It Was 2052, High Haven (2 page)

Up
from the low stretch and around the wide sharp bend the figure
approached. “That's not Kevin...”,
a
whisper.
W
hat
she at first sight thought was a small pony trotting beside the
figure was a large dog;
a
muscular, long legged, brindle spotted dog with pointed ears. When
her pistol came up, one deep bark blared across the distance between
the pair and her, felt like a physical thump on her chest. One finger
and one sound from the man beside the dog made it freeze in silence.

“
Don't
come any furthe
r. W
hat
do you want?” Cissy
's
voice carried across the separation.
She knew every person in this community.
This
was a stranger,
t
here
was a firm rule, strangers
we
re
always to be handled with caution and not trusted.

“
Stay Peaches,”
the man said to the dog and eased forward about two steps.

Cissy took one step back,
her hand with the gun extended steady.

“
My name is Taylor.
I promise I mean no harm. We've been walking for over three days. If
we could rest here a while? Please, I just need to get my bearings,
stop moving for a bit.”

She
took in the man that stood a few feet away from her. He appeared not
as old as her father,
yet
not as young as herself.
S
he
judged
him
to be a little over six feet tall
and
the lanky dog's head rose to right above his waist.
He wore faded tan overalls,
a heavy blanket type coat and boots. His arms
hooked
through the straps of a large back pack, a rifle on a strap was over
one shoulder.
D
ark
hair fell from beneath a
well worn western hat,
a
short
beard had a few specks
of gray and small dark sunglasses covered his eyes.
She
didn't
like
that, eyes told a lot about a person.
S
omething
about his posture gave
little doubt of his exhaustion. The dog sat obediently on the ground
behind him, panting.
What
sort of man would name a giant dog Peaches?

“
Rifle!
On the ground,” she
ordered
.

The man carefully lifted
the rifle and placed it on the rock cluttered soil, stepped back from
it.

“
See that house up
there?” she nodded towards Cody's green cabin, “Walk—go
on, move.”

The man's voice was deep,
firm even tinged with weariness, “Peaches, come.” As he
moved up toward the house, the lumbering dog at his heels, she
shouldered his rifle and followed.

The stranger was soon
ushered inside the small cabin and sat down at a long handmade table.
The dog stretched out on the porch. There were always dogs around the
family houses, one by one, big and small they assembled to check out
what seemed to be a gentle giant. “Thanks,” he said to
the woman who sat a cup of warm milk with just a dab of vanilla and
cocoa for flavor in front of him. He had removed the hat and heavy
coat, the backpack slumped at his feet. The small sunglasses went
into his flannel shirt pocket.

Cissy put away her pistol
and stuffed her hands down in her pockets to hide the shake she had
managed to conceal until she herded the man to the cabin.
Good,
she could see his eyes now. An unusual light golden brown, she didn't
recall ever seeing eyes that color. Impossible to determine if any
malice lurked there.
Was it sadness or just bone tiredness beneath
the heavy brows?
A bare streak in one side of the beard,
a
scar?
The brown eyes and the blue caught for a second.
Damn!
was I staring?
Her curiosity had caused her to carelessly inspect
him.

She never knew her family
to be cruel or even aggressive, always practical and cautious. The
stranger was far outnumbered and absolutely in their territory, no
reason not to allow him to rest and tell his story. Cody and his
wife Ashley, their friends David and Shawna lived in this house that
was actually the hub of the bonded group. Across the street lived
Sarge and Pat and their two sons. Even after David and Shawna had
first one daughter and then another, the friends wanted to continue
to live in the cabin. As the daughters grew, they added an extra
room. All of the residents of the three homes had traveled hundreds
of dangerous miles to reach this lofty sanctuary. They worked
together to survive and created a life here that none of them were
inclined to give up.

On occasion, Bubba, the
twenty-six year old son of Pat and Sarge would stomp and bluster
around and say to Cissy and her brother, “I'm getting out of
this place. There's a whole big world out there. I wanna know what's
going on. I got to see—don't you want to see?” Bubba's
rusty mop of hair topped off a young man that was in the process of
maturing. He wasn't shy about speaking his mind and his mouth often
worked much harder than his back. They, like the rest of the family
usually shrugged off his proclamations. So far, he hadn't gone away.
Cissy noticed that every day he appeared more attached to the
youngest daughter of David and Shawna.

Nearly all the family's
eldest were present and looked toward the interloper. Cody, who was
their accepted leader, said, “So, mister. What's your story,
what brought you here? We've all been here for a lot of years, it's
not the usual for a traveler to come walking up our road.”

“
Like I told the
lady,” he dipped his head toward Cissy, “the dog and I
have been walking about three days. We came from...”

An ear assaulting soprano
yapping from the front porch stopped the telling. Barks from bass to
tenor harmonized. Cissy and the visitor crunched together as they
both tried to move to the entrance. She clapped her hands, “Shut
up!” muttered, “dirty old dogs.” The pack
immediately quieted to low moans, obeying her implicit command. The
newcomer reclined as serenely as a sphinx on the weathered planks.
That indifference had obviously aggravated the tiniest bitch of the
canine herd beyond her patience. She continued to sniff and bristle
her fluff of hair.

“
Peaches...”
the low smooth voice seemed to be right in Cissy's ear. She moved
aside.

The extravagant wet
tongue slurped the small tense attacker and left her sitting on her
haunches with a spiky new hair-do. Cissy didn't feel like girlish
giggling was the thing to do right now and turned away from the
stranger and the family.

Taylor moved back to the
table, took a sip of the now cool milk. He rubbed his hand across his
beard, his expression hidden, “Sorry.”

Cody and Sarge from
across the road, scrutinized the man, didn't speak. Cissy's father
said, “We need to have your story, but first I've got to
know—why did you name that goliath
Peaches
?

By this time, the women
of the family had relaxed a bit and she could see her mother's soft
hearted perusal of the man. When Cissy first met her future family, a
tiny fur ball of a dog, named “Girl” had actually been
the cause of them coming together. That dog traveled over hundreds
of miles with the newly formed family and was more attached to Kevin
than any of the other three. The fearless petite barker on the porch
was one of many descendents of Girl. Dogs were guardians, companions
and there was hardly a one of the family that didn't have a real
appreciation for their value.

Emily said, “Are
you hungry? How 'bout a biscuit with egg?”

“
I'd appreciate
that,” said the man. He looked through the dusty screen door to
the porch, “When I found the dog it wasn't much more than a
pup. Of course, he was bigger than any puppy I'd ever seen. Anyway,
he wasn't in very good shape, dirty and skinny as spaghetti. He had
uncovered a rusted old can of peaches, gnawed and dug at it until he
punched through. His muzzle all sticky and covered with peach syrup,
he didn't even growl when he saw me.” The teller shook his head
and the hair brushed his shoulder, “I believe that if I had
reached down for a peach, he would've shared. You wouldn't want to
be bit by those jaws though. He's saved my ass more than once.”

Jeff said, “Okay,
one mystery solved.” He looked from one man to the next of the
family, “Why don't you eat that biscuit and then we'll hear the
rest of your story.”

Cissy wasn't sure why,
she felt a bit relieved. Her father and the other men of the family
were not usually the
shoot first, ask questions later
type,
though she had often over the years been given that advice. It was a
good thing for the most part. She wanted to know more about this man.
While the big dog might be gentle, she was far from convinced that
the owner was of the same persuasion. Sometimes she felt that she
would be ashamed if her family knew her long buried and deep motives
for being distrustful and cautious. She wasn't an innocent, some
threats were not negotiable. An intuition told her that this
undefined as yet person was very aware of that fact of life.

***

All
that listened began to follow the tracks of Taylor.
On
the day that the lights went off, never to come back on,
he
was just a boy of
8
years old. His family
had
settled into the housing on the Colorad
o
Springs
military base a couple of weeks before. He was completely fascinated
by the awesome mountains
that
surrounded the new home
with their snow covered tops.
Heck,
he
'
d
never even seen snow before, never where they used to live.
Dad
had promised to take him hiking on those mountains and the thought of
it made all kinds of wild thoughts go through his mind. Today though,
he wanted to get inside.
T
hat
show was on the Discovery Channel about bears.

His
father was a lieutenant in the Army, his mom took care of the family,
the house—it seemed she took care of most things to him. His
fourteen year old sister mostly
took
care of herself; her hair, her makeup,
not
her clothes. She
nearly
wore them out, changing in and out of them and throwing them in piles
on the floor. When the lights and everything else went dead, he heard
the
whiny voice from her
favorite
seat in front of the mirror in her
room, “S—T!”

He mouthed the words that he knew his
mother would follow up with,
“Don't-you-use-that-language-young-lady.”

Three
weeks later, there was still no lights or television and not a lot of
food. His father would walk to the end of the street in the morning
and climb on a big military truck. Often, he wouldn't return until
the next morning. He
brought
small boxes of groceries, was always tired and mad, or was it
sad
?
They
were
given strict orders to not leave the house, keep locked up. One day
when his father caught him sitting on the small back steps, he
grabbed his shoulders so hard he thought for sure he heard his bones
crunch, “God-dammit boy. I told you to stay in this house.”
Dad
wasn't the mushy type, but he'd never handled him so roughly or
looked at him the way he did that day.

Taylor
stayed inside. His sister
was
n
ot
pro
ne
to mind, one
day she was gone. Two days later, his father came home carrying her
like
a child in his arms,
wrapped
up in a dark green military blanket. Alive, but beaten close to
death, dozens of small
slices
on her body
and
raped. He didn't know what
raped
meant,
had to be bad. He truly believed the house would wash away in the
tears that his mother cried. Before the sun was up the next morning
his father arrived in a grumbling army jeep with no top and two tanks
of fuel on the sides.