A sad deal all the way around.
By then Faith had emerged somewhat from the confusion in which she marinated in the moments and hours after the lion unusually leapt. A vague, discombobulated, surreal, flummoxed brand of perplexed bewilderment. What happened? Where was he? The lights fairly blinding from the flashing forks of enervated gases, accompanied by the steady thrum of rushing wind as propelled by devilishly low pressure, the deafening -- or nearly so -- catatonia of overwhelming flustered lusting euthanasia, or an epidural or something, even as complete strangers strained and heaved over her prone somethingness, the something that is not nothing, all well intentioned, presumably, but still, a woman’s bare butt merits some modicum of modesty, but not here, oh no, not in this place, where even as Thomas periodically yelped by way of exercising his twice-burning lungs, and cast confused glances this way and that in search of something familiar, a babe in need of nurturing for sure, and even as the beautiful boy-child slid into her mitts and atop her heaving bosom for Mothering purposes, the hissing wind notwithstanding, low pressure’s yearning to cleave the boy from her heaving sides frustrated by fate, reality so-called, the welcoming embrace of the cave, from which no giant funnel might suck them. But not Peter, who apparently never bodily made it into the sanctuary, or rather out of the sanctuary -- depending on one’s viewpoint -- but instead fell or was pulled or plucked or propelled over the edge, just over the edge, having strayed too close to the edge, down by the water. Faith herself was heavily sedated, of course, as befitted the occasion, for the days of dropping one’s cubs by the side of the field while taking a slight break from planting are long gone, thank God, or at least relatively so. She lay abed surrounded by mourners and grievers and weepers, once news spread. Oddly idyllic, too. “All part of God’s plan,” someone said. “Everything happens for a reason,” added another. “Such a beautiful child,” observed more than a few. “God is love,” the general consensus. Neither she or her husband knew, had known, the twin would be lost, a fact attributable to the inadequate machinery of the time, so were heartened by the first child’s struggling, kicking, gasping emergence, only to be shoved over the edge themselves, so to speak, when the second child was by a leaping lion bodily taken from them, from her, from the child’s Mother, even as the nurses quietly assured her the good Docs had done all that was possible, and the Docs quietly explained how this fang or that cord or claw had gotten wrapped around a windpipe or shoulder or sucking chest wound, as sometimes happens, sadly, a confluence or coincidence or chance collision of child and leaping lion that cannot be completely precluded, one’s very best efforts notwithstanding, or so they explained. Holding the surviving twin in her arms as together they huddled in the cave while outside lightning forked and thunder rumbled, Faith turned to the man we knew only as A. Jacks and gripped his arm with the ferocity of a lion or, in this case, a Mother deprived of her child.
“Can I hold him?” she asked.
She could not. He was gone.
So explained the nurses and Docs and grievers and mourners and weepers in due course.
Only A. Jacks oddly seemed to understand. Seemed to understand, oddly.
“You have to find him,” Faith said.
A. Jacks nodded.
“I will,” he replied.
CHAPTER TWO
The hunt commenced in earnest the following day. Given but twenty-one short days to seal the deal, the hunting party coalesced with more than usual dispatch. They gathered at Arch and Faith’s modest farmhouse at dawn intent on scouring the countryside for the man-eating cat. Or, more accurately, boy-child-kidnapping mountain lion.
The modest farmstead bordered the river in the most westerly and most northerly corner of Cathar County in those days, a roughly eighty-acre spread, corn and milo and soybean fields encircling the white and green trimmed two-story farmhouse. Arch took over the land from his Mother Alice, who inherited it from her Father Henry, who inherited it from his Father Luther, as bequeathed by the original Arch. Five grain bins glistening in the rays of the dawning sun. A red barn with white doors and distinctive rooster-shaped lightning rod hulking directly adjacent the modest farmhouse. A brisk May morning, hints of frost in low-lying areas. The sleepy men and women of the valley between the villages far from civilized sight and mind struggling to understand, coming to grips with, the rather remarkable coalescing of violent weather coupled with even more violent animal attack, and the boy of ten or maybe twelve claimed, apparently, by the gruesome coupling.
Damned determined to do something about it.
Even as the men stepped from their creaking Fords and Chevys and GM pick-up trucks -- steaming coffee mugs in hand, many a trusted hunting dog yapping and swirling furiously at their knees -- and even as Arch limped from the family castle to take command of the regiment, trusty rifle in hand, the sound of A. Jacks sorting timber could be heard, if but faintly.
This was just over the edge, adjacent the property boundary between farming land and Home Place. A riot of lumber reposed one atop or askew or beside another. A. Jacks found that too. Where once a patch of ankle high grasses awaited consumption by the family’s half dozen head of holsteins when they, the cows, got around to it, there now lay or lied or strew a haphazard collection of boards and planks and other assorted timber. Just like that, appeared out of nowhere. Right fine walnut and cherry and maple deposited or dumped or dropped on Arch’s land by the storm’s pernicious, not to mention perverse, not to mention proverbially fickle, winds.
A. Jacks signed on for the job of sorting the timber while killing time awaiting the cat’s capture. Or not. He got an early start. Already beavering industriously even as the men of the clan gathered to hunt.
Whether the hunting partiers much noticed the distinctive slap and crack of boards as groggily they, the groggy men, congealed for cat-capturing purposes could not readily have been said. None among the company betrayed the slightest hint of distraction from the grim task at hand. After mobbing for a short sermon and benedicting prayer, eyes fixed and hands clasped, the men scattered purposefully, long striding and clench jawed, exchanging scarcely a pleasantry.
Lute and Rafe and Carl and Tobias and Stevey and Jimmy headed out in a mostly southerly direction to scour the fields and occasional breaks of pine. Harly and Tim and Festus and Joseph and Zac and Randy embarked on a mostly northerly course to finetooth comb the scrub and brush country. Lester and Duane and Rich and George and Mike and Calvin made a vaguely westerly heading, eyes fixed on the soybean fields over which they roamed. The final crew, including Taylor and Teddy and Sisco and Kevin and Bob and the other Bob, manned the eastern corridor. Each calloused farming hand gripping a fully loaded iron firing piece.
Twenty-one because the product of primes, perhaps, and because three and seven bear symbolic significance above all other mere numerals, possibly.
Or perhaps due to the suggestion of chance inherent in it.
By then the tracks were long gone, of course. The three-inch rainfall had seen to that. The rifle-toting men fanned out not with any firm leads in hand so much as armed with the raw hope of stumbling across success on their mission, as augmented by yapping hounds and the hand of divine providence. From field to field they trudged. Up many a hill (few though those be in our county) and down many a dale (assuming we have one). Striding shoulder to shoulder even as two dozen bewildered herefords followed their progress with interest.
Faith stayed home to tend the relatives and neighbors and friends and complete strangers tending her. Well-intentioned family and friends flooded the family farmstead. Word of the savage attack quickly leaked. News spreads powerful fast in our county. Aunt Greta and her daughters Bets and Beth arrived within the hour, covered hot dish in hand. Tuna casserole, to be precise. Cousin Susan and the neighboring Tjomsvitchisk girls arrived more or less at the same time, bearing rolls and cole slaw and ample condolences. Johnny and Mac from the farm just over the hill arrived with their Mother Mabel that very afternoon. Thomas the surviving twin was made to greet them. Under normal circumstances the three boys – or rather four boys, including Peter – well would have taken advantage of the unexpected recreating opportunity. Instead they merely stood awkwardly, shuffling from one