Chapter 6: Welcome Wagon
It was strange, Evanor thought, that nobody came to visit to see whether she needed anything, not even her best friend Dorka. Not that she needed anything in particular, really. The delivery had not been so bad. There hadn’t been any complications where she was concerned. Lem seemed perfectly healthy. He took his fill of milk at her breasts, God bless him. He was quiet, she told herself. There was so much she wanted to say about him, to tell her friends. She was so proud of every coo and burble that escaped his lips but there was nobody to tell, no one with whom to share her first experiences of motherhood.

Lem seemed like a happy baby. He never ever cried. He slept most of the night. When Thort or Evanor would get up at night and check on Lem, sometimes they’d see him lying on his back, his little arms and legs flailing, looking towards them and smiling. Lem didn’t seem anything like Sangor, at least the way Dorka told it.

It was like Lem’s birth didn’t count, Evanor thought bitterly. The neighbor women pushed their babycarts around proudly, like there was a trophy inside instead of a baby, and shared their child-raising experiences as though they were the wisdom of the elders to anyone who hadn’t had their own baby yet. To tell the truth, Evanor was a bit envious of that. She wanted to share the wisdom she’d acquired from raising Lem. She had earned the right to be respected too. Instead, it was as though she were invisible.

Sometimes Evanor and her family were not invisible, and then it was worse for them. When Lem was three months old, Evanor said it was high time they attended church. Thort didn’t have much patience for church in general and preachers in particular. They were pretty useless, as far as he was concerned, and religion seemed to put people up to no good. The only thing the church was good for was dying and getting yourself buried. Thort kept his opinions to himself since it was important to Evanor to stay on the good side of church society and she wanted little Lem to be raised properly. Thort refused to go to church every Godsday but once in a while was tolerable. He told Evanor, with his side-mouthed sense of humor, that if he’d go to church every Godsday, he might want to become a preacher and live off the alms of honest working people instead of working in the mine from first dawn to last dusk. She’d heard that so often that she didn’t laugh anymore, but he got a good snort every time he said it.

Evanor dressed Lem in the finest clothes she’d made for him, knitting near the kettle fire in their kitchen. She wrapped him in a warm blanket. When they were all ready to leave for church, Thort bent down and picked his tiny son up ever so gently. Evanor never ceased to be amazed by her gentle brute of a husband whose heart had been so thoroughly conquered by such a frail wisp of a child. Thort carried the bundle of Lem in the crook of his thick arm through the door. Lem’s blue eyes seemed to widen in his blue face.

When they approached the church gate, Evanor and Thort heard the sounds of people who hadn’t seen each other since last Godsday talking to catch up with events that had transpired before the preacher began the service. Evanor straightened her hair as they walked up the steps and through the tall wide doors.

The sounds of friendly conversation seemed to dry up in the desiccated air. They were replaced by a thick unbreathable atmosphere of unfriendly silence. Thort and Evanor walked down the middle aisle looking for a place for them to sit. Lem also looked out of his swaddling clothes. There was room for them to sit in the middle of the pews, but nobody welcomed them to sit next to them or made room for them to pass, not even Thort’s co-workers from the mine. Evanor saw Thort heading for the last pew near the door and knew that look of determination on his face that nothing or no one was going to stop him from clearing a path for his beloved family. She put her hand on his throbbing shoulder and said to him, “Come, let’s go home, please Thort, let’s just go home.”

They walked out of the church and Thort slammed the heavy doors shut with all his might. Evanor thought the doors would explode off their hinges. They went home. Evanor never asked Thort to go back.

When the fuss appeared to be over, the preacher walked into the large room where everybody sat expectantly. The preacher’s robes scuffed the wooden steps as he ascended to the platform where he would deliver his sermon to the congregation. “Blue is the color of abomination in the eyes of our Lord … He shall smite it down with His righteous arm!” the preacher worked himself up to a feverish pitch.

One night when Lem was six months old, Evanor heard him coughing hoarsely in his crib. She got up quickly and went to see what was wrong. Lem was breathing raspy breaths and coughing something frightful. She didn’t know what to do. Thort had jumped out of bed and was pacing back and forth uselessly. She sat with Lem on the chair rocking him back and forth, trying to soothe him against her warm breast. Evanor sang whatever lullabies she knew and eventually, he stopped his coughing fit. He was still breathing with difficulty and looked into his mother’s eyes helplessly. Evanor sang lullabies all night.

In the morning, after Thort had left for work reluctantly, Evanor wrapped Lem up and put him in the babycart. He was still breathing raspy-like. She pushed him out the door and through the street all the way to the doctor’s house.

She carried Lem into the waiting room. There were two other mothers with sick children in their arms. They both looked at Evanor and Lem, as though she’d brought an animal into the doctor’s clinic, and then they went on talking, ignoring her. The door opened to the doctor’s office. A woman walked out carrying her baby in her arms. Evanor thought she recognized her, but she wasn’t sure because the woman didn’t seem to recognize Evanor. One of the two women got up with her baby to enter the doctor’s office and closed the door behind her. After she came out and left, the other woman and baby entered the office and closed the door. Evanor listened to Lem’s labored breathing. She was so anxious she felt like bursting through the door of the doctor’s office. Finally, the door opened and the kind-eyed white-haired doctor came through it into the waiting room. He looked at Evanor and down at Lem, and back at Evanor.

“Doctor, he was coughing terribly all last night and he is breathing terribly…” she said to him.

“You should have let him die the day he was born,” the doctor said. “What kind of life do you expect for him? You’ll all be better off when he is dead. I know you don’t understand that now but you will sooner or later…”

Evanor could not believe her ears. She wanted to scream at the doctor. “Please Doctor,” she pleaded, “make my baby well again … just this time! Please, God!”

“He’s already dead,” the doctor said, “you just don’t see it. Please leave my office. Go back home … There’s nothing I can do for you!”

“You mean there’s nothing you will do for my son, you monster!” Evanor rose from her seat with Lem in her arms and stormed out of the house, so angry with the doctor that she forgot the babycart.

After three nights, Lem’s breathing eased a little. His cough lessened and was less frequent. Evanor sensed Lem was getting better and she told Thort because he worried so and didn’t know what to do.

After a week, Lem was back to normal.

Lem never saw another human doctor.

Chapter 7: Invisible Fortress
Somehow Lem survived his first 36 months. How he loved his mother’s singing. Sometimes Evanor would sing the lullabies she remembered from her childhood. Sometimes she would make up the words as she went along and sometimes she’d just hum melodies. Evanor sang when she fed Lem and sang when she dressed him and bathed him. Little Lem’s blue eyes would widen to swallow her whole and he’d smile for all he was worth. Evanor’s and Thort’s hearts would melt just to talk about how he smiled as though that were the only thing that made their dismal lives worth living.

One evening Thort came home with a cloth bag under his arm. Lem looked up at his father expectantly. Thort laid the bag on the wooden table by the door and swooped down on Lem picking him up high in the air and lowering him gently for a fatherly kiss. Lem’s eyes averted to the bag on the table. Evanor asked Thort what was in the bag. Thort said it was a surprise. Lem leaned toward the bag with his thin arms pointing at it. “Very well,” Thort said in a mock gruff voice. He set Lem down on the floor and handed the bag gently to Lem. Lem’s eye’s widened. He looked into the bag and pulled out a longbow with a ribbon of drac hairs stretched between the two ends of the bow. Lem pulled out the fiddle from the bag. He looked from the fiddle to the bow and back to the fiddle. Lem turned the fiddle over and looked at the strings of drac hairs stretched tautly over the bridge. There were thicker strings and thinner strings. He looked at the tuning pegs. The body of the fiddle was made of skagwood. Lem felt the smooth wood against his blue cheeks. He closed his eyes and smiled.

Thort asked Lem, “Aren’t you gonna try to play it?” Thort picked up the fiddle and scratched the bow across the fiddle strings. Lem closed his eyes and covered his ears with his hands.

“There go a month’s wages,” Thort sulked under his breath.

Evanor said, “I think he likes it very much … He just doesn’t like it when you play it. Let’s hang it on the wall where Lem can see it.”

Thort got a hammer and pounded some pegs into the wall. He hanged the fiddle and bow on the wall. When he finished, Lem closed his eyes and smiled. “I guess Lem’s smile was worth a month’s wages,” Thort said to Evanor and kissed her.

A couple months later, Evanor found a job as a seamstress at a local clothes factory. Her wages would help with their expenses but, best of all, there was a communal day-care near the factory where she could leave Lem while she worked. Evanor laid out Lem’s clothes and he dressed himself. She took hold of his hand and they walked all the way to the day-care. She opened the gate for Lem and they walked up the flagstone path to the door. Evanor peeked in through the doorway. She saw the children playing and the toys strewn over the floor. In the corner sat an obese woman whose age was impossible to ascertain. She was smoking a thick cigar and reading a newspaper. The fat woman looked beadily over the open newspaper and through the cigar smoke at Evanor and that little blue devil by her side, sizing them up and down. “Well, are you coming in or ain’t you?” she asked Evanor coldly. “Don’t make much matter to me, one way or the other.” The children looked at Lem and back at each other smirking. Evanor recognized Dorka’s child, Sangor, playing with a group of children and thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad for Lem after all.

“His name is Lem. He’s a good little boy and…” Evanor answered hopefully.

“Don’t much care what the little devil’s name is, do I?” the fat woman said. “As long as he keeps to himself and don’t cause no trouble, we’ll get along just fine.” She’d thought about telling Evanor to take her little devil and get out of her house, but she needed the money. In any case, there’d be hell to pay when the other parents found out there was a blue devil playing with their children. She’d think about that later.

“Please ma’am,” Evanor pleaded, “he’s a good little boy and I’ll be back for him before the other mothers come to collect their children.” She led him over to a corner where the blocks were. She bent down to kiss Lem and whispered in his ear that she would come back for him as soon as she could. Lem watched Evanor as she turned away from him and walked to the door. She didn’t want Lem to see the tears in her eyes.

The door closed and Lem was alone without his parents for the first time in his short life. He looked expectantly at the children playing near him. He listened to them talk to each other and learned the rules of their games which they made up as they went along. He waited for them to invite him into their games. He smiled when they smiled, but they weren’t smiling at him. When they did notice him, they usually made mean faces and jeered at him threateningly. Lem quickly stopped smiling.

He looked at the blocks in the box by the wall. They were soft and oversized. He smiled at the blocks. At least they didn’t jeer back at him. He picked one up out of the box and laid it on the floor. He picked up another and laid it down beside the first. Lem picked up another block and another, laying them down so that they encircled him. Then he put a layer of blocks on top of the first blocks. Lem built another layer of blocks on the first two layers. The other children, including Sangor, were watching Lem building this strange fortress of blocks higher and higher, until they couldn’t see Lem inside.

Lem sat quietly inside his fortress and ate the sandwich his mother had prepared for him. He hummed a lullaby to himself and felt safe inside.

Sangor whispered something to his friends and they laughed at what he had said. Sangor got up and walked over to Lem’s fortress. While looking at his friends to make sure they were watching, he pushed against the fortress slowly until the blocks tumbled down on top of Lem. One of the blocks had a sharp corner which cut Lem’s upper lip as it grazed past him. The cut stung a little and he licked the salty trickle of blue blood.

Sangor skipped back to his group of friends in triumphant syncopation. The fat woman squinted through the smoke of her cigar at the hateful blue child. He won’t last long here, she harrumphed to herself.

Lem stood up amid the tumbled blocks. He collected the blocks and put them back in the box by the wall. Lem turned to look at Sangor and his friends. Unable to read them he looked at the fat woman smoking a cigar, reading her newspaper. She was as unreadable as the children. Lem turned back to the box of blocks and reached in with both hands and pulled out apparently nothing at all. His two hands seemed to be pressed against a big invisible block. Lem laid it on the floor carefully. He picked up another invisible block and laid it down beside the first. Lem picked up another and another, laying them down around him. He laid a layer of invisible blocks on top of the first one. Lem built another layer on the first two layers. The other children, including Sangor, were watching Lem building this apparently invisible fortress of blocks higher and higher. When he had finished, he sat on the floor inside of it.

Sangor got up and walked over to Lem’s invisible fortress. He looked at his friends to make sure they were watching and pushed against the fortress walls slowly until he lost his balance. Sangor nearly fell on Lem but Lem moved so quickly that the other children could not believe their eyes. One moment Lem was sitting next to Sangor’s knees and the next moment Lem was standing near the box by the wall. Sangor fell on the floor and hurt his knee. The other children laughed and Sangor blushed with anger. He rose quickly and lunged at Lem, but suddenly Lem was standing in the other corner. Sangor ran at Lem and began to flail at him with his fists but he never made contact with Lem. The children laughed again. Sangor walked back to his friends, jerking his thumb up and back at Lem, saying look at that scared blue baby.

Good to her word Evanor arrived before the other mothers. She saw Lem sitting by himself silently and her heart was pierced. She went straight to Lem without asking the vile woman how Lem’s day had been. Evanor took Lem’s hand and they walked past her. “Don’t bother bringing him back tomorrow,” the fat woman said. “He’s a trouble maker, that one. One of the kids over there got hurt because of him and there’ll be hell to pay when his parents find out.” She tossed back her head and exhaled a flume of cigar smoke. Her hand flinched with a desire to smack the blue devil, to teach him a thing or two about his betters, but she realized she was too old and slow to do so.

At the door, Evanor turned to say, “Lem’s not a mean child. I’m sure you were all perfectly evil to him.” They walked through the door without waiting for a response.

The next morning at the mine Javid made sure he was working in the same part of the shaft as Thort. “You keep your kid away from my Sangor,” Javid told Thort, “if you know what’s good for you.”

Thort’s anger rose in his throat. “Lem was minding his own business,” he said. “It’s your boy who caused all the trouble!”

“That ain’t what the old lady told Dorka,” Javid raised his voice.

“Well, she’s lying!” Thort said.

“Who are you calling a liar, you whoreson?” Javid shot back.

Thort’s fist came from nowhere and hit Javid squarely on his jaw. Javid licked blood from his cheek and smiled at Thort crazy-like. He plowed into Thort, knocking him to the hard ground. Javid was on top of Thort pummeling his face, while Thort tried to turn over and lift himself up where he’d have an advantage over Javid. The other miners gathered around to see the fight and size up the fighters. They shouted encouragement to Javid and taunts to Thort. Thort twisted his body around so that Javid was pummeling his back and neck instead of his face. Slowly Thort rose up to his feet and Javid slid away. Thort punched Javid in the stomach lifting him off the ground slightly.

One of the miners shouted, “Hey, the assistant manager’s coming!” The other miners pulled Thort and Javid apart but Javid wriggled loose and kicked Thort in the groin.

“Who started it?” the assistant manager asked, looking at Thort, Javid, and the rest of the miners.

One of the miners said he saw Thort take a swing at Javid first. The others nodded in agreement. Neither Javid nor Thort said anything.

The assistant manager turned to Thort and said, “If you cause any more trouble, I’ll kick you out of the mine myself!”

Chapter 8: The Local Tavern
The horn blew loud and shrill in the mine shafts, informing the miners that their shift had ended. The first batch of men put away their shovels and pickaxes in the boxes by the main elevator shaft and filed onto the wooden elevator platform while the others waited for the elevator to return. Javid and most of Thort’s work buddies shoved their way onto the platform, leaving Thort and the miners from the other shafts to wait for the next elevator. The wired doors closed flimsily and the platform started to rise, creaking and groaning under the weight of the miners. Every man in the elevator said a little prayer that this would not be the night the elevator fell in the shaft.

After a maddeningly long time, the elevator returned to the waiting miners. Thort pushed his way onto the platform. He was pressed tightly against the other miners. He looked forward to drowning his pain and his troubles in some good brew with his buddies at the local tavern. He’d try to smooth things over with Javid. Thort didn’t want any trouble with his neighbors or co-workers.

Evanor knew Thort would stop at the tavern on his way home. He needed to unwind with his friends at least once a week. Thort saw the welcome lights streaming out of the windows of the tavern at the end of the road and could hear the raucous music and manly laughter spurt out every time the doors opened. Finally, he arrived. Thort walked through the doors and looked around the crowded room for his buddies. He saw them sitting at the long table by the far wall. They already had their tankards of brew in front of them. They were laughing and talking and poking each other. Thort walked toward them with a wide-open smile on his face, which soon disappeared. His friends had spotted him and stopped talking and laughing for a moment, but nobody moved aside to make room for him. They turned back to their laughing and talking and poking.

Thort found a small table nearby with a single chair nobody had taken yet. He sat down and made a drinking sign to the mistress of the tavern to bring him a tankard of the usual. When it eventually arrived, Thort slaked his tremendous thirst and dulled his pains, but his heart wasn’t in it. There wasn’t much point to it if he wasn’t drinking with his buddies, was there?

Thort could see Javid drinking with his buddies at the long table and hear him telling everybody his side of events at the mine that day. Javid was telling his buddies that if Thort were to show his ugly Rat-loving face at work tomorrow, he had better keep out of Javid’s way or Javid would give him another blue eye. Thort heard Javid’s threats and his buddies’ jeers.

Thort stood up unsteadily, upsetting his table. His tankard of brew crashed and spilled on the floor by his feet. He picked up the small table and threw it at Javid, hitting him hard and knocking him over in his chair. Thort was standing over Javid, legs planted on either side of Javid’s capsized chair. The buddies pulled Thort away from Javid and held his arms while Javid got up and hit Thort hard in the face and stomach. Several buddies took turns punching Thort wherever they found an opening, with a few carefully placed kicks to the groin just to make sure Thort couldn’t sire any more blue babies. Thort doubled over vomiting on the floor. Javid swung his knee up hard into Thort’s face breaking his nose and two teeth. Thort’s head flew back almost breaking the nose of the man who held Thort’s arms. Javid’s thick fist punched deep into Thort’s solar plexus and he slumped heavily to the ground barely breathing.

After Thort lost consciousness, the buddies dragged him out of the tavern and threw him into the road. The tavern owner followed the men out and stuffed a bill for brew and damages into Thort’s shirt pocket.

Javid and his friends went back into the tavern, picked up the chair, setting it right again, and ordered another round of brew.

When Thort regained consciousness the tavern windows were dark and silence issued from the padlocked doors. He pulled himself up on one knee to determine whether he could stop the world from spinning around him. Everything hurt and he had the taste of dirt and blood in his mouth. He tried to stand up but the pain in his groin made him double over. He tried again more slowly this time. He took a step and a sharp pain shot through his groin. He took another step and another.

Thort hobbled up the road slowly until he reached the gate to his house. He opened the gate and nearly passed out before reaching the steps. He dragged his right leg up the three steps until he stood in front of the door. Evanor opened the front door in her nightgown and gasped. Lem stood behind his mother horrified in the rawest of silence at what he saw.

She tried to support his tremendous weight, maneuvering him to the sofa. He fell backward onto the sofa and laid his head back. She went to the kitchen to bring strips of cloth and a bucket of water. “What have they done to you,” she asked him over and over, not waiting for or expecting an answer. She dabbed his gashes and bruises with water-soaked cloth strips. She had to go back to the kitchen to change the water in the bucket many times.

Thort fell asleep on the sofa. She didn’t have the heart to wake him and try to get him up the stairs into their bed. She went upstairs to get the quilt blanket and bring it down to cover him. She slipped inside the quilt blanket and pressed her warm body against his. She couldn’t sleep.

There were only two hours left before first dawn. He couldn’t miss a day of work.

Chapter 9: Dolarosa
It was still night when Thort woke up. The only part of him that didn’t hurt was Evanor, asleep beside him. He tried to move carefully not to disturb her. He recovered her with the quilted blanket. He wanted to bend down to kiss her but his back throbbed too painfully for that.

Thort went to the kitchen, relit the candle, put some wood in the stove, and kindled a fire in it. He splashed cold water on his bruised puffy face. He moved his tongue tentatively over the missing tooth.

Thort boiled a pot of coffee on the stove and cut half a loaf of yesterday’s bread for his breakfast. He put the rest of the loaf in a sack to take with him to the mine. He sat down at the table and gulped down coffee between munches of bread. He noticed Lem sitting silently across from him at the table. Thort was used to Lem’s quick and quiet ways. He winked at his son to show him he didn’t have to worry.

Thort kissed Lem on his forehead and went out the back door with the sack of bread in his left hand. He reached the mine just before the horn blew for the start of the shift. He pushed his way onto the elevator. The rancid odor of the men around him permeated Thort’s nostrils. He was in good company. Most of the other men on the platform, like him, had slept the previous night in the clothes they were wearing to work this morning, but Thort’s clothes were also stained with blood and mud.

Thort avoided contact with Javid and his co-workers. He worked at the other end of the shaft, striking the walls with his pickax and shoveling the rocks and grit into the shuttle car behind him. He tried to keep pace with his buddies at the other end of the shaft but the pain of his wounds and the bandages slowed him down.

The assistant manager told Thort that if he did not shape up and work with his team, he could turn in his pick ax and shovel and look for another line of work. Thort tried to pick up the pace of his work but everyone could see that he was falling behind.

At the end of his shift, Thort was told to come to the assistant manager’s office. He stood in front of the AM’s desk. He had been too proud to go back to work with the same men who had talked about his kid and worked him over the way they did. To hell with the job and the damned assistant manager!

The AM told Thort unceremoniously to take his last wages and get the hell out of his mine.

Chapter 10: A New Beginning
Thort came home to his wife and told her he’d been fired. Evanor had had to quit her job at the factory to stay at home with Lem because there was no one else to care for him. There was no other work in the village for Thort besides the mine.

He could have stayed home with Lem while Evanor went to work as a seamstress but there wouldn’t have been enough wages to survive on. Besides that, Thort didn’t have the soft kind of intimacy with Lem that Evanor seemed to have. Thort loved Lem but it was a gruff sort of love. It was as though Evanor and Lem shared a single heartbeat.

“We have to leave,” Thort said finally. “There’s nothing left for us here.”

“I know,” Evanor said and forced a smile on her face. “It will work out for the best. You’ll see. We’ll make a new beginning.”

Thort picked up her thread of hope. “Maybe we’ll leave this grey and dreary sector altogether. I hear there’s farming work to be done over in Sector 87. It’d be nice to breathe fresh air and see a bit of blue sky … to let the sun warm my sore bones.”

Lem was also caught up in this net of hope. He said with a big smile and eyes like searchlights scanning his parents’ faces, “Maybe I’ll find some friends who’ll play with me!”

Then it was decided. Thort used most of his wages to purchase a wooden cart with decent wheels and axles to transport their few belongings. Their house belonged to the mining company so there was not much they could convert to money or barter script, so a drac to pull the cart was out of the question. Thort would have to pull it himself. Thort removed the fiddle and bow from the pegs in the wall. Lem’s eyes locked onto Thort’s, but he looked away saying, “I’m sorry Lem. We’ll need the money to eat.”

Lem said nothing but imagined the scales running parallel in four keys all the way up to a note that nobody else could hear. Thort walked out the door with the fiddle and bow under his arm.

When Thort returned empty-handed, he explained to no one in particular that he was only able to get back half what he’d paid for it.

Evanor said, “That’s all right. We’ll get by. Don’t you worry.”

The rain had been falling steadily for the last several days. The winds whistled through the naked branches of the trees along the row of similar houses. Thort had rigged an oil-soaked blanket over the cart to protect their cartons of food and clothing. He picked Lem up easily, swung him over the sideboard of the wagon, and told him to sit under the blanket to keep dry. It would be hard enough to pull the wagon through the mud of the road so Evanor walked beside Thort as he trudged along gripping the thick handles of the wagon meant for drac pulling.

They didn’t look back or anywhere but forward as they advanced up the row road past Dorka and Javid’s house and the houses of other neighbors who watched them from heartless windows. Thort pulled the wagon past the Church of God’s Forsaken in the middle of the village. He pulled it past the midwife’s cabin and then the last house on the outskirts of the village. The ruts in the muddy road crisscrossed and deepened from lack of maintenance and the pulling became more difficult.

The daylight was ebbing. Thort pulled the wagon off the road behind a clump of young skagwood trees. Thort helped Evanor climb into the wagon and slip under the oiled blanket with Lem. Then he climbed into the wagon and slipped under the blanket so that Lem was warmed and secure between them. Thort reached into one of the food cartons and pulled out a half loaf of bread Evanor had baked that morning. He tore off hunks for Lem and Evanor, and a small piece for himself. They chewed slowly in silence contemplating, each according to his own ability, the path that lay ahead of them.

The pain in his shoulders and legs overlaid the other pains from the brawl at the tavern two nights ago. The unfamiliar sounds of the forest also made it difficult for Thort to drift off to sleep. What would be tomorrow? He tried to calculate how far he could spread their meager food supply…

Thick raindrops thrummed and thumped the oiled blanket over their heads. Soon Thort slipped into a blessed dreamless sleep beside the soft snoring of his wife and child.