|
The first of a new lifetime of nights on the ground was finally over. My back certainly wasn't feeling any younger, though it would have been a nice irony to discover, even this late in life, the rejuvenative properties of sleeping on hard earth.
Aaron, the young boy with us, and his older sister returned from who knows what adventures carrying a shirt full of sodas stretched out like a stuck pig for the chief's feast. I politely declined the carbonated pig meat. I didn't even try to explain the counterintuitive effects of such beverages towards dehydration, although Patrick seemed to give me a glance of approval when I told Aaron I would hold off until my body more desperately needed the sugar for sustenance. It was surprising, since I wouldn't expect to garner any respect at all from a man who so clearly knows his way around living in the outdoors. I'd certainly be interested to learn from him, but old dogs new tricks and whatnot, and I'd be afraid of wasting his time with my ineptitude.
Aaron's older sister prefers the interesting sobriquet "Vark" over her given name of Rebecca. When I mentioned that she shared a namesake with Rebecca Harding Davis--and proceeded to neglect her more substantial later contributions to literature, rather to specifically highlight the demoralized, darker characters in her earlier work--she seemed to perk up a bit, saying she wished they would have let her read such "cool stuff" in her school. I assured her she probably wouldn't like the real thing, and promised her I would still call her Vark as she desired. If creativity like hers were more often nurtured, perhaps we would have had better entry-level candidates at the university, and I wouldn't have minded teaching ENG 305 as much. But no use dwelling on what is lost.
Other than the adolescents and Patrick, there is a young woman named Skye (her real name, I was disappointed to discover) and today one more joined us, a former janitor named Fred. Apparently he and Aaron were already friends, and Vark she says she vaguely recognized him from her years at that same middle school. He is usually quiet, which makes him an odd companion for the rambunctious kid, but Aaron does seem a bit more relaxed now that he's here, so that's a welcome relief. Perhaps he will even lessen his antagonizing of Skye, but frankly I doubt it. She clearly never learned the rules of sibling rivalry (par for the course for an only child) and plays the victim so overbearingly that he virtually has no choice but to keep tormenting her. I hope for my own sake that Vark lends her a clue on how to deal with it soon--or perhaps these lecturn-softened hands could attempt to forge a new life on my own after all...
|