Gibraltar

by Matthew Thayer

  We’ve been assembling our travel gear and provisions up in Sal’s cave. Only place natives steer clear of. Nobody knows what to make of Singing Sal’s strange powers. Started bunking with him a week ago after me and Fralista had a fight. She knows we’re leaving. Impossible to keep a secret from that woman. Think she would like to get out of this valley, but I won’t try to convince her. Lot of things left unsaid between me and Fralista. Like that.

  More than a dozen woolly, smelly goat hides hang curing in this cave, along with 30 pounds or so of goat jerky slow-smoking over the fire. Tomon and Gertie built a pine bough shelter over their curing rack to catch the smoke. Lot of work to cure goat, but salted mammoth is too damn salty. We’d die of thirst on the trail. Plan is to mix four parts goat to one part mammoth, bash it into a pemmican. This crew is not afraid of a little work, all except Sal, who ducks out of chores better than any soldier I ever saw.

  Less than two months since giving birth, Gertie’s back to her old self, always keeping busy. She’s at her happiest when she’s right by her man’s side. Tomon’s calmed a bit now that preparations to leave are started. Serving as clan leader’s been tough on him, especially in the closed-in space of this valley. The new Green Turtles, the NGTs, are always up to something.

  His little sprout is not so little anymore. Healthy kid. Well fed. Hard to believe I helped with the delivery. Sal’s good for a few things. Kid’s taken a liking to me. Sometimes I’m only one who can hold him and get him to stop crying. He looks at me with those big eyes and coos. Thought they’d name him after Sal, but guess they’ll wait as long as it takes for the right name to find him. As expected of new parents, Tomon and Gertie’s world revolves around the baby. That said, their abilities along the trail will outweigh those negative impacts. They’re capable, and if the old man falters, they’re the only ones who know where the fuck we’re going.

  Shy Lanio continues to serve as Gray Beard’s adjutant and student. She sees his fire is built and a pile of ferns for his bed is stacked high. She’s happy to take care of both their dogs, listen to his every word like it’s gospel. Girl’s pretty skittish, uncomfortable around strangers in a way that lets you know she’s seen battle up close. From the losing side.

  Girl’s loyal to the old man to a fault. Glad she’s getting more comfortable around us. Don’t like being watched by armed guard all the time. When he’s off on a hunt or scout, she helps Gertie with the baby, or tends to chores. She’ll manage fine on trail. Lanio could do worse than Gray Beard for a teacher. Taught us all a new trick calling in the goats.

  All the times I tried bagging one of those shaggy mountain motherfuckers, never even came close. Too far away, dancing up on cliff faces. Gray Beard and Tomon squawked some Cro-Magnon mumbo-jumbo and animals ran right to us. Lured enough in to kill all we needed in a couple wild minutes. When I asked why they didn’t teach me their trick sooner, Tomon said it only works once. Saved it for the proper time. That’s good strategy.

  Hunt was at daybreak. Hiked above Sal’s cave to a shallow gulch about a half-mile up. Steep climbing right to base of sheer walls. Old man positioned Lanio, Sal, Fralista and me along the rims on opposite sides of the gulch, then hiked down in and started warbling like a female goat in heat with her head caught in the wedge of a tree. Seen enough skulls and carcasses stuck in trees to know it can happen. Strange noise, like nothing I’ve heard.

  Downhill, Tomon answered with the call of a male goat declaring the territory as his. Have heard that call. Sal and me were gabbing, asleep on guard duty, when a couple herds of goats almost knocked us down on their way to old man. Gray Beard was down in bushes, shaking a goat tail one second, and then up above with the women taking aim.

  Worked like they said it would. Tomon and Gertie made a quiet push up the gulch that spooked the goats just enough to force them into the kill zone. Animals ran toward girls and old man, and they poured spears into them, killing a few, sending rest straight to me and Sal. Atlatl was working good that day. Of 13 kills, eight were mine.

  As always, appreciated old man’s preference for hunting uphill. Even with gravity on our side, still took a couple hours to drag those 120-pound carcasses to mouth of Sal’s cave. We ate goat steaks and livers by firelight, and worked through the night to dress the animals, harvest the skins and best cuts of meat. Rest was buried in a spot deep enough to keep the vultures and rats away.

  TRANSMISSION:

  Bolzano: “Buon giorno, captain! Where are you off to, prickling with so many weapons on this fine autumn morning?”

  Jones: “Huntin’. Old man says big snow tonight.”

  Bolzano: “There is not one solitary cloud in the sky. Behold, what a shade of blue.”

  Jones: “Weatherman’s calling for a big dump.”

  Bolzano: “It always melts.”

  Jones: “Not this time.”

  Bolzano: “Did the resident meteorologist predict how much snow we might accumulate?”

  Jones: “He did.”

  Bolzano: “Well?”

  Jones: “Up to his chest.”

  Bolzano: “Was he having you on? Joking?”

  Jones: “Never know with the old dude. He seemed pretty matter-of-fact about it. Told me to kill him a couple deer so he has leather to work and venison to eat. If you care to look around, you’ll notice crews hauling firewood and fetching mammoth meat from the salt cave. I reckon it’s gonna snow hard as he says.”

  From the log of Salvatore Bolzano

  Firefighter II

  (English translation)

  A teepee of well-cured oak crackles delightfully within a semicircle of flat stones arranged against the back wall of Casa de Limestone. Unlike most of the deep caves I have endured in the Paleolithic, this domicile is void of the usual billowing haze of wood smoke. Thanks to a natural flume in the solid limestone roof, smoke magically curls to the flat ceiling to disappear into a fissure, never to be seen or smelled again.

  Orange, flickering light dances across the jumbled walls as the dog Izzy and I recline on our beds of soft pelts, snug and safe from the depredations of the blizzard outside.

  Gray Beard predicted snow and, as usual, he was right. Three days of squalls and howling wind with no end in sight has built a drift outside the mouth of the cave that stands at least twice my height. The translucent wall of ice and snow arches inward toward the cliff face and serves as a natural windbreak. Though imprisoned, the dog and I are left a narrow courtyard about three meters wide by eight meters long to duck out of the cave’s low entrance and do our business in fluffy snow.

  As the drift grows, thoughts of collapse, or even worse, avalanche, never stray too far from mind. I could very well be trapped until mid-summer! Cabin fever be damned, I can’t think of a better companion than myself. Oh, how I enjoy the Bolzano wit and sensibilities. Should icy Armageddon occur, I have made a silent pledge to travel my computer’s music archive in its entirety, from Aaaco to Zwumsteagles.

  The dry cave angles upward about 40 meters into the mountainside. I imagine an underground river eroded the channel. It cuts through a strata of rough aggregate sandwiched horizontally between two mantles of hard limestone. There are three chambers, with the first serving as a sort of mud room and place to store firewood. It is also where all of our smelly goat skins hang in the final stages of curing. Once past the skins, it is just a short crawl through a tunnel about a meter high and two meters long to the main habitation chamber.

  The previous occupant was a man of high rank within the Valley Clan. Ja’ja’ja the hunter, craftsman and would-be artist was stomped to death by a bull mammoth along with most of the clan’s men one and a half years ago. The catastrophe nearly pushed the solitary clan to extinction.

  Before his untimely demise, Ja’ja’ja peppered this room’s walls and ceiling with a plethora of charcoal doodles. Primitive though his scratchings may be, I shall never grow tired of the simple renderings of game animals, running hunters and toothy lions. Ja’ja’ja was no Rembrandt. Even b
y Cro-Magnon standards of craftsmanship, his work was rudely amateurish. He had trouble with perspective. The heads are perpetually too small. But he had a certain panache I find exhilarating. Artistry in raw form. An evolution of ideas and style. Building blocks for Michelangelo and all the rest.

  The valley clan claims Ja’ja’ja was hesitant to add his work to the walls in the hot spring chamber. I see why. The symmetry of purpose and movement captured in that room’s central masterpiece–two hunters riding atop a loping mammoth–convey the men’s utter confidence and the animal’s certain doom. Clan lore says the piece was created long ago by a forgotten artist.

  In my mind, Ja’ja’ja’s greatest contribution to the world of beauty was his acceptance that he had no business infringing upon the chamber with his elementary scribbles. For that, we all shall be eternally grateful.

  I must also tip my cap to Ja’ja’ja’s determination to create for himself a comfortable living space, and also for squirreling away goods against hard times. I did not know what to expect the day I was assigned these quarters. The Valley Clan, and now the New Green Turtles, eschew the cave as if it houses a ghost. I was pointed up the trail and left to find it on my own. The mud room gave me no reason to click my heels in delight, but when I crawled into the habitation chamber, I was thrilled to find it chock-a-block with interesting doodads, tools, weapons and other utensils. The tidy place had been left undisturbed since the dewy morning Ja’ja’ja left for his fateful hunt.

  Jutting planks of limestone serve as natural shelves for bright land shells and glittering sprays of quartz. Poles wedged wall-to-wall near the ceiling form a grid where bags, furs and household goods are hung. The chamber is about 2.5 meters high, with a floor space roughly five meters in diameter.

  During a close examination of the cave, I discovered the entrance to the third chamber hidden behind a pine-needle wall hanging. Wedging myself through the narrow tube, I emerged into a space about the size of a Milano elevator. On the crushed stone floor, arranged in five-by-five pyramids, sat nearly 100 gourds containing grain, nuts and raisins, the substances that form the basic glue of Cro-Magnon porridge. Using the night-vision optics in my visor, I rooted through a veritable warehouse of dried food. Plugged with oak stoppers, the gourds had held firm against ants, mice and mold. Lifting several dangling leather bags from where they had been slung over rock outcroppings, I found they were full of hazelnuts. Most had gone over, empty shells full of dust, but the bags were in good shape.

  When I brought the find to the Valley Clan’s attention, I was surprised by the people’s indifference. My suggestion that we join together to inventory the cache and share in the wealth was met with incredulous stares. I broached the subject with Fralista later that evening. We happened to be alone by the communal night fire–a pair of restless sleepers. I inquired if the clan rejected the food out of respect for the deceased. As is so often the case with these people, she answered my question with questions of her own.

  “Why would you have us eat old gatherings when the valley is full of fruit and grain that is now ripe? Would you poison the clan? Why store our sustenance in containers that are old and may fail?”

  She composed a face that said “old” and “spoiled” and “rotten” all in one, then shrugged her shoulders and continued in a mournful voice, “We would have eaten Ja’ja’ja’s food in the rainy times after the slaughter. If we knew it was there. Our children starved to death. Our elders starved to death. We who survived nearly starved. If not for the arrival of Father Leonglauix and Jones, the woman Doo-Art and her man Ky-kah-nee, we would have died. The cache you found reminds us of the starving days, and how we could have saved our families if we only knew Ja’ja’ja had stored food. Who would have thought a man with so little gumption could do such a thing?”

  Fralista is unquestionably the backbone of this hardy little group of mountain dwellers. Widowed in the mammoth attack, survivor of the burial of her children, she is not as old as she looks with her callused hands, weathered skin and hair flecked with gray. She and one-legged brother-in-law Karloon share in administrative duties, but she is the one who assures that day-to-day chores are accomplished.

  Tucked high at the dead end of a steep-walled valley deep in the mountain range that will one day be called France’s Massif Central, this habitation site is the most advanced we have seen. Fralista’s adopted clan has lived in the valley for more than a handful of generations, the latest in a long line of cave dwellers stretching back into time, for how long no one knows. There are at least two dozen habitable caves and one glorious hot spring.

  The natives love lounging in the steam-filled bathhouse with its cantilevered limestone roof and year-round flow of hot water. I agree with Dr. Duarte’s theory that the hot spring would be prime motivation for a nomadic clan to settle in such a remote place and never leave. Through the years, the people have made improvements in terms of security, sanitation, food resources, fire hearths, flagstone paths, and many other accoutrements that ease the strain of life in a collective society.

  This camp provides a fascinating glimpse into the building blocks of man’s propensity for shaping the world to his desire. Most Cro-Magnons are travelers, born and bred to chase the herds. Establishing permanent roots is viewed as a sign of weakness or old age. These mountain people, however, tend berry patches and harvest a breed of pig introduced to the valley by a clan member several generations ago. It chafes Gray Beard to see his daughter chained to the comforts of a hot spring and a long-settled valley full of possessions.

  Well, it is time for me to wrap this entry up. I must venture into my wine cellar to see which brew is suitably fermented for this evening’s repast of salted mammoth stew. Perhaps I’ll start with a martini of grain vodka complete with green olive, decant a gourd of raisin jack for the main course and finish with a berry port for tonight’s postprandial concert of Robert Schumann’s early work.

  You didn’t expect me to toss all of those ingredients and containers away, did you?

  TRANSMISSION:

  Bolzano: “Father never loved me

  Mother barely cared

  Society turns its back on me

  Claims my mind’s plumb impaired

  “I’ve got the Caveman Blues

  Whooo–ooooooooo

  That’s why I’ve got nothing better ta do

  than sing these mean…old…low…down

  C-a-a-a-a-a-ve M-a-a-a-a-n Blu-u-u-u-ues!

  “That was a real corker, Sally, old boy.”

  From the log of Salvatore Bolzano

  Firefighter II

  (English translation)

  Hank Williams may well have been snowbound when he wrote “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” Tears in my chamber! Tears down Salvatore’s face!

  So what if I have been crying a lot lately? Wallowing in self-pity. Whining. Why me? Why me? Why me? Isn’t it a man’s right to behave like a baby?

  Three weeks in solitary confinement has put the Bolzano psyche through an emotional roller coaster not seen since those glorious days in Milano. Back when I was drinking two bottles of scotch each night and seeing two psychologists each day. It was a grand time. The quacks and I were resolute in blaming Father, and also in letting him pick up the bills.

  Every time the going got tough, I got drunk. Or arrested.

  One would think my previous stints in the pokey would have prepared me for the loneliness of languishing in this cave. I see why they do not serve alcohol in jail. Sadness. These are sad vintages I have fermented in my quiet little abode.

  Izzy the dog is ensconced in a far corner, casting wary looks my direction. No doubt distraught over being cooped up with a raving lunatic. My songs used to please her so. Why does she wince when I stagger near? I will not step on your tail again. No, I will not! I promise!

  It is with some regret that Corporal Salvatore Bolzano reports officially to Team leaders, you merde-heads, that he has been inebriated for a personal record of 410 consecutive hours. Snowbo
und for 20 days, and shit-faced drunk for 17 of them.

  If you were hoping for reports, tough titty, I haven’t gotten around to them!

  TRANSMISSION:

  Jones: “How’d ya make out?”

  Bolzano: “It was lovely. And you?”

  Jones: “Long time to be cooped up.”

  Bolzano: “Did you and Fralista enjoy your month alone together?”

  Jones: “Not much. How about you, all by yourself?”

  Bolzano: “Not much.”

  Jones: “Old Man’s worried you’ll come over here.”

  Bolzano: “He has instructed me to stay put, therefore, I shall stay put. What is the holdup?”

  Jones: “Fralista says there’s a lot of bad ice between you and us. Ya got any hooch over there?”

  Bolzano: “Not a drop.”

  From the log of Salvatore Bolzano

  Firefighter II

  (English translation)

  I sensed the weather shifting from the depths of the cave. There was a scent of moisture in the air as the roar of the howling Arctic turbines wound down. Izzy led the way as we ducked from the cave to stand in the courtyard. Through the narrow slit separating drift and hillside, I spied stars shining brightly between scudding, moonlit clouds. In the dead of night, I had occasion to return outdoors to empty the Bolzano bladder. While I was at the task, I leaned back to see the clouds had vanished. More stars and universes sparkled in that slender skylight than I would have been able to spy in the entire heavens of my youth.

  Surmounting the drift the next morning, Izzy and I were bedazzled by a sugar-frosted diorama like nothing in my wildest imaginings. And that is saying something. As you are well aware, I am a world-class imaginer. No opera set designer would dare create such a wind-sculpted world of icicles grown sideways and colossal drifts marching across the valley floor in reptilian waves. The only blemishes in the dunescape were snowy bumps of boulders and pines bent into question marks by the weight of ice.