“Who is Max Stormer?”
“Max Stormer is a maverick, a miscreant, an angry young man with a dangerous and intractable will.”
“How then do you account for his popularity?”
“He has charisma and, as I said, a strong will.” He massaged his right hand and index finger.
“And what about the young girl they call Aidos?”
“I’ve never met her. I’ve only heard a few preposterous stories.”
“To the point then, Mr. Kohl. What do you suggest the mayor should do?”
“First of all, I believe any more publicity would be detrimental. Secondly, the key to all this is Max Stormer, who must be found and punished. These kids think this is all some sort of game.”
“And if he is not caught soon?”
“These kids have broken the law and they know it. You break the law, you should suffer the consequences.”
“Are you saying they should be bodily carried off?”
Principal Kohl smirked. “If we had done that four days ago, you wouldn’t be here now.”
“Jason Brodie,” said the stringer representing The Weekly Glitch. “You seem to be the only resident of this town that is backing these kids. Would you like to comment?”
“Not really,” he said, looking away and lifting his battered, greasy cowboy hat and setting it back again.
“You don’t deny you’ve been giving them a certain amount of aid, do you? Food, blankets, a toilet…”
“Kids have gotta eat. Gotta stay warm. Gotta go potty.”
“Does this mean you’re in favor of their actions here?”
“I ain’t in favor of nothin’ but keepin’ this town from becoming another cookie-cutter, condo-infested, big city knockoff.”
Jason Brodie, tall, lean, and with the look of an Old Testament prophet, scratched his thick, graying beard and looked on as the group of youths sat around in a circle and played music and sang.
“I see.” The reporter smiled. “I understand your daughter is one of the seven chained to the flagpole.”
“So?”
“Aren’t you worried about her?”
“’Course I worry. She’s my daughter, ain’t she?”
“Did you try talking her out of it?”
“Hell,” he laughed. “That would be like tellin’ your shadow to quit followin’ ya around. She’s a Brodie, son, as stubborn as her old man.” He pointed across the way to a girl with long brown hair, sitting cross-legged on a blanket, a guitar on her lap. “That there is Regina,” he said proudly, “strumming the gee-tar. She plays about five different instruments, that girl does. Has a voice to match too. Ain’t no Brodie ever had any talent before. Guess we were due and Regina got the whole bundle…”
“Can you tell us what these kids are after?”
“Not likely,” he said. “I ain’t much on words.”
“Well, why do you think they are so angry?”
“Hell, son, if you ain’t young and angry then there’s somethin’ wrong with you. Take a look around this world, who do you think messed it up so bad? Not them. But they gotta live in it. You keep bossin’ people around, and eventually they’re gonna dig in their heals and tell you to shove it. If I was half as smart as these kids when I was their age, I’d have raised a hell of a lot more hell than I did.”
“But aren’t they jeopardizing their futures by missing school, getting police records, some of them possibly going to jail?”
“I don’t know what you’ve been hearing, but these here are good kids with more guts in their little pinkies than any politician, TV or corporate dandy I’ve ever heard or seen. And if they all go to jail, then the way I see it, jail is the only place for a real and living person to be.”
“You would stand by and let your little girl go to jail?”
“She ain’t no little girl anymore. And no, I ain’t sayin’ that. There’s still a few places for an honest person to go before jail,” he said, nodding towards the woolly mountains in the distance. “That’s why we’ve got to keep these mountains wild. If you keep cuttin’ down mountains and pavin’ over everything that gits in the way of your so-called progress, then soon there ain’t gonna be nothin’ honest left in this world.”
“And Max Stormer?” the reporter said.
“What about him?”
“The rumors going around say—”
“Son,” Jason Brodie said, “in this town people pour gossip on their pancakes and spread rumors on their toast. I don’t know Maxwell Stormer like his pals do, but him and my daughter have been friends since I can remember, and he ain’t never done me no wrong. Anytime somethin’ needs fixin’ around my place I call the boy over. There ain’t nobody better with his hands than him.”
“Can you tell me about Aidos?”
“I ain’t never met her, but Regina thinks a lot of the girl, and that’s enough for me. She sticks pretty tight to them hills over there.”
“Isn’t that a little strange?”
“Strange is a mess of people wantin’ to nuzzle together in some stinkin’ city. That to me is strange.”
“What do you think is going to come out of all this, Mr. Brodie?”
“How should I know?”
“Got a guess?”
“Nope. But I tell ya, I didn’t think these kids would hold out this long.”
“There’s talk that if kids keep streaming into town and joining up as they’re doing, someone a lot tougher than the local police is going to be called in.”
Jason Brodie shrugged. “Could be.”
“And you think that’s okay?” the reporter asked.
“I can’t explain it to you, son, but somethin’s come over these kids. This town ain’t dealin’ with your average teenagers no more.”
A loud crash and a burst of cheers stole the reporter’s attention. Two more youths had run over to the junk pile and slung another television set on top. They yelled more slogans and then jogged victoriously toward the flagpole. Three lawmen dashed out of the crowd to intercept them, but the kids dodged their pursuers and merged safely with the others.
Hands on their clubs, the lawmen approached the circle of teenagers. The youths rose in jeering unison, making it clear that their patch of ground was off limits to anyone but themselves. The lawmen slowed to a stop and formed a huddle. They were nervously aware of a number of cameramen poised on the sidelines.
Another chant went up: “One, two, three, four, we won’t need it anymore! Five, six, seven, eight, we’re the masters of our fate!”
The crowd gawked in astonishment. The citizens of the small town of Pinecrest could not comprehend so much absurdity.
The reporters were equally confused, insulted even. Why, they wondered, in the age of YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, couldn’t they get any of the youths to talk to them? Didn’t they want their two minutes of fame? The youths snubbed every media person who approached them, dismissing them with a wordless view of their backs. The teens seemed to trust no one, and no one in the media could find out why.
The Glitch reporter sat down on the steps of the courthouse and contemplated what he was witnessing. He pulled out his smartphone and began dictating:
“Odd, very odd,” he said. “It’s not like any showdown I’ve ever seen. Something is in the air, and it’s not just the thunderclouds I see flashing in the west. It’s more ominous than that. These kids aren’t just protesting the razing of a chunk of forest, or the injustice that they feel was done to their friend. I don’t think they know themselves why they are amassing here. But something is drawing them. Their ranks swell by the hour. I can’t say why yet, but I think something—or maybe someone—extraordinary is coming…”
2
Changes
One year earlier…
Hardy Thoreson snapped the cap back on his fountain pen and closed his journal. A glance out the kitchen window told him it was time to wake his fourteen-year-old daughter, Aidos. Dawn was about to break, and soon the pine-covered hills wo
uld be dressed in their primordial best. He climbed the squeaky stairs to her bedroom. It wasn’t often that he had to wake her himself; the noisy stairwell did that for him. She usually had one foot in a battered tennis shoe before he opened the door.
Aidos rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “Ready?” she asked.
Hardy pounded his chest like King Kong, making her giggle. He ran his fingers through his daughter’s raven hair, matted by sleep.
Aidos shook her head and unfurled her locks. Her long strands yawned and fell, draping her shoulders and back. She reached for a band from the nightstand and fixed a hasty ponytail. She bent down to tie her other shoe.
“Let me just finish—”
Aidos snatched her father’s laces and whipped them both undone.
“Ready!” she cried, and then grabbed her father’s arm and yanked him onto the bed. She wrenched off one of his tennis shoes and bolted with it down the stairs.
“Cheater!” he hollered, and chased after her.
Father and daughter jogged side by side, the crisp air making small clouds from their breath. Neither minded the cold, though they wore only baggy cotton gym shorts and T-shirts. The narrow dirt road—banked by fleshy green shrubs, pine and juniper—wound climbing and dipping for a mile before it connected with the pavement that led to the main highway.
Aidos stuck two fingers into her mouth and blew a terrific, high-pitched whistle. A flock of birds took to the tree tops as a furry golden blur sprang out onto the road about twenty feet ahead of them.
“Beowulf! Hey boy, what’cha doin’?”
Hardy laughed. “By the looks of him, chasing toads again.”
The huge beast, muddy faced and muck up to his knees, jumped about in enthusiastic circles, his yaps cracking the serene morning air. Aidos stopped and squatted. She slapped her hands on her knees. In a flash, the vivacious pooch bowled her over, covering her with muck and slobber.
“Don’t I get a hello, Beowulf?” Hardy said, dropping to a crouch. In moments the three of them were a tornado of yaps and laughter. When they finished their carousing, they were up and running again, Beowulf between them in a well-mannered trot.
Half a mile from the paved road they turned off and followed another path that was just wide enough for them to jog through single file. The growth on the sides of the trail stretched over their heads, and the two felt they were tunneling through the very hillside. Hundreds of sunken footprints riddled the ground from times they had hiked the trail when it was muddy.
The path ended at the shore of a small lake. Aidos and her father often ventured there together for a picnic or a night under the stars. Aidos also enjoyed visiting the area on her own to collect and study the wildlife that flourished around its lush perimeter. Believing everything deserved a name of its own, she memorized the genus and species of every tree, bush, flower, grass, weed, and bug she could identify.
The lake—really a pond—measured a hundred yards long and half as wide. Less than twenty feet deep at its lowest point, it was fed by an underground stream that flowed year-round. Since the pond was difficult to find—only one of a dozen tricky paths led to it from the main road a mile away—they rarely saw another person. As far as Aidos was concerned, it was their lake and the fewer visitors the better.
The few who knew of its existence called it Mudflat Lake, because it always appeared churned and cloudy after the slightest disturbance. Aidos thought the name too undignified for such a magical place, and so years back she dug up the old sign and replaced it with a new one with neatly burned-in letters that read: Lake Gilgamesh.
As always, Beowulf was the first to go bounding into the chilly water. Aidos followed right behind with her exhilarated shrieks, and she in turn by her father and his war cry. They raced to the opposite shore—Aidos with her graceful free-style, Hardy with his hulking breaststroke, and Beowulf paddling urgently behind. Afterwards, they continued on with squishing steps along the perimeter of the pond until they broke off onto another path that led zigzagging back home.
Aidos and her father didn’t run every morning. Sometimes they just took a leisurely stroll, a short hike, or simply sat out back on the porch swing and sipped tea. But whatever they did, they did with the companionship of the dawn. Their morning tryst was more than a routine. It was a ritual—discipline inspired by delight—and they had been doing it for so long that they feared the sun might not rise without them.
“You mean,” Aidos said, perplexed, “most people down there get up in the morning only because they have to?”
“Just about,” her father answered. “Before we moved out here I was the same way. Every morning I woke with an ‘ugh,’ gave myself just enough time to scan the paper and slug down some coffee, then fought an hour of traffic to get to work.”
“Why?”
Hardy chuckled. “I don’t know. Habit, I guess.”
“It sounds to me like city people do an awful lot of their living out of habit.”
“I suppose you’re right,” he said, “but that’s how people cope with the complexities of life.”
“Cope? Hmm. Shouldn’t life be about living not coping?”
“Ideally, sure, but life down there is fast-paced and full of change. Habit gives people a sense of permanency and balance.”
“If you say so,” Aidos said, unconvinced.
After they had jogged on in silence for a minute, Hardy said, “You’ve been more pensive than usual lately. Is there something on your mind?”
“Maybe it’s because I’m turning fifteen in a few weeks. That’s an important milestone, don’t you agree?”
Hardy Thoreson did agree, but for reasons too disturbing for him to mention yet. He hesitated, wondering if his precocious daughter wasn’t just probing him.
“I think every year is important,” he said. “What makes you think that fifteen will be any more special than fourteen? You liked being fourteen, didn’t you?”
“Sure, Dad, but…” Now it was Aidos who paused contemplatively.
“But what?”
“Well, you know my body is changing, right?”
“Sure.”
“Something is happening to my mind too. It’s difficult to explain, but it’s the way I see things, and the way I feel about what I see. I’m not sure it’s, well, normal.”
“Normal!” Her father laughed. “Honey, you’re probably the most normal person on this planet. You’re yourself, Aidos, and that’s the most normal thing you could be. You’re unique because you’re yourself. It’s not something you should fear; it’s something you should encourage.”
“Yeah?”
“Absolutely,” he said. He rubbed the top of her head as they slowed to a walk upon the sight of their cabin. “I’m starved. How about some pancakes?”
Upon the mention of the word ‘pancakes,’ Beowulf let out a shrill bark and danced a caper. Aidos and her father bust out laughing.
“Well,” Hardy said, “mark up another word for Beowulf. Imagine if that dog could speak!”
I have, Aidos thought to herself, and guess what?
3
The A, B, C’s
Aidos considered their cabin home a small castle and named it Camelot. The Thoresons moved there twelve years earlier. Inside its wood walls were two upstairs bedrooms, a kitchen, two small bathrooms, and a den that doubled as a library and study.
They quickly discovered that the cabin of their dreams was a homeowner’s nightmare. In the first year of occupancy, prior to Julie Thoreson’s death, they worked day and night on its restoration. During that time, a fire broke out due to shoddy wiring, the pipe to the kitchen sink burst and flooded the entire downstairs, and a section of roofing caved in.
Hardy Thoreson wasn’t much the handyman and knew even less about carpentry, but the ex-academic was determined to learn. Mishap and mistake became his principal teachers, and although he cursed them colorfully, he heeded their advice. Slowly the tide turned as floors were stripped and varnished, walls plastered and
repainted, doors and cabinets refurbished, windows replaced, and one by one, a hundred other details were tackled.
Julie never lived to see the furniture, which came last. Hardy and Aidos made most of it themselves, and it showed. They saved their desks for the end, and although the desks benefitted from lessons learned from previous furniture, handsome they weren’t. “At least the drawers open okay,” remarked six-year-old Aidos. They placed the desks in the center of the den about six feet from the stone fireplace, which, combined with a wood-burning stove in the kitchen, heated their castle.
Bookshelves lined the walls. They had nearly a thousand books, half of which were left to Hardy by his father who had been a learned judge, and the others collected by himself, a one-time respected professor of English literature. Aidos’ father selected her most deserving sketches to brighten the cabin walls.
At the far end of the den, a door led out to the veranda and a porch swing, which they took advantage of nearly every evening. The cabin rested on top of a small knoll, and from the porch they could rock and sip their tea as they watched the sun disappear among the trees.
Over the years, father and daughter added many improvements: railings along the front porch, a picnic table, hammock, greenhouse, woodshed, and a garden. A balcony from Aidos’ second floor window was still awaiting parental approval.
Their cabin doubled as a schoolhouse. Though Aidos’ parents had both worked as teachers, they had decided before Aidos’ birth that she would not receive a formal education. She learned to read sitting on her father’s knee as he read The Arabian Nights, Gulliver’s Travels, Mallory’s Morte D’Arthur, and other romantic classics, pointing to the words as he went along.
Her discovery of the dictionary, and a little later an old set of encyclopedias, set her loose on the world of knowledge. The dictionary was her Rosetta Stone, and she believed that with it there was nothing that could not be deciphered. She passed many hours with these books, absorbed in wide-eyed anticipation with each turn of every page. It wasn’t long before she felt compelled to start writing herself.
Stormer’s Pass Page 2