Children of the Sunrise
Chapter 13
In the hour before midnight, our little camp has settled into the relative quiet that one finds in the wild, a raw, almost threatening quiet that unfolds with the careful listening, uncovering layer upon layer of sound. I discovered, when I was younger, that these noises disturb most people, that a vague disquiet settles over them, no doubt an inheritance from ancestors who faced real threats in the gathering dark.
I had placed my sleeping bag apart from my the bulk of our party. Benjamin and Joe the Frisby Cat skulked through the brush close by. Joey lay huddled in a pile with Dusty and several of the other children. Jubie, lying next to him, stretched his jaw with a contented yawn that ended in a doggy squeal, then put his head down and went back to sleep.
Seventyfive feet away, Sam and Mary Glennon, Sister Willa and Variety sat around the last, dying flames of the state park style BBQ pit in hushed conversation. John Sr. and the older boys had all gone to bed. The horses, standing close together for comfort in the new and frightening country, nuzzled each other just outside the glow of the fire. Children and their animals lay in small heaps all over the campsite.
Laying under a tree not far away, I saw the new boy, Jebediah. His glasses caught the moonlight from their resting place on a nearby rock. As I watched him, a dark shape dropped lazily from the tree above, grabbed the glasses, and sprang back into the tree. I had promised myself two hours before not to intrude. Arthur and Jebediah had been at this sibling combat since they had piled out of the hidden compartment in the Uhaul. The gibbon obviously used pranks and harrassment to express his affection for the boy, a tack that, despite his constant complaining, Jebediah seemed to understand. The first time the ape lifted the boy's glasses, several of us took up the comical chase but the mischievious monk was much too fast and we quickly gave up. A few minutes later, Arthur came flying out of a tree and sheepishly returned the spectacles. I think he did the whole thing just so he and the boy could make up.
The campground was unmanned and deserted when we arrived. Normally there are rangers at the park, even in the off season, but when we drove up, a sign was hanging from the entrance stating "Campground Closed Until Further Notice: Order of Sheriff's Dept. Gillespie County". Beneath it were a couple of fresh bullet holes in the middle of a postcript written in red spray paint..."The Lioness Rules!" We couldn't imagine what that meant but it wasn't exactly comforting. We had no place to go so we ignored the sign. Still, we kept everything packed except the bare necessities for camping as we wanted to be prepared for the earliest possible start the next day.
Sam and I plan to ease into Fredricksburg early tomorrow morning to see about buying a good, used truck so we can abandon the old Ford. No telling how crazy things are getting with the folks in Fredricksburg. They're of German stock...that made them "redneck, facist, cedar chopping, goat roping imperialist pigs" when I visited the "Rock" in my hippy days. When I came back a few years ago, I was amazed to find that all those nasty people had turned friendly as could be. It was quite an improvement. I was glad to see they had changed their ways. Amazing how the world shifts with your attitudes.
I hate to see the Ford go. On the other hand, I'm not too keen on driving a hot vehicle. The worst part is that I'll miss my tape deck. The truck's old but the sound system is top of the line. Guess I'll have to make do with a boom box.
I heard a faint sound far off in the distance that I could have sworn was the scream of a puma. I've only heard a cougar in the wild a couple of times in my life. It's an unsettling sound. I saw one once while hiking in the mountains of northern Utah. I was scrambling up a rocky slope, the site of a recent rockslide, when the cat stuck it's head over the edge of an outcropping about thirty yards up the slope. He must have been sunning on the rock and was no doubt full, lazy and a bit unconcerned. Not me, I was very concerned. I got down that mountain the fastest way I could, which happened to be on my butt. Gave me a bad case of cougaroids.
A few of the dogs perked up at the sound, but feeling the protection of the fire, they settled back down to sleep. I slid on my hiking boots, grabbed my fanny pack and followed Benajmin and Joe the Frisby Cat into the brush.
I've been to the rock a couple of times in the past so I know the area generally. If you skirt the jagged mound, keeping to your right, you'll eventually catch the rise that leads to the skirts of the larger slope. There's a thin gorge that separates the two mounds. It leads to a small lake about a half mile on the other side of the rocks. If the water table is high, water seeps from the fissures in the rock in a thousand small places. Lichen and little tufts of vegetation hang onto a sparse existence on the balding face as you get higher and higher towards the top.
It's smart to watch for snakes. I know in the westerns, a cowboy riding under the desert sun always rides up on a rattlesnake coiled on a flat rock, but in real life, rattlers are nocturnal. Cold blooded, with no way to effectively dissipate the heat, a rattler on a hot rock would cook. They hunt at night no matter what you saw on Hopalong Cassidy. That's why most Indian people in the Southwest had a distaste for night travel. That's also why the first thing I do before hiking is find a good walking stick. It's great for moving the brush around and creates a good target for an irritated rattler, much better than your ankle.
Snakes are like most critters in the country, given the chance, when some blind and deaf citybred hiker comes bumbling though the woods with all the delicacy of a herd of buffalo, they'll split. I'm half citybred. I only make as much noise as one buffalo...albeit, perhaps a drunken buffalo in army boots. Still, my relative stealth increases my odds of catching one of my little bellycrawling buddies unawares. Thus, the stick. Besides, carrying a staff makes me feel like Moses in the wilderness...
After about fifteen minutes, I had picked my way along the base of the first rock and was starting the assent to the top of the main mound. It's an even, steady incline. The big rock, from a few thousand feet up, must look like somebody threw a huge granite baseball at the earth and buried it about three quarters into the mud. It's amazingly spherical.
The cats darted in and out of the moonlight, running ahead, then disappearing into the underbrush. Benjamin's tabby coat was easy to pick out but Joe's slinking, black form would stay almost invisible until he turned back to look at me, then sometimes I would catch the eerie green glint of his eyes in the moonlight. As we moved out of the brush and onto the open face of the granite mound and began the slow incline to the top, they began to follow the sparse shadows created by the few plants that clung to life in hollows where a little dust had settled.
Enchanted Rock is a place of power. It has always been so. When I had journeyed to the rock earlier times in my life, there had always been people crawling all over the huge stone, each seeking his own catharsis, his own tie with the infinite. It has that kind of effect on you. Now however, I was alone...in the night...the moon was full... the whole effect was amplified.
As I climbed, the sense of overwhelming mystical power was almost tangible. Nighthawks and bats creased the moon. A chill wind washed over the face of the rock, carrying wisps of dust and dried vegetation like silt on the bottom of the ocean. High, ragged clouds hurtled across the sky like black wraiths after a soul.
As I made my way upward, I thought about the universe my "friend" had described on the way from Houston. An endless universe of life, uncounted forms and endless cultures of intelligent beings living on worlds far beyond the dreams of the most creative imagination...even worlds within worlds...species of microscopic sentient beings... other creatures so huge that an entire planet could support only one breeding pair. Things that lived in the cold void between the stars, sailing on winds of light. He told of godlike powers and advanced beings that sit at the very font of the creation of the universes. He said all these impossible and uncounted living things one day faced the test of the Awakening and came to either know themselves as part of universal life or fell back into the primitive mire to struggle again for thousands of years.
It was hard to contain the vision his speaking left in my mind. As he talked I felt myself slipping away to nothingness, my identity reduced to a particle in the endless vista of creation, a creation where I mattered not and where my life was only the slightest whisper of a breeze in the face of a hurricane. I had tried to get him to comfort me, to grant me some special status on the universal scale to save me from oblivion but he would not. He confirmed my greatest fears about my insignificance. He kept saying "Your power lies in the whole, not in the individual. You are nothing alone. Go past yourself."
On this bleak and magical rock, exposed to the hurtling stars and the rasping wind, my soul baked in microwaves from the moon, I could almost live with his words, his improbable universe. I could almost see the edge of another way of being, another body I might inhabit in a world to come, a body with a mind and senses attuned to plumbing the depth of present experience instead of rehashing the reactive whimperings of the past, a body in the light, filled with the magic of the everyday, flush with the miracle of each moment.
Joe the Frisby Cat stood on a bulbous outcropping near the summit. His irridescent midnight fur rippled in the breeze. Against the background of the moonlit rock he looked like a silhouette, a chiseled lithograph of the cat that wasn't there. A magic feline looking glass. It almost seemed like I could have reached through him into another world. He stood there, his nose to the wind like a statue, then suddenly, he started, dropped to his belly, and like a flash, darted into the darkness.
Still rapturous in the mountains spell, I wondered absently at what had startled him. The rock looked empty and Joe is far from faint hearted. Working to slow down my labored breathing, I walked the last few feet up to the high point in the rock where he had been resting. Here, at the summit, I could see for miles in all directions. I was overwhelmed by the incredible sight for a while. I stood there, catching my breath, devouring the dark and mottled landscape that lay like a rumpled blanket beneath the endless sky.
Just inside my periferal vision to the left, I thought I saw movement beside another swollen outcropping in the rock. I turned my attention to it, saw something and froze. There, not twenty feet away, tail switching nervously, stood a full grown mountain lion. I was so shocked, I almost forgot to be scared. The whole scenario was so unreal that my mind paid little attention to the screaming voices in my spine.
I slowly and deliberately pulled the walking stick up in front of me and spoke to the cat. "Big girl...good girl..." I purred at the animal. The puma let out a low growl but stayed where it stood. It looked back over its shoulder to the left. "What you got over there big kitty?" I slowly stepped off the rock and started easing to the right. If the cat had cubs, I was in big trouble and needed to move away. A cougar mom is just like any other mom...unreasonable.
The cat let out a cough and moved towards me. I froze. The voices strongly suggesting that I run were a lot more audible but even scared to death, I had been around too many animals to make a stupid move like that. If I ran, I knew she'd be on my back.
"Take it easy girl...you don't want to mess with me...I'm too big and ugly. You want a nice rabbit or a tasty sheep. Good girl..." I cooed. The cat growled and made a sudden rush in my direction. I made the biggest yell I could come up with given the iceburg in my gut, dropped to a fighting crouch and stuck my staff in her face. She batted at it with her front paw, growled loud enough curdle my blood, then turned her back and walked off. Still keeping a watchful eye in my direction, she walked about twenty feet away and sat on her haunches.
I figured I was dismissed and started backpedaling down the rock as fast as the irregular footing would allow. After I made it about thirty yards downslope, casting constant nervous glances back at the cat, I saw something that made me stop. There, stark against the moon, with her hand on the scruff of the big lion's neck, stood a young woman.
I shouted "Hey!".(I've always been a great conversationalist.)
The girl or woman, I couldn't tell which, looked towards me, then both she and the puma slipped into the shadows and disappeared. I was paralyzed by the sight. I didn't know what to do. It looked like she was on good terms with the cat but I had never heard of a domesticated cougar and I wasn't so sure I shouldn't try to save the lady from the lion. Not that I had any clear idea how I was going to do that with a stick. I started back up the hill, hesitated, then looked down the slope below me and was stricken by another sight.
There, treking up the hill in an irregular line like a herd of mountain goats were the kids and animals from the camp.
"Get back" I yelled "There's a lion up here." The line stopped. Two of the small people towards the front conferred, then the entire group started up the hill again. Towards the end of the line I could see Variety and the other adults trudging along with the others. Several of the larger dogs were almost up to where I stood. I was afraid they would catch the cougar's scent and take off after her. I called them over and tried to sit them down. They ignored me but seemed disinterested in a midnight hunt. Joe the Frisby Cat, defiant as usual, walked arrogantly through the legs of one of the German shepards, causing the big animal to jump sideways and growl. Joe ignored the insult, walked over and began rubbing my leg.
I started down the mountain towards the kids. After about fifty yards, I met Dusty and Joey. Radio, Ricky and John Jr. were right behind. "This is not a safe place you guys." I cautioned. "There's a mountain lion up there. I think we ought to go back to camp."
Dusty didn't even slow her pace. "It's a calling Uncle Tom. It's time for a gifting. The `friends' are calling for a big share." She grabbed my hand and pulled. I started up again.
"Oh well'" I thought "That lion's probably long gone with all the commotion around here." I hated to admit it but I was getting used to following her lead. Dusty's a natural visionary leader. She has that kind of monomaniacal focus that inspires loyalty. Never mind that she's eight years old and small for her age. Hell, Napoleon was a runt, and he conquered all of Europe.
I drifted away from the frontrunners and waited for the adults to catch up. They had a pack of dogs to protect them and I was feeling the need to commiserate. I was too resigned to resent my powerlessness over the kids any longer, but every time it was made obvious, I still felt sorry for myself. It's a big comedown to fall from absolute power. I was beginning to understand how Nixon must have felt.
I watched the kids thread by. Some of them petted me absently or said "Hi" but you could tell their minds were on something else. Their eyes all shared a common fire, something anticipated and powerful. It was infectious. By the time Variety and John Sr. caught up with me I was starting to feel the excitement.
"Did your `friend' call you too Thomas?" Variety took hold of John's hand and clambered up on the little ledge where I stood.
"No Hon', I was just takin' a walk. Do you know what's goin' on?"
She shook her head but I could see the same excitement in her face that gilded the faces of the children. "We were sitting around the fire talking and they just started sitting up in their beds like they heard something. It was so odd. The animals too. It was like they heard a bell ringing somewhere in the distance. Dusty came over and said we should come too...that it was time for us to be gifted. Sam wouldn't come...said he had to watch things in the camp." She suddenly got stern. "And you, Mr. Bowie! Don't you ever leave camp like that without telling us where you are going. I promised Jessie I'd take care of you and I'll damn well do it if I have to brake your legs and put you in a litter."
"Hell Variety," I whined. "I just went out for little walk. I didn't expect the `friends' to kick off a convention while I was gone."
John caught my eyes. I could see he wasn't pleased with my lone wolfism either. "You never know what the `friends' are going to do Tom. I think Variety's right. Things are touch and go right now. I think we need to know where each other are all the time... at least `til things settle down."
I knew he was right. I felt ashamed that I had worried my friends. "I'm sorry guys, I wasn't thinking. I won't pull that kind of stunt again." They grunted their assent and the three of us joined Mary, Willa and the last few stragglers amongst the kids for the last leg of the journey up to the summit of Enchanted Rock.
We reached the top and joined the other children who had begun to sit in a big fairy ring at the highest point. The wind was brisk and chilling. I had a worry we were going to have some sick youngsters if we didn't get them out of the night air soon. (Yeah, yeah. I know, my "friend"...It's my compulsive parent racket.) Dusty stood in the middle with her eyes and arms to the sky. She rocked back and forth on her skinny legs mumbling to herself as the rest of us seated ourselves in the circle. Their was a dominating air of urgency amongst the children. With burning eyes, they hustled us into places that seemed to be ordained. No two adults sat together. As soon as our bottoms hit the ground, the child on either side of us grabbed at the hand closest to them and gripped it like they were holding on for dear life.
The little nameless healer was on one side of me and Joey was on the other. They had no sooner grabbed my hands when something akin to an electric current came running up my arms and burst upon my consciousness. In seconds, I was lost in a fiery oblivion much more powerful than my other experiences. It was so galvanic, my arms began flopping involuntarily as if they were enduring bolts of electric shock. I felt horribly out of control but the waves of energy were too potent to resist. I experienced myself slipping away, like my soul was being sucked out of my being through my fingertips. In a blind panic, I tried to fight it but the pull was as inexorable as the tide and washed through me, draining me of identity, until "I" was gone.
"I" still lived somehow as a memory, a historical "fact" of limited relevance, but "I" was no longer interested in history. His friends sat with him under the magical sky. Their eyes met. "I" looked into the round, brown eyes of the little one on his right. "I" saw the little one "he" called Joey was only "his" son by accident, that the little one had many names. "I" could see now that "Joey" was not little at all but an immense being of great power. He sat with another, a dim being crouched just behind him. "I" could see scenes in time opening and closing around them like landscapes from a dream, but crisp and stark, imbued with reality. "I" could see that "Joey" knew of his death to come. "I" could feel his sorrow, his joy, his pain but most of all, the timelessness and immensity of his being.
"I" turned "his" eyes to the left and met the penetrating gaze of the other one who held "his" hand. She seemed to be surrounded with a kaleidoscopic rainbow of radiant color. Where "our" fingers touched, a brilliant golden light, like a tiny sun, beamed elemental splendor. She was "my" twin. She was sister and mate. She was an old soul in a tiny body. Another shimmering body sat beside her. The big people had called her "baby". It was a funny name for one so old. "I" laughed and looked into her past, seeing how little the big people had seen, how little "I" had seen. "My" friend laughed too. His dim image shifted in the moonlight and "I" glipsed another form, one less recognizable, as the "little black boy" hinted at his true form.
Giant, sparkling twins vaulted the seated figures and landed next to the small voice speaking in the center of the circle. One was in the form of a lion and one was in the form of a beautiful young woman. They sat at the feet of the one with the voice and did not speak. Her words rippled like wavelets on a lake of light, one voice lilting like a single falling leaf in an autumn wood, while a billion voices mummured in agreement. It was the voice of the one "I" called Dusty.
"This is how it is...We don't know where the light came from, but we came out of the light . In the beginning we were one "Life" and we loved the light. We saw we could feed the light and keep it well by making and dividing things. First, we divided ourselves in the light, then we made the darkness to hold the light. Then we threw ourselves into the darkness and divided ourselves in the darkness..." The voice paused. A shiver ran through the listeners.
"This is how to love the light. As each of us comes out of the darkness and sees herself in the light, another part of the light is known and can be loved by those who have come out of the darkness.
"...For everybody that lives in the light knows that there is only one light and one life and that no matter who we are and where we come from, we just have one job...to be ourselves and to make things...to create, so that more of the light can be known...cause every time one of us wakes up, the light is seen in a new way...every time one of us remembers who we are, a new light is uncovered so more can be seen, known and loved..
"...so we make things... we create, we become known, the light becomes known... this way, both the "Light" and the "Life" can be forever..."
Ghostly figures, visitors from many worlds, sat like diaphanous wraiths next to their human `friends' around the circle. "Life" in the form of human children sat by "Life" in forms unknown on the children's world. They sang together and the night reverberated with their song.
