John Doe had been moved from the hospital ward to a facility catering to long-term coma patients. Since the lawsuit had provided him with millions, the lawyers for his estate also ensured that he had the finest medical coverage available. It could cover the cost of his care at Belle Fontanel Rehab for a hundred years if necessary.
The long-term rehab was a country estate from the 1800’s, tucked away in a rural area of Maryland. The house was an old-fashioned plantation, upgraded to the best in modern living. Her staff was the most skilled money could buy and it housed only those whose families could afford the $500.00 a day price tag. There were no charity cases at Belle Fontanel nor would there ever be.
John had been a silent patient for a little over a year and the fact that he had not lost flexibility and muscle tone was due to the zealous care the Belle’s Physical therapists and staff provided for every patient. Twice a week, John was taken down to the basement and a staff member took him through a special routine in the heated swimming pool which maintained the boy’s flexibility. This prevented bedsores and contractures, two of the evils that coma patients were subjected to and one of the most difficult to treat.
No change had been noted in Doe’s condition. Day after day, night after night, the small boy lay on the special mattress in silence, unknowing and unmovable. Books, cheerful prints on the wall and a TV set that was kept on decorated his walls. He had his own window that looked out on vast, green velvet fields separated by white board fences where lazy Thoroughbreds patiently grazed. It was a peaceful, bucolic scene. Unfortunately, most of Belle Fontanels clientele could neither see nor appreciate it. John Doe was just another one of those patients whose lives had been drastically altered by fate. In the 60 years that the facility had been operating, only one out of the hundreds passing through her gates had woken from his coma.
He had sat up, looked around and died after uttering, ‘ain’t this the pits?’
*****
I was wandering in a barren landscape. Just me, my footprints in the dusty soil at my feet and a long expanse of nothing in front of me. When I turned around, the view behind me was pretty much the same, except for the arrow straight line of my prints. They reached back as far as I could see. A vast plain of nothingness. Sandy, one color that was no color and merged into the horizon. You could not see where one stopped, or the other began. No mountains in the distance, no change in the featureless terrain. No curve in the earth to indicate that I was on earth. For all I knew, I could be standing on Mars. Except that I knew I couldn’t live on Mars because there was no air to breathe on that planet. Besides, Mars was red, and this place was just tan. Pale beige, boring, no color. I thought that I was in the middle of nowhere and no matter which direction I chose, I would still be in the center of nowhere.
This place had no sense of time. No sense of anything. Even as a baby in the womb, I had an identity, a self-awareness that told me who I was and that I was important. In this place, I did not matter, not even to myself.
I sat down. What difference did it make whether I chose to keep going? That implied a destination. I had none. No decision I made would affect anything in this place. I could sit there forever or keep walking until I dropped. Neither action would change one drop of sand on that place.
I had questions but no one to ask. So, I asked myself and the answers made no more sense than the questions.
I did not sleep in that place. My body and mind had no need for it. Nor did I hunger or thirst. It was neither cold nor hot, just dry, and dusty. I never saw shadows or any other living thing. Or dead for that matter. I did not know it I was alive or dead. All I had was what was in my own head, my memories and they stopped at a picture of my mother standing in a small doorway with her hand on the jamb. She wore a blue dress that looked like a uniform and it was – a waitress uniform with an apron tied around her slender waist. She stared down at me.
I took that memory out and examined it until it became so clear, concise, and enhanced that it seemed as if she truly stood there before me. I could smell her cherry blossom soap and the coconut shampoo she used on her hair.
She reached down with one slender hand and caressed my hair. Her nails were short but clean, painted a pale peach that did not clash with the little make-up she wore.
“Cris,” she said, and her voice was like that of an angel. I wanted to curl her arms around me and let her rock me to sleep but deep down, I knew that she wasn’t real.
“I’m as real as your memories, Cris,” she smiled. “I am with you always. No matter what happens to me. I am in your heart. I love you. Forever. Always.”
“I love you, Momma,” I whispered. “Forever and always.” I heard the words resonate. For a moment, the bland landscape shimmered and turned opalescent before it dimmed to black. When the dark touched me, it pulled me back into its center. I was almost glad to escape the bland plain. It felt like limbo which to me was worse than death.
I
spent the next ten minutes furiously loading both of their Hawkins rifles and flintlocks. It wasn't until it was all over that I could take stock of the damage.
“I hit one,” Pierre said breathlessly. “Jean-Claude?”
“I hit two, one dead for sure,” he returned and held his side. Blood dripped through his fingers.
“You hurt?” Pierre asked me and as I shook my head, he turned to his brother. “Jean-Claude?”
“Arrow clipped me. Just a graze.”
I ran my eyes up to the cliff rock and found some leaves that might work as a poultice, one that Rain had shown me but before I could do anything, both were saddling and packing up, ready to bolt. Luckily, both horses had come through the fracas without a scratch.
“Let me see your cut,” I said, and Jean-Claude lifted his tunic and coat to expose a shallow graze that had just torn the top layer of skin. It had already clotted but I crushed the leaves of yarrow and pressed the sticky sap on the wound. He thanked me, and then hoisted me up on the back of his saddle. Minutes later, they were guiding the horses down a narrow deer trail that skirted a high ridge above the valley where we had camped. Pushing the horses as fast as possible on the brushy trail, we trotted for hours putting as much distance between the Indians and us as we could.
They traveled long into the night and I mentioned that we should be safe as no brave would fight at night for fear of dying in the darkness where his spirit would wander, unable to find its way back to the spirit world. Both told me that they had heard such superstitions but weren’t going to risk the hair on their heads on the off chance of meeting the one Indian brave that didn’t adhere to the notion.
“Aren't you affeered your spirit might wander and get lost?” Pierre asked me. I didn’t rightly know what I believed; Falling Rain had not expressed her spiritual beliefs to me.
My butt bounced on the back of the horse until I felt as if I were made of bruised fruit and the thought of another day's travel made me cringe. I was sick of horse sweat and hair working its way into my underparts, sick of the cantle banging into my privates and my bony butt bones slamming into the horse's backbones.
I was so exhausted that I couldn’t hang on and sometime during a period when I had fallen asleep or passed out, Jean-Claude had tied a rope around my waist to his.
I was leaning against his back with my face and cheek mashed into the wool of his capote. I’d drooled on him making a large wet spot, but he didn’t complain.
“Where are we?” I mumbled in French. “How much further? Before we stop?”
“By first light. There’s a small settlement on the banks of the Chase. We’ll be protected from the Indians there,” he answered. “You hungry? Thirsty?”
He handed me his water skin and a journey cake. Both went down my throat without me spilling a drop as the horse walked on. Thankfully, the beast was walking, not that bone-jarring trot as its sweat had dried in white salt patches on neck and haunches. The smell was strong and oddly pleasant.
“Merci,” I said, and he grunted. I held the skin up to Pierre and he took it from me, swallowing a long draft before he gave it back to his brother. I watched in fascination as an apple-shaped lump rose and fell in his throat.
“How’s your nose? Broken?” Pierre asked abruptly.
I wiggled it. Being upright on the back of the horse for so long had given it a chance to drain and I’d used willow bark to take down the swelling. The improvement allowed me to see and breath without much difficulty. My swollen cheeks, and black eyes had gone down enough that they no longer restricted my vision.
We walked on in silence which was broken as soon as the first red line of the rising sun broke the horizon and birds made sleepy protests as we disturbed them. The forest wildlife came alive in the secret rustlings around us, under cover and just within our eyesight.
I was able to see more of the terrain, we began to encounter clearings where the stumps of ax cut trees remained of settlers attempts to tame the wilderness. Logs had been taken to build their cabins and I saw other signs of white mens occupancy – serpentine cut rail fences, stone walls, and cleared fields. Smoke coming from rock chimneys down in the hollows.
We’d ridden only a mile out of the forest when we were challenged by men on horseback wearing farmer’s homespun and long caped greatcoats. Armed with smooth-bore muskets and Hawkins rifles.
Pierre and Jean-Claude pulled up. They told the armed settlers that they had been attacked by the Iroquois and Shawnee and that it was possible the survivors were still after us.
“You’re lucky,” the younger scout reported. “I’m Daniel Harris. Most times, they kill all the men they encounter in the forests.” His gray eyes picked me out hiding behind Jean-Claude’s large shoulders. “Who you got there? Your young’un?”
“Non. Young’un we took from a squaw caught running from Big Tooth’s band. Escaping,” Pierre answered. “White boy as you can see, taken from somewhere but he don’ remember his name or where he from.”
“You’re welcome to come in and rest up. Been riding all night?”
“Since the heathens attacked us. Truth is, if’n the boy hadn’t warned us they were coming, we’d all be scalps strung up on the wickiup poles,” Jean-Claude admitted. The brothers introduced themselves and named me, Michel Renaud. Michael Fox. I liked it, but it still sounded and felt odd. Like a shoe with a pebble in it.
We entered a small stockade bordered by pine trees standing upright in a fence that was the size of four acres, high enough so that four men standing on each other’s shoulders could not see over it and secured by a double planked iron hard oak gate hung on wrought iron hinges. A bar stood on the side and it was a solid tree trunk of over twenty inches thick and would require four men to lift it into place.
Inside the well-worn dirt square were several small buildings made of logs laid with the bark still on. I saw the remains of a garden, a well with a hand pump and an animal stockade milling with horses and milk goats. Behind me, the gates closed with a finality that sounded like the rumble of thunder. Jean-Claude held me as I slid off the horse’s near side, gesturing for me to open the gate to the pens. Both brothers dismounted and led their mounts into the corral. I slipped in and asked if they wanted me to remove their tack and unsaddle; I wasn’t surprised when they said no. Leaving a ready escape route if needed was one of their quirks.
Both pushed me forward toward the center building and we went inside following Harris. It was dark as there were no windows, but the lead scout lit an oil lamp and it brightened the dark corners. We saw a rough table with benches, a desk, and weapons stacked in the corner. One bed hugged the back wall and there were pallets on the dirt floor.
“There’s coffee on,” Harris gestured to a pot sitting in the coals of a fireplace. I studied the well-made rock laid hearth and chimney where a small fire with a large coal bed was busily heating the room. It drew well and had been made by a master stonemason. I stood in the corner as both LaSalle brothers threw their gear on the bed, poured themselves a cup each and sat at the table while all four went over the map. Pierre pointed out where we’d been attacked and where we’d come from but as to where they were headed, he kept quiet.
I slid down the wall and rested my hands on my knees, closing my eyes as their voices faded to a low drone.
“The young’un hungry?” Harris asked. “We got us a good cook. Makes bacon and biscuits taste right delicious and I brought down a deer yesterday. There’s stew.”
“He’ll eat after we do,” Pierre said. “Needs to tend to the horses and his other chores. Michel?” I opened my eyes. “Get up, bring water to the animals, feed them the last of the corn. Check if the firebox needs wood and bring us a bucket of water, our saddlebags, and packs.”
I nodded and rose, heading out the door, nearly stumbling on feet that dragged because I was so tired. Once outside, dirt drifted up from my feet as I approached the corral.
Watering the stock wasn’t too hard, there was a well with a hand pump next to the wooden trough and although it leaked, it held enough water for every animal to drink its fill.
Both brothers’ geldings were happy enough to stand still as I undid the girths, pulled off the saddles and carried them out of the reach of teeth. Both the horses and goats liked to chew on the leather. You would think that the animals wouldn’t be attracted to chewing animal hides, but I’d been careless once for doing just that and the back of Jean-Claude’s saddle had scars from his horse’s teeth. I’d been punished for letting that happen.
I found a pile of split firewood out back of the cabin and a hide with handles folded atop it. I’d lost ours in the woods when I’d run from the braves. Yet, neither brother knew that it was gone and when they found out, I was sure to be punished for losing that, too.
Four or five pieces were all I could drag at a time. It took several trips before the wood pile inside was full enough to last the night and met with Pierre's approval. By that time, my entire body ached with exhaustion, so tired that it was a pain as real as a broken bone and my hands were full of splinters from the wood. I had yet to bring in their bags and water nor had I eaten.
They were seated; hunched over bowls of venison stew and it smelled so good that my mouth watered instantly, filled with saliva and my stomach growled. I was faint from hunger. I dropped the packs on their beds and rested my hand on the wall by the door.
Harris stood and followed me out to the pump. It was he that filled the wooden bucket and carried it toward the inside of the cabin. Before he opened the door, he set it down and questioned me.
“What’s your name, boy? Your real name?”
“I don’t remember,” I answered.
“Your pa? Neither of them is your pa. You know where you come from? Where they got you from? How old are you?”
“Don’t know nothing,” I said and kept my head down, but I was wary of his hands. Any movement and I was ready to bolt out of reach.
“They hit you, boy? If you don’t move fast enough?”
“You are saying the way they treat me ain’t right?”
“Jehovah, boy!” he exclaimed. “You ain’t no more than eight or nine-years-old and you ain’t no common child. Nor a half-breed. You speak French and English. You can read, too.”
“How do you know?” I was curious.
“Because I saw you read the map, the English, and Latin words. If you can remember something, I could send a message on for you.”
“I don’t remember anything but the Indian village,” I returned. “The one they called Big Tooth’s and a …woman named Rain Falling on Rocks. She said I was her child.”
He shook his head. “She lied. You’re no half-breed. Go on in, I saved you a bowl of stew and some ale, made you a pallet in the corner near the fireplace.”
“Pierre and Jean-Claude? If I don’t finish my chores -”
“I’ll take care of it. Go sleep. You’re dead on your feet.”
I slid through the hide and found a bowl on the edge of the table. In it was a poorly made wooden spoon but I was hungry enough to use my fingers if I had to do so. The stew and the ale were gone in minutes. Warm, my belly full and my blood singing from the alcohol of the ale, I collapsed on the pile of blankets near the fireplace and was asleep before the next log crackled and fell off the fire-dogs.