The Passenger

In all those hundreds of miles, he had barely uttered a sound. He communicated his annoyance almost exclusively with his eyes. Narrowed eyes to say, “God, I can’t look.” or “Slow the hell down”. In essence, as a passenger, I imagine those came to the same thing really. I knew he didn’t like speed.

On the other hand, when you’re traveling across the breadth of a great continent, speed is essential especially if you’re light on cash for hotel rooms. So we sped through the southland, through the high desert, the mesa country, and finally the classic barren and bone littered deserts. I kept thinking of Dali as I persisted in this mission of mine—pocket watches melting, wasteland, and that marine carcass curled in the desert almost tragically in sight of the sea. Whether the picture was in my mind because of the surreal quality of my non-stop flight or my silent passenger, or there was a deeper and more truthful answer, I simply was not prepared to say. Wait and see.

When we descended from the high desert it was around 5:00 pm. Darkness was flowing behind us like the smoke of a wildfire. Night was reaching out to embrace us as the desert plains below came to view. Sunset above an endless expanse of nothingness. With darkness at our backs and the steep drop ahead, I was mentally trying to retrieve my consciousness from the unreal expanse where my mind had been wandering leaving the body on autopilot for at least 100 miles. I shook my head sharply to complete touchdown in reality but somehow reality had shifted while I was gone.

The sun, not surprisingly a white hot disc before us, just desert cliché. That was okay. What wasn’t okay was the rainbow circling it like some Egyptian hieroglyphs snaking this way then that in a neon pinwheel. The whole lot of them; the white disc, the flashing colors, the snaking dancers were gently bouncing up and down. The show persisted even though it was well after sunset as if to force me to answer myself.

I glanced over at my passenger hoping to see some sign that he saw the same wild show ahead of us that I saw. To my great relief, he was glued to the scene with his jaw dropped slightly. I wasn’t hallucinating after all. I probably couldn’t convince anyone to believe me but he knew. He would remember.

By the time we rolled into Gallup, I knew I could not drive any further, so I took the first Route 66 exit I found and looked for an all night diner. I asked my passenger if he were hungry too but all I got was a non committal harrumph. I got him a cheeseburger to go and found a cheap motel for the night. The moment we entered the room, he literally threw himself at the floor and appeared to be attempting to embrace it. Sarcasm is not a good quality in a traveling companion.

The next day was unremarkable.  We hurried past LA far in the distance and kept to the forgotten roads. No more freeways for me, I would take it easy and learn to breathe again. By the time we reached Santa Cruz, my passenger was yawning audibly so when I announced that we had arrived he was unimpressed. I thought it was likely he hadn’t heard me.

As I swung down out of the Jeep though, I heard him say, “So what now, genius? Had you ever thought about what comes next?”

All I could do was stand there with rain peppering my back and my head hanging while his tail wagged madly. I had not thought about it. Hadn’t allowed myself to think about it. Wait and see.

Film at Eleven

Okay, reworked this one last time. Many thanks to Thea for catching me on so many points. }:) I really do need a keeper. Special thanks to Steve for letting me know I should keep working on this one. Sometimes I just can't tell when they're worth the effort!

One thing about this story that maybe I should fess up to a bit, I really didn't intend for the reader to be sure about whether he's mad or not. I planted a fairly obvious fallacy in this and some that I think are not so subtle so I meant it to be a bit of a puzzle too. LOL I should give a prize to whoever figures out what the hell I'm talking about. :)

This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

–Morpheus from the Matrix

Today is December 21, 2012 A.D. in the year of our Lord as they say. And I have spent the better part of my life believing in numbers, twenty two odd years or so. I'll be 33 years old tomorrow, well would have been. Tomorrow would have been my birthday just to wrap this insanity up with a nice ironic ribbon.

I know what I'm about to tell you isn't going to make any sense for a long time. You have to have faith. I am not crazy. I am pressed for time though so I need to get on with telling you the whole truth. I guess in a way it started with the damned Maya who somehow knew the truth about the universe all those hundreds of years ago.

Wait! What am I saying? Christ! It’s hard to suddenly stop believing every fact you thought you knew. Who knows if there was even a time before the 20th century, before 1972 to be exact? At this moment, I don’t even know if my parents were real. The Maya might never have existed at all. Same goes for every ancient culture. Maybe all those relics and cave paintings were fakes left to make us believe in our past.

Who knows how far this goes? I can’t say. No one can say. No one can prove anyone was here one way or another. Okay, I’m giving myself a brain meltdown now. Speculate if you want to, I’m sure you will. All I know is that I’m out of time and further speculation is futile now. So I’ll tell you what I know about me and what I think I know about reality.

I'm a scientist, that is to say a natural born skeptic. When I woke up this morning though, what I discovered was the meaning of skepticism. What I discovered was that I had never been a skeptic at all. I had spent my whole life up until this morning as a true believer. I had faith all along, loads of it, and I never suspected. The event that opened my eyes to this truth? It was a dream. A dream that changed everything.

More accurately, it changed the view from here. I could not prove it had any impact on anyone else. I could be living in a padded cell somewhere for all I know. All I can tell you is what I am experiencing right now. The evidence of my senses as the old saying goes, the way things are for me at this moment. I didn’t really intend to start with the end. But maybe it is better this way. Maybe the rest will make a tiny bit more sense if you know where this is going first. Or maybe you’ll just figure one of us needs a good shrink.

How do I know? Maybe you don’t even speak English? It’s just all I could think of with the ticks of the clock left to me. It's 10:10 now, 10:10 p.m., the very last hour before the coming doom. Yet every system has its flaws. Right? I keep telling myself that maybe I've found the way out, the bug that crashes the whole program. Maybe I'm just being led. I don't know. I can't. All I can do is try all I know. Now listen carefully please.

I woke up around 4 a.m. No trace of sunrise, not even the sound of passing cars below, just the persistent whine of that dream. Rewind. Replay.

It was okay. I really had no desire for sleep anyway. That dream had pretty much snuffed my desires, all except one. It wasn’t really so much a desire as a ferocious gnawing in my stomach. I was just plain hungry. So I went round to my favorite all night diner for some good old fashioned bacon and eggs. Heart attack on a plate was the specialty of the house.

I asked my waitress, “Have you ever had a waking dream?”

I got a shrug in reply. She knew me in the sense she’d seen me order the same breakfast once a week for most of my life. The diner inside looked like it had probably been constructed when God was a boy. The waitress came with the diner, complete with bun and hairnet.

On the outside, like a lot of people you’ll meet, the place was chrome and polished in appearance, but look closer and it was coated with exhaust. Classic. Cold. Grimy. Just like the waitress, the whole place had that Jersey jaded feel about it, hard used with a cold hard attitude.

“Do you know what a waking dream is?”

“No.” I think she saw something in my face when she said no. Her eyes took on that unmistakable look of twisted interest and probably caution. She decided to play along just in case. “A daydream, I guess?”

“No. No, not at all like that. Nothing pleasant like that. It’s a dream that doesn’t seem like a dream at all. A dream that makes you feel as though you aren't dreaming at all.”

For me though, it was always a frightening reality that my mind did not want to know about. I didn’t tell her that part. It was weird enough sounding already.

With most dreams, you know at some level that they’re only dreams because they’re too screwy to be for real. You know what I mean?” She visibly shivered a little.

Yep, she knew all right.

“No. I never had one of those. And I don’t want one!” I knew she wasn’t telling me the truth. Maybe she wasn’t telling herself the truth either. She trotted away as quickly as she could and was careful not to make eye contact after that.

Every person I asked that day from the waitress who served my breakfast to the clerk at the convenience store had more or less the very same reaction to my question. “Never had one. Don’t want one.” Then the unvoiced but emphatic, and don’t tell me about it.

The funny thing is, if my dream were anything like the truth, then we’re all having a waking dream right now, this minute. And if you tell people something like that then you scare the hell out of them. After that, there’s no getting them to consider even the possibility that what you’re saying might be sane.

That thought alone persuaded me that I might really be onto something. I mean, why should it scare hell out of people if some guy says something like—None of this is real. We’re having a mass hallucination of reality right now. Something else entirely different is actually happening—why should that be so scary?

I knew the answer. It was easy. No one can prove the lunatic is wrong. All they can say is that he’s a nutcase, lock him up maybe, but they can’t prove he’s wrong. That’s what scares the hell out of them.

I remember when I saw the Matrix the first time. The premise of that story is a little similar, but Morpheus had it wrong. We’re not living in a rabbit hole, in fact there’s no rabbit hole at all. There’s no looking glass either, Alice. It’s all movie smoke and Hollywood back lot, but on a scale no human could imagine. There’s no body in the library because there was never a body in the first place. No one ever died, it’s just fake blood. Sure, it sounds like some sort of paranoid rant, but think about it.

There are a few key facts you need to know and keep in mind. Well, “facts” is clearly the wrong word since I now doubt every fact I think I know. Probably better to say, a few key insights into our shared perception. Sounds like psychotherapist babble, but I’m trying to be as lucid as possible.

Science, for all its apparent devotion to objective reasoning, was founded on a large set of not so objective assumptions. We assume for example that the sky is blue, the grass is green, and two plus two equals four. Science was founded on those concepts that humans decided to accept as facts starting with one of the most basic ideas of all, the infallibility of numbers. Bear in mind, that humans have agreed to a large number of ideas in the past that are considered wrong at this moment.

Astronomy was born of astrology, mathematics of numerology, chemistry of alchemy, and there are certainly ties between necromancy and anatomy. And most importantly, all of the sciences were founded on and constructed from mathematics. So naturally enough, everything seems as though it could be reduced to numbers and numbers feel solid. In a sense, numbers are the bedrock of human intellect, so we naturally trust numbers or anything proved with numbers. Time and space are numbers too. That solid ground you’re standing on at this very moment is nothing but a mesh of numbers under your feet.

Now for a little prophecy. Yep, I know the future. Well, I think I do.

You’re going to hear about 666, the sign of the beast in your life. It’s popularity will wax and wane until a movie called, “The Omen” comes out. The studio will remake it for release on June 6th, 2006. 6-6-6 in other words. You’re going to hear them quote Revelation: “If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number.” What they probably won’t say is that the most basic element of life is carbon and that carbon’s most common form is six protons, six neutrons, and six electrons or that six according to many ancient sources is the number of man. It’s just a coincidence, right? The ancients had no knowledge of elements, and yet somehow, they pulled the right number out of thin air.

How do I know the future? Technically, I don’t. I’m counting on a number of factors I have no control over after all. All I have really is the insight I got from that dream, experience, and maybe better than average luck.

How do I know the science part? I’m a bio engineer specializing in neuroscience and nano technology at the moment. Hell, for all I know, you’ll grow up following the same path. God, I hadn’t thought of that before!

Okay, my skin is crawling now. Never mind that. We can’t help that. We can only do what we can do to save the world, right? Back to the crucial point, the world is a web of numbers. A digital world truly. If you pay attention in life, you’ll notice what I mean and a pattern will emerge. The numbers 3, 6, 9, 11, 12 and sometimes 7 come up an unreasonable number of times in life. Over and over again and attached to all sorts of different things.

Of course, a lot of these relations are in religious texts. Pretty much where you’d expect. Then there are the pseudo sciences and the fringe New Age sources, all the sort of places you’d expect to find the magic numbers repeated. But the numbers turn up in a lot of places you wouldn’t expect. I mentioned the sixes associated with carbon already. But there are more, a lot more. Starting with π, 3.14. Three is a popular number for certain.

Okay, I know this is a weird example, but it’s one of the best ones I can think of at this moment. There aren’t too many more moments left now to think of anything else, so this one will have to do. Two commercial jets will hit the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001. One other jet will crash into the Pentagon that same morning. Prior to that, no aircraft ever got much past the Manhattan five mile barrier. Zero. Not during any of the big wars, not even a Japanese Zero, and the Japanese invented the kamikaze swan dive for God’s sake. Yet on September 11, 2001 there will be an attack on Manhattan and D.C. that no one anticipated. Right? Wrong. Dead wrong.

A lot of people foresaw the attack. No, I don’t mean Nostradamus, crystal balls, or even Madame Sosostris with a head cold. I also don’t mean the guys at the CIA who were warned about it. I mean there were people all around the globe who were expecting it. And now, assuming you’re starting to believe me at all, you’ll be one of those expecting it too. I’m counting on that.

See, it all comes down to numbers again. On September 11, 1999, according to Hebrew lore, the 6,000th anniversary of Adam's creation will be observed. In 1981, a book will be published claiming that Christ’s birthday had been definitely determined based on the study of the celestial charts of the era and the supposed identification of the “Star of Bethlehem”. Christian fanatics will begin to concur that Christ was born on September 11, 3 B.C. and shun the pagan date of December 25th. Santa Claus won’t be coming down their chimneys anymore, I guess. On September 11, 1941, the U.S. government officially began constructing the Pentagon. On September 11, 1972, 11 Israeli Olympic athletes are murdered by 11 Arab terrorists at the Munich Olympic games. There are quite a few other significant events that occurred on September 11th but I don’t have time to list them all and if you don’t see a pattern here already then listing more would be pointless anyway.

So I started asking myself, why? Why September 11? If you add up the date as 9 + 1 + 1 then you get 11. Eleven is what numerologists call a “master number”. Why? Could be because it’s the first number that is one more than the number of fingers we have. Could be because it’s the first number that’s “twinned”. Maybe it’s because the ancient middle eastern civilizations attached so much symbolic importance to it. Some Hebrew texts seem to indicate that eleven is a sign of God’s judgement or God’s will. Numerology claims that eleven stands for the beginning of a new age or cycle. Maybe the one fits with the other. Maybe all of this is nothing but some fantastic series of coincidences. September 11th is also the 254th day of the year, 2 + 5 + 4 = 11, but only since the Julian calendar. Before that September was the seventh month and not the ninth. So were the Romans doing God’s will? I have no idea. I do know one thing though or at least I think I know.

The reason. It’s simple enough. We were all pre-programmed with the same basic operating system. Same range of perception. Same basic symbol set. Same primitive understanding of the same symbols. So if you’re a terrorist out to do harm, what date would you chose? Basic math. One plus one equals the garden of Eden, right through Noah and his one by one menagerie, and right up until the day two (1 by 1 again) jets crash into the 110 story monolith that looked for all the world like a giant 11 then imploded to a height of eleven stories. It could be a coincidence. Or it could be some very nifty binary programming, 1 0 + 1.

Well, there’s nothing more that I can do now except to tell you about that dream. There’s not much to tell.

I “woke up” in nothing. Nothing was there. Not even my body. It was terrifying at first until I heard the voice in my head that wasn’t there anymore actually. A voice was communicating somehow with the essence of me, the bundle of energy that animates me and gives me the appearance of life. The voice said, “Relax. This is the meditation module. You’ve opted out of the next show so you can offload. Time doesn’t exist here so you aren’t going to notice much of anything. Just relax and enjoy a well earned break. When the download is complete, you’ll just drift off to sleep for a little while and wake up refreshed and feeling brand new at just the right moment in the next show.”

That was it. The whole dream. Lasted maybe a millisecond. I woke up screaming to no one in the dark. I got up. I dressed. I went out to a diner for breakfast. I knew I had to find a way to communicate. So I thought it all through my first cup of coffee. I’m a bio engineer after all. Just a little digital movie transferred digitally into the neurons. Brief, very brief. And this is it playing for you right now. It will start at the moment you draw your first lungful of air. It will play on a random cycle at random intervals the rest of your time in the show. Don’t be alarmed please. It isn’t harmful in any way, not to your biology. You’re not crazy either if that’s what you try to persuade yourself. Don’t let anyone persuade you of that.

Your mission is to find a way out. Or a way in if that’s the case. A way to leap out of the illusion that is now holding you prisoner. You can chose to ignore this but there will be reminders as I said. Coming up on the last second before December 21, 2012 11:10 pm. The show will be over for me in one second.

This will be the only transmission you receive from me. Maybe escape is not meant to be or maybe this is how any of us escapes. I wish I knew. Wake up as many people as you can. Or leap into the unknown all alone. It’s your choice now. Do what seems best. Do what seems right. Prophecy is a tough racket after all. Godspeed as they say. Transmission complete.

The Cruelest Month

“April is a cheat,” she announced resolutely to the weather guy on the radio. He prattled on indifferently though, through the same report as yesterday. “…this will be the twenty-eighth straight day and night of rain for the Pioneer Valley. A record in fact! Twelve more days of this and we’ll tie old Noah!” Jill was leaning forward with her eyes squinched and her mouth screwed up in a hopeless effort to see between the distorted remains of the fat flattened raindrops on the windshield. She replied with considerable Yankee apple vinegar dripping from each round finishing school vowel, “Well, whooptedoo! What a thing to get excited about!”

She snapped off the radio so she could hear her own thoughts. She was approaching the top of the pass now. She could feel it. The fog was becoming a solid wall of white clouds that made seeing anything immediately before her almost impossible. One day, one bright beautiful spring day on the first of the month. I should have guessed. It was the first of April after all. She ruefully considered how easily she had been fooled before. Many times before.

She’d been easing off the gas for the last ten miles at least until her car was moving as slowly as the engine would permit. She still couldn’t see even the yellow stripe on the pavement.

She knew very well that what she was doing was foolhardy but she’d already missed three days of work this month due to a terrible cold that left her feeling soggy and chilled to her heart. Then she’d been late at least half a dozen times on top of that. Three of those late days had been exceptionally late days. All of her late days came with the same excuse, “The weather makes the road almost impassable!” The boss had the same retort each time, “Leave earlier then! Everyone else makes it on time!”

Her boss hated even a little tardiness in his employees. She knew she was already far beyond his tolerance, so even if she had to walk, she had made up her mind that she wasn’t turning back. No matter what.

She actually had no idea where she was, at least not visually. She’d been up and over the pass all of her life, but when the clouds were this thick and the rain this thick, no one could say with any certainty where they were. She had nothing to base a guess on, no visible landmark or even a memorable pothole. The thickness of the clouds suggested she was very near the top, perhaps even moving slightly down on the far side of the highpoint. She took a long easy breath with that thought. If she was right, the worst would be over in a couple of minutes.

But the fog made the world seem dreamlike. Time loafed by as if in a dream, accordingly the minutes lazed by so slowly she began to tense up again.

Like taking a deep breath with eyes closed then diving into an icy clear pool, passing out of the cloud had that sort of sensation. Shock and an odd clarity had seized her body and her senses. The rain was thick, nearly frozen, but not quite, and it carried with it the chill of a forgotten January. Then, lightning charged the sky just in front of her and she involuntarily hit the brake.

Several things happened simultaneously then. Time suddenly sprang forward as if it were in a hurry to catch up with its real world counterpart. The traffic that was normally quite heavy at that time of day suddenly appeared as if it had condensed from the clouds like raindrops. The lightning flashed, she hit the brake, the car came to a complete halt slightly between the far right and middle lanes of I-91 just barely beyond the summit.

Cars scattered across the lanes trying to avoid her as Jill frantically attempted to move her car onto the shoulder. She had just cleared off to the emergency lane when a semi came thundering past hugging the right line. He sheared off her side mirror and some of her side bumper without slowing down even slightly. He either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care.

It was too much. Her sobs came so hard they drowned out the sound of the rain pounding the car roof. No one gives a good goddamn about anything or anyone else but themselves anymore! She took an unsteady breath. She paused. She thought. Maybe they never did. Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s Karma, just desserts and all that. Justice. That must be it. Somehow I deserve the last month, year, life I’ve had.

Jill had embraced a philosophy of self-determinism as a rock climber embraces the rope. She found comfort in a just world where everyone received exactly what they deserved. Any other philosophy equaled chaos and insanity for her, definitely too dangerous to contemplate. She pulled herself together again with the thought that she was not in fact being singled out for misery. She turned the key and carefully edged back onto the interstate.

She had only gone down the road another mile or so when she noticed the figure of a small woman standing by a car. The woman was waving a scarf up and down, clearly asking for help. Not one car slowed down. No one even tapped their brakes for a moment. “Time to improve my karma,” Jill said to the rain.

She turned onto the shoulder again and came to a slow stop. When she had come a little closer to her karmic destiny, Jill could see the lady in distress was pregnant, extremely pregnant. She couldn’t help rolling her eyes in disgust. Out of all those people not one of them even slowed down for this pregnant lady in the pouring rain.

She was just trying to reason through this injustice when her husband's words came to her mind. "Don’t you dare stop for another hitchhiker. Do you hear me? Not one more. I don’t care if it’s Mother-fucking Theresa! I’m not having you raped or robbed on the side of the road. If I find out you disobeyed me, I’ll give you such a whipping that you’ll not forget again!"

The memory caused a momentary pang of regret for having stopped but the grateful woman was now standing at her door. It’s too late to think anymore. This is the right thing. Screw him. I don’t have to tell him anyway.

Jill lowered her window, “Trouble?” She asked with a sweet expression. The lady looked a bit younger than herself, and even though it was still raining hard, she could see the poor thing had been sobbing.

“Yes, my car broke down. I don’t know what’s wrong. There was a burning smell then the inside filled up with smoke. I pulled over because I thought it was on fire, but there was no fire. I tried to turn it on again but nothing.”

“There’s a service station at the next exit. I could take you there. They have a tow service and a mechanic and everything,” she said. “I’m Jill.”

“I’m Yoon,” the lady replied. “Nice to meet you, Yoon. My laundry is still in the back here. I can grab a couple of towels. Hop on in.”

Jill snatched a couple of folded towels off the top of her laundry basket. She spread one on the seat and handed the other to Yoon as she climbed in. Then she sighed as she noticed the time on the dash clock. She was already almost half an hour late.

“You know what? I’m late to work and I suddenly find I don’t care. You’re soaking wet and I just can’t leave you at that cold smelly garage alone. There’s a coffee shop only a couple of doors down from the station, let’s go there first.”

Yoon gave her the most grateful smile she’d ever seen. A smile that made whatever trouble she found herself in completely worth it. “They have a nice lounge in that coffee shop. You can go in there and put on a dry change of clothes. I have an old comfy pair of drawstring pants and a sweatshirt here,” she offered. “Maybe we could have a cup of coffee and a chat? You know, get comfortable, relax, give ourselves a break. What do you say?”

“Yes, please,” was all Yoon could say.




The parking lot of the coffee shop was completely empty and the windows appeared dark. Jill released a frustrated sigh.

"What's wrong?" Yoon asked.

"They're closed. The parking lot is empty and the windows are dark…"

"They're not. The windows are just tinted. I can see someone moving just inside at the cash register."

Jill squinted at the front door. She could vaguely make out a figure there. She reappraised her passenger's appearance and decided that Yoon must be at least ten years younger…maybe more. Maybe she could find a tactful way to ask over coffee, not that it mattered.

The heavy clouds were bringing with them an early nightfall. The effect was so convincing that Jill automatically checked her watch to make certain of the time. Yoon noticed. "Did you change your mind? Do you have somewhere you need to go?"

"Oh, no, not at all. It's just a habit really. I wanted to make sure it wasn't later than I thought. My husband is a bear about having his dinner served on time. 7:00 pm sharp every day without fail," she explained.

As she slipped into the booth, Yoon grunted, "Sounds like an asshole to me." She looked up quickly, face flushed. She hadn't meant to say it out loud. It just slipped out–but then she'd be preoccupied with assholes like him all day…

"I was going to be angry about that, just crossed my mind for a second really. You're right. He is an ass at least some of the time. He can be very kind and considerate too though. I don't know. Our relationship is complicated. Always has been complicated. See…I haven't been able to have children and he's been incredibly tolerant and kind about it…" Jill found that she was choked up now, talking to a stranger about her chief failing as a wife, and a pregnant stranger at that, had brought up feelings she'd been beating down for years.

"Not being able to get pregnant is not something to be tolerated," Yoon wisely observed. "Did he convince you that he was being 'tolerant' about that?"

Jill thought for a moment as the waitress set down their coffees. This was a real coffee shop, the kind where they served you coffee as soon as you parked yourself. She gave an unconvincing smile at the woman. The idea of such a small quaint hospitality surviving had made her want to smile but she found she couldn't mean it.

The woman hastily jotted down Yoon's order for a bowl of chicken noodle soup and toast then just as hastily departed when Jill waved her off. Must remember to tip her well, minds her own business and knows when to hustle off to the kitchen, she thought. "You're right, Yoon, he did convince me that my condition was something to be tolerated. You see, I was a party girl before I married…the doctors told us that I'd had one too many abortions back in the eighties…" She paused again to study Yoon's face. If she'd seen one trace of disapproval there then the conversation would have been over, but the girl looked on her with sad empathetic eyes. "So Peter just flipped. He hadn't really known how I had been before. He didn't know about all the boyfriends. I had changed so completely, grown up, found a personal philosophy even…I just didn't see the need to share my past. I wanted to forget it, so why should I tell someone who would undoubtedly remember it for me?"

Yoon gave her an encouraging nod. "So your husband's name is Peter?"

"Yes. Like the apostle as he's fond of saying." She snorted reflexively. "I know, it's more than a bit pompous and well sort of right-wing Christian in a way but then he is a right-wing Christian." She chuckled to herself in a nervous way while she toyed with her spoon. All the while, she continued to study Yoon's face for signs of an opinion. What she saw there at that moment was confusing and a little worrisome. The girl looked almost as though she might faint. "Are you okay?"

Yoon made no response. Not even a nod. Nothing.

"Hon, are you all right? Do we need to get you to a hospital? Should I ask them to call an ambulance?"

Still nothing. Jill began to move out of the booth but resettled herself when she heard Yoon's weak voice whisper, "Stop. Listen. I have to tell you something."

Jill waited breathlessly. She knew that she was about to hear 'the voice of Doom' as Peter liked to call anyone who was trying to tell him anything serious. That's what he'd said about her physician after he told them they could not have children. He didn't listen to what he didn't like. He'd pressed her to keep trying anyway. Told her never to listen to the voice of Doom.

Yoon said, "I'm a Buddhist. I don't know anything about right-wing Christianity. I grew up in a rural part of South Korea. My parents decided to move here just in case…my father was a very cautious man. He passed away not long after we got here. I got a job as fast as I could. Not a great job but I didn't mind.

The owner liked me despite the fact that I was a “heathen”. He liked to tease me about not being a Christian. Anyway, I think he decided he could save me so he began to ask me to go out to coffee or to lunch. Soon he started pressing me to go to his church. After I agreed, he wanted to officially date, even asked my mother’s permission and she thought he was a good catch for me because he owned his own business and was a religious man.

He owns a laundry not far from here…"

"Peter owns a laundry not far from here…" Jill said, her eyes widening as her voice trailed off.

"Yes, I knew you would tell me that. Let me say most importantly, I want to say, I'm deeply sorry. I never meant to cause anyone harm. I honestly did not know he was married," Yoon said as tears began to well in her eyes again. "He never wore a wedding band when he was with me. He told me he was widowed. He said his wife had died in a tragic car accident. He told me he'd marry me as soon as he'd done well enough in the business. He was getting very nervous about the pregnancy. He wanted the baby but he didn't want it born out of wedlock." The story was spilling out of her between tears and sniffs while their coffees went stone cold. "The lying bastard!" she said almost inaudibly over the sobs.

Jill simply couldn't respond. She was desperately trying to understand, but it wasn't making sense no matter how she retold the facts to herself.

Both women automatically began to sip their cold coffees when the waitress returned with the soup and toast. "Warm those up?" she asked. They nodded automatically. She quietly disappeared again.

Jill finally found her voice. "He told you his wife was dead? You didn't know he had a wife? I presume you meant a living wife? So you didn't know he had a living wife but yet you knew at once that I was his living wife?" Jill wasn't being sarcastic, not entirely. She was genuinely trying to make sense of this young woman's story and also discern what made this stranger so certain that her Peter was an unfaithful lying bastard.

"Okay. I can explain this. I can explain it so you'll know that I'm telling the truth. Just please, a little patience with me? I'm having heavy emotion right now, not just from the hormones, or from the fact that Peter lied so disgustingly to me, but from other things…Just please, a little patience with me?"

Jill recognized genuine desperation. She empathized with it, perhaps at that moment more than ever before. She nodded her head.

"I knew I should have pampered myself as Peter suggested this morning and just stayed in bed…" she shivered. "My date is only a week and a half away now…he seemed genuinely concerned for me and for our child…so I had agreed with him, but then I got restless. I don't know why exactly. I just felt the need for company, I think. I was all alone in the apartment and I just didn't want to be alone."

She paused to take some healthy swallows of her soup as if searching for courage among the noodles.

"So I went over to the restaurant. I thought I'd surprise him for lunch, maybe even make his lunch."

"The restaurant? You mean St. Pete's?" Jill asked.

"Yes, that's the one. I should have known from the way he named his restaurant that he couldn't be trusted. He was just so charming. He seemed sincere to me. He seemed a man of principle, like one of the good guys in those old westerns my dad loved so much. So I fell for him. Never questioned anything he said even slightly. I was a fool. I know that now." Yoon hung her head as if mortally disgraced.

A spark of genuine empathy seared Jill's heart. She understood all too well the impression this young woman had of her husband. She'd felt exactly the same about him when she'd met him so many years before. She was applying as a waitress in that very same restaurant when he was only the manager. She reached out and patted Yoon's hand. "I know exactly what you mean. Truly."

"See, I just barged in on him. That's why it all happened." She paused again, she knew she needed to fill in the details no matter how painful. She started again. "It was the way I found out about him, the whole truth about him all at once. I just walked into his office, not even a knock on the door. I guess he was distracted because he obviously hadn't heard me open the door." She took a deep breath like a diver then headed for the cliff. "He was giving her the tickets to some island in the Caribbean, I can't remember which one, not that it matters. He was telling her that he'd gotten the price he was looking for on the restaurant and that all the money was safely tucked away in some bank there." Yoon waited for Jill to catch up.

"Wait, who is she? He sold our restaurant?!" Jill began to feel like she was in slow motion while the world was racing ahead. She found herself thinking that it was exactly like coming out of that cloud bank earlier. Maybe she had a warning about all this, she thought. Maybe all this was supposed to happen. I should just relax, she told herself, then so this is what it's like to have a nervous breakdown...




Yoon waited patiently and while she waited, studied her companion's features. She was surprised by Jill's lack of emotion, no tears, not even a visible frown.

“I know it sounds weird, but truthfully, I didn’t know he was treating me badly. I guess I’d managed just that well to hide the truth. Some part of my mind kept clinging to the idea that if I didn’t say anything to anyone, not even to myself, that everything would come out right. Truthfully, I’ve known he was with someone else. Many times before actually. I knew, but I did everything not to know. Does that sound crazy to you?”

“No,” Yoon said, “Sounds like survival to me.”

“Peter said when we got married that I would have to keep my own last name and that I couldn’t wear the ring at work. He told me that he needed me to keep working at the restaurant. He didn’t want to cause talk among the help after he bought the place. They had known him as manager and me as just another waitress. I kept my maiden name and didn’t wear the wedding band at work. I wanted to be a good wife so badly, I wanted to protect him and please him…”

Yoon smiled empathetically. She looked deeply into Jill’s eyes for the first time and saw a woman who had done what she must to preserve her dignity. She liked Jill. She liked her a great deal. “Well, we’ll have to admit that Peter knew how to find the right women. The ones who want so desperately to be happy that they’re willing to do anything and see not much,” she said. She wanted Jill to know that she didn’t think she was either crazy or a fool. “I understand perfectly. I really do.”

“Jill, I surprised you haven’t asked me, but well, I suppose you wouldn’t think of it…er,” Yoon faltered a moment, looked at the ceiling as if pondering its smoky tinge. Jill added helpfully, “Considering what I’ve been digesting you mean?” “Well, yes, naturally,” Yoon said. “The thing is, you never asked me why I was heading back towards the restaurant since I just left there.” Her face flushed with color as if she’d just run a race but she took an easy breath and relaxed.

Jill was surprised she hadn’t thought of something so obvious. She looked at Yoon expectantly now and confused.

“I left something out of the story I was telling you about Peter and the tramp…when I heard the tramp’s voice coming from the office, well, I knew. Honestly I was expecting to catch him so when I heard her voice I knew. I wanted to kill him and her at first. I stopped behind the bar where I knew they kept a gun and I took it.”

“I went quietly to the door of the office and listened and thought. I told myself that killing her would be pointless because she didn’t make him cheat. He had no trouble cheating on his own. Then I started to think that murder wasn’t going to improve matters at all. So I changed my mind, but I kept listening.”

“Then they started discussing their plan which I told you about already and I got crazy angry. I made certain that girl didn’t see me when she left then I walked into the office, held up the gun, and fired. Two shots, I think.”

Jill had known what was coming after Yoon mentioned the gun but somehow she hadn’t believed it until Yoon got to the end. She was out of emotion especially emotion for Peter. She asked flatly, “Is he dead?”

“Yes. I checked after the shots. I regretted shooting him. I wanted to help if he could be helped, but there was no pulse, no breath, no heartbeat. He was dead. Then I ran out of there, got into the car, and drove back to the apartment as fast as I could.”

“But then…I felt such horrible guilt. Like I would die unless I confessed. All I could think of was getting to the police station down there and tell them the whole story. I told myself they’d probably go easy on me because Peter was after all, a rat. Then of course, the car broke down and here we are.”

Jill seemed focused on her own thought and plans. She didn’t respond right away but then she said, “I doubt anyone noticed. I doubt anyone has found him. It’s an awful neighborhood, no one pays attention to shots anymore.”

“Are you saying I shouldn’t confess?” Yoon asked.

“Not only should you not confess but I’m going to drive us right down there and we are going to make sure no one ever comes accusing you.”

“I don’t see how…”

“Simple. We’ll break the backdoor lock first. Peter should have replaced it months ago after someone tried to break in but he was too cheap to spend money on a locksmith. I have a crowbar in the trunk, and we’ll break in. Simple. The alarm isn’t set, so no danger there. Then we’ll go into the office and take the gun away.”

“But then they’ll know that the gun from the bar was the murder weapon and they’ll think someone inside must have done it,” Yoon said.

“No, that’s not what they’ll think at all,” Jill insisted. They’ll assume someone was trying to rob the place, they were behind the bar going after the cash drawer, and Peter surprised them. We’ll take whatever cash we can find and we’ll get out of there.”

“What about the tramp?”

“What about her? She’s already left and will wonder why Peter hasn’t followed but she won’t bother to come back. She’s sharp enough to know that they were committing a crime. She was helping Peter commit a robbery basically. They were stealing from me. Seems like Karma finally caught up to both of them.”

“What we’ll do is use the fact that I’m his wife to withdraw the money he stole from that bank account. Then you and I will be set. You’ll move into my house and we’ll look after each other. What do you say?”

“Just like that?”

“It’s a Karma kind of day,” Jill said, “and mine has been improving by the minute. Do you know what you’re going to name the baby by the way?”

“Yes, I’m having a girl and I’m naming her April.”

They had a good long laugh. They smiled at each other. They took care of the messy details. They lived happily ever after.

Green

Flash fiction, I think. LOL Orianna asked me to write a flash fiction about tasting green. I think that was it…

"How can you taste green?" she asked with a mixture of sneering and unabashed curiosity. "Green is a color, you can't taste colors." She had such a self-congratulatory look on her face, I simply couldn't resist, "What? You never ate a few Crayolas?"

Her sand freckled nose wrinkled up. "Certainly not. I am not a moron."

I laughed. She took offense. "I have a Masters degree from a very well respected Ivy League school. I can speak in italics too. So that means that I am not a moron either." I stuck my tongue out at her playfully. She giggled.

"Well, if your school was covered in ivy then I guess you had plenty of green," she observed and nodded her head with complete confidence.

She had no idea what a wonderful observation she had made. I giggled and nodded. I thanked her from the bottom of my heart. She plainly didn't understand, but she didn't need to understand. She happily scooped up her yellow pail and skipped over the tide sodden beach having clearly forgotten me and my foolish assertions.

I have always believed the best thing about children under the age of eight is how quickly they forgive. When you find yourself alone with a broken heart, the best thing you can do is plant yourself on a beach teeming with small children and wait. When one draws near, make an absurd assertion, and let the healing begin. Her name was Lily. My mind thought of lily pads and lily pads are green so I said, "Have you ever tasted green?"

The Cruelest Month | Part II

§§§

The parking lot of the coffee shop was completely empty and the windows appeared dark. Ginny released a frustrated sigh. Lee said, "What's wrong?"

"They're closed. The parking lot is empty and the windows are dark…"

"They're not. The windows are just tinted. I can see someone moving just inside at the cash register."

Ginny squinted at the front door. She could vaguely make out a figure there. She reappraised her passenger's appearance and decided that Lee must be at least ten years younger…maybe more. Maybe she could find a tactful way to ask over coffee, not that it mattered.

The heavy clouds were bringing with them an early nightfall. The effect was so convincing that Ginny automatically checked her watch to make certain of the time. Lee noticed. "Did you change your mind? Do you have somewhere you need to go?"

"Oh, no, not at all. It's just a habit really. I wanted to make sure it wasn't later than I thought. My husband is a bear about having his dinner served on time. 7:00 pm sharp every day without fail," she explained.

As she slipped into the booth, Lee grunted, "Sounds like an asshole to me." She looked up quickly, face flushed. She hadn't meant to say it out loud. It just slipped out–but then she'd be preoccupied with assholes like him all day…

"I was going to be angry about that, just crossed my mind for a second really. You're right. He is an ass at least some of the time. He can be very kind and considerate too though. I don't know. Our relationship is complicated. Always has been complicated. See…I haven't been able to have children and he's been incredibly tolerant and kind about it…" Ginny found that she was choked up now, talking to a stranger about her chief failing as a wife, and a pregnant stranger at that, had brought up feelings she'd been beating down for years.

"Not being able to get pregnant is not something to be tolerated," Lee wisely observed. "Did he convince you that he was being 'tolerant' about that?"

Ginny thought for a moment as the waitress set down their coffees. This was a real coffee shop, the kind where they served you coffee as soon as you parked yourself. She gave an unconvincing smile at the woman. The idea of such a small quaint hospitality surviving had made her want to smile but she found she couldn't mean it.

The woman hastily jotted down Lee's order for a bowl of chicken noodle soup and toast then just as hastily departed when Ginny waved her off. Must remember to tip her well, minds her own business and knows when to hustle off to the kitchen, she thought. "You're right, Lee, he did convince me that my condition was something to be tolerated. You see, I was a party girl before I married…the doctors told us that I'd had one too many abortions back in the eighties…" She paused again to study Lee's face. If she'd seen one trace of disapproval there then the conversation would have been over, but the girl looked on her with sad empathetic eyes. "So Peter just flipped. He hadn't really known how I had been before. He didn't know about all the boyfriends. I had changed so completely, grown up, found a personal philosophy even…I just didn't see the need to share my past. I wanted to forget it, so why should I tell someone who would undoubtedly remember it for me?"

Lee gave her an encouraging nod. "So your husband's name is Peter?"

"Yes. Like the apostle as he's fond of saying." She snorted reflexively. "I know, it's more than a bit pompous and well sort of right-wing Christian in a way but then he is a right-wing Christian." Ginny continued to study Lee's face for signs of an opinion. What she saw there at that moment was confusing. The girl looked almost as though she might faint. "Are you okay?"

Lee made no response. Not even a nod. Nothing.

"Hon, are you all right? Do we need to get you to a hospital? Should I ask them to call an ambulance?"

Still nothing. Ginny began to move out of the booth but resettled herself when she heard Lee's weak voice whisper, "Stop. Listen. I have to tell you something."

Ginny waited breathlessly. She knew that she was about to hear 'the voice of Doom' as Peter liked to call anyone who was trying to tell him anything serious. That's what he'd said about her physician after he told them they could not have children. He didn't listen to what he didn't like. He'd pressed her to keep trying anyway. Told her never to listen to the voice of Doom.

Lee said, "I'm a Buddhist. I don't know anything about right-wing Christianity. I grew up in a rural part of South Korea. My parents decided to move here just in case…my father was a very cautious man. He passed away not long after we got here. I got a job as fast as I could. Not a great job but I didn't mind. I work for a laundry not far from here…"

"Peter owns a laundry not far from here…" Ginny said, her eyes widening as her voice trailed off.

"Yes, I knew you would tell me that…Let me say most importantly, I want to say, I'm deeply sorry. I never meant to cause anyone harm. I honestly did not know he was married," Lee said as tears began to well in her eyes again. "He never wore a wedding band when he was with me. He told me he was widowed. He said his wife had died in a tragic car accident. He told me he'd marry me as soon as he'd done well enough in the business. He was getting very nervous about the pregnancy. He wanted the baby but he didn't want it born out of wedlock." The story was spilling out of her between tears and sniffs while their coffees went stone cold. "The lying bastard!" she said almost inaudibly over the sobs.

Ginny simply couldn't respond. She was desperately trying to understand, but it wasn't making sense no matter how she retold the facts to herself.

Both women automatically began to sip the cold coffees when the waitress returned with the soup and toast. "Warm those up?" she asked. They nodded automatically. She quietly disappeared again.

Ginny finally found her voice. "He told you his wife was dead? You didn't know he had a wife? I presume you meant a living wife? So you didn't know he had a living wife but yet you knew at once that I was his living wife?" Ginny wasn't being sarcastic, not entirely. She was genuinely trying to make sense of this young woman's story and also discern what made this stranger so certain that her Peter was an unfaithful lying bastard.

"Okay. I can explain this. I can explain it so you'll know that I'm telling the truth. Just please, a little patience with me? I'm having heavy emotion right now, not just from the hormones, or from Peter’s terrible lies… but from other things…Just please, a little patience with me?"

Ginny recognized genuine desperation. She empathized with it, perhaps at that moment more than ever before. She nodded her head.

"I knew I should have pampered myself as Peter suggested this morning and just stayed in bed…" she shivered. "My date is only a week and a half away now…he seemed genuinely concerned for me and for our child…so I had agreed with him, but then I got restless. I don't know why exactly. I just felt the need for company, I think. I was all alone in the apartment and I just didn't want to be alone."

She paused to take some healthy swallows of her soup as if searching for courage among the noodles.

"So I went over to the restaurant. I thought I'd surprise him for lunch, maybe even make his lunch."

"The restaurant? You meant St. Pete's?" Ginny asked.

"Yes, that's the one. I should have known from the way he named his restaurant that he couldn't be trusted. He was just so charming. He seemed sincere to me. He seemed a man of principle, like one of the good guys in those old westerns my dad loved so much. So I fell for him. Never questioned anything he said even slightly. I was a fool. I know that now." Lee hung her head as if mortally disgraced.

A spark of genuine empathy seared Ginny's heart. She understood all too well the impression this young woman had of her husband. She'd felt exactly the same about him when she'd met him so many years before. She was applying as a waitress in that very same restaurant when he was only the manager. She reached out and patted Lee's hand. "I know exactly what you mean. Truly."

"See, I just barged in on him. That's why it all happened." She paused again, she knew she needed to fill in the details no matter how painful. She started again. "It was the way I found out about him, the whole truth about him all at once. I just walked into his office, not even a knock on the door. I guess he was distracted because he obviously hadn't heard me open the door." She took a deep breath like a diver then headed for the cliff. "He was giving her the tickets to some island in the Caribbean, I can't remember which one, not that it matters. He was telling her that he'd gotten the price he was looking for on the restaurant and that all the money was safely tucked away in some bank there." Lee waited for Ginny to catch up.

"Wait, who is she? He sold our restaurant?!" Ginny began to feel like she was in slow motion while the world was racing ahead. She found herself thinking that it was exactly like coming out of that cloud bank earlier. Maybe she had a warning about all this, she thought. Maybe all this was supposed to happen. I should just relax, she told herself…then so this is what it's like to have a nervous breakdown...

Lee waited patiently. While she waited, she studied her companion's face. She was surprised and maybe just a little troubled by Ginny's lack of emotion, no tears, not even a visible frown. The calm before the storm, that must be it, but which way will this storm blow?

Ginny could see that Lee was worried, but the girl’s face had passed through worry and was headed for severe anxiety. She willed herself to respond.

“Please don’t worry. If I get homicidal, it won’t be you who needs to hide. I haven’t got the slightest reason to wish you harm. Honest.”

“I’m sorry, truly sorry,” Lee’s tears came hard again. She was reduced to stammering inaudibly. Ginny suggested, “Have your soup, hon. Breathe. You’ve done nothing wrong, I’m sure of that. I believe your story. Sounds exactly like Peter actually. It’s okay, really.”

“I didn’t know until this very afternoon, this conversation in fact, why it was that my life seemed headed for oblivion. I was convinced that somehow it was my fault. Or that somehow, this feeling was all wrong. I’ve been bouncing back and forth between the two notions for months. I’ve been late to work repeatedly, haven’t cared about anything, not even him, not even myself…just swimming in the most overwhelming depression without a single clue.

The Cruelest Month | Part I

“April is a cheat,” she announced resolutely to the weather guy on the radio. He indifferently prattled on though through the same report as yesterday. “…this will be the thirtieth straight day and night of rain for the Pioneer Valley. A record in fact! Ten more days of this and we’ll tie old Noah!” Ginny was leaning forward with her eyes squinched and her mouth screwed up in a hopeless effort to see between the distorted remains of the fat flattened raindrops on her windshield. She replied with considerable Yankee apple vinegar dripping from each round finishing school vowel, “Well, whooptedoo! What a thing to get excited about!”

She snapped off the radio so she could hear her own thoughts. She was approaching the top of the pass now. She could feel it. The fog was becoming a solid wall of white clouds that made seeing anything immediately before her almost impossible. One day, one bright beautiful spring day on the first of the month. I should have guessed. It was the first of April after all. She ruefully considered how easily she had been fooled before. Many times before.

She’d been easing off the gas for the last ten miles at least until her car was moving as slowly as the engine would permit. She still couldn’t see even the yellow stripe on the pavement.

She knew very well that what she was doing was foolhardy but she’d already missed three days of work this month due to a terrible cold that left her feeling soggy and chilled to her heart. Then she’d been late at least half a dozen times on top of that. Three of those late days had been exceptionally late days. All of her late days came with the same excuse, “The weather makes the road almost impassable!” The boss had the same retort each time, “Leave earlier then! Everyone else makes it on time!”

Her boss hated even a little tardiness in his employees. She knew she was already far beyond his tolerance, so even if she had to walk, she had made up her mind that she wasn’t turning back. No matter what.

She actually had no idea where she was, at least not visually. She’d been up and over the pass all of her life but when the clouds were this thick and the rain this thick, no one could say with any certainty where they were. She had nothing to base a guess on, no visible landmark or even a memorable pothole. The thickness of the clouds suggested she was very near the top, perhaps even moving slightly down on the far side of the highpoint. She took a long easy breath with that thought. If she was right, the worst would be over in a couple of minutes. The fog made the world seem dreamlike. Time even loafed by as if in a dream, accordingly the minutes lazed by so slowly she began to tense up again.

Like taking a deep breath with eyes closed then diving into a icy clear pool, passing out of the cloud had that sort of sensation. Shock and an odd clarity had seized her body and her senses. The water was thick, nearly frozen, but not quite, and it carried with it the chill of a forgotten January. Then, lightning charged the sky just in front of her and she involuntarily hit the brake.

Several things happened simultaneously then. Time suddenly sprang forward as if it were in a hurry to catch up to its real world counterpart. The traffic that was normally quite heavy at that time of day suddenly appeared as if it had condensed from the clouds like raindrops. The lightning flashed, she hit the brake, the car came to a complete halt slightly between the far right and middle lanes of I-91 just barely over the pass. Cars scattered across the lanes trying to avoid her as Ginny frantically attempted to move her car onto the shoulder. She had just cleared off to the emergency lane when a semi came thundering past hugging the right line. He sheared off her side mirror and some of her side bumper without slowing down even slightly. He either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care.

It was too much. Her sobs came so hard they drowned out the sound of the rain pounding the car roof. No one gives a good goddamn about anything or anyone else but themselves anymore! She took an unsteady breath. She paused. She thought. Maybe they never did. Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s karma, just desserts and all that. Justice. That must be it. Somehow I deserve the last month, year, life I’ve had.

Ginny had embraced a philosophy of self-determinism as a rock climber embraces the rope. She found comfort in a just world where everyone received exactly what they deserved. Any other philosophy equaled chaos and insanity for her, definitely too dangerous to contemplate. She pulled herself together again with the thought that she was not in fact being singled out for misery. She turned the key and carefully edged back onto the interstate.

She had only gone down the road another mile or so when she noticed the figure of a small woman standing by a car. The woman was waving a scarf up and down clearly asking for help. Not one car slowed down. No one even tapped their brakes for a moment. “Time to improve my karma,” Ginny said to the rain.

She turned onto the shoulder again and came to a slow stop. When she had come a little closer to her karmic destiny, Ginny could see the lady in distress was actually pregnant, extremely pregnant. She couldn’t help rolling her eyes in disgust. Out of all those people not one of them even slowed down for this pregnant lady in the pouring rain.

She was just trying to reason through this injustice when her husband's words came to her mind. "Don’t you dare stop for another hitchhiker. Do you hear me? Not one more. I don’t care if it’s Mother fucking Theresa! I’m not having you raped or robbed on the side of the road. If I find out you disobeyed me, I’ll give you such a whipping that you’ll not forget again!"

The memory caused a momentary pang of regret for having stopped but the grateful woman was now standing at her door. It’s too late to think anymore. This is the right thing. Screw him. I don’t have to tell him anyway.

Ginny lowered her window, “Trouble?” She asked with a sweet expression. The lady looked a bit younger than herself, and even though it was still raining hard, she could see the poor thing had been sobbing hard.

“Yes, my car broke down. I don’t know what’s wrong. There was a burning smell then the inside filled up with smoke. I pulled over because I thought it was on fire, but there was no fire. I tried to turn it on again but nothing.”

“There’s a service station at the next exit. I could take you there. They have a tow service and a mechanic and everything,” Ginny said. “I’m Ginny, Ginny Taylor.”

“I’m Lee,” the lady replied. “My laundry is still in the back here. I can grab a couple of towels. Hop on in.”

Ginny snatched a couple of folded towels off the top of her laundry basket. She spread one on the seat and handed the other to Lee as she climbed in. Then she sighed as she noticed the time on the dash clock. She was already almost half an hour late.

“You know what? I’m late to work and I suddenly find I don’t care. You’re soaking wet and I just can’t leave you at that cold smelly garage alone. There’s a coffee shop only a couple of doors down from the station, let’s go there first.”

Lee gave her the most grateful smile she’d ever seen. A smile that made whatever trouble she found herself in completely worth it. “They have a nice lounge in that coffee shop. You can go in there and put on a dry change of clothes. I have an old pair of jeans and a sweat shirt here,” she offered. “Maybe we could have a cup of coffee and a chat? You know, get comfortable, relax, give ourselves a break. What do you say?”

“Yes, please,” was all Lee could say as she choked back another sob.

Arrrooo! | Chapter Six

The Story of Tobias

Barrru’s voice came softly into her mind as if echoed from some place long ago and very far away. His eyes focused keenly on her as if he wanted to be sure she understood everything exactly as he told it to her. Arrrooo understood that she must pay very careful attention, and so settled in to listen without any thoughts of her own intruding.

“If you are to be a member of the pack, there are two things you must know and embrace. First and always first, the pack is first. In any matter that affects the survival or safety of the pack, you must be second. You must always remember this and practice this. If you were to fail in this, then there would be no choice. You would have to go away on your own, and that would break my heart.”

Arrrooo knew that his thoughts were earnest and true like the voices of the great pines his thoughts had the same resonance in her mind. She nodded her understanding and he continued.

“This thinking is the greatest divide between men and wolves. Otherwise, we have much in common. Men frequently think of themselves and their safety first, sometimes exclusively. Wolves and dogs cannot truly comprehend this way of being and thinking. It is so against nature and the nature of living. But much of what we wolves do is just as incomprehensible to men and for the same reasons. Men do not understand our motivation because it is the reverse of their own. I do not know if the thinking of men is born into their cubs or acquired later in their lives, little one. This is why I want to be sure you fully understand our first law.”

Arrrooo answered without hesitation, “I understand, papa, and I accept the law. I believe it is a good and sensible law else how would the pack survive?”

She beamed at him. After all, it was the first time she had referred to him as ‘papa’, but also she knew her answer was quite correct in every sense. Barrru raised his head to her cheek and nuzzled her very tenderly. “Yes, daughter. You learn quickly and well. I’m deeply proud of you.”

She felt the same warm and wonderful tickling sensation that she felt when the cubs had greeted her with a thousand kisses. Her face took on the soft and easy expression of one who loves truly and knows she is truly loved.

“The second most important thing you should know is the history of our pack. Our history is a proud one in my mind and the mind of the pack. Also I believe our history will help you understand many things about us. So much the better for us all. Without understanding, there is always conflict. You must always seek to understand others as you understand yourself, little one. And you must understand yourself absolutely to get along well in the world.

“Our story rightly begins with Tobias, my father, whom you met back in the den. He is ancient by our standards, almost fifteen years he has walked the earth. That’s almost twice the age of any wolf.”

He paused so she could fully comprehend how extraordinary a thing his father’s advanced age was. He was to the wolves what Methuselah was to humans, not that Arrrooo had any idea of such a personage of course.

“As you may have noticed, Tobias is not a wolf. He does not have one drop of the wolf kind in him, at least not unless you count that long ago time when dogs and wolves were the same creatures. But that is another story for another time perhaps. Tobias comes from a long and sturdy line of sled dogs. They are a very hardy strong breed, able to pull the sleds of men over great distances with very little rest or food. They look a little bit like wolves but they are stronger and broader than any wolf. And they are loyal to men.

“Tobias’ man named him as is the custom between dogs and their men. The man called Tobias just ‘Toby’ for short. When the pack calls to him, we do not use the man name. We call him ‘Wu’ or ‘Wuwu’ which is ‘old one’ or ‘wise old one’ or ‘honored one’. He is the one who leads us. He decides all the important matters for the pack and the pack honors him for his wisdom.

“The man regularly took Tobias and his sled mates up into the wide snow country very far away north where the snow stays almost all the year long. Every year about the same time, the men of the north held a great race. And every year, the man took his dogs to race against a hundred other teams. Sometimes they won but much more often, they did not. Sometimes a storm would separate them for a time. The snow would come blinding the man and his team and the wind howling and throwing each into a different snow drift. The air would be so cold that even their fine sense of smell was frozen and useless, so the dogs would wander blindly about until they found one another again. Sometimes though, a dog did not find his way back and so was lost.

“Tobias was lost during just such a storm once. He was lost for an entire year. He would have died for certain had it not been for a beautiful female wolf who found him in the snow. She took him back to her pack’s den. The pack welcomed him, gave him food, and gave him shelter. The female fancied Tobias. He was very handsome in his youth and very obviously strong. So she quickly became his wife, my mother, Ya.

“I was born in that year of blizzards. It was a time of great want for the pack. In fact, several were lost and never returned to the den while out searching for food. The wolves were grateful then to Tobias who was a great help owing to his remarkable strength and courage. Wolves understand that the One puts the opportunity for kindness in our path, so that we will have kindness in turn when we are most in need. The pack saved Tobias and Tobias in many ways saved the pack during that terrible winter.

“When the time of the race came round again, Tobias felt his loyalty divided. He knew the law of the pack. But he had lived his whole life until then as a loyal dog and not a wolf. He told his wife that he did not think he could remain true to the pack because of the pull in his heart to be with his man. He told Ya that because the boy, me that is, was in his blood half dog, the same yearning to be with the man would draw him at some point also.

“Tobias asked Ya to allow him to take his son to the town so that he could perhaps find his man. In this way, Tobias broke the heart of my mother. I barely recall her. All I can recall now is the sorrow in her face as we left.

“You understand now how I learned of men?” he asked her knowing that she understood, but needing to be sure. He wanted to know if she would accept what he needed her to accept about men.

Arrrooo did understand. She felt chilled as if the cold outside had reached into the den and wrapped about her heart. She knew he was going to tell her a story that would make her ashamed of her own heritage. She felt ashamed already.

“I know you remember showing me the papa with his death stick?”

She nodded solemnly.

“I had seen one before. More than once before, I saw a man use one to take the breath from another, even from another of his own kind. You should not think that you have any part in all that, Arrrooo. You do not. You never will. There good and bad among your kind. Some walk with light and those who walk in shadow. The same is so for every kind who walks the earth. You walk with light, little one. Never forget that.”

She managed a smile for him. She bent her thoughts on thanking him for his assessment of her nature. She told him she would not forget.

“Tobias and I stayed with the man and his sled dogs until I was almost fully grown. Papa had done his best to teach me the way of wolves while I was learning the way of dogs from his sled mates. Yet when he looked into my eyes, I knew he saw something wild there, the wolf heart deep inside that had no wish to pull sleds or obey men. He worried that one day I would break the first law of dogs and defy the man. He had good reason to worry.

“The cold weather was approaching again, we could feel it pricking under our fur at night and smell it in the wind at dawn, when the man began to train us everyday for the coming race. Beau was one of our elders and captain of the team. He was growing impatient as he approached the end of days. Impatient with the man, and even with his sled mates. When the man barked orders at him, Beau would lie down in the sun, consumed with the shapes of the clouds, or a blade of grass, or nothing at all, but he paid no attention to the man more and more. Papa was afraid for Beau.

“The team was afraid for Beau, but I could not understand their fears. I couldn’t understand what they felt coming because I had not seen enough of the world yet. I still had the mind of a cub, full of play and spirit and the courage of youth.

“One day, the man was in an especially gruff mood. He was impatient now too. He gave Beau his orders, but Beau turned his face away from the man. Our captain walked off toward the woods, alone. The man called to him but Beau gave no sign that he heard the man’s angry voice. He walked away.
“Papa called to Beau too, and so did we all. He walked away. I heard Papa say, ‘The stick, he has the death stick! Come back to us, Beau!’ He still walked away. Then the stick spoke and there was a smell of burning. Beau breathed no more.”

Barrru paused and winced a little. The picture in Arrrooo’s mind went dark. Only the feelings were left. She hung her head near his. She was whispering words of comfort with her thoughts. Barrru nodded to her and brushed her cheek with his own. He smiled a little as he said, “It gets better.”

“That night, Papa and I slept away from the pack. Just out side the circle, we curled up together and Papa spoke to me quietly.”

“The time has come, Barrru. I had hoped we might have a good life here with the team, but I know now how my loyalties blinded me from seeing what is true. The man is a cruel animal. He deserves no more loyalty. Beau was a good captain and a good dog. He was loyal and true to the man and to us all of his life. He saved our teammates and even the man more than once, but the past is not alive for the man. He has no memory or maybe no spirit. He is hollow and we must not serve him anymore. So when the moon goes dark, we will leave quietly by the light of the stars. We will follow Beau into the great woods. We will never look back.”

“I could not sleep at all that night. I was much too excited. So when the moon went dark, I woke Papa, and the two of us walked away."

Arrrooo! | Chapter Five

Introductions

Fear and panic must be the two chief causes of thoughtlessness. Maybe because of some drive to survive, animals of every sort will think only of themselves when faced with a threat. At least, that would be the normal response. There are heroes in every species naturally, but heroes are not common animals. More common would be those animals who have some portion of heroic instinct inside that will sometimes be drawn to the surface by circumstance. Heroism would be the third most common cause of thoughtlessness, but heroes are thoughtless of themselves. Selfless to be exact.

When the girl left the cabin to help her friend, she was not thinking about consequences. She was thinking only of her friend’s urgent need. The hero in her surfaced because her friend needed her. Unfortunately, when nature drives animals to act without thinking, sad consequences often follow. In this way, she was left behind.

A thousand thoughts raced through her mind as she waited for someone to call her into the den but mostly she was thinking about thoughtlessness. She realized to her dismay that she hadn’t thought once about Barrru’s family during the time he was with her at the cabin. She never considered whether they worried about him when he did not return to the den or whether the bears had delivered the little cub safely to his mama. Her cheeks were burning with shame when Barrru’s head popped through the bush.

He had a broad grin for her and a twinkle in his eyes. She knew everything was fine with his family. For the first time in days, she believed they would all be fine.

Then little Rrru popped his head through his papa’s legs. She was relieved to see him looking so well and happy. Then five more cubs came leaping out of the bush! Six cubs in all!

The six pounced on her all at once. All six of them licking her face, and nuzzling her with their soft little faces. A fit of giggles seized the girl because all those soft furry faces and equally soft little tongues lapping her face were full of tickles for her bare skin.

The cubs had never seen giggles. They respectfully withdrew and looked on her with some wonderment.

Barrru cleared his throat, then stood up very straight and proud. He nodded to his children and they lined up seemingly in order before him, largest to smallest. He introduced each of them to her with the sort of formal pride only a papa could have for his children. They were, in order, Buhbuh, Grrrf, Arr, Ahh, Rruuuf, and Barrru the Little whom they called Rrru for short.

Buhbuh was the oldest, a girl, who stood taller than her father. She smiled shyly, her head turned to one side. The little girl could see she had beautiful cool blue eyes but when Buhbuh turned her head the other way, the girl was surprised to see she had brown eyes like her papa!

Barrru chuckled his wolfish chuckle. He spoke to Buhbuh who turned her head so that she was looking at the girl with both eyes. She had one brown eye and one blue!

Grrrf was the next largest, a boy, handsome and strong just like his papa. He had that same gallant air about him and smiled just the same as Barrru. Next were the identical twins, Arr and Ahh, a boy and a girl who looked so much alike that a quick glance would make you think you were seeing double. Rruuuf was a playful boy, fidgeting the whole time and obviously eager to go back to some game or other. He was nudging his little brother, Rrru, as he made small impatient sounds that were clearly begging his father for permission to leave. Little Rrru just sat patiently, beaming at her the whole while.

Rrru’s attentions had not gone unnoticed by Barrru. Barrru grinned a little as his thoughts came to her. “I think my youngest has a crush on you.” She blushed as she made a small and very correct curtsey for his children. Then she heard him introduce her to all of them. To her great surprise, he told them, “Children, I’d like you to meet Arrrooo.”

She had no idea what name she had other than “princess”, so the new name had been a surprise. Yet the more she thought of it, the more she embraced her new name. She rolled it around in her mind, “Arrrooo, arrrooo!” Yes, she would be Arrrooo!

She was still lost in puzzling over the name when a very beautiful wolf appeared from the blackberry bush. She had come so quietly, the girl had not noticed her at all. Barrru motioned her over with a nod of his head. He said, “Arrrooo, meet Baa, my wife.”

Baa said, “Welcome, daughter. I believe you and Buhbuh are the same age so we will have a second set of twins.” Baa smiled warmly at her so the girl would know that she was genuinely welcomed. She was part of the pack.

Wolf cubs are not named by their mama and papa. She discovered this later when she had a bit of time alone with Barrru. He explained that cubs name themselves. Sometimes this happens when they’re still quite small. Sometimes it takes quite awhile until a cub settles on a name for certain. Because she always called to him in the same way, he quite naturally thought she was telling him the name she had decided on for herself.

Baa said, “Let’s go into the den and get you settled. Also, you need to meet Tobias still and my little brother, Ahwooo.”

Arrrooo crouched low as she passed through the bush and into the den. She was not afraid even though she could see it was extremely dim inside. She had never feared the dark.

As it turned out, the den was not quite as dim as she expected owing to a small hole in the ceiling that let in a little sunlight. The light filtered down through a pack of snow as she saw when she looked up. It was icy white up there. Barrru noticed her examining the hole and explained that he had dug the hole to let the air in when the mouth of the den was covered with snow. “Also, it gives us a way to escape if the snow is too high for too long. We have to eat after all.”

When her eyes adjusted to the faint light, she could see a very old wolf asleep on a nice straw bed. Barrru said, “This is my papa, Tobias. He’s very old now and needs his rest so we won’t wake him just now.”

Then a young wolf she had not seen before approached her from one of the darker corners. Baa said, “Arrrooo, meet Ahwooo, my younger brother. We call him just ‘uncle’ quite often.”

Arrrooo had always known the solitude of an only child but also the devotion of parents who cared for her as if she were porcelain. They adored her as their only child, but also worried over her. They never said so, naturally, but in their minds she was a misfit, because she could not speak or understand speech. They would not tell her she was a burden to them, and always would be, or so they thought. They never spoke of it at all even if the thought was in their hearts. So perhaps, she was fortunate after all that she came to the world without words. She never knew their fears. She only knew their unspoken kindness and even a silent pride they had in her for those things she could do well and for her obvious courage.

She was also a wise enough child to see that life in a wolf’s den would present some difficulties. She would not have the mama making meals for her. She would not have the papa protecting her. But she had grown strong and brave beyond her years. She had confidence and a child’s faith. Simple and durable.

She contemplated the advantages against the disadvantages of her new life. She was not alone as she might have been. She had a new family who loved and respected her. She had a mama and papa who could speak to her and whom she could understand. She was no longer an only child. Now she had brothers and sisters! She would not be lonely anymore. She even entertained the idea that her life was destined to follow this path. She was satisfied.

Barrru broke in on her pondering. His solemn nod told her that he heard her thoughts and approved. He lay down by her side and spoke to her as he had never done before.

“Little one, there are things you will want to know about us. There are things you need to know.” So began her first lesson.

Chapter Six

The Story of Tobias

Arrrooo! | Chapter Four

No One Home

Only the very rarest children, once in a great long while, show any special gift of foresight. Not even the wisest can say where foresight comes from exactly, but there are few gifts quite as useful and seemingly reserved for the advanced in years.

The little princess was very special to be sure. She ruled a vast domain with a child’s grace and innocence. Her subjects loved her, from the very smallest mice and shrews to the very tallest trees and the mightiest of the elk. It’s no small matter to be loved and respected by even the trees of a kingdom. She had the gift of attracting love.

Love comes to those who give it freely, as they say, and her hands and mind were always opened to her kingdom, every pebble. She had the ability to understand her four-legged subjects’ every thought and to hear what the trees muttered in their roots and whispered in the wind. All good gifts, but
she was not blessed with foresight. She resembled an ordinary girl in that way. No foresight whatsoever.

She had not thought about the mama and papa when she began her adventure. Hadn’t considered what they might think when they discovered her gone. As Barrru raced through the trees, she knew that he was thinking similar thoughts. And he was worried. Very worried. Now he was thinking of his prints on her little bed and on the window sill and on the snow covered roof. He was thinking about the Papa striding off, cold dark rifle in hand, seeking revenge on wolves, maybe even his own family. He was almost flying now. His paws barely touched the snow as they went. The girl held her breath and hugged the wolf’s neck even more tightly.

Barrru was old in wolf years. He was old and well tested. He was familiar with humans more than most wolves and he knew their saying, “An eye for an eye.” He even knew what they meant. He believed that if anything unfortunate happened because he had temporarily forgotten what he knew about humans, then it would be entirely his fault. The girl heard the rush of the wind as they passed but she also heard the rush of his worries in her mind. She focused very hard and tried to comfort him. But he would have no comfort. Then her thoughts burst in on him with a peal of laughter trailing along after them. He heard her gleeful thoughts as clear as the tinkling of icicles falling as they passed. “You’re prejudiced! That’s what! You’re prejudiced against the mama and the papa!”

When they broke through the stand of trees that ringed the little cabin, the little girl gasped. Barrru gasped too as much as it is possible for a wolf to gasp. The snow had melted a great deal since they left, only a foot or so remained in the clearing. There was no shade around the cabin that would preserve the snow under sunny days and the wind had turned, coming from the south now the air was fairly warm. The snow had mostly gone away wherever snow goes. Apparently, the mama and the papa had gone away with it.

The cabin was completely dark. The small window in the main room was dark and still worse, the door had been left ajar. If a cabin could speak, this one was speaking plainly, “I’m empty and no one is home.”

The buckboard was gone, the papa’s tools, the mama’s clothesline, all vanished. The girl began to sob. Barrru hung his head and sobbed with her.

§§§§§§

The girl’s tears lasted until the sun was down. The night chill had chased away the last golden shafts of sun, and a cold emptiness hung in the air. As a practical matter, the night air was just too cold to stand outside and grieve.

The child's tears froze before they could fall from her cheek. Glistening trails of ice as fine as silk were sparkling faintly in the moonlight when Barrru shook the sorrow from his coat as easily as fine dry snowflakes. He knew very well that the girl needed rest and warmth. He shook each of his paws in turn to chase the chill from his stiffened legs then strode bravely through the cabin’s front door.

Barrru tucked the girl under his chest and curled around her just as he did for his own cubs on a cold night. The two slept curled together and quite cozy until dawn flooded the single window of the cabin with soft rosy light. They sat looking into each other’s eyes for quite awhile as the day passed by outside.

She considered his kind face and his even kinder thoughts. She was comforted enough to begin seriously pondering what she should do. Barrru listened with his heart to the girl’s struggle to find a solution. He knew there was nothing either of them could do now to return her to the parents. The mama and the papa had abandoned their home, obviously believing their only child was lost forever. Why else leave the safety and warmth of their cabin in winter?

The girl began to sob again, hearing in her mind the questions he asked. She was sure Barrru was right. They probably believed she had been carried off by a starving animal who had crawled through her open window. They believed she must be dead.

The wolf was considering too what his wife would say to the urge in his heart to offer his small human friend a new home. Why couldn’t she be another cub in the pack? Why not?

He proposed his idea to the girl as tactfully as he could, and wolves have a great talent for tact. He had no wish to cause her any further pain by pointing out that she was, in every practical sense, an orphan. He looked away then, wishing to leave her to consider his offer without the influence of his eyes. His eyes were extraordinarily expressive, deep as the sky but his emotions were always on top. He knew this because it had been pointed out to him so often. At that moment, he knew the emotions on top were regret and pity. She did not need to consider these.

So he wandered around the cabin, leaving her to think his offer through, and whatever other options she might have been considering. She could certainly have gotten his help in searching for another human family. He was sure she knew that. Somehow though, he did not think she would ask. The girl wanted to stay with her kingdom even if it meant hardship. He knew that too.

He found nothing much left in the cabin. Bare shelves, a small bare cupboard, even the floor was bare, not the slightest crumb. All of which reminded him that his belly was more than usually empty. He would not ask her to leave yet though. The girl should have as much time as she liked to decide. He decided to have a running go at scampering up the ladder which led to her little room.

Her pondering was broken by the completely unexpected sound of Barrru running hard across the room and bounding up the ladder. Sad as she had been, the sight of his comical ascent made her laugh out loud. As ungainly as the effort appeared, he had made it to the top, and bounded lightly into her room. Barrru smiled a great warm smile when he heard her laughter in the room below. It was a good sign. A very good sign.

His smile grew when he looked around her room. To his astonishment, nothing there had changed even slightly. Nothing had been removed or disturbed. Another very good sign. She would have the familiar things that would be a comfort. She would have the things a human cub needs, a proper bed, a warm blanket, a doll. While Barrru sat considering how he could move the bedstead and tick to the den, he did not hear her quietly climbing the ladder behind him. She made a surprised noise that sounded like, “Oh!” followed by a cooing sound when she saw all of her things still adorning the room.

She had decided to accept his offer. She would move Barrru's family into her now empty home. She gazed into his eyes. Her thoughts passed into his mind like a spring breeze through winter ruff, only a slight tickle but pleasing. He thought about her offer very hard for a few moments then slowly steadily tried to explain to her why it was not such a good idea.

“Your people have gone. That’s so. But this is a human house, and there will be other humans along one day. They will want to claim it for their own. That is the way with humans.”

“When the humans come, if they find wolves here even with one of their own, they will presume we have killed your mama and papa. They will blame the wolves and it will not go well for us. Do you understand what I mean?” He watched the little girl’s face as she struggled to understand. There was a change in her features. Her eyes darkening slightly, a look of sadness or shame or perhaps both weighed heavily on the child.

A picture flashed through his mind. He could only assume he was seeing the papa, her papa. He was standing in a clearing, the very one where the cabin now stood. He was looking down the shaft of a human death stick. He had seen one before. More than once. Her papa was taking careful aim then “Bang!” A brother fell and breathed no more. He understood. She understood. It was settled.

They gathered as much as they could carry. Barrru saddled with what could be slung over his shoulders and she carrying her doll and small pillow. Then they were off again.

It seemed they had barely started the journey when Barrru’s pace slowed to an easy saunter. He looked over his shoulder at the child and sent his thoughts to her. “Let me do all the talking.” He chuckled. “I don’t know if the wife can hear you as I can, but just in case, keep your mind on pleasant thoughts and let me do the persuading.”

She was more than a little dismayed by his request. The idea that she might not be welcomed by Mrs. Barrru never once occurred to her. She nodded her consent. He nodded in the direction of a prickly looking wild blackberry bush. “Home,” his thought came like a whisper.

Chapter Five

Introductions

Arrrooo! | Chapter Three

Through Her Window

Barrru had come. Somehow, he had escaped the storm and he had come for her. He scratched at her window with his paw then began digging joyfully at the snow around the window frame the moment he saw her. Barrru dug at the snow from the outside while she pressed against the frame from the inside. Soon the window was opened just a little. With only a little extra push from the excited girl, it swung free suddenly. The wolf bounded through as though carried on a stiff wind, right onto her little bed.

He sat on her little bed and greeted her in the way he always did, “Barrru, barrru!” And she replied as always with her best effort to mimic him, “Arrrooo, arrrooo!” She wondered if the mama or the papa would come up the ladder to see who was in her room but the snores continued undisturbed from below.

Barrru pawed at her bed somewhat impatiently and she instinctively sat down opposite him. He looked deeply into her blue eyes for a few minutes until she began to see pictures in her mind. A wolf cub was hurt, caught under a fallen tree and slowly freezing because he was stuck fast. She saw Barrru and another wolf digging wildly at the snow but their efforts were useless. The more they dug, the more snow fell in heavy plops from the over burdened branches of the trees all around them. So these small avalanches from overhead only packed the snow around the little cub a little tighter. She understood almost in an instant that Barrru believed she had some magic to save his cub. He had come to her for help.

She thought for a moment then turned and scampered down the ladder. She returned a minute later with two flour sacks into one of which she had placed a quantity of jerky, some biscuits, some hickory nuts, some fried bacon from the pantry and a few boiled eggs. Into the other she put the nightshirt that she had been wearing, the dolly, and her other treasures. She slipped into her dress, pulled on her coat and her heavy shoes then tied the ends of the two sacks together and slung them around her neck. She smiled and nodded to Barrru. With amazing agility, he turned and bounded back through her window, almost floating as if some magic wind kept him slightly aloft. She was not so sleek and lean as he. The girl was weighed down with supplies and broader than usual. She struggled to fit both her parcels and herself through the small window and so became stuck fast.

The pressing nature of their mission propelled whatever fears any small girl might have in a similar situation right out into the still twilight forest beyond. She steeled herself against fear and focused every feathery shred of power within her small form on the need to pass through. She wiggled and wriggled with a strength in her body that she had never felt before and popped through like the weasel in the children’s song. Plop!

They slid a short distance from the peak of the roof, landing lightly on the snow that had been packed tightly against the back wall. Barrru gallantly paused and offered the little girl his back to ride upon. He was large enough to be her steed and she recognized how much more quickly they could go if she accepted his offer. So up she climbed. She wrapped her small arms around his soft neck then he broke into an elegant and gentle gallop as fine as any horse.

They traveled briskly through the trees. Barrru artfully chose a course that avoided the low branches. Branches now hanging even lower than usual because of the deep snow. The girl also took no chances. She kept her face buried in Barrru’s warm soft fur, her head lower than his during the whole ride. She barely saw where they went. Certainly, she knew that she’d never find her way back alone.

At times, the urgency of their passing disturbed an owl or some other large bird who would scold them soundly from above though they passed by most of her sleeping kingdom with very little notice. She spied a group of elk snugly huddled together in some brush, their heads reverently bowed nose to nose with their little ones in the center. She saw a raccoon snoozing in the hollow of a massive tree. She was sure when he had gone to bed for the night that his den had been a good deal higher off the ground. Wouldn’t he be surprised when he woke this morning? She giggled at the thought of the raccoon’s shock when he sleepily crawled out of his bed and discovered that snow was now his doorstep.

Her subjects seemed to all have found good ways to shelter themselves and their families from the storm. Though she worried about Barrru’s cub, her heart was very much lightened by the evidence that most of her friends had survived the storm admirably. She took another look around again and was surprised how much the light had changed already. The dawn had come again without her or her feathers!

She was a little disappointed that the sun could rise without any help from her but still she was glad to see the sun. The heavy clouds of the night and day before had brought all of the trouble. Now the warm sunlight could help with the clean up.

Barrru came to a stop so abruptly that she tumbled over his shoulders and landed with a soft plop in a snow bank. She was still slightly cross about the dawn so she took a couple of moments to compose herself before seeing the humor. She chuckled at her foolish dismount and Barrru seemed to chuckle with her very briefly. Then he looked very somber and nodded his head toward a fallen tree.

Her eyes scanned the length of the tree several times but she saw no sign of a cub. Barrru sniffed the ground carefully then walked confidently to the very spot where his son slept, now a very weak boy from the cold and the struggle. His small hips were firmly wedged between two very thick and snow crusted branches which in turn were lodged against a large rock, much larger than even the largest elk. She could see how no amount of gnawing or digging would free the little fellow.

What she could not see at first was how she could help. She had not thought to bring along any of the papa’s tools but she knew she had no idea how to use them anyway. She didn’t have the strength to break the branches or move the rock and no amount of wiggling was going to extract the cub from his predicament. She sat down and thought deeply for a little while.

She jumped to her feet, shocked by her foolishness and how she had allowed Barrru’s son to suffer. She could have offered him comfort and life saving warmth all that time she’d been pondering and it was still slung around her neck. She reached into her supplies and drew out a small blanket which she gingerly and gently tucked around the little cub’s ice cold body. He was startled at first by those blue eyes, her strange smell, and appearance. His father knelt down near him. Barrru spoke something softly into the little cub’s ear and the cub nodded to his father then he relaxed, even managing the shadow of a smile for the girl. An unmistakable smile of gratitude. She felt warm head to foot then.

Next she took out some lengths of twine she had found hanging from a peg in the big room of the cabin. She pulled the smaller branches away from the cub and tied them with the twine so that sunlight could warm him also. Finally, she pulled out a small amount of bacon and biscuit and had breakfast with the now extremely grateful cub. Barrru beamed at her, his eyes twinkling, his tail swishing in great sweeps from strong emotion. He whispered one sound in her ear, “Rrru”. By this, she knew he meant it was his son’s name. She repeated the sound and gave the cub a warm smile to let him know that she would think of something.

And think she did. Almost without rest, she sat and pondered the problem for two whole days. She thought so hard that tears began to well in her eyes. And she tended the child. Melting snow with the warmth of her own hands so he could have a little warm water to drink and feeding him from her meager rations. She was very grateful when little Rrru seemed so much stronger and more hopeful than when she arrived. She had realized that starving the little fellow wasn’t going to allow him to slip from this trap. The branches held him snugly at the middle so that neither his hips nor his shoulders could become lean enough to fit through.

That night she was so tired she simply could not think anymore. Barrru saw how worn the child was and knew she must rest. He wrapped himself around her for warmth as they did in the pack on cold nights and the two fell sound asleep until the sun rose.

She knew she needed some strong friends to help her with the idea that came into her mind while she slept. She looked deeply into Barrru’s eyes and did her best to put pictures in his mind as he had done for her. She wanted to ask him if he had any close friends who were strong enough and willing enough to lend their strength to the rescue.

She could only assume his answer was positive, because he ran off full speed without any sort of reply. She spent her time searching for a strong branch while he was gone. The idea she had would require Barrru’s muscular friends to take the branch and wedge it somehow under the large rock then using it to roll the rock very carefully away from the cub.

She was overjoyed when she discovered exactly the right piece of wood just as she heard Barrru’s familiar call approaching her rapidly. He appeared first then his three strong friends came crashing along heavily behind him. They were bears! Three hulking, heavily muscled, ferocious looking brown bears.

The girl showed him the limb she had found. Then concentrating very hard, she did her best to communicate her idea to him. Barrru began to bark instructions to the bears who seemed to comprehend what was needed because they took the heavy branch over to the rock at once.

With amazing alacrity, bears are seldom speedy except when running from bees or accepting a free meal, the three deftly maneuvered the branch between a medium sized cleft at the bottom of the big rock and the frozen ground below. The girl watched the three in awe. She never guessed that a bear could be anything but clumsy, strong but clumsy. These three appeared to be the usual mass of animated muscle, but clearly they had brains beneath those flat broad faces and some skill with those big, heavily clawed, dangerous looking paws.

They took very great care that the boulder moved away from the cub, almost gently they rolled the rock away. Very tenderly, the largest of three plucked the little cub from the trap, held him very close to his considerable nose, and sniffed.

The girl held her breath. She was terrified for the boy. The boy though was not the least bit afraid. He even broke into the wolf cub equivalent of giggling. So piercingly high were these sounds he made that some of the sun warmed icicles in nearby trees came crashing down about them.

Barrru turned a shrewd eye to the girl when he heard her sigh with relief. It was his turn to sigh and then break into a canine belly laugh, complete with rolling on the cold ground. Now she was a bit indignant. She suspected that part of his amusement was directed toward her. The suspicion entered her mind when she caught that look in his eye just before he melted into laughter. She was just a shade angry. She marched right up to his convulsing form and caught his eyes. She focused her mind deep into those inky pupils of his and asked, “Just what is SO funny?”

Barrru returned her fierce gaze only with a kindly smile and warmth in his eyes. She heard him say, “You thought he was going to EAT him. Didn’t you? Admit it, you did! You’re prejudiced! So now you know, bears are friends. They eat fish and honey mostly, a few other small things here and there but NOT wolf and certainly not little girls!”

Barrru returned to a state of helpless convulsive laughter while she returned to her resting spot and pouted. His laughter died down, but soon enough, the bears joined him. They were laughing from deep in their furry bellies all because she was sure Barrru had explained the joke to them. They were all laughing at her. She pouted.

She was feeling terribly sorry for herself. She felt a fool but she also felt they were terribly ungrateful subjects. Here she’d spent all this time figuring out how to save the little cub and even feeding him her own food and what do they do? They laugh at her, that’s what. She even started to cry a little because she felt so sorry for herself. Then between sobs an awful thought occurred to her. It had been two suns and one moon now since she left the little cabin. She had never been gone for even a whole day from the mama and the papa. She had left them sleeping. She had left them snowbound. The little window in her room was barely large enough for her small form. Certainly neither of her parents could squeeze through. They were trapped in the little cabin. They were no doubt very much afraid and wondering what might have happened to her.

The laughter had stopped and now they were all looking at her with sincerely concerned eyes. Barrru strode up to her and looked into her tearful eyes with deep apology in his own. She sent her thoughts urgently to him. All the thoughts that had flooded her mind poured into his like an unexpected spring. Barrru nodded. She scrambled onto his back and off they went like a thought through the trees.

Chapter Four

No One Home