Children of the Source (2 page)

    They came in the dead of the night.
  No moon.  A force of twenty-five men using two rafts crossed to the east side, and made their way to the Navajo Generating Station.  There they launched a diversionary operation which drew most of the guarding forces from the bridge and dam.  As silently as possible they took the western defenses and managed to take the whole bridge with only five wounded.  After crossing the bridge, they linked up with the diversionary force at Antelope Pass.

    They traveled U.S. Highway 89 south, crossing the Little Colorado River at Cameron, buying sheep from friendly Navajo shepherds.
  The long hill from Wupatki to Sunset Crater took four days.  Sharp ribbons of dried lava flows made the crossing treacherous.  The weather had stayed overcast and uncertain, keeping the Army away.

    There they found four to five inches of patchy snow.
  Bareton held a council and decided to cross Shultz Pass Road to avoid the army newly set up in Flagstaff.  It was fourteen miles to where the dirt road ended at the old country club, and the town’s two fifty million gallon reservoirs, the water maintenance crews called ‘the Northend’.  Cheshire was just across the Federal Highway 180 from these huge reservoirs which we still used.

    It took three days to make it through Shultz Pass.
  Fortunately we knew of their coming. Several of us dreamed of hordes of people descending on us, but most of us thought it was symbolic of something else.  Except a young girl, Helen Roseman, who knew all along.  She told us they would come.  Gifted in a down-to-earth fashion without guile or ego, she sat on our council.  Bareton had taken the courtesy to send  emissaries.  We met them, heard their story, and decided to help.  There were some surprises in store.  They made it to our community two hours before sundown.  We fed and settled them in as best we could.  It took most of the rest of our winter stores.  The sky kept its welcome blanket of clouds.

    Bareton stayed with me by mutual agreement.
  We could arbitrate any trouble.  But he had another motive.  The next day dawned to scattered clouds and after the chill wore off, it rose into the upper forties.  The sun shown bright and the sky the incredible blue that only a seven thousand foot altitude can give.  The Peaks lay coated with confectionery white.  We fed everyone again, which wasn’t much.  Joint hunting parties brought in four elk and made everyone breathe easier.

    Bareton’s meeting with his captains broke up.
  I saw him talking with a young woman I’d never seen before.  He saw me and they walked over.  “Jamie, my daughter, Judith. Judith, Jamie.”  Each of us later said we heard the introduction as though in a dream.  Time ceased for us.  We saw Charles study us and nod with satisfaction.  He left.  We began to talk.  It must have been about noon when someone brought us plates of food.

    The next two days we spent making up provisions for the convict army.
  They rested up for the next leg of their journey.  They were headed for the Chiricahua Mountains to get lost.  To make a life for themselves away from the prying eyes of the Federal government.  Judith and I hardly noticed the passing of time, but others watched us with amused curiosity.

    On the evening of the second day everyone gathered at a great meeting.
  There had been no violence, only sharing and understanding.  Gifts were given and provisions checked with a few short speeches of hope and thank you.  Then there grew a hush over the crowd as Charles Bareton rose to speak.  His face, carved with a certain haunting, could smile and his eyes sing with life, and tonight he was smiling.

    “This night before we leave, two of our company will be staying with you,” he said.
  I was mystified until Judith’s hand slid into mine.  The second person I didn’t know.

    “Your leader, Jamie, and my daughter have decided to stay together.”

   There was scattered laughter and cheers.  “I don’t know about legal marrying, but if two people were meant to be together, I’d say they are.”  He dropped silent for a moment. 

    “Laith.”
  As he said the name a strange silence settled over the people.  It was unreal.  A young boy walked forward out of the crowd.  There was something about him, a certain peace, completeness.  He must have been about five.  The people held him in reverence.  I’d heard of people being healed by him and other strange things which I discounted.

    “Judith.
  Jamie.  Would you come here, please?”   We walked over and the boy gave us an engaging grin.

    Bareton took our hands and joined them together, the three of us. “I would say you’re family.”
    

    After the meeting, I took Bareton aside and we walked.
  “Bareton, I understand about Judith, but what about Laith?  I admit there’s something about him.  Don’t know if I’m ready for instant family yet.  What do you know about him?”

    Moonlight played on the creases of his face as he smiled. “You’ve seen Laith.
  That’s no immature self-concerned little kid.  What was your dream two nights ago?  Tell me the rest of it.”

    “About a great teacher.
  Never saw his face.  But he sure turned the world around.”

    “You saw the birthmark on his body,” Bareton said.
  I started.  “Look at Laith. You dreamed accurate.  This is he.  It was explained to me.  Nothing supernatural about it.” 

    The dream.
  The birthmark.  They were real.  “Why me and Judith?”

    “You’re suited for it,” He said briefly. “No hocus pocus of science or religion.
  You’re both open and stable people.  And you two are free of the tragedy and comedy of roles.  Simply put, you both have a great deal to offer.”

    “Laith.
  Where did he come from?  What do you know of him?”

    “I found him in a cabin we came across in southern Utah.
  Saw two fresh graves.  He said his mother and grandmother died of fever.  An old man helped bury them and moved on.  Laith said he had been waiting for us.  I dreamed of what happened three nights before we found him.”

    “Does he know everything?”

    “Who does?  I don’t.  I’m sure he doesn’t.  We all set up challenges, opportunities for ourselves.  It wouldn’t be much of a life if we didn’t.  You’ll be asked your own questions in the years to come.”  He laughed.

    “Any rate, don’t worry about it.
  He’ll raise normal enough.  There’ll be surprises.  Maybe more than a few.  You’ll have dreams and find more of your inner abilities coming forward.”  He ran his tongue on the inside of his lower lip, eyes narrowing, looking at me. “Abilities you’ve never dreamed possible.  You won’t be wanting for help and guidance.  It will be there.”  He waved a leathery hand taking in our whole community. “I’ll tell you something, my friend, you’ve got potential here.  You’re building something here with the right people.  Helen, the young girl, will develop into a fine trance medium.  The old woman, Rosa, also has those abilities.”

    “Rosa Guttierez?”

    “Yes.  Everyone thinks she is simple-minded, but you know it’s only a small portion of her whole self.  She created the simple minded personality for a reason.  Her whole self can speak through her body provided you and others are willing to listen.  Let her sit on your councils and watch.” 

    He was tired.
  Pushing himself eighteen to twenty hours a day.  But in his wisdom he always managed to find time to dream.  The touch-stone of the soul.  He said he needed the time to participate in group and mass dreams.  To find pathways into the future.

    “Will you stay another day?” I asked.

    He took a great breath and looked up at the night sky, a mass of brilliant shattered diamonds on midnight velvet.  No moon.  I heard him give a great sigh, long and slow.  “I wish,” he started.  Silence.  Then he said, “There’ ll be a time enough another day.  I shall return periodically if I can.  Me or Mary.  Finally one day, God willing, we’ll be able to come back for good.  But for now, we have to take our people and help set up a community where they can live and prosper.  Something more than survival.  As you’ re doing here.  When the people have gotten to the point where they no longer need us, we’ll come home.”  He turned slightly so the light from the campfire lit his face, showing the angle differently.

    I drew in a sharp breath. .
  “You’re the one!”  For several years I’d dreamed consistently of an older man, who when I asked, would come to give me counsel in my dreams.  It was like a faucet, I’d always get answers.  Though  sometimes I’d get what seemed like riddles or partial answers which would lead me to ask the right questions.  And I would answer myself or the answers would lie in the correct question or a daily experience.  But always, in every dream I would see the same cast of his face.  I still did it, and indeed, last night I saw him chuckling to himself secretively in my dreams as though at some great joke.

    In the close darkness I heard him chuckle.
  It was like the dream and the present were uncannily one. I felt off balance, yet strangely pinpointed.  “Sit down,” I heard him say.  A large hand steadied me, easing me down.  Mike Roseman, a friend, saw us, and started over.  I waved him away.

    I looked up at Charles   He said, “You’ll see that personality differently now in your dreams.
  I was party to what you saw, but not the personality.  It wasn’t really a deception, but to impress upon you the idea that this meeting was no accident.  That Laith is no accident.  That none of this is an accident.  The personality, that acts as a helper and source for you, will now represent himself more closely to what he actually is.  You call it The  Energy From Within.”

    I nodded slowly.
  It made sense to me.  Things fall into place sometimes.  This was one of those times.  Validating and giving weight and power to information we’d gotten elsewhere.  A lot to take in, but it confirmed what we’d been given by our own sources.  “We’d better get back now,” I said.  I wanted to meet Mary, Charles’s wife.  I hadn’t said three sentences to her since they’d come.

    “Mary will be pleased,” Charles said.
  “You’ll be her only son-in-law.  Should meet your mother-in-law.”  He chuckled that chuckle.  “Sorry about the telepathy.  Disconcerting sometimes.  It is just so natural that I have to make an effort to remember most others don’t have the abilities quite as developed as I do.”

    I took in the night scene.
  Lots of people stood outside, mingling in groups of various sizes.  Several large campfires cast dancing shadows among the voices.  The night temperatures dipped into the mid twenties.  We steered our way slowly through the mixing crowd until we met Judith, Mary, and Laith at the corner of Wilson and N. Roberta talking with a small group from the convict army.   Laith had my calico kitten, Talker, cuddled in his arms.  True to form she lay in his arms, talking up a storm with her motor going.  It was amazing for she was usually terrified of people and hid from anyone new.  Groups in my house were an unforgivable sin and I’d hear about it for days afterwards.

    Mary and I got to talking.
  She knew more about psychic phenomena from a practical use, and gave me many pointers.  We talked for a couple of hours.  All of us ended up at my house.  It was midnight before we slept.  That was how it got started. How Judith and I came together.  A lot had happened since that time.

    We put our arms around our growing children and went inside for some tea.  I mentioned to Laith we’d be going to the fort at eight-thirty and could use his help.  Laith nodded in agreement.  “That religious fanatic Benson is out for blood.  He’s bound and determined to convert us, especially you, Dad.”

    I shivered. “He gives me the willies.
  God Almighty, the guy scares the hell outta me.”

    Laith laughed. “Doesn’t help when he’s six foot six with a baritone voice and looks like he crawled right out of the Old Testament.
  Not to mention being  fixated on the belief of the End of the World and the Second Coming.”

    “Nope.
  Sure doesn’t.”  I accepted a mug of tea from Judith.

    “Or that he considers you the Devil Incarnate for your abilities to heal, see the future, and other things.
  Abilities he craves and will never have.  You can’t imagine the envy and frustration welling inside the man ... ”

    “I’d rather not,” I said.
  “What’s going to happen isn’t going to help matters with Mr. Benson.  It’s the
other things
that might set off our religious fanatic.”

    “Maybe,” Judith said, “it is something you should not do.”
  Her green eyes searched my face.

     “No.
  It’s been agreed to in the dream state by the parties involved,” I said.  The hot catnip tea with honey sure tasted good, and was the brunt of many jokes.

    “Do you need to antagonize General Carson?”
  Judith always had the questions.  Ones I often didn’t think of, which sometimes made me reconsider options.  Laith watched me carefully.

     “Not a good thing,” I agreed.
  “Not a man to cross in any circumstances.  But he needs a lesson in the personality’s survival of physical death.”

    “Why?” Laith asked.