The Traiteur's Ring (16 page)

“Oh, God, Ben” she hollered and felt his muscles tighten as he pressed her more tightly against the door.

“I love you, Christy,” he moaned, as she felt him fill her with his own orgasm. Christy laid her head on his shoulder and lost herself in the feel of his final desperate thrusts as her own electrical storm subsided. He leaned into her as he relaxed and held her that way for what seemed like an eternity, his arms under her knees,  holding her against the door as their breathing and heartbeats slowed. Then she unwrapped her legs from his waist and slid her feet to the floor. He held her tight and she heard the un-romantic plop of the product of their uncontrolled lust spattering the foyer floor. She giggled.

“Oops,” she said, and Ben laughed.

“Well,” Ben leaned back to look in her eyes. “Didn’t set any kind of endurance record, did I?” He looked a little sheepish. She kissed him deeply again.

“It was perfect,” she said and meant it.

A few minutes later they lay together in sweat pants and T-shirts, arms and legs wrapped around each other in the hammock they kept on the wood deck that stuck out from the back of their town home. They had cleaned up their mess (she wasn’t sure what it would do to the wood finish – a very practical, but not very romantic, thought) but still had not brought Ben’s sea bag in from the truck. They rocked gently back and forth, held each other, and looked out at the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean not far beyond. Ben turned her face up towards his.

“Can we go get it later today?”

“What?” she asked, totally confused.

“Your ring,” he said, “I want you to pick out a ring today.”

Christy smiled and hugged him tightly, her head on his chest. “I don’t care about a ring, Ben. I don’t even need a ring.  I’m just excited to marry you.”

“I need the ring,” he said and kissed her cheek. “Can we go this afternoon?” His voice had a kid-like quality that struck Christy as unbelievably cute. Please, can I have it, Please?

She kept her head on his chest and smiled. “Sure, baby. But not a lot of money, okay? We have lots of better things to spend our money on.”

Ben kissed the top of her head and said nothing but she could feel how happy he seemed and realized she felt nearly delirious with happiness herself. Her eyes fell on his right hand which rested on her hip. She had not noticed the ring until now and knew she had never seen it before. In fact, she couldn’t remember Ben ever wearing any jewelry before. He took his watch off every opportunity he got.

The ring looked to be made of carved and polished bone-white stone. It shined with a sheen that seemed almost to hold hints of rainbow like color. Christy reached out her own hand to touch it, but her fingers stopped short. She felt suddenly apprehensive about touching the ring that, as she watched, seemed to change color slightly, taking on an almost orange hue – reflection from the sun on the shiny surface as she turned her head she decided. She put her hand down without touching it.

“Ben,” she said intending to ask about the strange ring that looked out of place on his hand.

“Yes?” a heavy and sleepy voice said. She knew that voice and pictured his closed eyes above her.

“I love you.” She would ask about the ring later.

“I love you, too,” his sleep-filled voice said, and his breathing got deeper and more rhythmic.

Christy lay on his chest, watched the dark grey, late winter ocean, and wondered if she had ever been this happy in her life.

Chapter 13

Ben walked along the narrow path in his sweat pants and “Duck-Inn Summer Beach Party” T-shirt. He had no delusion this time that this was anything but a dream, but still felt glad he had pulled on a pair of running shoes as he left their wood deck and stepped off into the purple light of the jungle. The sun had set, or nearly so, and the soft remnant of the day did little to illuminate the path, but his eyes acclimated quickly, and anyway he knew the way. What had drawn him out of Christy’s arms and back to the jungle he tried so hard to forget? He knew the answer but still couldn’t come up with it. Hadn’t it been the voice – the child’s voice? The words had sounded strange and foreign, but he knew it called to him – an invitation more than a pleading.

So he followed the path he knew would lead to the voice.

To Jewel?

Come see me, Father. We need to tell you something.

Knowing he dreamed did little to curb his anxiety as the smell of cook fires reached him and the brush beside the path thinned. He approached the clearing and the village slowly and prayed it was the village as it should be, not as it had been the last time he had seen it.

Ben pushed through the last few leafy branches and broke into the clearing, the smell of the cooking pots and fire now strong and pleasant. Only a few villagers milled about the clearing, and he could see much better now, the village lit as it was by the glow of several fires. A blur of motion caught his eye.

Father!

Jewel ran to him on wobbly toddler feet, arms stretched up towards him. The voice in his head sounded so much older than the baby girl who weaved towards him. That was just the way with dreams, he supposed. Ben took two long, grown-up steps towards the girl and then scooped her up into his arms. Jewel burrowed into his neck, and the soft, sweet smell of her seemed too wonderful to be a dream.

“Da be doo,” she chattered and laughed the music that comes from children in every country.

I missed you, Father. There is so much still to do.

The older voice in his head sounded no less real, which a curious part of his mind wondered about, but mostly he felt happy to hold her. He pulled her face up by the chin so he could see her. She grinned and patted his cheek.

“I missed you, too, Jewel. Are you okay? Are you safe?”

I am safe in our home. We need you.

Jewel squirmed with the universal “put me down” twisting, arms up, that every child knows, and Ben bent and put her down beside him. She seemed so tiny, looking up at him from below knee level, and Ben felt a wave of regret and shame wash over him. He should have done more. He should have found her and brought her home to his life with Christy. His vision of the girl in his dream blurred as his eyes rimmed with tears. He wondered if his Jewel was even still alive.

I am well, Father. We will be together soon.

He looked down at the smiling face and took her outstretched hand. She turned and began to toddle across the clearing of the village, and he went with her, slightly stooped over so he could hold her hand. After only a few steps he knew where she would take him – far to the southwest corner of the village. He felt his pulse pound a loud protest in his temple. Seeing Jewel was hard enough – the rest of it he really needed to be able to put behind him. He needed to leave it behind so he could start his new life with Christy. Jewel didn’t seem to care about that and tugged him behind her.

The old man sat squatted on his haunches on the brown mat of woven reeds and prodded gently at a steaming bowl of dark brown mush. He looked at least twenty years younger than the man he had seen in real life, and his head and throat were unblemished by the gaping wounds from before. Ben thought he saw a faint hint of glowing blue light around his head and neck, but it went away when he looked more closely. The Village Elder looked up at him with soft, kind eyes and smiled the broad, brown-toothed smile Ben remembered very well. The little girl let go of Ben’s hand and scrambled into the old (young) man’s lap.

The man spoke rapidly but softly in the language Ben remembered but still didn’t understand, and the girl hugged him, slipped off his lap, and toddled away toward a long, low shack with brightly colored cloth hanging from poles along its corners.

Sit, Ben.

The man motioned with long, sallow fingers and another brown smile. Ben sat down cross-legged on the edge of the mat across from the elder. He felt his hands shake a little and reminded himself again that this was just a dream. His subconscious still must be searching for closure on all of this, and hopefully he could find it in this fantasy. He practiced his four-count tactical breathing and felt his pulse slow.

Dreams are reality, Ben. Gammy taught you that, but you would have known it anyway.

I need to get past this – past you. I need to get on with my life.

Yes, Ben. This is a big part of your life, though, and always has been. You have always known this.

I can’t do this. I have to go back.

Ben rose to his feet and looked sadly at the man who still squatted on the mat.

I’m sorry.

The old man smiled again, his eyes light and young.

You have no need. The cycle of the Living Jungle is not something you control, and all is as it must be. You must go back to the beginning, Ben. There you can find the final answers and the path to your destiny.

The beginning? Ben felt his pulse rise again, and his stomach tightened. He could not possibly go back to that morning in the village. He couldn’t possibly watch that horror again. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly and with all his might willed himself away from his dream and back home to Christy. He felt the air around him vibrate as he seemed to float and rise up and out of his misty shroud. Far away, below him it seemed, though, with his eyes closed he couldn’t be sure, the old man’s voice followed him but faded into far away.

When you get there you will find a guide. A face that is familiar and unfamiliar. The answers are there if you find the questions. Look back and ask them, Ben. Then, you will be ready.

The voice drifted farther away and disappeared. The vibrations stopped. Ben slowly and cautiously opened his eyes. He saw trees above him and felt the hammock rock softly beneath him. He reached behind him for Christy and her hand but felt only more hammock. He rolled over.

Ben lay alone and something felt immediately wrong. Why were there trees above him? The smell – the sweet but musty smell of water and rich earth – came to him and, with it, a flash of remembered emotions. He swung his legs out of the hammock and looked around. Right where it should be he saw the ramble shack house with its soft glow from half open windows. He smelled the smoke which, invisible in the dark, he knew curled from the leaning chimney on the roof. He knew exactly where he was.

And when.

This nightmare he knew, and he made no effort to fight it. Years had taught him he would awaken only when released by the power of the dream and so he hopped out of the hammock and walked briskly along the path through the Louisiana bayou. Better to just hurry and get it over with. He followed the worn trail and after a moment the soft glow from the clearing up ahead. He stopped at the edge of the clearing and took a deep breath. Then, he walked boldly into the glow of the camp fire.

No matter how many times he came to this dream it did nothing to lessen the shock each time he saw his grandmother. Gammy – who had bathed him and rocked him to sleep, read him stories and told him Santa made special presents for children of the bayou – stood naked in the clearing. Her bare feet shifted back and forth, ankle deep in the lake of blood, her arms stretched out and upward. Her left hand gripped the handle of the long, curved knife, and blood ran from the bone-colored handle down her arm and across her old and wrinkled breast. In the darkness, the spatters of blood on her face and body looked almost purple. A few feet away the mutilated deer twitched with the last bit of life it had and raised its head to look at him.

The eyes were small and shaped nothing like big doe eyes. They were blue and human-looking and seemed freakishly small and out of place set deep in the deer’s face. The tongue that protruded from the deer’s mouth seemed thick and swollen and, as always, made the words that hissed out, impossible to understand. This time they seemed weirdly familiar – not from past dreams, but from somewhere else. The blue eyes flashed orange and then turned grey and lifeless. The deer’s now dead head fell into the lake of blood with a splash.

An animal scream from his Gammy’s throat shattered the night, and then she babbled more unfamiliar words. Then, she dropped her head and looked at him. She stared a moment at him with eyes that glowed red, like the last embers of a hot fire, and she extended a bloody and bony finger towards him and screamed again.

*   *   *

Ben felt relief that this time the scream he heard in his dream did not come from his own throat, but he snapped his eyes open anyway, his fingers sore where they gripped tightly the rope edge of the hammock. Inches away from his face, Christy smiled at him and reached out a soft hand to stroke his cheek.

“Hi,” she said softly.

Ben smiled and swallowed away the remnants of the dream (dreams) and reached up and pressed her hand to his lips.

“Hi, yourself,” he said and felt his breathing slow.

“Bad dream?” she asked but they both knew she knew the answer. They had been together a long time.

“Yeah, kind of,” he said. Why did he always say that? “What time is it?”

“A little after twelve,” she said.

Ben stretched out his back, knotted and sore from the tension of his mystical excursions, and tried to appear casual and normal. He turned to Christy again and kissed her softly on the cheek which brought his favorite smile to her face.

“Wanna go for a walk?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said but didn’t move to get up. “Are you sure you don’t want to nap a little more? You traveled so long and so far.”

Ben smiled at her constant concern for him. He used to ask about the paradox – the way she worried incessantly about little things like naps and surfing when the water was too cold, but never said a word or batted an eye about him jumping out of a helicopter into the ocean at night with a full combat load. She would just shrug when he teased her about it and told him she could only control the things she could control, and the other things were just who he was.