Wolf Bit

[Dora Lynch]

[glow=red,2,300]Wolf - Bit [/glow]

Summer 1333

“It were some six week ago, I knew for certain for that was the time I put in the beans to twine on poles and weeded the kitchen garden.” Dora carved a notch for each subsequent day on a stick she used to stir the washing tub at boil, so she did not forget the number. “It begun when Clovis had him some time off, with the foster boys helping out, it did happen now and again, we all got a breathing spell.” This is how Dora Lynch related her tale.

“Let me take the lad out to the wood lot, Dorie. Time for Loomis to start learning about the family business, besides the farm.” He gave his wife a kiss and began to gather his gear, for a trek into where he would harvest firewood for curing, for home and for sale in Turas Lan.

“Be back before dark; I will have a nice stew ready for the table. The boys are off to do some fence repairs and then to the swimming hole.” The Lynch family had three young teens for foster children, adopting them if their Da did not return from his journey. There was a little girl of eleven helping Dora for the summer, with paid wages. She got paid in vegetables for her Gran, back in the city. “Today we work in the kitchen garden, Sally, I know you like that.”

Clovis took his favorite axe and a bag of food, slinging Loomis on his back like a back-pack, he took off into the deep wood at a jog. He turned back at the dark cave that the path under the tallest oaks arched over and waved. Both of them waved, happy and smiling.

The bulk of the day had been one of wonder and enjoyment for Loomis, so different from his beloved story pages he would have spent his free time reading, but time with his Da was not to be missed. It took away some from the loneliness he had, missing the run off Liam, the brothers had been close friends.

While Clovis searched what trees he would harvest and marked them with his axe, Loomis ran free among the underbrush, chasing little animals and yelling back to his Da with that nail on chalkboard screechey voice of his.
“Da! I think I found a dog. He is following me and wagging his tail.” For Loomis was familiar with the manner of dogs, he had a pet mixed breed dog of his own, a gift from Clovis. “Look! The dog is coming over to where you are. Maybe he wants to be your pet? “ Loomis ran along after the strange animal. “It looks like a wolf to me, but there is only one and wolves come in a pack, right” He chattered on and on.

As fast as a shadow fleeting to cover the sun and changing the day’s mood, something changed the very friendly manner of the wolf, for it was a wolf, from pet like to a snarling attack minded animal. The attack was headed for Clovis. The dark man, axe in hand looked up to see he was being threatened by a wolf, with characteristics he knew well enough, from memory. The wolf’s coat was ruffled and dried out looking, his eyes squinty and rimmed with dried excretions. Such a fast change in mood meant it might be rabid.

“What is the matter with the dog? “ Loomis had approached dangerously close to Clovis and the wolf. There was time only for Clovis to climb the tree next to him or to grab little Loomis and sit his son as high in the tree’s limbs as possible.

Into the tree Clovis virtually tossed Loomis and with his woods axe faced what he now as sure was a rabid wolf. Face to face, the man and wolf eyed each other, although it was not sure what image that wolf had in its fevered brain. It began to growl and in mid vocalization it sprang at Clovis, meeting the strike of a very sharp axe at the same moment. Blood spattered, red and warm against the tree trunk, on the rocks nearby. Clovis stood, leaning against the oak, finishing off the wolf into large chunks, striking it over and over. Up in the tree, Loomis screamed, grasping onto the tree for dear life.

He looked over through the leaves, once it became quiet. There was no sound to hear but his Da breathing, gasping for air after that encounter. “Da! Are you hurt?” the child knew the answer before he finished his sentence. Clovis had been bitten by a wolf, a rabid wolf.

“Some. Get down and tell your Mum to get some men out here. I need carried home.” His leg was torn open knee t o ankle, blood was his and the wolf’s. Rabid wolf saliva glistened on the wound. Was it too late for Clovis? “Run and don’t touch anything with the wolf blood on it.”

Big bug eyes watched the little boy slide down the other side of the tree and run, like a scared bunny skittering through the leafy plants onto the path and home.

That night, they carried Clovis to the new barn and set him in the center of the space. “Do what I tell you, Dorie. I burned and buried the wolf. Now I want you to send the other farm workers and the animals here off to the neighboring farms, for a while. The foster children, too. Take Loomis to your friend Violet; he will like a visit to her family. Now get me some rope and some cloth so I can wrap my..”

“Let me do that. You need sewed up, that is a big gash.” Dora was about to go over to where her husband was but he waved her off. “Ropes. I can do that.” She ran off to do all that her man asked of her. Dora had remembered what she knew of rabid dog bites; there was no cure. Her man was wolf bit.

That was six weeks of agonizing hell for Mistress Lynch, serving food to her husband, until he began to refuse it. Not being able to get him to drink the willow bark tea that helped his pain. Soon she was going to have to follow his last instruction. That one involved a crossbow.

“Go to Dmitrii,” he told her, “When I cannot speak or drink water anymore and get the loan of a cross bow. You can shoot a cross bow, I know you can. Aim and put me out of my misery.”

She shook her head.”I cannot do that. “ Dora had said at the time, now she saw what that suffering was and there was no way out. There had been no way out of this ordeal since the rabid wolf bit him.

[Dora Lynch]

Clovis is Gone.

"Every blade in the field Every leaf in the forest Lays down its life In its season As Beautifully as it was taken up.".....Thoreau[/color]
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Dora walked his hand in hand with hers as the little boy trudged along through the downed limbs and dark mushy piled of the previous year's pine needles and then onto into the oak section of the deep forest. Tall trunks formed the uprights for a green canopy, the true Almighty's catherdral, Dora always told the lad. She did not want to explain that as an unbaptised child of a handfasted couple, Loomis was not warmly welcomed in the Church buildings in town. Clovis was not churched.

"Here? My Da is under the ground by the Huggy Oak?" the child looked up from under the straight cut fringe of hair across his wide forehead and glared at the gigantic tree as if it had reached out and grabbed his Da for itself, leaving him orphan. "Why couldn't we sit him in the branches so he could see the blue sky? He'd like that, the sky and leaves and firewood."

"Yes, he is buried, as we are got from the earth, our bodies go to rest best when Mother Earth has her blanket over us, eh?" She nudged her only child, the last living cells of her and Clovis were mixed to make this precious child. "But our spirits that make us alive - you know, go directly back to the Almighty, to get back as we lived. Good for good and penalties for if we was bad." That was hard to tell the little one but in 1333, life was harsh. Death and after were only extensions of life, Dora reasoned and therefore nothing to scare a good child.

"I seen the men heads on pikes, Mum. If their sprits went to the Almighty and their bodies to the ground, why did they set the heads up for us to see?" Loomis knew about ghosts and had fearful respect for the restless dead. If all was in order, why bury the bodies and show the heads like trophies.

"That was because the men did crimes and that was earthly punishment. I 'spect the heads got buried for they are not there any more." At that moment it struck Widow Lynch that was not quite right, displaying heads from men who had met their maker and folks did not bury all of them at once, as was proper. Proper and sanitary.

"My Da will become part of the forest? He'd of liked that." Loomis pondered what he might tell his Mother and what he ought to leave unsaid. Then, he looked up at her, just as a sunbeam filtered through the high up leaves, that moment stirred by a light breeze. "Mum? I want to be a church goer. I want the sacraments when I get old enough. Since I cannot join Mistress Janice's religion, I would like to be in the regular church. Mum? Don't weep. It is a good thing, it is."

The recent weeks had taken their toll. It was time for Dora to go back to the family farm, to land that Clovis had won for them in a joust, their own land and keep the homeplace going. It was almost harvest time and there was work to be done. Instead here she stood with her son, tears dripping down her cheeks and on off her chin, trying to say that was not weeping for grief. "It is I am so happy to hear that you love the Almighty, child, with all the burdens he has given you in your young life. If you can do that, why sure you can go to the church. When you are seven, I will walk with you but I cannot rejoin until I forgive the Almighty for what he done to your Da, my Clovis."

"Come on then, Mum. Lets go home and I will get the fire ready and you can make us supper." He tugged at her hand and his courage tugged at her heart. It was still bright daytime when the two headed back to the little cottage Clovis had built for this family. Neither of them mentioned Liam, the adopted boy run off to Ulster, expecially with news of a war there was common knowldege.

Two johnny cakes and a bit of greens sat in their trenchers, not even a speck of dried apple left in the larder. Life went on and the appetite for work was fueled by need. "I will get the farm hands back tomorrow and you can run to Lenny Feilder's and tell him that tis time for the livestock to return."

"Take the mule, Loomis. Tis a long way to the Fielder's." Dora was on the way back to her normal practical hard working self. "And make sure he don't milk the cow afore she gets sent here to home."

That night Dora hugged her pillow and thanked the Almighty not for the usual daily bread or good health or any of the normal things. She thanked the Good Spirit for just life. Only life itself. Without any reservations, to be alive.

For one sparkling wonderful more time she dreamed of his dark strong face, lighting up with that wide warm smile, as it was when they sat before the evening fire together. She waited in dream to hear him say one more time,"Dorie, give us a kiss now." But she awoke to an empty room, the fire's embers a mere glow, a memory of the past. Nothing but a memory remained.

******