The Second Intelligent Species: The Cyclical Earth

by Dale Langlois

  “They want us to be the baby’s godparents.” I paused before daring to speak again. “At the baby’s baptism.”

  “Oh, so we’re going to start that again. Why should we continue to believe in those old ancient myths and stories, when many of them have been proven to have been distorted and manipulated to control the population? Most of the bloodiest wars have been fought in the name of religion. Let’s face it, we are just another species going extinct. There is no God!”

  I knew I had opened up Pandora’s Box. I was sure the others could hear, but I wasn‘t going to be overpowered by her this time. This time was different. Speaking one notch below yelling I said, “We’ve had these discussions before, and you know how I feel. Maria and Jorge are happy. Is that a bad thing? If their faith makes this place more bearable then so be it. That’s their business. Tolerate it and move on. Not everybody believed what N.A.S.A said to be true all the time either. Looks to me like they dropped the ball on this one, didn’t they?” I knew that, in her opinion, I had just blasphemed.

  The crackling fire was the only sound, not even the children dared speak.

  “Will you be there with me at the baby’s baptism?”

  “Might as well,” she said with a sigh. “Science just took a ten-thousand-year backwards step. Baptism huh…? Is there going to be a witchdoctor with a bone through her nose?”

  Beth went to the baptism and performed just as Maria and Jorge wanted her to. Beth and I promised to take care of Emanuel should anything happen to the both of them.

  To celebrate we roasted a large beaver. Turning it on a spit over an open fire, the meal took on a luau type atmosphere.

  Jorge and Maria led everyone in the Lord’s Prayer. Everyone except Beth.

  We each had gifts for the baby. Marcos scavenged until he found some cloth durable enough to be used as diapers. Pete and Sarah worked together to make a pack to carry the baby while we were between shelters. Pete gathered and dried the reeds, and Sarah wove them into a pack. Beth went to the baptism, and I felt I had given enough being the godfather.

  Chapter 32

  Mentoring a New

  Apprentice.

  Beavers and opossums were our main source of food. We seldom needed to eat rats anymore. We continued to follow the swamps. By following the water, we came upon many culverts—too small for shelter, but excellent places to hang snares. Occasionally we would find one big enough to spend a night or two.

  One time we stumbled across a railroad trestle made of old fashioned concrete, back when they still had railroads. As old as it was, it had withstood the earthquake.

  Water ran through one side of the arched shelter, but the other side was high and dry. The wind was perfect so a fire could be built and the smoke would drift away from the sleeping area.

  We still had a lot of supplies and could have kept moving for a couple of more days, but the trestle just said home, at least for a few days. We weren’t heading anywhere fast anyways.

  We set up camp. The girls started supper: more opossum stew.

  Pete and Jorge were gathering railroad ties from the old tracks above. Buried in earth, the bottom half was unburned. The ties were easily found without a lot of walking. We decided that the two youngest men would tackle the duty of bringing them down the hill. Actually getting them down was the easy part. The hill was so steep, they would roll all the way to the bottom. The breeze blowing through would take out the thick smoke of the creosote-laden ties.

  Getting to the top was easier for them than it was for me, so Marcos and I gathered our traps and started looking for signs of animals.

  We weren’t far from the others when I noticed a couple of freshwater clam shells near a pool. They didn’t look like they had been there all that long and they were all opened.

  First of all that meant there were clams out in deeper water that we could eat. We hadn’t had any luck fishing. Clams and crayfish were all we’d been able to eat that came from the water. Even though I still had the fishing line, fishing was a waste of time. I spent a lot of valuable time waiting for a bite.

  Secondly it meant that there was a raccoon nearby. I hadn’t thought that any of them had survived, but apparently at least one had; and I knew how to catch him. I just hoped he wasn’t the last of the species. I would hate to be known as the man who ate the last raccoon.

  I instructed my young apprentice, “Marcos, take the torch and look for a trail next to the river’s edge. The ground will be matted down along a path. You will see tracks in the mud at the water’s edge.” He could bend down better than I could.

  “Are these some tracks?” Marcos asked, pointing to the mud.

  “Tell me what they look like; I can’t bend over ’cause my back is killing me.” I could get a pill from Beth when I got back.

  “They have five fingers and look like a little hand,” he said, kneeling and bending with his head mere inches from the tracks.

  “Do they look like they have a thumb?” I asked.

  “No they look like they are all spaced about the same distance apart.”

  “No thumb on one, but not on the other?” I asked reassuring myself, and teaching Marcos the difference between a raccoon track and an opossum track.

  “No, they’re both about the same. What are they from, another possum?” He was intrigued by tracking. For a city boy, woodsmanship came easy.

  “No, I think we have a coon living off these clams in this pool. Wanna catch him?”

  “Can ya eat ’em? What do they look like?”

  I couldn’t believe he didn’t know what a raccoon was. I loved to teach about wildlife. I used to take Beth up to the woods all the time. “Well, they’re about the size of a fat cat or a small dog. They have black around their eyes. They look like a bandit, you know, a bank robber, a thief. And that’s what they are. That’s how you catch them. If they’re around, put out a little food with a lot of smell, and you’ll catch them. They like shiny things too. I used to place a piece of aluminum foil on the trap pan when I trapped. That’s what we’re going to do tonight. As for eating one, I never did, but a Native American fellow that I used to work with said they taste good but are greasy. I caught many when I was a trapper and can attest to the greasy part. When I used to skin them the fat was slimy. I was never hungry enough to eat one.”

  Although there wasn’t any moonlight, I knew that any type of shiny metal would draw its attention. I showed Marcos how to set the trap at the end of the path that had been worn down. He placed a steel trap, one of many we found on somebody’s garage floor, one half inch below the water’s surface.

  I had never used this type of set before because we had never encountered raccoons until now. They lived mostly in trees, and I was sure most of them perished.

  Aluminum foil is what I used to use to wrap around the trap pan. The pan is where you would put the cheese on a mousetrap. It’s a trigger. The aluminum foil would draw the raccoon’s curiosity, he would reach out with his hand, and snap! We would have supper and maybe a coonskin hat for Marcos.

  Any aluminum foil that we had was used so many times in the fire to cook that the entire luster had gone.

  I needed something that would draw the attention of an animal with the keenest of senses, something that shined even in the dimmest light, something with flash.

  There was only one thing I could think of. Beth was reluctant to give them up, but when I assured her that she would get them back, she loaned me her diamonds to use as bait.

  I’d caught one cunning animal with them, so I figured I could catch another.

  Chapter 33

  Therapy

  The two of us set enough traps to assure raccoon for supper tomorrow night.

  Marcos filled his pockets with clams. We were getting very efficient at providing for ourselves. Every stream held something, every pond, every swamp. If there was an animal living nearby, we could catch it.

  Pete and Jorge had brought down enough wood to last a week if needed. Supper was on th
e table. Well, we didn’t have a table, but we did have bowls and spoons. Forks and plates weren’t necessary because anything we ate either had a bone we could hold on to, or was made into stew. Plates would just be that much extra weight to carry when we were traveling around the swamps. No napkins, just our sleeves; those of us who had them.

  Possum stew and freshwater clams made up the entrée. At one time I never would have eaten freshwater clams. They were too full of heavy metals to make them safe to eat, but now it was a short term goal to survive, not a long term one.

  We all had full bellies and plenty of water.

  The children were able to play around the wall on the dry slope of the riverbank. We could see them from a distance due to the size of the fire. It lit up the whole area and beyond. We loved the light, and there were plenty of railroad ties. There was sign up stream and we hadn’t even checked down stream. All was good.

  Marcos, Tara, and Eve were throwing stones into the water at the other end of the trestle. Beth was watching them like a hawk—no an owl. They see better in the dark.

  Sarah and Pete were talking alone up by the entrance to the trestle.

  Maria and Jorge were devoting all their attention to the new baby. When Maria wasn’t nursing the baby she was busy making him a wrap made out of muskrat fur, it was the softest fur we had. The snows had ceased, but the nights were still cold, especially for an infant.

  Beth and I were left alone for the first time since we found the other nurses and the children. The crying had stopped long ago and laughter took its place.

  “Do you want to go wash up at that pond upstream you told us about?” Beth asked with a subtle tone in her voice that I thought had gone extinct with most everything else.

  “We’ve got some traps set up there. Wanna explore downstream? I’ll rig up a torch.” I didn’t want to disturb the area and ruin the trapping where Marcos had worked so hard. I wanted him to find something in the morning.

  Pete and Sarah returned.

  I liked to pick on Pete. He was so quiet for such a big man. “Where have you two been?” I asked, just to get a rise out of him.

  “Sarah was just telling me about the trains that used to travel on the tracks.” Pete looked down at Sarah and smiled. “She was telling me about the…”

  Beth interrupted. “Sarah, can you watch the kids while we go look for more tracks?”

  “Yea, we’ll watch ’em,” Sarah said with her usual snotty tone of voice. She only talked to Beth that way. She was slowly becoming tolerant of everyone else.

  We walked away holding hands, until Beth turned and said, “Don’t let them out of your sight!”

  “Let’s go, Beth!” I yanked her by the hand before she could ruin the moment with a confrontation. “Thanks, Sarah. We won’t be gone long.”

  “We better be.” She jumped up to whisper in my ear. When she came back down she grabbed my ass—the first time since her grandbabies died.

  We walked along the riverbank until the light from the tunnel could no longer be seen. That’s when Beth took the torch from my hand and stuck it in the stream, drowning its light.

  “Guess, it’s going to be harder to find tracks now, isn’t it?” In the second after the words were out of my mouth, Beth’s tongue was in it.

  All the emotions suppressed due to the conditions of the past ten months surfaced on that sandy bank.

  The last time I’d been with Beth, she was a third heavier. I was seeing Beth as she was twenty years ago. This was the first I noticed.

  The aches and pains that accompanied both of us disappeared briefly as adrenalin substituted for Oxycodone.

  This was the therapy we both needed.

  “Well nurse… I think…I’m cured!” Breathlessly, I looked up at her. There wasn’t enough light to make out the color of her hair. I knew it was grey, but in the dark, it was red again. It had grown back.

  “You’re the patient…I’m the nurse… I’ll tell you…when you’re cured…. You need some more… sessions,” she said as she collapsed and lay on the sand.

  The love we made that night had more passion than the first night we spent in the camper, or any time in-between, and this time she was sober.

  Once we both caught our breath, we shook the sand out of our clothes and went back to the others. Our torch was out.

  Beth found it romantic that we walked arm in arm back to the others, but it was due to my weakened legs that the trip back took longer. I’ll never tell her that.

  “Where did you guys go?” Marcos said. Our arrival distracted him from a drawing he was scratching on the concrete walls of the trestle.

  “We just went down stream to look for more signs of wildlife. Uh… then our torch went out,” I said.

  “Did you find any? Are there more coon tracks? You told me that I was going to help you do more scouting. You’re going to take me tomorrow, aren’t you, Nick?”

  “You bet. I know you’ll have something,” I said in an attempt to stymie his curiosity of our whereabouts.

  “What are you drawing?” Beth asked, having the same goal.

  “It’s Mommy.” He had never talked about his mother when we asked what happened to her.

  Beth placed the torch into the fire to ignite the oil-soaked fibers and held it closer to the drawing. Only when the wind blew steadily, carrying away the smoke, could the full image be seen all at once.

  He had scratched a picture of a woman with her clothes and hair on fire. The picture was within a circle, except for the arms. The arms extended out of the circle as if hanging down. The mouth of the woman was open wide as if screaming out in pain.

  “Was that the last time you saw your mom, Marcos?” I asked.

  “This is when she put me under the road, in that hole that they were working in. She put me in and then dropped me. I fell to the bottom and couldn’t get back up to Mommy to help her. Fire, and sparks, and smoke was coming in the hole, then she was gone. After that I had to run down into the dark, it was burning me. There was two other guys down there. They had white hardhats. I think they died when it was so hard to breath.” His demeanor had turned quite somber.

  Beth placed her arm around his shoulder. “Hey, Marcos, Nick says you’re pretty good at setting traps and should have us a coon for supper tomorrow.”

  Instantaneously his expression changed from one that was about to develop tears, into a full-blown smile. The only other smile I have seen bigger was that of Jorge when Maria’s baby was born.

  Chapter 34

  The Wall

  The whole side of the wall of the trestle was covered with artwork, but only up to about four feet. Most of it was indistinguishable scribbles. Marcos’ drawings could be identified. There was the one of his mom. There was one of a campfire surrounded by the exact number of people in our group. My favorite was one of him with his first coon. He spent a great deal of time insuring the coon was as close to the real thing as he could. He did a good job.

  Beth and I were looking at the newest renaissance when she inquired, “What would you draw?”

  I thought for a while, then I said, “A deer, I guess. I don’t know.”

  “You can’t draw a deer.”

  Of course I couldn’t. “Why not? I’m the artist. I can draw anything I want.”

  “It would be like drawing a dinosaur. They don’t exist in our world. This wall could be a message to other survivors. If we draw deer, they might think we found some. We should draw pictures of animals that still exist, the ones that we are living on, and instructions on how to catch them. Let’s make this place a library of the most important facts of our time, so others might have a better chance.”

  Before we left, that shelter was covered on both sides with drawings, tips on how to survive, and lots of examples of how it used to be.

  The remaining space belonged to the adults. Extra torches were put about until the whole trestle was lit up. We became obsessed with the project. We eventually erected scaffolding made from piled up railroad
ties to extend our reach higher.

  I illustrated how to make deadfalls, and snares for those who didn’t have leg traps like we did. I went into detail about the process of skinning and butchering. I contributed survival tips.

  Beth, Sarah, and Maria worked together on first aid tips, and basic life saving techniques.

  Maria wrote down recipes for all the things we have been eating. She scratched several prayers into the area surrounding a very life like portrait of Emanuel and herself.

  The portrait was Jorge’s contribution. “I like it, but I wish I had a way to add color. Your beautiful brown hair and eyes look black. I want to show what you look like in the sunshine.”

  Sarah sat up bumping Pete’s big nose as she rose. “We can get you some paint, Jorge.” She stood up and headed for the stream. Unsure of her footing on the rocky riverbed, she carefully looked at the rocks, torch to the ground. She would pick one up, look at it, and either toss it back in the river or put it in one of her pockets.

  When she returned she took some of the raccoon fat that we used to grease our boots to make them more waterproof, and put it in a pot to render it down. The smell gagged any of us who were unfortunate enough to be down wind. While the fat was slowly heating, Sarah began crushing white, brown, red and black pebbles between two flat stones. She kept each type of rock in a separate pile consisting of now, only dust. She took the fat, rendered down to liquid, and mixed it with the powered stones, a little at a time until the dust took the appearance of four separate colors of paint on an artist pallet.

  “Here you go Jorge, here’s your paint.” Sarah handed the flat stone to Jorge. “You’ll have to find something for a brush.”

  Jorge accepted the gift. His smile said thank you for him.

  “Come here girls.” Both toddlers ran up to Sarah. “Put your hands up to the wall and I’ll paint you.”

  The children and Marcos put their hands up against the wall as if they were being frisked. Sarah held one hand from each while she blew the remaining dust from the stones against their little fingers. After each pulled away, the silhouette of a hand remained on the side of the wall.