Canyon Lands

by T J Reeder

  Beth was told to go rest so I took her up to the house and we “rested.”

  I woke up from the nap to find the bed full, the feast was ready and it was siesta time. I love a cold beer but one at lunch just knocks the crap out of me, I woke up all logy and feeling grimy so I headed for the shower which really revived me because I screwed up and forgot to open the hot water valve and that creek water is like ice. I think my scream woke up the world because I soon had company. They got the water right so I could come out of the corner where I was hiding. One thing for sure I was neither logy nor grimy! And other things had retreated up inside. I love showering and then air drying, it’s wonderful and cooling on the hot days which is most days. We dressed and headed down to await the arrival of our guests.

  When they arrived it was in a small convoy, Charley could wander over the world alone but Old Woman was never far out of sight of her People, they were very protective of her as they should be.

  Charley escorted her to the common area where we all waited, Old Woman walked to me and took my hand for a minute and said, “We will talk soon.” Then hugged the girls and greeted the other ladies.

  When she came to Vanessa she took both her hands and said, “Welcome home my sister, I hope your travels have all been good.”

  Vanessa smiled at her and said, “All journeys have stones in the road but it is a part of life and shouldn’t be avoided but learned from.”

  They walked away from all of us to the rock I love to sit on by the water where they talked for a while.

  Charley had come to me and we watched the women talking, I looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

  He shrugged and said, “I know who she is and I know her and Old Woman have known each other for most of their lives but that‘s all I know.”

  Now I had to bring up the fact that Old Woman was standing on Plymouth Rock when the first white folks arrived, but Vanessa is somewhere between 40ish and late fiftyish more or less.

  Charley just looked at me and finally said, “John, this is the desert, time is different here, things are different here as you know only too well.” Uh huh, ice burgs on the spine. But he’s right, so I just accept it and let it go.

  The feast was as usual a great success and the Old Woman had all the women in a cluster talking quietly, teaching is what she does. My ladies have spent countless hours with her but they were sitting right there spell bound, at her right hand was Vanessa who I’m beginning to believe is now our resident witch. Vanessa turned her head, looked at me and almost smiled, Sandy and May did smile, Beth never broke contact with the words being spoken.

  We stayed up late into the night and the fire lit the canyon walls with dancing shadows, it makes the entire canyon come alive. Beautiful!

  We headed for bed around midnight and I woke early, showered and headed down for coffee and then to my rock where I found Old Woman sitting. I started to back off but she made a hand motion so I went and sat beside her.

  We sat quietly for a while then she said, “John, do not be troubled about Vanessa as I know you are.” She said she had known Vanessa since they met in college. I almost opened my mouth but didn’t, if Old Woman said it I believed it! She patted my hand and said, “You are growing wiser by the day John, this is good.”

  I asked her about the sickness, she said it was in the cities and many were dying and many were running away but carrying it with them, she looked so sad I couldn’t help it, I hugged her and said, “Well we will fight it as we do all things that come to this land.”

  She nodded and said, “Yes we will,” and smiled, I took my shot while I had the chance and asked if she could explain how it was Vanessa showed up right when needed.

  She said, “Yes, I can John,” I waited and she smiled and said, “But I won’t.” Damn! Foiled again! She laughed and said, “John I may have a price but it’s more then hugs!” Now we both laughed, I really love this Old Woman but then so does everybody.

  “I understand you have located a hive of honey,” she said. I told her all about it but I still think she already knew. She asked about the lad who walked among the bees without fear. I told her I only knew what I saw.

  She nodded and said she would visit with him soon but in the meantime we needed to visit the hive so we headed off just the two of us, well and several young men armed to the teeth, we walked to the cleft in the rock wall where we found Charley waiting for us. I just shook my head when he smiled. He talked to Old Woman then explained to me what was said; she speaks perfect English as does he so why speak in Navajo then translate? He sighed.

  Old Woman walked into the cleft and shortly returned and said, “We will harvest half of the honey; the rest will be left for the bees, this way they will remain here and will provide for your needs for many years to come.” She said the hive had fed many peoples for a very long time and the bees understood that this was the way.

  Ok I’m good with this; I believe anything here in this place. She patted my hand and said, “John you get better and better each day,” now that sounds like I’ve been sick. She said, “Kind of,” and walked away.

  We returned to the canyon and she gathered the girls and Vanessa, Mable and the young lad who found the hive. They sat while she talked, I noted the lad was very serious and listened to every word and when she asked him something they all listened when he talked. Mysteries, where you find them, one thing I wondered was where had the boy come from? We have lots of kids and I can’t keep track of them all but why don’t I remember him? I would ask the girls when they were done.

  But that didn’t happen because they all stood up and headed off to gather plastic 5 gal buckets with lids, and headed off without a word, I was gonna follow but Charley nodded and I looked and saw all his young men flanking the women.

  Charley said, “We might as well relax since this might take till after dark. So relax we did, we talked about all the things we wanted to get done and the things we didn’t want ever again as far as we were concerned. We both know that in time that will change and progress will raise its ugly head and fk things all up again, but not in our lives.

  I asked him about Vanessa but he just shrugged and said all he knew was what Old Woman said about her and that was it, and likely would remain “it”. Well I hate that crap but nothing is gonna change Old Woman’s mind so in fact that is “It.”

  We talked about how we could seal off the area if it comes to it; Charley explained his thoughts which was better then mine.

  This area is not the easiest place to get into on the best of days and will be much worse with the roads closed and the trails watched.

  The main threat as I see it will come from the Lake itself, anybody can launch a boat and head in here so all we can do is keep them as far away from our canyons as possible.

  We talked about the use of force to hold people at bay and decided the best way was to provide shelter, food and water in places where we can control egress, neither of us were going to start shooting people just running for their lives but we would before we let a sick person into our home area, as distasteful as it would be we had to look at the preservation of all we had built here over the life of a sick person or one who possibly was a carrier.

  This wasn’t going to be an easy task on any level but I felt we could do it. But what if we were faced with a mass of humanity rushing into our area? For me there wasn’t a choice, I’d kill as many as it took to keep my family, clan, and tribe safe and god knows we have the fire power to do it.

  The upside to it is the fact that we are very isolated here and very few people will run into a desert in fear.

  I had a small light bulb go off in my head and told Charley we needed to talk to Doc and headed off to do just that. We found Doc and Vanessa holding a two person conference and Doc said, “Speak of the devil!” He and Vanessa were talking about the plague and what it might be and what we could do to fight it. So Charley and I sat down and listened.

  Doc figured it was going to be something like the Black Pla
gue that almost wiped out Europe back in the bad old days, Vanessa (Call me “V” please) said it might be a flu pandemic like the early 1900’s which was flat horrible.

  Charley asked what it would take to get moving on some kind of idea of what it was. Doc said he wouldn’t have a clue until the first cases showed up. That sounded kind of late to me. But where would we find it short of trolling for a person with it? Doc just looked at me and looked sad but smiled, I said, “Oh no, hell NO! We ain’t going bug hunting!”

  We talked some more and decided to leave in a few days after we acquired some hazmat gear (I’m firm with my NO’s!…shit) I knew we had stuff at the Fort and sent word to them to dig it out and send it our way.

  Next question was who did we have who was qualified to do the research on the poor bastard we brought back and where? That was the stickler, we had nobody who was trained in that field.

  So we put out the word to all our outposts what we were looking for on all counts and waited, and waited.

  Finally we heard from Harry who said there was people in TX working on the whole plague issue and they had a lot of brain power burning the midnight oil. That was a relief coz I didn’t wanna have to deal with it any more then we might have to. And on that note we needed a meeting damn fast on how to handle the issues of people running away but transporting it.

  Charley, Old Woman, V and my usual command staff sat under the trees by the water, I said what we were meeting about and tossed it out to kick around.

  Old Woman spoke first saying that we would have to find a way to stop people from entering, which we were already working on.

  She said we needed to plan on setting up sheltered places where groups who were traveling together could stay until they were proven healthy and then we could take them in or let them pass on with certification they were healthy if that would mean anything to scared communities along the way.

  V added that we would need to keep the groups separate to avoid later comers from infecting people who had proven well, which meant we needed to set up the “camps” right now. “Also,” V said, “Mable and I are going as fast as we can to get herbal supplements for both boosting our immune systems and to help heal or cure. Garlic and honey are two very good supplements. Also parsley is good for our animals. We should also have a goodly amount of apple cider vinegar, if possible.”

  Doc and V both agreed that this flu or plague most likely wasn’t air borne but would take direct contact to pass it on, meaning touch, bodily fluids or droplets from a sneeze or cough.

  Joe asked the question we all had avoided which was what to do when an entire camp proved to have it.

  All I could say was make sure they had food and water and stay the hell away from them. Doc spoke up and said as a Doctor he couldn’t do that, I told him that as the head of our clan if there was in fact a head that I would not allow him to risk getting infected and bringing it back here but that if he insisted then he could stay out in the camp areas and drive to each camp to do what he could, but I would rather he not do that because it would be a waste of a life that might be needed here more then there, we couldn’t afford to lose Doc. Everybody else spoke up and agreed with me, Old Woman said he was needed by his Clan and it must come first, he should not endanger himself. Tough Love. (After the meeting I told Joe and Willy that if Doc made one move to head out to the future camps to lock him up for his own good) I admire Doc a great deal but not enough to allow him to commit suicide. Oath or no oath.

  One thing that in a way bothers me is the fact that we’ve been hearing “Plague” for months and yet it’s not showing up, which I’m not complaining about just want to know where it is.

  We have maintained contact with Barstow, it’s sketchy at times but it’s there enough to pass information. So far they haven’t heard much and there is no mass exodus from the Southern CA. area.. yet.

  Our meeting did establish that we were going to set up temp locations where people could lay up until they showed they were clean, but first we needed to know what, if anything was coming. I’m not happy waiting. I want to head out looking for it but if I go the girls will come meaning Beth and we can’t risk losing her most of all, or any of them for that matter. So I can’t go without a major fight and I don’t want that.

  I settled for rousting Ralph out and before they could react we were in the air in the chopper, the plane would be better in some ways but landing is a problem if there’s something to look at. There wasn’t, we covered an expanding circle from the canyon and saw nothing worth checking out. We flew over the check points Charley had placed on the roadways but they just waved so we headed on.

  We made it back with some fuel left and I saw “them” waiting so I laughed and told Ralph to drop me on the ridge which he did, calling me several colorful names, I told him they wouldn’t hurt him too bad and laughed as I jumped out the door to the ground a few feet under the skids, he flew away and I headed for the shower, if they want me they have to get wet to do it.

  It took them less time to get to the house then it would have taken me to run down the path, which meant they were pissed. They fooled me, all three trooped bare assed into the shower and cuddled. I was waiting for the blade between the ribs but they asked if we saw anything. I gave them a report on it and said I had thought to send the bird up every day but it was likely a waste of fuel. Sandy said Ralph’s small plane could cover way more ground for way less fuel and was a more stable platform for scouting. I guess she would know since she’s spent more time riding in the plane then any of us, I won’t get into it since I just don’t fit.

  After we air dried we grabbed some cold beer from the big fridge and sat on the bed talking about that idea, I wanted information on any sudden large movements of people that could signal the coming plague. I figured we could maybe stop the first ones and get some information if we were careful, meaning keeping our distance and hazmat suits if needed.

  I was still waiting for the fight over sneaking off but it never came, instead they were all excited about the lessons V was teaching about Herbs and their history in helping mankind. I have and do use Aloe Vera plant for many things. In ancient times people migrating from place to place would transport the plants out of fear of not finding it wherever they ended up.

  I’ve used it for sunburn, other kinds of burns, rashes, I’ve drank it by the gallon where it’s bottled as 99% pure, of course that was back in the good old days.

  I love the plant, and that is the end of my knowledge of Herbs.

  The girls were really excited about what they learned and how the Herbs can be used for health. They are really interested in getting Garlic growing here, I said call the Fort; if it grows they have it.

  All three slapped their foreheads and said “Duh.” As much as we get from the Fort we have a tendency to forget about them. They have swept the entire area for thousands of square miles and hauled off everything not nailed down and in fact nothing stops them.

  Now they want a small greenhouse up here on the ridge, I said well when your armor and artillery gets up here where ya gonna put it? They admitted they had rethought the entire issue and decided the stuff can stay where it is since it will clutter the place.

  I’m blown away, shit I figured we would use cases of Grenades for door stops, I watched two heads turn to look at me, I said, “No, not a chance!” They both smiled but didn’t say a word, “shit,” me and my big mouth, wait, I never said that out loud…did I? (laughter..) “Shit!” “Stop cussing!” “Yeah, yeah the baby can hear me…right uh huh…”

  So now we need a small greenhouse which I think beats the hell out of a 105 or a LAV.

  I said I was hungry and that set off a foot race to the bottom of the ridge, leaving me and Beth walking hand in hand slowly, I asked her if she missed being in the rolling fur ball that was the rest of my wives, she said yes but it would come again.

  Lunch being a catch as catch can I headed for the ice cave where I found cheese and beer, two main food groups, I also kne
w there was a pile of fry bread stashed near the eating area which I found being controlled by “them.” So it cost me a large share of my cheese and beer to get the bread, it was worth it!, others wandered in and got more beer and cheese. I was laying in the shade using somebody’s tummy as a pillow and more to myself then anybody I said, “I really miss potato chips.” That woke up everybody and soon the girls and several other ladies were planning to raid the potato storage area, then somebody said they missed burgers.

  Need I say more? Supper became a BBQ, while we had never used it we have a big meat grinder so that became my job. I drafted Joe and Willy to help. I didn’t know how many mouths we fed daily until I started grinding meat, beef and deer mixed, it takes a lot of burgers to feed this many people! The ladies were baking buns in the earth ovens. Somebody said bacon burgers would be great but the thought of running out of canned bacon for our hot cake and egg breakfasts ruled that out for now until the Hillbillies get the hog thing going.