Back To Our Beginning (20 page)

“Oh God, what I wouldn’t give for some fireball,” Tansy said whimsically, stepping past the man and continuing on. They prowled through the darkened musty store until Tansy reached out and touched the bottle she desired. She fingered it within her grasp before removing the lid. Lifting the bottle to her lips Tansy tilted her head back and sucked the contents lazily, her eyes closed. She held the bottle cradled to her chest as she savored the taste, enjoying the warmth closing around her insides heating her skin. Opening her eyes, Tansy noticed her daughters were watching her wide-eyed.

“What? It’s been at least five months since I’ve had a drink,” Tansy said in her defense, remembering her last chocolate martini nostalgically.

“I have some?” Michaela asked.

Tansy let her suck a bit off her finger. Michaela made a grimacing comical face while sticking out her tongue and all three laughed.

“Well now aren’t you all sweet,” came a rough voice.

The bottle dropped to the ground and shattered as Tansy spun around. In the doorway stood a man covered in dirt. His stringy hair hung past his shoulders in mats, his clothes were grimy and filth stuck his crusty beard to his neck. When he smiled his lecherous smile half of his teeth were missing. His beady eyes grew smaller as he leered. The girls backed away behind their mother who stood shaky yet firmly.

“We don’t want any trouble, we’re just passing through.”

“Well now,” the man said in a gruff whisper, “I think you just decided to stay.” He looked them all up and down, his intent clear.

“No, we’re not.”

The man picked up a wine bottle and smashed it down, the bottom broke off, the wine spilling out, the jagged top half remained clutched in his filthy hand. He moved, stalking his prey. Tansy became angry; they’d been through too much to let some disgusting deranged dirty old man challenge them with a broken bottle of booze.

“Stay back,” she threatened, meaning business, and clutched her small knife in front of her, waving it back and forth in an attempt to slow his advance.

The man laughed at the pocketknife and continued toward them. His laugh deepened as his steps grew closer. A wild, crazed look was in his eyes, he raised the jagged bottle over his head, his hand covered in the red substance dripping down his sodden sleeve like blood. He advanced, his smile deepened and he licked his lips.

The man stopped suddenly, his eyes widening in surprise. Dropping the bottle he reached for his back, both hands clawing. He fell forward onto the floor leaving Tansy and the girls to flee backwards lest he land on them.

“I’m gettin’ kinda tired a savin’ you,” said an exasperated voice from just beyond the doorway.

“Clint,” all four of them shrieked as they raced around the dead body to bombard the bedraggled man.

“Are you alright?” Tansy questioned.

“Where did you come from?” Emmy asked.

“How did you find us?” Shanie cried.

“Pick me up,” Michaela demanded, bouncing up and down in front of him, tugging at his pant legs.

Clint reached down and picked up Michaela then allowed the other three to embrace him, feeling a bit overwhelmed by their exuberance. Tansy, happy to see him, glanced behind searching for the others. When Cord and Randy didn’t appear, Clint told them his story. After Clint had saved Tansy and Michaela, he had helped Cord with Emmy until he had heard Randy’s cries for help. His night vision, always having been somewhat acute, vaguely made out Shanie’s silhouette struggling up the hillside on her way to relative safety and felt she would make it without his assistance. He watched, dismayed, as Randy then Cord, disappeared into the turbulent water.

Uncertain what to do next, Clint had been felled by a fast moving piece of hard debris and was knocked unconscious. When he regained his senses he was wet and freezing. Shivering, he searched the hillside, his movements warming his body, until he came across Tansy and the girls’ tracks. They were gone by the time he found the remains of their little, half-buried hole in the ground. He sought shelter from the tornado then lost track of them briefly as the storm demolished their trail by moving back over their hiding place.

He feared for their safety, realizing they were being followed by someone else finding a set of tracks only feet from the liquor store. It was possible the man was close by and saw them enter the store. Clint had hurried the last few feet, hearing the exchange of words. By Tansy’s tone, he knew she was ready for battle. Judging by the shoe size he knew it was neither Cord nor Randy, who he hadn’t seen since the flood. The only shoe prints he’d been able to locate had been Tansy’s and the girls. He at first traipsed his way downstream farther for a day until he wondered if his friends climbed to the other side. Clint had been swept so far he held no hopes of survival for his two dearest friends. Though they were powerful swimmers, the water had been too fast, the sides of the valley too slick to be able to grab a decent handhold.

Tansy placed a hand on his shoulder as Clint struggled with his emotions then continued his story.

There was absolutely no sign of them anywhere. Becoming entangled in floating debris was the only thing that saved Clint’s life, keeping him trapped above the water and not pulled under. He struck out sadly after the women once finding their imprints, not wanting to remain alone, certain of acceptance and a welcome. To his relief he was right, their enthusiasm at seeing him alive was genuine.

Clint handed Michaela back to Tansy then leaned down after disengaging himself from Emmy and Shanie to retrieve the hunting knife he had thrown into the man’s back. Wiping the blood off on the dead man’s trousers, Clint stuck it back into the sheath at his boot. Then stepping over the man, Clint browsed the racks and pulled down a bottle of cherry brandy. He uncapped it, tossed his head back and took a long drink. His eyes closed as he savored the taste continuing to swallow lazily with an exaggerated gulping motion.

“So jist how close are we?” Clint asked, after taking a breath, referring to the mines. He put the lid back on the bottle of brandy and began stuffing bottles into his numerous empty pockets. At the quiet look of concern on Tansy’s face he stopped.

“Don’t fret,” he said, he resumed stockpiling the alcohol. “I’m a happy drunk.”

“Well, bully for you,” she answered, still concerned. She didn’t want to replace a repugnant smaller man, with a decidedly bigger and stronger belligerent one.

“Really, I’m harmless,” Clint said.

Tansy raised her eyes and gave a noticeable glance toward the dead man on the floor. Looking sheepish, Clint stopped filling his pockets and coat with alcohol and splayed his hands wide.

“How ’bout I jist come back for this later?”

“Fine, but for now we need to find a place to spend the night. We won’t get there until tomorrow and night’s coming. Who knows how many more of these are around,” Tansy said, casting another anxious glance at their dead attacker.

Clint agreed. But as they roamed throughout town, trudging through stretches of deep snow, he was curious about what he could find, though most everything was buried. Now that the stress of catching up with the women was behind him, he fell into his more laid-back gamboling ways.

Without Cord directing him, Tansy found Clint more difficult to manage than Michaela. She gathered the girls and plowed ahead taking charge, leaving Clint to happily follow behind, protecting their rears, as he so gallantly put it.

Outside of town, as twilight gradually gave way to impending gloomy darkness, Tansy scanned the area. She found the remains of the foundation of an old farmhouse and looked around, kicking at the snow until her foot hit wood. She dropped to her knees and, using a pointed stick to aid her, dug around the wooden icy hatch which led into the cold ground.

Clint smashed the padlock and pulled back the door to reveal a root cellar. Stripping a piece of cloth off his worn undershirt, he wound it around a long piece of partially dried deadwood.

“Maybe you’d best keep back apace. I’ve been wearin’ this a long time and it might be a bit...potent,” Clint said, half in jest, half seriously. He lit a match pulled out of the hollow of his knife and set the fabric on fire. The flames licked hungrily for a moment then caught and Clint began to descend into the hole. When he gave the all clear, he handed Emmy the torch and plucked Michaela from Tansy’s arms and handed her to Shanie.

“Go on down now, while your mother and me get some wood.”

Sensing Clint had issues he needed to talk about, Tansy nodded in agreement and the girls beat a hasty retreat out of the cold wind and into the relative safety of the cellar. The two adults collected wood. They found a large old pot that held plants in the summer. The tiny greenish-white bulbs were still inside. Raising one to her nostrils and giving a tentative sniff, Tansy wondered if they were edible.

“No,” Clint answered her look, as if she had asked a question outright. “It’s lily-a-the-valley. It’s dangerous. But don’t worry; the root cellar looked as if it will keep the girls busy for a while. There was somethin’ on the shelves.”

Tansy stood awkwardly for a moment looking up at him; he was filthy, his hair and beard had mud in patches making him look like a decrepit hobo. His clothing had fared no better than her and her girls’, ripped and tattered, shredded in various places. His gloves were gone; his hands were red, chapped and calloused with a few tiny cuts laced with dried streaks of blackened, caked blood. The laces on his worn boots were threading as were Tansy’s, and had been knotted back together clumsily several times, while small holes, and some not so small, showed the grey-black of his dirty socks.

“I wanted to thank you for saving Michaela and me.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I looked for you...after. I couldn’t find anyone but my children.”

“I know. I saw your footprints, I followed ’em twice before I realized you was pacin’, or lookin’ for someone.”

“I want you to know I didn’t want for you, Cord or Randy to get hurt. Cord saved Emmy’s life. I’ll always be grateful for that as well.”

They gathered armloads of wood they tossed down into the cellar, making sure the girls knew to stay back. Working companionably for a while, Tansy told Clint the mine wasn’t too far. They’d reach it by late next afternoon, if all went well.

“What then?” Clint asked.

“We begin again, I guess. We make a new home. I can’t go back to my old one, or my old lifestyle. As you can see, I haven’t been to a salon for quite some time.” She held up a dirty strand of hair and looked at it with loathing.

“Yeah, you sure do look kinda bad, real rough.”

“Well, thanks very much,” Tansy snapped and marched toward their shelter, her face reddening in embarrassment.

“Well, what’d I say? I was only agreein’ with you. I thought women liked men who was agreeable.”

“Not
that
agreeable.”

Tansy was pleasantly engulfed in warmth as she sat down, Shanie handed her a jar full of preserved pickles. She fished out a large one and munched noisily. Clint followed, pulling the door into place then propping a rock under it to allow smoke to escape. He sat, pulling Michaela into his lap. Her tiny hand clutched a half-eaten pickle that dripped onto his worn jeans. After glancing from Clint’s saddened expression to her mother’s annoyed look, Shanie offered Clint a teasing smile.

“Stuck your foot in your mouth again?”

Looking sullen, Clint nodded in the affirmative and refused the preserved peaches Emmy opened. With both girls casting her reprimanding looks and Clint looking so remorseful, Tansy relented and took pity on him.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and can find a way to make a place to wash again. I mean, we were lucky you found us,” Tansy said, handing him the pickle jar. Clint took it from her, suddenly beaming from ear to ear.

“Well sure, I’m all for that. You ladies look and smell a real whole lot better when cleaned up good and nice.” Clint, with his double-edged comments, didn’t notice how both Emmy and Shanie regarded him with daggers. Looking at Tansy, who was silently shaking her head, they decided to let it go.

Clint sat happily slurping peach juice, while alternately munching on pickles. A slow smile spread across Tansy’s face as she gazed at him and decided she was right. They were lucky he found them. Hopefully their luck would continue.

* * * *

The trek to the mine consisted of following a snowy narrow dirt road. They were deeply into the darkened forest, the barest shimmers of light peeking lazily through the giant tree tops. They began to travel a snowy pathway, their feet dragging; Tansy hefted Michaela to her hip. Although the numerous trees looked largely untouched there were a considerable amount of tree branches littering the forest floor like refuse creating an eerie tree graveyard of barren limbs.

The rocks were becoming more prominent as they walked, as well as steep sudden ditches and deep ravines, and they took care not to slip and fall. Finally, Tansy stopped; she set Michaela onto her wobbly feet. Clint came up beside her. Eyes wide, they ventured within, gazing into the encompassing silence. The mines looked like deep caves. There were two openings that joined to make a large room once you entered. The ceiling was about fifteen feet high; the large area went back about fifty feet into the solid rock that dripped in places. It was beautiful to look at; the solid rock contained lively colors as the different types of rock joined and formed patterns.

Tansy explained there were a few smaller tunnels tucked inside the mine that went deeper into the hillside. It was dark and damp in some places, well lit and dry in others. A few of the tunnels held icy puddles of water of various sizes. The floor was a mixture of hard dirt, clay and rock. The ground dropped down substantially once you left the main area, sloping gradually into another larger open area at the bottom. That space was approximately sixty by seventy feet with the ceiling almost sixty feet high buried well beneath the many tons of rock overhead. A variety of different-sized rocks and boulders were scattered throughout the large darkened area.