Dewdrops

Oleg Volk

Sixty miles north of Latterdale is a tiny nameless lake surrounded by
cabins.  Most of them are old prefab affairs put in as summer escapes and
built upon by their subsequent, more permanent residents.  None of these
dwellings were easy to find and this one was no exception. It stood to the
side of a dirt trail which went to the lake.  The careless paint job, grey
with black specks, made it blend into the birch undergrowth.  An ancient man
that lived there, tall and severe, was up and about early.

From where the old man stood, a scant hundred feet away, the cabin was
already barely visible.  The abundant dew of an early summer morning had
already darkened his pants and chilled his pale bare feet.  The man stepped
carefully, trying to avoid the wet vegetation. From time to time, he bent to
set down a faceted glass he had in his hand onto the damp black earth. Then
he would reach to his belt, flick open a small knife and cut a wildflower
with it. After placing the flower, a lily of the valley, carefully into the
glass, he would wipe the blade on his jeans, fold it and clip it back to his
belt.

Some time has passed and the man finished his slow, deliberate sortie.  He
started toward home with light, flowing steps carrying him noiselessly to
the veranda of the cabin.  The wooden steps creaked slightly as he mounted
them easily, the glass in his hand unwavering.  A screen door separated the
den from the outside.  He tried to nudge it aside with his right shoulder
without much success.

The old man was preoccupied with keeping the dewdrops on the bouquet in his
glass undisturbed.  In his bid to open the door without shaking the glass,
he nearly lost his balance and the heavy holstered Webley that hanged from his
left side hit the siding with a thud.  He winced, squatted and set the
flowers on the floorboards of the veranda.  Then his adjusted the shoulder
holster with a practiced, impatient flourish and grasped the door handle
with his right hand.

Inside, he set his improvised vase onto a light wooden tray.  A napkin in a
silver ring was placed by it.  The old man considered the early dawn light
outside and walked to the kitchenette.  There he put on water to boil,
covering the teapot spout with a bit of sponge to keep it from whistling.
He sat down, pulled up a ceramic platter and began to arrange paper-thin
slices of venison alternating with chunks of crispbread and spicy hard
cheese.

The dew on the leaves beaded prettily, refracting the room around them.  The
tiny white flowers held onto their dewdrops as well, listing heavily past
the edges of the glass.  Those droplets were beautiful, ephemeral and
fragile yet life-giving, just like his wife.  He remembered the day when he
had first noticed her.  Unlike most men, he also remembered the day when he
had noticed dew.

They were married four years back then and ready to start on kids.  But the
thunder was on the horizon and so they sought to wait out the troubles.  One
day their truck rounded a curve past a rare hill in the otherwise flat
Dellie County and drove right into a roadblock.  He was at the wheel then
and turned hard onto a dirt road on their right.  The people manning the
roadblock opened up through the thick cloud of dust their wheels kicked up.
He got hit in the arm almost at once but kept the pedal floored.  The gained
a quarter mile when a freak hit stopped the heavy vehicle for good.
He went into a shock then, barely aware of the pain as his wife  dragged him out
of the cab and behind a pile of rocks left there by farmers.  When the dust
settled, their ambushers closed in and set the truck on fire.  The nearest
of them got to about two hundred yards when Reiko centerpunched him.  The
rest fell back, one limping badly.  That was their mistake, as she outranged
them. They could not drive off nor take their prey down, but they could
stand off, keep her pinned down and buy time.

The old man glanced at the watch he left at the table and sighed. It was
noon when they got ambushed.  By nightfall, he had become feverish. They had
no water and thirst threatened to finish what the machine pistols of the
enemy had started.

The full moon saved them as the attackers stayed in the ditch by the
highway.  Trained men would have flanked them in the dark but these were
only jaybooters, well-armed but not so well trained or brave.  Those huddled
for warmth and to keep the fear of darkness away.  By morning, Reiko found
water.  She had crawled to a depression in the ground where a few low shrubs
provided shade for the wildflowers.  Those she picked with the kind of care
that misers reserve for gold and sappers, for mines.

He thought it a bad jest when she crawled back with lilies of the valley in
her outstretched hand.  His glasses lost, he could barely see the closest
blossoms glistening with the drops of the dew.

"Water," she whispered.

The enemy had opened up then and several clumps of dirt kicked up by bullets
marred the perfection of the offering.  He licked the wet leaves anyway,
feebly, selfishly.  A close report hammered on his ears but so tired he was
that he did not even flinch.

He passed out shortly thereafter. As dusk approached, the jaybooters tried
to rush them, three covering, three running forward with a disdain for cover
born of desperation.  Two of the attackers came back after their
front-runner pitched forward, legs still treading but most of the head gone.
That night the jaybooters left.  Reiko probed their egressing cruisers with
her 338 but, fatigued as she was, ineffectively.  Two hours later she dozed
off for the first time in two days and slept for a long time.
Water came to a boil and the old man brewed smoky Japanese tea in a dark,
heavy bowl.

He thought again to the day when he woke up feeling light and unreal. He was
too weak to move and that is why it took him a day to miss his left arm.
His wife was next to him, breathing too softly for him to notice.
She had carried his limp, filthy body to the makeshift hospital set up by
the Marines in Jumo.  It took her two days and all of her strength to cover
the eight-mile distance to town.  She never did recover completely from that
strain.  But she has stood by him in the fifty-six years that had passed
since.  She had borne his children, fought for him again in '21, aged
gracefully and now slept fitfully in the back of their tiny home.

The old man picked up the tray with the tea bowl and the flowers and went
into the bedroom.  There he set the tray on the small folding table at the
head of the bed and made himself comfortable on the floor. Sitting with his
back against the veneer wall, he looked at the white-haired woman whose body
made a tiny lumpy island in the middle of a vast antique bed.  Any minute
now, the smell of green tea would wake her up.
"We are rich now," he thought. "We don't have to save dewdrops."