Chapter 15

I wonder can I ever learn what is needed to live in this place. In this time.

So much in just one day. It began in great joy with Linda, and then she spoke long in the thing she calls a telephone, and I hear her talk of me to some of those to whom she speaks. I am glad she talks of me, it makes a good feeling in me that she is willing to do this.

Then she took me in a thing that moves at her command. Very fast does it move, faster by far than anyone may run, and it allows travel farther than many will ever go in their lives.

I have seen many wondrous things. There are people here so old I do not know how they live, and yet they do live. There are places with vast quantities of all manner of things. Most of the things are strange to me, but I expect that now, all here is strange.

One thing do I see that is familiar. In this time the meat is already butchered by others, but I have done butchering and I know how meat should be. When Linda tries to take a piece that is not good I tell her, and show her better than she has taken. I choose much of the meat that we will take.

Then is a bad thing. We stop again and this time Linda tells me stay when she emerges from the traveling thing, the car. But I see a man rush to her and push her down, and then the man leans into car and points at me a thing such as I see on teevee. I believe it is a weapon.

This man cries some words at me, but I do not wait to understand, I see only the weapon. Very quickly do I reach to grab his hand where he holds the weapon, and I squeeze as hard as I can. I feel the bones break in the hand where I squeeze. Then, because he has pushed Linda, I pull him into car and strike him. I use the heel of my hand, not the knuckles, so I will not break my own hand.

For a time I think I have done ill, because Linda quickly returns to the car and makes it go away fast backwards before she turns to go again in front. When I ask is it wrong what I have done she says no, I did well, but she says she will not talk more now. She still does not wish to talk when we reach her dwelling, and works much with the food we have taken while I think her mind runs.

When she finishes with the food she again takes up the telephone, but this time she speaks only with one person and it is short. Then she turns to me.

“OK, Hugo, I’m sorry,” she says. “We can talk now. But first I need to tell you something. Tomorrow a man will be coming here. He’s my brother.”

I am dismayed that she asks a man to come. I have begun to think that I am her man, that she has chosen me, and I wish for her to choose me. But I think she sees my feelings, for quickly she explains that a brother is the word for another child, a male child, of her own mother’s loins. That is different, I know well of brothers, the woman of my hearth had two such and they were good friends to me. I tell her I will be very glad to know her brother.

I ask her again why we so quickly leave the place where I struck the man with the weapon.

“If we’d stayed there would have been big trouble,” she says. “The man tried to steal our car, to take it when it isn’t his. In this time that’s a crime, a bad thing. There are people called police, and they would come and take that man away, that’s their work.”