Twenty-four

Three years before Rian was named, just as he felt the first stirring of manhood, the older boys in the village goaded him to visit a woman who might teach him how things would be with him and his wife. “Sometimes a man needs lessons away from books,” they told him. They even gave him the copper that the woman would demand.

“Up this stream,” they pointed. “She’s easy enough to look at, but don’t expect a princess and fairy tales.”

“How far does she live?” Rian asked.

“It’s a hike. The village woman folk won’t have her too near.”

“But some men like a good walk,” one of the boys chimed and they laughed and guffawed and slapped Rian and each other on the back.

So Rian hiked upstream.

One boy asked, after Rian had disappeared into the brush and up into the wood, “Will he even kiss her, you suppose?”

“I never did,” one admitted.

Another looked up the ridge and declared, “He never will.”

“He’ll not have her, you mean? And what of our copper then?”

“Charity, that’s where our copper will go,” another said, and shook his head.

“Give him some months, he’ll find his own copper. The itch devils a man ... or is he to be professed?

“I could never give it up.”

“Nor I.”

“I gave it up for two days,” the oldest said and then he laughed and told them, “God but I had to leave off. I had rubbed mine raw!”

Along side the creek bed, Rian whistled as he hiked. He loved the woods and assessed the trees he passed. Some would make nice timber, others were hollowed by time and misfortune, but these last were the trees that made homes for owls and squirrels.

The dappled light of the woods cheered the boy, almost enough to settle the upset he felt in his stomach and the ragged excitement he felt even deeper.

“What will Pater think?” he asked himself, but he pushed the nagging thought away.

It was the tail end of summer and the creek had nearly run dry. There might be a pitiful spring at its head. Is that how the woman drank? How can she live alone this way?

Rian had hiked long enough so that his neck was sweaty and his shirt clung to his back. And he stood still, not to rest, but because he heard a moaning. Not heard, he realized, but he felt it somehow. And a scalding feeling along side his hip that felt like it would spread to fever.

“What now?” he asked the sun, the trees above him seemingly spinning. He reached for a trunk and eased himself against it. He looked down into the leaf litter and breathed.

“She’s hurt.” He looked up just another forty yards or so and saw that the trees thinned there, above a clearing where a ramshackle hut stood and, inside, a woman in tears, with a tangle of blond hair going gray. Her sobbing was broken only by nearly inaudible cries for help.