Asmireen
©2024 by Jonathan Scott
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Chapter 5 - Marie
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Future Things
21.24 Papa Voice, He show Kole the world before the final sort. He show Kole the future world and Kole look.
21.25 Then Kole, he cry because it all be so bad.
21.26 He all be cold and greedy.
21.27 She all be crazy and greedy.
21.28 The children, they half die. Then, they other half grow with the cold and greedy men and the crazy and greedy women. Then, they other half become cold and greedy and crazy and greedy too.
21.29 The world, it be like a dead cold crazy greedy machine. It be like a machine that make dead people and it be like a machine that make cold crazy greedy people.
21.30 Papa Voice, He look at the dead cold crazy greedy machine and He say "The world, it be too bad."
21.31 Then, Papa Voice, He end all and begin the final sort.
It was now dark. Jake finished his chicken dinner as Quick patiently waited by his side. Hank sat quietly across the table from him. Somehow, after the death of her mother, Jake and Hank had managed to talk Marie, the little girl, into showing them where she lived. She ate a little at first and then drank a little but soon chose to instead go to her bed. Occasionally she would cry. Occasionally she would mutter things in her sleep. In general though, she rested. They did not look forward to seeing her wake the next day. But for now, she was fine.
Marie lived in a smallish home with not enough land to do any real farming on. It did though have a good sized garden and a hen house filled with eggs and restless chickens. From the number of eggs that were there, Hank guessed that the explosion that had happened here had probably occurred on the same day as the explosion in Eastbrook. Neither were able to guess how long Marie had stood over and waited on her dying mother. Marie, like Jake and Hank, was alone now too.
"Well, we have to take her with us. We can't leave her here." said Jake.
"Yeah. We do, don't we." replied Hank sullenly.
"How in the world are we going to talk this kid into going with us though?" asked Hank.
"I mean, if I were in her shoes, seeing my mother and everyone die and all, the last thing I'd do is take off with a couple of strangers passing through."
"Yeah. Well, we were able to talk her into letting us come in here. Maybe she'll let us talk her into going the rest of the way with us as well." stated Jake.
Jake stood up and began to look around the room.
"I'm going to prepare for tomorrow's breakfast now. My guess is that she's going to be starving in the morning. We'd better be ready for it, especially if we plan to talk her into coming with us." said Jake
Jake made a makeshift torch and walked out to the henhouse. The hens had laid many eggs since the explosion and Jake was unsure which of them had not yet spoiled. He threw out all of the eggs that he could find and went back into the cottage. He would cook whatever new eggs he could find tomorrow morning.
When he returned to the cottage, he found Hank and Quick asleep by the fire. He joined them.
Hank and Jake leapt from bed. Quick raised his head and began to look around sleepily. It was now just after five o'clock the next morning and all the remaining occupants of Pine Mountain were awoken by the shrill cry of an eight year-old girl.
Jake ran to Marie's room as Hank grumbled about something and went back to bed. Jake stood just outside of Marie's door and waited for himself to finish waking and to calm down. He then slowly opened her door to find her sitting in bed in her nightgown with her arms wrapped tightly around her legs. She had awoken and remembered everything. Her cries slowly turned into quiet helpless sobs.
"Hey. Are you ok?" said Jake softly.
The girl continued to silently weep to herself.
"My name is Jake Tunnis. I'm from William's Peace." said Jake softly.
Marie quietly stared at her knees.
"My family died too. The same thing that happened here happened there." he continued.
"Your Momma died too?" asked Marie quietly.
"My whole family, my Mom, my Dad, and all my brothers and sisters."
And so they sat for a long time. Jake knew how to be when children were frantic. Marie found it easy to open up to him.
Jake later found out that she had been sick on Sunday and stayed at home when her mother went to town. Then, when night came and her mother had not yet returned, she became afraid. She had wanted to go and find her, but she was too afraid of the darkness to leave her home. She ended up staying up all night long sitting in the middle of her bed, too afraid to leave it, and too afraid to sleep. It hadn't been until the next morning when she finally gave up and went to town. It was there that she saw everyone and then found her mother still screaming in pain. Marie then stood there feebly attempting to see to her mother's needs until Jake and Hank finally arrived yesterday.
Jake offered to make breakfast for her, which she accepted. She eventually would eat six eggs, two thick slices of bread with butter and a leg of chicken before she finally grew tired and once again went back to bed.
It was now six thirty in the morning and Hank was gone. Quick sat quietly by the front door and watched the yard.
By ten o'clock, Hank had returned from burying Marie's mother and all were once again on the road heading towards Eastbrook. Marie had somehow become completely at ease with Jake, enough so, that she was willing and capable of sleeping in the back of the wagon as Jake and Quick rode up front. Two more days of journeying remained.
There was not a lot of conversation between Hank and Jake as they travelled. Jake knew that he could not trust Hank and that was how Jake dealt with those in whom he had no trust, with silence.
Jake looked back at Marie. She was sleeping. He began to think about how hard her life must have been over the two days before he and Hank had arrived. She looked as though she had not had enough sleep. From the way she ate and drank, Jake also assumed that she had not had enough food or water as well. Marie was strong.
About four hours later, Marie awoke and moved up to sit next to Jake in the seat. She sleepily picked up Quick and held him in her lap.
"How are you doing?" asked Jake.
Marie didn't reply. Instead, she just looked at the scenery as it passed them by.
Before they had left Pine Mountain, Marie had packed some of her belongings, had once again eaten and then washed herself. She now sat next to Jake in an old faded blue cotton dress and bare feet. Marie was younger than Jake's sister Kira had been before she died, but nonetheless, she somehow reminded him of her. Kira had been so outspoken. She had bordered on being overbearing. Marie though, was so young and so frightened. He couldn't really understand why the two seemed similar to him. Perhaps it was just in strength. Kira was always certain of what she was doing. She always had had a strong unbroken focus about her. Marie, similarly, had stayed and waited on her dying mother for two days. Then, she had met Jake, and had become capable of trusting him almost immediately. Marie was only eight, but she was strong. It was good. Because from now on, she had no one else to lean on other than fourteen year old Jake.
It was now about four o'clock in the afternoon. Marie was obviously bored. Jake was much more accustomed to trips like these and so he was fine. Quick, as always, dealt with it the best. He slept. Occasionally though, he would jump from the wagon to chase a rabbit or some such only to come back later to sleep some more. For Marie though, sitting hour after hour, doing nothing, seemed to be far too hard on her.
Then, finally giving up on being patient, Marie stood up and said, "I'll be back. I forgot something." and then leapt from the wagon. Jake immediately pulled the reins and stopped. He looked over his shoulder for Marie, but she was not there.
Then, he stood up quickly and looked back down the road to see Marie far off in the distance running away.
"Jake! What was that?!?! Did you see that?" shouted Hank.
"Yeah. I did."
Marie could run faster than anything either of them had ever seen before.
She was now just a speck in the distance. Somehow, she had leapt from the wagon and had managed to cover roughly two thousand yards in just over a minute. Both Jake and Hank stood still, unable to speak, watching her little barefooted body fly down the road until it was no longer visible. The only remnants of her existence were the long line of dust that her feet had kicked up into the air as she had run away and her luggage that Jake could still see in the back of the wagon.
Jake looked at Hank.
Hank looked at Jake.
Both looked down the road to see if they could still see Marie.
Jake looked at Hank again.
Hank looked at Jake again.
Both looked down the road again knowing that they would not be able to see her any more, but wanting to look nonetheless.
"What is going on here?" asked Hank.
"Wow, she's fast." Jake said blankly. His mind was completely empty.
Jake and Hank stood on the road trying to understand what had happened.
"She said she'd be right back. She said that she forgot something." said Jake to Hank.
"What?!?!"
There was an uncomfortable pause.
"She's going to run all the way back to Pine Mountain?!?!" replied Hank.
"Yeah, I guess so."
"We left there hours ago. We must be at least thirty miles away from there now."
Jake looked at Hank.
Hank looked at Jake.
Both uselessly looked down the road.
"Well, should we keep on going?" asked Jake.
"Yeah...I guess so. This is crazy." said Hank.
Both, once again, continued down the road sporadically looking backwards to see if they could see Marie. Jake and Hank's minds were both empty. Both stared off down the road wondering about Marie.
"If she could run like that before, then why didn't she just run off to Eastbrook and get help for her mother?" asked Jake.
"I don't know."
Whatever had been in the minds of Hank and Jake before Marie had left them was now gone. Both minds frantically tried to fit this new thing that they had just seen into their own personal definitions of "reality." As a rule, people don't usually have to update how they see reality very often. As a rule, it stays the same pretty much throughout an entire person's life. Within the last week though, they'd had to figure out how to assimilate the following into their definitions: "big, fat monster", "absolute evil", "dead family", "alone in the world", and now "girl that runs like lightning."
Hank and Jake's minds were tired.
They continued riding down the road to Eastbrook.
About an hour and a half later, they heard the staccato "slap, slap, slap, slap, slap, slap, slap, slap, slap" that they had been waiting for. Little Marie ran up alongside Jake's wagon and climbed aboard and began to eat something from a bag that she carried. As she ate, she placed another piece of luggage into the back of the wagon.
"Can I have some water?" asked Marie.
Jake and Hank both stared at her.
"Please?" asked Marie.
"It's back there." answered Jake as he pointed behind him to the barrel in the back of the wagon with his thumb. Jake was astounded.
Jake and Hank both stared at the little Marie waiting for some kind of explanation. Marie though, oblivious to their attention, continued to chew and watch the scenery. Jake finally grew tired of waiting, and broke the silence.
"How come you can run so fast Marie?" asked Jake blankly.
Marie continued to aggressively eat the piece of sausage that was in the bag that she held.
"Marie..." said Jake, reminding her that he had just asked her a question.
"Yeah?" answered Marie.
"How come you can run so fast Marie?" asked Jake a second time.
"My gift was running."
"What? What gift?"
Marie looked at Jake for a long second and then repeated her answer.
"My gift was running." responded Marie carefully.
"What's 'a gift?' What do you mean by that?" asked Hank with a serious look of concern.
"You don't have a gift?" asked Marie as she looked at them with a look of mild surprise.
Marie then began to look at Jake and Hank very suspiciously. She looked as though she were wondering about them.
"It's from the church. You mean you two don't know about the church?" asked Marie.
Hank and Jake looked back and forth at each other and then back to Marie.
"You don't know about Nahli?" asked Marie.
"No."
"It's my church. When you become a member, you get a gift. Mine was running."
"Well then why didn't you just run to Eastbrook for help for your mom?" blurted out Hank.
Marie began to pout.
"I did. But, I couldn't get anyone to come."
"Did you ask your church for help?" Hank asked.
"Yeah. They said that they couldn't come."
"What kind of a church won't come when something like that happens?" said Hank loudly.
Marie began to cry.
Jake had heard about foreign lands and how the people in them worshipped gods other than Papa Voice. He'd never heard about anyone worshipping another god here in this land though.
"Don't you follow Papa Voice anymore?" said Jake.
"My Momma just told me one day that we were going to change our religion and I just did what she told me to do."
"It's been nice. I like the running and we've had money since Momma became a healer and all."
"Your Momma was a healer?" asked Jake.
"Yeah. That was her gift. She could heal people when she touched them."
"Your Momma was a healer... Then why didn't she just heal herself?" asked Hank.
"I don't know. It just didn't work." said Marie who then began to cry again.
The sun was now going down and they had all stopped to make camp. Marie had eaten an entire two foot long dried pork sausage and had drank perhaps half of the water that was in Jake's small water barrel. She was now sleeping peacefully in the back of the wagon as Jake and Hank made camp. Marie would sleep for the rest of the night. Jake and Hank would feel like talking for the rest of the night, but not really know what to say.