There Goes the Neighborhood

by Gary J. Davies

4. Critters

  “The critters are a-coming,” pronounced my nearest neighbor Slim what’s-his-name from my doorstep, grinning gap-toothed in his torn, mud stained would-never-again-be-truly-white tea-shirt and ripped denim overalls, and chewing on a piece of hay and/or tobacco or God knows what they chew on out here in the boonies.

  I probably misunderstood him. I was new to the South, to living in the country, and to this neighborhood, if that’s what it’s even called out here in the middle of nowhere; fresh from a northern city where more people lived comfortably in single square block than survived in this entire back-woods county.

  Was the man actually suggesting that even MORE animals were a-coming? It seemed to me that I had been up to my eyeballs in 'critters' since I moved here two months earlier. Still, I didn’t really much mind them; they were part of the price to be paid for this slice of God’s country, and far less of a hassle than the sixty-mile commute over narrow cow-paths to the nearest outpost of civilization where I worked. Besides, I had achieved elevated social prominence at the office with my critter stories. “They’ve already come," I informed Slim. "For example a mystery animal has been getting into my garbage can.”

  “Probably jess coons,” drawled Zeke Potter, from beyond Slim. Zeke was wide-bodied enough to be seen to each side of Slim. “If’n it was bears or skunks, you’d a knowed it.” He laughed, his big round belly shaking under a khaki work shirt with buttons strained beyond reason and fat, bare skin squeezing out between them hideously.

  Slim thoughtfully stepped back to the porch edge to spit out a disgusting brown wad of whatever-it-was he chewed onto my front lawn, as I looked with disbelief at my watch. It was not quite six AM on a Saturday. Would these two yokels ever come to the point? I figured I had at least three more hours of sleep coming to me.

  Slim continued, flashing less than white teeth. “We don’t mean to worry you none Mr. T. It probably won’t amount to nothing a’tall, if’n you follow our ad-vice, but we thought it’d be the neighborly thing to give you fair warning. Did you hear the distant drumming last night? THEY always hit around here the night after THAT happens don’t you see, if there be a full moon.”

  “And there be one,” added Zeke, his round grinning head rolling a nod atop his Humpty-Dumpty body.

  I couldn’t possibly have seen or heard anything the night before. I had slept like a log after driving from my ex-wife’s place and back, mostly over twisting country roads. Only the potholes kept me awake during the final stretch; after that I was dead to the world. I still wasn’t fully awake now, and didn't want to be. “What critters are you talking about?”

  Zeke and Slim looked at each other, their smiles disappearing, replaced by looks of surprise.

  “Well now, didn’t ole Howie Long tell you none about the critter problem hereabouts?” asked Zeke. “Before he sold you his place?”

  “He said something about wanting to get away from animals in the forest, but I didn’t really pay attention. It just wasn't important.” I yawned as I stood there in my pajamas. SLEEP was important.

  “Man-ohhhh-man, Mr. T., that tweren’t fair of ole Howie a-tall!” declared Slim, shaking his hairy head. “It’s a good thing then we done stopped by. Howie, he don’t like to talk on it; that’s gotta be it. Can’t fault him none for that I guess, after what he's been through.”

  “It were his own fault,” stated Zeke. “We done told him not to try'n stop-um, but he went and killed that’n, and that were the start of it.”

  "Yep,” agreed Slim, shaking his head. “He shot himself a critter, then he lost his own young-in in return.”

  “Now wait just a minute. What are you talking about? Bears, mountain lions, wolves, what?” I asked, definitely feeling now that I was being hoodwinked. What was next, snipe hunts at midnight? How stupid did they think I was?

  “All them critters and more,” said Slim. “Some things that be spirits of the long gone, like them Injins. Maybe some things that ain’t never lived, ‘cept in twisted minds. No Mr. T, there ain’t no one name for-um, that us or you’d a heared of. So we jess calls-um critters.”

  “Some of the ones I seen could ‘a been wolves, at one time,” added Zeke. "They be the noisiest, cept’n maybe for them yelling Injins."

  “Them and bears and buffalo be mostly ghost critters of course, along with the ghost Injins,” added Slim. “But there be plenty of real critters too, thousands of them. Howie shot him one mean looking coon. But what they aire, live or no, don’t matter none. You jess leave out for-um ALL yer food, Mr. T, anything and everything you got ‘il do jess fine, and you’ll be Ooooh-K.”

  Ghost wolves and bears and buffalo and Indians. Right. “You guys are putting me on.”

  “Don’t hold nothing back of food, or try to fight-um off, or they’ll get even, that’s what ole Howie found out, when he done lost his boy,” admonished Zeke.

  “You can’t stop-um, so don’t think you can. You gotta remember they ain’t really out to hurt nobody, and jess keep still while they go about their business,” added Slim. “If’n I were you, I’d put all my food on this here front porch by nightfall. They maybe won’t even come inside the house then."

  “But don’t you count on it,” added Zeke, laughing. “They’s a curious bunch. They might just want to check you out real close, you being a newcomer, and living in Howie’s old place.”

  “They paid a lot-a ‘tension to ole Howie. It were his ad-verse attitude, don’t you know,” explained Slim, as he fished a disgusting old leather pouch from a pocket, and fumbled a big gob of tobacco from it and into his grinning mouth.

  “OK, fellas,” I laughed. “That’s enough, I get the picture. You want be to put all my food out on the porch for the raccoons tonight, and then you guys will have a good laugh.” I ushered them off my porch.

  Zeke walked slowly away, shaking his head, clearly insulted, while Slim turned back to face me, his face serious, his eyes looking into mine. “Truth is, Mr. T, Howie thought the same about it, and we ended up with State Police, and hounds, and T-V reporters here-abouts for near a month after his boy disappeared. We don’t want that same thing again, no way. Tell you what. I got me some food to spare, what if I’s to put some on your porch here for ya? That might help some.”

  “No,” I said firmly, as I slammed my front door shut. I was tired and grumpy and out of patience. It was six AM on a Saturday morning, for Christ sakes!

  I watched them amble down my long driveway until it made a turn into the woods and the motley pair were blissfully lost from sight. I headed upstairs for my warm soft bed.

  “What were those men here for, Daddy?” asked Laura, standing in the doorway of the guest bedroom in her white cotton nightgown with little bunnies all over it, rubbing her eyes. How quickly she was growing. She was in kindergarten already. Seeing her one weekend a month wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. All the weekends in a lifetime wouldn’t be enough.

  “Nothing important, Pumpkin,” I reassured her. “Go back to bed; it’s still too early to get up.” I took her small, warm, soft hand in mine and led her back to the bed.

  “Did they say about the drums, Daddy?” she asked, as I tucked her in.

  A chill went through me. “What drums, Honey?”

  “Those drums from in the woods last night, Daddy. Didn’t you hear them?”

  “No,” I said, trying to show nothing but reassurance. ”There are no drums in the woods Pumpkin; it must have just been a dream.” I kissed her cheek. “You go back to sleep now.”

  Those two bastards were worse than I thought. I could picture them trudging through the woods in the moonlight, beating on drums and laughing, and probably pausing now and again to pass a jug of moonshine between them. They must have been trying to spook just me though; they didn’t know about Laura, unless one of them happened to see her when we drove in. This was the first time I had her here with me at the new house.

  Maybe my ex-wife Jane was right, maybe this country house was a mistake, but
I didn’t listen to Jane anymore, maybe I never had. I bought the remote house in the woods as much for Laura as for myself. I just needed to get away, but Laura loved being in the woods and seeing the wild animals there, just as she loved trips to parks and zoos.

  This wasn’t a storybook forest though; this was an isolated rural area, apparently inhabited by loony hicks who got their kicks trying to frighten newcomers. My heart and mind still racing too much for sleep, I got my new rifle out of the box, read the instructions, and loaded it. I hated guns, but now for the first time I was glad I had one. It was only a twenty-two caliber target rifle, but I knew that a long-rifle shell could slam lead through several inches of soft pine and kill just about anything around, including humans. I put it on top of my big bedroom dresser where Laura wouldn’t even see it. She was an innocent in all this; too young to understand mean senseless adults. Whatever happened, I would keep her safe from it.

  We passed the day together idyllically, exploring the house and the surrounding woods. I was with my little girl again. Trees, birds, flowers: everything was a wonderful miracle to her, while to me she was the greatest miracle of all. I soon forgot about critters and up-to-no-good, good-old country-boys.

  However, that night I was careful to lock all the doors and windows. After Laura fell asleep I went into her room and sat in the rocker next to her bed. I opened her window just a crack and listened to the comforting, normal sounds of tree frogs and crickets for several hours, until I finally nodded-off to sleep.

  I woke to the sound of Indian tom-toms and chanting, howling, hooting and growling, rustling and snorting, coming from immediately outside the open window. Slim and Zeke must have hauled a whole damn stereo system out there, to create such a racket. Laura woke too, but I closed all the windows and comforted her.

  Open or closed, windows didn’t seem to make a difference to the sounds, which were growing louder and coming from everywhere. A wolf howled, impossibly close, sounding like it was somewhere in the house. Indian chanting seemed to be coming from the closet, and then also from under the bed. From outside there were sounds of dry leaves shifting and twigs snapping, as though a whole heard of animals was stampeding through the woods around the house.

  “I’m not scared, Daddy,” Laura announced, after a few minutes. “It’s just the animals on parade, like in the book.” Sitting on the bed, her little body was swaying back and forth with the beat of the drums and the chanting. The sound was strangely mesmerizing. I felt something enticing about it, something familiar, ancient, and primal, but at the same time it was horribly strange and therefore terrifying.

  I had to do something. I stepped to the window looked out cautiously through an opening I made in the venetian blinds. Something large and dark flew past, with a screech and a flap of wings, and I jumped back, but not before noticing plenty of shadowy motion at ground level down among the trees. I returned to the window, expecting or perhaps now desperately hoping to see Slim and Zeke stumbling about, but I could only make out a sea of shifting shadows, all through the woods as far as I could see. The strange shadows and rustling noises had to be made by breeze-blown trees and leaves in the moonlight, I reasoned.

  I opened the window and pressed my nose against the screen, and waited for my eyes to focus better and for my tired brain to recognize what I was seeing, while a gentle breeze brought in unmistakable zoo-type smells, noises and sounds. Terror shot through me, as it became clear that the shadows were impossible numbers of animals, rambling about in time to the Indian drumming and chanting, while they snorted and growled and howled. Critters, countless thousands of them! Some shadows were far too big to be even bears or deer, others were as tiny as mice, but it was too dark to make out exactly what most of them where. Thousands of birds and bats also moved through the air.

  I struggled with my confusion and my fear. I had to DO something, didn't I? To regain control? God knows what they were up to! I had to protect my property and above all Laura. Animals are afraid of people, I reasoned, so I screamed and cursed and banished them all at the top of my lungs through the open window. In response a big shadow paused and reared up towards me. I could make out big wide-spaced eyes only a foot or two below me, looking up into mine. It was an impossibly huge bear; I had seen Kodak and polar bears in zoos, and this one was much bigger. It roared at me in defiance, and the sound and putrid breath knocked me back from the window to sprawl rag-doll-like against Laura’s bed. Strength had drained from my body and soul. Animal sounds were everywhere now; tiny footsteps on the roof, shuffling and scraping of claws in the hallway, and hoots and grunts and snorts and howls and roars from everywhere. Through it all came Indian chanting, wailing, and drums.

  I reached for Laura. The bed was empty! The pounding of my heart was suddenly louder than the drums and chants and howls could ever be, and I sprang to my feet and switched on the lights. There were no lights! I ripped the blinds from the window, letting in as much moonlight as possible. Ignoring the dancing critter shadows on the walls, I looked and felt desperately for Laura in closets and under the bed, calling out her name again and again. She was nowhere in the room. Could she have opened the door and walked out while I shouted useless nonsense through the window, or had something monstrous come in and made off with her through the very walls or floor?

  I stumbled into the hallway where it was even darker and into the back of a big black bear. I bounced off it, and it seemed not to notice me among the riot of pressing animal bodies, sights and sounds. Hundreds of wild animals crowded the hallway, and their grunts, squeals, squawks, and musky scents filled the air. I felt unknown furry things scurry past my legs, their clawed paws stepping on my bare feet, while bumping me this way and that as I stumbled about. Feathered wings fluttered against my face. They were all converging on my upstairs pantry, where they pulled out bags of flour and sugar and corn meal, ripping them open, and lapping up the contents ravenously.

  I studied this all for only the brief moments needed for me to satisfy myself that Laura was not there. I bumped my way past furry and feathered bodies into the bathroom and then into my own bedroom and quickly looked in places she could have hid, to no avail.

  Then I remembered the rifle. In an instant it was in my hands, reassuringly solid and deadly, and I worked my way through the wild throng to the stairs with it grasped firmly, my best hope and my strongest link to sanity.

  On the stairs I stepped on something soft, which I picked up and examined in the near-darkness. It was Laura’s nightgown. I screamed in despair and ran down the rest of the steps, stumbling into and pushing aside grunting, squealing animals as I went. At the bottom of the stairs the front door was ripped from its hinges and hundreds more critters poured in from outside. There were squirrels, raccoons, skunks, opossums, foxes, wild-cats, wild pigs, bears, and others, grunting, hooting, growling and screaming.

  In the living-room, light poured from the roaring fireplace fire that I hadn’t lit, and moonlight streamed in through the windows to display a dozen chanting, drum pounding Indians and scores of animals of all kinds, swarming around my Laura. She was standing in the middle of the room wearing only her panties, her little body swaying to the sound and vibrations of the drums, her skin glowing red in the firelight, as chanting Indians circled her and painted black and white lines and circles on her bare skin. I thought that I could her little voice chanting in chorus with the others.

  I shouted her name with no results. I ran towards her, but my path was blocked by an impossibly huge bear, maybe the one I saw outside. I didn’t care how big it was, my desperate terror had grown now beyond all reason or fear. I swung my rifle butt at it. To my surprise, the rifle and I passed through the bear as if it was not there, and the creature instantly disappeared. At that the Indian figures dimmed for just a moment, becoming translucent. I could see the fireplace fire right through the body of one of them, confirming what my neighbors had said of them being ghosts.

  The critters and Indian ghosts all turned to s
tare at me then, as if my act of passing through and extinguishing the bear had finally gotten their attention. The chanting and chattering paused for just a moment, then resumed anew with even greater intensity as they returned their attentions to Laura.

  I thought that she glanced up at me then, and that there was a flash of recognition in her eyes, but my view and my path to Laura were then completely blocked by a big black bear. I shot off the gun into the air and swung the butt at the bear as I stepped towards it and Laura, but this time I encountered immovable solid flesh and fur and muscle that reared up and at me and swung a mighty blow to my head. I blacked out realizing that this bear was real.

  I woke with my head pounding painfully, and tried to sit up, but was held down firmly.

  “He’ll live,” pronounced a familiar voice, as my eyes opened to confirm the speaker’s identity. It was Slim. I could see Zeke standing behind him. “You had us worried there, Mr. T.”

  “Laura?” I asked, sitting up despite Slim as I looked desperately for her. The living room was empty and disheveled, including a lamp broken on the hardwood floor around thousands of muddy animal footprints, and ashes that filled the fireplace. “Laura!” I shouted.

  “Who the deuce be Laura?” asked Slim, helping me to my feet when he realized that there was no stopping me.

  “My five-year old daughter Laura, where is she?”

  “Daughter! Hell's-fire man!” snorted Zeke angrily. “We didn’t know you had no daughter! That’s a whole other ball game! Hell, we’d-a done a sight more to for you an’ her last night if’n we’d-a knowed about a daughter!” He ran off through the house to look for her, followed by Slim, while I dizzily struggled to join them, stumbling, and dripping blood from my aching head. When we found no sign of her inside or out, Zeke phoned the County Sheriff.

  I blubbered incoherently they told me later, when asked questions by the Sheriff, State Police, and FBI during the search over the next two weeks. I saw Jane one day, sitting in one of dozens of vehicles here for the search. I tried to get to her but she just looked up at me from in the car with pain and hopeless worry etched upon her face, as a strange man got out of the driver's seat next to her and firmly walked me away. It must have been her new husband Frank, I realized later. We had managed to avoid each other until then.

  They found no signs of Laura, and suspended the search after the third week. They didn’t tell me outright, but I was a key suspect. Despite thousands of animal tracks and so-forth found in and around the house, and the injury to by head that could have been made by a bear, my story was totally absurd. Ghosts don't exist, and wild animals just don't behave that way. I was loony or guilty or both. My neighbors were also suspects of course, as this same thing had happened three years earlier to Howie Long’s boy.

  They arrested Mr. Long a few days later, I saw it on TV. Now I recognized all too well that blank despairing look in his eyes, which I had months ago attributed to sadness about selling his home. It was the same look that now I had. Long had killed both his son Tom and my daughter, the authorities claimed. Mindless, worthless bastards, what the hell did they know about anything? Long didn’t even seem to mind getting arrested. I almost wished they had arrested me instead; what did any of it matter? The critters had taken my Laura.

  One morning bright and early Slim and Zeke were at my door. “Come on in,” I invited them drearily, seating them in my living room. These men and their kin had trudged through the woods looking for Laura more than anybody, and put up with police and reporters. If I had listened to them in the first place, Laura would be alive and home. “I owe you fellas a huge apology…” I began, but Slim cut me off.

  “Tain’t so,” disagreed Slim. “We all feel bad about what happened, but that ain’t important.”

  “What’s important is your little girl,” said Zeke, stating the obvious.

  “Laura is gone,” I said, the words almost choking me.

  “Cops say Howie Long done it,” said Slim, sizing me up. “What do you think?”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  Zeke nodded his head. “Just wanted to make sure yer mind ain’t addled, like they says in the newspapers. We don’t want to get yer hopes up too high, but we got us an idea.”

  “Might not work a-tall, but we thought it’d be neighborly to give it a try,” added Slim.

  “Idea?”

  “To be-a get’n back yer little girl,” said Zeke.

  I could only stare at them blankly.

  “We tried to get Howie to do it to get back his'n, but he wouldn’t have no part of it,” said Slim. "Maybe he was scared, or just too stubborn.”

  “I'll try it, whatever it is. I’m not scared of anything anymore,” I said.

  Zeke nodded his head. “We figured that a fella that wrestles with bears might feel that a-way. Anyway, here it is. There’s an Injin reservation south of here that’s got some old Injins still a-living there.”

  “We went and talked with-um one time, some years back,” added Slim, “about our critter situation.”

  “One old timer took us aside and told us that there was an older tribe here before they come. On warm nights they done something special with the animals and the animal spirits,” continued Zeke.

  “Moon Dancers, he called-um,” said Slim. “He said that some youngsters in his own tribe got pulled into it, and danced with them ghosts and animals for a time, for’n they got-um back.”

  “Got them back?” I asked incredulously. “How? What do I have to do?”

  “Join up with-um for a bit,” said Slim. “Dance with-um, like your girl done. But you stay awake, and stick with her, so at dawn she don’t go back with-um, to wherever they be when they ain’t Moon Dancing in this-here world.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “That’s ‘bout all the old man done told us,” said Zeke.

  “When can I do it?”

  “When the moon’s near full.”

  “Do they come at every full moon?”

  “No,” said Slim. “One time in a year or two is normal, if that.”

  “I can’t wait a year!” I blustered.

  “Might not have to,” said Slim. He pulled an old-looking leather pouch from a pocket. It was not unlike the one that held his tobacco in terms of general appearance, but this one was covered with burnt-in markings. He placed it in my hands. “The old Injin done give us this-here. Yer tribe is supposed to sing and beat tom-toms around a fire about midnight, a couple nights running, at the full Moon.”

  “Naked,” added Zeke, grinning, “or near so. With these here markings of the pouch painted on-um. It’s supposed to draw the whole she-bang to ya, captured spirits and all. Your daughter too, Lord willing.”

  I looked inside the pouch. Inside was dust, or maybe ash, and what looked like tiny bits of charred, ancient bone. I studied the markings on the pouch more carefully. What I had first took for meaningless lines and circles were ancient runes, plus pictographs of all sorts of animals. Many I recognized as animals that still lived in the forest, but there were also buffalo, elephants, and other beasts that I had only seen the bones of in museums.

  “What the hell could I sing?” I asked. “I don’t know any Indian words!”

  “The old man said language or race don’t matter none,” explained Slim. “Your tribe has just got to sing praise to the spirits of critters and such.”

  “From the heart,” added Zeke.

  “I don’t have a tribe,” I objected.

  Zeke and Slim looked at each other and grinned. They stood up and stripped of their shirts, yelling, laughing, and clapping their hands, and started doing a terrible parody of Indian dancing all around the room. Runes and pictographs were drawn with markers all over their bare backs, stomachs, and chests. I had my tribe, and the moon would be nearly full tonight.

  I drove to town and bought three sets of Cuban bongo drums. That was as close as I could find to Indian tom-toms. Meanwhile Slim and Zeke gathered firewood. All night the three of us
sat around a fire in the woods in back of my house, chanting and singing and howling at the moon. We must have looked ridiculous in our paint and underwear, but this was dead serious business. We got cold and mosquito bit, but that was about all that happened.

  The next night we took a pinch of powder from the pouch and added it to our body paint. Slim brought some hooch, as he called it, and passed the jug around. We were even less inhibited as a result, and bongoed and danced and hooted and barked so much that we almost didn’t notice the faint sound of answering drums beating in the distance.

  The third night, we built three fires, and danced and sang out loud while wearing pouch-powdered paint as we had the night before. Around the campsite we had placed several bales of hay, sacks of seed torn open, mounds of day-old bread, fifty pounds of beef, and some fruit.

  Zeke noticed them first. Birds, dozens of them, and then hundreds and thousands of them, were softly settling into the trees all around the fire. Big and small, they included both night and day birds: owls, hawks and eagles, herons and vultures.

  Two huge dark shadows passed over our heads, with a rush of wind that almost snuffed out our fires. Two impossibly gigantic and ugly birds with wingspans of several yards landed on a fallen log near the fire. It was black vultures that stood as tall as men, with eyes that sparkled in the firelight and bore into ours. I vaguely remembered reading of long extinct birds their size. These were only ghost birds, I hoped.

  I glanced at my companions. Despite the fear in their eyes, they kept up their singing and drumming and dancing, but they passed around more hooch. We heard dozens of wolves howling but, but a translucent brown bear as big as a Volkswagen came next. It settled in quietly near our fire and simply stared at us. Much smaller bears, black ones, discovered the food we had left out, and started eating. These I suspected to be real bears, drawn from the neighboring woods, but I resisted the impulse to poke them in order to find out for sure.

  Drummers and chanters came towards us through the trees; Indian spirits, mostly adult, painted much like we were. They looked almost solid, but ancient and colorless. We altered our own singing, drumming and chanting to match and join in with theirs as best we could.

  Several Indian children and a few adults came dashing into our midst, singing and laughing, running with hundreds of animals of all sorts. There were coyotes and wolves and foxes, badgers, wildcats and mountain lions, deer and elk and buffalo, squirrels and chipmunks and raccoons. Birds of all sorts flew with the cavorting creatures. A translucent elephant came trumpeting majestically through the crowd, followed by a huge ponderous beast that I recognized to be a giant ground sloth.

  Everything moved and made sounds in time with the chanting and drums. There was something about it that reached to the primitive core of the brain. I didn't have to try to immerse myself in it; I couldn't help being part of it. It was me and I was it with every fiber of my being.

  Someone was shaking my arm, disturbing my perfect one-ness with it. I shook them off but they persisted, and shouted something in my ear that I didn't understand. "Laura!" What did it mean? "You done slipped too far into it, you got-ta pull back just a bit," they said. They forced nasty tasting stuff down my throat, dimming my thoughts. I found myself standing between Slim and Zeke, sharing their rot-gut jug, and swaying not quite so perfectly with the critter music.

  Slim and Zeke pointed across our little clearing and nodded. There she was, my Laura, dancing among the Indian children. She looked much as she had when I saw her last, nearly naked and painted, though now mud was spattered on her, and she might have been thinner, but she looked real, alive, healthy and even happy. I resisted a powerful impulse to run to her; that had availed me nothing a month earlier.

  An older boy perhaps twice her age followed her every step. At length they both paused briefly to eat fruit that we had left out, and I realized with a shock that the boy was real too: a thin white boy in very ragged shorts, his skin darkened by sun, his long, tangled hair half-way down his back.

  “That be Tom Long,” Slim said in my ear. “You dance towards her slow; me and Zeke will keep playing. We got to keep-um here till dawn. If’n they run off we’ll lose-um.” He took my drums and handed me the half-full jug of hooch. "You take this’in; we got us more," he said, pointing towards an identical jug in his own hand. Then he pushed me towards Laura.

  I had to join in with Laura somehow. I danced with the beat, moving towards her cautiously. As long as I moved and chanted as the others, no one paid attention to me, but if I tried to 'cheat' a little to get to her faster, dozens of critters and their Indian friends turned towards me, suspicious.

  When I finally got close to her, she moved rapidly away, pulled by the boy. I worked towards them again, and he pulled her away again, laughing. It had to be deliberate. He made a little game of it, pulling her away, then hiding behind grunting bears and Indians and growling cougars. We were soon running more than dancing, and after a short while I was out of breath, and the exercise cleared my brain of hooch. As I rested I found myself slipping dangerously into the critter-spell again, until I took another swig of the mind-numbing hooch.

  We went on like that for what seemed like hours. I was nearly exhausted; this couldn't go on. I tried calling her name, but this time not shouting it out of cadence, but making it part of the chant. I was at last rewarded when she looked at me and smiled, but at that the boy pulled her away again.

  I had to try something else. I began calling his name also, again and again. It slowed him. I caught him looking at me and thinking about it. As I got closer and closer to them, my anxiety and desperation mushroomed, and I lost all focus on dancing and chanting. They were only a few steps away.

  Suddenly I heard a scream, and the drumming and chanting abruptly stopped. An ancient spirit Indian stepped forward and pointed at me. He didn’t look happy. I had been found out. Several real bears drifted my way, their menacing, dark eyes fixed on mine.

  "Dance, Mr. T!" yelled a voice at my shoulder. It was Slim, with Zeke by his side, re-invigorating their dancing and chanting for all they were worth. Each took me by a shoulder and together we jigged and jammed drunkenly about the joy of nature. This time though, Slim and Zeke slipped their own names into their litany of revered animal names. Then they added Laura's name and Tim's.

  Suddenly I understood. Our names all belonged with the critters. I added Jim, my own name. Slim, Zeke, Jim, Laura, Tim, we sang, over and over. The old Indian gradually smiled, then nodded, and all the Indian chanting and animal wallowing restarted, more rambunctious than ever. Among the Indian words chanted by the spirits now I heard our names. More, I somehow heard our names among the howls and grunts and chattering of the animals and animal spirits. I felt animals rub against my legs, and flutter over our heads in the soft night breeze. I rubbed back. We were indeed one with nature, all of us; all part of a grand celebration that was life and death eternal.

  The old spirit Indian danced slowly towards us then, hand in hand with Tom and Laura. He put their hands in mine as we all chanted, looking deep into my eyes. Then he smiled as he withdrew. He said nothing, but I sensed that my tribe and I had been assessed as worthy; worthy to live in these woods and to raise our children among the critters. As the dull glow of dawn began to return color to our world, and the moon started to disappear in the bluing sky, the spirits and animals faded with the morning mists. Only we five humans remained.

  Laura leapt into my arms, hugging me. "I danced with the animals, did you see, Daddy?"

  "Yes Honey," was all that I could choke out in reply, between happy sobs and kisses.

  "Mr. Zeke," asked Tommy," can you take me home? My Pa's gonna be mad at me being out all night."

  "Sure, Tom. But don't you worry about him being mad at you, he's jest going to be very happy to see you." Zeke took Tommy by the hand and started to walk out of the forest, followed by Slim, my daughter, and myself. My two country neighbors could hardly walk, nor could I, as exhilaration gave w
ay to exhaustion, hangovers, and mosquito bites.

  "Slim, Zeke, we owe you more than we can ever repay you," I started, when we finally got back to the house.

  "Wasn't anything that good neighbors shouldn’t do, Mr. T.," shrugged Slim.

  "I'd be much obliged if you'd call me Jim."

  "Sorry, we can't do that, Mr. T." replied Zeke. "Too confusing."

  "My real name is James," confessed Slim.

  "Slim Jim?" I asked, incredulous.

  "The guys in the office already hung that one on me."

  "Office?"

  "I'm an investment broker. Work for Zeke and Zeke's Pa, Andrew Potter." He took a swig out of the hooch jug he carried, and passed it to Zeke.

  "The multi-millionaire investor Andrew Potter?"

  "Don't spread that around," implored Zeke, after he took his own swig from the jug. "We like our privacy and our country way of life. It's a return to our roots, you might say. Say, how's about if we just call you J.T.?" He handed me the hooch jug.

  "Sounds like a respectable good-ole-country-boy name to me," I agreed, accepting the tribe jug gratefully. I took a big swig of tangy hooch that nicely warmed my throat and tummy. My grin was miles wide. I was home and where I at last belonged. We all belonged here together: me, Laura, our tribe, and the critters.

  ****

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  5. Cube

  The cosmic being who lost it wasn't very concerned. It was a simple trinket after all, merely an interesting plaything. It wasn’t worth another trip across the Multiverse just to retrieve it.

  The water-blessed planet where it was lost teemed with primitive life in its seas; clearly it was a planet with potential, but one that would not support sentient life for hundreds of millions of its years, if ever. Environmental impact would be negligible. Probably.