Chapter on of Novel Five - Rough First Flow Draft

The Gospel According to Don Quixote
Chapter one

There’s a unique shade of green that leaves own only when they first unfurl to face the spring sun. A pure unblemished green that made Nahtan slowed from a loping run to a full stop in the middle of the ancient trail he’d followed for the last three days. Instinct rather than thought drove him into the thick foliaged to his left.
Motionless, he squatted in the thick mat of rotting leaves and began to listen to every sound surrounding him, classifying each and moving on until he’d finally focused on the one sound that had crept into his sub-consciousness and stopped him.
The sound of the wind, he knew, was by far the most complex as it slipped over, past, through, and around countless obstacles and hindrances. The wind carried as its burden sounds and scents that all can, but few actually do, sense or feel.
He resisted the urge he felt to get up and run away through the foliage though he knew he could do it without attracting the attention of the group a few yards to his north. The breeze had slowed but it still brought the scents of the group to his nose mixed with the more familiar scents of the northern forest.
His mind slowly sifted through one familiar marker after another until only the unfamiliar scents of the men and women to his northwest remained. Women, was the first word through his mind. He couldn’t remember having smelled, or seen a woman in many seasons. His body tensed as it began to rise and move involuntarily toward the source of the scent. Such had been the power of its attraction for him.
He took a long breath to relax the muscles of his legs and back as he settled to the ground again as the less powerful but more frightening smell of male sweat bullied its way into his consciousness making caution overcome the growing pressure between his legs.
Adjusting the bow and quiver on his back, he backed away without rising up and slithered through the foliage following the wind through the leaves and branches. The skins covering his feet made no mark on the earth beneath him as he covered the distance separating him from the group. They’d stopped moving he knew and had already begun gathering up wood for a fire. That they, whoever they were, had made no attempt to be silent or even careful in charging through the forest told him a great deal about them sight unseen.
His arrival in sight of their camp happened just as the first snaps and pops of a campfire that was sure he knew to grow much, much larger than it needed to be. Smoke billowed up amongst the think canopy of branches above their heads in such volume that it was sure to attract the attention of anyone from horizon to horizon who looked up.
He looked across the valley to his left and saw that the sun wasn’t much more than one or two diameters above the horizon. “Good,” he whispered barely loud enough for even himself to hear it as he crept on his belly, inches at a time, close enough to be able to see all of them.
His gasp surprised him and caused the woman feeding wood into the fire to pause and then finish dropping a small branch into the flames.
Nahtan had retreated almost two body lengths when he felt a sharp point against the small of his back just before someone took a handful of his shirt and pulled him to his feet.
His second unguarded reaction that morning was prompted by the owner of the hand that he pulled him up off the leaf mold. He looked up from her uncovered bosom, precisely at eye level for him, up to her face more than a foot’s length, at least, above his own.
She looked down upon him from two dark blue, almost violet eyes in which he saw not the slightest indication of either mercy or kindness. She said a few words as she pushed him in the direction of the camp. Her words had an odd sing-song quality as they fell upon his ear which didn’t match her massive size and strength.
Realizing that he had no other option than to go with her at the moment, he decided to do just that and then look about for a way to escape later. He couldn’t help but look now and then to his left fascinated by the graceful movements of the woman’s heavy breasts not two feet from his face. The unfamiliar pressure in his loins returned with a vengeance just as he was walked out from the forest into the small clearing where they’d tethered their animals and built a fire.
He again turned his head to the woman, watching her face as she looked about unsuccessfully for her companions. He could see from their tracks that they’d fled into the trees in four different directions. He watched as, when she shouted for them to come back to the fire, her efforts caused tiny vibrations in her breasts.
Somehow he found himself on the ground in less time than it took to realize where he was looking up at her, and then at the other four as the appeared in front of him. He worked his jaw as he rubbed the right side of his head with a callused palm finally understanding that she’d knocked him to the ground and he hadn’t either sensed or otherwise seen it coming all. The knowledge hit him hard as it had never come close to happening to him before.
Ignoring him, each of the group, three women and two men went back about the tasks of setting up camp ignoring him as if he wasn’t even there.
“I guess I’m no threat,” he said under his breath as he stood and brushing the dust, twigs and bits of leaves from his vest and leggings.
“Look around you,” a man said to him as he skillfully erected a sort of one-sided shelter from branches he cut from the surrounding trees, all of us but one would easily make two of you. Do you think you are a threat to us?”
The man who’d spoken was very dark-skinned, even for late summer and incredibly tall, though not quite so tall as the blond woman now gone back to gathering wood for the fire. His language, though hard-edged, and guttural to his ear, was understandable enough.
“I am Nahtan, teller of stories and holder of memories.”
The big man stood placing his left hand flat upon his chest and, bowing, said, “I am Khatib, and she,” he indicated the tall woman who’d just reappeared from the forest, “is Anatak, and if I were you I’d do my best to keep my gaze a little higher if you don’t want to get knocked down again.”
The small man nodded. “Can she understand my words?”
“Yes, she can,” was all he said before going back to weaving branches this way and that. Over his shoulder he finished, “She can speak to anyone and be understood. Always has.”
Nahtan walked toward the tall woman and stopped in front of her. “I ask your forgiveness,” he said just out of arm’s reach.
“Why were you looking at me that way?” She dropped the last of her branches and turned to face him.
He bowed slightly and said, “I have never seen a woman such as you.”
“What does that mean?” She took a step toward him.
“You’re beauty overwhelmed me. It will not happen again.”
She stopped, looking down at him for a moment before saying, “Help me with the fire wood.”
It was not a question, nor was it quite a command, but he took it as one and followed her into the shadows enveloping the forest still just out of arm’s reach just in case.
“What was that about?” Massoon said as he unburdened one of the pack horses.
Khatib shrugged before stepping back and looking at the shelter and, satisfied, he turned to him and answered, “I am surprised she didn’t break his neck.”
“I think she didn’t know what to think,” Okio said without looking up from the meat and roots she was chopping for the evening meal.
“Yes she did,” Alsa said as she dumped the contents of the basket in which she collected a days travel worth of mushrooms and fruit.
“Okay, she did, but she still wanted to beat him up I think.”
“I did not,” she said dumping an armload of wood by the fire. “It’s just that his eyes are right there,” she pulled an arm up horizontally at the level of her nipples. Maybe I should cover myself.”
“What for?” Okio said looking up. She too wore just a skin around her waist about a foot’s length or a little more, more than enough for the heat of summer though Alsa wore both a vest and leggings of pale deer skin and always had.
Everyone waited for Anatak to answer but she ignored them and pulled up a section of a fallen log. She sat next to the fire and stared into the growing flames.
Nahtan watched the interchange with great interest, wondering who these people were and how they’d come to be together. Questions about this and a dozen other things rushed through his mind as he watched the simple evening activities, each man and woman busying themselves with roles that were as clearly defined as they were well practiced. In his mind he began to construct a story about these people, all so extraordinary in appearance and speech, he knew he could spin a tale that would hold the attention of any audience long enough to earn a meal or two, or convince a crowd not to do him harm.
“So who are you?” Anatak said without looking up.
“I am Nahtan, teller of stories and holder of memories,” he said as he had said before. He pulled himself up his full height and looked around to see if anyone noticed. No one did.
“I am Khatib,” he said with no bow this time.
“I am Masoon,” the shorter man said with a slight bob of his head.
“And I am Okio, and you could help me over here if you wished to suddenly become useful.”
He turned toward her as Alsa introduced herself without looking up from her fruit and fungus.
Nahtan took a circuitous path keeping several feet between him and each man or woman he passed until he stood in front of the Okio woman.
She looked up at him though the most oddly shaped eyes he’d ever seen. A golden brown they were. Her face was very round and very flat with a small nose. “Do you have a knife?”
He thought that was just about the strangest question he’d ever been asked and it hurt his pride somehow. He reached behind his back to pull his prized possession from the scabbard. His hand searched his back for the half-second it took for him to realize that it was gone. His eyes sought out the tall woman, Anatak, and quickly found her. She had the leather-wrapped grip in her left hand and the tip resting on the index finger of her right hand. He knew she knew he was looking at her. He’d already sensed that in her, found some sort of kindred spirit, a fellow traveler though the shadows that seemed to consume the world from ocean to ocean.
It was then she smiled for the first time, at least the first time he’d seen her smile. In a movement almost too fast for him to follow, she took the blade in her right hand and threw it towards his head. Time dilated for him as it always did in times of danger. By the time the knife had cut through two feet of air he knew that it wasn’t going to hit him; that it would miss him by an inch or two, so he relaxed into perfect immobility and watched the blade slowly approach his face and then fly past ruffling the air near his ear.
He’d watched her the entire time, though it was only three slow beats of his heart. She had examined his face, gauged his reaction to what she’d done until the knife had buried itself inches into the tree to his left.
The smile returned to her face as he stood, she maintained eye contact with him until he turned away from her to retrieve his knife.
He turned back to find the other four pairs of eyes focused on him. He made eye contact with each until he’d returned his gaze to the tiny woman sitting at his feet. He tested the edge of his blade with what was left of his thumbnail and found it still sharp enough to split a hair. Sitting down in front of the tiny woman at his feet, he began to slice up the fruit and mushrooms she’d pushed across the broad plank at her feet.
Khatib leaned toward Anatak and whispered, “He’s not at all what you thought he was, is he?”
“Shall we take him with us?”
Khatib looked at her. “Do you think he’ll want to?”
“No man truly wants to walk alone.”
Khatib watched him carefully slicing the apples Okio had pulled from trees they’d walked under that morning. It was obvious to him that the knife Anatak had thrown at him was very, very sharp and equally obvious that she could have killed him had she chosen to do so.
“I think that it would be equally difficult for a woman to walk alone for all her days….” He followed her gaze to the small man slicing apples half a dozen paces across the fire. He had known Anatak since he’d found her, a small silently crying child, covered by her dead mother’s body in the burned out remnants of village in which the Hors had left nothing else alive.
A scratching sound pulled Khatib’s attention back to her. He watched as she created designs in dark earth at her feet with a stick she must have sharpened with Nahtan’s knife before she’d returned it to him. She’d told him long ago that they were the signs of the gods that had created both her people and this earth before the long ago. Asymmetrical crossed lines in various forms, five and six pointed stars, crescent shaped moon forms, fishes and fat sitting men, she always drew them exactly the same way, the way she’d been taught since she was old enough to hold the drawing stick in her hut seated at the foot of her mother.
He’d asked her a dozen times what the signs meant, or meant to her, and had always gotten exactly the same answer, “The signs and symbols of the sacred before times are not for the uninitiated, I will share both their creation and their mysteries with my daughters when they are born, with them and only them shall I share the mysteries.”
“And when will you have the daughters of which you’ve spoken so many times?” he asked as he stood. He’d asked the question before; it was a game they’d played many times. So many times, in fact, that he was stunned when her answer this time was different. So different that he stopped mid-stride and turned back to look at her.
“What did you just say?” he asked having heard her words but not believed what he’d heard.
Wrapping her fist tightly around the stick, she drove it far into the ground before she looked up at him. “You heard what I said.”
“Him? You want him? That little man?”
“It’s not about what I want. The prophecies of my mother have all come true for me but one.”
“She foresaw a tiny frightened man fathering your children?” he couldn’t stop the laugh that boomed forth from him. All eyes were on him as he watched Anatak stand to her full height.
“No,” she said simply,” she said that she’d foreseen that I would see the man who would fill my womb in a dream of my own.”
He looked at Nahtan and than back at her. He spoke loudly not caring who heard him as he replied, “You saw that,” he said still pointing at Nahtan,” in a dream? I don’t believe it.”
Nahtan stood knife in hand.
Okio said, “I wouldn’t.”
“I’m not you,” he hissed not taking his eyes from the man across the fire nearly twice his size.
Khatib took one step toward the fire before Massoon stepped in his way.
“Massoon, you had better move.”
“You should think about what you are doing. You do not know anything about this man you seek to kill.”
“He is barely a boy.”
Khatib place a hand in the middle of Massoon’s chest to push him aside expecting him to yield easily but he did not. He took the big man’s hand in his own and twisted it effortlessly yet powerfully enough to drive Khatib to his knees dropping his blade on the way down.
Nahtan watched everyone. He had no idea what was going to happen but he was anxious to see. No one looked surprised at what had happened between Massoon and Khatib. Massoon released his hand and waited for him to get back up on his feet. He wiped both sides of Khatib’s blade on the leather of his leggings and handed it back to the tall man. Not a word was said as the activities that had been going on before the confrontation resumed as though there had been no excitement. And, as he relaxed and sank back into a crouch in front of Okio and Alsa.
Alsa pushed more apples toward him and went back to work. Okio stared at him intently.
Nahtan cut an apple in half, and then in half again before returning her stare. “Yes?”
“I watched you.”
“And?”
“You showed no fear. I would have seen it were it there, but you had no fear of Khatib that I could see though he would easily make two of you.”
“I think,” he said returning to his work, “that it doesn’t matter so much the size of the dog in the fight, as it does the size of the fight in the dog.”
A broad grin grew across Alsa’s face though she didn’t stop what she was doing she looked over at him and then at Okio.
“What?” Okio said. She looked at Alsa for a second and then stuck her knife into the wood at her feet, stood up and walked away.
“What did I do?”
Alsa turned back to face him after Okio disappeared into the shelter. “You’ve surprised her.”
“You think so?”
“Yes, and you should know that she doesn’t like to be surprised.”
“Well, no one does,” he said starting in on the haunch of meat Alsa had return with.”
“No that’s not it. Okio, I think is very good at reading people, like some can read the sky and tell when it will rain or be cold, or read the signs in the forest and tell what animals can be hunted, she can read a man or a woman. So you can see how you surprised her, and why she doesn’t like that very much.”
“What about you?’
“Me?”
“You, what’s your story?”
“My story?”
“Yes everyone has a life that is a story.”
“I have done nothing.”
“You have survived this world in which we live.” He looked around the campsite and saw that neither Okio nor Khatib had reappeared from the darkness of the shelter he had built.
“They probably won’t come back out until tomorrow morning. That’s what they do every night.”
“They are bonded?”
“What?” She looked up with a confused look.
“A man and a woman who decide to create children together over time.”
She stopped cutting and laid her knife on the plank. “Why would anyone want to do that?”
“So they can know whose children are whose.”
“What woman would not know her own children?”
“A man wants to know who his children are I guess.”
The expression on her face eased from confusion to amusement. “You’ve never had a woman have you?”
“Had a woman?”
“Buried your manhood between a woman’s legs.”
He immediately looked down and finished removing the bone from the hunk of elken meat in front of him. His knife cut through the flesh with little resistance until he had a large pile of cubes in front of him.
“You do good work.” She’d moved around behind him as he’d worked, head down, suddenly oblivious to everything and everyone around him. He started when he felt her hand on his shoulder. She leaned past him and tossed a few cubes of meat back and forth before she drew her hand back to his stomach and then pushed it down into his crotch causing his manhood to stiffen, and his face to redden even below his sun-burned face.
“We may have to keep you around for a while.”
Having again gathered his wits, he looked up to see her retrieving a basket from beside the fire. Two pots, one slightly larger than the other, both very black, had been suspended over the fire on what had to be an iron pole. Steam rose straight up from each in the still air of the campsite.
“Put the meat in this one,” she said as she set the basket down onto the earth next to his knee. He shifted his behind to relieve the pressure that remained as he grabbed one handful of meat after another until the basket was full and the board in front of him empty.
He readjusted himself on last time and then stood, checking for obvious signs of his condition as he did so.
“Just dump half in each one,” she said as she pushed everything else that had been gathered up that day into each of the pot. When she was done she began to stir one pot and then other.
He watched her slowly stir the content of one pot and then the other.
“You could help you know,” she said.
“Do you have another spoon?”
She pointed at the pack next to the shelter with the spoon in her hand. A moment later he too was stirring the pot as soon as it began to bubbling and spit its contents into the coals below. He stopped stirring and used a log at his feet to back the coals to either side of each pot. The bubbling slowed enough to keep the contents inside the blackened pots and out of the hot earth beneath them.
“This isn’t going to take very long,” he said as he resumed stirring the pot.
“No, we’ll eat first,” she said without looking up. “Anatak, Massoon, bring your bowls; get it while it’s hot.
Massoon preceded Anatak by only a step or two and both soon stood over the fire bowls outstretched to Alsa. Nahtan took a short deep breath and then reached up to take Anatak’s bowl from her hand. It was then he noticed that she’d put on a doeskin vest that she’d obviously just cut as there were, as yet, no stitching nor any kind of adornment such as he’d come to expect on the clothing of beautiful women. But she’d put it on and, though his experience was very slim, he knew that she’d put it on because of him. He thought of the quills and beads that filled his small pack still cached out among the trees and how he could take the rough cut skin and make something beautiful from it as he filled her bowl and watched her walk back to the tree stump she had been sitting on.
“What about them?” He indicated the shelter Khatib had built and then disappeared into.
Massoon answered, “They’ll come out when they’re done,” and took his bowl back to the spot upon which he’d already spread his night cloth and blanket.
Nahtan looked over at Alsa who handed him a large bowl someone long ago had scooped out from the burl of an oak tree. “Thank you.”
She bowed her head slightly and began to fill hers as he filled his. Setting the bowl down on top of the woodpile Anatak had collected; he emptied the remaining contents of his pot into Alsa’s and began looking around for someplace to wash it.
“Leave it, and come eat with me,” she said walking past him and picking up his bowl. The two of them clean up after they get finished.”
“Eating?”
“Fucking and then eating,” she said with an odd smile, “Okio is obsessed with filling her womb with as much of Khatib’s seed as she possibly can.”
“She wants to have a child?”
“Her womb is old and dry though she’s convinced Khatib she’s much younger than she is. When men think with that,” she poked him in the groin with the thin end of her spoon, “they can be very stupid.”
He followed her over to the trunk of an enormous tree more than wide enough for both of them to recline against it side-by-side.
“It’s going to be cold tonight,” he said taking the bowl from her.
“It can’t be, this is only the eighth moon of this year, we have at least two moons of hot weather to come.”
“Maybe,” he said between bites, “maybe not. The wind hasn’t been blowing at all as it should be, at least not as it has in my lifetime.
“The wind blows amongst the trees as it always has.”
He spooned the contents of the bowl into his mouth as quickly as he could out of long habit. Those who stayed long over something as simple as a meal would not last long in this world he knew, and had seen for himself enough times to take the lesson as his own. He set the bowl down in the soft earth next to a thick root and then took in his hand a clump of dry earth. “Do you remember the last time it rained?”
Her hand stopped the spoon halfway to her mouth. It hung there as she watched him let the dust in his hand drift towards the ground on the slow breeze.
Her spoon fell back to her bowl. “Where did you come from?”
“South. You going to finish that?”
“I am, there’s more in the pot.” She pointed at the fire with her spoon at the same time he moved off in that direction. “I could carve you a ladle you know.” The look on her face told him she had no idea what a ladle was. “I’ll make you one,” he said in a whisper only he could hear.
“Would you?” Anatak stood over him with her bowl thrust towards him. He took it from her hand afraid she wouldn’t release it. She did. And she smiled. “I brought your packs in from the forest. They are next to my things. I heard you say that you believe it will get cold tonight. How can you know that?”
He looked over at Alsa for a few seconds as he filled Anatak’s bowl. Handing it up to her he explained, “I spend my days alone mostly, walking the old trails, the older the better even if they are only seen once a day you can feel that they were there once and where they go makes sense somehow. When you follow them the forest itself swallows you up and you become part of it, and when it does it speaks to you and tells you its secrets.
“I have never known a man to speak of mysteries as you do.”
“The forest is only a mystery to those who will not see it.”
“Thank you,” was all she said as she took the bowl from his hand and walked back to where she’d been eating. He took a step back toward Alsa but she shook her head and then inclined it towards Anatak. When he hesitated, she mouthed the word go and inclined her head again. Finally his feet began to move of their own accord, or maybe at Alsa’s command he wasn’t sure. One step followed another until the sound of the wind in the trees above his head stopped him mid-step.
As he watched the branches far above his head sway first one way and then the opposite, he inhaled deeply through his nose once, and then again.
“Yes.”
He looked up beside him and saw Anatak standing next to him looking up into the trees.
“Yes?”
“I’ve never seen the trees do this.”
“I have,” he said and walked over to where she’d laid his packs.

*******

Chapter one of Novel Five - Rough First Flow Draft

The Gospel According to Don Quixote
Chapter one

There’s a unique shade of green that leaves own only when they first unfurl to face the spring sun. A pure unblemished green that made Nahtan slowed from a loping run to a full stop in the middle of the ancient trail he’d followed for the last three days. Instinct rather than thought drove him into the thick foliaged to his left.
Motionless, he squatted in the thick mat of rotting leaves and began to listen to every sound surrounding him, classifying each and moving on until he’d finally focused on the one sound that had crept into his sub-consciousness and stopped him.
The sound of the wind, he knew, was by far the most complex as it slipped over, past, through, and around countless obstacles and hindrances. The wind carried as its burden sounds and scents that all can, but few actually do, sense or feel.
He resisted the urge he felt to get up and run away through the foliage though he knew he could do it without attracting the attention of the group a few yards to his north. The breeze had slowed but it still brought the scents of the group to his nose mixed with the more familiar scents of the northern forest.
His mind slowly sifted through one familiar marker after another until only the unfamiliar scents of the men and women to his northwest remained. Women, was the first word through his mind. He couldn’t remember having smelled, or seen a woman in many seasons. His body tensed as it began to rise and move involuntarily toward the source of the scent. Such had been the power of its attraction for him.
He took a long breath to relax the muscles of his legs and back as he settled to the ground again as the less powerful but more frightening smell of male sweat bullied its way into his consciousness making caution overcome the growing pressure between his legs.
Adjusting the bow and quiver on his back, he backed away without rising up and slithered through the foliage following the wind through the leaves and branches. The skins covering his feet made no mark on the earth beneath him as he covered the distance separating him from the group. They’d stopped moving he knew and had already begun gathering up wood for a fire. That they, whoever they were, had made no attempt to be silent or even careful in charging through the forest told him a great deal about them sight unseen.
His arrival in sight of their camp happened just as the first snaps and pops of a campfire that was sure he knew to grow much, much larger than it needed to be. Smoke billowed up amongst the think canopy of branches above their heads in such volume that it was sure to attract the attention of anyone from horizon to horizon who looked up.
He looked across the valley to his left and saw that the sun wasn’t much more than one or two diameters above the horizon. “Good,” he whispered barely loud enough for even himself to hear it as he crept on his belly, inches at a time, close enough to be able to see all of them.
His gasp surprised him and caused the woman feeding wood into the fire to pause and then finish dropping a small branch into the flames.
Nahtan had retreated almost two body lengths when he felt a sharp point against the small of his back just before someone took a handful of his shirt and pulled him to his feet.
His second unguarded reaction that morning was prompted by the owner of the hand that he pulled him up off the leaf mold. He looked up from her uncovered bosom, precisely at eye level for him, up to her face more than a foot’s length, at least, above his own.
She looked down upon him from two dark blue, almost violet eyes in which he saw not the slightest indication of either mercy or kindness. She said a few words as she pushed him in the direction of the camp. Her words had an odd sing-song quality as they fell upon his ear which didn’t match her massive size and strength.
Realizing that he had no other option than to go with her at the moment, he decided to do just that and then look about for a way to escape later. He couldn’t help but look now and then to his left fascinated by the graceful movements of the woman’s heavy breasts not two feet from his face. The unfamiliar pressure in his loins returned with a vengeance just as he was walked out from the forest into the small clearing where they’d tethered their animals and built a fire.
He again turned his head to the woman, watching her face as she looked about unsuccessfully for her companions. He could see from their tracks that they’d fled into the trees in four different directions. He watched as, when she shouted for them to come back to the fire, her efforts caused tiny vibrations in her breasts.
Somehow he found himself on the ground in less time than it took to realize where he was looking up at her, and then at the other four as the appeared in front of him. He worked his jaw as he rubbed the right side of his head with a callused palm finally understanding that she’d knocked him to the ground and he hadn’t either sensed or otherwise seen it coming all. The knowledge hit him hard as it had never come close to happening to him before.
Ignoring him, each of the group, three women and two men went back about the tasks of setting up camp ignoring him as if he wasn’t even there.
“I guess I’m no threat,” he said under his breath as he stood and brushing the dust, twigs and bits of leaves from his vest and leggings.
“Look around you,” a man said to him as he skillfully erected a sort of one-sided shelter from branches he cut from the surrounding trees, all of us but one would easily make two of you. Do you think you are a threat to us?”
The man who’d spoken was very dark-skinned, even for late summer and incredibly tall, though not quite so tall as the blond woman now gone back to gathering wood for the fire. His language, though hard-edged, and guttural to his ear, was understandable enough.
“I am Nahtan, teller of stories and holder of memories.”
The big man stood placing his left hand flat upon his chest and, bowing, said, “I am Khatib, and she,” he indicated the tall woman who’d just reappeared from the forest, “is Anatak, and if I were you I’d do my best to keep my gaze a little higher if you don’t want to get knocked down again.”
The small man nodded. “Can she understand my words?”
“Yes, she can,” was all he said before going back to weaving branches this way and that. Over his shoulder he finished, “She can speak to anyone and be understood. Always has.”
Nahtan walked toward the tall woman and stopped in front of her. “I ask your forgiveness,” he said just out of arm’s reach.
“Why were you looking at me that way?” She dropped the last of her branches and turned to face him.
He bowed slightly and said, “I have never seen a woman such as you.”
“What does that mean?” She took a step toward him.
“You’re beauty overwhelmed me. It will not happen again.”
She stopped, looking down at him for a moment before saying, “Help me with the fire wood.”
It was not a question, nor was it quite a command, but he took it as one and followed her into the shadows enveloping the forest still just out of arm’s reach just in case.
“What was that about?” Massoon said as he unburdened one of the pack horses.
Khatib shrugged before stepping back and looking at the shelter and, satisfied, he turned to him and answered, “I am surprised she didn’t break his neck.”
“I think she didn’t know what to think,” Okio said without looking up from the meat and roots she was chopping for the evening meal.
“Yes she did,” Alsa said as she dumped the contents of the basket in which she collected a days travel worth of mushrooms and fruit.
“Okay, she did, but she still wanted to beat him up I think.”
“I did not,” she said dumping an armload of wood by the fire. “It’s just that his eyes are right there,” she pulled an arm up horizontally at the level of her nipples. Maybe I should cover myself.”
“What for?” Okio said looking up. She too wore just a skin around her waist about a foot’s length or a little more, more than enough for the heat of summer though Alsa wore both a vest and leggings of pale deer skin and always had.
Everyone waited for Anatak to answer but she ignored them and pulled up a section of a fallen log. She sat next to the fire and stared into the growing flames.
Nahtan watched the interchange with great interest, wondering who these people were and how they’d come to be together. Questions about this and a dozen other things rushed through his mind as he watched the simple evening activities, each man and woman busying themselves with roles that were as clearly defined as they were well practiced. In his mind he began to construct a story about these people, all so extraordinary in appearance and speech, he knew he could spin a tale that would hold the attention of any audience long enough to earn a meal or two, or convince a crowd not to do him harm.
“So who are you?” Anatak said without looking up.
“I am Nahtan, teller of stories and holder of memories,” he said as he had said before. He pulled himself up his full height and looked around to see if anyone noticed. No one did.
“I am Khatib,” he said with no bow this time.
“I am Masoon,” the shorter man said with a slight bob of his head.
“And I am Okio, and you could help me over here if you wished to suddenly become useful.”
He turned toward her as Alsa introduced herself without looking up from her fruit and fungus.
Nahtan took a circuitous path keeping several feet between him and each man or woman he passed until he stood in front of the Okio woman.
She looked up at him though the most oddly shaped eyes he’d ever seen. A golden brown they were. Her face was very round and very flat with a small nose. “Do you have a knife?”
He thought that was just about the strangest question he’d ever been asked and it hurt his pride somehow. He reached behind his back to pull his prized possession from the scabbard. His hand searched his back for the half-second it took for him to realize that it was gone. His eyes sought out the tall woman, Anatak, and quickly found her. She had the leather-wrapped grip in her left hand and the tip resting on the index finger of her right hand. He knew she knew he was looking at her. He’d already sensed that in her, found some sort of kindred spirit, a fellow traveler though the shadows that seemed to consume the world from ocean to ocean.
It was then she smiled for the first time, at least the first time he’d seen her smile. In a movement almost too fast for him to follow, she took the blade in her right hand and threw it towards his head. Time dilated for him as it always did in times of danger. By the time the knife had cut through two feet of air he knew that it wasn’t going to hit him; that it would miss him by an inch or two, so he relaxed into perfect immobility and watched the blade slowly approach his face and then fly past ruffling the air near his ear.
He’d watched her the entire time, though it was only three slow beats of his heart. She had examined his face, gauged his reaction to what she’d done until the knife had buried itself inches into the tree to his left.
The smile returned to her face as he stood, she maintained eye contact with him until he turned away from her to retrieve his knife.
He turned back to find the other four pairs of eyes focused on him. He made eye contact with each until he’d returned his gaze to the tiny woman sitting at his feet. He tested the edge of his blade with what was left of his thumbnail and found it still sharp enough to split a hair. Sitting down in front of the tiny woman at his feet, he began to slice up the fruit and mushrooms she’d pushed across the broad plank at her feet.
Khatib leaned toward Anatak and whispered, “He’s not at all what you thought he was, is he?”
“Shall we take him with us?”
Khatib looked at her. “Do you think he’ll want to?”
“No man truly wants to walk alone.”
Khatib watched him carefully slicing the apples Okio had pulled from trees they’d walked under that morning. It was obvious to him that the knife Anatak had thrown at him was very, very sharp and equally obvious that she could have killed him had she chosen to do so.
“I think that it would be equally difficult for a woman to walk alone for all her days….” He followed her gaze to the small man slicing apples half a dozen paces across the fire. He had known Anatak since he’d found her, a small silently crying child, covered by her dead mother’s body in the burned out remnants of village in which the Hors had left nothing else alive.
A scratching sound pulled Khatib’s attention back to her. He watched as she created designs in dark earth at her feet with a stick she must have sharpened with Nahtan’s knife before she’d returned it to him. She’d told him long ago that they were the signs of the gods that had created both her people and this earth before the long ago. Asymmetrical crossed lines in various forms, five and six pointed stars, crescent shaped moon forms, fishes and fat sitting men, she always drew them exactly the same way, the way she’d been taught since she was old enough to hold the drawing stick in her hut seated at the foot of her mother.
He’d asked her a dozen times what the signs meant, or meant to her, and had always gotten exactly the same answer, “The signs and symbols of the sacred before times are not for the uninitiated, I will share both their creation and their mysteries with my daughters when they are born, with them and only them shall I share the mysteries.”
“And when will you have the daughters of which you’ve spoken so many times?” he asked as he stood. He’d asked the question before; it was a game they’d played many times. So many times, in fact, that he was stunned when her answer this time was different. So different that he stopped mid-stride and turned back to look at her.
“What did you just say?” he asked having heard her words but not believed what he’d heard.
Wrapping her fist tightly around the stick, she drove it far into the ground before she looked up at him. “You heard what I said.”
“Him? You want him? That little man?”
“It’s not about what I want. The prophecies of my mother have all come true for me but one.”
“She foresaw a tiny frightened man fathering your children?” he couldn’t stop the laugh that boomed forth from him. All eyes were on him as he watched Anatak stand to her full height.
“No,” she said simply,” she said that she’d foreseen that I would see the man who would fill my womb in a dream of my own.”
He looked at Nahtan and than back at her. He spoke loudly not caring who heard him as he replied, “You saw that,” he said still pointing at Nahtan,” in a dream? I don’t believe it.”
Nahtan stood knife in hand.
Okio said, “I wouldn’t.”
“I’m not you,” he hissed not taking his eyes from the man across the fire nearly twice his size.
Khatib took one step toward the fire before Massoon stepped in his way.
“Massoon, you had better move.”
“You should think about what you are doing. You do not know anything about this man you seek to kill.”
“He is barely a boy.”
Khatib place a hand in the middle of Massoon’s chest to push him aside expecting him to yield easily but he did not. He took the big man’s hand in his own and twisted it effortlessly yet powerfully enough to drive Khatib to his knees dropping his blade on the way down.
Nahtan watched everyone. He had no idea what was going to happen but he was anxious to see. No one looked surprised at what had happened between Massoon and Khatib. Massoon released his hand and waited for him to get back up on his feet. He wiped both sides of Khatib’s blade on the leather of his leggings and handed it back to the tall man. Not a word was said as the activities that had been going on before the confrontation resumed as though there had been no excitement. And, as he relaxed and sank back into a crouch in front of Okio and Alsa.
Alsa pushed more apples toward him and went back to work. Okio stared at him intently.
Nahtan cut an apple in half, and then in half again before returning her stare. “Yes?”
“I watched you.”
“And?”
“You showed no fear. I would have seen it were it there, but you had no fear of Khatib that I could see though he would easily make two of you.”
“I think,” he said returning to his work, “that it doesn’t matter so much the size of the dog in the fight, as it does the size of the fight in the dog.”
A broad grin grew across Alsa’s face though she didn’t stop what she was doing she looked over at him and then at Okio.
“What?” Okio said. She looked at Alsa for a second and then stuck her knife into the wood at her feet, stood up and walked away.
“What did I do?”
Alsa turned back to face him after Okio disappeared into the shelter. “You’ve surprised her.”
“You think so?”
“Yes, and you should know that she doesn’t like to be surprised.”
“Well, no one does,” he said starting in on the haunch of meat Alsa had return with.”
“No that’s not it. Okio, I think is very good at reading people, like some can read the sky and tell when it will rain or be cold, or read the signs in the forest and tell what animals can be hunted, she can read a man or a woman. So you can see how you surprised her, and why she doesn’t like that very much.”
“What about you?’
“Me?”
“You, what’s your story?”
“My story?”
“Yes everyone has a life that is a story.”
“I have done nothing.”
“You have survived this world in which we live.” He looked around the campsite and saw that neither Okio nor Khatib had reappeared from the darkness of the shelter he had built.
“They probably won’t come back out until tomorrow morning. That’s what they do every night.”
“They are bonded?”
“What?” She looked up with a confused look.
“A man and a woman who decide to create children together over time.”
She stopped cutting and laid her knife on the plank. “Why would anyone want to do that?”
“So they can know whose children are whose.”
“What woman would not know her own children?”
“A man wants to know who his children are I guess.”
The expression on her face eased from confusion to amusement. “You’ve never had a woman have you?”
“Had a woman?”
“Buried your manhood between a woman’s legs.”
He immediately looked down and finished removing the bone from the hunk of elken meat in front of him. His knife cut through the flesh with little resistance until he had a large pile of cubes in front of him.
“You do good work.” She’d moved around behind him as he’d worked, head down, suddenly oblivious to everything and everyone around him. He started when he felt her hand on his shoulder. She leaned past him and tossed a few cubes of meat back and forth before she drew her hand back to his stomach and then pushed it down into his crotch causing his manhood to stiffen, and his face to redden even below his sun-burned face.
“We may have to keep you around for a while.”
Having again gathered his wits, he looked up to see her retrieving a basket from beside the fire. Two pots, one slightly larger than the other, both very black, had been suspended over the fire on what had to be an iron pole. Steam rose straight up from each in the still air of the campsite.
“Put the meat in this one,” she said as she set the basket down onto the earth next to his knee. He shifted his behind to relieve the pressure that remained as he grabbed one handful of meat after another until the basket was full and the board in front of him empty.
He readjusted himself on last time and then stood, checking for obvious signs of his condition as he did so.
“Just dump half in each one,” she said as she pushed everything else that had been gathered up that day into each of the pot. When she was done she began to stir one pot and then other.
He watched her slowly stir the content of one pot and then the other.
“You could help you know,” she said.
“Do you have another spoon?”
She pointed at the pack next to the shelter with the spoon in her hand. A moment later he too was stirring the pot as soon as it began to bubbling and spit its contents into the coals below. He stopped stirring and used a log at his feet to back the coals to either side of each pot. The bubbling slowed enough to keep the contents inside the blackened pots and out of the hot earth beneath them.
“This isn’t going to take very long,” he said as he resumed stirring the pot.
“No, we’ll eat first,” she said without looking up. “Anatak, Massoon, bring your bowls; get it while it’s hot.
Massoon preceded Anatak by only a step or two and both soon stood over the fire bowls outstretched to Alsa. Nahtan took a short deep breath and then reached up to take Anatak’s bowl from her hand. It was then he noticed that she’d put on a doeskin vest that she’d obviously just cut as there were, as yet, no stitching nor any kind of adornment such as he’d come to expect on the clothing of beautiful women. But she’d put it on and, though his experience was very slim, he knew that she’d put it on because of him. He thought of the quills and beads that filled his small pack still cached out among the trees and how he could take the rough cut skin and make something beautiful from it as he filled her bowl and watched her walk back to the tree stump she had been sitting on.
“What about them?” He indicated the shelter Khatib had built and then disappeared into.
Massoon answered, “They’ll come out when they’re done,” and took his bowl back to the spot upon which he’d already spread his night cloth and blanket.
Nahtan looked over at Alsa who handed him a large bowl someone long ago had scooped out from the burl of an oak tree. “Thank you.”
She bowed her head slightly and began to fill hers as he filled his. Setting the bowl down on top of the woodpile Anatak had collected; he emptied the remaining contents of his pot into Alsa’s and began looking around for someplace to wash it.
“Leave it, and come eat with me,” she said walking past him and picking up his bowl. The two of them clean up after they get finished.”
“Eating?”
“Fucking and then eating,” she said with an odd smile, “Okio is obsessed with filling her womb with as much of Khatib’s seed as she possibly can.”
“She wants to have a child?”
“Her womb is old and dry though she’s convinced Khatib she’s much younger than she is. When men think with that,” she poked him in the groin with the thin end of her spoon, “they can be very stupid.”
He followed her over to the trunk of an enormous tree more than wide enough for both of them to recline against it side-by-side.
“It’s going to be cold tonight,” he said taking the bowl from her.
“It can’t be, this is only the eighth moon of this year, we have at least two moons of hot weather to come.”
“Maybe,” he said between bites, “maybe not. The wind hasn’t been blowing at all as it should be, at least not as it has in my lifetime.
“The wind blows amongst the trees as it always has.”
He spooned the contents of the bowl into his mouth as quickly as he could out of long habit. Those who stayed long over something as simple as a meal would not last long in this world he knew, and had seen for himself enough times to take the lesson as his own. He set the bowl down in the soft earth next to a thick root and then took in his hand a clump of dry earth. “Do you remember the last time it rained?”
Her hand stopped the spoon halfway to her mouth. It hung there as she watched him let the dust in his hand drift towards the ground on the slow breeze.
Her spoon fell back to her bowl. “Where did you come from?”
“South. You going to finish that?”
“I am, there’s more in the pot.” She pointed at the fire with her spoon at the same time he moved off in that direction. “I could carve you a ladle you know.” The look on her face told him she had no idea what a ladle was. “I’ll make you one,” he said in a whisper only he could hear.
“Would you?” Anatak stood over him with her bowl thrust towards him. He took it from her hand afraid she wouldn’t release it. She did. And she smiled. “I brought your packs in from the forest. They are next to my things. I heard you say that you believe it will get cold tonight. How can you know that?”
He looked over at Alsa for a few seconds as he filled Anatak’s bowl. Handing it up to her he explained, “I spend my days alone mostly, walking the old trails, the older the better even if they are only seen once a day you can feel that they were there once and where they go makes sense somehow. When you follow them the forest itself swallows you up and you become part of it, and when it does it speaks to you and tells you its secrets.
“I have never known a man to speak of mysteries as you do.”
“The forest is only a mystery to those who will not see it.”
“Thank you,” was all she said as she took the bowl from his hand and walked back to where she’d been eating. He took a step back toward Alsa but she shook her head and then inclined it towards Anatak. When he hesitated, she mouthed the word go and inclined her head again. Finally his feet began to move of their own accord, or maybe at Alsa’s command he wasn’t sure. One step followed another until the sound of the wind in the trees above his head stopped him mid-step.
As he watched the branches far above his head sway first one way and then the opposite, he inhaled deeply through his nose once, and then again.
“Yes.”
He looked up beside him and saw Anatak standing next to him looking up into the trees.
“Yes?”
“I’ve never seen the trees do this.”
“I have,” he said and walked over to where she’d laid his packs.

*******

A Random Thought About Writing Style

In posting this latest chapter of my second novel I can't help but be struck at how dramatically my writing style has changed over the last few years. I'll post of a chapter of my work in progress in a bit and the difference should just jump out at everyone who reads even a bit if each.

North Wind - Chapter Five

Chapter Five

As monumental as it was for me it was merely the beginning of a week from which my time has been measured for the rest of my life. Marissa and I hadn’t made much progress in her room when Jennifer banged on the door scaring all of us. As soon as Maritza opened the door she began shouting, “They’ve contacted the government!”
“Whoa, Jennifer,” I said. What government, who contacted what government?”
Maritza tried to get her to sit but she wouldn’t saying, “Jack you need to come over to the lab. We’ve got them on the radio.”
“You’ve got who on the radio?” I asked putting on my coat.
“The United States government.”
“What United States government?”
“The people we’ve been talking to claim to be the United States government.”
“Where do they claim to be?”
“Tegucigalpa in Honduras. They say that they’ve, for all practical purposes taken over most of central America since most of our population has occupied it and the northern half of South America.”
“You’re kidding.”
“That’s what he said.”
“They contacted us, or we contacted them?”
Thinking for a second she said, “I don’t know you’d have to ask Tina.”
“Tina?”
“She’s been talking to them so far.”
“Why then do you need me?”
“They asked for the person in charge.”
“And Tina said that was me?”
“Everybody said it was you. Tina said she was sending for you and they said they’d stay on until you could get there to talk to them.”
I looked over at Maritza. Marissa was standing next to her and they both had grins on their faces. “Go on,” Maritza said, “they’re waiting for you. You can tell us about it when you get back. Go now.”
I got up and led Jennifer out the door, over to the lab and up all four flights of stairs to observation deck.
“It’s about time, where the hell have you been?” Tina said and then turned to the microphone in front of her.
“There’s a lot of stairs between your place and mine.”
“This is climate base to US station one. This is climate base to US station one, over.”
“Climate base, this is US station one. Is Mr. Smith there now?”
“Yes he is, over.”
“Mr. Smith this is William Beaumont calling. I am assistant secretary for science and technology in the US government in exile, Tegucigalpa, Honduras.”
“Mr. Beaumont, this is Jack Smith. What can I do for you?”
“I and my associates have been speaking with your climatologist (I looked over at Tina and then back out the window) and she tells me that you are the leader of your community there. Is this true?”
“If she says so. Mr. Beaumont I’d appreciate it if you’d call me Jack. Everybody here does.”
“Only if you’ll call me Bill, Jack.”
“That I can do. What else can we do for you Bill?”
“It’s not so much what you can do for us, as it is what we can do for you.”
“Do for us?”
“From what your climatologist has told us your community is something of a scientific enterprise, yes?”
“Yes it is. We are lucky to have gathered a few very high skilled people, who for reasons that are their own chose to stay here and fight this new climate.”
“That is exactly what we had hoped.”
“Why is that?”
“We here would very much like to have access to the data you are collecting. We have facilities here for its analysis.”
“That’s all you want? It has always been our goal to do exactly that.”
“If you think it’s feasible we’d like to support your efforts there.”
“You’re a long way from here, Bill.”
“Distance is not a problem, Jack. I have three transports being loaded as we speak with equipment and supplies for your team. To this point we have loaded the generators, radio equipment, computers and scientific equipment requested by your climatologist. What else can we send you?”
“Food is our greatest need. We have twenty two mouths to feed and scavenging the countryside is becoming less and less productive.”
“We assumed that might be the case. I will have the other two transports loaded with foodstuffs and get them in the air first thing in the morning. Do you have truck transport available to you?”
“Outside three pickup trucks, no sir.”
“That’s clear. We can airdrop your supplies if you’d rather that modality be used.”
“We are adjacent to the former campus golf course.”
“I will inform transport of this. We will contact you tomorrow when the transports are in the air. They will contact you on this frequency tomorrow when they are one hour out.”
“Roger that. It goes without saying that we appreciate your assistance.”
“In the bigger picture it may be that we here in the south are the greater beneficiaries of your sacrifice in staying where you are. And I have to say that I am looking forward to your installation of satellite communications.”
“We look forward to it sir. Is there anything else?”
“Your climatologist said that you have your own electrical engineer is she available?”
“She’s right here sir. Her name is Jennifer, and she’s the genius that has made this conversation possible.”
I could here laughter on the connection as I handed the microphone to Jennifer. She mouthed the words Now you’ve got him thinking I’m some kind of genius you turd. But she was smiling when she said it. As she started speaking I turned to April and said, “April will you please spread the word that we will all need to pitch in tomorrow morning to bring in the supplies?”
“I can’t wait to. Everyone will be very excited. What time?”
“I have no idea, maybe we should all just get up early and stay ready. If those planes take off early in the morning, I can’t imagine them getting here before noon, but who knows? We’ll know better in the morning when they let us know they’ve left. We can find out the ETA then.”
“Makes sense. You goin back home?”
“In a minute. I have one more question to ask Mr. Beaumont.”
Jennifer stopped speaking and looked over her shoulder.
“Hold on Bill, Jack has another question.”
“Yes Jack?”
“Bill, because we’ll be moving the supplies by hand is it possible that you could limit their individual blocks to what two people can lift?”
“Hold on.”
Jennifer said, “Good idea, they’d have dropped half ton cargo boxes for sure.”
“Jack?”
“Yes, Bill.”
“That won’t be a problem with the food or most of the equipment, but there are a few pieces of equipment that cannot be broken down to subassemblies that small.”
“Okay, how about sending along something that will help us pickup and move heavy cargo over a golf course?”
“We’ll have to work on that. I’m sure we can send along something to help you out with that.”
“One more thing Bill, we could use fuel, gas, diesel, kerosene and lamp oil.”
“We’d already included the gas and diesel. The other fuels won’t be too much of a problem. That all?”
“I think so. I haven’t had too much time to work out our current logistical situation.”
Tine and Jennifer both raised their eyebrows simultaneously.
“Would it be possible for you to include a couple personal items?”
“If possible.”
“I’d love some cigars, and there are many here who’d kill for a cigarette that wasn’t a couple years old.”
“Don’t forget that we’ll be sending regular supply runs going forward.”
“Thank you sir. I’ll be much more prepared for the next run.” I said handing the mic back to Jennifer. April was already gone so I grabbed my coat and headed for the door.
Tina blocked my way. “You did okay.”
“Thanks.”
“How’s the family?”
“Maritza and Marissa are fine. How are you doing?”
“I’ll be doing better once we get all the equipment I asked for up and running.”
“You’re the reason they’re interested in us at all.”
“I doubt it. If I wasn’t here they’ve sent a climatologist.”
“You know that never crossed my mind.”
“That’s because you’re not the climatologist with no name. Did you notice that he called you and Jennifer by name but kept referring to me as the climatologist?”
“That’s not what I meant. It never occurred to me that they’d send someone here in addition to the stuff they’re sending along.”
“Would that be a problem?”
“Nothing’s free. Hold on a second.”
I walked back to the radio and saw that Jennifer was still talking.
“Jennifer?” I said holding my hand out for the mic.
“Bill can I ask you one more question?”
“Certainly.”
“Are you planning to send any personnel along with the supplies?”
“Of course. You will be needing technicians to support our equipment.”
“Mr. Beaumont I hope you will believe me when I say that all we need are the necessary tools and manuals to support the equipment. No additional personnel are requested or desired here.”
“Mr. Smith, I’m not sure we can risk a million or more dollars of highly technical equipment without sending along the personnel needed to support it.”
“Mr. Beaumont if you change your mind in the future and do need our data, please contact us on this frequency and our community of highly educated and trained research one university technicians and professors are at your service.”
Silence.
“Jack, what the hell are you doing? What the hell difference…”
“Mr. Smith, Mr. Beaumont here.”
“Yes sir,” I said smiling.
“Please be prepared to receive transmission on this frequency in two hours. Do you have clocks there?”
“Yes sir, on our computers.”
“We will contact you no later than 2:15pm your time. Is that clear?”
“It’s clear sir. We’ll be here. Out.
“US station one out.”
That was it then. We had two hours to wait.
“Like I was saying,” Tina continued, “what possible difference does it make if they want to send a couple technicians?”
“Materiel and food is one thing. They’ll make life a little easier, and somewhat more interesting. Sending people here compromises the dynamic of what has, up till now, naturally evolved into a community of people.”
“What?”
“I don’t want a couple government people coming in here messin this place beyond all recognition.’
“How the hell do know that’s what they’d do?” Tina was yelling now. Everybody was staring at her.
“Tina, governments control. That’s why they exist. I don’t feel the need to be controlled.”
“What you mean to say is that you don’t want anybody else in control here, other than you of course.”
“Tina,” Jennifer said. “I’ve got to go with Jack on this one.”
“Maybe we ought to take a vote,” Tina said, her voice returning to normal.
“Mr. Beaumont is going to call us back in less than two hours. We’ll have to have an answer before then,” Frank said pointing to the radio.
“I tell you what,” I said, “April’s already going around telling people about tomorrow. I’ll go find her and we’ll get everybody to meet at my house in half an hour. We’ll have some coffee, talk it out and have a vote. Okay?”
Nods all around.
Frank looked at Jennifer and then said, “Jack, we’ll stay here. You have our vote for what it’s worth.”
“Jennifer?”
“You heard the man. We need to do a little work on this radio before we need it again.”
“Okay.”
“Jack, I’m gonna come with you.”
“Suit yourself,” I said putting my coat on and heading out.
We went from door to door, catching up to April at the third door. Twenty minutes later it was clear there was no reason for a meeting. Everyone we talked to said that if I thought it was best they were willing to go along with my condition. Everyone but Tina had a tangible distrust for anything to do with the government. Their reasons were their own.
“I guess I can assume that Maritza will vote with you,” Tina said stopping at the front door to the lab.
“I don’t know, she has a mind of her own. Either way just about everyone here doesn’t seem to find the idea of the government sending people here to be a good one.”
“And here I thought you were just trying to make me out to be the bad guy.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. Why would I want to do that? Better yet why is it that of all the people here you’re the only one who thinks it’s a good idea?”
“You wouldn’t understand Jack, forget it,” she said turning the doorknob.
I grabbed her sleeve and said, “You know Tina if you’d relax a little you’d be surprised how many friends you had you didn’t know about.”
She jerked her sleeve from my hand and said without turning around, “Sure Jack, whatever you say,” before she disappeared through the door.
I jogged over to the house and sprinted up the stairs.
“What happened?” Maritza said.
I described the last hour and a half as quickly as I could and explained I had to get back in a few minutes.
“So you really told this assistant secretary that you weren’t going to have him sending his people but he could go ahead and send his million dollars worth of equipment and food anyway, you really told him that?”
“I did, do you think I screwed up?”
“You’re asking me this?”
“I want to know what you think.”
“Everybody but Tina already said that they agreed with you.”
“Maritza, I need to know what you think.”
“Jack, I think you did the right thing. There’s no way those people would come in here and just fix things if they broke. They’d be trying to fix this place like they thought it should be or how they were told it should be working. More importantly their motivation would be to get from us what we need. Our current leader’s greatest concern is for the welfare of the people who live here and what’s best for them. This is what I think.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s important to me that you asked me what I think. No go back over there. We’ll have dinner ready for you when you get back.”
“I think I’m gonna need a pot or two of coffee. I won’t be sleeping too much tonight.”
“Neither will I then.”
“I love you.”
She stood there for a moment and then said, “That’s the first time you’ve told me.”
“I do.”
“I love you too, Jack. Since the first time I saw you I knew. Now go, you can’t be late.”
I leaned over and kissed her. She pulled my head back and kissed me again whispering, “I love you too as she pulled back.
“Now go,” she said pushing me towards the door.
When I got there Mr. Beaumont was already on the radio talking to Jennifer.
“He’s here Mr. Beaumont,” she said handing the mic to me.
“Mr. Smith, Bill Beaumont here.”
“Good to hear from you again sir.”
“I have spoken to my people here and we have no problem sending along what you have requested at this time. We are also sending along all necessary support and maintenance documentation, resources, and tools you could possibly need.”
“Thank you Bill,” I said, “so we can expect a call in the morning when the aircraft are airborne.”
“There will be no need. The aircraft will be airborne at approximately midnight and should be at your location approximately one hour after sunrise. You can expect a call from the mission at approximately six am your time to confirm a final arrival time. Is that clear?”
“That’s clear, sir. Is there anything we need to do to be prepared on our end?”
“Have your people ready to collect what we drop. We will be sending along a forklift vehicle to assist you. We have also scheduled a second drop seventy two hours after the first that will be comprised entirely of food. It has been decided that ensuring your food supply through the winter is of the utmost importance.”
“We very much appreciate that sir. More than you can know.”
“Your group is very unique amongst the twenty of so that we have been able to contact thus far. Yours is the only one that seems to have all the required personnel and to spare. Because of your success we will be sending out teams to investigate other locations that have had major university campuses in the past.”
“You’ll be sending these personnel here sir?” I asked fearing the answer.
“No sir. We will be creating and sending out overland two dozen teams to determine whether or not there are other groups extant such as yours who currently do not have access to radio or other communications.”
“Jack you wouldn’t have a list of the names of your personnel handy would you? We’ve had quite of few requests since word has gotten out that we’ve contacted a new group.”
“One moment sir.” I let go of the key to the mike. “Folks I need a list of all first and last names and approximate ages as quick as you can.”
Two minutes later I’d read and spelled all the names as well as I could and we were done.
“Do you really think anything’ll come of them putting out our names?” Frank asked.
“I hope so,” Tina said, “I’d love to know for sure if my folks made it down there all right.
“I’m not sure that was the main purpose of getting our names,” I said looking at the snow blowing past the window past tops of the trees.
“Shit, here we go with the governmental paranoia again,” Tina said getting up to leave the lab.
Ignoring her I continued, “I believe the main reason they wanted the names was to allow them to run checks on us to see if we really are qualified to run this station for them.”
Nods all around, even Tina seemed to agree.
“So you don’t think we’ve heard the last of Mr. Beaumont wanting to send his people in here,” Jennifer said shutting down the radio.
“I doubt it but that, as they say, is a problem for another day. I’ll just be glad when we get both these shipments we’ve been promised and nobody walks out from under any of the parachutes.”
“I hear that,” Frank said shaking my hand on his way out.
“I’ll see you all about six okay. Pass the word?”
“We’ll want to bring every truck and wagon right?”
“Everything we can haul boxes in.”
“Frank, do you have any firearms at your place?”
“Sure, why?”
“When these parachutes start drifting toward the ground anybody and everybody else living for thirty miles will be coming to see what’s going on.”
“You think there’ll be trouble?”
“I hope not, but I’d rather be ready and nothing happen than the reverse.”
“I’ll pass the word around about being prepared, too.”
“Thank you sir.”

Well, what did he say?” Marissa asked as soon as I was inside the door.
“Marissa, let Jack get his coat off.”
“It’s okay, everything went very well as long as what Mr. Beaumont said is true.”
“So he’s still sending supplies tomorrow?” Maritza set a cup of coffee on the kitchen table and patted the table. I walked over, sat down and took a sip. “He is sending supplies tomorrow along with some kind of forklift to help us load the stuff. He’s also sending an all food shipment on Saturday that he said would be enough to get us through the winter.”
“So not only did you keep him from sending people, he’s sending enough food for the whole winter?”
“It was his idea.”
“I doubt that, he just knew that you weren’t a man to be taken lightly.”
I had to smile.
“What? It’s true.”
“I am very proud of you,” Marissa said putting a bowl of stew in front of me. “You haven’t eaten anything all day so eat up.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“What’s tomorrow’s schedule?” Maritza said sitting across from me with a cup of coffee.
“Well Mr. Beaumont said that the planes should get here about one hour after sunrise.”
“That’s about eight or so.”
“That’s the way I calculated it. One of the pilots is going to call us on the radio when they’re an hour out. We can leave here about a half hour after that and go to the golf course. I hope Jennifer told them to drop it in the South east corner.”
“If she didn’t you can always tell them in the morning when they call. When you get done eating we need you to get you to bed, there’s going to be a lot of work to do tomorrow.”
“Which we cannot stop until we are finished. I don’t even have any idea where we can put six plane loads of supplies.”
“We’ve got twelve hundred feet of space downstairs, three floors of the lab, and any number of empty houses around here we can use for storage,” Maritza said.
“Well there’s nothing to worry about then,” I said between bites.
“I’ll take care getting the food stored. All the equipment will be going in the lab. Next year we’ll have time to build a warehouse facility.”
“Marissa can I have another bowl?” I said holding it out to her.
“Yes you sure can.”
On her way over to the stove she said, “Jack can I ask you a question?”
“Any time.”
Walking back she said, “Would it be okay if called you dad?”
I looked up into her eyes as she stood over me. She looked anxious, and a little scared. I stood up and hugged her as tightly as I dared. “It would be the greatest honor of my life to be your dad.” And then she cried, and Maritza cried, and hell I cried. We all ended up hugging each other for the longest time.
“Ladies I am absolutely stuffed, I’m going out for some air.”
“Where are you going?” Maritza said.
“Nowhere, just drive around with the window open for a while. I need to scout out some houses to use for storage and take a look at the ground over on the golf course. It’s only a couple hours till dark, I’ll be back by then okay?”
“Dad, lemme put the rest of the coffee in your thermos before you go.”
“Thank you daughter.”
She had the biggest smile on her face when she handed me the thermos.
“Be careful daddy.”
“I’ll always come home to my girls.”
“You better,” she said squeezing my hand.
“I will.”
Taking in the houses in the neighborhood and driving around the golf course only took about twenty minutes. I was lucky I didn’t get stuck in a sand trap I didn’t see under the snow. I took off down Texas heading for my actual objective for the trip a jewelry store I remembered and sure enough it was still there. I had to smash the door to get in and half expected the alarm to go off. Of course it didn’t but also of course there was no jewelry to be found anywhere, way too easy to transport. What I wanted was to find Maritza a ring. We were about as married as two people could get and she more than any other woman I’d ever met deserved a ring.
I went outside, sat in the truck and racked my brain where I could possibly find a ring. I figured I might as well search a few more stores while I was waiting for an idea. I broke into six more stores and found the same nothing in each one. In half of them the doors of the safes were still open which made me wonder why the others had been still locked. I had half a plan to blow those safes when I had a better idea. It occurred to me that most people keep their computer passwords on a note taped within eighteen inches of their computer so I went back to the store I was in first and started searching the sides and back of the safe, nothing. I searched the desk in the office, the bottoms of the drawers, underneath the slide out, outside the desk under the desk, damn, still nothing. Then I walked back to the truck and got my flashlight and got down on the floor and looked under the safe and there it was. I got a broom and swiped at the dust until I could run my fingertips against the steel surface. I could feel three numbers scratched into the paint. It took two dozen tries before I got the number right; before the handle turned. I actually held my breath as I pointed the flashlight inside.
Money, all there was, was goddamn money. Worthless, not even good for toilet paper. I pulled it out anyway figuring Maritza and Marissa would get a kick out of using it to start fires. I filled two paper bags with the stuff, there must’ve been at least a million dollars in cash. My jeweler friend must’ve known that paper money wouldn’t be worth much where he was going. Ergo leaving the safe locked, old habits die hard.
I reached to the back of all the compartments to make sure I had all the money and felt something at the back of one of the cubby holes, it was stuck. I got my fingers wrapped around it and pulled whatever it was tore and I heard a metallic sound. When I pulled my hand out I had half a black velvet bag in my hand. I stuck my back in and, palm down pulled out what had fallen out of the bag. I caught them in my hand as each one fell from the cubby hole. And there they were. Six diamond rings all of which had a single large diamond set in what was either white gold or platinum. One of the rings had two blue stones, one on each side of the diamond.
I searched the drawers behind the main sales counter until I found ring boxes. I got two and put Maritza’s ring in one and the other five rings in the other one; grabbed my flashlight and rushed outside. It was dark, real dark. Maritza was gonna be madder than hell at me being gone so long.
It only took five minutes to get back to the house but it seemed like forever.
“Ladies, I’m home. Sorry I’m late.”
“Jack,” Maritza said running across the room, “I was so worried, you said you would be back by dark and that was two hours ago. I was about to go get Frank to help me go find you I was so sure something had happened to you.”
“I’m so sorry Maritza, I got caught up in something and I lost all track of time.”
“What possibly could have been so important that you lost track of time for two hours?”
All I could do was reach into my pocket, pull out the box and hand it to her.
The anger left her face as she said, “Jack what is this?”
“Now that we’re a family I wanted to give you a ring, I want you to feel like my wife, and if that’s what you wanted, and if it was I wanted everyone to know.”
“Jack are you proposing marriage to me?”
“Very, very badly, but yes I think I am.”
“Well here,” she said handing me back the unopened box, “do it correctly please.”
I took the box back and was about to get down on my knee when I stopped and asked, “Where is Marissa?”
“She’s in her room. Would you like her to be here for this?”
“I’d like to ask her if it’s okay before I ask you if that’s okay with you I mean.”
“I think that would mean a great deal to her. Go get her.”
I knocked on her door and went in when she said come in.
“Did you just get back?”
“Yes I did, it took me longer than I thought it would to find what I was looking for.”
“What were you looking for?”
“Marissa for a while now I have found that I love your mom very much.”
“I know. She’s very happy. She’s told me she loves you very much too.”
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that I have decided to ask your mom to be my wife.”
“Could you two be more married than you are now?”
“I just want to your mom to know how much I love and respect her, and for me that means asking her to marry me and giving her a ring.”
“That’s what you went out to get a ring for my mom?”
“Yes but before I actually asked your mom, I wanted to ask you if you were all right with your mom and me making it official.”
“Of course,” she said hugging my neck and kissing my cheek. “Go, hurry up she’s waiting for you. Go on.”
“Thanks baby,” I said.
“Love you too, dad.”
Everything was picked up in the kitchen, which let me know that there was only one other place Maritza could be. I thought for a second about knocking on the door of the bedroom before I just went ahead and went in.
She was sitting at her vanity wearing a white negligee that was all but see through. I just stood there staring.
“Jack would you please brush my hair for me?”
I remembered with a start that I still had the ring box in my hand. “Okay.”
“I laid you out some pajamas on the bed go ahead and change into them. I want to see how you look in them.”
“Okay.” It was warm in the room. I looked over at the stove and the door was a dark cherry red around the edges. I walked around the far side of the bed and changed as quickly as I could. I wished I could’ve taken a bath but there was no time now. She handed me her brush over her shoulder when I’d walked up behind her.
“Maritza, I’ve got something I’d like to ask you.”
“As soon as you get finished.”
Concentrating on the task at hand was very difficult with such a beautiful woman in front of me all but naked. But it was the film of the negligee that heightened the sensation for me. I’d never seen such a thing before.
“Let’s see,” she said reaching around to grab the mass of black curls from my hand smoothing them with her hand.
“I might just have to give you this job permanently; you do a very fine job. Help me up on the bed would you?”
“Of course.” I held out a hand and helped her up into the bed where she sat on the edge. I couldn’t take my eyes away. She reached out a hand, grabbed my chin and lifted my face up to look at hers.
“See anything you like?”
I could not make my mouth work to say a word. I was completely captured by the way she looked at that moment. She shook my chin back and forth a little and said, “Did you say you had a question to ask me?”
I snapped back and saw her looking at me with her dark eyes. I reached behind her and grabbed the box. Getting down on one knee put me in the wrong position to be able to concentrate enough to ask Maritza what I needed to ask her.
Again she reached down to get my full attention. “Yes?”
“Maritza, I hope you know how very much I love you. I hope you also know that I want you and I to spend every remaining day that we have together. I know that together we can face anything that even life as it is now can send our way. God has blessed me greatly bring us together, and I would be more honored than any man has a right to be if you would marry me.” I opened the box and held it up to her and waited for her answer.
She drew a breath that let me know that she was impressed with the ring. “Jack come up her and get in bed with me.”
Not the answer I was hoping for. I did though, after blowing out the lamps. The woodstove was even brighter in the dark that descended on the room making red dancing lights on the walls.
“Jack, I love you so much that it scares me sometimes. I never thought I’d find a man like you who would love me so completely, so unconditionally. You love my daughter I think as much as you love me. I feel your love for her as strongly as I feel your love for me.”
She took my hand and placed it on her chest.
“Can you feel my heart beating Jack?”
“Yes, Maritza I can. Your heart beat put me to sleep last night.”
In the fire light I could see big tears welling up and running down Maritza’s face.
“Thank you Jack.”
“For?”
“Everything you’ve done for me, for your love for me and Marissa, for protecting us, for providing for us, for making us laugh, for making us feel safe and at home.
“That goes both ways you know.”
“I know, that’s why my answer is yes, of course I’ll marry you. Someday I hope we can find a priest, until then we are married before God. I am honored to be your wife.”
I put the ring on her finger and, of course, it was way too big.
She laughed and said, I knew it would be. Wait.” She dropped down out of bed and went across the room to her vanity. Even in the dark it was a sight that is carved forever in my memory. She was back in a couple minutes with yarn wrapped around the inside. “See?”
“I can fix that tomorrow.”
“You won’t have time tomorrow; we’ll all be very busy.”
“The next day then. It won’t be a perfect repair, but I can make it fit.”
“I have faith that you can do absolutely anything you set your mind to.”
“I was able to find five more rings; I can remove the diamonds and use the platinum to make you a wedding band if you’d like one.”
“I have my mother’s wedding band that I’d like to wear.”
“That would be perfect.”
She held up the ring and looked at it in the dark trying to catch the tiny bit of light in the room. She then sat up and started pulling her negligee over her head and I stopped her.
“Please don’t. I have never seen anything half as beautiful in my life as you in that, whatever it is.”
“I though you might like it,” were the last words either of us said that night.