Narrower Steps

by Riley Moreno

  And they slow down with their feet drudgingly coming off the bikes pedals and their breaths having to quickly be recollected. The gap between the jeep and these four bikes widen, but it closes each time with Lee speculating as to how long they can keep this up for?

  Lee has an unlucky escape twice as 2 men show up at either side, but they lose momentum as their hands slip from trying to open the side door. The 2nd time Lee got their first to hold the door shut and Ringo tried to thump the man with one hand on the wheel to help her.

  Darren is still scrounging for his pistol. But Lee’s ready to fire now as she sees one persistent individual with a distinctive cleft in the conjoining of the lips and wide-set eyes that make him seem almost inhuman as they shine black but are a nasty looking brown.

  He carries a maliciousness about him in this manner. And in his actual hand is a large stone. “He’s going to throw the stone at the back window.” Ringo goes for the swerve as he swings the wheel to the right, the bikes go right, then he goes to the left and the bikes swerve to the left too with the sound of the tire on the dusty road. The man with the ugly cleft raises his hand for the others who lift their stones.

  Ringo is swerving left and right and it makes for an inaccurate target as Lee tries to remain in one place and Darren holds onto the side of the door: the window is wound all the way down as Ringo says he’s going to have to cut through a path that comes just before the bridge that they need to cross. It takes them through to another way to the town.

  “How far is it? I’m getting car sick.” Lee can’t take the swaying motion of the jeep.

  “In just 15 – yards.” A few bricks are thrown, and some hit the back with minimal damage but Lee ducks just in case, others miss, and land on a spot just as the jeep pulls away. Lee thinks it’s about time to give off a few warning shots, so she sticks her upper body out just after a stone flies past her, levels her Kahr-Cw9 and shoots at the tires of the bicycles like pow-pow-pow-pow.

  Some brake, and then ride in the other direction. But Lee keeps firing at them as it keeps them at bay. She’s then joined by Darren who pokes out his gun’s muzzle awkwardly from where he sits in the front. But she stops him; “save those for when we get to the bridge. I’ll use this magazine to keep them off until we reach.”

  She doesn’t see Darren disagreeing. But he doesn’t shoot so she takes this as him obeying. But it’s because the bridge came, and Ringo took a sharp turn north-east and then the whole jeep bumped up and down, then found its way strolling down the rocky path in a consistent wave of bump-bump-bump-bump and hold your head and hope it doesn’t hit the car’s roof.

  Lee finds that the men stay at the top. But she makes sure they do by shooting off some rounds and having them disperse out the way as to not get hit. It worked. They are off, and the bumping noise decreases just in time as they reach the very bottom and a signpost in the shape and color of a metallic green cucumber points them to Torbelli in 5 – miles.

  Chapter 10

  When they arrive at Torbelli, it’s like what her absent mother used to describe when she would speak of back home: a cactus that is looking for some other plants. It hits her when the yellow granite gravel path starts after they cross a small slope that carries them over the small pond.

  And there stands a huge banner above that’s attached to 2-faded gray poles with black, gold and white flags having a breeze. The guards supported this uniform back at the airport. It’s something Lee will consider later. When they drive in a little further, it’s pretty much a ghost town.

  A few cars are parked on the side though: land cruisers similar to Ringo’s, a couple of live-in RUV’s inside fences with their own postcode, a church with a rocket-ship front has a large bell that ding-dongs as they take a left and follow the sign that says main town area. There are a few stalls that catch Lee’s fancy like a bakery with no sign but it’s open for business, southern delicacies sold by a man with shorts so small he might as well call them boxers as his pink belly flops over and his belt is let loose.

  There’s a woman who is platting a young girl’s hair with their mother waiting underneath the shade of curved apple tree. It’s a business with another 2 ladies doing the same with an umbrella protecting the girls from the heat.

  Lee also spots a small station: police, a school, a library. A private dentist, and then further down is a hill that goes up ... and up there lies plenty of tall broccoli-infested trees along until more of them appear dispersed amongst that must house the ones who have a little more money to afford 2 – story homes with red tiling and roofs.

  Ringo doesn’t take that route though, he takes them to the 1 motel that exists in the town, and that’s Shanti’s motel with minimum occupancy and small rooms for everyone.

  Lee peers out the window, “Does the town suffer from the rebels often?” She starts to see signs of abandoned properties: barricaded and slapped with a slanted plank with red paint that says N.O. ownership.

  Then comes old jeeps that have been robbed of their parts. “The rebels try to come here. But the newly appointed mayor and chief make sure that they keep their distance by implanting new rules whenever they can find enough votes to make it an actual thing. A prison is being built. Right now, all they have is the few cells inside of the station and those can’t hold all those rebels that roam out there.”

  “What do they rebel against?” Darren finds that another bottle of water will cool him down as each time he drinks a refreshing splurge of life appears on his eyes – to – brow.

  Ringo gives Darren a glance, and then looks in his rear-view mirror to catch Lee and keeps his attention on her; “it’s a story that gets told in different ways. But all can agree that Torbelli came around in a time when the working-class people had made it into a place where we earned well, ate well, farmed well, and even produced happy families as they went to school, and we went to work at the factories, docks, and just places where we brought in an income out here.”

  Ringo wipes his rear-mirror. “The change that came was unexpected. A couple of visitors had arrived. And the man in charge back then was a Filipino called Marvin, and he wanted so much for this little town. And he decided to work with these visitors who had a proposition and black suitcase in their grip as they traveled to see him in the major’s building.

  And that proposition brought about plenty of trade. And the new airport that’s still being renovated as we speak came around, and planes that carried in these visitors with black cases came frequently. We as people would stand and watch these men in suits. But we never seemed to get richer. The only thing that grew was more demand to work, more demand to produce, more hours, and the factories started to build plane parts with less pay, and ship them over to towns that you can reach by plane or long journeys on the bus.”

  “And the rebels ...” -

  “Were majorly those who worked in the factories and use to live in some of the smaller homes. It’s hard to say what they’re rebelling against. But all this is so relatively new that we’re all catching up on what’s happening. And then there’s the ...”

  Ringo applies the brakes and the jeep screeches a couple of yards away from the elderly lady who crosses the narrow road with her burnt umber horse by the reins. The triangular sign that stands on a post has a small image of a horse.

  “The horse’s pathway,” Ringo says. Lee and Darren patiently wait for at least 5 – minutes as they hear the singular gallops as he trots down the lightened yellow path that’s in-between an open fence. “She owns a stable. We call her Madelene.” The jeep drives on and Lee’s neck twists to get another look at the lady and her horse.

  ...

  They reach the motel fifteen minutes later and it lies on-top of white gravel surrounded by a couple of patches of green outside that surprisingly has many tree stumps and a few men in jackets hacking down a few more that stand not too far.

  Lee hears whzzzzzzzzzzz from the saw and other methods include the age-old axe, as some trees are thinner and with a
couple of hacks they eventually start to fall as men move out the way and watch it plummet on down with an almighty thump ... thump ... thump ... and the vibration and echo upon the soil carry on in Lee’s ears.

  Darren collects his things from the footrest then shuts the passenger door. He takes a-hold of his hand luggage, then goes to the back of the jeep with Ringo who now pops the trunk open to get his and Lee’s suitcases out.

  But when Darren heaves and lowers Lee’s case until the gravel floor, he sees her walking over to speak with one of the tree cutters. And just waits and sees for a second if he should assist, but Ringo insists on bringing his and her stuff inside and he figures he should get it indoors too. That’s more his tired mind wanting to just switch off for a second.

  Lee can already see the recoil on all their faces. But they carry on as normal. If Lee was into that feeling of the racist card game then this would be close, but they’re darker than she is with a Sri Lankan fineness that makes their skin appear so youthful. The edge to them is a Bermudian texture of hair that flows out of their white hard-hats for safety. They’re all middle-aged men judging by a feeling that she gets.

  She wanted to find out about the tree – cutting. It’s a good thing that she’s not shy because they make it well known that her being there is unwanted. They even try to program the industrial excavator in a dug spot, which is unheard of in terms of health and safety in close proximity. And they restart their hacking and saw at the trees, but she ignores all this and approaches one man who stands back surveying the whole process.

  She begins to come closer, and when he gets a glimpse of her doing so, he walks up to and holds out a hand; “No further.”

  “I just wanted to ask you” -

  “No questions.” He then leaves Lee to stand in her confusion. But she persists.

  “I need to know why you are cutting down these trees?”

  “You’ll have the ask the major,” he says this offhandedly. “He instructs, and we act.”

  “But ...”

  The next question doesn’t come as Lee’s head turns as fast as she hears the fired bullet. It’s Darren, who has Ringo pinned to the floor. “Lee!?” he shouts, “He mentioned Shaka. Ringo mentioned Shaka!”

  End of Part 1.

  Read Part 2 and 3.

  Out now on Amazon Kindle Unlimited.