In that brief minute or two I felt I was in the possession of a thousand different futures, and that each one was just as likely as all the others. All that I had to do was choose one. But it wasn’t only the freedom before me that I saw. I had become aware of a thousand tiny freedoms that I had already lived through.
I saw the freedom I knew every year as a kid when the school bell signaled the end of the last class before the beginning of summer. I recalled my first sight of the Pacific Ocean from my family’s hotel room on a holiday to San Diego, where the surf and salt air, the seagulls and ocean’s expanse filled me with such anticipation that I dashed out of the room and onto the beach wearing only my T-shirt. I saw myself at sixteen when after months of abuse by my odious boss, I threw my dishwasher’s apron at him, proclaimed that I quit, and grabbed a customer’s pastrami sandwich off his plate on my way out.
Freedom, freedom everywhere! There was the day I learned to ride a bicycle. The day I got my driver’s license. The first girl I ever asked out. The second girl I asked out. The third, fourth, and finally the first one who said, yes!
The memories flooded on, right up to that very moment. Expansiveness, possibility, expectation, joy—the delicious feeling that today, right now, right here, something wonderful had gotten underway, and I was invited!
Doreen jogged up alongside Aidos. “Are you picking on my little brother, Aidos?”
“I’m afraid I am.”
“Good. Can I watch?”
“Not much to see, really,” Aidos said, as I slowly returned to my senses. “Mostly a lot of grinning, nodding, and blinking. And some occasional odd gurgling noises.”
“Guy,” Doreen said, “you okay?”
“Never better. Who’s Dost?”
“Toast?”
“Never mind,” I said. I wasn’t sure what I meant by that either. “What do you want, Doreen? Aidos was just going to tell me how she and Max first met Ellery.”
“Oh?” Doreen said.
“Oh?” Aidos said.
“And since you’re not interested in such things,” I said, “why don’t you fall back with your flibbertigibbet friends and continue documenting your pathetic lack of discrimination. Have you got to the Jim Fielding chapter yet? Or, are you still documenting your high school screamers?”
“Actually,” Doreen said. “I’d be very interested in hearing such a story. I had a nice chat with Max last night and—”
“And the saga continues,” I said.
“Guy, we just—”
“Shh, darling sister. It’s none of my business what you do on a moonlight stroll with a handsome hunk of irresistible masculinity at your side. Aidos, go on. We’re all ears.”
Aidos looked at Doreen, and shrugged.
Doreen stuck her tongue out at me. “Go ahead, please.”
“About five years ago,” Aidos began, “quite a fuss was made over Max and me and some friends of ours in our home town, Pinecrest. You see, Max was an outstanding athlete, especially at football. It was said that he was the best high school quarterback in the state. A famous sportswriter wrote maybe even in the entire nation. The man predicted a state championship for Pinecrest, and a great future for Max.
“Needless to say, the town had high expectations for Max and his team. So, when Max abruptly quit and said he didn’t want to play ball anymore, people, well, overreacted. A number of misunderstandings followed, as well as cases of sabotage, vandalism, a mysterious death, and my own unaccounted for disappearance, which added to the confusion. It’s a long story. Anyway, Max and I were singled out as the cause behind the town’s run of bad luck, and the next thing you know Max was a fugitive on the run.
“Then things really got interesting. Max was rather popular you see, and soon the town had a full-scale rebellion on its hands. The unrest spread like wildfire along the entire mountain ridge. Every kid in every school along the ridge knew and admired Max Stormer. The National Guard was called in to try to restore order, but the situation only worsened. That’s when Max and I returned to Pinecrest. We hoped that if we turned ourselves in we could prevent any more people from getting hurt. But as Max handed himself over, someone shot him. His best friend managed to heave him onto my horse and we fled.
“We rode through the night, losing our pursuers in a maze of old, badly-weathered logging roads, which I knew very well. The forest canopy protected us from being spotted by helicopters. Max was unconscious. He had three bullets in him and badly needed medical help. Eventually, we came across a ghost town, remnants of a turn of the century mining town. Among the ruins stood two crumbled buildings: a fire-gutted general store and a dilapidated saloon with half a roof. We spent the night in the saloon and I did what I could for him.
“At dawn, five riders dressed in long duster coats rode up on horseback, guns drawn. I walked out to face them. One dismounted while the others waited alertly back, like bodyguards, their guns trained on me. The man who approached me was elderly. I said…”
Kindred Spirits
Excerpts from Journal Six, continued.
…She said, “I know you.”
I grinned, amused by the bow and arrows she carried over her shoulder, the childlike way she toyed with the silver band around her finger, and by the fact that she could not possibly have known who I was. “And what do you know of me?”
“I know that you’ve been looking for me for a long time, and that you have come to repay an old debt to an old friend.”
I stared at her, unable to conceal my surprise. “How long?” I asked.
“As long as it took you to fight many battles and to lose your soul and find it again.”
Clearly I was in the presence of a remarkable girl. Stunned by her answer I replied, “Yes, well, if it weren’t for what happened in that little town I’d never have found you. Your friend, how is he?”
“He’s dying. We must get him to a doctor.”
“We can’t do that, but—” I turned to the others. “Noriko, Johanna, the boy’s in bad shape.”
The girls slipped deftly from their saddles, unstrapped two duffel bags and hustled them into the ruin.
“Don’t worry,” I said, “if he can be saved, they’ll save him.”
The girl nodded, as if she had complete faith in us. I knew no more about her than the rest of the world who had followed the Pinecrest story on TV and in the papers, which was next to nothing. Somehow her father had managed to keep her off of every existing database, just as the Organization had done for my girls. She wasn’t born in a hospital, and had never been to a doctor or any school, church, or other social institution where records could have been kept of her. I knew her to be sixteen years old.
The girl was mesmerizingly pretty. Her build was slim but athletic, her mouth small, lips thin, and her teeth straight and as snowy as the whites which housed her crystal gray eyes. Pine needles dangled from her profuse, shiny black hair. She reminded me very much of my own girls when they were her age, especially with the bow and quiver of arrows she wore over her shoulder.
“My name is Ellery,” I said. “Ellery Channing.”
She shook my hand and said, “My father never mentioned you.”
“He had no reason to. Your father and I never met, though from what little I know, I think he must be an exceptional man.”
“And my mother?”
“Julie. We never met either. I wasn’t in the position to contact her, but I followed her path the best I could. From a distance. But I lost track of her some years before she met your father.”
“But she knew of you?”
“Possibly. I was very close to her parents, especially your grandfather, Chaim. They met on the island of Cypress where we were all interned after the war, and there they fell deeply in love. It wasn’t easy for them to split up, especially since your grandmother was pregnant with your mother at the time. But there was no other way. They were certain they’d be back together again soon, in Palestine. But, well, as you probably know, Chaim died in th
e war and your grandmother stayed on in America and eventually remarried.”
“My mother told me about my grandfather, about him escaping into Poland’s forests and of fighting the Nazis. You were there too, weren’t you?”
“I was. And darling girl, I can assure you that your grandfather was one of the bravest, most extraordinary men I’ve ever known. And when he received news of your mother’s birth—the proudest.”
“Are these girls your daughters?”
“Well, yes, yes they are.”
“I’d like to meet them.”
I chuckled. “It was to meet you that they dragged me out here.”
“It was their idea?”
“Oh yes. They think you’re a kindred spirit and insisted we track you down.”
Aidos helped me and the other girls with the horses, hiding them from aerial view. We grabbed two saddlebags and went inside the crumbling saloon to check on the lad. Melody and Zeeva remained outside to stand guard.
Inside, Johanna and Noriko, both wearing surgical gloves and masks, had the boy on what remained of a bar counter, a clean sheet under him and an I.V. in his arm. They were in the process of removing the third of three slugs. An empty syringe lay on the bar and the young man appeared to be feeling no pain. Aidos watched with interest as the girls operated, cutting him open with a scalpel, removing the bullets with long tweezers, sterilizing the wounds, and sewing him back up.
“It’s best we don’t move him for a bit,” Johanna said as she finished the last of the sutures.
“Do you think we’re safe here for the day, Ellery?” Noriko asked.
“We don’t have a choice. Let the boy sleep for now. It’s best we travel at night anyhow.” I turned to Aidos. “Don’t worry. We’ll take good care of you and your friend.”
“I’m not worried.”
Noriko walked over and snapped off a bloody glove. She extended her hand to Aidos. “I’m Noriko, and this is Johanna. That’s Melody and Zeeva outside.”
“Aidos. And this is Max Stormer. Where did you learn to operate like that?”
“It’s just something we picked up along the way.”
“Your ‘way’ has been an interesting one, I think.”
“You might say that,” Noriko said. “Are you interested in travel, Aidos? In seeing the world?”
Aidos turned and laid a hand on the boy’s forehead and then combed his shaggy hair with her fingers. “That’s Max’s dream.”
“He means a lot to you, doesn’t he?” Johanna said.
“Max is special. Few people know him like I do.”
“Special? How?”
“He has the hero’s soul and is meant for great deeds. He doesn’t understand this completely yet, but perhaps it’s best that way, for now.”
Johanna didn’t laugh at the girl’s bold words, though I almost did. Instead she said, “Why should that be?”
“It’s his innocence. His power comes from a childlike faith in himself, in friendship, and in the divinity of goodness and truth. It’s a genuineness that others instinctively feel.”
I looked at the sleeping young man, a painkiller-induced grin on his face and a steady stream of drool dribbling down his cheek, and wondered. The fact that hundreds of youths had rallied around him, putting their lives in danger certainly added credibility to the girl’s words. He reminded me of someone I once knew, a young man on the German front, the leader of a platoon of Druids. He too was innocent and idealistic. I somehow knew that our lives had become intertwined and that I must take him under my wing.
“And you, Aidos,” Noriko said. “What’s your dream?”
“I don’t have one.”
“Everyone has a dream,” Johanna said.
“There are many things I intend to do and learn about,” Aidos rejoined, “but I have no specific goal in mind.”
“Doesn’t that bother you?” Johanna said, turning, as was her way, every conversation into a philosophical one. “It seems to me we need something to aim at to keep us moving forward, to add meaning to our lives. We may change our targets in the course of our journey, but by having a goal in mind we can better avoid dissipating our energies with meaningless distractions.”
“Meaninglessness,” Aidos replied, as if already having given much thought to the subject, “is just a bad habit, a symptom of living life half-asleep. When we are awake we are flooded with meaning. It saturates all our senses. I can’t contrive a purpose for my life greater than that which I know in the continual discovery of the minute-to-minute facts of being alive.”
“But surely,” Johanna argued, “we can’t just spend our days sitting awestruck, marveling at the miracle of being alive.”
Aidos smiled. “No, that would be quite a waste, I think. We are invited to action every day, drawn to it as by a magnet. Life is doing. When living things cease to do, they die.”
The girls continued talking in such a manner for some time. I didn’t interrupt. Wistful, I wished I were young again—young and equipped with the presence of mind and enthusiasm for life that these girls had. It was fascinating to watch the three bond before my eyes.
Though Aidos had never attended any school, she seemed to possess an encyclopedic knowledge of the world and a memory that bordered on the photographic. Not since meeting Zeeva had my girls met such an equal. Knowing that Melody and Zeeva would want to be in on the girls’ conversation, I went outside to relieve them.
“You were in there a long time,” Melody said. “Is everything all right?”
“The boy’s in a bad way. It’ll be touch and go for a while, but he’s patched up and sleeping. The girls are getting to know one another.”
“What’s she like?” Melody asked.
I scratched my chin, wondering how to describe her. “She’s…sweet.”
“Sweet? What do we need with sweet?”
Zeeva, strolling up, caught Melody’s outburst. She laughed.
“Sweet to your sour, Mel. Together you’ll make Chinese food.”
“Seriously, Ellery,” Melody said. “What are we going to do with them? He’s a gimp and she’s little Anne of Green Gables. They’re going to slow us down.”
“We can’t just leave them here,” I said
“Why not? You said he’s patched up. Let them fend for themselves. It’s your butt I’m worried about. Didn’t you learn anything from last week’s close call? The Organization is always just one move behind us.”
“That girl is all that’s left of my old friend. I owe it to Chaim to see that she’s okay.”
“Age is making you sentimental, old man,” Melody declared. “And sentimentality will kill you. I’ll stay here with Billy the Kid and Pocahontas, and you and the others leave while the getting’s good. I’ll ditch them with our closest friendlies and meet you later. I bet that chick hasn’t shot anything but her foot with those kindling sticks she’s carrying on her back.”
“Tell you what,” I said. “You and Zeeva go introduce yourselves, and I’ll have a think about your idea.”
The girls went inside.
I shook my head in amusement. Little Aidos was going to have her hands full with Melody, to whom everything was a contest. Melody didn’t mean any harm by her challenges; she just liked knowing peoples’ limits. She wanted to know what she could expect from a person. She didn’t hold it against Noriko and Johanna that she could outrun, outjump, outride, and outshoot them. Melody knew they were good, just not as good as she. Nor did Melody hold it against Zeeva when Zeeva had bested her. She just trained all the harder.
Aidos didn’t impress me as the competitive type. I imagined that if Melody tried to goad her into any contest, Aidos would smile brightly and politely refuse. Melody, neither a bully nor a bad sport, would likely then point at the girl’s meekness and inexperience and firmly suggest to her that, for her own safety, she ought to listen well and do whatever Melody told her to do.
I looked for a place to stand sentry. Many thick-trunked trees surrounded the dilapidate
d building, but none offered me both the protection and view I wanted. I lifted my head to the treetops. Hmm, who’s she calling old man…?
Ever since my days as leader of the Druid Patrol, the sight of a strong, heavily branching tree felt to me an invitation to climb. I selected a towering evergreen, walked over to it and slapped it on the side. “Hey old girl, mind if I take you for a spin?” She nodded in permission, and I began my ascent.
The hundred-year-old conifer was like a time machine. The feel of the bark under my hands and the sweet perfume of pine carried me back decades. A giggling old man is a pathetic sight, but no one was around to witness my private glee, and I indulged in the reminiscence of my youth.
Halfway up I heard voices. I positioned myself on a sturdy branch and looked back at the weathered ruin to see what the commotion was about. The girls emerged from the bar squabbling. Their voices carried easily in the stillness. I took out my binoculars and watched.
Hands-On Experience
Excerpts from Journal Six, continued…
“Give her a break, Mel,” Johanna said. “She’s had a rough day.”
“Rough days are a fact of life,” Melody retorted. “I just want to know what she can do. If things get bad I think we need to know how much of her weight we’ll have to carry, that’s all.” She turned to Aidos and put her arm around the girl’s shoulder. “I’m not picking on you, understand?”
“I understand,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”
“Can you use those arrows on your back?”
“I sometimes shoot at pine cones with them.”
“Yes, well, pine cones don’t shoot back.”
Zeeva laughed. “Melody, what do you expect her to shoot at in a small town, the high school principal?”
“Ever do any hunting?” Melody asked. “You know, shoot at something that moves? Rabbits? Woodchucks, maybe?”
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