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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 38: Takano 96
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Cooper 12
Lost in thought and dawdling over her supper, at first Tommy didn’t process the sound. As she shook herself from her reverie and realized what it was, she also vaguely realized that she couldn’t be oblivious like that. This wasn’t a dangerous sound, but dangerous sounds would have been a lot less obtrusive. She would be lucky if a lion or a wolf broke a twig before it pounced.
This sound was water running at her spigot.
It was in a sense her spigot because each of the three group camps had its own, so no one needed to walk to her camp to get water. It wasn’t unknown, but it was unusual. She glanced that way and back to her food, and then realizing what she saw she looked again.
He was not a member of the tribe.
Oh, he was unassuming enough that he might have been standing in the crowd unnoticed all these months. After all, with about a hundred residents there might be a couple she had never actually met. It was more than that, though. He had a backpack with a frame, very like her own only bigger, with tent and sleeping bag strapped to the bottom and a full axe tied along the side. The bow that was set on the other side was not like those used by her hunters, which were relatively simple recurve bows, but a compound bow like the one Lauren used. He was wearing a warm jacket and a red hat with a brim and ear flaps of a type Tommy associated with hunters. A pair of what looked to be leather gloves were tucked under one arm, as he used bare hands to work the spigot.
He noticed that she was staring at him, and spoke. “Pardon the intrusion, ma’am. Didn’t know anyone was here, and just filling my canteen on the way through.”
Something in her confused mind said she should answer him.
“That’s--that’s all right. It’s just--I’m surprised, that’s all. Who are you?”
“Name’s Davey. Grandfather said it was the name of a famous woodsman, or something like that; my older brother is named Dan’l, and Grandfather said that they were sort of a pair in history.”
“What are you doing out here?”
“Well, in the winter I try to hunt a wider area; the deer are moving a lot more looking for food.”
“I’m sorry, I meant--oh, I’m being rude. My name’s Tommy. Tomiko, actually, but everyone calls me Tommy. What I meant was, why are you not in the caves?”
“I remember the caves. I was pretty young when we left. Grandfather said it was wrong to worship machines, and we had to go somewhere where we could worship the true and living God, as he always said. So he brought the whole family out of the caves and built a cabin out of tree trunks in the woods. He taught us how to live out here, and we’ve been out here ever since.”
He was a godsend--maybe literally.
“Um,” she began unpromisingly, “we could really use your help.”
“My help? What could I do?”
“Well, it’s a long story, but there was a man who decided we had to leave the caves, that it was becoming dangerous to live there, and he led all these people outside but died on the way. Then there was a woman who taught us a few useful things, like building these huts and spearing fish and shooting arrows. She also died. So since then it’s been the blind leading the blind, as we try to figure out how to survive the winter.”
“What did you do last year?”
“Last year we were still underground. We came out as the spinach and broccoli and beans were just becoming edible.”
He whistled. “You are in trouble. How many of you are there?”
“About a hundred.”
“Really? Where is everybody?”
“We’re broken into three camps, each with a leader and an assistant, camped at its own spigot.”
“And why are you here?”
“That’s also kind of hard to explain. I was traveling with the woman, the one who died, and we met the man and all the other people on their way out and joined them, but we were never exactly part of them. We knew something about living on the surface, hard to explain that, but we became their advisors. So I’m still an advisor.”
He nodded as if that made sense. She continued.
“Anyway, you could have this nest over here; I’ve got a few things stored in it, but I’ve plenty of room in my own nest.”
“Nest?”
“Oh, that’s what Lauren--the woman--called them. She learned to build them from the birds.”
“Yeah, that explains a lot. I was going to ask if she was an indian, because they look like wigwams, but not quite. Well, I guess I could stay a few days. The hunting’s probably not worse here than anywhere else. You say that nest is available?”
He was already removing his pack and settling it by the door. Yes, she thought, a godsend.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #503: Versers Progress. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
