Millicent and Ralph Finally Do That Interview

 

            Word came to Ralph, by way of Maeve, that Millicent Price still wanted an interview for the paper.  This time there would be no photographer, nor a secret mic or even a live mobile on her person. Just hand written notes to be taken and examined by Ralph, to make sure that ol’ Milly wasn’t a skilled portrait sketcher.

            “Tell Millicent that I agree to her terms.  However, I want her to appear here at the fire circle.  I’m not swimming that river again for a while,” Ralph told Maeve. “I need to stick close around here anyhow. Ramona needs me. Tell her to choose a day, and to show up at about 5PM. You’ll have to tell her how to get here.”

            So, Maeve soared high above the forest and the river and the farms until she came to Milltown. At last, she spotted Millicent’s open window in the Stumptown Clarion Review’s office building. That might not really be the name of the paper, but no matter. It was a newspaper office building with an open window and a reporter inside working on a story.
            Maeve is a largish corvid. When she hit the window frame it sounded like a good five pound thump. “He says he will agree to the interview, as you promised with no recording devices and if you meet up at his place.  He says you should pick a day, be there at 5:00 and I’m to explain to you how to find the place.”  
            Millicent agreed to all of that and picked the following Tuesday, because Tuesday is one of those days when nothing happens. Maeve helped her sketch a rough map. Of course, you will understand that it is not really that linear of a process. Some concessions to concealment had to be made.  More of that later.
            On the appointed Tuesday, Millicent drove her Passat out to the Baker National Forest by way of the highway, she made a left at the big rock, she drove around the grandfather cedar tree three times to the left as she had been asked. She drove down a hidden driveway and parked the sedan behind some ferns and alder saplings. She was prepared to hike. She had those hiking sticks, a sun hat, and left her phone in her car.  This hurt, but she did it.
            After a short hike up a path that she never was able to find again, she came into Ralph and Ramona’s home clearing and the nice fire circle with the logs pulled up to it all cozy. At first it seemed that no one was home. She didn’t see how anyone could live here.  Where would they live?  There was only the forest, the clearing, a blank stone wall of granite, and the fire circle. When she looked back at the ring of rocks she noticed that a compact camp fire was burning. She wasn’t sure that it had been burning when she first looked. She held her ground, for the sake of getting a good interview with Ralph. It would take more than slightly morphing reality to rattle Millicent Price. Milly was a pro.
            In the granite wall there was a clever wooden door made to fit a natural opening in the rock, the mouth of a cave, in fact. The door had been stained by having mud rubbed into it. Its construction was unclear to Millicent.
            At just about 5:00PM the door opened, and Ralph came out after having to bend over as the door was short for him. He appeared as if he were about nine feet tall. The fire lit his face from below.  He looked very imposing. A lesser reporter might have been frightened, but not Millicent.
            “Pull up a log, Milly,” quoth he. “What’s today’s topic of choice?”
            “Glad to finally see you again, Ralph,” said she, while finding a comfy spot on a log by the fire.
            “I have an idea.  I think it’s a good one!”
            “Tell me,” said Ralph, finding a comfy log himself and becoming much less imposing when he sat and smiled.
            “Okay.  I want you to tell me something that you know, but nobody else knows,” said Millicent, whipping out her pad and pen and crossing her right leg over her left knee.
            “Hmmm. You don’t want much do ya?  Just a total scoop! An absolute scoop! And you want me to hand it to you?” Ralph did some of that stuff men do when they’re thinking, like rubbing his chin and scratching his big old head.
            “Alrighty then.  I’ll bite. This is history, not a story.  It was given to me by my maternal grandmother, you could call her Mabel, if you wanted, in your article,” said Ralph from light of the flickering campfire.

            “Mabel was born and raised in the desert lands among the cliffs and canyons. Her family were co-inhabitants with the human tribes of the whole general area. All four corners, right? For hundreds of years, they lived in peace with these humans who built their homes up in the cliffs as if they were birds building stone nests up there.
            “Now, scientific type inquirers can just about understand how building materials might be brought up there, and how food grown elsewhere might be carried up to these cliff houses. But no one knows how they were able to have water up in those cliff apartments. You don’t know do you?” said Ralph rather pedantically.
            “Well, no, Ralph, as a matter of fact, I can’t imagine how they got water up there.  Doesn’t seem like catching rain would work because it almost never rains there,” agreed Millicent.
            “This story should work for you then, playing by your rules, but I am afraid no one will ever believe it,” he sighed.
            “Oh, I don’t even care about that,” said the lady reporter eagerly, “let’s have it.  Lay it on me!”
            “Alright, you remember that I said the local tribes and Mabel’s family, extended family, were pretty friendly and helpful to each other?
            “There were two things going on down there in the desert. No. 1, the humans needed water uphill and the first people, Sasquatch to you, loved worked stone items.  They collected them like works of art, keeping very special ones as objects of intense esthetic appreciation. So, a deal was struck between humans and first peoples.  Get ready for this Millicent. I’m not sure you’re going to like it….
            “My people, the first people, the forest people and rock people have some abilities that humans don’t possess.  We bend light, truncate time a little, we can even wrinkle space a little. Water is easy to re-direct. Water doesn’t care where it goes.  It goes where it is sent, even if that is uphill.”  Ralph nodded ruefully, for he knew how hard this was for her.
            “This is what happened there for around four hundred years. Mabel’s family sent a stream of water uphill, running against gravity, to the people in the cliff apartments, the people kept making them worked stone points and pretty beads. This went on until the culture of the people became degraded, they quit working stone for the first people family and the arrangement gradually fell apart. The water reversed and began running downhill through the canyon again. The humans moved out of their cliff houses then, becoming nomadic again.”
            “Are you teasing me Ralph?” demanded M. Price rather sharply. She slapped her notebook shut and stuffed her pen in a pocket. “How can I print that? How can anyone believe it if I am having trouble with it. How can it be true?”
            “Millicent, you’re looking at me right now.  How can I exist, and yet, here I am.” He smiled in an avuncular pleasant way. "Hey, let me see that notebook for a minute.  Thanks!  Anyhow, I told you something that nobody knew! Nobody knew that one!” He chuckled to himself.
            Millicent was getting kind of sleepy now. She yawned sitting there on her comfy log by the little fire in the ring of stones. When she opened her eyes, she was sitting there alone. There had not been a fire, maybe, or maybe there had been. The stone wall was a blank surface.
            Realizing that the interview must be over, she stood to leave, at which point Maeve arrived. She sat on Millicent’s shoulder and whispered in her ear, “come on, I’ll show you the way out of this conundrum, Milly. Just keep me in sight, and I will lead you as I take short flights and hops.”
            So that’s what they did.  Maeve would go forward by one means or another, and Millicent would catch up. Eventually they arrived at her car, which was still where she had left it, and she was very glad to see this. It started right up, just like in the normal world.  She drove around the grandfather cedar three times to the right, and then turned right at the big rock, onto the highway taking her back to Milltown.
            On her way back home, Millicent tried to imagine how she would present this article to her boss on Wednesday.  A very good question indeed. She thought she would need to sleep on it.