Joko (32 page)

“Who cares how long it takes? You know, Mr Swan, it could take us forever if you have a heart attack or break a leg.”

Swan exploded in anger. He jumped to his feet so quickly that he lost his balance and slammed his hip painfully against a rock. “I can keep up with the best of you!” he snarled. “I’m no geezer! Hell, I’ve walked more miles than you’d care to deal with.”

“Whooaa, I didn’t mean to rile you. It’s my leg I’m more worried about.”

“Then why didn’t you say so?” Wincing, Swan sat on a fallen stump and rubbed his hip. Then he pulled out his pipe.

Swan was obviously in pain, but he seemed resolved not to admit it. Johnny could think of nothing helpful to say, so he waited with Jack while Swan smoked a pipeful of tobacco.

Near them was a shallow pool of water trapped between the boulders. It crawled with life like a miniature ocean. Jack and Johnny watched the tiny creatures make the surface sparkle and dance like golden effervescence. Suddenly the movement stopped. Except for the rippling stream and the mosquitos that buzzed around Johnny’s ears, the forest had grown deathly quiet. Even the birds had stopped singing. At that same moment Jack let out a yelp and began running.

Johnny looked around but saw nothing. Some distance away, a group of deer sprang from the forest, bounded frantically across the stream, then disappeared into the underbrush.

Swan stood up to see where the sasquatch had gone.

“Jack!” screamed Johnny.

Suddenly the sky, the ground, the air itself, was full of movement. Johnny felt like he was falling. Reeling on their feet, he and Swan clawed the air to keep their balance. Then the sound came; a terrible rending thunder as the earth shook and trees began crashing down.

Jack’s feet detected it first – a movement far away and deep in the earth. He felt them all the time, but this one was different. It was big. All his instincts for self-preservation snapped his body into action, and he was propelled toward high ground. Suddenly he stopped, remembering his new family. He was standing thigh deep in weeds at the base of a bluff. He felt it coming. It was close. Jack turned around in confusion just as the first seismic waves reached them.

“Earthquake!” screamed Swan.

A half minute later the ground stopped trembling enough for the river water to reorganize itself into a single body.

Johnny and Swan clung to a boulder in fear, while all around the sound of falling trees shattered the air as the earth’s rumbling faded into the distance. They waited, not moving or talking, for at least a minute. It had grown quiet again.

Johnny stood up and yelled. “Jocko! Jack! Can you hear me?

To his surprise he heard an answer, a feeble call: “Johnny … help … Jack!”

Johnny bolted toward Jack’s voice with Swan close on his heels. They scrambled over the rocks and then pressed into the undergrowth.

“Jack!” yelled Swan. “Where are you?”

Only a few yards into the woods they found themselves disoriented.

“
Jockooooo
!” yelled Johnny.

“Call him Jack,” said Swan.

“
Jaaaaack
, where the hell are you?” called Johnny, frustrated.

Again they heard Jack. This time he groaned as though exerting himself.

“Over there.” Swan pointed at a dark shape some distance away.

Jack lay pinned under a branch of a large tree. He was grunting and pushing with all his might to free himself, but the branch wouldn’t budge.

Swan bent down and examined the branch. “Calm down, old boy, we’ll get you out of here,” said Swan, patting Jack on the shoulder. Jocko continued to thrash violently, his eyes filled with raw terror.

Johnny grabbed Jack’s wrist. “Stop moving, Jack!” he shouted. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

It did no good. Jack was frantic.

“He’s just caught,” offered Swan. “Look … no blood … and his leg doesn’t look broken. He’s just caught.”

“He’s scared to death,” said Johnny. “That’s what.”

Suddenly another tremor swept through the forest, not as powerful as the first but strong enough to cause Swan and Johnny to crouch defensively. It lasted only a few seconds.

When the shaking stopped they rose cautiously and looked around. The stream bed was nearly dry.

After a moment Swan looked at Johnny in alarm. “We’ve got to get Jack out now!”

“I’m working on it,” said Johnny with a grunt. He had found a heavy pole and was trying to roll the tree off Jack by lever action. After a few tries with Swan’s help the tree moved, but not enough for Jack to free himself. Johnny suggested that they all work together. Swan found another sturdy branch and took a place next to Johnny.

“On the count of three,” said Swan, stabbing his branch next to Johnny’s under the log.

Johnny counted and they gave a mighty heave. “Jack, push! Push hard!” ordered Swan. Finally the tree moved just enough for Jack to free his leg. Jack’s pants were torn, but the sasquatch seemed otherwise unscathed.

Johnny stooped to check Jack’s leg, but Swan grabbed his arm. “We have to move now, John! The river has stopped.

Do you know what that means?”

Johnny stood up and looked at the riverbed. “It seems peaceable enough to me.”

“The water has stopped flowing,” said Swan, impatiently.

“A rock fall or something has stopped the flow.” He stopped talking and listened for a second. The silence continued.

“If the stream has stopped, that means it’s being blocked by a rock fall. Somewhere upstream the water is building up for a deluge.”

“We’ve got to get to high ground,” said Johnny.

“Glad you’re catching on,” said Swan sarcastically. “I don’t know how long we have, but judging from the way the water was flowing before the quake …”

“Let’s get out of here,” said Johnny. They pulled Jack up and crashed through the woods. High grasses and bramble blocked their path.

Jack moved toward the river. He beckoned to Johnny to follow him and pointed to a slip of land that led to a tall bluff perhaps a hundred yards away. “Follow him,” shouted Swan.

They ran as hard as they could. Johnny held back, keeping an eye on Swan, expecting the old man to fall, but he was amazed at how quickly Swan covered ground. Johnny was about to compliment Swan’s spryness when he heard a sound. At first he thought it was the roar of his own blood as he ran, but it was growing louder. It soon became a rumble like the earthquake, except that it came from a distinct source upriver. Jack had already put on an amazing burst of speed.

Taking long strides he reached the bluff in seconds. Without missing a step, he sprang onto the rock face and began to climb. Hearing the sound, Swan sprinted for the cliff with Johnny close on his heels. He and Johnny arrived simultaneously at the spot where Jack was scaling the cliff.

The rumble behind them grew steadily. They both scrambled up the rock face, grabbing at the foliage still held firmly to the ground despite the quake.

A branch that Swan was using to hoist himself suddenly ripped loose in a spray of soil. Swan tumbled past Johnny into the brambles below. “Jack!” Johnny screamed, his voice nearly drowned out by the deafening roar behind him.

Johnny glanced upriver and gasped in disbelief. Like the hump of a rising monster, the river had cleared broken limbs, trees and boulders, everything in its path as it hurled itself downstream. It moved at the speed of a locomotive, and its sound reverberated through the forest as Johnny reached down and yelled to Swan. Swan never looked around. He sprang to his feet and leaped toward Johnny, growling with rage and pain. His hands tore at the rock as the peril rose behind him. Johnny grabbed Swan and together they continued up the steep bluff.

The wall of debris turned a bend in the creek bed and leapt forward, gaining momentum. It seemed to pause a moment, then it surged forward. Still scrambling up the rock behind Swan, Johnny allowed his eyes to look into the face of the monster. It was a vision that he would carry with him to his grave.

Like a living thing it rose toward him. Trees, boulders, mud and brush; rolling, chewing up the riverbed and raising clouds of dust amid exploding water, wood and stone. In its rolling maw, trapped and doomed, a deer straddled a fir tree; its wild eyes looking for a place to leap; anywhere to run. But the poor animal was there only a second before it pitched forward and disappeared under the advancing rubble.

Johnny screamed in horror then turned to climb.

Desperately he scrambled upward beside Swan, but the beast was moving fast. Out of the corner of his eye Johnny saw it coming, a dark thing reaching for him, ripping at his arm. It lifted him up. Johnny screamed, but death never came.

Instead, Johnny found himself looking at blue sky, then dry grass. Behind him he heard the roar of the howling monster and felt it pummeling the cliff as it churned angrily in the riverbed below.

Johnny rolled over. He found himself lying safely next to Swan on top of the cliff. Jack was standing over them both, watching in fascination as the river of destruction moved downstream. Johnny suddenly realized that it wasn’t the river that had grabbed him, but Jack. The sasquatch had somehow managed to pull both Johnny and Swan up the final ten feet at the same time.

“But how?” said Johnny, staring at Swan.

Swan was in shock. “He’s even s…saved our p…packs,”

He pointed to the ground next to Johnny. “I saw it, b-but I d-didn’t believe it.”

They lay there for a long while, waiting and listening as the torrent subsided and the river decided a new course. An hour passed, then two, and little conversation passed between them. Soon darkness fell and they slept.

land move

Jack sav Swan and Johnny

from moving land

we folow

new river

Someone was busy last night
, thought Johnny as he awoke, surprised to find himself covered with his bearskin. He pushed it aside, stretched, winced at the discovery of several sore joints, and sat up. Seeing Swan was awake, Johnny asked how he felt.

“Aside from a real stiff left shoulder and a sore hip, I guess I’m doing fine, John. And you?” Swan was making a campfire.

“My right arm feels like somebody tried to tear it off. Other than that …” Johnny looked around. “Hey, where’s Jack?”

“Roaming.” Swan rubbed his shoulder. “I saw him leave a half hour ago. I thought sure I lost my pack below.”

“Jack got the packs and made camp, and covered me up.”

“Yes. And he saved our lives.” Swan dug into his coat pocket for his tobacco. His cold fingers fumbled until his meerschaum was lit.

Johnny watched him light his pipe and reflected on the previous day. Finally he gave an all-over shiver and pushed the bearskin off his legs. He stood up and faced the river.

Daylight revealed the extent of the devastation. The ruined riverbed was now littered with broken trees and boulders. As far as Johnny could see, the ravaged shoreline showed the awful beating it had endured. He swayed back and forth as nausea swept over him. He tore his eyes away from the scene and sat back down. Huddled into a ball, he breathed in long deliberate gasps.

“It’s all over now, John,” said Swan. “We have the

Almighty to thank for our continuance.”

“Don’t forget Jack,” Johnny said. “He saved us.”

Swan smiled broadly. “Oh no, not Jack. Certainly he’s the greatest of God’s blessings.”

“I still can’t believe it! It was like a bad dream. And that deer!” Johnny’s teeth chattered.

Swan hadn’t seen the deer, but it was clear that Johnny had witnessed something horrible. He sat next to Johnny and patted the boy’s shoulder in silence. “Death is part of life, John,” he said after a long silence. “But appreciating the loss that it brings is part of what makes us human, yes?”

When Johnny finally stopped shaking Swan suggested that some beef jerky and sweet coffee might revive them both. Before long a blazing fire was warming a tin pot of water. The camp they had made proved comfortable for one established so haphazardly. No more than fifty feet away was a bubbling spring.

By the time they were drinking coffee Jack had returned, munching some fiddlehead ferns. Mud and cockleburs covered his shirt and pants, but he was dutifully carrying his green bag.

Swan stood up with arms outstretched. “Jack! The hero returns!”

Jack stopped in his tracks and looked at Swan suspiciously, and then he offered the man a fern.

Johnny broke into laughter. “You two make me laugh!”

“What?” asked Swan. “I fail to see the source of your amusement.”

It took a moment, but Jack realized Swan was greeting him. He reached out to hug the man just as Swan lowered his arms. The resulting collision between the two had Johnny rolling on his back and howling with laughter.

After a few hours of rest and conversation they packed up and continued moving south, paralleling the river. Since the flood debris made the riverbed impassable, they decided to try and navigate through the forest guided by Jack. But the dense underbrush proved as difficult to negotiate as the ruined river. It took hours to cover only a few miles. Despite Jack’s best efforts at trying to guide them through the forest, his communication skills were not yet up to the task. Most of the time the sasquatch was completely out of sight. Jack had a knack for moving so smoothly, even in boots, that he just melted into the shadows.

Jack forced himself to walk out in the open so Johnny and Swan could see him. Feeling so exposed and out of step was only part of his problem. He had to keep looking behind to see if they were keeping up. Generally they were not, so Jack spent most of his time waiting.

He wondered why his kin feared the humans, if this was the best they could do simply crossing through the forest.

They couldn’t walk quietly. They couldn’t climb. Jack had to haul them both up ten feet of cliff to save them from the flood.

Certainly Jack felt no closer to understanding the human ways.

With every passing day, instead of being easier to understand, the humans became more mysterious to Jack.

But he still felt bound to them by circumstance and compelled to help guide them back to their world; a world he feared.