One More Round

One More Round

By Bobby Neal Winters

He was born last Thursday.  Eight pounds two ounces with a head of hair and his mother’s eyes.  I got to hold him in my arms when he was only a few hours old.

Little babies are scary. They are small and fragile.  You  are so afraid that you will break them.

But you don’t.

Grandbabies, first grandbabies I think especially, by their very existence, transmit a message to you with crystal clarity that the universe has been trying to convey to you but that you’ve been purposefully not hearing.  My grandson was a mirror in which I saw the face of my own grandfathers and met an eternal truth.

I am going to die.

Don’t worry. This is not news; it’s just the one thing we know for a fact since the day we are born. This is a mathematical truth and not a statistical one.  The reckoning of the date is uncertain and has a margin of error, but the fact that the date will come is as certain as anything there is.  We know this rationally, but that’s not the same as knowing it in truth, knowing in our bones.

He lay there asleep on my arm with a look of peace on his face and the truth seeped into my body like rain on a garden.  It rose to my ear like a whisper.

You are going to die.

They would like us to think that we are a product of our genes, a product of our educations.  They would say that we are bags of mostly water, that we are just combinations of atoms and information.

We are made of dust to be sure, but also from the breath of God who blew into Adam’s nostrils all that long ago.  The breath has blown down to use through our parents, our grandparents, and so forth.  There are currents and eddies within it.  We are a product of our parents genes, yes, but make from their experience and all they ever encountered.  Our foundation is our parents love and all who loved them.

And so, I am going to die, yes. Yes. Okay.

But there is another soul breathing in the world today.  God voted that the world should have another spin.

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given:

It’s okay.

Welcome to the New Age

By Bobby Neal Winters

I’m waking up

I feel it in my bones

Enough to make my systems blow

Welcome to the New Age

--Imagine Dragons, Radioactive

Many of my friends have been confused as to why zombie movies and literature are so popular.  I’m not. The human race has been fine-tuned to look for apocalypse. Disaster to the point of near total destruction has been an ongoing theme in history and prehistory.  There’ve been plagues, wars, and famines taking us to the brink.

The Zombie Apocalypse is simply another metaphorical vehicle in which to carry the theme along.  Near-total destruction of the human race is a theme going back at least as far as the story of Noah and the Ark. We see apocalypse covered of course in the Apocalypse of St. John, also known as the Book of Revelation. We get the metaphor of the Four Horsemen: Conquest, War, Famine, and Plague. One could view it as the ravings of a madman or one could view it through the lense of what happened as the Roman empire eventually fell in the West and was conquered in the East.

Within the literature, within the stories we read in books or watch at the movies, there is usually some core of survivors. Noah’s family survived. Those whose name were written in the Lamb’s Book of Life survived.  There is a prize set of traits that help survival:

Rule 1: Cardio

Rule 2: The Double Tab

Rule 3: Beware of Bathrooms, etc.

Those who don’t pick up on these rules are selected out, winnowed like the wheat from the chaff. This brand of literature tends to focus sharply on survival.  I was deeply affected by wanting Steven Spielberg’s version of The War of the Worlds. It’s not a zombie movie, of course, but it is an apocalypse. Humans are faced with beings who simply want them dead. There is no misunderstanding; there is no negotiation; the aliens are using humans as fertilizer for their own alien flora.  Gardeners don’t typically negotiate with fertilizer, either bone meal or blood meal.  That presented the issue with a razor-sharp edge.

Rarely in life are issues presented with that sort of focus. In this genre, it is clear what is at stake and the stakes are high indeed: personal survival and the survival of the species. In the modern West, we are rarely allowed to see anything with this sort of clarity.

For example, currently one in five babies conceived will be killed before they are born.

I put that last sentence in a paragraph by itself to make it hard to miss. I leave out the absolute numbers for now because they are so large.  Stalin, the antichrist that he was, said the death of one person is a tragedy but the death of a million is a statistic. Twenty-seven people, twenty of them children, were killed in the Sandy Hook school tragedy. On that same day, a couple of thousand--yes, thousand--were aborted in the United States. That happens every day. The same people who are up in arms about Sandy Hook, don’t breath a word against abortion.  There are people who won’t eat chicken who will fight to the last to preserve a woman’s ability to kill a child up until the point it’s born.

But one in five children conceived will be killed before they are born.

If this were a disease killing that many people, we would be up in arms, and, indeed, many people are. The irony is that so many of the people who support abortion rights are otherwise gentle souls: they take good care of their pets; they are very fastidious with regard to the ethical treatment of animals; but the slaughter of the innocents, even when carried out on a truly apocalyptic scale, goes under their radar.  

No, that’s not true. It doesn’t go under their radar. They will spend their money, their intellect, and their time to maintain a woman’s ability to kill her unborn baby.

What hurts is that I was once on that side. Then, somewhere along the way, the scales fell from my eyes. My eyes opened, and I could see.

Blindness that is a good metaphor.  Or, better yet, think about I am Legend. The lone hero in the city doing his work in the light, while the vampire/zombies flee the light.  Of course, they do kill him eventually.

I see nothing that can change the current situation quickly. The apocalypse comes and there is a great dying.  The survivors struggle on afterwards because those who die take so much with them when they go: art, literature, and various other pieces of civilization.  Civilization does require people to keep it going.

But the survivors do emerge afterward, stronger.  Those who survive a plague will carry some sort of resistance. Those who survive a disaster carry some sort of knowledge of survival techniques.  Presumably those who survive a zombie apocalypse would take good care of their cardio and praise the value of the double-tap.

Those who survive the current apocalypse will also come through changed.  The culture will be changed. But the bulk of the apocalypse is ahead of us, and we must first survive it.

I Ate a Butterfly

By Bobby Neal Winters

Howard Wolowitz is a character on the television sitcom The Big Bang Theory.  Howard is over-parented, over-sexed, and in over his head when he applies to be an astronaut on the International Space Station.  Before he can go up on the ISS, he has to go through survival training.  After undergoing the grueling experience of living on his own in wild, he skypes his girlfriend and is obviously the worse for wear.  Trying to be stoic, he speaks to her of the rigors of the training and the discomfort he’s had to endure.  Then he utters a non sequitur.

“I ate a butterfly,” he says.  “It was so small and so beautiful,  but I was so hungry.”

In spite of his appearing to be totally unsuited to any sort of adventure, he has been pushed to his limit and has found his strong core that does not want to die.  There is a fiber within him that will not break. It wants to achieve its goal.

It wants to live.

It has been written that nature is red in tooth and claw.  I don’t purely adhere to that; there is much else.  However, it does point to what might be termed as the great competition of life.  Carnivore eat herbivores; herbivores eat plants. Plants vie with other plants for their share of sunlight and water.  Species compete with other species within a particular niche.  Within species, individuals compete with other individuals.   Life itself is the impetus.  Without this competition, there is death--or maybe not even death.

Maybe there is nothing.

But in addition to the competition there is altruism.

Much has been written of altruism and I have no need to reproduce it here. Individuals can sacrifice for the sake of the group. We are in general for it.  Our sacred texts, myths, literature, movies, and songs are full of stories in which an individual gave his very life for the same of the group.  We honor this in every aspect of our culture from Jimmy Dean singing “Big John” to Good Friday services at church.

But it can be taken to an extreme. One heroic individual walking out into the blizzard to that the rest may have enough provisions to make it until help arrives is heroic.  The sacrifice of three hundred can save western civilization.  Everyone doing it is just stupid. It’s like O. Henry’s  “Gift of the Magi” without the implied sex at the end.

But the stories of everyone going out into the blizzard just don’t happen.  They don’t happen because within us we have a core.  There is something that says “I am!”  It is the will to live.

It is within us, at least in healthy individuals.

I chose to say “I am” on purpose.  In the Greek it is “ego eimi.”  It occurs within the Gospel of John for profound theological reasons beyond the scope of the current piece.  But that word ego is my real focus.  

We don’t like ego.  We talk disparagingly of those who have big egos, and often with good reason. Some ego is necessary, however, or we would just lay down and die.

Ego is to a human as patriotism is to a country. It can be overdone, but for continued existence it is absolutely necessary.

I say with no originality at all that it is a matter of balance.

Where do we find the fulcrum for the balance?

Grab Her Bootie and Pinch

A few years back I taught College Algebra.  This is a general education course that attracts students with a broad range of preparation. On one hand, there are the students who’ve successfully mastered the material in high school, and on other other hand, there are the students who’ve been exposed to it four times in high school and are now taking it one more time at four times the pace.

In this particular course, there was a young man who sat in the middle of the front row.  His face was round, and he sported a baseball cap atop his head. To his credit, the bill was oriented correctly.  His upper torso had the shape I’ve learned to associate with young men who are not unacquainted with beer, and he wore t-shirts.  One of them was a spoof of the Abercrombie and Fitch t-shirts. It said, “Grab her bootie and pinch.”

I am not very easily shocked, so it didn’t bother me.  More importantly it didn’t bother the young women who sat beside him who, by all appearances, seemed to appreciate the sentiment. He was regular in attendance and ultimately received a good grade.  

This is not what I remember about him.  I remember him because one day I was walking past the Newman Center and saw him in attendance, attired more or less as I’ve described.

My department chair is Catholic, so I related this story to him complete with character description.  This caused him to related a story the priest at the Newman Center had told about one of the young men there.

The priest had been warning the young man about premarital sex, and the young man had replied.

“This isn’t premarital sex,” he’d said. “I’m not going to marry any of these girls.”

My chair opined this was probably the same guy. Surely there couldn’t be two.

Surely not.

Regardless, the character is consistent.  

I bring him up in this piece because, whether he realizes it or not, the nothing less than the species desire to survive is housed within him and is driving him. Finding the right fulcrum of balance for that desire will be very important to his living a good and happy life.  In some manner--either through birth, seeking, or maybe just dating a Catholic girl--he has found a place that teaches a way to find that balance.

The School of Reality

I began with a story about Howard Wolowitz of The Big Bang Theory.  His character, not unlike the butterfly he ate, has undergone a metamorphosis. At the beginning of the series, even though he had the technical expertise of an engineer, he was very much ignorant of anything to do with real women.  This was in spite of a great curiosity about certain aspects to say the least.

This is being remedied. He is receiving an education in this area, as most men do, from a real woman, his girlfriend, Bernadette.

Tradition has a way setup for this education to take place.  The first step is to be born into a home with loving parents from which one can learn the roles of the sexes and how they interact with one another. One is then taught a framework about courtship, marriage, and fidelity.  Howard is missing big parts of that framework. His father left the family so he didn’t have a model to follow.

But, regardless, nature has driven him out of himself and to a real woman who is by no means a doormat.  This is important. Iron sharpens iron as they say.  While a marriage shouldn’t, by any means,  be a continual battle neither should one spouse simply be a ditto stamp. That core within Bernadette, that “I am” she has that matches his is helping him to become a full human man as opposed to the mockery of a man that he had been.

Kingdom of the Squirrel: Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Elizabeth had been away awhile. Years. Enough years for she and her husband to have a baby girl, Victoria, and Victoria to get a little sister, Isabella, and Isabella to start walking and talking--just a little.

Her grandmother, every time she held Isabella, got tears in her eyes and told her that she looked just like her mother when she was that age. Isabella didn’t disagree neither did she understand.

Elizabeth, in the way of women, was becoming more like her mother each day. She missed her mother and wanted to be around her and was constantly on the lookout for a job near home.

Then came the day they surprised each other.

Elizabeth called her mother.

“Momma,” she said. “I’ve got some news.”

Then she shared that both she and her husband had gotten jobs in their home town.

“We can see you all the time,” she said. “Now we just need to find a house.”

There was a silence on the other end of the line that she wasn’t expecting. It only last a second or maybe two, but it was enough to make her worry.

“Well,” her mother finally said, “you can have my house.”

Elizabeth’s mother had never dated before Elizabeth left home. Somehow the manner of Elizabeth’s father’s death right before Elizabeth’s birth had frozen out any other relationship. When Elizabeth married and left herself, it was judged to be time. Elizabeth’s mother joined groups. She’d met people. She’d met a man, and she’d introduced him once to Elizabeth.

She’d worried that as he was a bit older than her whether it would go anywhere.

“But today, he asked me to marry him,” she said. “I said yes. He lives in a very nice house out in the country that he’s had all to himself since his wife died. You all can just have this one.”

And so it came to pass that one winter day Elizabeth--and her family--returned.

The movers had moved everything in. They got unpacked. Elizabeth and her husband got into the flow of their jobs, and Victoria and Isabella got into the flow of preschool and daycare.

Winter passed slowly but then spring came, and Elizabeth did something she had dreamed about for years. She took her daughters out into the backyard to do yard work.

It was one of those days of spring that was sunny but there was a reminder of winter in every breeze. The leaves of the some of the more daring trees had burst out, but not of the oak. The oak was waiting until it was surer that spring wouldn’t retreat again.

Victoria ran quickly to the swing set that had been waiting all winter for her, while Elizabeth and Bella, as Isabella was called, walked along behind.

Elizabeth looked at Isabella toddling toddling ahead of her and had to admit that she did look like her own baby pictures. There were pictures of Elizabeth standing in this yard, near this very spot, with the only difference being the tree.

She smile to herself.

“Bella,” she said. “Do you know what your grandmother and I called this tree when I was your age?”

She hadn’t expected an answer because Bella didn’t act like she was listening. Instead she seemed looking at something in the tree. So what Elizabeth heard next surprised her in more ways than one.

“The Daddy tree!” Isabella said with a giggle, still looking up.

Elizabeth was surprised because she didn’t remember having told her about the Daddy tree.

But then in the way of mothers who are teaching their children how to speak, she grabbed Elizabeth up in her arms and tickled Bella’s tummy.

“Who told you that? Who told you that?” she asked. “Did grandma tell you that?”

“No,” Isabella answered through giggles. “He did!”

She was pointing up the tree.

Elizabeth followed her finger to a point twelve feet up the Daddy tree and saw a squirrel. And the squirrel did appear to be talking.

And, as you know, the squirrel was talking. He talked a lot. Indeed, he preached a lot. Among his many name segments, most of which referred to his loquaciousness in some way, the most prominent was the Prophet. This is how we shall call him.

The Prophet had been preaching for years. He could tell the whole story from the planting of the Daddy tree; the day the Emissary saved the tree; the Death of Postumus; the elimination of the Creep. He’d known Ninja Squirrel himself only briefly but long enough to learn not only the story of the Emissary’s parting but of her promise to return.

As time moves so differently for squirrels and little girls, the fact there had been a change of occupants in the house had almost been missed. It’s like barges or continents moving past each other. One has to really pay attention and even then sometime details can be missed.

When Elizabeth stepped out, the Prophet thought that she was her mother, or, rather, the Mother. Then he’d seen the two little ones come out and was confused. Who were they? Ninja who had seen the Emissary who had, indeed, guarded the Emissary, has said she was as tall as the Mother. By way of contrast, the early stories had suggested that the Emissary was much smaller than the Mother. The story was that the Emissary had grown into an adult, and it is not the way that adults grow smaller again. And to become twain? No.

But.

But he had to be sure, so be did what he did best. He talked. He preached.

“And in those days, Postumus visited this tree, the tree of his father...”

As he continued, it looked as if the smaller of the two were listening. He was sure of this when he heard her translate for her mother.

“The Daddy tree,” she had said.

He had seen the Mother look at her and follow her finger, and he was now looking into the Mother’s own eyes as she looked at him. Being a squirrel and being very good at body language, he could tell there was a very great deal going on behind her eyes.

And indeed there was. She was remembering Ninja Squirrel, the day she had been attacked, the furry images she had seen, and the sound she had heard. She remembered all the times squirrels had left her little gifts. She remembered the day Grampa Squirrel had died. There was even a faint, half-remembered dream of a time when a squirrel had told her about the Daddy tree.

She turned to look at Bella and believed her.

And when she believed, she could understand what the Prophet was saying.

And the three of them--and the Mother and the Male and the Rich Man--they had many adventures the writing of which would take many lifetimes.

But the Prophet told these stories to his disciple, who told them to his disciple, who told them to his, and that disciple was me.

The End

Kingdom of the Squirrel: Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Squirrels know where baby squirrels come from.  They are a product of what squirrels call the Chase.  Every mating season, boy squirrels and girl squirrels chase each other.  When one or the other manages to get caught, a batch of baby squirrels is the result.  This is the purpose of the Chase. (When a boy squirrel or a girl squirrel is never caught, they are said to be “chased.” This is a pun in English, but not in squirrel.)

It is the way of squirrels to have this chase every season but not with the same pair of squirrels chasing each other every year.  Squirrels don’t pay much heed to lineages, other than to know one’s father and mother as everyone is related to everyone else by many, many connections.  This is simply their way.  They know that there are  creatures, like doves, who mate for life.  They know of cats and dogs who were as promiscuous as themselves.

But, as we mentioned earlier, they have trouble understanding humans.  One big reason for this problem, as has been said, is the fact that the human lifespan is so long relative to that of the squirrel.  A squirrel born at the same time as a human could live three or more lifetimes, were he granted such, before a human starts a family.

Time flows differently for squirrels and trees and little girls.

But squirrels do know where oak trees came from.  This is because they are part of the very process that Nature has for oak trees to reproduce themselves.  Squirrels failing to retrieve an acorn they’ve planted is all a part of the plan.  

Nature is subtle. It is all about life, so all sorts of ways have been devised to make sure life continues.  With squirrels it is the Chase; with oak trees it includes squirrels; and with humans too there is also a way.

Squirrels are not part of the human process as they are with oak trees. While there are certain human activities they could have extrapolated from had they seen them and thereby received insight, they’ve never seen them.  They go on behind closed doors in houses, hotels, cars, and the occasional linen closet.

So it took the combined genius of the followers of Postumus to discern even that children were of the same kind as Man.  This could happen because the followers of Postumus as a group continued to exist through time after individual members had died. The knowledge of one generation was not lost to the next.  Indeed, the knowledge of one generation was a foundation the next could build upon.

But squirrels are prisoners of geography.  Crossing a street for them is a life-risking act of heroism. Streets to them are somewhat like oceans in the time of Columbus were to human beings. Few are so bold as to be able to move more than a few blocks in their lifetime, but there are exceptions.  Bold, heroic exceptions. Like Ninja Squirrel and his disciples.

Because of his rare ability, Ninja Squirrel had been made He-who-guards-the-Emissary and had taken that as a name segment.  He and his disciples travelled several miles every day as they followed the Emissary on her mysterious pilgrimage. They had saved her from the creep who had attacked her, receiving only minor wounds themselves and had continued to guard her afterwards, as clearly they were needed.

They continued following her as she went alone to the university day after day until one day she didn’t.  That is to say, she didn’t stop going to the university, rather she stopped walking alone.  One day she emerged from one of the buildings and someone was walking beside her.  Her companion was taller than she was, broader in the shoulders, and had shorter hair.  He had biceps that rippled visibly.

Ninja had seen this kind of creature many times before and knew it to be the male of Man.  Ninja and his disciples watched as they walked out of the quad, off the campus, and toward the Emissary’s home.  About two-thirds of the way there, they came to a corner, stopped and talked to each other for what Ninja considered an overly long period of time, and then they parted.  Squirrels didn’t like extended conversation on the ground for extended periods because of the constant threat of brain-eating cats.

Ninja allowed his disciples to follow the Emissary home as he himself followed the male. He noted the male paused after he’d walked about a quarter of a block to look back at the Emissary for a long moment and then walked on with a spring in his step.

This happened every day. The ritual where the talked before parting lasted longer and longer, though cats never did take advantage.  One day, as it became spring, they stopped in the park and the Male pulled a flat round object out of his back pack.  They tossed it back and forth to each other until Ninja heard the Emissary say she was thirsty.  The male then left her and came back with something the Emissary began to drink from.  

Then something strange happened.  While the Male’s back was turned, the Emissary reached into the cup and brought out something and put it down his back.  Then he started chasing her.

This aroused Ninja’s interest to a large degree and he watched intently because he thought he knew where this was headed.  The Male did catch the Emissary, but it didn’t end the way Ninja thought it would.  Instead, they kissed.

Summers and winters came and went and then it was spring once again.  Ninja saw people on campus walking around in flat hats and wearing robes as he had every year, but this time the Emissary and the Male were among them.

Soon after there was a large gathering in the Emissary’s yard.  The Mother--who had not been called She-Devil in years--was there; she was smiling and crying at the same time.  They were standing beside the Daddy tree in the sunshine and a man in a robe like the ones on campus said some things.  And they kissed again.

Then the Emissary rode off with the Male in a car, but before they did,Ninja heard her say something to the Mother: “I will be back.”

Ninja, though, never saw her again.

Kingdom of the Squirrel: Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Though he was not yet two years old, his name had grown so long with so many segments as to take several minutes to say. Most of the segments were of the squirrelishly obscure variety, so we will call him by the name that Beth christened him with: Ninja Squirrel.

Beth had come upon him shortly after beginning her time at college. There were many squirrels on her college campus, of course, but none of them so bold and cheeky as Ninja.

Ninja would often confront her on the sidewalk and attempt to engage her in conversation.  Beth’s ability to understand squirrel had waned as she had grown older.  Certain things still leaked through, but mostly on the unconscious level, and that was probably a good thing because people who say they can speak to squirrels are often fitted with funny coats with long sleeves and spend a good deal of time hugging themselves.

When Ninja tired of waiting for her to answer, he would often segue into preaching.  He liked quoting extracts from the story of Nut-gazer and the story of Postumus. He admired the heroism of Postumus’s death and the mystery of Nut-Gazer’s disappearance.  Whenever Beth tried to escape because she was late for class or simply had something better to do than listen to a squirrel chatter at her, Ninja would dodge in front of her and block her way until he was finished with his sermon.  

She had given him the name Ninja because he would vault down trees and leap across sidewalks to get to her when he saw her coming out of one of the buildings on campus to walk across the quad.

Because of his long and weighty name and all the acts that earned it, Ninja Squirrel was greatly respected by all of the other squirrels on campus, at least the ones were followers of the teachings of Postumus according to the Council of Lincoln Park. Being on a college campus, the squirrels were a very independent lot.  Some of these denied there was a Source, some denied there was a First Tree, and some of them denied there were any trees at all, as trees were simply a social construct.  They often proclaimed this very thing while sitting in a tree.

There were those, however, who believed and faithfully followed the teachings of the Council.

Beth herself was gaining a long and weighty name.  Her mother had always called her Beth, but when she came to college and heard the professors calling her name from the roll as Elizabeth Katherine Rosewood, she liked the heft of it.  Beth was your friend, but Elizabeth was a queen’s name, a couple of them in fact.  While she didn’t mind being Beth with her mother and her childhood friends, she rather liked the way she felt when her professors and her college friends called her by her full name.

This may very well have been part of her kinship with the squirrels going back to Postumus. The squirrels, more than anything else, understood the power of a name.  In their culture, their religion, their names were the very things they were.  They remembered their achievements, both positive and negative, by commemorating them in name segments.  While a hero might take the segment Car-dodger, another less heroic might have the name segment Almost-dodged-a-car.  One of this variety might also be missing a part of a tail.  Sometimes the final name segment was Didn’t-dodge-a-car.

Though she went to college during the day, she still lived at home as the college was but a half-hour walk away.  She enjoyed the walk back and forth everyday as it gave her time to think and experience nature.  She enjoyed it especially well as the autumn progressed, the evenings cooled, and the leaves turned.  

She enjoyed it except for one thing.

There was a young man who sometimes crossed her path as she made her way home.  He was not un-handsome, although he wasn’t nearly so handsome as apparently he believed himself to be.  When their paths crossed, he spoke to her, and she would be polite, but no more.

As was said, before the Fall, Man could talk with the animals.  A good part of that ability resided in the reading of body language.  The body tells its own story whatever the mouth might say.  When different stories are perceived, this creates a disconnect.. When this young man talked to Beth, it left a disconnect which she, being talented with words, had no trouble putting a name to. Indeed, it only took one word in English: creep.

Had this young man been a squirrel, he would’ve had a long name: the word creep repeated a thousand times.  Being less separated from Nature than Man, squirrels would’ve worked in dangerous a dozen or so times along the way.

One could discuss how the young man had gotten to be that way. One could talk about ways he might be changed.  At this point for Beth, for Elizabeth Katherine Rosewood, it doesn’t matter. The Creep was like a wolf. She felt that.  She started altering her path to and from the university so as to avoid him.

And so it was on this particular autumn night Beth was going home from the university.  She had stayed on campus late because there was a speaker that interested her.  She heard the speaker, lingered for hor d'oeuvres, and then began her way home in darkness.  Her way was dark, but not particularly scary. At one point, it took her past a part of town that had not been developed.  It was wooded and quiet and very, very dark.

While many people might’ve been very afraid while walking in this part of town, that was not Beth’s nature.  She wasn’t afraid until the very moment she felt an arm crooked around her neck, a knife scratching her under her chin and drawing a trickle of blood, and a body pressing her backpack into her spine.

She struggled but she couldn’t get a way.  She tried to scream but the arm rammed under her chin wouldn’t let her.  Her assailant threw her to the ground so hard that it knocked the breath out of her.  

There were all sorts of things she might’ve thought but didn’t.  She saw the glint of the knife and there was no thinking; there was only fear.

Then something very odd happened.

The figure above her began to make noises.

“Ouch! What the? God dammit!”

He rolled off her and began to tug at himself somewhat frantically.  He was pulling at his sides; he was pulling at his neck; he was pulling at his head.  He was pulling things from his body and flinging them to the ground.

This gave Beth time to think. While part of her wanted to hit the man who had attacked her, the smarter part told her to run.  And she did just that. She was a block away before she even slowed.  She then found a house that was lit and awake in which some college kids were drinking beer, playing cards, watching TV, and doing anything but studying.  Beth hammered on the door screaming and crying.

She explained to the college kids that she’d been attacked.  The boys ran down the street to where it had happened, and the girls called the cops.

It was the boys who found the body and stayed with it until the cops arrived.

When the cops shined their lights on the body, they couldn’t understand what they saw. There were hundreds of bites on the body. Many of the bites were through the man’s clothing.  One of the bites--the fatal one--had gone through the carotid artery.

They brought out Beth who identified the man as the fellow she knew as the Creep.

The detective on the case was a very practical man.  He looked at what had happened and could not come up with a narrative that fit all of the evidence. Given that, he decided to ignore quite a lot of it.  In his report, he suggested that the assailant had suffered some sort of a fit while he was attacking his victim and had accidentally stabbed himself.  Case closed.

The truth would not have been believed anyway.

The for those who believe, the answer isn’t so complicated. One of Ninja squirrels squirrelly name segments was He-who-guards-the-Emissary.  He followed Beth back and forth from the university as a part of a holy vow he had made to keep the Emissary safe.

He was good to his vow and, and he and a group of his disciples were following her tree to tree when the Creep attacked her.  It was Ninja himself who had delivered the fatal bite.  His name grew even longer among squirrel-kind.

Beth, for her part, had seen more than she realized while it was happening, though her rational mind was having trouble letting her believe it.   The things the Creep were pulling from his body made noises, and she believed she recognized the noises.

Kingdom of the Squirrel: Chapter 4

Chapter 4

With the passing of Postumus, the squirrels who followed him continued along in the ways he taught them.  If anything, they practiced it even more faithfully because they didn’t have him to ask face to face; they could only ask him through memory.

It was providence that on the day of Postumus’s burial a squirrel of rare intellect was there to witness it.  His name was Nut-gazer.  He was still young and only had one name segment, but if even if he’d lived to be as ancient as ten, he would’ve still only had that one but perhaps repeated 100 times.

He thought.  He stared absently at a nut--any nut--and thought.  He thought deep thoughts, broad thoughts, and important thoughts, and he was respected for this.  He put his talent for thinking to the service of his community and solved the puzzle of one of the neighborhood “squirrel-proof” bird feeders and many other problems along the way.

On the day of the Postumus’s death, he’d seen Beth’s mom bury Postumus and it had raised questions in his mind.

Indeed, it had raised questions in most of the squirrels’ minds.  Why would the She-Devil bury Postumus, and why would she choose to do it in such an appropriate manner at the base of his father’s tree?

Some had said later it was because the Emissary had made her, but this didn’t dovetail with what they’d seen with their own eyes. Clearly the She-Devil had been the initiator.

Nut-gazer thought long and hard.  He sifted through memories of what he’d seen and what other squirrels had told him.  This was important because not only was he a great thinker, he was a great listener and remembered everything he’d heard in his short but inquisitive life. 

Squirrels thought humans were devils because they fed the dogs and the cats, but some humans also put out food for birds.  Nut-gazer knew this because he’d helped steal it.  Some humans also put out food for squirrels and he had seen the She-Devil feed the Emissary.  So humans fed other creatures.  They didn’t feed just enemies of the squirrels; they fed all creatures.

He gazed harder and harder at his nut.

It followed, therefore, that humans weren’t devils.  They were feeding other creatures, but who were they feeding the creatures for, whom were they serving?  There must be something, someone to whom they bowed a knee.  Were they servants of the tree?  But there were many trees.  Ah, but each tree came from a nut and each nut from another tree.  Was it possible that all trees were connected to a first tree?  Were humans servants of that first tree? 

He thought this must be the case and he began thinking of it as the First Tree.  It became this way in his mind.  The humans were not devils. They were servants of the First Tree whose job was to care for all of the First Tree’s creatures.  All--squirrels, dogs, cats, humans--were all creatures of the First Tree.

When great seriousness he shared these thoughts to a close friend of his whose name would eventually include the segment Truth-bearer.

Indeed, Nut-gazer was a truly rare squirrel, and shortly after he told his story to Truth-bearer, he was gazing at a nut and Mischief came up behind him unnoticed, killed him, and ate his magnificent brain.  No one saw this.  No one of the Children of Postumus, as they began calling themselves, ever found Nut-gazer’s body.  This became part of his legend added to his mystique.

As time passed, the Children of Postumus began to believe the things he’d said.

/***/

Time flows differently for squirrels and trees and little girls.

The years passed away until Truth-bearer, who had become the leader of the Children of Postumus, died quietly in his sleep inside his home, which was the attic of Beth’s home.  She and her mother could smell something odd and had guesses, but never knew for sure what it was.

Not long after this, Mischief and Charlie, who themselves had been very old relative to their kind, passed-away within months of each other.   Beth and her mother were twice more at the base of the Daddy tree burying each of them in turn.  The squirrels witnessed this and approved as the words of the Prophet Nut-gazer were confirmed.

They began preaching the unity of all animals under the First Tree to everyone: squirrels, cats, dogs, and humans.  Most scoffed, but some believed.  The humans were mostly clueless as to what all the chattering was about.  That did not keep the squirrels from preaching to them, however.

Then there came, as so often is the case, a miraculous summer.  One summer when Beth was thirteen, she became taller than her mother.  She lacked her mother’s breadth and her mother’s heft, but she was taller.  She looked rather like someone who’d stepped out of a painting by El Greco; tall, thin, and beautiful.

It was then the squirrels noticed. 

The younger squirrels noticed first because they been around to know the Emissary when she was small, but the very oldest of their kin, the venerable six-year-olds, confirmed it and said it must be so.  The Emissary and the She-Devil were of the same kind. They were both the female of Man.

The Emissary, indeed, must be the She-Devil’s child.

This was not as shocking as it would have been before Nut-gazer had discerned, and Truth-bearer had proclaimed, that humans were simply creatures of the First Tree like squirrels.

The truth was simply the truth and was to be lived with and bit by bit understood. Nothing could be done about it, but the discovery did make calling the one who was the mother of the Emissary “She-Devil” unacceptable.  The squirrels about all believed names were important.

After thinking about it among themselves and a great deal of chattering, the answer came and it was so clear they’d wondered why it took them so long.  They called her Mother.

And the winter came and another and then several more.

The Daddy tree became thicker than a cat’s body and taller than a house.  Squirrels throughout the city had learned of the teachings of Nut-gazer and believed. They saw their wisdom and talked of them ceaselessly. 

But there was a question:  If there was a First Tree--and they believed that there was--then the First Tree being a tree must have needed light.  Where did the light come from?  It was possible the light and the First Tree were both eternal, but even so, the First Tree would need the light but the light would not need the First Tree.  The light would be greater than the First Tree.  This would have great ramifications.

So all of the wisest squirrels of that town gathered in one place and talked about it.  They talked with such intensity that they brought along some of their brethren who were not great thinkers in order to serve as guards lest some wily cat sneak up on them.  (There were some among the wise who had theories about the fate of Nut-gazer.)

On the third day of the Council of Lincoln Park, as it came to be called, someone asked whether it were possible that the First Tree and the Light (they were thinking about it in capitals now) might emanate from the same source, an ultimate source.  This would make sense.  If so, didn’t it also make sense that everything emanated from this Source?  While the Daddy tree and the First tree and the Emissary and even the Mother were objects worthy of veneration, shouldn’t worship be reserved for the Source?

This seemed reasonable to the Council of Lincoln Park, so they voted to accept it.