Fritz’s energy drained away with the adrenaline and his shakes began again. He stumbled onto the playing field, and all hell ensued. The players reacted first, running towards him. Then the fans reacted. Some thought he was deliberately disrupting the game and complained, booing loudly. Some laughed, figuring it was another of his dumb stunts. But blood is never funny. Deep crimson soaked his shirt. He could feel the weight of it.
As the true situation became clear the stands emptied and people ran onto the field. Fritz looked up to see Ella standing on a bench seat halfway up the stands, at this distance looking old and alone.
People pressed around trying to get the story but only a few knew sign. Fritz signed to a kid who did a credible job of passing his report on verbally. Joey. Joe. Good lad. I’ll have to tell Ella. Several hotheads started towards the fence. Some people apparently thought panicking would help and proceeded to do that; more got in each other's way trying to help Fritz. He let one of them tighten a strip of cloth about his arm. Someone with a parade ground voice began to straighten things out. Men were dispatched to deal with the bodies and search for more outlaws. Complaints were made. A growing faction wanted to finish the game.
Fritz pressed through the crowd towards the bleachers. He signed to Missus Ella, "I'm okay." She stood above the crowd looking now like a commander surveying the troops. People kept walking over to speak to her. Men called up to her from the ground. Two people signed. She nodded or shook her head, folded her arms and waited for Fritz. He was not looking forward to giving his report to her. Amazing. He'd just killed two men and here he was afraid to talk to a little old lady. He shook his head and marched bravely on.
Ella was standing on the first riser when he reached her which placed the top of her head about equal with his nose. She put her hands on her hips and looked up. Her lips thinned. "You just scared a year out of me! I haven't got that many to spare!" Her eyes were bleak and red. She threw her arms about him regardless of the blood. "You big lug!" she said, and sobbed into his neck. Fritz was astounded. He knew Ella loved him, loved every one of her extended family. He just didn’t realize she took it so personally. He held her and patted her back, surprised at how frail she felt in his arms. He tried to say for the second or third time, despite his missing tongue, "I’m fine, Missus, I'm fine. I'm just fine."
Ella pulled back and her face cleared. "Oh," she said as if in surprise or enlightenment. She gave him a look that penetrated all the way to his boots. "You never said, and I never realized. Someone died, didn’t they, trying to protect you?"
Fritz nodded dumbly. Ella pulled him close again to whisper in his ear. "You don’t have to feel guilty. It’s not your fault." Fritz’s heart twisted in his chest. Tears blurred his vision. But Ella’s eyes shone clear with the light of revelation. "When we get home," she said, "I have a drawing you need to see." Fritz nodded again, unable to do anything else. He hadn’t mentioned Van Meer. He hoped the poor lost soul had a rabbit hole.
****
Van Meer walked beneath large calm fall-colored trees. Light and shade made intricate lace patterns on the ground, stirred by a sweet breeze. He wore only a shirt and coat. His Comfort in its pouch bounced at his hip and he carried a pitcher holding two beer-soaked sausages. He had no idea how he'd come by two beer soaked sausages. God provides. He fished a sausage out of the pitcher. Ella helps. He remembered that.
His hairy shanks were bare but Van Meer couldn’t be concerned. It was going to be a mild night, a soft lovely night with an oversized moon, a night meant for contemplating miracles. He was happy. And he thought he might know where his pants were. They were probably dry by now.
Chapter Three
"All creation is a mystery. Life is too short to learn much. But what the hell. Learn to enjoy the quality of mystery." –John Roberts
Van Meer lay on his back quiet as a corpse, his arms folded over his chest, listening. Sometimes his head would empty out and he'd listen that way. When air moved across his face he inhaled deeply searching for clues. Only his head was above ground. There were men in the forest searching every foot.
Van Meer's rabbit hole, more likely a groundhog’s abandoned burrow, ran horizontally into a sharp slope beneath a pine tree different than those in the world Van Meer knew, sparser in branch and needle. The hole was too far from an open field to do a groundhog much good but it fitted Van Meer's needs. He had spent considerable time enlarging the burrow. Clay was easy, rock and coarse soil tougher, stubborn roots were the most difficult. He placed his coat on the brown needle pack and piled hacked roots and clay onto it to be carried to a creek bed and dispersed, leaving no sign. Time and labor were not a problem for Van Meer. When he focused on a task time did not exist.
To make his bed wide and deep enough, Van Meer had to go into the hole head first. At the last he measured his full length in the narrow tunnel and the back of his neck brushed the tunnel's roof. All he could do was back out on his elbows dragging a shirt full of dirt and rock with him. But he did not fear cave-ins, he was not claustrophobic, he felt safe in tight dark until he was driven out to face what demons there were.
He stuffed the far end of the hole with pine needles and lined the rest with dry grasses. He pulled on his coat and wormed feet first into his nest, warm and safe. Only his face was exposed to the elements and concealment involved nothing more than pulling a pine branch over his head. Even without that precaution he was beneath living tree branches and impossible to spot. But there was something to give him away.
Rocks in the creek bed sheared easily in thick smooth flakes that exposed odd shapes pressed into the stone. He found a leaf carved in perfect detail. He found little round shapes and stem stalks and a segmented worm carved in the soft rock. Sometimes they were all mashed together, pressed on top of each other in bewildering proliferation like the intertwining drawings of his Comfort.
Not a hundred feet from his hidey-hole he placed dozens of the stones organized by size and content. Some he laid out in patterns. Some he piled into shapes and figures. He had intended to use them to back a fire pit that would bank heat into his shelter but had been compelled to stack and order them first.
Men methodically combing the woods for swordsmen found his collection. Van Meer heard them clearly. "Look at this! What is this? It must be a gathering place for a witch's coven or something."
"Ahh, you're always going off the deep end with that stuff," said a second voice. "Probably just another ambitious squatter. Okay, an inhumanly organized, tightly squeezed, madly drunk squatter. Lord, look at this. This is amazing!"
"What would be amazing is getting out of here before dark. Isn't Ella Robert’s farm over that way? If we can get lost in here how can bandits who don't know the territory find their way?"
"Maybe bandits are just brighter than you two," said a third voice.
A sharp concussion of sound jolted the entire length of Van Meer's body. Somebody let loose a rebel yell. "I’ll be damned! Completely, totally, eternally damned! I’ve never seen anything like it. Did you see that? That deer jumped right out into the middle of that circle. This is all for a trap, some kind of crazy hunter’s trap! I will be damned!"
"If you're gonna' keep wishing for damnation, do it somewhere else. I've got other plans." That was the third voice. "I say it's luck or God's grace. We've spooked every animal out here today. No wonder they're jumping all over. But either way we've got a campsite with an easily-made fire pit and spit and fresh meat handed to us. And I don't want to get caught wandering about out here in pitch black. So drag that buck to water and butcher it. I'll make a fire. We'll camp here tonight."
Van Meer, hidden safe and warm, thought Yes, God's grace, and went gently to sleep. He woke up drooling in the black of night. He could see stars through the branches but they cast no light down here. He turned his head and saw a deep red glow above the hot coals of a dying fire. He smelled roast meat and heard the occasional drop of grease hissing on coals.
Joy ascended. God's glor
y cast its cloak upon him. His spirit rose to dance. In total rapture he slid from his burrow. In glee and fearless delight he approached the fire. Moving like mist he floated across the campsite, the ground itself could not feel the press of his feet. He spirited over to the first of the sleeping men and trying not to giggle removed a spoon and a small pouch of oats from the man's kit. In patient wonder Van Meer removed a tiny cross on a delicate silver chain from around the sleeper’s neck. He did not question how he knew it was there.
One man still sat by the fire occasionally lifting a hand to turn the spit, an act no longer necessary. His head rested on his knees. Van Meer took his blanket. He slid the entire loin of deer from the spit, replaced the spit and tip-toed away like a naughty four-year-old with a stolen cookie. He pressed his lips together to keep from guffawing at the sheer thrill of it all.
Van Meer slid the hot meat into his hole and pushed it all the way back with his feet. He wormed in until his head was fully underground and finally giggling out loud pulled two dead branches over the entrance. God provides. In strange, unfathomable ways, God provides. His feet were toasty warm. He slept smiling and undisturbed deep into the afternoon never knowing the rippling pebble-in-a-pond effect his actions engendered and the stories to be told, meant to color the world.
****
To Be Continued . . .
Grantville Gazette, Volume 71 Page 23