Down The Path Page 4
“Cooper, good, good, come in, please.” It was the woman, Nancy, who had grilled him so hard the last time he was here. She still had that same, relaxing tone to her voice, but her eyes were bright and happy. “We asked you to come because there are things we need to tell you. Guidelines for your expedition, you understand. Things you may not have thought of.”
He nodded his head in agreement as sat in the same wooden chair that he sat in last time. Another man stood up to speak, “you will be walking a long way and we want to make sure you make the most of your time and attempt to keep any dangerous situations to a minimum.” This man had a booming voice and he commanded the room. He seemed very young to be on the council, but his dark skin had wrinkles around his eyes. “Have you given much thought to when you would begin to return to the city?”
He really hadn’t thought about that very much. He just assumed that he would come back when he had found something significant or began to run out of supplies. “I assumed I would head home once I had completed my expedition sir.”
“This is precisely what I am talking about son,” the man with the booming voice replied. “It will take you at least a month to follow that river to the south. We want to make sure you consider the seasons on your journey. If possible, do not head back in the heat of summer or the cold and unpredictable weather of winter. I couldn’t imagine being caught out in the elements during one of those cold winter rains that last for days.” Apparently, the man felt he had made his point and sat back down.
“What he is trying to tell you, Cooper, is that we are concerned for your safety,” Walter piped in. “We want to make sure you are not stuck out, trying to cover ground, when it hits 120 degrees in the middle of summer.”
These were things he had not thought of. Realistically, he hoped to find real shelter to live in throughout the heat of summer. It got so sweltering that even the crops died in the summer. He had even heard that it was hotter farther away from the cold waters of the lake. Since he never ventured far from the gardens, he didn’t know, but it certainly seemed to make sense. Also, he might not have a large cold lake to jump in on the really miserable days. If he remembered from his schooling, the river might move too swiftly for him to jump into.
“Realistically, Cooper, you may be out there for a full year.” Walter’s face seemed to crease oddly as he said this, as if he tasted something terrible. “We think others tried to hurry back and this might be part of the problems of past expeditions. We are relying on your patience and logic in strenuous situations to tell you the proper and safe time to venture back to us here in the city.” Again, this seemed painful for Walter to say. It made perfectly logical sense to the anxious adventurer. If it took him months to get to wherever he was going, he needed to plan accordingly for the journey back, making sure he was walking when it was easiest on his body and increased his chances of survival.
“I agree with your thoughts council members, and I will take them to heart. Given this information, I would not expect to return for a full year and I would ask you not to count me out for at least a year.” He had gathered his confidence from all the people he had seen in the city and all the well wishes. He felt good about surviving the year outside the city gates.
“While we want you to be confident, we want that confidence to be based squarely in reality instead of the arrogant mindset of youth.” A man he had met once before said this. Cooper thought his name was something like Brett or Brent or Brant. He couldn’t remember and it bothered him. He was usually very good at remembering names.
“What Brett is trying to say,” said Nancy, “is that we have one more gift for you.” He was very interested in what this gift could be. He had already been given everything he could imagine. Short of a working truck, he couldn’t imagine what it could be. “A man named Christopher, who enforces the rules of the city, has created a book that he wants to give to you.”
He had never met this Christopher, but he had heard plenty about the men who enforced the laws. One of the perks of living out by the garden was that these men never ventured out that far unless they were called, and they were never called to his plot of garden. He had heard that they were pushy, and laid guilt on people before they even had a chance to say anything. He supposed it was not a big deal to accept a book from this man though.
Brett spoke up again, “This book is not meant to just be handed over. It is a guidebook to surviving outside the city. While Christopher has never been outside the city, when he was a boy, his brother went on an expedition and never came back. Since that event, he has been inventing techniques and trying experiments that may have helped his brother survive” Brett began sweating as he said this and Cooper wondered if had sensed his own disdain for the men who enforce the law. “This book is not something to be taken lightly. It has been this man’s passion for many years and he has spent a great deal of time refining these techniques.”
Walter stood and silenced Brett immediately. “Let’s all calm down, everyone’s tensions are running high the nearer we get to this momentous expedition.” Cooper was unsure what had just happened, but he wondered if this man, Christopher, had learned these methods of survival, why he wasn’t leaving, or hadn’t left in the past?
Walter began to speak again, “what we are trying to say is these techniques are best learned from Christopher, and then the book is used as a reminder while you are away. We were hoping you would spend several days, a week even, learning from him before your journey.” The old man’s eyes lowered and he quietly said “I realize you were eager to leave sooner, but this delay may very well save your life.”
Cooper had been all ready to leave and expected to be out the gate in a day or two, at the most. This was a setback, but it made good, logical sense to learn as much as he could from this man. He certainly needed all the information he could get. “Of course I will spend some time with Christopher, and I thank you all for the opportunity to learn even more before my voyage.”
“Don’t thank us, son, he’s waiting outside the doors for you now,” Brett said. With that, the council wished him well, and dispersed from the chambers.
Cooper stood up from his chair and headed out the doors to meet with the first rule enforcer he had ever met. He was fairly confident everything would be fine. What could he do, arrest him before he tried to save the city?
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Christopher was waiting outside the door, as he had been told. He looked like an enforcement officer. He was average height, had a bit of a belly, and the top of his head was completely clean of hair; so much so that his head actually had a shine to it. He had a line of hair above his ears and on the back of his head that was trimmed very short. It was jet black, the same color as the thick line of hair between his mouth and nose.
As he approached him, he extended what appeared to be a bear paw of a hand, attached to an equally thick forearm. “Damn glad to meet you, son! Hell of an undertaking you have gotten yourself into,” Christopher said as they shook hands. “Come, let’s walk back to your box and talk a little along the way.”
The man seemed very friendly and Cooper was quickly put at ease. As they walked along the path, it was as if they had known each other much longer than they actually had. Christopher had a great sense of humor and seemed to laugh most things away. He wasn’t sure what all the rumors were about the rule enforcers, at least in the case of Christopher, they seemed totally untrue.
As they walked, the bald man spoke of his own childhood and adolescence. He said he always felt guilty for not being able to help his brother, Robert, on his journey. When Robert left, he didn’t have any of the techniques that Christopher had now discovered. It was why he had come up with them in the first place. Maybe if he couldn’t help his brother on his quest, he could help the next person.
“Ya know, Coop, I always wanted to leave. I figured I could develop these tricks, train myself, and head off after Robert.” As they walked, Christopher stared up and the crumbling ruins of the massive city acr
oss the water. “He went over there you know,” he said, pointing at those huge, broken down gray towers. “He always thought that place had to be loaded with supplies. Can you imagine how many people could live inside boxes that size?”
Cooper had tried never to really think about that ancient city. To him, it appeared even more depressing than their own. He liked to look across the water, he just chose not to look that direction. “Why didn’t you leave?”
“Well, that’s a tricky question son, because I still want to.” His voice had grown slightly deeper at this, and it was apparent he was angry with the situation. “But basically, by the time I felt ready, I was already thirty five years old, and a damn fine enforcer, so the council said no. Said I was too vital to the city to walk off to my death.”
No one had left since Robert, and Cooper knew that the council had been dissuading people from leaving, but he didn’t realize they were actively saying ‘NO’.
Then the anger rolled off the large man, and his face looked totally peaceful. “Don’t get me wrong, they were right, I was just too old to try something so foolish. That’s a young man’s game. For a long time I was angry at myself for taking so long to get ready, but it seems something was in the works after all.” Now he looked pleased with himself again and was actually picking up the pace. It was nearly a struggle to keep up with him without jogging.
He began to speak again, this time with a more professorial tone to his voice. “Now listen, in those extra years after being turned down and then having you come along, I have refined my techniques and they are better than ever. No one will have ever left this city with the information and skills that you will have,” and he clapped him on the back with one of those bear paws.
Cooper didn’t wince at all, even though it was difficult not to. He could tell how excited Christopher was about all this. “Well, this is my box here.”
“You picked a great spot, is that your garden right over there?”
“Yes, my neighbor John and I tend that for the city. It yields decent usually.”
“I always wanted to move closer to the water, but with my job, it was important that I was always in the thick of community.” He stared so intently out over the water and the place where the dark gray of the water met the dozens of gray towers rising up to the clouds, it almost seemed as if he saw something out there that no one else did. “He called it Sharcago, you know”
“What did he call Sharcago?” Cooper wasn’t even sure who Christopher was talking about, but he could hear the reverence in his voice and chose to simply listen.
“That huge city over there….the one that looks like its about to fall over…Robert said that one of the old maps could still mostly be read and that the city was called Sharcago”
Cooper remembered on several of his maps being able to make out the last of a word ending in “ago,” but on most of his maps the rest was unreadable. He never much cared since that was not the direction he was heading.
Shaking out of his mental fog, Christopher turned back to him and said,
“Listen, we’re going to start a little slow, I think you will remember things better that way.” Cooper nodded his head in agreement and said he only wanted to do what was best.
“Ok, well tonight and all day tomorrow, I want you to read this book,” he said as he plopped down a binder full of sheets of paper. It was larger than he had imagined it would be. “Read through the whole thing, study it real good, then tomorrow night I will come by and we’ll talk about a few things, questions you might have, stuff like that. Then, the morning after that, we’ll put these skills into action and get into the thick of it.” His nose wrinkled up as he finished his thought, and he turned on his heels to walk back up the path.
It seemed like a solid plan to Cooper, he tended to learn best on his own anyway and this method allowed him to learn it and then test it before he was in a critical situation. So he wasn’t interrupted, he swung the heavy metal door shut on his box and let the light streaming in through the small window provide all the illumination he needed to read. Then, with plenty of excitement about learning these new skills, he grabbed the book and flopped onto his bed.
---
He had been awake much of the night reading through the book. Even though it was a great deal of information, he was retaining most of it, probably because the techniques seemed so foreign to him. The book described many things that seemed common sense once you read them, but they were things that most would not have come up with.
He had no idea that the salt had so many uses. The thing that intrigued him the most was salting red meat and leaving it out on a rock in the sun to dry. Apparently this concentrated the flavor, made it safe to store in his pack for weeks and was delicious tossed into boiling water to make a simple soup.
He really wanted to eat that soup, especially as he ate his breakfast of mushy carp. He was hoping someone would drop by something tastier for dinner, but feared that many had already given him what they could. Most, himself included, expected him to have already left.
Cooper had been up so late reading, he had not woken until the sun was well over the horizon. He decided to take advice from the first page of the book about keeping active, so he went for a quick jog along the lake. When he returned, Christopher was waiting for him at his box and his pockets were bulging!
Cooper slowed his pace as he approached and was pleased with himself that he wasn’t breathing hard. Christopher also seemed pleased. “You seem to be in good shape, that’s important. You never know what you may have to run from.”
He headed inside to grab a drink of water as the enforcer emptied his pockets, which ended up being filled with a myriad of random objects. He laid out little things including different rocks, small sticks, one large stick, a bag full of several dead insects, a long length of twine, and many potatoes.
The potatoes intrigued him, because his garden plot was near the water, the spuds just rotted when you planted them. He always enjoyed eating them when the food center had them to offer. He assumed they lasted a long time, so they were to be food reserves. Christopher corrected him on this. He said that food that was this heavy was not worth carrying on a journey like his. Most of his food would be gathered from the wild to limit any extra weight he had to carry. No, these potatoes were to trade with other people he met.
He seemed to say it so obviously, like there was no doubt in his mind he would meet other people, and potatoes would be a hot commodity. “I got these spuds from my friend who tends the garden closest to the gate. He says they have a heckuva time keeping them healthy and that it is very likely other communities don’t have them. This makes them very valuable. I brought you a small guide for growing them, written by him.”
“I’m just not sure that I am going to find anyone else…”
“Best to head into this situation prepared for every eventuality. Let’s just assume you are going to find others, and be prepared for it. That way you have no surprises.”
“Makes sense to me,” and he took the potatoes and set them aside, wondering how long he could resist eating them. They were smaller than the ones he usually sees, and more bumpy, but he was certain they would still be delicious.
“Well son, let’s begin.” With that, Christopher and Cooper went over every page in the book over the next 2 days. Studying it, attempting everything in it, even applying slight changes to the technique’s assuming different situations.
They spent by far the most time on gathering food and water as well as first aid. Even with the nice tent that Walter had given him, which Christopher had given his seal of approval to after an inspection; they focused on building shelters too. The shiny headed man simply said that the tent might not always be with him and re-iterated preparing for every scenario.
It was fun for a while, but eventually it turned tedious. Cooper had this down backwards and forwards, and now he felt ready to leave. He wasn’t sure why they were still going over things. How many fires did he need to bu
ild with two sticks and a strap of leather to prove that he knew how to do it?
Throughout it all, Christopher was very polite but firm. Sometimes the man could convey a great deal simply with his stare. He could tell when Cooper was tired and that was when he pushed him the most. Always saying to be prepared for everything and that he would be tired and frustrated out there and still have to do things like gather wood and build a fire. No stopping just because your hands hurt or you were hungry. Sometimes Cooper wondered if this was a form of punishment. Was Christopher secretly angry at him that he was the one who got to leave?
Then he would look up at him and see no malice in his eyes, just concern for the redhead’s well-being. He knew, after all this training, that if Cooper did not return, Christopher would put all the blame on himself. He already seemed to blame himself for his brother’s demise, and he was only a boy then, with no training like this.
He thought about it heavily in the evenings, but knew there was no way to derail that train of thought in Christopher’s mind. He didn’t imagine the large man being able to shoulder the level of guilt he would heap upon himself if he failed to return. He would simply need to do everything he could to make it back, which was his plan already, but now he had skills that he never imagined, and was feeling more confident by the minute.
After running through the whole book one more time, Christopher was convinced that the young man was as ready as he could make him and, after wishing him the best of luck and giving him another hearty slap on the back, had gone to notify Walter. Cooper rested in his box, drinking some tea, relieved that his body would get a night to rest and heal some of the blisters the training had produced. He would be leaving in early afternoon the next day.
---
As Cooper opened the door to his box on yet another fresh morning, he realized it would be his last morning within the city for quite some time. He sipped his morning tea and thought about all the angst that had grown in him through his years as a resident in this city. The hoopla over his hair color, the mushy carp, and the daily sight of the ashen faced and morose residents that made up the community had given him contradicting feelings that were hard to reconcile. There were high expectations placed on him to save a city that he always thought he hated. But now with the announcement of him leaving to try to help the city, things had turned around.