Gibraltar

by Matthew Thayer

  I will miss the hot spring most of all. Excepting three weeks of blizzard, I have made it a daily ritual to take a long steam. Captain Jones accompanied me to the sauna today and we spent a relaxing hour discussing a variety of topics. We swam through the tunnel to the painted chamber to find that at least one of the New Green Turtles had found it. There were handfuls of mud splattered across the central painting and someone had wiped human excrement upon the opposing wall’s handprints. The defilement hurt as much as a punch to the jaw. Jones said something about pea-sized brains and the fate of mankind, but it didn’t register. We turned and swam back to the hot spring in silence. The enjoyment had been stolen.

  On the way home to the cave, I suggested Jones might care to make his union with Fralista official. The woman’s serious, solemn demeanor, and her willingness to hold opinions close unless she feels she must speak her mind, make her a fitting match for Jones. If she were one who droned on and on just to hear the sound of her own voice, she would drive Jones mad. As would a woman too meek to stand up for what she believes. The Captain is a warrior. He needs a woman like Fralista.

  Gray Beard’s daughter is also smart and patient enough to understand when the time for debate and small talk is over. The Americans label the bleak periods in Jones’ life as his “blue moods.” If I were to assign a color I would probably choose black or charcoal. You see it in the sadness of his eyes, and hear it in his desire to cut every communication short. I think Fralista would be able to handle the days and sometimes weeks when he’s hurting but does not want help.

  Having buried a husband and all three of her children, Fralista, I am certain, has demons of her own. She strikes me as a woman who understands the need to be left alone.

  Alone is not all bad. I find myself devoid of company for the first time in two weeks and am enjoying it. Roommate Jones has not yet returned from Fralista’s cave, though I know he will, for he has yet to organize his gear and we have an early departure.

  Ja’ja’ja’s cave is once again habitable, though it continues to carry the tang of tannins and urine used to cure the hides. Our shaggy new capes, simple mittens and snow boots are draped over poles in the mud room. Gray Beard claims goat skins are perfect winter gear. Warm, waterproof and light. The fact that we harvested the hides in late fall means they are thick and rich in oils that repel water.

  With Lanio’s help, Gray Beard fitted each of our dogs with their own boots. He says they will need the shoes to protect their pads in the ice and slush. We will be taking only four canines to carry essential gear. They will also serve as our alarms against toothy intruders. The old storyteller says four is the maximum number we can sustain and protect along the trail. Odd how, back in the day, we thought of dogs as our protectors. In these times, they are more like dull-brained livestock, not big enough or powerful enough to compete with the carnivores we encounter.

  One item in the do-not-take pile is a gourd of five-day-old wine Jones and I will share this evening. Memories of the last time I poured viable spirits into the mud still prickle the Bolzano conscience. Such a waste! A sin if there ever was one! I shall do my best to see that not one drop of this tart grappa befalls a similar fate. Headache be damned, I will say farewell to the comforts of home in intoxicated bliss.

  Ciao for now!

  TRANSMISSION:

  Jones: “Head’s about ready to split.”

  Bolzano: “I warned you it was a potent mix, basically grain alcohol and plum wine. Perhaps you are out of practice. I feel quite fresh, and at a conservative estimate, I would wager I drank twice as much as you.”

  Jones: “Fralista mighta poisoned me.”

  Bolzano: “Not really her style. She is more of a ‘frontal assault’ kind of gal.”

  Jones: “Suppose so.”

  Bolzano: “How long has it been since your last plunge into the dungeon of a hangover?”

  Jones: “Oh, man, years. Got a little beer buzz at that shindig before launch, but Team assholes were dangling captain’s bars over my head. Couldn’t afford to fuck up.”

  Bolzano: “Not that it helped.”

  Jones: “Roger that. Shoulda got wasted.”

  Bolzano: “Did you and the medic Pete consume spirits together in Ontario?”

  Jones: “Naw, we ran in different circles. If you gotta know, last time I got hammered was nothin’ to brag about. Was in some concrete box, a dark bar in Erie, Pennsylvania. Spending my pay on my two fucked-up brothers. Typical night for those two. Drink ’til you’ve got your mean on, then pick a scrap with some little out-of-towner, roll him for his wallet.

  I caught a cab before all the drama went down. Had the driver drop me off at the city plaza to walk it off, and two punks tried robbin’ me. Ended up in a fight anyway. Woke up in jail covered in piss and puke, not all of it mine.”

  Bolzano: “And you swore off drinking?”

  Jones: “Swore off my fucking brothers. Let’s walk quiet for a while.”

  From the log of Salvatore Bolzano

  Firefighter II

  (English translation)

  Slumping through the dark, so heaped with skins we could easily be mistaken for woolly camels, Captain Jones and I arrived early to the marshalling point. The boulder-strewn clearing several kilometers down the valley was surrounded by a copse of spindly pines. We had clear views both thermally and visually of the approaches if we cared to flip down the visors of our helmets. Neither of us cared to.

  Once our packs were doffed, we groaned and stretched for a few moments then pulled up rocks to lie down and wait in the dark. This close to the winter solstice, hemmed in by the valley’s tall walls, we knew night would not relinquish its grip until well past the eighth hour. Not to say our Cro-Magnon associates understand time in a Julian Calendar sense, but they did straggle in just as planned, as the sky to the east showed the first hint of cobalt blue.

  Tomon and Gertie arrived from the gloom holding hands, whispering about one thing or another as their wide-eyed scallywag peered out of a fur cocoon slung round his father’s shoulder. In low voices, they greeted me in a common Green Turtle manner, the inevitable morning questions, “Did you fly in your dreams?” and then three pats on the arm. I assured them, as always, that when I do fly in a dream, they will be the first ones I inform. No, actually, my reply was equally formal. “I did not fly in my dreams, but it is a good day. I am alive and so are you. Now, please tell me, brother Tomon, did you, or wife Gertie, fly in your dreams?”

  Gray Beard has sold Tomon on the notion that he is able to fly any night he chooses. When the old storyteller is in a mood, he will delve into great detail describing the things he encounters in his flying dreams. One tale may chronicle the people he meets, while another is about the animals he hunts, or forests of incredibly tall trees where the sun never reaches the ground. Cro-Magnons would sit for days and listen to his flying stories. As would I. His tales are quite interesting. Once again, Leonglauix sets himself apart from the everyday masses with his level of thought and imagination.

  Tomon also possesses a superior intellect. Twice during his childhood, Tomon dreamed he was a bird. Those must have been very special dreams, for he is quite determined to have another.

  Izzy alerted us to the other dogs’ approach a good five minutes before they lunged into view, three mutts pulling Lanio at the end of three braided leather ropes. Gray Beard and daughter Fralista trailed behind, dragging a pine bough to wipe away their tracks.

  “The clan sleeps, but will wake soon,” the storyteller said. “Let us put much distance between us and camp. We should not have trained them so well. They will be hard to lose should they decide to follow.”

  Hoisting our packs and weapons, tugging on dog leashes, we sallied forth into the gathering mists. Valley dawn was strangely quiet this day, as if winter had stripped away not only the leaves from the trees, but the everyday sounds of nature as well. We were left with our footfalls and the clacking of our spears as we wound our way through tall, light-starved oak
s.

  My grappa-fogged reverie was brought short by the sight of Fralista studying my heavy load with a slow shake of her head that said “tourist.” In comparison, her burden was quite Spartan. Three spears and a small rucksack holding contents less than two kilos in weight. Can you imagine condensing 20-something years of acquisitions into a purse? The thought boggles the Bolzano psyche.

  Her mezzo-soprano voice cut my ruminating short.

  “Father said you have my warm clothes. I will take them when snow comes. Big storm. It will be cold. Much snow. This is last morning to leave. Big storm.”

  I expressed my understanding that a storm was due, then welcomed her to the traveling party, told her how pleased I was that she would be joining us on the adventure, and hastily bid her adieu when she trudged off in search of Lanio and Gertie. The day brightened slowly in the valley’s shadows as we picked our way along the stream bottom, keeping to the dried edges of a trickle that not two weeks earlier had been a raging torrent. When sunlight finally crested the valley’s steep walls, it had no warmth to offer. Hazy clouds robbed Il Sole of his heat.

  If winter truly was poised to settle in with a bang, the animals knew it, for there were none to be seen. No birds chirped, no insects buzzed, and it was the same silent act for amphibians croaking, wolves calling, hyenas yipping, mammoths trumpeting, lions roaring, bears bawling or humans singing. Nada, zip, zippo. Whether hunkered in dens or flown south, not a creature was stirring, not even a grouse. The world seemed so cold and lonely, I had a half a mind to scoot back to my warm cave and reopen its distillery.

  “Got a bad feeling,” said Jones in a worried tone that forced me back to reality. A dusting of fallen snow formed a white crown atop his mound of hair and twin drifts over each knitted eyebrow. “Old man and nephew been gone too long.”

  The duo had stopped to watch our back trail and I hadn’t given their absence a second thought. It is something they do all the time–scurry forward and back on the trail, disappear into the woods. Leonglauix ordered us to stay with the women and child and that is what we did.

  “You’n me better go have a look-see.”

  I did not waste one moment arguing. It was not possible for someone to have leapfrogged us coming down the valley, so we instructed the women to continue forward and remain on high alert. After less than 100 meters of backtracking, we stopped to lock our packs around a tall pine, and set off at double pace. Sans freight, I felt as if I could fly. I followed Captain Jones in leaping from rock to rock and sprinting up animal trails. Jones pulled up short at the mouth of a side canyon where its stream emptied into the valley proper.

  Face hidden by his helmet’s visor, holding up an index finger to signal me to silence, Jones cocked his head the way a curious parrot might. “Somethin’s happenin’ up this gulch.”

  We found tracks leading upward into the steep, heavily-wooded ravine. Several footprints belonged to Tomon and Gray Beard. They were recognizable where they had made a hasty turn out of the streambed and up into the ravine. Halfway up, they were covered by the prints of a Cro-Magnon stampede. Echoes of laughing and stones crashing grew louder as Jones and I quietly scaled uphill.

  The trees were too thick to allow an atlatl shot when we first spotted Babeck and his merry band of lunatics. There were seven of them, virtually all of the bad eggs clustered in one clutch, dropping rocks and logs and whatever else they could put their hands on, toward Gray Beard and his nephew. Our two companions had been chased to the back of a dead-end canyon. The New Green Turtles were arrayed about 20 meters above, along the ravine’s south rim. The cowards were having a grand time in their attempts to deliver death by way of avalanche or bouncing rock bomb.

  We quickly circled through the trees to gain the high ground above the mob. The mangy dogs’ mouths made little o’s when Jones rapped an atlatl bolt against the trunk of an oak to announce our presence. Turning in surprise, scruffy beards on the men, hair pulled back in single ponytails for the women, they surveyed us in wide-eyed recognition of doom. Standing before them were the mighty warriors Jones and Bolzano.

  Unfortunately, a tree branch obscured the captain’s view of Babeck. If not, I am sure Jones would have made that skunk his first target. From my vantage point I could see the burly hunter seated upon a large boulder, hugging his chest with both arms in a way that made me think he might be nursing broken ribs. Though well out of my spear range, Jones could easily have reached him with one of his atlatl bolts.

  Jones’ attention was on the rock rollers and log throwers directly below us. One of Babeck’s lieutenants, a lank-haired string bean of a lad named Thjinkslinsbff, gets credit for giving it the old college try. Shrugging his shoulders as if to say “Where have you good fellows been?” he bought himself just enough time to snatch a spear stuck butt first in the muddy ground before a meter-long bolt plowed through his chest, shattering his collarbone and spinning him to the ground.

  Before anyone could retaliate by launching a missile of his own, Captain Jones closed the gap.

  “Watch my back!” he shouted as he strode into the fray with a flint-tipped jabbing spear in his left hand and the atlatl launcher-turned-club in the right.

  They say rats, once cornered, will turn and counterattack. These rodents were no different. Seeing their companion struck down, adrenal systems insisting it was time for fight, not flight, they raised their weapons and charged in a pack. Men and women together, growling and swearing our deaths.

  Five against two may seem poor odds, but in fact, it was actually one versus five. I delivered not one thrust or parry, just stood there at the edge of a hurricane. West Point-trained, hardened in the Water Wars of California, Jones is the consummate soldier.

  Barking out the Green Turtle wolf call with each swing, he delivered measured smashes to spears and forearms that collapsed the men and women into a tight bunch. Herding the ruffians backwards upon themselves, he drove them to where the ridge narrowed to a point, a killing zone. Jones picked up the intensity of his attack, swinging his club and jabbing his spear with cold efficiency. Each thrust pushed them closer to the brink. The wolf call was substituted with a warning to Gray Beard and Tomon. “Look out below!” Or something to that effect.

  In American baseball, I believe they call it clouting a grand slam home run. Paying no heed to cries for mercy, Captain Jones delivered one last haymaker to sweep the entire bunch into the abyss. Screams and thuds echoed through the valley as they clawed at each other, tumbled down the same cliff where they had been rolling stones only moments earlier.

  Looking to my left, I saw Jones teetering. His swing had carried him to the precipice, a muddy patch with no purchase. The captain was headed straight down, leaning forward like one of those old Olympic ski jumpers, when he reached back the way they teach you to accept a handoff in the 4x100-meter relay. Somehow, the head of my club slapped into his hand. The maneuver was pure reflex, yet Captain Jones insists I saved his life. No small praise from a warrior such as he. Perhaps I shall receive a promotion and upgrade in pay.

  When they scaled up out of the ravine, Gray Beard and Tomon said they had been ensconced safely under an overhang. Apart from dodging the occasional rock ricochet and an avalanche of troublemakers, they weathered the aerial assault without incident.

  “What took you so long?” Gray Beard asked with a twinkle in his eye. The old man does enjoy a good dust-up. Clapping his hands together, he asked, “Where’s Babeck’s body? I want to make sure that snake is dead.”

  Jones and I gave each other a vacant look.

  “You let him slither away? We must travel fast to reach our women before he does.”

  TRANSMISSION:

  Jones: “Can’t see shit. Never find those packs.”

  Bolzano: “Of course we will.”

  Jones: “Trees all look the same in this fog.”

  Bolzano: “If you care to flip down your visor, Captain, you shall see my pack glowing round yonder bend.”

  Jones: “Remembere
d to activate the locator, did ya?”

  Bolzano: “It seemed a prudent thing to do at the time.”

  Jones: “Hell, Sal, you’re on a roll. Keep this up, we’ll get Duarte to promote you to sergeant.”

  From the log of Capt. Juniper Jones

  Security Detail II

  Day started with my head foggier than the weather. Almost bought the farm leavin’ that valley. Coulda died fallin’ off a cliff, freezing to death, or bustin’ through thin ice. Take your pick.

  Night before, came back to cave to find my roommate in a drinking mood. Woulda been happy to swig right outta the gourd, but he was fussy, took the time to pour the hooch into goat horn cups he found stashed somewhere. Next thing I know, he’s leading me on weaving tour, pointing out crappy little charcoal wall pictures in the firelight. Bolzano’s named all the drawings and copied them. Jay-Jay’s work. These computers ever make it back, he says someday that dead hunter will have his own book.

  Maybe got an hour or two of sleep, woke up with awful hangover. Head was just beginning to clear when Fralista trots up and sets my brain wobbling.

  Eight hours before, she claimed she hated me. Didn’t make me heartbroken, just a little sad. What’s new? Not like we have some great romance, but we get along pretty good. She’s one of the few women I’ve met content with silence. I asked her to come along a couple weeks ago. She said no and I just figured the valley had a hold so tight she couldn’t break free–even with all the shit going down, couldn’t make up her mind.

  And then she shows up with her spears and traveling bag. Gives me a little smile and punch on the arm. Was paying more attention to her and my headache than situation behind us. Old man and his nephew got into a scrap with NGTs. Me and Corporal Bolzano didn’t get back to help until it was almost too late.