Samuel Florman - The Aftermath

The memories of fire and flood were raw in her mind. After all, it had only been three weeks since the disaster that had wiped out the Malagasy world, that world to which she had escaped from her all-American youth in southern New Jersey. If the destruction was global—as she suspected, having heard that a comet had been on its way toward the earth—then that civilization, too, the mighty United States, no longer existed, except in those memories of times, good and bad, that filled her dreams. Of course, she had different dreams now—of conquests and of building a new world as conceived in her fantasies.

Anne Marie Appleton grew up in Cherry Hill, a South Jersey town that looked to Philadelphia for economic sustenance and to the equidistant shore towns for recreation. It was a large brood: seven kids, including Anne Marie, who was the second youngest. Dad worked in a local insurance agency; Mom was a registered nurse. They were a solidly middle-class family, and lived in a four-bedroom Victorian-style home. The children all went to Catholic schools, followed by attendance at a local community college. When her turn came, Anne Marie, who had been a straight A student and star athlete in swimming and soccer, won scholarships and loans that made it possible for her to go to Cornell.

As she looked out at the hard faces of the men who would follow her into battle if necessary, she almost laughed aloud at the contrast between the would-be adult Anne Marie of ten years ago and the woman of today. It seemed unreal to her, this journey through time and experience that had taken her halfway across the globe.

In college, Anne Marie read history voraciously and began to experiment with radical politics and mind-altering substances. Left-wing, right-wing, uppers, downers, hallucinogens, plain old alcohol, all came into play. She dated men from alternative worlds that she had never even imagined as a parochial school girl in suburban Cherry Hill. Who knew that the universe was infinitely expandable and that academic courses and boyfriends were infinitely expendable? They had never taught her that at home, where the issues were black and white, us and them, American and foreign, right and wrong.

She took a year off and traveled to Central and South America, dabbling in revolutionary politics and drug dealing. Her parents never knew how close she came to being jailed in Peru and Colombia. She was clever enough to figure out when it was time to move on, and she had friends to help her. She became ever more fluent in Spanish. Languages were easy for her. Reluctantly, she came back for her senior year, graduated, then took her own poor girl’s version of the Grand Tour of Europe: including some of the old Eastern bloc countries like Bulgaria and Romania, pushing on to Turkey and Lebanon. In those years she flirted with neo-Marxist affiliations, fell in briefly with Islamic terrorists, and learned about guns and bombs. She had willing teachers, some of them lovers. But she never officially joined any of the radical organizations that sought to recruit her. Nor did she reveal any of this to her parents in New Jersey.

Next stop: Africa. Starting in Morocco, then moving across the northern tier of the continent, she eventually worked her way south through the sub-Saharan regions that were plagued with revolution and diseases. Lucky? She looked back and wondered how in hell she had never been struck with either a bullet or malaria. She came to love and respect the people she met, the undernourished and downtrodden masses with black skin and blacker futures. She witnessed tribal massacres and military coups. She learned several languages, and improved her skills with firearms. She became adept at target shooting, but never had to fire at another person until one dark and dangerous day—a day that changed her life forever.

The city of Durban in post-apartheid South Africa was a teeming seaport that, like any port, attracted “all kinds.” Anne Marie Appleton certainly fit that category: a bedraggled, world-weary traveler who owned no more than the clothes on her back, a few bits of costume jewelry, some paperback books (including worn copies of revolutionary tracts), and the odd penny-equivalent coin as souvenir of the many countries in which she had lived. Her clothes were a man’s much-patched flannel shirt a few sizes too big, a pair of denim jeans that were much too tight, rope-soled sandals that barely clung to her feet, and a floppy hat that sometimes kept the rain or sun from her matted hair. It was rare that she ever saw or touched any local paper currency. When she did, it was in payment for a sexual favor for some stranger—or a friend. She often begged for food, or a few coins to pay for it.

She had started to drink around the clock, or at least during the time she was not unconscious on her bedroll in a city mission. She stole booze and drugs when she could, bummed tobacco at waterfront taverns. After several months she had blended into the scene, and it was as if she had been there all her life. Anne Marie Appleton of Cherry Hill was thirty years old and going downhill fast.

“I am the anti-Peace Corps,” she joked to her black stevedore friends in the bars. They laughed, but kept a safe distance from her. There was something in her devil-may-care attitude that made her seem dangerous.

One night, she showed up in her favorite tavern with a large quantity of cash. She did not tell her comrades where or how she had come by her treasure, but she bought several rounds for anyone who would drink with her. When the police came, looking for a woman who had robbed and murdered an English businessman, she slipped out a back door.

She ran. It was raining and the slick streets were her enemy. Her sandals betrayed her at every turn, so she shed them and ran barefoot. The police, alerted, came in pursuit, guns drawn. Her mind was a blank; all she knew was that she had to escape. If apprehended and thrown into jail, that would be the end for her.

Drunk and nearly blinded by driving rain and tears, Anne Marie ran to the waterfront, onto the dimly lit and dangerous docks. Her pursuers sent a few warning shots into the air, but then lost sight of her in the maze of shacks and gangplanks, crates and barrels. She did not know where she was running, but she ran and ran and ran. Ahead, she saw a dilapidated tugboat hugging a dark pier. Without thinking, she leaped over a pile of ropes and aboard the craft. She buried herself beneath a tarpaulin that smelled of fuel oil and rotten fish. There she passed out, oblivious to the shouts and footsteps that echoed through the night. The police did not find her.

The young woman awoke—came to—as the boat churned to life the next morning. Luckily, she still had some money in her pocket from her previous night’s adventure. She paid the tug captain to take her alongside a cargo ship scheduled to leave the harbor that day. He did, and she talked her way aboard with a story about running away from a rapist in Durban. Two days later, she disembarked in Madagascar, a mysterious, even mythical place that she had never planned to visit—let alone to live in as a fugitive from the law in South Africa.

Anne Marie sought out the neo-hippie community on the southwestern beaches of Madagascar; there, within several months, she learned Malagasy and, again, blended into the scenery. She was spent, exhausted physically and mentally, tired of running, and for the first time in years she felt homesick for New Jersey and her family. She contemplated writing a letter to her parents, asking for their help. She thought about this for days, for weeks on end. Several times she started the letter, then tore it up. As time passed, she began to feel that, without help from her family or anyone else, she was “coming back,” climbing out of the dark pit into which she had descended. She cut down on her drug usage, remaining dependent but feeling “under control.” She congratulated herself for getting “mellow” at last.