The Tree of Knowledge

I wake in the morning to the smell of roasting meat. Jeff, ever the early riser, has started on breakfast. He’s cut the bat meat into thin strips and is frying them in a pan over the fire. He calls it “bat bacon”. It doesn’t really taste like bacon, but it does crisp up in a satisfactory sort of way.

Susie is working on a sort of hot cereal made from Desert Indian Wheat sweetened with cactus pears and dotted with chia seeds.

I stretch languorously and emerge from my sleeping bag, wishing them a good morning. I volunteer to make the tea.

It’s getting so much colder. Hot tea will be just the thing to pry everyone else out of their sleeping bags.

From the cavern entrance the next “room” over is the one I crawled into, with the stream. I scoop up some water in a pot and head back to the fire with it. I boil the water with some fragrant orange flame flowers.

Dave has stumbled out of his sleeping bag and leans over the pot.

“Passion flower?” he asks, hopeful.

“Flame flower.”

Dave sighs dramatically.

“Passionflower’s better.”

“Oh, really?”

Boy couldn’t identify a flower to save his life. Literally. When he goes out to gather, half of what he brings home is poisonous. I can’t believe he’s this useless and presumes to bitch about the selection.

“How about I just run to Central Market and pick you up some fucking organic vanilla chai? Does that sound better to you?”

“It does sound good.” Susie interjects, wistfully.

“Or coffee….remember coffee?” Jeff adds as he flips the bacon strips.

“Kit! Kit! Kit!” Bonita bounds up to me. Her little hands are stained red. “Kit! You have to look! I painted you a picture!”

Bonita grabs me by the hand, smearing me with the sticky juice. Dutifully, I let her drag me away, leaving Dave to mind the tea.

Apparently, ever since Isabel started on her murals, Bonita has been begging non stop to be allowed to paint too. Isabel, possessing only a finite amount of paint, was unwilling to share it. After learning of this, and receiving many, many assurance that she would not stick her fingers in her mouth, I made Bonita some of the berry paint I had used to make my arrows. With this act, I seem to have earned her undying love, because she hasn’t left me alone since.

“Look!” she demands, pointing proudly. “That’s me, and that’s you, and that’s a pretty flower.”

“Wow!” I gush over the little red stick figures with big heads. “It’s beautiful!”

Bonita shakes her head.

“I don’t think it looks like you. I think you should sit still and I can paint you like a real artist.”

“Okay, but how about we do that after breakfast?”

Breakfast has a tendency to double as an inventory meeting. Are we short on edible plants? Meat? Firewood? Do we have too much meat or plants, and should we start preserving some of it? Could someone please find some passion flowers so that Dave quits his bitching? Billy puts in a request for thin, bendy reeds for making snares if anyone sees any.

After breakfast, we head up the rope using my prussic knots, one at a time. It takes awhile, but at least it’s safe. Joe stays behind to watch Bonita and work on making jerky.

Billy heads off in search of meat. I tried to help him hunt the first day, but he says I make too much noise. Actually, his exact choice of words to describe my movements was, “louder than a goddam filly n’ a rock quarry.” Instead, I’ve been relegated to setting and checking traps. Today we got two squirrels. I toss them in the guano bucket and lower them down to Joe, who yell ups promises of squirrel stew for lunch.

We work on gathering food and firewood until lunch. The day’s haul gets loaded into the guano bucket and lowered down.

Billy returns from hunting, triumphantly bearing a huge animal carcass over his shoulders.

“What is that?” I ask him.

“Dunno. Kind looks like a furry hawg. Betcha she tastes like one too.”

“That’s a javelina.” Rosa says. “I think they’re an endangered species.”

“We’re an endangered species darlin’.”

The thing is huge. Eighty pounds at least. After lowering it down, we get right to cleaning it and starting to cook it for dinner. After Billy laments for awhile how much more succulent the meat would become in his smoker back home, we opt to jam it onto a spit and take turns roasting it over the fire.

I multitask on my turn, slowly turning the spit while Bonita paints me. This time, I’m a red, big headed stick-figure with a pig.

Isabel is also using this time of day to paint. I wander into The Temple of the Unnamable Gods to see what she’s working on. Yesterday she completed a towering portrait of Odin with one blazing blue eye staring down on us. Last week’s project was Thor. She swears up and down that she did not make him look like Chris Hemsworth on purpose. Continuing with the Nordic theme, she’s started on Loki.

As she paints the tangles of his beard, she asks me, “If God is real, do you supposed the other gods are real?”

“The Bible never says they aren’t.” I offer. “Just not to worship them over God.”

“What if it wasn’t God in that video?” She waves a hand around the cavern. “This room is full of tricksters and shape shifters, no? Loki is the Norse god of chaos. What else would you describe our life as if not chaotic?”

It’s an angle I hadn’t considered before. One I could sooner swallow than an alien invasion. But something about it still feels off.

“Not chaos.” I say slowly. “Is there a god of oppression?”

“You mean besides the one in the Bible?”

I do my yoga. Marcos usually joins me and sometimes Ela. Bonita will join in for a couple of minutes, but ultimately lacks patience for it.

I kill an hour reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

Then it’s time to make dinner.

Quite sensibly, no one lets me cook, but I help chop roots.

Dinner tonight is a feast of roasted javelina, which really does taste like pork, with yucca and wild carrots. Billy busts out a jug juniper wine which he mulls over the campfire. The flavor reminds me of the pomegranate wine Jace’s dad would make-

(Jace will be dead in fourteen days)

- the taste sweet and warming, filling my head with a pleasant fuzziness. Everyone has too much, and I laugh aloud like I haven’t in ages.

It’s a good night.

And like every night, we end it with campfire stories. The stories are important, Marcos explains. If we don’t keep telling them, they might be lost forever. That’s the whole reason they’re here, to try to keep this stuff alive.

Joe starts tonight, at the behest of Bonita, who demanded a Coyote story.

“One day,” he says, “Coyote was traveling and came upon the home of King Fisher, who had built his nest near a frozen pond. King Fisher invited Coyote into his home, but told him, ‘I have no meat to feed you.’ So King Fisher flew through the ice and caught a fish, which he fed to Coyote. Before he left, Coyote asked King Fisher to visit him in his home.

“When King Fisher came to see him, Coyote said, ‘I have no meat to feed you.’ So Coyote tried to dive through the ice, as King Fisher had done. But instead, his nose bounced off the ice, striking it so hard that he died.”

Bonita giggles. It strikes me that Apache bed time stories are somewhat different than the Disney tinted fables I was raised on.

“King Fisher brought Coyote back to life, and then dove through the ice for a fish, explaining to Coyote that he had Magic Coyote did not which allowed him to do it.

“The next day, in his travels, Coyote came upon the home of Buffalo, who invited him in, but said, ‘I have no meat to feed you.’ Buffalo reached behind his back, and when he brought back his hands there was dried meat in them, which he served to Coyote.

“As they ate, Buffalo made fearsome noises and Coyote was afraid. Buffalo explained, ‘Oh, I am always this way.’ Before he left, Coyote asked Buffalo to visit him at his home.

“When Buffalo came to see him, Coyote had wrapped himself up in furs and fashioned horns for his head, trying to look like Buffalo. He told Buffalo, ‘I have no meat to feed you.’ and reached behind his back, but when he brought his hands back, they only held bark.

“’What did I do wrong?’ Coyote asked.

“Buffalo reached behind his back and brought out dried meat, as before, explaining to Coyote that he had a Magic Coyote did not.

“The next day, Coyote happened upon the home of Elk. Elk invited him in, but said, ‘I have no meat to feed you.’ Elk reached to his hip and brought forth meat. While they were eating, Elk turned his head, and Coyote was afraid of his antlers. Elk explained, ‘Oh, I am always this way.’ Before he left, Coyote asked Elk to visit him in his home.

“When Elk came to see him, Coyote had taken great branches and tied then to his head like antlers. ‘I have no meat to feed you.’ He said and reached to his hip, but brought forth only tree bark. ‘What did I do wrong?’ Coyote asked. Elk reached to his hip and brought out meat as before, explaining to Coyote that he had a Magic Coyote did not.

“The next day, Coyote came upon the home of Woodpecker. Woodpecker had red feathers, and when he spread them out, Coyote was afraid. Coyote cried out, ‘Your house is on fire!’ Woodpecker explained, ‘Oh, I am always this way.’ Before he left, Coyote asked Woodpecker to visit him at his house.”

Joe pauses and turns to Bonita, “Do you remember what happens next, Bonita?”

Bonita giggles. “Coyote sets his house on fire.” She says.

“That’s right. And when Woodpecker cried out, ‘Your house is on fire!’ Coyote said, ‘Oh, I am always this way.’ And then he burned up and he died.”

There’s some scattered applause.

“Coyote’s a dumb fuck.” Billy declares.

“Billy!” Ela yells at him, covering Bonita’s ears.

“Just sayin’…”

“Who’s next?” Marcos asks. “Kit, you haven’t told a story yet.”

“I really don’t know any stories.” I mumble, embarrassed to be put on the spot.

“Everyone knows a story, chica.” Rosa says.

“And you probably know a story that none of us do.” Jeff adds.

“And tomorrow,” Dave chimes in, “You might fall climbing that rope and break your neck, and then no one will know that story ever again.”

Miranda scowls at Dave. “That’s awfully grim.”

“Also, on point.” Susie comments.

But I really don’t know any stories, especially the kind they’re looking for. We’re supposed to tell the stories no one tells anymore. I can’t think of any story I used to tell, let alone one I had to stop telling.

Except…

Except for the songs I used to sing. I didn’t lose stories, I lost music. All those songs that couldn’t be sung anymore. I remember, after The Revelation, I lost those offending songs at the same time I lost Jace, and that one song just played in my head over and over again, dying inside me waiting to be let out.

So with one more gulp of mulled wine for courage, I sing.

“When the earth was still flat,

And the clouds made of fire,

And mountains stretched up to the sky,

Sometimes higher,

Folks roamed the earth

Like big rolling kegs.

They had two sets of arms.

They had two sets of legs.

They had two faces peering

Out of one giant head

So they could watch all around them

As they talked; while they read.

And they never knew nothing of love.

It was before the origin of love.

“And there were three sexes then,

One that looked like two men

Glued up back to back,

Called the children of the sun.

And similar in shape and girth

Were the children of the earth.

They looked like two girls

Rolled up in one.

And the children of the moon

Were like a fork shoved on a spoon.

They were part sun, part earth

Part daughter, part son.

“Now the gods grew quite scared

Of our strength and defiance

And Thor said,

’I’m gonna kill them all

With my hammer,

Like I killed the giants.’

And Zeus said, ’No,

You better let me

Use my lightening, like scissors,

Like I cut the legs off the whales

And dinosaurs into lizards.’

Then he grabbed up some bolts

And he let out a laugh,

Said, ’I’ll split them right down the middle.

Gonna cut them right up in half.’

And then storm clouds gathered above

Into great balls of fire

“And then fire shot down

From the sky in bolts

Like shining blades

Of a knife.

And it ripped

Right through the flesh

Of the children of the sun

And the moon

And the earth.

And some Indian god

Sewed the wound up into a hole,

Pulled it round to our belly

To remind us of the price we pay.

And Osiris and the gods of the Nile

Gathered up a big storm

To blow a hurricane,

To scatter us away,

In a flood of wind and rain,

And a sea of tidal waves,

To wash us all away,

And if we don’t behave

They’ll cut us down again

And we’ll be hopping round on one foot

And looking through one eye.

“Last time I saw you

We had just split in two.

You were looking at me.

I was looking at you.

You had a way so familiar,

But I could not recognize,

Cause you had blood on your face;

I had blood in my eyes.

But I could swear by your expression

That the pain down in your soul

Was the same as the one down in mine.

That’s the pain,

Cuts a straight line

Down through the heart;

We called it love.

So we wrapped our arms around each other,

Trying to shove ourselves back together.

We were making love,

Making love.

It was a cold dark evening,

Such a long time ago,

When by the mighty hand of Jove,

It was the sad story

How we became

Lonely two-legged creatures,

It’s the story of

The origin of love.

That’s the origin of love.”

Everyone claps. Billy whistles. I flush with relief.

“That was Aristophane’s story from Plato’s Symposium.” Miranda says in wonderment.

“That was Hedwig and the Angry Inch.” I say.

“That was beautiful.” Bonita says.