V 14 - The Oregon Invasion

by Jayne Tannehill (UC) (epub)

  It was not that Hadad expected the people to know what he knew to do to help her. It was that he expected the people to know and do what they knew to do to help her. And what surprised him was that they did nothing. The driver cradled her head on the jacket and then knelt beside her saying over and over: “I didn’t see you. Really, I didn’t expect you to dash out like that. Are you going to be all right?” The others stood around in a circle pressing closer and closer. They spoke to one another; one man ran back to the store shouting: “Someone call an ambulance; she’s hurt.” But no one did anything.

  And so the authority that Hadad had always expressed among his own people surfaced with these Earth ones. Easily he commanded. Easily he assigned tasks. Easily he evoked from others their cooperation and competence. And no one questioned his leadership because he did not question it himself.

  To this one he gave directions on how to hold the places on Ruth’s head that would allow her to feel and release her pain. To another he said: “Squeeze here, hard.” And the person did. To another he said: “Put your finger here and press.” To another he said: “Don’t stop her from crying.” To Ruth he said: “Remember now the energy released when the bone snapped in your leg. That is the energy you must receive back into your body.” And as he guided her, he pressed on the regeneration points he found in her thigh and visualized the regeneration in her body, as he had always visualized it in his own, calling on all the assurance he had known since birth, known as natural to all living beings, known and seen on Earth in all the lizards he had caught for food, known as the way of Zon, learned as the teachings of Zon, practiced as a follower of Zon.

  He took the “now,” the realization of Ruth, broken. And in his mind he moved back through time, second by second, encompassing them all, back through the impact of her body on the pavement, back through the press of her body through the air, back through the twist and snap of her body as it responded to the impact, back to the impact, back to the squeal of brakes, back to the energy of running, back to the imbalance as she stepped from the curb, back to the engaging energy of her body standing before him on the curb.

  And each of those thoughts he held, singularly, not

  rushing, not hurrying to the next. Each he held until he felt her body under his hands accept the truth of his visualization. When her body accepted the impact on the pavement, Ruth cried, and the sobs wrenched from her body. A woman came over and tried to quiet her, but the man who had been told to let her cry chased the woman away. And then as her body remembered the momentary flight, Ruth stopped breathing. For long moments she neither exhaled or inhaled. Then the crowd grew frightened. A man exclaimed: “She’s going to die.” And another came over, shouting: “Tip her head back, let me in there.” But just as he got to her she suddenly gasped, filling her lungs, then breathed deeply. And the man turned away confused, and frustrated that he was not needed for the only help he knew how to give.

  As her body twisted in Hadad’s mind, she moaned in agony. Again the muscles tightened and the body wrenched physically in response to the mental image. Now it was resisting. But he held the thought evenly, patiently, and finally the body accepted the truth of its experience.

  An energy returned to it, and in a snap as abrupt as the impact of the car upon her leg, the broken bone rejoined and the cartilage knitted to reconstitute her leg. And then her body relaxed.

  Hadad opened his eyes, looked down at Ruth, and then released the regeneration points. The work was done. He assured the others who were helping that she would be all right, and let them release their responsibilities. Ruth smiled, convincing each that she really was all right. And gradually they accepted it as truth and got up, each sighing deeply, as though they had also stopped breathing during the entire ordeal, and then each returned to the crowd, and then to the conversations that acknowledged them as participants in the drama. No one spoke to Hadad.

  “Do you feel like standing up and getting out of the street?” he asked her.

  Ruth laughed a little at herself. “I guess I am sort of holding up traffic, aren’t I?”

  The ambulance arrived just as Ruth was getting up. “Don’t let her move,” the attendant shouted as he got out of the van.

  Now the drama was repeated for the benefit of the late arrivals. Hadad stood back and watched as the emergency medical team went through its routines. There were others in the crowd eager to participate, to answer the questions about what had happened, to volunteer information for the reports made out in triplicate. It was hard for the person examining Ruth to accept that she could have endured the impact of the car and have no broken bones, no aches and pains to show for it. The driver, having gotten his reports filled out, came over to his companion and looked down at Ruth.

  “Hey, Ruthie, sounds like you’ve been doing battle with a mechanical dragon. How’s she doing, Frank? Is she going to live?”

  “Mike, I can’t find a scratch or a broken bone in her entire body. Seems a little farfetched to me.”

  “Aw, c’mon, Frank, you know Ruthie! She’s not going to let us medical people get one up on her. A little hocus-pocus, a few herbs, and everything’s okay, right, Ruthie?”

  “Mike, I mean it. She’s not faking it. She’s okay.” “Well, let’s take her in and put her under observation till she gets out of shock.”

  “Mike, she isn’t in shock. Pulse is normal. Breathing regular. Body temperature regulated. Tell him how you feel, Ruth.”

  “Mike, I was about to get up and walk away when you got here. I’m okay.”

  “Okay, how about I come up and let you watch me for a while? Just don’t make me ride in your hearse. I’ll take my car.”

  “You shouldn’t be driving.”

  “Okay, I’ll get someone to drive me up. Okay?” “What do you say, Frank?”

  “Can’t see any reason why not.”

  “Okay, but don’t call it a hearse, you hear?”

  Ruth grinned up at him and watched as he got to his feet, then pulled her up, slowly, cautiously, watching for any change in her balance or coloration. He seemed to accept that she was all right and the two men got back into the ambulance and hit the siren once, clearing the street in front of them, and then drove back up to the hospital, turning left at the comer,

  Ruth found Hadad in the group on the sidewalk. “I feel like somebody’s fool. You let me go rambling on forever about all the healing I’ve done, but you never said a word about being a healer. Thank you.” “You said I owed you one.”

  “Accounts square. Thank you.”

  The eyes of the deer looked at Hadad once again. He stared back and then looked down at the sidewalk.

  “Those grasses you eat,” he said, trying to break the silence that he felt was far too public, “they are natural to you?”

  “A lot of people think so.”

  “Other humans do not think so.”

  “No, I guess they don’t. Why did you ask?”

  “The energy returned rapidly. At home, I would have expected that. I was surprised.”

  “You’ve done this before?”

  “It is part of my training . . .”

  “I know ... to be a king.”

  Hadad shrugged, a little embarrassed to be talking about his own skills.

  The crowd, convinced that Ruth was able to walk again, aware that the excitement was over, began to move away. The driver got back into his car, moved it to the curb, and sat for a moment collecting himself.

  And so Ruth and Hadad were left alone on the sidewalk. But not for long.

  It started as a roar, like the sound of water rushing through a canyon in a flash flood—distant, unrelated, ominous, but unidentifiable.

  And then they appeared. Running, four abreast, the red-uniformed Visitor soldiers rounded the comer of Main and Third, ignoring the “no left turn” sign, thundering down the street toward the courthouse. As they came, soldiers peeled away from the group in an orderly rhythm, their positions filled by the soldiers behind them, the sm
aller groups charging into the stores on either side of the street, the column running undaunted toward the goal.

  There was still enough of a crowd to mobilize some resistance. A few braver ones ran toward the soldiers, trying to block their passage. Perhaps those few thought they would be killed for their efforts, but they were not. The soldiers did not fire, they just moved around them, not affected by their presence. No shots were fired. All the mobilization efforts outlined earlier seemed to disappear. The people stared open-mouthed, and their movements became random and chaotic, some trying to get out of the way, others trying to find shelter, others trying to protect the others on the street from something undefined, yet present. Others stood very still. Somewhere someone was screaming, but no one in the street screamed.

  And then the Visitors climbed the steps of the courthouse and disappeared in the double doors and the old stone building swallowed them up. And suddenly, as quickly as it had begun, the invasion was complete. And once again there were no red-

  uniformed lizardmen on the streets. Now they were everywhere. And none were visible.

  Hadad became aware that he was holding Ruth in his arms as he watched the parade. He was not certain why or how that had happened. He had not been aware of a moment when she had moved from the sidewalk in front of him, facing him, to face the invaders, nor of a moment when his arms had opened to surround her shoulders. But now she was there and he found he was holding her tightly to him.

  There was a pause when the last uniform disappeared into the building. Anything could have happened in that moment. And nothing did. And then Hadad felt the quiet pulses in Ruth’s body as she started to cry. He turned her around and looked into her eyes as she cried, still holding her close to him, and her crying stopped, and then her body calmed.

  “Ruth, you do not have time to go to the hospital. I’m sorry. You must get out of town before they have control of all the roads. You must get to an airport. You must go to Los Angeles and find the resistance. They must dust the valley. You must convince them. Do you understand that?”

  Ruth looked at him, about to cry again, but the tears did not come. His arms held her and again the tensions receded. She looked at him and this time the eyes of the deer held fear, but not of him. Slowly she nodded in acceptance of what she must do.

  “I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

  Hadad nodded. And then he let his arms drop to his sides.

  She looked down at his hand and saw the bandage.

  “Don’t forget your medicine plant,” she said, and smiled up at him.

  “I won’t.”

  “I’ll come back.”

  Hadad recognized that she was saying more than that she would return to Prineville, that somehow the retom had something to do with him, something to do with doing what he had asked, but more. “Be careful.”

  “I will,” she promised.

  And then she took a breath, and turned away from him. Checking the highway, she crossed to her car. She got in, started it, and drove west, not looking back.

  He watched her go. And realized he would not be there when she returned.

  Chapter 6

  Hadad woke well before dawn, as he had planned.

  The night before he had wrapped his other clothes in a flannel shirt, tied the sleeves to secure the bundle, ground the leaves of the medicine plant, and mended his hand. His few tools and his eye drops were stashed in the pocket of his jacket along with his wallet. He left nothing behind.

  Now he must remove his mark upon the space he had claimed.

  One by one he took the stones back to the places they had occupied before he cleared them for his bed. With a branch he scored the land that had worn smooth with his daily squattings to watch the animals around him. He had brought water in a jar from Crooked River. He emptied the jar over the rocks where he had once stored his clothes. Then he gathered sage and juniper branches and ground them between rocks in each of the places he had imbued with his presence, with the scent of his occupancy.

  He put on his jacket, picked up his bundle of clothes, and started down to the road.

  The stars were completing their journey of the night. Cancer had dropped below the horizon; now Leo sat at the edge of the world and Scorpio ruled the southern sky. The Eagle, the Dolphin, and the Swan had just risen. The moon hid behind a solitary cloud on the rim of the plateau behind him. Hadad walked silently. He had eaten well before sleeping, knowing that he would have to travel today without food.

  Knowing that he might not find food again that would fill him without filling him with death.

  There were no stirrings on Coombs Flat Road. A light went on as he passed one house, an alarm clock buzzed behind him in another. It would be a while yet before even the early risers would emerge.

  He reached the watch shed at the mill just as Dave completed his last rounds of his shift.

  “A bit early, aren’t ya?”

  “I am going west. I need an early beginning.” “Leavin’ us, eh?”

  Hadad looked evenly at Dave. He did not see censure in the old man’s question.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you’re not alone. A good many started out even yesterday. I’d probably go myself, but I just can’t figure where I’d go at my age. It’s not like I can just start up again anywhere. After a time you realize you’re gonna die somewhere. It doesn’t much matter where it is. And you might just as well be somewhere you can call home when you do it. You young ones. You’ve got a chance out there. I just hope there’s still somewhere out there that’s safe for you to make a life for yourselves.”

  “I hope so. I do not know.”

  “None of us know anything anymore.”

  “Some do not know that yet.”

  “They’ll learn, or they’ll die.”

  “You know that too?”

  “You don’t get to be as old as I am without learning that somewhere along the line. That fella over there is heading west. Maybe he’ll give you a ride.”

  “Thank you, Dave.”

  “Luck to ya.”

  “To you also.”

  Hadad backed out of the watch shed. The old man

  raised a hand as if to wave, and then turned back to his log sheet to record his rounds.

  There was a blue pickup truck across the highway in the direction Dave had pointed. The man was adjusting a load of furniture and boxes, trying to add one additional box that just wouldn’t fit without throwing the rest off balance. Hadad crossed the highway and swung a box out of the way to give a little assistance.

  “Thanks.” The man juggled his package into place and then adjusted the load so the others would fit. “Dave, over there, says you are heading west.” “Soon as I fill the tank.”

  “Could I ride along?”

  “Far as I’m going, sure. Could use the company to keep me awake. It’s been a long night. You drive?” “Sorry, no.”

  “No matter. As long as you keep talking.”

  “I will try.”

  “Name’s Jerry.” The man extended a hand. “Dave.” Hadad took the hand, watched the eyes. “Hop in.”

  Hadad walked around to the curb, opened the door, stashed his bundle of clothes on the floor behind the seat, and then climbed up to the seat. As he closed the door, Jerry got in the driver’s seat and started up. The truck pulled into Juniper Fuel and Stan came out from the office, shaking his head to clear the sleep that threatened to recapture him this early in the morning. He smelled of coffee as he stuck his head in the window of the cab.

  “What’ll it be, Jerry?”

  “Fill ’er up, Stan. I’m headed back home.”

  “Looks like you’ve got a full load.”

  “Can’t talk the folks into coming with me. They just loaded me up with stuff for the wife. You’d think . . .”

  “Maybe they’ll follow you when they see what happens.”

  “If they can. How about you, Stan?”

  “Can’t move Mary. Long as she’s up there at the hos
pital, I’m stuck here. Soon as I can move her, I’m gone.”

  “Got anywhere to go?”

  “Got family over in Eugene. Hey there, Dave. You headed out too?”

  “Yes.” Hadad nodded.

  “Heard about what you did for Ruth yesterday. Wish you’d have been there when my Mary had her accident. Maybe she’d be up and walking now.” “What are you talking about?”

  “Where you been, Jerry? Ruth got hit by a car yesterday. Dave here had her fixed up in just a couple minutes. Make him tell you about it.”

  “After you fill it up.” He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb.

  “Right on.”

  Hadad stared out at the dark road while the gas poured into the tank. He didn’t want to volunteer. He wasn’t certain his obligation to talk had started yet.

  Jerry paid for the gas and started the truck up again. He drove carefully through town. A few cars were starting to move. Not many. The lights were still on at the courthouse, but there weren’t any signs of life at the windows. The signal lights were all against them, and so they stopped at each, waited while nothing crossed their path, nothing approached them from behind, nothing met them from the front, and then as the light changed they moved to the next. Finally they reached the divided road at the end of town and started up the grade that would take them through Sisters and across the pass.

  They rode in silence. After about ten miles Jerry snapped on the radio. His taste ran to mellow country. Hadad listened to the words. In song after song the singers observed that love is not all it is cracked up to be, and life has its ups and downs, and basically people need each other to get through the troubles and to share the joys.

  The sun came up in as ordinary a way as it can in the mountains. The shadows danced on the windshield as they drove through the forests, winding farther up, farther west.

  In the middle of one song Jerry snapped off the radio.

  “Can’t stand that tune. What did Stan mean about you fixing Ruth up?”

  “It was not difficult. She was hit by a car. There was no one there to do anything.”