Copyright July 2006 by Lars Bohr

Chapter 4: Decision

Tom hadn’t eaten anything since last night, but he wasn’t hungry; hunger had taken a backseat to thirst in the early afternoon, when the sun rose high in the sky and began roasting the stable he was trapped in.  He sat listening to the drone of the cicadas, and the jangle of his handcuffs against the wooden post.  His mouth was dry, and his forehead beaded with sweat.

Tom entertained thoughts of what he would do to the grave robber if he ever saw him again – he knew it would be a sin to do to a man such things as he was thinking, and, for that matter, that it was a sin to be thinking them, but he couldn’t help himself.    
Besides, it was a way of passing the time.  He rested his head against the post and closed his eyes.  How much longer would he be here, chained up like an animal?

Speaking of trapped animals, the horses were getting restless in their stalls, snorting and kicking out.  They had enough food in their tubs, and water in their troughs – Tom envied them their water – but they were itching to stretch their legs and eat fresh grass.  Tom felt sorry for them, but not as sorry as he felt for himself.

As the afternoon wore on, he mulled over his new troubles.  Both of his gift horses for Alex’s parents were gone, and he couldn’t think of any suitable replacements.  

Horses were his family trade, and he had just lost the best two the ranch had to offer.  The gift was an essential part of the courtship; according to Church Law, Tom’s proposal would be invalid without a suitable offering for his future bride’s family.
He might have found two other horses that were almost as good, but he had already checked the stolen two with father Macopenny, who had bestowed his blessing on the gift.  If Tom gave God a lesser offering now, the entire marriage could be tainted.

And he was running out of time.  Marriage was only permitted at this time of year, in the height of summer.  Only a certain number of couples were allowed to marry every year, and each had to make their case to the church as to why they deserved union.  Tom worked hard building his family ranch, and it was time that he was granted land of his own – he deserved it – but there was no reason for the Church to see it that way.

It spun about in his head, making him feel sick and worried.  He was even becoming worried about being found.  His father should have noticed by now that none of the livestock were out to pasture.  Worry about his father’s well being was compounded onto Tom’s already full plate of worries.  

He felt wretchedly hot and tired.  His eyes came unfocused and double-visions of matted straw danced before him.  He began to drowse restlessly.  Alex’s voice echoed in his head, Tom, do you love me?  “Yes,” he muttered aloud.   

Suddenly Alex’s voice was gone, cleared from Tom’s mind in an instant when his ears picked up the sound of crunching gravel.  Somebody was walking just outside the stable doors.

Tom licked his lips and cleared his throat.  “HEY!” he shouted hoarsely, “I’m in here!  Help!”

“Tom?”  It was Cadyr’s voice, thank God.

“Get in here!”

Tom listened to Cadyr run up, and observed his shadow at the foot of the door.  It was good having a friend like this.
Cadyr cracked the heavy doors.  He had some difficulty getting them all the way open with his one good arm.  The other arm lay across his chest under his shirt, as always.

Cadyr walked in, eyeing the shackles on Tom’s wrists.  “You’ve got a funny way of running this place,” Cadyr said.  

“Get my father,” Tom said.  “Tell him to bring an axe, and some water.  I’m thirsty as hell.

***

Cutting through the post wasn’t an option, unless they wanted half the hayloft crashing down on their heads.  Tom pulled the handcuffs tight, and Tom’s father, Bill, took careful aim with the axe in his hands.  With one sure swing he hacked through the chain.

Tom stood up, savoring his freedom and rubbing his wrists.  It was immensely gratifying just to be able to take a few steps in any direction, so he paced.  Relief soon gave way to anger, however.

“I lost two of our horses.”

“I can see,” said Bill, looking into one of the empty stalls.  

“No you don’t,” Tom said – forgetting himself – “They were my gift-horses.”

“Yes,” his father said, looking at him.  “I’m just glad you’re not hurt.”

Tom stopped pacing, feeling suddenly like an ingrate – he revered his father.  

His father asked “He held you up with what again?”

“Some kind of metal pipe that could shoot fire,” Tom said, not knowing how else to describe it.

“Like,” Cadyr jumped in, “it shoots flaming oil or something?”

“No, it was more like—” Tom could think of no other fire that was like it, for it licked out far faster than all the others he knew, like a stove fire, or a camp fire, “—I don’t know it was just really fast.”  He bent and picked up the broken shovel, “Look what it did to my shovel!”

Bill drew a breath.  “Son, how long have you been out in this heat?”

Tom’s head was actually reeling from the heat and the lack of water (which Cadyr had neglected to bring), but his head also reeled in annoyance at the suggestion he could have imagined the whole thing.  “A long time, but the robbery happened at noon.”

Bill raised an eyebrow.  “And what were you doing in the morning?  Letting the animals out has been your first chore for eight years now.”

Tom froze.  In all the confusion, he’d forgotten – he could have said just as easily that he’d been chained up since dawn.  As usual, he could think of no suitable cover stories, for they would all be lies, and lies he could never grapple with.  The urge to confess began to rise in his throat, and he fought it back down with a hard swallow.

Cadyr saw this.  “We need more patrols on the roads,” he put in, hoping to divert attention.  It worked.

Bill shot Cadyr a warning glance, “That’s not for us to say, boy.  Talking that way can get you in trouble, you know that.”

Cadyr shrugged, “It’s just us here, Bill.”

“I know, Cadyr, but if you get in the habit of thinking like that, you’re going to forget yourself at a bad moment.”

“But look at—“

“Not now,” Bill said finally.  “Tom, how long ago was the outlaw leave?”

“About six hours,” said Tom.  “He’s long gone.”

“I’m sure he’s far from here,” said Bill, “but he may have been stopped somewhere further on toward the City Jersey.”

“How do you know he’s going that way?” asked Cadyr.

“Because there’s only one fresh set of tracks going up our trail to the main road, and it turns east, toward the City.  The Gates are already closed for the day; if we tell the Guard who to look for tomorrow, he’ll be taken at the Gates in the morning,” Bill pronounced with confidence.  

Tom had already given him a detailed description for the Guard, and Bill walked back out the door, saying “He may yet be caught, and your horses returned, son.  I’m going now to find the Guard, have faith.”  He stopped, and without turning around said “We’ll talk about what you were doing this morning later.”

Tom’s shoulder’s sagged.

***

Tom and Cadyr went into the house.  Tom plunged his head into the barrel of drinking water, while Cadyr watched in distaste.  Tom kept his head in there for a long time, chugging as much water as he could.  When he was done, he began dragging the barrel out to empty it, and refill it at the well.

Cadyr went with him saying “Bill won’t be able to get a report in tonight.  There are hardly any patrols this far out in the Cairn.”

“I know,” said Tom, looking forlorn, and working the pump.

“If we leave it until tomorrow morning, he’ll be through the gates already.”  Cadyr paused, looking at Tom directly.  “We have to go after those horses ourselves.”

Tom only rolled his eyes.  He wanted those horses back more than anything, but there was simply nothing they could do at this point.

“So then…?” said Cadyr

“So then what?” said Tom aped peevishly.

“Let’s go after them. If we go now, and ride full speed, we can be there when the gates open, waiting for him.”

Tom resented Cadyr for giving him false hope.  “Cadyr, that’s dumb.”

“Yeah?”

“We aren’t even allowed on the roads at night.”

“We just won’t get caught.”

“It’s too dark at night to ride that fast, it isn’t safe.”

“Not a cloud in the sky, and it’s nearly a full moon tonight; we’ll see every pebble on the road.”  Tom still looked doubtful, but Cadyr saw a spark of optimism in his eyes.  Encouraged, he went on: “The Guard barely patrols the Carin in the day, and at night they mostly withdraw to the Wall, or the outposts on the Fringe.  There’s nothing in between, so we’ve got nothing to worry about.”  

Tom was coming around, Cadyr could tell, but he needed something other than reassurance: he needed to be prodded.  “Just think how hard you worked raising those horses, man.  Those two were special to you, I know they were, because you worked so goddam hard on them, especially the charger.  Remember how much trouble the charger gave you?  How many times it bucked you off into the dust, how it trampled your foot once, and crushed one of your toes?  I know that hurt because you squealed like a stuck pig when it happened.”  Tom looked at Cadyr sharply.  He was getting angry, and that was exactly what Cadyr wanted.

“Remember the hours and hours you spent breaking that horse, not despite its balls, but because of them?  You knew the more it lashed out at you, the more hell it gave you, the better it would serve its master in the end.  You did all that work just so you could give the damned thing away to another man, Alex’s father.  And just when all your effort is about to pay off, it gets taken away from you by a lowly thief.  Are you going to try and get it back or aren’t you?”

By the time Tom realized he was being manipulated, it was too late for him to give a shit.  They would find the grave robber together, and make him pay.  With any luck, they might even recover the horses.  “Let’s ride,” Tom said.


***

Tom and Cadyr rode hard for the first few miles.  The air wasn’t particularly cold that night, but they shivered from the chilly wind, which they weren’t dressed for.  They should have thought about that before they left, but once they made the snap decision to pursue the grave robber into the City, they were too excited to heed such mundane considerations.  They had simply saddled their horses and charged off, feeling no longer helpless, no longer like victims; feeling like gods.  They rode on in spite of the cold, driven by a strong sense of adventure.

By the time they came to a wooded area, where it was too dark to see the road, it was time to give their mounts a rest anyway.  They slowed from a gallop to an easy trot, for safe riding.

The forest was beautiful, particularly at this time of year.  Fireflies weaved in and out of the trees, and flew across the road.  Cadyr admired their beauty, which was both earthly and unearthly, and wondered at the glory of God’s Creation.  It also set him thinking about the old, old texts his father kept under lock and key, in a chest in the attic of the house, like The Origin of Species.

The books had been handed down over generations without number, and Cadyr had learned to read by reading of the Galapagos Islands, and the theory of relativity.  Cadyr’s father had told him repeatedly never to speak of those texts to anyone, because the books might get burned.  Father was a man of God, but he loved books, and he couldn’t abide by the Church’s book burning – neither could his father’s father, or his father before him.  

Cadyr had read all the texts, of course, and he found them fascinating.  They offered explanations of how the world worked that were far more satisfying than those contained in the Bible.  However, the texts were a mixed blessing; as Cadyr read on, a feeling of estrangement grew within him.  This feeling did not subside, but grew and grew as he contemplated the conflicting arguments presented in the Bible, and the other books, which were sacred to him as well.  

The subjects of evolution, and physics, and astronomy were often on Cadyr’s mind.  For a little while he had broached the subjects with people, despite his father’s warnings.  At first, Cadyr found it amusing to bounce the ideas off of people from around the neighborhood – usually after Church services let out – simply because he had done the reading and they hadn’t.  

Soon after that cheap thrill wore off, he realized how immensely frustrating it could be to make people see logic.  Few people were willing to listen, and when he was even given the chance to advance his arguments – the arguments of brilliant men long dead, who he respected and admired as saints of science –  they looked at him like a simpleton.  Talk of fossils had gotten him stares, laughs, and even sneers; not an ounce of appreciation or understanding.  That had gotten old fast.   

He still talked with his father occasionally but – as he had been amazed to find out – his father believed none of the words, and valued the books only for their antiquity.  When Cadyr brought up the fact of the earth’s orbiting around the sun – as opposed to what he’d been told in Bible School – his father had only nodded distantly.  How could someone who’d read the books not see the sense in them?  Not be seized by the sense in them?

Once in a while Cadyr still discussed things with Tom, he was slightly more receptive.  Wondering briefly if maybe this was a bad time to bring it up – everything being so hectic – Cadyr asked anyway: “Tom, have you ever heard of a guy called Darwin?”
“Darwin Lindsey, from down the road?”

“No, Charles Darwin.  He had some interesting things to say.  My dad has a book of his teachings.”

“I don’t want to get into this,” said Tom, “not if it’s going to be like that time with that guy Copernicus.”

“It’s nothing like that.”

“Good.”

“It’s a completely different subject,” said Cadyr.

They rode silently for a moment, annoyed with each other.

“I really just don’t want to talk about it.”

“Fine, but don’t expect me to explain it later.”

Another silence.

“I don’t like it when you go against the word of God, Cadyr, it’s just stupid.”

“I don’t know how you can say that, when you aren’t even willing to look at the arguments and take them seriously.”

“Because God’s word is law, Cadyr.  You should be glad no one takes you seriously, if they did, you could be in a lot of trouble.”

“I know God’s word is law, but is it truth?”

“Law and truth are practically the same thing.”

“They aren’t at all.”

Tom didn’t reply.  That was quick, thought Cadyr, resenting his friend a little.  People always hush up first when they’re wrong.

They rode on for another ten minutes, neither of them saying anything.  The number of fireflies in the air increased as they went, and they even got larger.  A different species must be inhabiting the inner forest, Cadyr thought with interest.  They really were strangely large, their glowing abdomens about the girth of a dime.  Darwin had talked about the variety of –

Cadyr glimpsed a swiftly growing ball of green light coming in from his left.  He turned to face it, and it hit him directly between the eyes.

Tom had plucked one of the flies from the air and flicked it at Cadyr’s head.  The fly recovered and buzzed away as Cadyr blinked.  Tom threw his head back and laughed.  “If you could see the look on your face, man,” he managed to say after he was done laughing, “Priceless.”

Cadyr laughed a little too, but he was thinking: you just don’t know what it’s like.  Reading books is like spending time in somebody else’s head.  I wonder if anybody else understands that.  Probably a church cleric would know what I’m talking about.  I wonder if we’ll run into any near the City…

“Woah,” Tom said to his horse, and it stopped.  Tom was no longer laughing, or even smiling.  He pointed up ahead and said “What’s that?” to Cadyr.

Cadyr looked where he was pointing and saw something lying just off to the side of the road.  It was a large, round black shape; glossy, and shining in the moonlight.  As they walked closer, Cadyr made out what looked like four legs poking out of it, and determined it was a horse.  Was it…?

Yes – he realized when Tom groaned out loud and jumped from the saddle – it was the charger Tom had lost to the grave robber.  He had lost it for good now.