!A fire in Galilee
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by Anna @ 2004
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Chapter III: Quilting with torn memories
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Sleep is where dreams are. Sheena lay awake on the
bunk. What had happened was scraps in her mind.
Without moving she reached into her hidden scrap-
basket with her invisible threaded needle and the
guidance of her grandmothers. The other women slept
in their bunks around her. She listened hard for
the egret as she worked without moving.
Quietly, Sheena pulled out the scrap where her Joe
went out looking for the goat herder said he fucked
the cripple woman. Who told him that? Not Hiram.
Maybe Simon or he heard word on the street. The
scrap told its piece.
Joe was fierce, fearsome, like he used to be. He
was drunk. He went in his things, gort out qat leaf
to chew. The qat leaf will keep you awake. It will
make you not hungry. With qat you can walk very
far, but it will also make you crazy.
Sheena was sat up in a chair by the bed looking at
Joe, unsteady because she was not used to using her
body after so long. Her calves hurt, her back hurt.
She said, "What you doing Joe? Please think about
what you doing!"
Joe was fearsum but determined and silent. He had a
gun she had never seen before. He cleared the
chamber, checked the clip, loaded it, and stuck it
in his pants. He turned to her as he left. "I'll
find that damn goat herder. He bout to be one
Samaritan who wish he never came around our
people."
"Wait---what goat herder you talking about? What
you talking about, Joe?" Sheena sat still, forcing
weak muscles to hold her torso upright. She heard
the distant train say rumbledumb clacketetang. That
train was coming.
* * *
Sheena let that scrap lay and found another.
Crystal and Peggy recovered from their shock---
Sheena saw this scrap told a story well before Joe
went and scared her like that. Her friends
recovered from their shock at Sheena's healing and
cried with her. Somehow they got her home. They
left Hiram behind in his wheelchair in the crowd
outside the place where the doctor was doing his
business.
Back at Sheena's house they washed the dust out of
their sandals and freshened up. Crystal and Peggy
started up again with the excited talking,
questions Sheena didn't answer past her tears. Then
they joined her crying again.
Sheena didn't know what she would do now. Everybody
would hear that she got healed by the great doctor,
like it was some kind of proof he would bring
freedom later. Overwhelmed and confused, Sheena
asked her grandmothers what she would do now.
If everybody knew she got healed she couldn't lie
against the basalt tower at the city gates with the
Sea off to her left any more. She couldn't earn
money any more. Her hands were so wasted and
contracted it would take years to learn how to
thread a needle again.
The other two women stayed up half the night
talking. They expected the docctor would help
Crystal with her cut off welfare check, Peggy with
her broken television, and Peggy's son who was in
jail for selling qat to Romans. His trial was
supposed to come up on the 24th. The great doctor
would surely help. Crystal didn't talk about her
son. All three women already knew he had left and
gone south where it is swampy to join the arm
resistance.
How did that night end? The thread had come unwoven
at the edge of the scrap; Sheena couldn't tell what
had happened. So she lay that scrap before the one
where Joe came and left, talking all that stuff
about a goat herder.
Then she reached deep and pulled out an old patch
she had handled for her whole life; the scrap where
her grandmothers had showed her a pieced-together
quilt that if you memorized it would help you find
your ways. Back in slavery time, they had tucked in
Sheena's mama in a quilt like that.
Each scrap and stitch told you where something
about the land was at. There were blue scraps for
the spring branch and the stream, brown scraps for
the house and cabins, cross-stitching for every
fence on all the places around. The big oaks were
dark green scraps.
By studying the quilt you could contemplate the way
to go away from the drivers and the foremen, find
your way to freedom in the wilderness. Lots of
people went before the big surrender, but then on
that day everybody still on the place got up with
such as they had; biscuits that hadn't had the time
to rise, sacks and just the cattle they could
drive, and everybody went into the wilderness
behind the great liberator. Most of the telling
quilts were left in the houses and cabins behind
them.
Sheena needed this piece so bad to help her make
sense of everything that had happened since the
visit to the great doctor. She didn't know where it
fit yet. She laid it on the knee of her mind, broad
and unwithered, and pulled out a fourth scrap.
There was gaps, but this piece had to go between
that business with Joe and where she was at now.
Sheena closed the eyes in her heart, then gathered
strength and opened those eyes again. To piece
together her own telling quilt she had to
courageously assemble what scraps she had. The ugly
ones had a place.
This piece told of when Hiram had lent her his
wheelchair for the day. She had went off with Peggy
so Crystal wouldn't know. The women set off to the
south to find a root doctor who knew where to find
the root call John. Sheena knew her grandmothers
knew about John. She thought maybe John could help
her.
To be discreet when they went around the walled
city down unpaved roads through olive groves Sheena
covered her hairs with a scarf and sat with her
head down. They started south from the gate she
used to sit by. The two women followed the long
road south. Crystal pushed as much as she had to;
Sheena wheeled herself as much as she could.
The land got drier. There was a place by the road
where sisters of the cattle used to live before the
land got so dry. It was a long way. The women got
there late in the day and stopped for water. If you
stood by the well and listened hard you could hear
far off fire like somebody big and scared
breathing.
After she drank, Sheena sat still in Hiram's
wheelchair, leaned to the side because it was too
big for her. Peggy rested her back against a
crooked desert tree and sat. The road was deserted,
but they heard the far off breathing of the fire.
It wasn't so much wind. The women set and stayed in
the shade by the water for a minute, resting.
The distant breathing got louder and then they saw
three helicopters overhead and going on away. They
could no longer rest. Peggy stood and took hold of
the wheelchair to push Sheena in the direction the
helicopters came from, away from the road.
They came to a set of jeep tracks and followed them
awhile. The dry land was quiet. It was of deep
gullies which say that it still rains heavy
sometimes. It was still hardly any wind, but the
breathing of the fire was closer. From the sound of
it, it was a big fire. Neither woman thought this
was something they wanted to get into, they just
went. The jeep tracks were joined by more jeep
tracks.
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I'M NOT FINISHED TYPING THIS ONE UP YET ---ANNA
