by Neil Hetzner
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Resisting a Rest
The building where Bob Tom is imprisoned is a long, narrow, high-ceilinged concrete block structure with four massive overhead doors. He guesses that it might have started its life as a maintenance garage for a highway department. Bob Tom is tethered to his stall by a length of chain which circles his neck and passes under his wings before being padlocked to a stanchion. The shock of what, or who, his captors are is beginning to wear off, even as the shock of being captured keeps growing. Although there is enough slack in his tether to sit or lie down, the winger mostly stands so that his wings aren’t harmed.
So far, he has counted six different centaurs. The one who first emerged from the thick foliage alongside the river after lassoing the old man seems to be the leader. He and Bob Tom have had several conversations; however despite hearing strings of sounds that seem like they could be English, Bob Tom has understood very little of what the centaur has said. When he asked if the centaurs had seen a girl with wings, they had become so agitated that he assumed that they had and, somehow, that is important to them. When he tried to describe Joe to find out about his friend, the response is much more subdued.
Most of Bob Tom’s attention has been taken up with keeping panic at bay. He has been free for so long. Free to fly. Free to fish. Free to do neither. Free to sleep in his cabin or under a tree. Free to start the day with the idea of hunting, change his mind to gathering hickory nuts and change it again to riding the thermals high above Mt. Marcy. Now, he has the freedom to stand or lie down, to walk two meters to the left side of the stall or two meters to the right. Panic sits in the corner of the stall like a rabid badger, all feral teeth and claws, prepared to launch itself at any second. To keep that savagery at bay, the old man has sung everything from the first six stanzas of Yankee Doodle Dandy to eight of the Green Party’s Hymns and Herms of Life. He repeats the sixty-three states of the union and the fifty-six capitals he can remember. He makes himself frantic with the capitals he cannot remember—like Alberta, Manitoba and North Dakota—but figures that frantic is better than panic. He takes hundreds of pieces of dried grass from his stall and begins to weave a mat. He looks at the moles and scars on his hands and tries to see shapes as if they were constellations in the sky. He smoothes the hairs on his arms, takes a thousand even-sized breathes while ignoring the fire-eyed watcher in the corner. Night is the worst because there is an eternity between the dark of the stall and the darkness of sleep. To sleep he must relax, but if he relaxes, the badger will sense it and spring.
The second night of his capture, the old man is half-sitting on a mound of straw he has shoved into a corner of the stall. His wings are spread. His head is resting against the concrete wall. His eyes are closed. He can see Blesonus combing out her shiny black hair while sitting on a boulder by the Bureas River. Her fingers are strong. The back of her neck where the hair has been pushed aside is very white. He starts to step from the shadow of the woods where he has been watching when she reaches down, picks up a shoreline rock that is as big as a baked potato, and holds it in the air above her head. Bob Tom waits for her to throw it into the rippling water. Suddenly, there is a scream, an earth shattering scream and his daughter smashes the rock into her face. Bob Tom bolts from the woods, bolts from his dream, tears at his tether and smashes his wings against the walls of his prison. He cannot see the badger, but he can feel the wounds the animal makes as it slashes at his legs with its claws and teeth. He smashes back to free his legs from the attack.
When the spectral attack finally stops, Bob Tom’s spirit and two bones in his right foot are broken.