“Thrust quick with the biggest knife you can get. Remember you only have one chance to kill him before he kills you. Go for his body holes where the knife can go in fast, like the nose, the eyes, or the mouth. Stab into the hole in his backside and pull up through the stomach to finish him.”
He put the knife back. He looked around and saw the small framed picture that had fallen on the floor. It was of his foster parents, Mimi and Fred, the farmers who lived next door when his parents died in the tenant house fire where they lived. They’d taken him in, brought him up. They were all he could remember of his childhood.
Mimi made him the pumpkin pies he loved. Fred worked him, taught him to respect and to fight. He thought about their walks in the spring fields, the man’s heavy rubber boots squashing in the fresh mud, his comment that it was God’s tears that made the soil fresh for the farmer, made the new crops grow.
He thought, “Am I running out, taking this job in Baltimore?”
Chapter 7
Wednesday, July 10, 6PM
Andy had asked him out to her home to look at what she had discovered about the pile of stones near the mound. It was evening, that kind of hot summer twilight on the Eastern Shore of Maryland that makes the sides of the country roads dark with humid shadows and the western sky a deep red.
The lawn was overgrown beside the brick walkway to the front door. He made a point to notice the stand of mulberry trees to his left where her father had discovered the other mound. It was a patch that extended about one hundred yards square, not as large as the swamp mound but large nevertheless. A porch stretched in front of him, wide as the front of the house in the Eastern shore style with three dark green rocking chairs on it, books piled around each chair, and a once white wicker table with empty china cups as for tea or coffee.
He mopped back his black hair and wondered if his shorts and polo shirt were good enough dress for having dinner at Andy’s home. At any rate it was too hot and too late for him to go home and change.
He opened the screen door. The main wooden door was already opened back into the inside hall. A dark cool entryway had light coming from a door at least twenty feet ahead of him. Shelves were built into the walls and several cats sat on them, each steadily eyeing him.
“Andy,” he called.
She answered from the distant lighted room. “Come on in. We’re out here.”
He heard another voice, more husky and mature, talking to someone, “You just be quiet. Your meal is almost ready, Saturn.”
Saturn, he thought. That’s the name of a planet. Then he remembered why he was seeing so many cats. Father Phillip had told him Andy’s mother was a cat fancier. She had attracted and fed every stray in the area and refused to let any of them go away starving. Two cats brushed against his ankles. He reached down and patted them.
“Out here,” Andy said again, her voice bright. He smelled a delicious odor of grilling tomatoes and chicken. As he entered the room, two cats proceeding him like guides, he saw a four foot long framed drawing mounted on the wall between old pine cupboards. The drawing was of early Chesapeake Native American men and women, showing them in a long dugout canoe fishing in a local river. They were naked except for small beaded skirts around their waists.
To John’s surprise, Andy and her mother were dressed like the natives in the old drawing. Like the ancient people both wore only a short skirt and were barefoot. Andy’s mother was a tall muscular woman. Her skin was darker than Andy’s, her long hair deep red with flecks of gray and white, held back from her work by a bright colored headband. He could see the similar strong features in their faces. The two women stood by the counter surrounded with tomatoes and greens as they prepared a multicolored salad. To the older woman’s right side was a doorway to an outside deck. John glimpsed a table set brightly with candles and flowers and further away a smoking charcoal grill.
“Mother, this is John Neale,” Andy said.
The older woman looked at him and nodded with a large smile, showing strong white teeth. “Welcome,” she said, in a pleasant but commanding voice as she wiped then held out her hand. “I’m Doctor Robbins.”
Andy grinned through her freckles, pushed her hair back and said, “I bet you’re surprised at our outfits. Want to try one of the Nanticoke skirts? The Nanticoke answer to summer air conditioning. We think they are better for your body than the machines.”
He smiled, hesitated for only a moment, as both of his hosts watched his reaction, and said, with a short uptake of breath, “Sure.” A large cat brushed his right ankle.
“That’s Saturn saying hello, John,” Andy said as she gave him a brightly beaded skirt. “This should fit and make you comfortable in the heat. We don’t use electric air conditioning.”
“Ok,” he said.
“Go ahead and change. We don’t mind,” she said and turned back to helping her mother. After he changed he patted the sides of the short skirt and said, “It’s cooler, all right. I guess the Indians had the right idea.”
“We’re pretty much in favor of Nanticoke customs here, John. Mother and Daddy started wearing these things back in the Fifties. Diane Webber, the naturist, and the other friends they had in those days all wore them,” Andy added. She explained, “Diane was one of Mother’s feminist heroines of the Fifties.”
Mother said, “The ancients didn’t know about solar cells but they figured out that our bodies drew energy from sunlight. So it was more healthy to be open to the sun when possible. Summer was a time to store energy for the sunless winters.”
“The golden sun,” said John, remembering the old priest’s blurted words as he was dying. He felt himself drifting into the world of these women, a wonderful free and intelligent world. He said, “Makes sense.” He moved his waist from side to side and grinned. “Like a hula dancer.”
Andy’s smile in return seemed to him at that moment the friendliest he had ever seen.
He said, “Did you interview descendants of the local tribes in your research?”
Andy said, “No. The Nanticoke Lenni Lenape connection elsewhere in the Chesapeake region was not our primary interest. Those other villages feared the Nanticoke tribe here in River Sunday. It was because this particular group was very mysterious. According to the descriptions of them in the old diaries written by the early European traders and settlers, the tribe lived near the mounds like guards keeping others away from them. From what we have researched, we don’t think they built the mounds, just revered them something like we do our modern churches. They seem to have had a whole different concept of Manito.”
“Manito?” asked John.
“That was the god figure in their religion.”
John said, “You had told me your father was an astronomer too.”
She handed him a carrot stick. “He taught astronomy at the University of Maryland and he researched this local tribe of Native Americans, the Nanticokes.”
“Why?”
“He wondered about the strange beliefs they held. He discovered information about it in old colonial journals. It had a lot to do with the universe and he got interested.”
“I was his assistant,” Doctor Robbins said. “He died only a few years ago,” she added, sadness moving over her face.
“I’m sorry,” said John.
The doctor brightened and said, “He said before he died that he was going to be part of a flower, a nice yellow one, on some planet at the other end of the universe. He’ll be happy, I’m sure.” She stroked a tabby who had climbed up on the counter. “I’ll finish dinner. Show John the legends about Manito and the children,” she said.
“Children?” asked John.
“Sure,” said Andy. She stood up, pulled two fresh beers from the refrigerator and handed one to John. “Come on.” She led him out of the room into a wide hallway. She switched on a light and he saw it was more like a long room with the far end having an open door. Both side walls were hung with large sheets of paper filled with columns of scribbled handwritten lists
.
“My parents worked here for years organizing notes and Mother and I are continuing to do the same. I have started writing the chapters that bring together all the work.”
John walked slowly and carefully along the wall reading the lists and their notations. He kept his hand on his skirt, which tended to slip down his thighs.
Andy explained, running her hands over the piles of books stacked along the walls, “Mother translated a lot of this from the original Spanish and French explorers who wrote in their travel logs about these people. It took years to collect the original works. My parents traveled all over Europe to find them in museums and private collections.”
She looked around with pride. “Manito is found in all the religions of the Native Americans, but this tribe had a different interpretation. We call it “Manito of the Children,” she said.
John could see that the lists were summaries of stories with simple notes illustrating that they were animal legends or tales of journeys by the local tribe. He moved his eyes over the mass of material. He read out loud, “The children arrived in canoes from the south to bring the wisdom of Manito.” That sounds impossible. Your father thought that children were the source of this material?”
She nodded. “See these lists. Mother and I have organized the book in the following chapters. She read them from the wall charts.
Chapter One. Good and Evil.
Subtitle: Manito is the good energy that with evil energy binds the universe together in balance.
Chapter Two. The Universe.
Subtitle: As night and day are evil and good, the entire universe is likewise evil and good.
Chapter Three. Life.
Subtitle: When you receive life you are created with good energy which is soon tainted with the evil energy in the world around you. You must constantly strive to keep your energies in balance by learning to love, the only way to survive the lifelong battle of good and evil inside you.
Chapter Four. Death.
Subtitle: At the end of your life what is left of your evil and good energies will rejoin that in the universe but only the good will go on to be shared in new life.
“So this Manito is the god force,” said John.
“The good energy is what my father called it,” she answered.
“Like electricity.”
“He didn’t know what it was made of, John. Let me try to put it into a perspective. From what he read in the stories, good survives and bad does not. The sun is connected to things good. Sun is warm and night is cold so good is warm and bad or evil is cold. The legends tell that the good in us connects with that universal energy when we leave our physical body. Then it comes back united with other good energy in new life.”
“After we die in this life,” said John.
“Yes, it’s like some kind of survival of the fittest, as if good is the only thing fit to survive.”
John shook his head, “No disrespect to your father, those children coming in canoes is a lot to believe.”
“You’re right. Children don’t seem capable. Think about it. A lot of these ideas are in other religions around the world. How did this small tribe of Native Americans come up with philosophies that resemble those of far greater civilizations existing thousands of miles away and at different centuries in time? The same thing seems to have happened with certain groups all over the world like the Egyptians, the Mayans, the Incas. That’s the question that fascinated my father and intrigues Mother and me.”
John paused for a moment, then said, “So with all this wisdom, why do you go to the little church in River Sunday? I mean, it seems so different, like, no Jesus or anything.”
“I went because of Father Tom,” she said. “Besides, Manito’s not so different from the regular religions we know.”
She moved away from the wall. “Come on. I discovered a possibility for that word ‘fancy’ we found.”
He followed her, stepping over hordes of cats of all sizes and shapes, which rubbed against his bare feet and legs. They went through adjoining rooms in the house, the pictures on the wall dim in the semi-darkness of the evening. He noticed that most of them were of star systems, nebulas and constellations, the pictures in vivid colors that dominated the dark.
He was awed by the human and animal earthiness of this house and of Andy and Doctor Robbins. Yet Andy, as she moved ahead of him, her bare feet padding on the wooden floor, seemed unimpressed by the cosmos around her, or for that matter, his presence in her unique world. He wanted to know more about her.
“So besides writing about the children of the Manito what do you do, Andy?”
“I write a few articles for science magazines about space subjects. I give talks to astronomy groups in Baltimore. One of my articles is monthly. It is a trip through space among the constellations. People like it,” she said.
“I’d like to read some of them,” he said.
“You can be one of my fans.” She added, “I think you’ll be a good fan.”
“Why?”
She said, “Because you care about things. Father Tom saw that you have a good heart. That’s why he liked you.”
He hitched up his skirt again. “I think I need a tailor.”
She said, “Lawyers care about people.”
“Sometimes I’m not as sure.”
“Well, you’re not making big fees off your clients. I mean, someone said you live in a trailer so you are not rich.”
“Yeah. At least I can afford to have a lot of wildlife for friends.” He laughed, “My life has a lot of confusion right now. It’s hard for me to figure out whether to be poor and successful or to be rich and successful. Seems like money is the big question in all of it.”
“Are you regretting your choice to work here with farmers?” She grinned. “It’s probably not any of my business,” she said.
“That’s OK. It’s what I thought I wanted. Now I’m not so sure. I owe too much money to too many people and farmers don’t pay their bills.”
She said, “It’s always that way. Even if you make more, you spend more so you don’t really get the bills paid off. I think it comes down to being happy with what you do. That’s the real success. Father Tom is as much a success in my eyes as one of the billionaires I read about in the paper.”
John said, “It takes a lot of courage to be like Father Tom, giving his life to others and being so poor.”
“So maybe courage is what it’s all about. Maybe it’s not so brave just to make a lot of money. I think it’s been a controversy since humans first discovered wealth and its power over others.”
“Well, one thing for sure. These days there isn’t enough money to go around. My clients become broke so a few other people in the business can harvest the money, get all the rewards. I’m still not sure I want to be on that rich end of things. Anyway, I had to make a choice. I’ve decided to leave my work here and take a better paying job at a law firm in Baltimore.”
She said, “Like I said, you have a good heart. I think you will work it out for yourself. I know I had to go through the same thing in my own life. I’m sorry to hear that you are leaving. I bet Father Tom didn’t like that decision.”
“He didn’t know about it.” He looked around the room they had entered. It was walled with books. Three windows let in a view of the outside night. The books were mostly on astronomy. His eyes moved over the titles.
Noticing where he was looking, she said, “These were my father’s. I’m afraid I read more on the Internet in my work than I do in books.”
“Your father influenced you in the astronomy thing.”
“Oh, yes. Like, he was always telling me about Cygnus, another one of his systems.”
John said, “You can point it out to me sometime.”
“It’s a fascinating star system. There are religions all over the world which teach that this star is related to the afterlife. Cygnus is named for swans and many of the faiths have swan motifs. There’s even one theory that cosmic rays have been measure
d from this star that hit the earth at various important times of human evolution, influencing the development of people.”
The room had an antique rug with its edges frayed from foot traffic. At the far end of the room was a desk, its top covered with stacks of books and reports, a large leather chair tilted backward from the edge, its back toward John. Facing it among the papers was the monitor of a computer, its screen alive with lines of print.
He noticed several books on the desk by an author named Velikovsky. “Who’s this writer?”
“An asteroid guru,” she said. “Like, according to him, Venus hit the earth and caused a great amount of damage. He writes that he found evidence of this in the writings of most early religions and philosophers.”
“What did the Nanticoke legends say?”
“We couldn’t find anything about it.” She pointed to another book, this one written by Levy, a book on comets. “I like him better. As for me, I have a couple of asteroid web sites I blog each day.” She bent over and turned off the computer screen. “You know, reading about asteroids and space, and studying my father’s notes, really got me interested in the past,” she said.
“I thought you were an astronomer,” said John.
“Yes, but astronomy is the past,” she said.
“I don’t understand. Space is kind of like the future,” John said.
“It’s about the past too. When you look out at the stars you see light from the past of the universe just getting to us.”
“Anyway, you came to hear about the word on the stone.” Andy turned to some papers on the desk and said, “I thought it might have been written by pirates.”
“That’s as good a guess as anything else. It was highly crafted and certainly didn’t look like the work of a farmer naming his hog pen.”
Gold (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 4) Page 8