Still A Lot To Do

 

          Thaga had been busy writing invitations on small thick cards of buff colored paper, for those guests who were readers.  She wrote with an old fashioned dip pen using homemade ink. Until quite recently, we didn’t know that some Neanderthals were literate, and could write too.

          Then Maeve flew!

          Maeve landed with a solid thump on Millicent Price’s desk at the Stumptown Clarion Review, in downtown Milltown. Millie read the card and gave Maeve a thumbs up and a wink and then marked her calendar and went back to work writing up a story.

          Maeve could only carry one card at a time, so she flew back to Thaga and got the next one for Dr. Geoff!  Yes!  She did. How did she find him? Ralph helped with the space-hopping stuff. A kind of sequential bi-location. Hard to explain to three dimensional types.

          The doctor was in his backyard thinking about a strange dream he remembered having about a beer and a cigar and a talking Sasquatch, then he remembered that he had the cigar butt in his side desk drawer.  Oh dear!  This had happened to him several times. It always kind of stunned him.

          A very large Raven flew toward him, landed, and dropped a card at his feet where he sat.  She gave him a very sharp sideways look and took off. You may wonder how he would make his way to Ooog and Thaga’s.  Well, we shall see, shan’t we, as they used to say?

          Next trip, she found Folky Joe at the corner of Walk and Don’t Walk, playing a Simon and Garfunkel tune, the one about being a rock. He stopped playing when the big black bird landed on his left shoulder with a card in its beak. He read the card. It said, “You are invited to a party in the BNF at Ooog and Thaga’s. Bring a baby gift. In four days’ time. Maurice will fetch you.”

          Maeve made a special trip to find Uncle Bob. He had taken up gardening on the lowdown behind an old lady’s house in Index. She asked no questions and didn’t mind the vegetables appearing with no effort on her part.

          That’s where Maeve found him and passed the message on verbally. Uncle Bob was touched and delighted to be included and started thinking about a baby gift right away. He was 100% sober, if a little vague, but he knew the way.  No problem.

          Maurice was in Tacoma, trying to get his job back, but she found him.  Everybody has personal coordinates, and Ravens can locate them. Maeve got him to listen to her for a minute and he said “yeah, I’ll get Joe off the corner.  We’ll show.  Don’t worry. Four days from now.”

          Her last errand was finding Sam & Dave.  Nobody knew them very well, but it seemed fair to invite them. They were in Arlington, WA at a county fair in a tent.  An Indian guy was charging people five bucks to go into the tent and look at them.  Then they would act scary and have a good laugh.  They got 25% of the take for themselves. Of course, the Indian, Billy, had to do the spending of the money for them. A Squatch can’t go shopping without causing some notice.

          They were pleased to be invited to a party, especially since they knew a young blond was hanging around up there in the hills with Ramona. Maeve warned them to arrive with a baby gift in four days! She said to make sure and go to Ooog’s place, not the home clearing and cave.

          Now, at the same time, Ralph had some fishing to do. He had to do a lot of fishing and he had to keep the fish fresh for a couple of days. He had a way of doing this. It started with a big mesh bag made of cedar bark fiber. Thaga made it because she was clever with her hands. It was almost like knitting but not quite.

           Ralph liked to float down the river on his back, like a piece of driftwood. Just floating. No trouble to any fish at all. All serene. Silently, with no splashing. Then, when his big hand drifted near a likely steelhead, or trout, for that matter, he would grab it by its tail fins and pop it into his big mesh bag, still alive of course.

          Sometimes he had to float down the same stretch of river two or three times, but when he had about two dozen fish, mostly trout, he closed the bag up securely and tied it down to a certain big underwater snag near Ooog’s backyard. 

          After he tied his fish bag in the river he stopped in to see Ooog and make sure he had everything he needed, like firewood, and to admire the many zucchinis and eggplants. There was plenty of firewood, so Ralph rambled on home to see Ramona, Twigg and Cherry. He was also getting a little hungry!

          Ralph needed to walk by his cedar log to go home.  While he was passing it he noticed an unknown.  Just off the path was a rock.  Black. About as big as a black bear if he was rolled up tight.  Ralph should have paid a lot more attention.

This ball of yarn.