Chapter 12: Gondor Returns
Early monsoon season is a fine time for fishing at dawn. Certainly, Gara and Lok see the situation so. They rouse with day's first stirring outside their cave and with the sliver of sunlight on the horizon. From her look-out duty, Kim Butler kindly comes to wake them. Although, such is not too necessary. The cave-dwellers have pretty good internal "clocks", even though they do not use clocks.
After wake-up, Gara and Kim quickly work in the home cavern's "kitchen". They cook some meat and perhaps cut some fruit for sounder sleepers Gorak, Greg, John, and Tana. (When possible, they cut the cheese). Katie could be a solid sleeper, but no one will ever know. Early each morn, Kim gives her daughter a gentle kick or hardily rocks her awake. Mom mentions that others will expect their breakfasts soon, so Katie should get cracking. Come help the other women. You aren't better than anyone.
The year is 1975, and it is that year in the Valley of the Dinosaurs. There are no microwaves, and there are not really any male feminists. Only cavemen, perhaps. Neither Kim nor Katie foresees the future. And, Kim—although limitedly liberated, for her time—always lives in 1950 or earlier, to some extent.
Ever-cheerful Katie creeps out of bed, creaks upright, and cracks a joke. Her mother cons to crack her one, but Kim is also joking. Gara just smiles and mixes some mush to warm over the fire maintained overnight. Ex-Marine Kim communicates that she dutifully helped maintain the home fires.
"Of course, we had 'fire watch' in the Corps, but that duty was something different," mentions Mrs. Butler.
Gara grins and nods nicely. She pets Digger nuzzling her and grazes fingers along Glump's hide. The two pets get up with their humans and the smell of food. The cave mom returns to repast prep.
Passing his mother, Lok carries angling equipment down the gallery to the outside. All gear is fairly light and limited. A party of four will have to carry it today. However, the tackle and accoutrements are also ample enough to necessitate several trips. So, Lok moves fast so that folks fish by dawn. The river is two miles, or thirty minutes (or two thousand seconds), from the Gorak residence—if you are the Butlers. Otherwise, Lok just knows that the rising sun reaches a certain point when one really should get going.
Inside the cave, Katie calls Digger and gleefully commands "Go wake Greg. Go on". The hound happily hops on his resting master and mashes a wet nose into closed eyesocket. Greg crinkles his face and curls into a ball. The kid almost curses. Katie cackles and even cavorts around. Her gaiety half-wakes Dad, Gorak, and Tana too. John chuckles at his daughter's hijinks and playfully jerks Digger away from the boy. He hauls the thrashing beast onto his tatami and gives him a vigorous bellyrub while laughing.
Staid Kim successfully contextualizes the situation and decides not to chastise "cheeky chick" Katie. Instead, she orders Katie to help Lok but to also aid Gara as needed. "Everyone needs to go soon, girl" is what mother reminds daughter.
Kim knows that Katie is not Greg. Katherine is the eldest and a girl. She needs to understand how to run things—even if the men and boys don't understand that she is running them. That way the men can do what they do.
Lok lugs a large sack over his shoulder. He hurriedly hoofs it outside to the humid air. Last evening, the sky rained torrentially, as it does during monsoon season, and the tropical night produced muggy air. Lok handles a hemp coil with a hook on its end. He is careful with such valuable equipment for today's angling efforts. Lok lays the looped line upon the other light luggage. About facing, he hears "Hey, Tarzan", which is Katie's nickname for him. During storytelling one night, Katie told an engaging tale of this Tarzan, and he seems all right. Apparently, he even once visited New York, from where Katie comes.
"Hey, Tarzan," catcalls Katie, "Do you need any help with your heavy load?"
"No thank you," Lok lunges forward—but not at the domicile entrance.
Rather, he homes in on Katie. Sans sentimental hug, the semi-civilized savage simply hauls her in and steals a kiss. Lifted by her biceps, Katie demurely sways her legs beneath her surprised light brown eyes. But, Katie does kiss Lok back, despite her confused feelings.
Focused on work, the primitive puckerer plants her feet on the pebbly ground. "You are sweet and so are your lips," loverboy Lok lumbers off for more load.
In pre-dawn's low light, Katie keels backward and blushes. She steadies herself at the cave entrance. Katie chuckles at her crass chevalier as capricious as she is. Lok should not have locked her arms and then her lips. "Now that's what I call Loked lips" kibitzes Katie to herself. However, the "damsel" is no ditz. She does as many distaff do. Katie will exculpate "her man" this incident and craftily coach him into shape. Katie decrees to herself to kindly connive the callous from her companion and convert a big caterpillar to a beautiful butterfly. It's all okay. She will change him. She pads into the pit after her primal man and project.
A quarter hour later, Kim kisses Cap. Butler goodbye until at least midday. The mama moves out her company of Gara, Lok, and Katie. Everyone grabs some gear, and the group goes gracefully toward the river. Around them, the ebon early morn has its sounds and subtle sensations. A sultry breeze tickles skin and tussles tresses. The mud temporarily tactilely traps three pairs of tramping bare feet, and it audibly squelches beneath Kim Butler's boots. Accompanying the marching beats, awakening animals announce their initiating diurnal activity. Dinosaurs trumpet in bass tone. Hyenas titter. Taciturn herd beasts disturb the underbrush. Birds talk in their calls.
Kim, Katie, Lok, and Gara come to the chosen channel for chasing down some piscine chow. Cherry dawn light rutilantly rides low chopping waves. Chipper Katie cherishes the chaste scene for a second, until Kim conscripts her. Cheerfully, the eccedentesiast obeys. Katie cannot wait until she is a woman and can leave the Valley of the Dinosaurs, especially the Plateosaurus parenting her. The fuddy-duddy "fossil" faces about, and she takes to readying fishing seines.
Spotting opportunity, Lok charges the shallows and hand-catches a sizable chub for bait. Breathing heavily, Katie quietly bets that her capable companion could noodle catfish in nothing flat. Then, she and her champ could canoodle in celebration—if she so chose. Katie's fantasy is quick, and she expeditiously canters to her observing elder.
Lok chops the chub into chunks and unfurls the coil of fishing line. He twirls the loose line and casts the chub tchotchke a considerable distance for cat or cod or whatever aquatic creature comes. To his left, Lok lobs another craning cord clear to mid-channel. Contentedly, he lies between the lines and watches, lids half-closed. Lok could have a lazy day or a busy one. But, either way, he is the big man going after the big fish and the big supply of meat.
Certainly, the women have slightly more given labor than Lok. However, the ladies neither execrate their excellent boy nor call cave-dweller culture a kakistocracy. Rather, they cope without complaint and fish for no compliment from the casual cur reclined on the sunny bank while they work. Completely composed, the cadre of Kim, Katie, and Gara stretch a curtain of spaced crochet. The gill net could catch the Valley community, and Gorak's cave, a mess of crappie, a crop of piranha, cooter turtles, and other compact consumable critters. Cooperatively, the crew collects rocks to ballast the uncrumpled net's bottom. They check the corks crossing the top.
Then, Kim tells Katie to wade into the cold water and to watch for hazards such as constrictors and crocs. Previously, Gorak provided Kim, Katie, and Greg a boat for fishing by net (E6). However, a dug-out would be heavy to haul this morn.
Wading in, Katie cocks a glance at large, lying Lok and bats her beautiful brown eyes. But, Lok isn't looking. Glaring, Kim points off coast and proclaims "move your caboose, kid". Katie charmingly complies with some cute show, of course. Calm Gara gets a kick out of the scene. Mom Kim either scowls or smirks; one can't quite read her countenance. Not surprisingly, Kim witnesses her girl being stronger than she looks. By hook and crook, Katie conveys the net across the channel from the shore to a sandbar. Beyond the mini-cay, the main current flows. Clay secures a skein of seine on Gara and Kim's shore, and Katie anchors a knot opposite her elders. "Come back here" communicate Kim's clinching fingers. "Okay" signals smiling Katie, and she swims the murky course from feculent quicksand to opaque agua to the sucking muck before her mother.
"Clean yourself," Kim commands, "And, do not remove your filthy clothes." A cross index indicates Lok close-by.
Gara and Kim construct further plans. The couple of them can go to check creels previously placed a kilometer north of the current position, for cagey Gorak counseled his clan to set lines while the river was still a creek, as Gara recollects. The creels could contain corpulent crawdads, crotchety crabs, curious clams, freshwater krill, or other appetizing river citizens.
Katie's creator instructs "Cinderella" to clean, crucify, and desiccate any catch while the women are gone. And, don't neglect to help Lok. The nascent nanny goat nods, wrings her wet wear, and winks. She clears the creek cola without uncovering much. Such curries favor with Mom. Kim and Gara walk away.
Katie chatters, "I shall kill time with Kermit here by the kill."
Bullfrogs croak by the river, or "kill" in Empire State colloquial. They consume crickets. Crickets chirp all around. Katie keeps watch on the set net.
Shortly, Katie considers lusty Lok over there lazily basking light brown skin in the sun light. "The cat's away; the mice will play," says she to self.
The incorrigible barefoot beauty creeps toward her luscious boyfriend. The lass tucks her blouse bottom through the shirt's cleavage and exposes her lean belly. She and shaggy-haired Lok could cuddle like koalas. The call of the wild compels Katie to cartoon romance that is about as carnal as carnival caramel or cotton candy. Relax, readers. In the Valley, no one knows what goes on behind closed doors because there are no doors—and none of that.
Up the way, two matriarchs mosey along the meandering, muddy monsoon wash wandering from the far-off mountains through the campo to the massive marchland beyond. Cyclical climate connects all of it. At their elbows, the pair pass an extensive network of cobwebs and those weaves' arachnid occupants. The rising sun illuminates the spiders' strands to shimmering spectacle. Biologist Butler almost covets the bugs' station, for she can imagine how colorful and kaleidoscopic that it must be. Contemplatively, Kim compares the spider's condition, queen of her compact domain, to her own confined by a vast country, this Valley of the Dinosaurs and adjacent domains. What Mrs. Butler wouldn't give to be back in the Big Apple and above the fruited plain.
"Hey look, fruit!" Gara gushes.
In the riverside greenery, there is a glen. And, in the glen, there are clusters of vegetation. And, those verdant clusters contain coconuts, kumquats, cocoa beans, cashew apples, cassava roots, casaba melons, and wild carrots. Gratefully, Gara goes to gather culinary components. Like Betty Crocker, the cavewoman must cater a meal later, and the next days too.
Rarely complacent herself, Kim Butler canvasses the vicinity and quests for something contributive to do. A cell of quebracho trees catches her attention, for it has a clearing beyond it. And, an astute scientist acutely kens that that clear acre conceptually cannot coincide with the corresponding landscape. It perhaps shouldn't be there. Kim moves her khakis for a closer look. Certainly, the conspicuous space must sport something compelling: an expanse of quartz, an elephant charnel, compromising Nixon docs, Folgers coffee crystals, Keebler elves, "the crux of the matter", something.
The inquirer encounters only open space covered by clovered ground and clumps of grass, except for one quadrant. A cactus and a quirk catch Kim's attention. Marine Corporal Butler crosses the clearing to check-out an odd sight.
An unlit coal campfire sits cool and unused. No crackling combustion challenges the church-like quietude covering the immediate area. On a quilt, coarse cups contain a crude consommé unheated and uneaten. Kim notes that the quilt's quillwork comes from outside of the Valley. Camloc and his camel riders (E16) carried such accoutrement, if memory serves. Curiously, accrued clutter is concealed throughout the Kelly clover and grass cover. The collection comes from cultures and locales across this vast country. Kim even espies camera components from the Butler's sunken raft, and she kind of concludes that this camp's people are human packrats. Assiduously, Kim crouches to search for scavenger tracks. The cave-dwellers would be more competent at this task, but Mrs. Butler does discern some scattered natural prints and moccasin impressions.
Behind Mrs. Butler, a concealed cad crawls from a natural culvert and quickly cuts for Kim. But, a crisp stick, on soft soil, crunches underfoot. Kim stands and confronts the klutz. The knave pulls a kris knife. Constantly cool-headed, Kim confidently continues eye contact. Abruptly, the creeper's comrades appear, and they have encircled their prey. From cucullate camouflage, one rises capped in grass like a ghillie suit. He contracts his cowl and shows his craggy face. Kim recognizes Gondor the craven "commandant" who leads a community of nomadic kleptomaniacs who carry on like crows, looting caves across the land (E11). Kitty corner to Gondor, another cloaked kobold comes forth. Along the earth, a couple cullions crawl like worms until rising nigh their kleptocrat. Gondor stands cocky, creepy, and 4.5 cubits tall.
Composed Kim has few collywobbles. Her core is not nervous despite the company encompassing her.
She simply says, "Well, Gondor returns."
"We meet again," Gondor grins giddily.
"Do you want my cash?" New York mocks her mugger.
"Only your cache of supplies," growls greedy Gondor.
The bandits brandish weapons. One crumb raises a cosh, by gosh, to crown Kim. Another a quirt to cane her. Another a slipknot to cull her. Another still carries his quasi-cutlass. And, Gondor has grabbed a chunk of coke from the un-combusted campfire.
Gondor and his goons get ready. For a couple seconds, Kim recollects these uncouth cretins who captured Gara and her a while ago (E11). During the dry season, lightning struck forest and caused a conflagration charring woods and grassland. Passing through, Gondor and his gang neither communicated the spreading danger nor contravened directly. They kept the knowledge of the danger to themselves, for the contemptible crowd conspired to loot the Valley village. Acting in accord, the Butlers and Goraksons combated the fire with their customary classic courage and incredible ingenuity. Acting in collusion, the Gondor tribe took everything from cabbages to fur capes to chili con carne to copper pieces to chisels to crypts' relics to candy from babies to any kitchen sinks that they could have copped. Completely, they took the cake. The crooks also cribbed medicine the qualities of which they didn't comprehend. The toxic compounds could kill them. Without knowledge of the danger, Gondor and gang were about to cancel themselves.
Ever compassionate, Gara wanted to counsel them not to consume the cocaine, caffeine, quinine, curare, constipation cathartics, chewing tobacco, and hard cider in large quantities. Thus, Kim, Gara, and Digger called on the tribe and their teepee city. Like a good Christian or Confucian or other contemplator, gracious Gara proclaimed the cave-dwellers and cave-combers "all one people", requiring respect. Then, together, unchecked fire confined them all like a cord of kindling; smoke and flame threatened to choke and cremate chaps and chichas alike. However, John's fire crew concocted a rescue plan. By their captain's acumen, clever Katie, capable compatriots, and precocious kids plucked limestone from a certain cavern's "batcave" and gathered caustic geyser water that they combined to make a cartload of extinguisher foam, atop a kitbashed carriage. The carbonized fluid—countermeasure—quenched a sea of flames. And, the two peoples, contingents, parted ways.
Now, like coprolite-Köpfe, Gondor's rowdies would rob kind Kim. Conclusively, she resents that. Cpl. Butler cocks a fist before a knucklehead.
"Listen, cookie," Kim chides Gondor, "I coddled you clueless Cro-Magnons last time. I contained my temper. But, if you clods are discourteous to a lady today, there will be consequences. Comprehend?"
From behind, a coot captures defiant Kim and compresses her arms down. He has her cooped-up and corralled-in tight. His kris knife points at her chest, threatening acute cardiac distress. The churls converge like comic-book cannibals. The greedy guerillas move to confiscate her things.
"Shut up, crone," Gondor cracks her one. 'Cause, ain't no cops coming in this 1975. He chortles.
Mama Kim quivers with fury. Years back, she took taekwondo classes in Korea. She has been always itching to use them.
Her head bolts upright backwards. The Brooklyn "broad" Bronx-kisses her captor's chin. She cricks his wrist excruciatingly and cranks him high over her collar. Flung, he collides with firm ground.
Like the Caped Crusader, Kim clocks Gondor. Ka-pow! The blow is almost manifest in mid-air. Like a sidekick, her whipping boot clips the quirt guy onto his keister. Like Yvonne Craig, Kim Butler knees the abdominal cavity and claps the ears of "King Coal". Like Chief O'Hara. . . . . Well, like Commissioner Gordon. . . . . Okay, like a champion, Kim cries or kihups, to use taekwondo diction, and she chops an incoming cosh in twain. But, the cogent strike nearly cripples her hand! She isn't Kryptonian.
"Time out," declares cranky Kim.
The surrounding curs caterwaul and counterattack. Gondor reconvenes fisticuffs. A keen blade cuts khaki. Like Santa Claus, a fur-clad chubby old "elf" comes with coal. Another cuss kicks her calf. Another tough customer tosses a broken club.
Covering up, Kim recalibrates her battleplan. Kim could use currently a big cow horn. But, not as a claymore sword. Rather, her cave clan commonly uses kudu horns or conch shells as klaxons in crises. Instead, to her chagrin, Cpl. Butler must make a crow call. But, her long-distance caw can't possibly carry far. Kim has a confounding quandary: outdoor acoustics.
Yet, like the cavalry, Gara arrives. Somehow, Oola Oop has great instincts or great ears. (You cannot conceive how comprehensively modern noise pollution corrupts contemporary cochleae). Grandly ululating, Gara engages the enemy. The charging "worst nightmare" chucks icky contaminant: spider cocoons (snatched from the stream shore). Grody grapeshot contacts the countenance of "King Coal". The cases break. A cone of spiderlings covers consternated face. A cloud of creepy-crawlies chivvies contracted chest. The coward's blood-curdling scream sends gluey glop, gross gossamer, glomming grit, and quarrelsome cargo down his gullet. Coated and queasy, the gagging goon flees.
Glaring like gorgons, contentious as Gemini, Gonzo Gara and crazed Kim go to work on guilty, nigh guileless, grievous aggressors.
Gara gabbles another war cry. Growling like a bear, Gara gesticulates wildly at two thieves. They gander quizzically. The dual dunces wonder what she is doing.
"I guess you forgot your gris-gris, witch woman," states one slack-jaw.
"Girls shouldn't grapple with us unless they want swollen eyes and swollen bellies," the other glibly gibes.
Goaded, Gara's goat is gotten. Gravid with rage, she summons savage animus suppressed for some time. You see, Valley cavefolks have created a crude kung-fu emulating the animals. After all, man (or woman) is clever, but a person is not always as powerful as the predator, pachyderm, or spry prey. So, the wise man cultivates both mind and might.
The cartoon chauvinist advances whipping his quirt pluckily. A crane kick punts the leather crop. Neebra-claw technique slices the cheesy chav's nose, and the cut cheddarhead kvetches "gouda". Gara catches her conquest and quashes foot like Gondo the mastodon. She would gore him if she could. He knells, kneels, and collapses.
The crumb bum's buddy quickens. Face contorted, he cuts curving arcs in the air like an incensed knight. His crisscrossing kris still hasn't quit. He commences circuitous slashes like a chronicled cavalier. An ursine swat, like a cave bear, knocks the knife clean away. Quixotic cave-queen's fist cobra-strikes plain fool. His green teeth fall like croutons to the grass. Seeing birdies, the brute brandishes only a chipped and gummy smile. Gara gets out basic, bone nunchaku and whumps a chump while, somewhere, '70s funk contributes the soundtrack to our story's indecorous, outdated, questionable, censurable chop-socky action from the "uncivilized" last century, per current captious crowds.
Concurrently to Gara's brawl, Kim unreservedly clashes with King Kong Gondor and his remaining guy. Butler brings up her dukes. Bereft of weaponry, "King Kong" and "Josh Cosh" ape her. The bad guys beat their chests. Ma Butler boosts her bosom and beckons "come on". Cautiously, Goliath and his guard approach hard-Corps Kim cracking her knuckles and neck.
She queries, "Are you cowards going to queue up nicely? Or, do I have to chase you? Come on. You couple are being such fraidy-cats that you ought to wear skirts!"
The dudes do, in fact, have on comfortable, coordinated, catskin sarongs. And, they can't be sorry or contrite about Kim's crude and close-minded characterization. Even Cro-Magnon criminals celebrate a complex culture daily.
Thus, Gondor kvells, "I weigh o'er a quintal and stand a canyon's height! By Crom, Katara the Iguanodon [E13] is not more cruel or cunning! I, Gondor, steal like a ghost, run like a greased Glump, fight like an alligator gar, chew granite, and heft glaciers! You are outclassed!"
Kim comments, "How the heck do you know what an 'Iguanodon' is? You're a monkey's uncle."
The grouchy gorilla grinds his teeth. Gondor conversely grills, "Since the great fire, how the blazes do you know we haven't gratified ourselves in the Valley? Iguanodon graced a graph in Gorak's grotto. It was your gift to me, Kim. I also gulped your grape juice and claimed your cushion."
Kim converses, "Was the straw and cylinder separate from the central cavern?"
"Yeah," Gondor grants.
Kim discloses that Butlers recently designed a commode for their compatriots. In that side chamber, the new chamber pot sits beside the old "can". So. . . . .
Aggrieved Gondor grouses, "No! I smell like goat, and. . . . ."
"You got that right," Kim quips like kid Katie. Smirking, she conspires to keep the contrived gag "ambiguous", shall we say. Call it psychological chess.
A chump and his chum charge carelessly. Butler's boot bounces the big guy back, and her knife-hand (strike) gores the other greaser. Gut-punched, Gondor's geek gawps and groans, his morning gruel collywobbled. Cooing gutturally, he caresses crammed belly above cramping legs. Like a Rockette, Kim Butler uppercuts his chin, and the punk falls—kaput.
Gondor the Gladiator recoups and reattacks. To his credit, the cutthroat gulls Kim. He engages her frontally, glides past her flank, and then grafts giant hands to her neck. Grendel's grip grates cervical vertebrae and gullet. And, the grudge-holder greets the instant karma that's going to get her (maybe, Gondor pirated from John Lennon too). But, like Beowulf, Butler's strength exceeds "Grendel's", just as the ogre's mother's might eclipsed his own. Certifiably, she is cleverer than he. Classifiably, the gal just has more gumption. She feigns concession and sinks to her knees. The tall clamped crook cants forward, for he can't not change his center of gravity. Cocksure, he loosens his grip, convinced of a contest won. Granted, her neck didn't crack, but chumps sometime count chickens before they hatch. Excited saliva drool glazes Kim's cheek.
However, having gestated, the chick comes alive. With consolidated fury, the firecracker—in concert—forcefully chops a galoot's girthy wrists—sending them forward. By scientific criteria, Kim cannily chooses Gondor's grip's weakest point. The thumbs unlatch from her neck, and the fingers come free. Liberated, the lady contender tumbles backward between her off-balance foe's garters and girded loins. With (cartoonish) kismet, she backrolls between his legs. Behind cad's kilt, supine Kim kicks, each combat boot, like a cannon. Crural cartilage quits bicamerally. The femoral biceps crease convexly, and Gondor kneels. Continuing down, the colossal kleptocrat keels over, keister up, contrary to conqueror Kim. His face indecorously plants. His neck cracks painfully but does not crap out.
Glum Gondor cantors, "Oooow."
Kim handstands erect and flips to her feet. She chats, "Our quibble is over, correct? I would like to aid and console you."
Kowtowing west, Gondor corroborates that he cooperates with Kim. "Curses, foiled again," he quaintly mutters.
Kim claims victory, and the (bad) mother quickly constructs calipers (i.e. splints) and crutches. Gara doctors cuts, bruises, and concussions. The couple direct that Gondor and his crew had best keep out of the Valley. Or else, face the consequences of crossing Kim Butler and her battlin' buddy.
The unconquered pioneer women depart the clearing and walk. Kim and Gara hold quorum while returning to a quotidian existence.
"Don't tell the men that we can fight," goads Gorak's Gara.
"They would be self-conscious," Cpl. Kim chuckles over the usually comfortable context, copied continually, that keeps her kept.
Although, from her childhood to current times, change occurs. Constantly, every day and every century, people have compassion, common sense, common decency, civic duty, a congenial spirit of cooperation across factions, complex minds, a cosmopolite's comprehensive and clear vision, necessary courage, confident optimism, and good intentions. Change is always coming.
"Hmph, guys," grunts Gara.
