Two Wanderers Came Wandering

 

Could not resist blaming it all on Thompson and Thompson from Tin Tin.

Then, all of a sudden, it was morning. It was a mild sunny fall day. With so many people in the house, we were all busy for a while. 

Then, when Doug called us together, we all stood facing Felicity and Evan. They had their arms around each other and looked all giggly and excited. Doug looked serious. He had combed his hair back too.

He said “Evan and Felicity, this is more of a prayer than anything else. We’ll all do it with you. You are promising to be always together, to help each other and to make a family here on Earth.”

And so, we stood with them and helped them promise, using a version of the well-worn old promises that everyone knows. They were the first.





Look out for Thumbies

Felicity and Evan only spent one more night with us. They decided to make the trek back to Silvana and Monica at the house with the garden. They hoped that the attention of her rude admirer would have wandered off, or that he had himself.



So, a day passed uneventfully. We rested. The next day was different.

Bubby sat up. He woofed a couple of times deep in his big chest. Someone was outside the front door. Then they were outside the back door in no time at all.

Bubs said “hey!” and ran to the kitchen door. Two men stood outside. We were sitting around the kitchen table. No one knocked. Doug stood and opened the door, looking out. Both men wore black suits.

“I’m Howard.” “I’m Boris.” They spoke together. It is hard now to remember their faces. They didn’t seem to leave much of an impression. “We think you need us. We work together,” both said.

“What do you think we need you for,” asked Doug, laughing.

“We fix things!” H and B said.

“Fix means to stabilize. Your door is broken,” they went on. “We will stabilize its configuration!”

There was something a little unusual about these two. Understatement of the year.

Seeming slightly dazed, Doug said OK and ushered them in and through to the front room. They headed right for the nailed shut door and examined it right up close, like they needed glasses or something. Noses right to the door, bent over, elbows out. Now that was something!

Then they started picking the nails out by hand. Pulling them with their fingernails, like you would pull a splinter out of your thumb.

They piled the nails all together on the floor. Then they opened the door and looked at how the lock was broken and where some of the wood was splintered. This is where it’s hard to remember exactly what happened. Howard pressed on the fractured wood around the lock with his thumbs and then it was not fractured.

Boris picked up a nail and held it against the broken lock and it seemed to melt into the metal of the lock and then it wasn’t broken anymore.

Howard worked the latch a few times and closed the door and locked it. He nodded to all of us. He might have been humming to himself, or just kind of buzzing.

There was something different about how their arms were made. I noticed that at rest their thumbs pointed more outward than normal and that there might even have been a separate joint in their arms between shoulder and elbow. The arms seemed extra bendy and flexible. I harbored a brief fantasy of them dancing in their weird black suits, snaking their arms loosely around their bodies.

Also, the black suits were not made of normal fabric. They seemed roughly of normal design, but also almost painted on. Very supple material.

“We fixed the door,” Howard said, and he and Boris headed for the kitchen and out of that door and walked off toward town. I wondered why Bubs hadn’t said anything during all of this. He was asleep on the carpet. He had been known to mutter in his sleep, but not this time.

Yes, they did fix our door, but they also got right past our defenses and into the house. No problem. Was it a problem? We didn’t know yet.

Well, Elvin thought it was a problem. “That’s really scary Doug, you let those two weirdos right into the house with Lou and Jen here, and Bubby took a nap!

“I think like they put some kind of whammy on you! We messed up, or you did, maybe! We don’t know, do we? Who else could walk right in?”

I had never seen him oppose Doug in any way before. But I guessed he was right. It more or less took the careless fun out of the day.

“Yeah, I guess,” said Doug, rubbing his eyes and yawning a little.

A voice called from the kitchen, where Lou sat at the table still dabbling with her oatmeal. She yelled, “yeah. I can see this coming. We gotta go talk to Mr. R. Jones and check on his mother!

“No rest around here!”

I could hear her out there stacking the morning dishes in the sink and starting to run some water.



We did need to confer with Mr. Jones, it is true. This involved walking two miles into town. It felt like we were wearing ruts into the road lately. However, when we got to the Steele house, it was obvious that someone was there. It was Roops. He was there to get some of his mom’s stuff. She wasn’t really in any condition to walk out there, so he left her back at the radio station, hoping for the best.

Lou and Bubs went and sat in the front room and played word games to entertain themselves while we quizzed Roops about our visitors.

Elvin began, “these two jokers in black romper suits showed up at the back door and said they wanted to fix the front door and Doug let them in. They did some kind of hoodoo on the door, and it is fixed. They looked strange.”

“Did their thumbs stick out funny,” asked Roops. “Did their arms seem too flexy Elvin?”

“Yes,yes,” I said, butting in. “Too many joints in those arms, totally creepy.”

“Well, I call those Thumbies,” said Roops. “They are ETs, but I don’t know where they are from. They seem to be obsessed with passing for human. I don’t know of them harming anyone, but they can be insistent and persistent.” He went on a bit…

I was looking at Doug, who had taken off his jacket and was in his T-shirt. His arms were very tan from the sleeve edge downward. His throat and cheeks were very tanned also…

I shook my head and concentrated on what Roops was saying.

“The Shorties are keeping an eye on them because they think these Thumbies might get the idea that they should repair the triangle crafts, that they have disabled. The Shorties would have to stop them, but they are not eager to demolish them.

“They told a guy I know that they want to repair the Wharf Café.”

He had packed up two bags of his mother’s clothing and some of her freshest groceries. It wasn’t much. Some produce and some milk. We locked up and since we were all going the same way, Doug grabbed one of the bags and we all took off together. Five people and a dog. Roops wasn’t the world’s fastest walker, so it took longer than usual. Big guy, you remember.

There was a tiny private shop in town. It sold a few things produced by locals. Some bakery stuff, herbal meds, home made cheese and local eggs, stuff like that. They also carried goods liberated from abandoned buildings. That was still going on, ten years later. It was near the high school, used to be called Welche's. Elvin wanted to see what they had, so we all went in and filled the place up. You had to pay them with old cash, or in kind, or barter. They barely hung on there.

A young girl was minding the counter. She took a good solid look at Doug and his NO patched backpack. She stood up suddenly and said “hey, are you Doug Simpson!?”

Total link: In the tenth year of the pandemonium.docx