Mungus: Book 1
Page 8
I fell asleep early that night and awoke to see the moon sitting plump outside of my window. I closed my eyes and remained still on my cot, but my feet wouldn’t stop fidgeting. I twisted and turned under my blankets and I heard an owl hoot outside of my window. My eyes shot open, I crawled under the wooden back wall and then I was out, running over the dirt in between the stalks.
My face smiled as the cool breeze rushed over my running body for the second night in a row. I ran just as I had the night before, digging my feet into the soil and pushing forward with as much might and as often as possible to propel me forward. I ran passed the first road, the second road, and then the third until I came to the spot that I had stopped during my last run and then I kept on going. The stalks whipped passed me as a wall of green and I kept my eyes fixed on the road ahead, silver and gray in the light of the moon. My body begged me to stop, begged me to listen to its cries of pain and to stop, but I didn’t obey. My mouth became dry and hot mucus formed around my back teeth. ‘Dig, dig,’ I thought as I felt my toes plowing through the earth under me. The night before I had felt an intense freedom at the thought of being away from watchful eyes, but on this night, the feeling became more than that. I was free of more than just people knowing where I was. I ran until the pain consumed me and it was all I could think about. I couldn’t think about Glen putting the gun in Saul’s mouth, I couldn’t think of my mother’s yellow eyes and dying pleas, and I couldn’t think about Blaine Trotter’s body being ripped apart by canine jaws. No, the screaming from my muscles was too loud for me to hear anything else. I was free of my thoughts. I was free of everything, and for the first time in my life, I felt entirely capable and self-sufficient.
Finally, after a long fight, my muscles won over and my body collapsed into the dirt. I lay there, gasping for air and holding onto my chest as my legs locked and writhed in the dirt. Every inch of my body ached and tingled and the moon darkened in my tunnel vision. I closed my eyes and I did my best to pull air into my lungs. I coughed and spit mucus out onto the ground and then I pulled my body up onto my hands and knees and my stomach lurched, but nothing but strings of mucus came out. Then, I turned over and lay panting in the dirt as if I had just come up out of water for air. When I opened my eyes again, the moon was sturdier and so I stood up and began to walk.
I didn’t go near the dog fences that night. The animals’ barks made me uneasy and even though I was relatively sure that there were no Salyers patrolling the farm at night, I didn’t want to risk the noise. I crept throughout the night until I came upon the big brick building where the Salyer workers lived. I wondered if Hank was in there sleeping and if he had made a recovery. I thought about Verne and about how he had collapsed that day. I had never been told, but I was fairly certain that he was dead. The young and old don’t last long on the farm. I kept moving until I was close to the big house that I had dropped Hank off at on the trailer. The house looked even bigger than I had remembered it. I hadn’t had much time to examine it when I dropped off Hank. The mansion stood four stories tall with great stone pillars with green vines wrapping around in the front. The doorway was a work of art with beautifully carved white wood and glass pieced together to form the centerpiece of the mansion. The doorway led outside to a large, multileveled wooden deck with rocking chairs, hanging swings, and potted plants.
As I crouched down in the dirt and gazed at the mansion in between plants, my ears cocked up and my body tensed. I had heard something. I listened and stopped breathing. It was a low sound coming from the back of the house. It was quiet and I circled the house through the plants to investigate.
I moved on my toes with my head ducked low to avoid detection. When I reached the back I saw her—the beautiful Salyer woman who had answered the door and told me to run—sitting on a swing and sobbing quietly with her head in her hands. She sniffled and moaned and the tears ran from her eyes. Her bare toes swung just above the hardwood deck as the swing moved back and forth. I lay down in the plants and watched her. She cried for the better part of an hour and never said anything to indicate why. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. The woman thought that no one was watching and as she wept I promised myself that I would never speak of what I had seen to anyone.
Finally, her sobbing stopped and she stood up. She straightened up her skirt, opened the back door, and padded inside. I lay in the dirt for a moment, thinking about what I had seen until my eyes grew tired once again and I made my way back to my cabin and crawled through the dirt under the back wall.
8
A New Job Title
I sat spooning my grits out of an old tin can and into my mouth. They were congealed that morning and I guessed by their consistency that they were leftovers from the previous days. I longed for variety. The texture and tastes of the grits had become as common to my taste buds as the roof of my mouth and I felt that if I had to eat one more serving that my body would start rejecting the stuff. Still, the sun wasn’t yet above the horizon and it was going to be a hot and long day. I decided that I needed the calories so I held my breath, tried not to think of the stuff being slopped out of the rusty wheelbarrow, chewed, and swallowed.
Cabin after cabin of sleep deprived servants seemed to be doing the same things. The older ones didn’t even look at the stuff, they just took a spoonful, tilted their heads back and swallowed. They probably didn’t even taste it.
The Salyers, of course, seemed to have something different for breakfast every day. That day they were eating stacks of pancakes doused in syrup. Hank was among them and looked well. He laughed and opened his mouth wide to take in a huge bite. He had made a full recovery.
From beyond the first cabin I heard the galloping of a horse and saw that Salyers and Beardsleys alike turned their attention toward the dirt road. The woman who had thanked me, the one I had seen crying the night before, rode in on a muscled white horse. She was wearing blue jeans and a pearl snap, like the Salyer workers, and despite her masculine attire and lack of hair, she retained a feminine beauty that was the envy of all of the servant women who looked upon her. She came to a stop right next to where the Salyers were eating their pancakes and Hank stood up to greet her. They shared a few words, and then, to my horror, Hank pointed right at me. Then, after they said a few more things, the woman on the horse began to ride over to me.
My body tensed with fright and my spoon stopped in the air while bringing grits to my mouth. My mind raced with terrible possibilities. ‘What if Glen found out that I took the horse?’ ‘What if she’s going to take me to answer before Glen?’ ‘What if he puts that gun in my mouth?’ ‘What if my blood is the next to stain the cement and bars of the Cell?’ Or, the worst one, ‘What if she saw me last night?’
Before I could think of more things, the horse came to a stop before me. Its ears flicked and its nose snorted. “Come with me,” the woman said. “I have a new job for you.” I put my grits to the side and stood up. She offered me a hand, pulled me onto the back of the saddle, and without any more explanation we were off and riding in between the rows of cotton.
I held on tightly to her slender torso as the horse ran in between two seas of green. We passed the brick building and the stables and then the horse came to a stop in front of the big white mansion. The woman did not look at me, but said, “my name is Lauren, I’m Glen’s wife, and we needed a servant at the house. I am raising a toddler and the cleaning is becoming too much for me. Go to the front door and knock. Pitri will answer. I have to go tie this horse up in the back.”
I felt as though I should say something. “Thank you for choosing me. My name is Walt.”
But she didn’t answer. She just stared off into the sky. I couldn’t even see her face. I climbed down from the horse and as soon as my feet hit the dirt the animal took off around the house. I dusted my pants off, walked up the stairs, and knocked on the door.
A Beardsley man with an unfamiliar face answered. “Hello?” he asked. He raised his eyebrows, popped his hip, and pursed h
is lips at me when he talked. “Can I help you?” The man blinked his eyes and I saw that they were painted with black makeup. His face was rugged and tough; he was a man in his later years in life. The top of his head was completely bald, and hanging from his face was a mess of gray hair. His shoulders were not as bulky as the other Beardsley’s and a round belly stuck out under a dirty white t shirt.
“Are you Pitre?” I asked.
“Yes, honey, and who are you?”
“I’m Walt. I’m supposed to be working here. Lauren just dropped me off.”
The old man’s weathered face smiled and he stuck out a straight arm for us to shake hands. I took his hand and he shook with a firm grip and a lot of movement. “Oh, how exciting! A new worker!” He released his grip on my hand and lowered his voice to a whisper while he looked behind him to see that we were alone. “Don’t tell Lauren that I told you this, but she’s so excited to have you here. She’s been talking about you since you arrived on the farm a couple of weeks ago.”
I was shocked by his statement and said the only thing that could come to mind, “why?”
Pitri didn’t answer but just pranced away back through the door and into the house. I followed him. The man swung his hips as he walked into the living room.
I shut the great door behind me and came into the house. The smell of sawdust was in the air and the living room rose tall with spacious white walls and dozens of hanging paintings around the bookshelves. The marble floors, oak stairs, banister, coffee table, leather couches and chairs were all completely void of even a speck of dust. The floors shined and whenever I looked down I could see my warped shadow in the white tile. Surrounding the walls were panels of smooth wood embroidered with carvings of ships, whales, and coral reefs. I couldn’t imagine how I was going to keep the house in any more order than it already was.
I followed Pitri into the kitchen which impressed me just the same as the living room had. Gleaming metal ovens and refrigerators lined the walls and pots and pans hung over shining cabinets. Bacon and eggs were sizzling on the stove and as Pitri flipped the bacon my mouth began to water. To distract myself from my hunger I asked, “is there anything that I can do?”
As soon as Pitri answered, I regretted asking. He handed me two large pales and told me that the tub out back had to be filled halfway up with water for Glen’s evening bath. He pointed me to the stone well coming out of the ground twenty yards away on the lawn and sent me outside. I spent the next thirty minutes trudging back and forth from the well to a porcelain tub. The buckets were heavy with sloshing water and sweat ran down my face. As I was finishing and going inside I saw that the other servants were scattering out into the fields. The group that I saw was too far away to identify, but I began to think about Saul working out in the hot sun. I wondered if he was worrying about me as he picked.
I came back into the house through the kitchen and saw that Pitri was scrubbing dishes in a basin of water. “What should I do now?” I asked.
Pitri looked at me, batted his eyes, and said, “I don’t know, I didn’t hire you. Lauren’s in the living room.”
I entered the living room and found Lauren and a 2 year old baby girl sitting on the leather sofa. Lauren was reading a picture book to the child. The child looked just like her mom except for her cheeks which appeared to be burning red with fever. She stopped reading when I entered, but she never looked at me. “Can I help you?” she asked.
“I was just wondering if there was anything that you needed me to do.”
“Go ask Pitri for a broom. Then you can sweep.”
“Sweep what?”
“The whole house,” she said, and then she continued to read to her baby girl as if I were not there.
Pitri pointed me to a broom and dust pan in the kitchen and then I bounded up the stairs and into the rooms above. The house was huge and confusing. The upstairs was a maze of hallways and I would often find that I had accidentally walked in a circle. I went into bathrooms, guest bedrooms, offices, and a huge library full of shelves upon shelves of books. No matter how hard I looked I couldn’t find even a speck of dust to clean up. The hardwood floors and tiles looked as though they were swept and mopped an hour before I arrived. I pushed the broom around on the clean floors and whispered to myself, “what am I supposed to be doing?”
After an hour of walking around the house looking for dust that wasn’t there, I came back down stairs and reported to Lauren. She was sitting upright on the couch with her baby girl lying in her lap. This time she looked at me in the face. Her green eyes were so perfect that they made me self conscious. “Are you done sweeping?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’m,” I said.
“Great. There are some sandwiches in the kitchen if you want any. They should still be hot. After you eat, go back upstairs and sweep some more. You’re doing a good job.”
I didn’t understand. What was I supposed to be sweeping? I told her that I was done. I went into the kitchen and found stacks of hot sandwiches. Thick pieces of hot wheat bread were on either side of a mixture of roast beef, melted cheeses, and assorted onions and sauces. It was the best meal that I had had during my entire stay on Mungus. I ate two sandwiches and when I was finished my stomach was full and my eyes were sleepy.
With nothing else to do, I headed up the staircase and walked around the house aimlessly with my broom and dust pan. Still, I couldn’t find anything that needed to be swept. The house was impossibly clean. I entered the library and began to walk along the rows of books. Oak shelves rose up tall against the walls and a rolling ladder was attached to each shelf to retrieve books too high to reach. The back wall was a tall half circle window that provided light throughout the entire study. Outside the window were acres and acres of green crop. Near the window was a heavy wooden desk with a shining top and locked drawers. Away from the window was an assortment of leather couches and chairs sitting on the hardwood floors. Many of the books had unnamed leather cases and I plucked one and went and lay down on a couch and began to read. I had nothing else to do. I read of a man sailing off to sea on a raft and soon my eyes began to get heavy. My stomach was digesting the sandwiches I had eaten and a fan swung above my head giving the room a cool breeze. I couldn’t fight my fatigue for long, and soon, I was asleep.
When I awoke I expected to be in my cabin with Saul snoring beside of me. Instead, I found that I was in Glen’s study and that Lauren was standing above me. She was smiling and said, “Wake up, sleepy head.”
I sat up in a flash and grabbed my broom and dust pan. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” I began to speak so fast that my speech began to mashing into one word, “it-will-never-happen-again-I’msosorry-please-forgivemeifyoucouldIwouldreallyappreci…”
“Shhh,” Lauren said and I quieted. “You’re not in trouble. You’ve done a fine job, really. I’m just waking you to let you know that Glen’s about to be back from the fields. You should go back to your cabin.”
Some emotion that I didn’t expect flashed over her eyes and then she paced out of the room. I smiled and although I was gracious for her hospitality, it confused me. I replaced my book where I found it and went downstairs and into the kitchen to return my broom and dustpan. I returned the items and then saw that the stack of sandwiches was still tall. I took three, one for me and two for Saul, and tucked them into my shirt and held them as I walked back to the cabin.
Whenever I got back, day light was fading and supper was being served. I hid the sandwiches in my cabin and Saul and I received our dinner-a gray stew with no meat and only a few vegetables. Saul and I ate our dinner inside of our cabin. When I revealed the food that I had brought, his eyes lit up in excitement. He scarfed down both sandwiches and all of the stew and said, “thank you, Walt,” profusely. I noticed that his stomach was flatter than it used to be and that his shoulders were losing thickness. I made up my mind at that time that I would sneak as much food to him as possible. He was huge and still growing. He needed a lot to eat.
I snuck back into my cabin and as soon as the pots and pans rang out in the morning air and my door was opened I headed for Lauren’s house. I knocked on the front door and this time Pitri answered and hugged me. It was an odd gesture, but he was an odd guy. He pranced off into the kitchen. He was cooking egg and ham omelets for Glen and Lauren and I went outside and filled the back tub with water.
Whenever I was done I came back into the kitchen and found that Pitri had made me an omelet too. I had never had an omelet before and found that I loved them. The melted cheese, ham, and egg were delicious. I ate until I was full, a feeling that I wasn’t accustomed to.
As I was eating in the kitchen Lauren came in and talked to me. “How are you today?” she asked.
“Good,” I said through a mouthful of omelet.
“I’ve talked to Glen and he was upset about what time I let you go yesterday.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“No, it was my fault,” she said. I cocked my head at this. It confused me. Weren’t Salyers supposed to be mean? Wasn’t everything supposed to be my fault in her eyes? “But from now on, you will have two more jobs. In the mornings, you have to serve us breakfast, and in the evenings you will be our servant for dinner.”