added writing from 05/27/2019

1 files changed, 19 insertions, 8 deletions

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@@ -1,4 +1,8 @@
 % Untitled
+“On either end of the social spectrum there lies a leisure class.” – Eric Beck
+"Hi Bruce;
+Very nice to hear from you. Here's the story. It is raining and many of us are sitting around Yosemite Lodge. Roper is reading Thorstein Veblein, THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS. In my usual smart ass manner, I happen to remark that there is a leisure class at both ends of the social spectrum. That's it, apparently this caught on with climbers. --Eric Beck
+
 # Prologue
 
 They were two. Blood covered the sheets. Even the midwife was whimpering and pitiful by the end. "A night and day," their father would say later. Their mother never corrected him. And they were born, one the night, one the day. 
@@ -149,7 +153,7 @@ Birdie woke early, before first light. She sat up and looked off toward the sea.
 
 She lay back in the sand and stared up at the stars. They began to fade as the pre dawn blue crept up from the edge of the world, turning black to blue to pink to orange and then they were gone. A new day. A groan escaped her. It was going to be a long, hot day made even hotter by the fires. IT was time to start making tar, a task Birdie loathed, though truthfully there weren't any tasks she didn't loath. She wanted to spend all day at the Arkhangelsk, with the new pot, with her sister, even her brother, even her cousins and her brother combined would be better than fetching wood and dried reeds all day and feeding them into ovens.
 
-Her father came walking up from the ocean swinging his arms and stretching his back. He saw that she was awake and plopped down in the sand next to her. His beard was still wet and droplet of salt water sprayed her as he sat down. They did not say anything, the just sat together and watched the dawn paint the sky in front of them. 
+Her father came walking up from the ocean, swinging his arms and stretching his back. He saw that she was awake and plopped down in the sand next to her. His beard was still wet and droplet of salt water sprayed her as he sat down. They did not say anything, the just sat together and watched the dawn paint the sky in front of them. 
 
 Birdie's people were sea gypsies, Alban, was what her father called himself. Got lost on our way to the old valuta grounds her father would say, chuckling. Birdie still wasn't quite sure what this meant. He never elaborated. He was a man of few words, comfortable with silence and he expected everyone else to be comfortable with it as well, especially his. The low landers, as he called anyone who wasn't of the sea, which made no sense to Birdie, but did apparently to at least to her father, talk to hear something, talk about what they don't even know until their half way through talking about it, he said. I know I am the only one of my people you have to judge by, but we are not that way. If there is something to say, say it. But mark your words Birdie, pay attention to them, think on them, choose them well, find the best ones you can and don't speak until you have found them. The low landers think they can learn by talking, by asking questions, but you must listen first. Listen and watch the world around you. If you have a question, ask it first of yourself, see what answers you can come to and once you have those ask someone else and see what answers they have. This is how you learn.
 
@@ -161,13 +165,13 @@ She stood up and wiggled her feet, letting them sink into the sand up to her ank
 
 She took her bowl and stepped out into the shade of the porch her father had built. She sat on a stump and ate. The more she ate the hungrier she felt and before long whe went back inside for anoter bowl. That's my firl said her father, ladeling another bowl for her. Lilah stepped in fater her . Henri still pretended to sleep in the far corner of the hut where he slept with his mother. He was still very much a Mama's boy, probably always would be Birdie figured. 
 
-"You girls ready to tend some fires today? Her father raised his eyebrows at them," but it was not a question.
+"You girls ready to tend some fires today?" Her father raised his eyebrows at them, but it was not a question.
 
 "Yes papa," they mumbled between gulps of stew. The bolted a soon as they were done, walking together down to the shore to wash their bowls in the surf and sand. 
 
 Birdie stopped at the shore. Lulu knlt and let the rushing water of the wave fill her bowl and pull the bit of fish at the bottom back out the sea. Birdie watched but she made no move to wash her own bowl. She stared out at the sea where she though she saw something white on the horizen, someting that might be a topsail coming into view. 
 
-Lou, what is that?
+"Lou, what is that?"
 
 Lulu stood up, she was shorter than Birdie by half a head, but she saw it too. "Sail?"
 
@@ -179,18 +183,25 @@ They looked at each other and smiled. A way out of tending the lins. Birdie quic
 
 Birdie nodded. She screwed up her courage inside and said quickly before she lost her nerve, "Papa, can Lulu and I play at the Arkhangelsk until you need us?"
 
-Her father looked at her darkly, but then he smiled. "What gave you the idea that there was ever a time when I did not need you? I always need you Birdie, at my side, we are jouned at the hip. He clasped a huge hand on her shoulder and pulled her tight agaist his lef and attempted to take a step forward, swinging her alone with him. She laghed and tried to pull away, but his grip was strong, she remained pinned against his leg and he took another, stiff-legged step, swinging her along again. He walked her like that, laughing as they went all the way over to where Lulu stood oblivious to the bpoth of them, watching the saile through the glass. "She's tacking toward us."
+Her father looked at her darkly, but then he smiled. "What gave you the idea that there was ever a time when I did not need you? I always need you Birdie, at my side, we are jouned at the hip. He clasped a huge hand on her shoulder and pulled her tight against his left and attempted to take a step forward, swinging her alone with him. She laughed and tried to pull away, but his grip was strong, she remained pinned against his leg and he took another, stiff-legged step, swinging her along again. He walked her like that, laughing as they went all the way over to where Lulu stood oblivious to the both of them, watching the sail through the glass. "She's tacking toward us."
 
 Her father stopped and took the glass from her.
 
-Hey. 
+"Hey." 
+
+He stared for a while. "Indeed she is. Okay girls, you may play, I will fetch you when it's time."
+
+Lulu and Birdie tore down the slope and through camp, startling the still half asleep Henri, sitting by the fire, groggily spooning fish stew in his mouth. To the Arkhangelsk they cried as they race past him. Henri looked up, but they did not wait. 
 
-I want to see.
+Eventually they realized he was not coming, he and samuel and charles and gone off hunting in the woods. They sometimes managed to bring back a rabbit, or a partiage or woodcock, but usually the returned empty handed with hard to believe stories of their nearly amzing feats. Lulu and Birdie usually just nodded and went on with whatever they were doing, though henri was ndid not otherwise tend ot exagerate or make up stories, which always made Birdie wonder if at least the stories he told might actually be true. Especially the stories about Tamba's people living deep in the woods. 
 
-He stared for a while. Indeed she is. Okay girls, you may play, I will fetch you when it's time.
+Tamba was about her fathers age she guessed, perhaps a few years older, the hair at his temples was whiter than her father's, thugh he had no beard to it was hard to say what color it miht have been, her fathers tended closer to silver every time she looked closely at it. Tama and his wive lived deeper in the woods, ten minutes further up the river and then a good walk from the shore. We are not water people he told Birdie when she ased him why they did not live near the beach. We come from jungles hotter than this he smiled. His arms were strong under the shite cotton shirt he always wore. This Engilish was stiff around the edges, acquired from many sources, including her father, who had aquired his from many different people. Birdie liked hearing Tamba tell stories though because his voice and the way he pronounced them made English words sound more beautiful, more thoughtful, more important than when other people talked. 
 
+Her father nodded when she told him this once. "Tamba is like us. He is the Alban of his place. Highlanders always speak less. We put more thought into what we are going to say." 
 
+Birdie wasn't so sure any of them would qualify as highlanders, living as they did, so low, near to the sea. Even Tamba, though he claimed not to be water people, lived by and survived mainly from the water that was ever-present around all of them.
 
+Tamba's skin was near black. Light seemed to disappear when it landed on him. She noticed that he used this to his advantage, sometimes to disappear into shadow, sometimes by wearing a white shit that provided such a contrast he was impossible not to see. She noticed one day that he used clothes in a way that most people did not, they were not simply things that hund over his frame to keep the sun off, they were tools that helped him navigate the world. And Birdie new that it was harder for Tamba to navigate the world than it was for her. Many Africans were slaves. And those like Tamba that were not, that had arrived here free men aboard ships they helped to sail were always in danger of becoming slaves. Englishmen are devils her father said once in her hearing. Tamba had nodded with a sad smile Birdie still remembered it was a smile of defeat, the smile one had when everything else has already been tried and defeated, a smile that protects agaist a hurt to large to look at otherwise. Birdie knew this smile because she herself used it at times though she knew not where it came from, how she had aquired it or what it was she did not want to look at, only that it was there, available to her when she need it.
 
 Details on the day of lighting the kilns, games the kids play, treats they eat, the last bit of gum chichle. Then the fishing 
 
@@ -202,7 +213,7 @@ Thsi time of year that meant gather grasses and helping tend the fires of the ki
 
 The sago palm fronds clattered in the wind, a clicking ticking sound like the women's shoes on the plank sidewalks of Charles town.
 
-He father pulled the sail in toight, the boat heaved away from them, but her father leaned back against he gunwale slightly until to reached a balance point that balanced speed and awkwardness, the boat lept across the waves and out beyond the surf line of the sand bar to smoother water. The wind was blowing offshore, a storm from the west would be here tomorrow her father said. 
+He father pulled the sail in tight, the boat heaved away from them, but her father leaned back against he gunwale slightly until to reached a balance point that balanced speed and awkwardness, the boat lept across the waves and out beyond the surf line of the sand bar to smoother water. The wind was blowing offshore, a storm from the west would be here tomorrow her father said. 
 
 Her father spun the little boat into the wind, dropped the sail and walked toward the bow to get the net. Birdie sprang up and followed. They heaved the net over the side, letting the drift of the current carry them away from it, spreading it out. Once it was out her father used and oar to bring the boat about to where he wanted it and then he yanked the tk line , shooting the halyard and the sail back up. It caught the wind the minute it was up and tighted the lines of the net, pulling them and the net back toward shore. Birdie leaned over the gunwale and watch as fish swam by and were pulled into the net.