The Second Intelligent Species: The Cyclical Earth (24 page)

Chapter 35

An Atlatl

Just as they did with Emanuel’s baptism, Jorge and Maria officiated at their own wedding. This too was recorded on the wall. Freshwater clams and raccoon was the feast served. No flowers, no priest, no rice, just witnesses. That was good enough. Their vows were accepted as truth by all present. Done deal.

This was one of those days. Everyone had enough food and water, the chores were done. We lay around watching the children play. Made me wonder why so many children were neglected in the past. They provided more entertainment than anything that once had been beamed around the planet.

Without warning one of the girls would get up and add one more thing to the last bit of space remaining on the wall.

Tara and Eve were playing with the empty clamshells. They would throw them against the wall to watch them break, a trick they learned from Marcos. They didn’t have the strength to break many, but when they did it was a major accomplishment
followed by great celebration on their part: dancing and laughing and jumping around.

Beth and I were lying on some of the larger pelts up against the wall away from the breeze. Our spot was nearest the fire. Seniority had its privileges.

Maria came walking over to us. “Nick you haven’t held your godchild in a while.” She forced the baby into my arms. “Beth holds him all the time. Don’t you love little Manny?”

Doing my best not to have his head break off in my hands, I held Jorge’s son. “Oh… he’s nice.” What an idiot. “Of course I love him. I’m just not much of a baby person.” I handed Manny back and stood up to throw more railroad ties on the fire. Occasionally the wind would shift and blow the smoke directly at us, but we found that if we kept a hot fire, more smoke would be burned off.

Dejected, Maria handed the boy to Beth, who gladly accepted. “What’s wrong, was that miserable old man mean to my baby?” She held him up and kissed him repeatedly. “Ninny will take care of him later. I think he needs another stress session, old grump.” She laid the baby down to check the diaper that had once served as a shirt to some factory worker named Evans.

Marcos was throwing a stick at a ledge along the edge of the river. He placed an old soda can on the sandy bank. He only hit the can a couple
of times, and then with the side of the stick as it hit the hill sideways. The can would tumble into the water, only to be retrieved again and set up for another try. We all enjoyed his antics.

Around his neck dangled a new trophy. The raccoon he harvested was a boar. Few people know it, but the male raccoon has a bone in its penis. I thought it would make a nice trophy for him, dangling from a beaver leather string. Every time he caught a boar, he could add to his necklace. The women were disgusted with the idea. No matter how much they voiced their opinions, the necklace stayed. Of course I took the brunt of the tongue lashings.

Sarah put her hand on Pete’s leg and said, “Pete, go get me one of those trees that Marcos made that spear out of. One only about one inch around, but bring me roots and all.”

“What do you want that for?” Pete asked.

“Just get me one with a one inch base and lots of roots. I’ll show you when you get back.” This was an order, not a request.

Poor Pete. He really didn’t have much to choose from. There were no more fish in the sea.

Pete was only gone about five minutes when he returned soaked from the waist down, with her tree, roots and all.

Sarah inspected the tree to see how the roots were formed. “That should do just fine. Now cut
off the roots about seven or eight inches from the bottom and we’ll make him another spear.”

“Then what did you want the roots for?” Pete asked in a disgusted tone. He wouldn’t have gone in the water if not for the roots.

“You’ll see. Give me your knife.” No please or thank you ever came from Sarah’s mouth.

Once Pete handed her the roots and the knife she started to hollow out a bend in the base, where the roots met the trunk. After about a half hour or so of concentrated digging, she had made a hole into the roots a little bigger than the diameter of Marcos’ spear. “Marcos, bring your stick over here. I made you something, but put that can back up first,” Sarah yelled.

He placed his target back up on the hill, supporting the bottom with rocks. When the can would stay in place, he turned and came splashing over to Sarah.

“Did you see me hit it? Nick, do you think I could kill a raccoon with this?” he asked as he handed his weapon to Sarah.

“You might scare one away,” I said.

“You’ll be able to when you practice more,” Sarah said as she placed the end of his spear into the hole she carved. Then she laid down the spear and carved a little more at the roots. Now the hole was the size she wanted. What she had made was
a device to put the end of his spear into before he threw it.

“Hold this and your spear like this,” she demonstrated how to hold the new invention, handle and spear in line with one another, spear resting in the hollowed out end. “This is called an Atlatl. Early man used to use them to hunt small animals.”

This caught Beth’s attention. “Some believe this invention is what gave Homo sapiens the advantage over Neanderthals long ago. Isn’t that right?”

“This handle will make it so you can throw farther and more accurately.” Sarah’s lack of response seemed out of place since they both worked so hard on the wall together. “There’s no reason you couldn’t kill something if you get good enough with it. Just hold it like this; hold on to the handle and let go of the spear when you throw.” She looked at Beth and said, “Yeah, that’s what they say.”

As Marcos practiced, Beth and Sarah watched. The overlapping of history and science was the only thing that these two nurses could find to talk about. Once they started talking the rest of us couldn’t get a word in.

It took a while but Marcos killed that can several times while we were there.

Chapter 36

More Instruction

The time spent at the trestle turned out to be our happiest. Leaving reminded me of the last day of a vacation when you packed suitcases before an early flight; we didn’t want to go, but knew we had to. The food at the trestle had all been harvested. There was no reason to stay.

Days and weeks were finally measurable. The light shown through the clouds barely enough to distinguish day from night. Our sleep patterns returned to normal, and our moods improved as well. Sadly, sunshine still couldn’t poke its way through the thick cover for longer than a minute or two a week, but when it did, all eyes looked up.

One time while our group stopped to make a fire, the sun came out. The thickest clouds parted without warning and the star’s rays warmed everyone the instant it touched our faces. Like Aztecs, we all worshiped the sun from the moment it showed blinding light on our dismal surroundings.

The women stripped every child and held each of them up over their heads. Jorge held little Manny over his head, he was taller than Maria.

“What to hell are they doing?” I asked Pete.

“I don’t know, something about crickets,” he said.

Sarah laughed. “Rickets, not crickets, you big dummy. The children are lacking vitamin D. Sunshine is good for them, and without it they could get rickets.” She laughed again. “Crickets.”

Beth turned while still holding naked Tara. “I want you to save the livers from anything you catch from now on too. We’ll give them to the kids. That’s another way they can get vitamin D.”

Like someone who suffered from seasonal stress disorder, I could feel my demeanor improve as the rays warmed my face.

All too soon it turned dark again, the children were dressed, and we went back to our nocturnal ways. Once again, the fire was our only source of light.

We were staying next to a wall with a makeshift roof that Pete and I had constructed with the fur tarp.

Travelling from swamp to swamp left us without fresh meat the first day in a new shelter. We found that it was better to send at least one of the party ahead to find shelter or swamps showing good signs of life. He would set traps, gather wood to get the fire started, and then return to lead the rest.

Jorge drew the short straw. I was leery about sending him out alone. “Make sure you mark your route so you can find your way back to us. We’ll have supper on when you get back.”

Kissing his family goodbye, he took five of the leg-hold traps and a canteen of water, and trudged off into the dark.

I knew that Jorge would be back in two days. I had a promise to keep. Time to earn my keep. Before I went out to check my traps I threw some more wood on the fire. Marcos gathered enough to keep the area warm and lit all day while we were gone. We would get some more while we were checking traps. It seemed we’d been bringing home more wood than meat for about two weeks. Pickings had been hard since we left the trestle.

I threw one last log on the fire before waking Beth. I kissed her, and then whispered so as not to wake the others, “We’ll be back with supper.”

She looked up at me with Tara still asleep in her arms, gave me one of those looks of desperation that tears my heart out, then smiled and said, “Be careful. I love you.”

Her goodbye seemed more solemn than normal. “Don’t worry, hon. We’re going to make it,” I said, as I combed my fingers through her hair. “I think the sun’s poking through more and more each day.”

The fire lit up the shelter as Marcos and I left for the swamp. I had done this so many times I knew every stream, stump, and stone by heart. Using a torch wasn’t necessary, I just had to follow the water and I’d come on to my traps.

One by one, empty trap after empty trap, the morning went on. One trap had caught something, but it had pulled away. We needed to cut some teeth in the jaws so the animal’s chance of getting away decreased. When I had trapped before, the laws stated that traps could not have teeth. There was no law now. Our conscience was our guide. Feeding all of us was what was important. We needed a hacksaw. We’d left one behind when we abandoned the fork truck, but we could only carry so much.

“Trap number eleven should be just down here,” I told Marcos. I strained to see in the darkness, looking for a stick standing upright in the mud with a white ribbon tied to the end. I took a few more steps to find my exact location. I realized I’d gone too far. Had I missed it or had it been set
?

“Here it is Nick…I think,” Marcos yelled excitedly, but without conviction.

I reached for my Bic lighter. It had long since run out of fuel but the sparker still worked. When I flicked it a couple of times I noticed my flag was laying in the water.

The feeling I got then, was that of a parent on Christmas morning, when there were Christmas mornings. Marcos was as excited as he would be with a new toy wrapped in shiny gold paper.

That stick hadn’t fallen down by itself, and he knew it. I had tied some wire to a log; the end of the wire held a fishhook baited with the guts of a muskrat. The log had been pulled out towards the pond, but got hung up on the rocks Marcos strategically placed.

I waded out into the water, reached down, and fished in the dark for the wire. I wanted Marcos to learn, but he wasn’t ready for this quite yet. “I could lose a finger this way, you know.” We both laughed remembering the beaver incident. Finding the wire, I started pulling, hoping to feel something pull back. As I pulled, I felt tension. I backed away from the shore and handed the wire to Marcos.

He walked backwards higher onto the bank, slipping and falling twice.

I was cautiously waiting for what I knew was on the other end. Our catch’s unique shape broke above the water line. “Dinner!” I pulled the snapper onto dry land. Now I could keep my promise to Jorge. As I attended to the reptile, I instructed, “Just pull the wire until you hear the hiss, then carefully put your foot down and hold the shell down till you can find the head. Hold the wire taunt to
keep the head out.” I struggled to pull the head all the way out to keep my fingers away from its jaws. I started to saw. The thick skin of the reptile’s neck was as tough as leather. When I got to the spine I had to twist the blade to get between the vertebrae. A crunching sound told me that I had easy cutting from there on. “Then slice around the shell until the hissing stops.” Surprising how fast you develop standard operating procedures after you lose a finger to an animal in the dark.