The Child Badger
In retrospect, there were many signs that indicated how
special Sara was. For one thing, the fact that she was found on top of a tree,
and stayed there for two days while the elderly arriero tried to coax her down.
The second was the fact that, although she was starving when found, she was
still capable of incredible self-restraint. She has something of the wolf
inside her, ever watchful, hesitant to trust, and decisive when she needed to
be. She would reveal her true nature during the disastrous expedition into the
woods, finishing what Sa had been unable to finish.
The people still bore the uneasy memory of the recent
troubles. There had been a war, and the people had risen up to resist the
settlers, burning down buildings, and massacring families, and burning fields.
It was a long and bloody combat, in which the settlers had had to withdraw. Why
they didn’t return in force no one could understand, and it gave the people a
false sense of security. For ten years they thought that, possibly, they had
succeeded in expelling the settlers from far to the south, those settlers who
looked so different, and who so insistently had sought to impose new ways.
There was the fact, first of all, that the two peoples could
hardly understand each other. The settlers refused to listen, and took no heed
of custom. It had ever been the case that when conflict arose among the people
of the land, there had been clashes, and raids on other nations, but no one
group had ever tried to impose their ways on the other. Clashes flared up but
then receded, and there was a certain stability in the ways that had prevailed
for so many years. Observances continued, their ways remained distinct, and
when outsiders arrived, the groups of the rolling prairies would join together
to expel them.
This latest conflict had been long overdue. The newest
settlers had behaved in ways never seen before, and they had brought with them
misfortunes they had never experiences. Among them was the obligation to change
their way of life, and the imperative that they settle in permanent abodes,
attached as they were to farms and to a new style of agriculture they had never
practiced before. They had chafed, but the settlers had flashing fire sticks
that had killed many, and after a while, they had been forced to submit. But
they didn’t forget their ways, and even though one generation grew up among the
settlers and began to give signs of accepting what had been imposed on them,
there were ways to rally resistance.
Eventually, with the killing of the son of the old chief,
they had rebelled. They had long been conspiring together, but the settlers had
taken little notice. Finally, they had their chance, and on a new moon they
burned as many buildings as they could, and captured as many fire sticks as
they could, and most importantly, they killed all the horses they could reach
and took all the food they could take, riding deep into hiding and awaiting for
opportunities to ambush the pursuers.
They had been successful beyond their wildest imagination. The settlers had become overconfident, and
although not all of the people joined in the rebellion, they managed to inflict
heavy losses. Later, scattered punitive expeditions took their toll among the
people, and there were several massacres, on both sides, of women and children,
but the native people managed to expel the settlers. They killed as many of
them as they could, and the rest fled as best they could, guarded by the few
foot soldiers who remained, in a long column towards the south. By then, it was
winter, and the people made plans so that they spring would not catch them unprepared.
The people were fortunate to have a leader with the
qualities of Dry Arroyo. Such was his name, in the language of his people. He
decreed that the groups should return to their traditional ways, and that the
land be cleansed of the presence of the settlers. And such was the way of life
for the people during the next thirty years. Many had, of course, developed a
preference for some of the customs of the departed settlers, and in particular,
many women took to wearing crosses carved out of wood, but for the most part,
and it also took several years before the buffalo ranged in the same numbers as
they had before, but for the most part, they were able to work through their
difficulties. The winters were leaner and colder than they had been before, and
hunger returned, but at least it didn’t carry the weight of humiliation that
they had had to bear during the period of settlements.
When the European settlers returned, they had the help of a
few of the southern peoples who, in generations past, had belonged to waves of
people who they had long distrusted. These southern people had changed, and now
wore the clothing of the settlers, and also, spoke much of the language of
these people. They had changed. By then, Dry Arroyo was an old man, and the new
leaders were ineffective in mounting a defense. It was also the case that the
people had fallen into disunity. They had no eternal leader such as the wolves
of the echoing woods had.
The nations were overcome singly, in a process that lasted
almost twenty years. At times, the people grew so desperate that a few of the
younger and foolish ones expressed the opinion that they should seek the help
of the white wolf, for hadn’t the wise man
Sa said, several generations ago, that he was to be considered a protector?
They made entreaties at the edge of the woods, and left offerings of food and
precious materials, and even, live children, but their offerings were refused.
The wolves were still to be seen, emerging from time to time from the woods,
and they still had the evidence of the fires that were set within the woods,
but other than that, they lacked a man with the qualities of Sa who would be
acceptable to the wolves. They knew better than to try to enter the woods
themselves.
With time, new garrisons were established by the settlers,
who returned with their livestock, with their weapons, and with their
preachers. There was a harder edge to them this time, and it was evident that
they meant to establish two parallel societies. No longer would they live
together, servant and master in the same household. Now, it was evident that
they meant to force the nations of the rolling plains to live in new
settlements, where they would be separated from each other, and guarded over by
preacher and soldier. And, they would no longer be allowed to gather for
conferences.
Buildings were constructed once again, and a livestock
economy was revived on the grasslands. The soldiers with time sent for their
families, and they were given grants of land. Slowly, five years, it was as if
the memory of resistance had taken a dream-like quality. They had had
difficulties, of course, and they remembered the immense pride they had felt
after the success of their first rebellion, but they found themselves now so
imprisoned in an onerous web of control that they found it difficult to conceive
of a plan for a new rebellion. Their leaders were identified and punished, but
what surely must have been a network of spies, and it was the case as well that
the resistance they had mounted had weakened them. There were many widows and
many orphans, and their hunger was not alleviated.
But among them the lore of the land continued. It was, of
course, a beautiful lore, and it was passed on from one individual to the next.
The women, in particular, became the prized storytellers of the people, and
they held on to much of the history of the nations. Their symbols took on new
meanings, in the type of double life they were leading, and for them, the white
wolf and his pack became symbols of a justice that was deferred. The woods, of
course, remained as impenetrable as they had always been, and it gave them
pleasure to hear of foolish settlers who tried to enter the woods and never
returned. The woods were the same, and in the same degree that they came to
admire the white wolf, there grew a deep dread for this same creature and the
woods in which they lived on the part of the settlers.
From time to time, one of the old ones would venture to
visit the edge of the woods and address the trees. They would tell of their
struggles, and talk about their dreams, in which they imagined a new home, one
waiting for them deep in the woods. That their dreams were motivated in large
part by the delirium of hunger was known by all, and also, by the fact that
they almost certainly must have been suffering from a type of intoxication that
came with the consumption of too much of the sacred weed, the Paruntha plant.
The old ones would talk about the moving patterns they saw in the skies, and of
the way the water reflected the presence of the many ghosts that inhabited the
land, ghosts that had grown more numerous especially in the way of the brutal
losses of life they had suffered.
It was said that these old one from time to time would find
themselves looking into a dozen pairs of eyes staring out from the woods. Those
eyes were part of a presence they took for granted, and whether ghost of
wolves, it made no difference, for in truth both beings were taken to be one
and the same. The wolves of the woods were spirits, and it was understood that
they rejected the style of life to be lived out in the rolling hills and open
lands because it was a life of dream. The eyes never blinked, and the old ones
told the rest that they never heard any breathing or howling either. Those eyes
were quiet, but also, insistent.
The settlers knew of these monologues at the edges of the woods,
but given that these were the doings of the older ones, they found it easy to
ignore them. They were not likely to severely punish old people who were undoubtedly
rattled, and who furthermore, posed little risk with their burdens that they
unleashed to the woods. Had it been young people, especially young men, they would
have taken harsh steps and whipped them until they left them scarred and bent,
but the old ones had already been punished by time, and were seen as a
nuisance, for they contributed little towards the reestablishment of the
settlements. It would have been just as well if they had chosen to enter the
woods and not returned.
The woods, however, posed a continuing problem. From time to
time expeditions were formed, with hunters who knew of trails and the life of
the woods, and accompanied by soldiers with guns and a few native guides who
they trusted implicitly because they had been forewarned of any consequences should
they be found guilty of any treasonous acts. The settlers were always
grim-faced as they ventured on these expeditions, but the guides were somehow
elated. No one had ever been known to return from the woods, and this gave the
guides a certain comfort, for they thought that surely they would find a
liberation and wonders in a place that only Sa had been allowed to enter, and
of which he had given only vague hints, because after all, he had been blind
when he entered, and he had furthermore been unable to share the full scope of
what he had experienced.
The settlers , with their soldiers , took the forbidding
feel of the woods as a sign that there must
surely be a hidden tribe or nation of people hiding within, one thoroughly
adapted to the ways of the wood and as such a source of constant threat. There
was to be no going around the woods, for they lay in-between the rolling hills
and the mountains to the west, and these mountains would surely have to be
explored because they had people who were keen on the prospect of mining, and
eager to determine if there might not be incredible wealth to be found. The
woods, as well, would surely help the settlements in other ways.
The old arriero Felipe San Ramón was to be a part of the
latest expedition. He was not native to this land, and had come from much
further south, from groups who had been overtaken, and who had also similarly
resisted and been overwhelmed, and who had resigned himself to forgetting about
retribution or a return to the old ways, and who would now settled for a
peaceful old age. He had become a porter, and he made the long journeys from
the south up to the new settlements on the northern frontier. He had been an
avid hunter as a young man, and been successful as a warrior, but now, his
bones grew quickly weary, and he was frequently slow of speech with strangers.
He knew of the difficulties of the natives, but he knew few of their words, and
for this, he was deemed especially useful by the settlers, for his inability to
talk to the suffering natives and share grievances.
Felipe was a very weathered old man who had grown slightly
stooped with age. He was always talking to his burros, which was the same as
saying that he talked to himself compulsively. The burros didn’t mind, and whether he rode on
top of them or walked besides them, it made little difference. The burros were
stolid creatures, gentle and trusting, and quite clever when they needed to be.
The could be obstinate as well, and when they didn’t want to walk any further,
they were in the habit of stopping, and nothing Felipe could do would entice
them to resume unless they had satisfied their appetite or rested, and since
these impulses so frequently coincided with his own impulses to do precisely
the same, there was much harmony between them. At times, it even seemed to
Felipe that the burros talked back to him, for an entire speech could surely be
read in the muzzle toss of a burro.
Recently, Felipe San Ramón had come into possession of a
granddaughter. How this had happened, given that his children had never grown
to be of age where they could have children, they having succumbed to sickness
and hunger long ago, was neither here nor there. His granddaughter was a young
seven year old girl named Sara, who he had encountered last year when returned
up to the frontier while carrying a load of pots.
She was an orphan, in a land where orphans were common, but
she was unlike any orphan he had known before. For one thing, so many orphans he had known
had been piteous and mistreated children who grew stunted both physically and
emotionally. Many banded together into packs like wild wolves, and were ever on
the hunt for the meal, for the next look of pity that they could milk for a
handout. They were predatory, and much to be feared, especially by an old man
such as himself who, if he wasn’t careful, could be swarmed by a pack and find
his wares stolen, after which the pack would magically disappear.
She had been a solitary figure that he had found one
afternoon as the light was drawing to a close, out in the middle of the land,
all by herself. He had not seen her at first, he having stopped next to a tree
where he chose to customarily find shelter. He had settled underneath, removed
the load of goods from his burros, tied them and given them water. If they
needed more food, they knew best how to find it. He had also gathered dry
branches, and had made a fire for heating his tea, and the meager meal he
always had for dinner. He had taken little note of the pair of eyes above until
after he had finished eating, and had chanced to look up. It took him a little
while to recover his breath, for he thought for a moment that he had had the
misfortune to have sidled up to a predatory cat of some sort.
She stared back down calmly, and didn’t move. He called out
loudly in the hope that he might intimidate the beast he thought he might have
encountered, but as his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he saw that she was a
small child. There was an unusual cast to her, and as he stoked the fire to get
brighter flames, he saw that she was wearing a peculiar type of clothing. He
felt reassured that she was only a child, and that there was only one of her,
and not an entire pack of orphans who surely would not have taken pity on him
if they had encountered him alone.
Felipe tried to coax her to come down, but she resisted. He
tried to ask her for her name in several of the languages he had encountered,
and to none of these did she seem to react. She was a very thin creature, and
Felipe reflected on how foolish it must have been for a single child to find
herself alone. He would later find out that she was more resourceful than he
had imagined, for she was adept at trapping birds, and was furthermore expert
at the art of foraging. He would also learn that, had she chose, she could
easily have hidden herself from his view. For some reason, she chose to reveal
herself to him, an inoffensive and shuffling old man whose constant monologue
could be heard a mile away.
Felipe offered her food from his stores, and water. He
poured out a little of the corn meal he carried with him, and he showed her as
well the acorns he carried, and he mimicked to her the act of drinking. He
wondered if he should not gather his burros, burden them once again, and move
on to another shelter, but he knew enough to recognize that not only was he too
tired to go tromping off into the open land after a day of travel, but his
burros would never consent to do so. Besides, he reasoned, she was much too
small a creature to pose him any harm. He decided to trust to his fate, and to
set some food and water for him on the other side of the fire, and to settle
down with a blanket and to go to sleep. Maybe he would tell her a story about
the badger he had once encountered further south, next to a river, one that had
followed him for a way and that he had never found the courage to kill because
it seemed like such a foolish creature, a badger with a fearsome reputation but
who somehow gave the appearance of being lost and in need of some help. He told
her about that bright summer day long ago when he had made a new friend.
He would later name her Sara. He had no idea why he had been
motivated to give her this name. Maybe it was just the sound of those noises,
or maybe, it was a name he had encountered in the past, although he was unable
to remember where he had heard it. During the entire next day and night, he
stayed under that tree and rested, and felt no guilt or danger because of this.
He couldn’t seemed to convince her to climb down the tree, but it suspected she
had done so, given the fact that the food he had laid out had disappeared.
Besides, he knew he was a sound sleeper, and she would surely have had ample
opportunity to climb down. Still, it bothered him that she would respond to his
questions, only look at him insistently, as if she were in need of something.
What he did know, after gauging her appearing in the light
of day, was that she was a product of the local peoples. The shape of her face, of her eyes, and the
color of her skin told of someone who came from one of the local nations. If
only she were to say something, then he could pin it down.
Felipe decided on the third day to leave. He had spent the
entire second day explaining that he would be going soon, and that she should
tell him if she understood, and that he wouldn’t be coming back, and that he
would like to hear her say something. She remained above in the tree branches,
looking down at him, or sometimes, looking off in the distance. He left her a
serving of cooked cornmeal on the day he left, as well as a pile of nuts and
some dried beef. He did feel a little regret, for even though she had never
said anything, she had seemed to be a patient and attentive audience, and he
could have sworn she understood him. He spoke in a mangle of languages, but
principally, in the language of the settlers as well as the dialect of his own
southern people, but interlaced with a few words of the local language of these
people of the rolling hills.
That morning, Felipe gathered together his things, and tied
them once again on the burro, and retook his path. He walked slowly, and
wondered if he might have taken the wrong tact when he spoke to her. Maybe
there are things that one can communicate without words? What if she were like
the badger, who had followed him and proven to be such a nuisance to him that
day long ago, but that he missed after it disappeared? By all rights, the
badger had needed help, and he had been unable to provide it. But at least he didn’t
shoot it, which he had been tempted to do but which, out of what mysterious act
of grace, had overwhelmed him.
He continued on that long road through the empty grasslands
with his cargo. When he stopped for the night, and started his fire, he felt
lonelier than he had ever felt, and found himself wishing for comfort. Somehow
he couldn’t sleep, and it was quieter than he had ever remembered. He looked
out into the open sky, and saw the shape of the bear pouncing after the slither
snake. When next he came to, it was still dark, but he heard the sound anew
that had awoken him. It was a quite cough in the darkness.
He turned and noticed the girl, Sara, sitting off to the
side, at the edge of the shadows. Felipe chuckled to himself, then stretch out
his hand to the additional blanket that he had set aside next to the tree. He
offered it to her, and she got up and took it before returning to her spot on
the other side of the fire. There was an air of quiet acceptance in her stance,
and Felipe turned to his side and fell asleep, dreaming as he did of the
badger, who told him a story that he quickly forgot when he woke up the next
morning..
She was, of course, there the
next day when he woke up, tending to the fire, and had already heated a pot of
water. When he opened his eyes and gazed at her, this small child or the rolling
hills, this dark creature of seven or eight years of age, more animal than
human, he couldn’t help but notice that she smiled.
OGRomero © 2013
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