The Game of Shepherd and Dawse

by William Shepherd

  The day was Wednesday and the time was early evening. Charlie was at Joe's as usual and it was raining outside, very hard. Joe’s living room had taken on a cosy feel to it, as living rooms do when it’s dark and wet outside. Charlie was sitting in front of the fireplace, looking through some of Joe’s World War II books and the history there of. He’d really gotten into the reading of this particular book and had been drawn in by the author's fervent patriot writing of his take on the war.

  In his childlike excitement, Charlie looked up to Joe and with a wide smile asked, “Was it fun killing all those Germans in the war, Joe”?

  He was expecting Joe to reply with something like, ‘Oh absolutely, it was amazing. In fact, it was the most amazing thing I’ve ever done’.

  But Joe didn’t reply as Charlie had expected. Instead, he just gave Charlie a look. It was more of a stern look than a glare, but Joe made sure he held his gaze into Charlie’s eyes long enough to let Charlie know what a silly question it was that he had asked. Charlie felt the energy immediately and instantly came down from his media fueled high. Charlie slowly looked away, acknowledging Joe’s look and letting out a small, “Ooops!” with the tiniest of little grins on his face.

  Charlie’s quick analysis of the situation melted away any of Joe’s disapproval with his young student. Joe tapped Charlie lightly on the arm and explained, “Sorry Charlie, it was a little harsh of me to look at you like that. But books like the one you're reading only describe the glorious side of war, if there is such a thing. They never show the true horrors of war because if they did there would never be any more wars and they don’t want that because wars are big business”.

  Joe settled himself in the straight-back chair that was near Charlie and next to the fire before he continued. "So in answer to your question, my little friend, there are three types of people who go into battle. The first type are those who really enjoy killing. They get a real taste for it and these are the people who allow wars to happen. The second type are the ones like myself. We do what we have to do because we have no choice. We are good men in a very bad job. We don’t like it and we don’t dislike it. We just shut off all emotion to it and hope to dear God it will be all over with as soon as humanly possible. Then, there is the third type,” Joe said with a slight sigh. “My good friend, Adam Flowers, fit into this third category. He hated war and he hated killing people. The only thing he hated more was that he was so damn good at it”.

  Joe gazed into the fire a moment, remembering his dear friend. Charlie broke the short silence when he asked, “So why didn’t he just stop fighting, Joe”?

  Joe laughed at Charlie’s naivety. “It wasn’t that simple, little fella. It'd been nice if it had been, but unfortunately the dark forces of the world made sure that everyone got involved. Nobody had a choice. It was either kill or be killed and Adam didn’t want to be killed, so he killed. That's the tragedy of war”.

  “Adam was an ace pilot,” Joe went on. “One of the very best. What that man could do with a plane was beyond physics. He also had some kind of gift for killing, but that was a gift that he could have done without. After each landing, he would go to his quarters, sob his heart out and literally feel the pain of each of the German families’ of the pilots he had just shot down. No one ever interrupted him, as this was how he dealt with the pain of having to kill”.

  Charlie, looking slightly confused as to why someone would be so upset about shooting down the enemy, didn’t have to say a word for Joe to pick up on his feelings.

  “Its ok”, Joe continued, “I know what you’re thinking and that’s only natural. But you see, Charlie, none of us really wanted to be in that damn war - not the British, not the French, not the Americans or any other nationality. Apart from the ones who enjoyed killing, and there weren’t many of them, the only people who really wanted the war were the ones who didn’t fight in it, the ones who started it in the first place”.

  This was a great learning experience for Charlie and gave him a better understanding of how the real wheels of war turned.

  “So what happened to your buddy, Joe? Did Adam ever get shot down”?

  “Yes and no is the answer to that, Charlie. His plane did get shot at but never shot down. The only damage his plane ever suffered was to the undercarriage - it wouldn’t allow the wheels to come down and there was some damage to the fuel tanks, as well”.

  At this point, Joe's voice became charged with a tinge of excitement and he spoke a bit faster. “This is where the real miracle happened”, he said. “As Adam came into to land, he had to get the pitch just right”. Joe stretched his arms out wide as if he were Adam’s airplane.

  “He was low on fuel and didn’t have many options for landing. He took the nearest piece of land available to him, which just happened to be on the Devon coast. Now, a plane can just about glide to the ground without wheels if all the variables are absolutely bang on, but boy they gotta be right”.

  Joe's arms were gesturing about madly and Charlie couldn't remember ever seeing his old friend so animated. Both were enjoying themselves immensely.

  “Not only did Adam manage to glide his plane in”, Joe continued, "but he had to glide it in going up a slight hill, which is actually nigh on impossible even for the best handful of pilots in the world. Yet Adam managed to do it"!

  Joe absently put his hand to his mouth, reminiscing about the ending of that infamously impossible landing.

  “Adam went on to fly more sorties after that, didn't he, Joe”?

  “No, Charlie, I'm afraid not. That landing came at a price for him, even though he managed the landing itself. It was so heavy and awkward that he broke his back in the process. He later told me he heard the fateful 'snap'. When the rescue crews finally reached him, they were amazed Adam wasn’t in any pain at all. He had only tears of joy running down his face”.

  “Ahhh, right. That was because he was really happy he'd survived. Right, Joe”?

  “No, Charlie”, Joe said with a bit more somber tone, as he stoked the dying embers of the fire. “It wasn’t. It was because as soon as he heard his back snap, he knew he'd never have to kill another German. Happiest man you ever met, who'd live the rest of his life in a wheel chair”.

  Other evenings when Joe wasn’t telling stories of the war or teaching other life lessons, Joe taught Charlie to play several games – first snap, then draughts, and finally chess. Joe never let Charlie win on purpose though - not because he couldn’t stand losing but because he wanted to teach Charlie the true taste of victory and the lesson that nothing in life is just laid on a plate. One day, Charlie asked Joe what was in the dark brown book on the bookshelf near where Joe sat.

  “Ahh”, Joe said curiously with a smile on his face, “I wondered when you were going to ask me about that”.

  There were about 70 different books on the two long bookshelves in Joe’s reception room, but Charlie was interested in only this one.

  “It’s called The Chronicles of Us”, Joe said as he pulled it carefully from the shelf and dusted off its cover. “It has many stories of all different types. Some are long and others are short; some are funny and others sad, while some are real stories and others are made up. There are stories from all around the world in this book, Charlie”, Joe replied, in a way that he now knew his little student was already hooked.

  “Wow”! Charlie gasped. “How did they ever fit so many stories in just one book”?

  “Well, this isn’t the only book in the series. There are 56 different volumes in total. I keep the rest upstairs because,” Joe said with a knowing smile, “there’s only room for one down here”.

  In all the years that Charlie went round to visit Joe, not once ever had he been in Joe’s bedroom. Joe never said he couldn’t. It was the just the unspoken rule that bedrooms were private and out of respect, Charlie had never asked. Joe’s mother had come from the Victorian era. She’d been a decent woman who had certain standards and one of those things was that children never went into thei
r parents' bedrooms. Joe had the same belief.

  “Why did the author write so many books”, asked Charlie.

  “Well, there’s a good reason for that...” Joe said as he sat down in his arm chair and switched on the floor lamp. Charlie felt a story coming on and settled himself on the floor in front of Joe. Satisfied that his audience was ready, Joe began.

  "The author of The Chronicles of Us was named Chorley Chumley. Chorley Chumley had always dreamed of being a writer, right from an early age. But as so many artistic people like him discover, life had a way of preventing him from doing the one thing he was really good at. Over the years, Chorley had become rather melancholy with life and his health began to suffer as a result. One day he started feeling a pain in his head. After seeing several doctors and having many tests done, the doctors told him he had a brain tumour and that he didn’t have long to live.

  Seeing that he was going to die, Chorley decided to quit his job and use the money he had saved up over the years to start writing. He wanted to leave the world with at least something that he was good at. Shortly after he began to write, Chorley started feeling much happier about himself. For the first time in his life he was actually doing something he wanted to do and the more he wrote, the better he felt. The pain in his head went away and within no time at all he had written his first great story, almost as though happiness itself was curing him.

  Though shortly after finishing his first story, he started to feel the pain come back in his head, so Chorley decided to write another story, just to squeeze one more in before he went, and then another and another and another. All the time that Chorley wrote he felt great but whenever he stopped, the pain in his head would come back.

  This pattern went on again and again until he couldn’t think of anything more to write or anything more he could teach the world. By the time Chorley finished, he had lived 55 years longer than the doctors first thought he would”.

  Joe took a deep breath and looked up from the book to see Charlie’s sad face. “Is that when the tumour finally got him, Joe”, he asked looking slightly glum.

  “Not at all”, replied Joe in a dead pan voice. “Chorley died of a heart attack”.

  “Wow, who would have thought”! Said Charlie in an almost adult kind of way.

  Suddenly Charlie’s childlike curiosity overcame him. “Read me a story from that book, Bampy Joe”! Charlie so hoped Joe wouldn’t say no. It was the first time Charlie had called Joe, ‘Bampy Joe’, to his face. Joe rather liked it and it really touched his heart when Charlie called him this.

  “I certainly can, my little friend”, smlied Joe.

  Joe narrated the very first chapter about the story called Shepherd Wood and about how it funtioned as a society and how they lived their lives in peace and harmony. Charlie loved every minute of it and couldn’t wait to hear more.

  A few weeks passed, which to Charlie felt like quite a while since Joe had read that first chapter. Joe had wanted Charlie to absorb every part of the story before moving onto the next part. He also wanted Charlie hungry for the next chapter, and by now he was positively starving for it.

  After four weeks had gone by since Joe had first read about Shepherd Wood and Charlie had made up his mind to very politely inform Joe that it was about time for another chapter. Charlie was a little annoyed that Joe had left it so long and decided to take charge of the situation.

  He even worked on a sales pitch all day that he was going to present to Joe on why they must carry on with the story.

  Luckily for Charlie, there was no need for bargaining that day, as Joe had already sensed his young student wouldn’t wait any longer and had placed The Chronicles of Us by his chair so that Charlie knew tonight was a Shepherd Wood night again, as soon as he came in. As expected, when Charlie saw the brown book sitting out, a gentle excitement took over any frustrations he was feeling and he and Joe shared a glance and a smile at each other that said a thousand words. As soon as Charlie and Joe finished their meal and cleared everything away, they settled down and Joe started the story of Shepherd Wood where he had left off.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AMAN

  “Everything has beauty. You just have to see it.”

  ~ Aman

  Aman was the first and only child of Sasha and Aisha. She was a beautiful young lady, in fact almost as beautiful as one can get. She was small boned and slim with short blonde hair. She had a slightly tomboyish air about her, while still retaining her femininity. Her most striking feature was her big, brown eyes.

  Aman had received her name in the traditional way they did in Shepherd Wood. When one of the female tribe members became pregnant, she would go deep into the forest with her closest friends to an area that had the right kind of energy circulating around it. The women folk would sit in a circle, surrounding the expectant mother, and start to meditate. Once the whole group had reached the right meditative state, they would all start chanting and after a while a name would come to them. Soon the whole group would be chanting the same name and this is what the coming child would be called. It was a technique that allowed the group to get in contact with the child’s unborn spirit and intuit what the reincarnating spirit wanted to be called in this lifetime, thus allowing the child to choose his or her own name.

  When the child was about to be born, the same group of friends would all sit around the birthing hut and again chant the name that had come to them. The only other time the name would be chanted was at times when the child was acting a little out of character. He or she would be placed in the centre of a circle of friends, who would chant the birth name once again. This would allow the person to remember who he or she really was and revert back to their own true nature.

  Unlike the other girls in Shepherd Wood, Aman opted to wear soft buckskin trousers, which added to her tomboyish appearance. Aman was of a bubbly nature without being ditzy and beautiful without being conceited. She always had a ready smile for everyone and others always smiled when they saw her approaching.

  It was springtime in Shepherd Wood. The birds were merrily singing, the leaves had returned to the trees and everything was looking lush once again. People were busy making repairs to their houses from any damage done throughout the winter and there was a general hive of activity buzzing on the plain.

  There was freshness in the air in Shepherd Wood this time of year – the kind that makes you feel so alive, the kind that makes you feel like getting up and doing something. Aman was in a doing mood this particular day and had decided to go off and pick the first batch of juju berries.

  Juju berries were very important to the tribe, not only because of the amount of Vitamin C they contained, but also due to the anaesthetic properties the seed inside was capable of producing.

  Each seed was very small, but with enough of them they could cure almost any form of pain. When pain relief was needed, the seeds would be dried, crushed and added to water. Juju seeds were always in great demand, so by the end of the winter the seed stocks would be mostly diminished, and it happened that Aman always liked being the first to go out and collect the juju berries when spring came round. So with a spring in her step and a smile on her face that would melt even the hardest of hearts, she headed for the thickly wooded area at the bottom of the plain where she knew the berries grew thick and ripe.

  This year, however, the berries there did not grow so thick and ripe. In fact, there were none at all, which was strange. It was the right time of year for them, and this was Aman’s best spot for picking. She knew there should be fresh growth and a decent harvest because she had always been taught to leave enough to seed for the next season’s crop, as well as for the animals to feed on.

  “Those greedy little animals”, Aman thought to herself. “They must have stuffed their little bellies full of these berries”. Giggling to herself, she pictured a bloated badger, who couldn’t move because he was so full and her wagging a disapproving finger at it. This thought made Aman smile and she became even more radiant tha
n usual.

  As Aman traveled deeper into the wood, her smile quickly turned upside down. She began to realize the lack of berries in her usual spot couldn’t have been the result of just a few greedy animals. Indeed, there didn’t seem to be any berries anywhere, yet the stalks were still intact. This puzzled Aman greatly. The elders had always taught that animals live in harmony with nature and keep a perfect balance with it, and that if the tribe also kept in perfect balance with nature, then the cycle of growth would always be maintained. The only conclusion Aman could come to was that some animal was stripping the land of all the berries and the seeds, and she was determined to tell the elders about the phenomenon when she returned home.

  Aman’s face had fallen into a serious adult expression, while she decided to look elsewhere for the berries rather than returning empty handed. As Aman edged farther into the wood, she stepped carefully to avoid being stung by the freshly grown nettles. It was then she noticed a slight opening ahead of her, where the midday sun was poking through. In the glistening light she could see her elusive berries. The ripeness of the red berries against the green foliage was an unmistakable beacon. When she reached the area, it didn’t take long for Aman’s basket to start filling with the lush ripe berries. Once her basket was half full, she remarked to herself in a triumphant way, “Now, I’ll be able to keep my title as ‘Aman: Queen Berry Picker’ after all”. She then giggled to herself at the thought of wearing a berry-shaped crown.