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October 28th, 1932. That afternoon’s velvety, buttermilk sky had made way to welcome a foreign conglomeration of clouds. The heavens had blackened, and with nighttide, it brought wicked gales that could mangle anything with its veiled and evasive hands. A ruthless blizzard. Townsfolk had become entrenched in their low-born homes. They’d hammered the windows with wood planks, and lightened up their quarters with oil lamps and candles when the power went out. The hard pouring snow had given birth to landslides in all sorts of places around town. Mostly around the timberland granges and frigid hillocks. Nooktown had emitted an orange warning. Driving their people to look for a safe place to stay, whether it was at home or any place functioning as a refugee camp.
Wyatt’s ear had met the earpiece of The Lodge House’s kettle phone more than eight times that day. The desk phone had been installed ages ago on the last floor of the currently ramshackle and pigeon-holed hotel. The suite embodied the most lustrous and swankified rooms of The Lodge House. But now the astounding walnut leather executive desk paint was falling off and the golden wallpaper with leaves and apples had rotten. Different kinds of moss and goo
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had grown from beneath the now papyrus-like plastered ornamented paper. Calvin was beside his brother on a half-ruined chaise lounge reading a manuscript. A fragile-looking poetry booklet he’d found at the bottom of an antique wooden vanity piece. It was called Ten Days of A Dream by an anonymous author. Someone had spilled coffee over the pages and those themselves had turned a dark brown-sugar color with the passing time.
The Elsner brothers were just a few of the guests that knew of the existence of the spiffy suite. They had shut themselves in it for temporary accommodation. The lower-class townspeople such as them had crowded the lobby, halls, and rooms of the hotel at dusk, with a long line to the receptionist’s phone line to call their dear ones. The Bon Vivant Suite, as it was known for decades, was out of grasp for most of those that sought refuge, since certain locations at the abandoned hotel were strictly off-limits due to the instability of the structure. Broken staircases, pieces of furniture that blocked the hallways, putrid floor moldings, and cracked walls that fell to chunks. The brothers had paid no mind to the warnings and had made themselves at home several times.
“Yeah, he is here with me,” Wyatt spoke into the black wooden receiver and wheeled his eyes back to his younger brother. “What do you mean if he is doing okay with this going on? I find him reading the newspaper with a cup of coffee every morning. What kind of pipsqueak does that?”
“Hey!” Calvin grabbed a nearby velveteen cushion and aimed for his brother’s head. His sibling dodged the projectile for an inch, and mouthed the word ‘pipsqueak’, yet again.
“The lobby is pack-full and we still haven’t heard how long this blizzard is going to take. We keep losing the radio frequency here.” Vivian was out of town in the meantime, housed at a nearby village while helping her father transport large quantities of oilseeds in their gas guzzler
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pickup truck. Both father and daughter were supposed to return that same night but they’d have to wait for the winds and snow to ease a little before going back on the road.
The young couple hung up the phone an hour later. Calvin turned another page and briefly glanced back at his brother with concern, the unnecessary corny evenings were a distant memory now. His brother had been shot twice at The Pegasus Expo trying to protect Vivian from some psycho gunner roaming around at the exhibition hangar that day. He’d been taken to the emergency room just a few minutes later after the seemingly senseless attack had ended poorly for the perpetrator and two other victims. Wyatt had survived with life-threatening wounds and spent two weeks and a half under medical observation. Out of plain gratitude, the Bixbee family had paid for the medical expenses, while his little brother and his girlfriend lingered to take care of him. Vivian would often change his bandages once out of the sanatorium. She’d also cook and help Calvin with homework if needed.
Veteran farmer Donny Bixbee was unable to collect any case material from the police. They insisted that such public demonstrations of violent acts could not be discarded as unprofound terrorism, for which they reinforced that anyone could have been the victim and not just his daughter and company. The derivation of the attack was still unknown and presumably eclipsed by law enforcement for institutional reasons. Spreading uncertainty amongst all townsfolk.
Calvin quickly fell to the depths of sleep to which Wyatt proceeded to pick up the same old cushion from the floor and tuck it under his younger brother’s nape. He then pulled the dust-caked bear-skin rug off the floor and covered the boy with it as if it were a blanket.
He’d keep watch, after all, this floor was no safe place and nights like this never lacked the occasional moonlighter. He collected more wood for the chimney’s fire from decaying pieces of furniture and brought some pillows from next door. He bolted the door behind him when he
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came back, and sat on an oxhide leather sofa near the metal-cased window. He admired the tempest from between the timber planks, the wind’s symphony giving life to the blizzard. He knew this weather disturbance would ultimately need a cleanup. He would have a lot of work back as a shoveler. He could already imagine the soreness on his feet and the frost pummeling his fingertips but also, the weight of money in his pockets.
The snow kept knocking on the window, accumulating on the glass panels, and encrusting on the lower sash. The view was clouded most of the time, but a couple of hours later a puny yellow light appeared through the trees below. A torch battling against the convulsing air currents. Wyatt rubbed his tired eyeballs and approached the window. A beige and waddling figure carried the beacon. The individual brought with him a sheepskin backpack basket. Plus a regular basket hanging from an arm, protected by a chunky knitted wool blanket. Once at the entrance of The Lodge House, a scattering number of guests guided him inside with welcoming gestures.
“Calvin, wake up!” The young man shuffled his little brother out of sleep.
“Wha—what’s going on?”
“I think someone might have called for replenishments. Two pairs of hands are better than one.”
Calvin pondered on that with his hands over his belly. Still fighting sleep. “You know, you might be right on that one . . . ”
“I know I’m right. Quick, grab your coat.”
The two boys squeezed out of the room from its barricaded doorway. The corridors smelled like wet swine and the carpeted floor was torn and feathery. Leaks had formed puddles all
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around so they tiptoed to the marble staircase and passed by countless other rooms in worse conditions. The spiral steps had broken down in two by a column that had fallen off and blocked the way. Another piece of that same column had rolled down, breaking the golden filigreed handrail. After that, there were no major obstacles rather than the greasy floor tiles of the kitchen and a few oxidized pipelines in the boiler room. The rest of the locations were simply unreachable, fallen walls, or the mammoth-sized hole in the dining room that had swallowed tiles, benches, and tables. Leaving a hungry, deadly trap behind.
The brothers arrived at the vestibules in a matter of minutes but the beeline to the food, supplies and other assorted items was already longer than the initial toll-free call line. The boys grunted, waiting in line one behind the other. Wyatt’s gaze met Woodbone’s toothless smile and uneven mane among all the people, he murmured something into Calvin’s ear and told him to stay in line.
The oldest Elsner brother opened the way towards Randall, who sat on the fancy ivory tiling of the lobby, back pressed against a dusty decorative urn at a corner. On his lap, he held the basket he had brought with him from his long trip from the town hall. His backpack basket had been handed over to someone else to share out the supplies the Renou village had sent as evenly as possible. Wyatt had assumed it was him all along. Woodbone was known as one of those few fellows that cared for all the people in Nooktown. His work was always out there in the wealds, serving others in the dense parts of the forests. Collecting samples, cultivating and boiling in burettes, the best natural remedies for the township, and the Ancient Botany Museum.
“Hey Woodbone, how goes it?” He plopped on the floor beside him and noticed a woman near them playing with the foyer’s radio while the receiver played nothing more than static. “Saw you from up there. Bad day to be Nooktown’s hero?”
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“I’d say it’s been a pretty good day to have a wooden leg.” He huffed.
“Uh-huh. What’s in the basket?”
“Ah, what a nosy lad you are, my friend. It’s my business.”
“Ah come on . . . Sometimes you just have to ‘leg-it-go’.” He snorted.
“Hell with you kids and your puns! Here, give me your hand.” Wyatt leaned forward, but Randall pushed him down. “No, no. No, close your eyes or go back to your stinky room, pal!”
He extended his dirty palms and shut his eyes tightly. The old man uncovered the basket and handed him what was in the interior. He felt the blood-warm, shaggy fur. The short limbs. He tried to blink.
“Nah, don’t open your eyes just yet. What do you think it is?”
“A puppy?" Woodbone chuckled at that.
“Nope, keep guessing.”
Wyatt manipulated a velveteen sort of tail, it was rather long for a small body. The pointy ears, however, brought up the right word to his mind.
“It’s a fox!” It came out of Calvin’s lips first, who’d run towards them at the sight of the minuscule creature.
“Calvin! Go back in line.” His sibling opened his eyes, conspicuously upset.
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Fragile beyond measure, the man had revealed a reddish-orange cub that looked slightly disoriented. Filling its little lungs with light winds and then pushing them out. Its small powerless howls and squeals were joined by a similar chorus inside the basket.
“Aye, let him be! I’ve brought enough short-aged cheese blocks, crackers, grapes, and orangeade to fill everyone’s belly! At least until the morrow, I’ll need to make another trip then.” Randall exposed the basket entirely for them to take a peek. A dozen cubs curled against each other looking for warmth. The boys dandled the itsy-bitsy fox cub with extreme care.
Woodbone told the tale of how the young ones had come into his possession. An inebriated skinner had accidentally shot the mother of the babies while he tried killing a brown bear for its pelt. A reindeer herder from the Renou village had been there, while the pie-eyed man stumbled through the foliage looking for his prey. Taking no notice of his crime, the man had left. But the mother’s muddy prints had led the herder to the underground nest. Randall had brought with him the basket still unsure of what would be of the cubs but heeding the Renou Matriarch’s words. The cubs carried endearment and a mission as wards within their free spirits, but nowhere near their woodlands. Once Woodbone presented himself at the town hall, he’d come to terms with the Mayor and Head Commander of time to foster the foxes and train them to put their noses to good use, just days before Jesse could occupy his first political office. They told him a soldier would retrieve them and send them far off South tomorrow morning. Being Randall’s cross to bear until then.
“We should keep one,” Calvin whispered.
“We can barely feed ourselves . . . ”
“What if they simply decide to get rid of them?”
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“It’s not our business.”
“Might as well be ours if they think it’s theirs.”
Woodbone scratched his chin. “Calvin has a good point. But I have to follow orders.” The thrill that had sparked on the youngest sibling’s face came down crestfallen.
“But,” The old man chuckled, “Keeping one won’t hurt anybody . . . ” The man turned to Wyatt. “This one is yours.”
“Mine? Why?”
“Why not? These types of scruffy little things know the woods by instinct, you could learn from them. Vegetation, minerals, rivers, the soil, the wind . . . mutts, and other wild things interact with them daily in a single, spirit-bound language. Wise words from my father. See?”
“Say yes!” Calvin met Wyatt’s doubtful eyes.
The little fox sucked on Wyatt’s fingers, and that made him snicker. The static coming from the nearby radio finally turned into a tune. The song spread through the lobby and the halls bringing forth a tingle of coziness among those crowding the place. Jimmie Carol and the Boogie-Sharks seemed to bolster the good and comfy vibes in the building with their song, ‘My Doll’.
I’ll protect you my doll, the fairest of them all
When the night comes up to snatch you
When there's no one there to catch you
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I’ll be there, I’ll be there my love
Out the window, we fly, in the same bourbon sky
When the night comes back to haunt you
I’ll be there, I’ll be there my love
I’ll protect you my doll, once and for all
When the night comes back to trap you
And there’s no one to patch you
I’ll be there, I’ll be there my love
Wyatt raised the carrot-colored cub and stared at her unalloyed and virgin eyes. “Carol, for a name, how does that sound?”
END OF CHAPTER #11
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