Jasper's Mountain - Part 14

As Jasper and Claudia hop from one rock to the next, following the river South, Jasper lets his mind wander to memories of his past.

Jasper remembers holding out her box that she kept all of her favorite dried flowers in up towards the sky that was sending down evil black drifting parachuters. The stench of burnt items clung to the insides of his nostrils and burned with every breath he took. He slammed his knees down in her front yard, as he fell in deep desperation. The rubble and rocks of the aftermath dug into his skin, cutting it to pieces, but he was too distraught to notice the pain or blood that trickled down his knees towards his feet.

He held the tin box out in front of him, looking at each beautiful dried flower that she carefully picked out as worthy of her keepsake.

How did this little box, with preserved life survive the scorching?

His tears fell into the tin, and he wished he could preserve a little piece of him, place it in the box, and let their spirits live on together there.

His mouth fell open as he stared at what was left of his love, his life. Saliva fell towards the front of his open lips and began to pool at the middle part of his bottom lip before slipping out of his mouth, making its slow descent to his legs, where it lay in a pool.

As his spit fell onto his legs, he let out a blood-curdling scream. His anger and desperation came flooding out of his belly and filled the quiet surrounding with sorrow and echoes of a broken hearted man.

“WHY?!” Jasper screamed, with his face tilting up towards the sky, arms outstretched, offering up the tin box.

“WHY HER?!” He gasped, “WHY NOT MEEEE?!”

He began sobbing, using every part of his body to let out his pain. He rocked back and forth on his knees as his whole body was shaking uncontrollably.

“Whyyy?!” His cry grew a little quieter, as he lost his voice and used every bit of his energy to scream out his pain to the silent void.

Jasper didn’t always believe in God. She always urged him that God was true and good and that He always took care of his people. He was never too sure if this was true, but it was hard to argue with her, especially when she believed in it with her whole heart.

There, on her lawn, he screamed out to her God.

“If you are so good and take care of your people, then why did you let this happen?! Why did you let her, who is so perfect and kind in every way, be taken away? She believed in you...”

He never heard an answer back. All else that could be heard was the sound of a crackling fire dying out over all of this now barren land that use to hold so much life, so many people, homes, community. Now? Now, it's all gone, burned to the ground.

Jasper felt empty to the core. His stomach twisted in knots. He should have been here. He should have died too. Or, he should have done a better job of convincing her to leave with him. He will never be able to reverse time and get back those last moments of her life. He won’t be able to ever hold her in his arms again and feel the warmth of her body against his. Or bury his face in her hair, and inhale her smell of lavender and sweat that could only come from her.  

A world without her seems like no kind of world to live in to Jasper. She’d been gone for only a matter of hours, days at this point, yet the world lost its luster when she went, and Jasper wondered if he could stay living in a world without her beauty in it.

As he sat shuddering in the midst of this destruction, with no other life around, it began to rain.

His distraught crying turned into a partly joyful cry with a grin on his face. The transition to a passerby would seem insane, but Jasper was thinking about what she said about the rain.

“I am so happy when it rains. It’s when God rains down on all of us like this that I know He is real and good. I feel alive in the rain, Jasper, and I know this life is worth living when I get to experience it,” she would tell him this almost every time it would start raining outside. More times than not she would go out and start twirling in the rain after she’d tell him this too.

Jasper felt like the clouds were weeping on him, for him, for the loss of so many lives, across such a vast amount of land. He felt its cleansing properties wash over his body and soul. His ash stricken face was being spot cleaned by the rain drops.

Jasper raised the tin box up and out away from his body and laid in the child’s pose yoga position, resting the box on the ground and gripping it with his fingertips. Letting his forehead drop down onto the now wet, ashy grass, with his belly and chest cradled in his thighs, he sobbed and sobbed.

“Sadie… Sadie… Sadie…” he repeated between sobs.

“Is this life worth living? I’ll give it a shot, for you Sadie.”

Jasper closed his eyes tight and thought of the memory of her running out the screened porch door after a summer rain began to fall. She was wearing a flower summer dress and twirled around in the yard with her arms outstretched and her face to the sky, smiling. He remembers her looking over at him watching her from the porch, leaning against the post grinning.

“Come on Jasper! Come live with me!” She shouted.

He shook his head and smiled, but she ran up the steps, pried his arms free from being crossed over his chest, and pulled him down the stairs into the rain. She held his hands, leaned back, and they twirled together in the rain.

She laughed and smiled, and then pulled him towards her. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she leaned up and kissed him.

Jasper loved her free spirit. She had so much life in her.   

His thoughts are disrupted by a whizzing sound that passes his ear. He grabs up at his ear that feels like it’s on fire. Reflexively, he pulls his hand down and finds it covered in blood. Snapping his head up, he sees a blade stuck in the tree in front of him.

“Run!” He screams out to Claudia.

Jasper's Mountain - Part 13

“Sir! Sir! One of our guys found some strange looking tracks near the camp,” one of the men says to the young leader at camp in the morning.

“Show me,” he replies.

The man leads the way out of the leader’s tent towards the tree Claudia had been posted up in. The marks looked chaotic and were difficult to follow when mixed together with Jasper’s. They did not seem to make sense to the men inspecting the tracks.

The young leader puffs his chest out and declares, “This could just be some strange creatures out here in the woods. They don’t look to be more than two animals at most, so don’t worry about it lad,” he slaps the messenger on the back, “they will bring no harm to our large group.”

“Of course sir.”

“See to it that camp starts to get packed up. We need to move out soon.”

The man nods at the leader before scurrying off to do his task.

“Laz. What have you found?,” asks the older leader, Zeph, as he approaches where Laz stands underneath Claudia’s tree.  

“Nothing of consequence sir. Just some small tracks that will not affect us in the slightest.”

Zeph inspects the tracks.

“Don’t underestimate what appear to be small in number. They may one day come back to haunt you,” with this Zeph raises an eyebrow at Laz, sweeps his eyes once more over the tracks, and turns to walk back towards the camp that is in the process of being taken down by his hungover men.

Once Zeph walks far enough away, Laz spits in his direction, despising to be lower in rank to him. He hates being made out as incapable of differentiating a threat from a nuisance. He feels it’s a waste of time and energy to put forth the effort of investigating the trivial tracks, but knows Zeph will hold it over his head forever if he does nothing about it.

He whistles two of his men over to where he stands.

“What do you two boys make of these tracks?”

The three of them walk around, checking out the tracks, trying to understand the two different paths and how they tell a story together. These two men, in particular, are known for their hunting skills and are able to tell the differences between Claudia and Jasper’s tracks from each other.

“They must have been stationed up in these two trees. Makes me think they were trying to keep an eye on us. Doesn’t make me feel too good,” the taller of the two comments.

“Could be scouts that were sent to spy on us,” chimes in the second.

“You boys feel like you could scout out their trail and see if you can find their group? Get a head count on how many they travel with and any other useful information on them. We need to make sure these fellas aren’t going to be a threat.”

“Don’t see how such a little guy as this one must be could be too big of a threat, sir,” replies the shorter one with a smirk.

“I don’t give a damn if you think they won’t be. Just go check it out and report back,” he spits out at them.

“Yes, sir,” they both stammer to their leader and turn to start their hunt.

Laz walks towards camp and yells out, “Leave the camp up for now! We will be staying here for another night.”

Zeph stares at him as he calls out this order and then disappears into his tent.

Laz storms into his own tent and the camp can hear the women cry out from inside as Laz takes his anger out on those at the biggest disadvantage in his group.

---

“I know it will be difficult, but I think we should travel by the river. Our tracks will be impossible to follow and the river will lead us down the mountain,” Jasper says to Claudia.

“Ok.”

They are slow to reach the river, and once they do, their speed slows down as they try to keep their feet on the rocks around the river, so as not to get completely wet, and thereby freeze to death.

As the day goes on, they each feel more at ease about the low likelihood of being chased.

Perhaps we were not worth their time after all.

“We need to eat,” says Claudia. She stoops down and begins gathering rocks and building a wall in the river to create a pool.

Jasper grabs larger rocks than Claudia is able to handle and helps her create a bigger pool to catch fish. It does not take long for them to have a couple of decent sized fish swim in their contraption. Jasper bends his knees and cups his hands as he slowly leans towards the fish. He grabs on tight to the slithering fish as it tries to wriggle its way out of his hands, and throws it on land. Claudia is ready with a stick she sharpened and stabs the head down into the ground. She pulls the body of the fish back as she lets its blood drain on the muddy bank.

Jasper is able to throw two more fish at her, each of which she also stabs and drains.

Once they are drained, both Jasper and Claudia use their knives to cut the fish open and eat the meat straight off the carcass. They are too tired to try to eat more civilized than this.

The two are squatting, eating away at these two fish while breathing heavily through their noses. Their need for food in their bellies trumps all other fears or social norms in this moment.

The blood on the mud from the fish trickles down towards the water and seeps back into that which it came.

The only sounds that can be heard are their heavy breaths, loud chewing and the serene flow of the water traveling south to north. Clouds are beginning to form and the sun disappears behind them.

Yes. Snow, fall.

Jasper looks up into the sky, fish bits stuck in his beard, as he silently pleads to the clouds to drop its soldiers. The skin and bones left of the fish that Jasper holds out in front of him as he gazes into the grey roof looks like a sacrifice he is offering up in exchange for snow.

Jasper's Mountain - Part 12

Dawn is upon them and they have worked hard to make their tracks a spider web of intricacies in hopes that with such a large group as the caravan moves with, they wouldn’t be able to spare the time or men to follow their path for very long.

As the first light enters the sky, Jasper and Claudia take a break to refill their canteens at a river and rest for a few moments.

Claudia looks down at Jasper’s shaking hands to see they are crusted over with blood and are scratched all over.

“We need to wash your hands in the river. Don’t want your hands to get infected,” she tells him.

“Yeah. This happened on the way down the tree. I just forgot about it,” he replies.

As Claudia fills the canteens, Jasper dips his ripped palms into the piercing cold water. He inhales sharply as he plunges his hands entirely into the river. Using his clean fingers, he rubs at the open wounds on both hands to debride them of tree bark and dirt.

Once he feels like he cannot take any more of the pain, he pats them on the front side of his shirt and holds them out in front of his face for inspection.

“Here,” Claudia tells him, holding out a pair of socks. “I have these extra socks. You should wear them over your hands.”

Obligingly, Jasper accepts the socks and pulls them over his freezing hands. He then cups them over his mouth and breathes in warm air to bring back feeling all the way through his fingertips.

“I think if we can gain a little more ground as the sun rises, we should be safer from those people. I’m just not completely sure where we are now and how we can get back to our original path,” Jasper says.

In the panic of escaping the large group of people, they got themselves off the track down the mountain. Neither Jasper nor Claudia are willing to say they are lost. The complicated, yet necessary dance of survival that is nourished by hope hangs in the air, and each are willing to feed the other hope-cakes all day long in order to make it through.

“We aren’t too far off from the trail, and the most important thing is for us to get down the mountain,” Claudia says, hopeful that she is right.  

They get up in unison from their break and continue marching on towards the path unknown.

---

“Did you and your family ever see groups of people traveling through the mountains like that before?”

“Not this deep in the mountains, no, never. We saw them a lot closer to the borders, but it must be getting even worse down there if they are moving into the mountains now.”

Step by step, their crunches in the snow are melodic; creating a story of two unlikely souls intertwining their broken hearts into an adventure of survival.

“Papa told me those kinds of people who are hungry for power and enslave others to show their strength are hurting too. They just were not shown enough love. I think they didn’t have Papa’s or Mama’s who showed them good from evil.”

Crunch, crunch continues their story written in the snow by their footprints.

“What about your Papa and Mama? What did they teach you, Jasper?”

“Mine?” He becomes silent as memories of his own mother and father flood his mind. His beautiful mom, twirling him around in the grass when he was a young boy. He loved her red and blue flowered dress that would blow around as they twirled. She wore bright red lipstick and her hair fell perfectly around her face. Her kind eyes are what haunts him the most. Knowing that that kindness will never walk this earth again eats at his heart and anger flares up in his chest.

To distract his anger, he thinks of his pensive, intelligent father. He remembers touching the rims of his glasses as his father would hold him in his lap on the chair at night, smoking his pipe and reading to Jasper and his mother. His eyes held knowledge that Jasper craves.

Jasper comes out of his thoughts when he hears Claudia clear her throat. She is waiting for his reply.

“I lost my parents far too young, like you, but they gave me the gift of yearning to learn and find solutions, as well as the gift of hope.”

Although when I lost them, my hope was squelched, but she doesn’t need to know that.

“‘Hope', Papa always said, ‘is what keeps us moving, Claudia,’” she says with a forced grin.

They continue on, each knowing that if they do not eat soon, then they will slow down and become weak.

The sun creeps up into the sky and knowing that those people could possibly be hunting their tracks sits heavy in Jasper’s gut.

If only it would snow, then maybe our tracks would soon be lost.