure, his boots would be far enough in to be hidden.
Someone was calling his name.
The boy stopped wriggling.
His mother. No. She was supposed to be running in the other direction, decoying the Soldiers of God away from him. The boy's father was the one who was supposed to circle back, and he wouldn't do so unless the woods were clear.
The boy edged up to the knothole. He blinked against the light. And the distinctive crack of a Sako TRG-21 sniper rifle shattered the glassy stillness of the April morning.
He squeezed both eyes shut and sucked up a mouthful of grit as a second gunshot cracked the air. Or was the second shot only an echo? The boy was familiar with the games sound could play as it ricocheted off trees. He squeezed his eyes tighter.
Dry, papery, trashy sounds came next, like someone wadding notebook paper up close to his ear. But the sounds weren't paper, the boy knew. The same sorts of sounds had come from under the boy's and his mother's and his father's feet when the three of them had been running away only moments ago. The sounds were the leaves, dead and drifting since autumn, breaking as something fell.
Silence. Worse than the sounds.
He should look. Surely, the boy thought, that was why God had placed the knothole just so. Was why, maybe twenty years ago, when the log was still a living giant in these eastern Oklahoma backwoods, a branch at the very spot where the boy's eye was now had rotted and fallen off, unplugging the hole. Was why, years later, a storm blew in and toppled the tree at just the right angle. All of it so that the boy, at this moment, could see. Could see that in spite of the crack of the rifle, in spite of the breaking leaves and the silence after, his mother was all right. Sometimes even Soldiers of God missed.
Quick, he told himself. Before they came chasing after their bullet. Quick, before they found the boy, eyes closed and twitching behind the knothole. The boy released the gritty gulp of air and opened his eyes. Bits of crushed leaves stuck to her face.
"Mom, Mom."
Now the day is over, night is drawing nigh.
"Remember the prayer at tuck-in time, Mom? Let me pray it for you now. For both of us."
Shadows of the evening steal across the sky.
"You cross-stitched the words on the hem of my pillowcase."
Lord, give the weary calm and sweet repose.
A thread of spit hung from her lip.
And with Thy tenderest blessing, may our eyelids close.
"Please, Mom, wipe it off. Mothers don't go around with threads of spit hanging like cobwebs. Wipe it off wipe it off WIPE IT OFF."
But already a fat red ant was climbing the strand.
The wound must be on the side away from the boy because he saw no blood or bullet hole. But he could see the angle of her head on her neck, and his chest began to rise and fall, pressing against the ragged insides of the log. Now he could barely whisper. "Oh."
Snap. Like a mousetrap, but there were no mousetraps in the forest. Probably a high-topped army boot, stepping on a branch, coming for a boy in a log.
"It's okay, Mom." The boy said his goodbyes softly between heaves. "Mom, don't worry. I'll be fine." To no one in particular he added, "I knew anyway. Ever since that ant started up."
Voices approached, calling one-word orders too muffled to make out. The leaves crunched close by, and hot urine flooded the inseams of the boy's Wrangler's. If the soldiers were alert, they could sniff their way to him.
They would defer to their best marksman, though they would no longer need a marksman. Taliferro, probably. Sean Taliferro could deliver shots in a half-inch cluster at one hundred yards.
Whoever the gunman was, he would slowly, calmly, maybe all the while shaking his head with regret over the orders, put the barrel of his rifle to the knothole. Or poke it up the end of the log, up between the boy's legs. Would the boy rather die from a bullet to his eye or from a bullet ripping vertically through him, organ by organ?
Or the soldiers might not end it so easily. They might keep their catch alive for their commander in chief, the Reverend General, the Fisher of Men himself.
Branches snapped and dust billowed as pair after pair of high-topped army boots exploded into the clearing. The boy barely breathed. His heart pumped fast and loud.
One set of trousers tramped up to the log, then stopped. The red and black patch stitched high on the outside right boot completely filled the boy's tiny window of vision--two M-16's, crisscrossed over the Christian sign of the fish.
The boy knew the emblem well. His parents paraded it openly. On a flag thumbtacked to the fake wood paneling in their Airway Deluxe mobile home. On a license plate wired to the bumper of their pickup. The fish and guns were even tattooed in fine-line indigo on his father's forearm.
The patch moved away, clearing the boy's view of another set of boots straddling his mother's body. The owner of the boots knelt and spoke. "Pupils fixed and dilated." Fingerless black knit gloves gently examined her head, then pressed the vein behind her ear. The gloves lifted her torso off the leaves, exposing the nape of her neck and one soft curl at the hairline.
A few yards away, someone began to vomit. The inspecting soldier ignored the throwing up and continued to report. "Entry, back of skull, upper left quadrant. Exit, right temple."
The gloves laid her down and her head wobbled back. The gold dove wedding ring that she wore on a necklace under her blouse slipped into the niche at the base of her throat.
A third set of boots paced. "Lord," the soldier murmured over and over as he walked back and forth, "but this is sorrowful duty."
"Sorrowful waste of good looks, too," another soldier answered.
The boy strained to recognize the voices but didn't. Maybe the log muffled the pitch. Or maybe these were new guys. There were always new guys.
"Bag the body," the officer in charge ordered. "And remove it to base camp."
The commanding officer was right, the boy thought. The object on the other side of the knothole was "it," not his mother. The boy's mother was a beauty who sat for hours dangling a bare foot, memorizing poems. The boy's mother was an artist when she held a needle in her hand, her fingertips hard and shiny because she never used a thimble. The boy's mother was a dreamer who used to scoop a little boy up in her swirling yellow flowered skirt, swaying with him on the porch swing as she read him fairy tales.
You must not think of her.
The voice in his head was right. The boy closed his eyes and tried to empty his mind. Slowly he opened his lids again.
A soldier unzipped a vinyl bag and rolled the body onto it. The commander strode back and forth giving orders. "Designate this site Alpha. And get me a sitrep on the two additional targets."
Static erupted, then was tuned away. A second voice spoke distinctly, as if into the radio, stating identification and position and relaying orders.
"We'll hold Alpha," the officer continued, the second voice repeating him into the radio. "It looked like she was coming to this spot. Maybe the clearing's a rendezvous point. The other targets may rejoin Alpha if they are still up and moving."
The boy flinched. The other targets were him and his father; of course they were still up and moving. But then he remembered the echo. Or second gunshot. A second bullet could have found another victim. His father could be lying in his own heap, out of view and earshot, waiting to be bagged by a different squad of soldiers.
The fifteen-year-old boy crawled on his elbows, wedging himself tight inside the fallen hollow tree. His jeans were some protection but his flannel shirt was not, and as he inched forward, the wood scraped his belly.
His goal was a window of light, a knothole, several inches ahead. The boy pushed the deep pocket of air out of his chest and collapsed his ribcage so that he breathed from only the top of his lungs. To narrow himself, he stretched his right arm up the crumbling insides of the log, then pulled his body after it. If he could make it to the knothole he would be able to see and breathe and, he was pretty sure, his boots would be far enough in to be hidden.
Someone was calling his name.
The boy stopped wriggling.
His mother. No. She was supposed to be running in the other direction, decoying the Soldiers of God away from him. The boy's father was the one who was supposed to circle back, and he wouldn't do so unless the woods were clear.
The boy edged up to the knothole. He blinked against the light. And the distinctive crack of a Sako TRG-21 sniper rifle shattered the glassy stillness of the April morning.
He squeezed both eyes shut and sucked up a mouthful of grit as a second gunshot cracked the air. Or was the second shot only an echo? The boy was familiar with the games sound could play as it ricocheted off trees. He squeezed his eyes tighter.
Dry, papery, trashy sounds came next, like someone wadding notebook paper up close to his ear. But the sounds weren't paper, the boy knew. The same sorts of sounds had come from under the boy's and his mother's and his father's feet when the three of them had been running away only moments ago. The sounds were the leaves, dead and drifting since autumn, breaking as something fell.
Silence. Worse than the sounds.
He should look. Surely, the boy thought, that was why God had placed the knothole just so. Was why, maybe twenty years ago, when the log was still a living giant in these eastern Oklahoma backwoods, a branch at the very spot where the boy's eye was now had rotted and fallen off, unplugging the hole. Was why, years later, a storm blew in and toppled the tree at just the right angle. All of it so that the boy, at this moment, could see. Could see that in spite of the crack of the rifle, in spite of the breaking leaves and the silence after, his mother was all right. Sometimes even Soldiers of God missed.
Quick, he told himself. Before they came chasing after their bullet. Quick, before they found the boy, eyes closed and twitching behind the knothole. The boy released the gritty gulp of air and opened his eyes. Bits of crushed leaves stuck to her face.
"Mom, Mom."
Now the day is over, night is drawing nigh.
"Remember the prayer at tuck-in time, Mom? Let me pray it for you now. For both of us."
Shadows of the evening steal across the sky.
"You cross-stitched the words on the hem of my pillowcase."
Lord, give the weary calm and sweet repose.
A thread of spit hung from her lip.
And with Thy tenderest blessing, may our eyelids close.
"Please, Mom, wipe it off. Mothers don't go around with threads of spit hanging like cobwebs. Wipe it off wipe it off WIPE IT OFF."
But already a fat red ant was climbing the strand.
The wound must be on the side away from the boy because he saw no blood or bullet hole. But he could see the angle of her head on her neck, and his chest began to rise and fall, pressing against the ragged insides of the log. Now he could barely whisper. "Oh."
Snap. Like a mousetrap, but there were no mousetraps in the forest. Probably a high-topped army boot, stepping on a branch, coming for a boy in a log.
"It's okay, Mom." The boy said his goodbyes softly between heaves. "Mom, don't worry. I'll be fine." To no one in particular he added, "I knew anyway. Ever since that ant started up."
Voices approached, calling one-word orders too muffled to make out. The leaves crunched close by, and hot urine flooded the inseams of the boy's Wrangler's. If the soldiers were alert, they could sniff their way to him.
They would defer to their best marksman, though they would no longer need a marksman. Taliferro, probably. Sean Taliferro could deliver shots in a half-inch cluster at one hundred yards.
Whoever the gunman was, he would slowly, calmly, maybe all the while shaking his head with regret over the orders, put the barrel of his rifle to the knothole. Or poke it up the end of the log, up between the boy's legs. Would the boy rather die from a bullet to his eye or from a bullet ripping vertically through him, organ by organ?
Or the soldiers might not end it so easily. They might keep their catch alive for their commander in chief, the Reverend General, the Fisher of Men himself.
Branches snapped and dust billowed as pair after pair of high-topped army boots exploded into the clearing. The boy barely breathed. His heart pumped fast and loud.
One set of trousers tramped up to the log, then stopped. The red and black patch stitched high on the outside right boot completely filled the boy's tiny window of vision--two M-16's, crisscrossed over the Christian sign of the fish.
The boy knew the emblem well. His parents paraded it openly. On a flag thumbtacked to the fake wood paneling in their Airway Deluxe mobile home. On a license plate wired to the bumper of their pickup. The fish and guns were even tattooed in fine-line indigo on his father's forearm.
The patch moved away, clearing the boy's view of another set of boots straddling his mother's body. The owner of the boots knelt and spoke. "Pupils fixed and dilated." Fingerless black knit gloves gently examined her head, then pressed the vein behind her ear. The gloves lifted her torso off the leaves, exposing the nape of her neck and one soft curl at the hairline.
A few yards away, someone began to vomit. The inspecting soldier ignored the throwing up and continued to report. "Entry, back of skull, upper left quadrant. Exit, right temple."
The gloves laid her down and her head wobbled back. The gold dove wedding ring that she wore on a necklace under her blouse slipped into the niche at the base of her throat.
A third set of boots paced. "Lord," the soldier murmured over and over as he walked back and forth, "but this is sorrowful duty."
"Sorrowful waste of good looks, too," another soldier answered.
The boy strained to recognize the voices but didn't. Maybe the log muffled the pitch. Or maybe these were new guys. There were always new guys.
"Bag the body," the officer in charge ordered. "And remove it to base camp."
The commanding officer was right, the boy thought. The object on the other side of the knothole was "it," not his mother. The boy's mother was a beauty who sat for hours dangling a bare foot, memorizing poems. The boy's mother was an artist when she held a needle in her hand, her fingertips hard and shiny because she never used a thimble. The boy's mother was a dreamer who used to scoop a little boy up in her swirling yellow flowered skirt, swaying with him on the porch swing as she read him fairy tales.
You must not think of her.
The voice in his head was right. The boy closed his eyes and tried to empty his mind. Slowly he opened his lids again.
A soldier unzipped a vinyl bag and rolled the body onto it. The commander strode back and forth giving orders. "Designate this site Alpha. And get me a sitrep on the two additional targets."
Static erupted, then was tuned away. A second voice spoke distinctly, as if into the radio, stating identification and position and relaying orders.
"We'll hold Alpha," the officer continued, the second voice repeating him into the radio. "It looked like she was coming to this spot. Maybe the clearing's a rendezvous point. The other targets may rejoin Alpha if they are still up and moving."
The boy flinched. The other targets were him and his father; of course they were still up and moving. But then he remembered the echo. Or second gunshot. A second bullet could have found another victim. His father could be lying in his own heap, out of view and earshot, waiting to be bagged by a different squad of soldiers.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherLaurel Leaf
- Publication date2002
- ISBN 10 0440229391
- ISBN 13 9780440229391
- BindingMass Market Paperback
- Number of pages160
- Rating
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Paper Trail (Laurel-Leaf Books)
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