Kesh Page 3

  “But Louis was different. He had started talking about how wonderful the factory was. And, he began staying long into the night, well past our curfew. I missed him. Yelling over the hum of the machines, I said, ‘Why don’t you walk with me anymore?’

  He said, ‘I don’t go home anymore.’

  I did not understand. ‘What do you mean, Louis? What do your parents say? How can this be possible?’

  “My father doesn’t notice, and my mom….” he paused and sniffled, then gathered himself up and spoke confidently, ‘Well, she never said anything about anything. She just isn’t important.’”

  Kesh grimaced, and the rag man said, “Does that ring a bell?”

  Kesh said, “No, it doesn’t,” but he wondered if he had ever sounded like Louis.

  “You see, my mother was the most fearless person I had ever known, much more than my dad, so Louis’s statement was hard for me to understand. Still, that night when she told my father how afraid she was, her voice was small and shaking, too quiet, and it made me afraid. But Louis was different. In our perfect little town, his life had never been so perfect. His father was a hard, mean man, and his mother was nearly invisible.

  “He said the work made him feel good, and the factory man was paying attention. He’d often come down to the floor and inspect our work. More and more, he’d return to Louis’ station. You see, Louis worked harder than anyone else, and when the factory man came by, he’d light up. The man noticed, and started asking Louis to walk the line with him. He’d explain each part with pride, and Louis ate it up. ‘I think I’d like to be a factory man when I grow up,’ he told me.

  “‘It sounds pretty awful to me.’

  “‘That’s only if you work the line forever. I’m going to be the boss someday. You just wait and see.’ To be honest, I was happy for Louis. He hadn’t had much of a life, and I was glad to see him feeling good about things.

  “The factory man told everyone that this was progress, and each day, it seemed, the factory added more and bigger machines, and it needed more children to make more things more quickly. These things, we were told, were very important. They were sent off to other towns, in other faraway places where, it was said, we had become very famous, and we would soon be the most famous factory town in the region.”

  The rag man paused and took a noisy sip of his drink. Kesh shifted his weight to get more comfortable and said, “What happened next?”

  “We went on like that for a very long time. Then one Sunday, the only day we could leave the factory for family supper, we began to hear talk of a new stranger in town. I asked if he was another factory man, but my mother said, ‘No, he’s definitely not a factory man. In fact, Kesh, the stranger is not a man at all. The stranger is a woman.’

  “My father looked up from his dinner and said, ‘From the stories I’ve heard, she sounds like a lunatic, and people say she is the oddest thing to look at.’

  “I’d heard things too on the factory floor, strange, exciting things about the woman. I’m still unsure, but the rumors said she spoke to the younger children through dreams, and she had told them they would be free from the factory man, I couldn’t say anything to the grown-ups, not even my parents, because I thought they wanted the factory and all the new things it brought.

  “I asked my father, ‘What do you mean, odd?’

  “‘People are just saying she’s funny, that’s all. This woman is as tiny as a sapling, as thin as a wisp of smoke, and as wiry as a wind spider. In fact, people are calling her the spider woman.’

  “The next day at the factory, it was no longer a secret, and all the kids were talking about the spider woman. Rumor had it, she had angered the factory man, that she had come to town to protest the factory, and that she had announced to the mayor and all the other important people in town that she was going to close the factory down. Nobody knew quite why. She was telling the people the factory simply had to go because it was destructive. She claimed the factory man had sinned by using children for labor. I was afraid to tell anybody, but I began to feel the growing thrill of hope. We all began to believe we would be free…all except Louis. He said, ‘She’s here to ruin all of us. The factory man told me she’s evil, and I believe it.’

  “I didn’t know what to believe, but it didn’t matter so much. The mysterious spider woman disappeared as suddenly as she had come, and our hopes were gone.”

  The rag man’s eyes were fixed on Kesh, and the boy had the impression he was being studied closely. In return, the boy leaned toward the man in anticipation, and his dark eyes watched the storyteller intently. The rag man smiled through his beard and continued:

  “Well, you can imagine, we were sad. It looked like we would be chained to that factory, to making those things, for the rest of our lives, and our parents were not going to save us. It was as if they couldn’t even see us anymore. That was okay for Louis, but the rest of us were feeling pretty lost just about then. Still, you never know what might happen, my young friend.

  “You see, a short time after the spider woman disappeared, strange things begin to happen in the town, especially near the factory. At first, they were small things–a vine grew through the factory man’s office window; crows began building nests in attics and chimneys, which is not really so odd at all under most circumstances, but these were not most circumstances. Animals we had never seen before began to appear at the oddest places. Snakes, bearcats, opossum’s, weasels, and lizards, critters of all types, bats, and even dogs and cats seemed to be over-running the town. They were in the water pipes, in the closets, in the cellars, in the cupboards, on top of light posts, in mailboxes, in dresser drawers-they were just everywhere they could be.”

  Kesh hopped onto his knees and interrupted. “Did you see the animals?”

  The rag man smiled slyly. “Indeed I did, my inquisitive friend. Now may I continue?”

  Kesh settled back and nodded.

  “So many of the grown-ups did what grown-ups often always do when they don’t understand something. The mayor and some of the men planned a campaign to shoot, poison, and trap the invaders-they would get rid of the animals one way or another. But that didn’t work. It seemed as if the animals were too smart to be stopped. Bullets disappeared from rifles, traps were sprung harmlessly, and the poisons went untasted.

  More and more creatures showed up in living rooms, in the stacks of the library, inside trash bins, under the toilet seats in bathrooms, and more and more, in the factory. And these weren’t just the small, normal animals. Strange cats, lizards, apes, and other creatures nobody had ever seen before started turning up all over town.”

  “Wait a minute. This sounds like a fairy tale. It can’t be true.”

  “A fairy tale? Do you mean like The Pied Piper? You know, the one about the fellow driving the rats out of town then leading the children away, never to be seen again. That’s a good story, if a little sad, and I can see how this story might be similar, but this is not The Pied Piper or any other fable. As you will soon see, this is a very different story. And I suggest you wait a while before you judge what is and isn’t true. Now, may I tell the story?”

  Kesh settled back and nodded meekly.

  “Well, lad, our little world was becoming even scarier, and the most troublesome things began to happen. The grown-ups started disappearing, one by one until the only ones left in town were the mayor, a few of his friends and aides and, of course, the factory man.”

  “Where did they go?””I’m coming to that. Patience please.” The rag man took a deep breath and went on. “So you see, things were getting mighty strange, and the kids were getting more and more frightened. The mothers and fathers were disappearing too. The factory was still running, so most of us just worked, ate, and slept there. It was terrible, but what else could we do? Wild animals were roaming every corner of the village, and we were suddenly orphans– all except for Louis. He had moved into the factory some time before this happened. Now he was acting as a foreman, walking the
line for the factory man. He was dressed in blue coveralls with the factory logo on the breast pocket.

  “One day, he stopped and put his hand on my shoulder, and his face almost glowed until I said, ‘Louis, your mother and father have disappeared. Nobody has seen them for days.’

  “He pulled away. ‘Good riddance to them,’ he said, and hurried up the line.

  “What we didn’t know was that the factory was in its last days, just like the spider woman had foretold. You see, for some time, the smaller animals had been gnawing little by little on the cables and pipes that made things work in the factory, and the children who kept the line running had begun to disappear. One morning, the gigantic metal press came to a sudden violent clanking, crashing stop.

  “The factory man screamed at us. ‘Get in there and fix it! Hurry, you fools!’ But he was wasting his time. By then, all of the out-of-town grown-ups, the engineers and managers had fled and gone back to their homes, leaving only Louis, the other children and the animals. Some of the lights started sputtering out; then the main pipes burst, spewing water clear across the factory floor, flooding all of the machinery, and shorting out what few machines were still operating. The factory went dark, and the water began to rise.

  Kesh was on his knees again, leaning toward the rag man.

  “As the water rose in the factory, I glanced at my friend, Paul. Suddenly, he disappeared into the rising water. Just like that, he was gone, and a sharp blue fin moved swiftly toward me through the dark water. The big fish slid past me, rubbing against my leg and riding the rushing fountain to the street and beyond, I supposed even into the river and out to sea. I thought I saw others vanish into the water as well. One by one, they simply slipped into the water and were gone. I was scared.

  “With his factory quickly falling into ruin and the animals in rebellion, the factory man ran away as fast as his thick greedy legs would carry him, and a small gray wolf loped along beside him. I don’t remember how I got out, but when I returned home, my mother and father were waiting for me. All over town, parents were reappearing just like that. At one moment, they were gone, and the next they were there again. And then, the spider woman came back.

  “The factory was closed now, but it still stood there on the edge of town, cutting into the mountain and crushing the earth and the life underneath, denying the trees and other living things their rightful place. When the spider woman drifted back into the town, word spread quickly, and people came out to see and follow her. By the time she was in the village square nearly everyone in town was there too. She jumped up on the great stone in the center of the square and began to speak.”

  The rag man closed his eyes for a moment and breathed in heavily. Then, with his eyes still shut, he spoke in slow, deliberate words. “The voice that came from the spider was unlike anything I had ever felt. It was almost like the wind, but softer, almost too quiet to hear, but even though she spoke in a strange way, everyone listened and understood. It was as if she were speaking from inside each one of us. I don’t remember hearing words, but when she was finished, I remembered everything she had said. I remember it to this day.

  “‘People of this place between the water and the deep forest, between the sky and the stone mountain, you have been given a second chance. In each of you is a spirit of nature. We are all born with the tree, the river, the mountain, the world, and the universe inside of us. We are all born with an animal spirit guiding us, but until now, you have forgotten. You are fortunate that the spirit was not buried so deeply as to be lost forever. Watch over it well, or you may lose it again.’

  “At first, all the townspeople had been fooled. Like everyone, I thought it was an exciting new adventure. Even after we children had become slaves to the factory man, we still believed the factory must be a good thing. Why else would our parents allow it to go on? The children had known long before the grownups. It took this strange woman to teach the town that the factory was wrong. A lot of them looked at the ground or averted their eyes as if they were afraid to look at the spider woman until she spoke again. ‘You are good, honest people who care for each other and the land. You have no need of shame. Be glad, and make this place whole again.

  “‘Now,’ she said, ‘I have one more task for you. You must finish what you have started.’ The town people looked up and cheered, and we set to dismantling the factory, piece by piece. The mayor sold the machines and metal and pipes and wires to other places. The brick was sent back into the earth, into the gash cut into the mountain, and in a very few years, the wound had mostly healed, the insult had faded. The stolen earth and brick and stone were absorbed slowly into the bones of the mountains, and the children could play again. I’m sorry to say that they never played so easily and innocently as they once had, and they never again looked at strangers in same way.”

  The rag man stopped and let out a long sigh. “That’s it. That’s my story.”

  Kesh sat up. “I liked it, but it can’t be a true story! People don’t talk like the wind.”

  “Ah, so you know all about how people talk.”

  “I don’t know, but that story can’t be true. It’s too weird.”

  “Of course, Kesh, I understand why you are a doubter. In fact, I approve. If you believed that tall tale, I’d be worried about you. But, it doesn’t really matter. You’ll see soon enough. For now, my boy, you need to sleep while you still have the night. I can’t stay here during the day, because the police come down and chase me off.” The rag man lifted the heavy cover and arranged it tightly around Kesh. “Now close your eyes and get some rest.”

  The fire and blanket wrapped the boy in deep warmth, and he drifted off into visions of magical places filled with creatures of all kinds, especially great dark cats, and snakes with blazing red eyes.

  Chapter Three

  A Stranger Road

  He awoke to a persistent shaking and a raspy voice urging him. “Come on my young friend, we really do have to get moving. Get up boy.”

  When his eyes cleared, Kesh looked around and said, “This is a dream.” Now, instead of the rag man, a small stout creature squatted before him, urging all speed. He had dreamt about magical talking animals for as long as he could remember. “This is a dream. It has to be. You’re not real.”

  “As you wish, boy. Real or not, we have to get out of here, so can we please be going?”

  Kesh threw off his covers and rubbed his eyes. Then he remembered: “My parents! I’ve got to get home to find out what happened to my parents.”

  The creature spoke gently. “Your mother and father are fine, Kesh. I know you were frightened , but they are safe.”

  Kesh felt his anxiety lift. He thought, This is all part of the same dream. “I get it,” he said. “I’ve been dreaming all along, and you’re part of my dream.” He felt better, certain the mystery was solved. Then, he looked down at the small creature and said, “What are you, some kind of beaver or something?”

  “No!” The creature huffed, “Beavers have great big ugly flat tails and horrible overbites. I’m a muskrat, at least at the moment.”

  “Oh!” said Kesh. “You’re a rat. You don’t look like any rat I ever saw.”

  “I am not a rat! They are disgusting things that haunt children’s nightmares and hang around sewers and trash piles. I, young man, am a muskrat, and that’s altogether different. We are impeccably clean. I’ve even been referred to as regal.”

  Kesh rolled his eyes and said, “Okay, okay your Majesty. You’re a muskrat, not a rat. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “Fine, fine,” he huffed. “Now please hurry. I need to get you safely to Anna as quickly as possible.”

  “Anna?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough. Now, come along quickly. The night is not safe for us here.”

  Muskrat and Kesh moved along the dark trail as quietly as the creatures that inhabit the night. Kesh knew he was just on the edge of town, hardly the wilderness, but it seemed far removed from his safe, modern world
. The growth along the path felt strangely stifling, a black thicket that seemed about to close around them.

  The imagined threat propelled them along, as Kesh was eager to get wherever it was they were going—anywhere but here, he thought. But the path opened, and the forest grew lighter, more welcoming, giving rise to new worries. Kesh caught up to and passed the swift muskrat, then stopped, turned and said, “What do you mean, you need to get me safely to Anna? Why wouldn’t I be safe?”

  A howl rose from somewhere nearby, and Muskrat sniffed the air. “Well, let’s just say that not everyone is your friend. Now come on. You’ll know all you need to know shortly.”

  The path followed the riverbank for a distance before it turned abruptly and cut deeper and deeper into the thick woods. This was not the wilderness. The trees were orderly and evenly spaced, and the underbrush was sparse, but it was dark and thick enough for Kesh. Muskrat’s warning had rekindled his fear of danger lurking in the adjacent woods. In the dark dream world, Kesh imagined danger in the shadows. He still felt certain he was dreaming.

  What else could it possibly be, he thought. Still, he was becoming more afraid and aware that this was unlike any dream he’d ever had in his life. More to the point, he thought, what if this isn’t a dream?

  Another howl rose from the darkness, and Kesh scanned the trees for some sign of movement. He could see remarkably well for such a black night and was able to make out individual trees and the motion of small creatures and moving leaves.

  He was still scanning the woods when the muskrat let out a startled squeal. Just ahead, half obscured in the night, a tall figure stood in their way. Kesh thought it seemed very odd to find a human here in his dream. He felt his stomach turn queasy.

  “Oh, it’s you.” Kesh heard something odd in the muskrat’s voice.

  “Yes, rodent, it’s me,” answered the tall man. “It’s strange to see you here at this time of night. I’d think you’d be more careful. You know, a lot of predators are hiding in the darkness.”