Bread

by Stephen Brown

THE CASEBOOK OF GEEZA VERMIES

  I have been out here for four days and I’ve seen a lot of things - you never stop learning eh? It wasn’t until today though, that what I had actually come looking for was revealed to me.

  I knew I wouldn’t be able to get any help from the airport or from Calgary itself - I just didn’t have the feel of the place. Despite the Pantherina, my mind was still filled to the brim with thoughts of Africa and I had to get out into the wilds again to get a proper grip on things.

  Old Elias had said to me that all I had to do for help round here was ask and listen, so I drove myself back out to Banff Park, the Southwest corner this time, where it borders with the Kootenay - another big National Reserve. I abandoned the car at another Auto Termination Zone, this one encircled by tree stumps and headed out into the woods.

  I also remembered that he warned me to be more careful next time and not go plunging blind into anything, so I took a few minutes to get a proper note of my bearings. Having established which way was East and which was West, I fixed some good, solid landmarks in my mind’s eye, before setting off into the tall, thick Forest.

  It took just over two hours as near as I could tell - all I had to go on was the position of the Sun - to find a spot that felt just right. It was set back slightly from a fast flowing stream running through the woods, where the huge, straight trees met briefly with thick, low lying greenery.

  What initially caught my eye and drew me to the place was a large Blue Heron who landed conspicuously on a thick branch overhanging the water’s edge. The Heron turned a beady eye on me and held my gaze for some time, only turning away when he was sure I’d noticed him. I sat quietly at a distance from him, respecting his space until he flew lazily away, at which point I moved in.

  I knew immediately that I’d come across a Power Place, where the Earth’s heartbeat was particularly strong and I scattered some herbs on the ground in recognition of this. There was a vibration in that spot which was simply perfect and I could almost taste the energy as it pulsed and throbbed though my body, filling me with feelings of peace and warmth.

  On that first night I lit a small fire and waited. I ate nothing and I drank nothing. The morning dawned of the second day and I went through the pangs and pains of hunger that normally take a grip at around that time. Stripping off I dived into the river, the ice cold of the mountain waters instantly killing off the feelings gnawing away at my stomach which threatened to overwhelm me. Sitting naked, wrapped in a blanket which I had brought from the car, I poked the coals into the life once more and got the fire going again. I knew that all I could do was sit there and wait patiently.

  That evening the hunger returned for its last attempt to weaken my resolve. I’ve been there before, so I know how to deal with it. Walking a short distance away from my site I stuck my fingers down my throat and purged my body of all the remaining rubbish that was hanging around in my system.

  Heading back to the river, I swilled some water around my mouth and spat it back out again. I still wouldn’t eat or drink anything until my vision had come to me. I slept for about two hours that night, under the stars. It was beautiful, utterly beautiful, but still at the end of it I had seen nothing that could help me with the problem of the Professor.

  Day three and things began to filter through. It was both stunning and profound, but most of it I can never reveal - it was so personal and close to the heart and besides, how could I hope to put such wonders and all encompassing truths into words? It is impossible. Nothing would even come close to describing the things I saw. It was truly magical. I bathed at Sundown and slept more fully that night by the dwindling fire, the warmth of the Spirits cradling me in their arms.

  The Sun was not that high above the horizon on day four - this morning - when I was awoken by a soft, rhythmic noise, low pitched and gentle and very close. As my dehydrated eyes cracked painfully open I saw that I had been honoured with a visitor. Standing over two metres tall at the shoulders, with massive antlers denoting his status and maturity, was a large, lone bull Moose, grazing not four feet away from me.

  As he nibbled and picked away at the vegetation around me, his big bell - the flap of skin that hung below his jaw - wobbled with every mouthful. It was his chewing I realised, that I had heard upon waking and I lay for several minutes simply enjoying the sound and the closeness of such a magnificent animal.

  I moved slowly, not only because I did not wish to clumsily frighten him away, but also because I could do very little else. My body was weak from four days without food or water. Rolling stiffly onto my side and groaning in pain from where I had obviously been lying on two sharp rocks, I bade the Moose good morning.

  “Hello,” I said. Well, what else do you say to a Moose? He barely stopped his chomping as he greeted me in return. “So I, err, I hope I’m not intruding.”

  “Nope,” he said munching on a long string of duckweed. I waited for him to say more, but he was not forthcoming.

  “Just as long as I’m not in your way or anything,” I persisted.

  “Nope.” Munch munch munch.

  “You’ll let me know though, won’t you,” I said, struggling to think of how to get him to open up. “If I am that is.”

  “Yup.” Scoff scoff scoff.

  I gave up. I decided he would talk to me when he was ready so in the meantime I just carried on as normal. With difficulty I dragged myself to my feet and lit my small fire, then simply sat there and watched him as he wandered around the clearing sniffing at this and chewing on that. He was magnificent. The size and power of him, the self-confidence and the raw wildness of him… Truly awesome.

  Eventually he had obviously eaten enough for now and finally he spoke. “So, you like it here?”

  “Beautiful isn’t it?” I grinned.

  “We like to think so. Course it’s all changed so much since my Mother’s day.”

  “Really,” I interjected.

  “Yup. It’s so noisy now.” I wondered at this as he scratched his rump against the rough bark of a Hemlock Tree. It seemed blissfully quiet to me. “You two-leggeds jabber on so much, always rushing around,” he continued, pausing to really get into an itchy spot. “Ahh! That’s better. Yeah, it’s almost as if you never came down from the trees,” he said.

  Now this shocked me. How could a Moose know about Monkeys? I asked him.

  “I suppose you think all I should about is where the Salt licks are, or where to find the Chokecherries, or how to escape from the Wolves… Not that there’s many of them round abouts any more - avoid the trucks would be more like it, thanks to your kind.” He stopped his scratching and lifted his head high, staring down at me from his full height. “There’s more to Mooses than meets the eye, two-legged, as well you know.” He cocked his gaze slightly, refocusing on me with only one eye. “As well you know more than most…”

  We spent some time in idle chit chat and making pleasantries, during which my parched, croaking voice grew steadily stronger as my throat found some moisture in the damp morning air. It was a wonderful experience, talking with him; he was both eloquent and astute. I have never spoken with a Moose before, so they may all be like that, but I got the impression that this old boy was something pretty special.

  When he spoke his words came slowly and thoughtfully, as if he were giving even the simplest of questions his deepest thoughts. He never answered in a straightforward way either and when I tried trapping him into a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer he just looked at me with his enormous brown eyes, chewed for a moment whatever he had in his mouth at the time and then said “…possibly…” while slowly nodding his head.

  A good hour or two of this passed by, our conversation interspersed with several breaks whenever he wanted to graze. Then, once again only when he was finally ready, the elderly Moose gave up what he had come to tell me.

  “We’ve been picking up a disturbing amount of interference just lately,” he said in his thoughtful, deliberate way. “Human noises where there shouldn’t oug
ht to be any.”

  I was confused. “I’m sorry? I… don’t think I understand.”

  “Oh. Which part?”

  “Err, all of it, sorry. Who’s ‘we’?”

  “All of the Antlered creatures,” he said and then he must have noticed I was still perplexed. “Do you know why we have antlers?” I thought back to all the books I’ve read and the documentaries I’d seen.

  “It’s some sort of display isn’t it? For protection and for displaying your… attributes; your age, your strength and virility. I think that’s the general consensus among my kind.”

  He nodded sagely, his bell swaying gently back and to beneath his chin. “Yes,” he agreed, “but there’s more to it than that.”

  “Oh?”

  “Animals communicate in a variety of ways,” he began.

  “Like body language,” I suggested.

  “Stance, yes. Amongst other things we have use of a basic inter-species body language as you put it, which is understood by all in a particular class of Animals. The fish have one, the mammals another, the reptiles another and so on.”

  I had to ask something. “Excuse me a minute. You say ‘mammals’ and ‘reptiles’ – you know our terminologies?”

  The Moose snorted a gentle sigh. “Of course.”

  “So… you can speak?”

  “Well of course we can speak!” he said. “What do you think we’ve been doing for the last half a day?”

  “I just thought that was just, you know, you. Me. The Panther Fungus, the rituals, the fasting…”

  “We can all speak two-legged, all Animals.”

  “Then why don’t you?”

  “Two reasons,” the Moose replied. “First of all, when you start speaking you stop listening; you stop taking notice of all that’s going on around you. Most of your kind’s esoteric schools insist on silence for their meditations do they not?”

  “Most of them, yes.”

  “Well they’re right and you only have to look at the changes that have overtaken your kind since the advent of mobile telephones to prove the point. With all that constant chatter going on, do you not think the two-leggeds have become somewhat less aware?”

  I thought about it and had to agree with him. “True,” I said. “That’s true.”

  “Indeed. And the second reason we choose not to talk aloud is just as simple – it’s just that there are much better ways to communicate. More efficient ways; more subtle. I take it you are familiar with the concept of telepathy?” he asked. I replied that I was. The Moose took a minute out to dig a bit of lichen from behind a tooth. “We are all born with certain appendages,” he continued, “be they antlers, or the spines of certain fish, the whiskers of a cat, or the antennae of the insects. Each species has their own particular telepathic organ. For Primates it is located within the inner ear.

  “By using a mixture a words and imagery, symbols and feelings, we are each of us able to broadcast any message we want to, or need to, to anybody else in the World. You two-leggeds have your radios, your satellites and the internet, but you don’t need any of them. You have just forgotten, that’s all; you alone of all the Species.

  “However much you have tried to remove yourselves from Nature though, you are still intrinsically linked. You are and have always been ‘a part’ of the web, not apart from it.”

  “So every one of us, Man and Beast - no offence intended -”

  “And none taken.”

  “Every one of us is capable of telepathy?”

  “Yes. And one of your kind has just rediscovered this.”

  “The Professor!” I gasped.

  It turns out that Humphries has somehow tuned into the same frequency used by all the Animals and that is how he’s been sending his messages and demands out across the airwaves.

  The Animals were not paying much attention to what he was saying exactly, the individual words he was using; it was the tone. It’s like my Grandmother always used to tell me: “It’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it,” and they did not like the way he was saying it at all.

  They thought the tone of his voice carried a distinctly destructive timbre. My large friend had been picked as the most appropriate Spokes-Moose to come and inform me that they have managed, using their antlers, spines and who knows what else, to pinpoint his broadcasting signals to a precise location many, many miles from here.

  Collectively, they are all equally as keen as us to see him silenced. The main reason they want him stopped however, is nothing to do with shiny bits of rock or world domination. It’s much more simple than that: they’re just not happy with the fact that he’s using their frequency bands.

  “You two-leggeds are so very noisy already,” he said. “If you remember how to tune back into this frequency we’ll never get any bloody peace and quiet!”

  ***