The Protectors

All three.

The Protectors

Today, Jim was a man with a mission. As he drove, he lowered his head to peer through the center of the half-frosted windshield. It was snowing again, almost as hard as it had the night before. Although he was driving in afternoon daylight, the snow was making visibility so poor that only darkness could have made it worse. And this was a little-traveled, winding dirt road.

Jim looked over at his English Setter on the seat beside him, then gingerly steered around the top of a fallen tree that was partly across the road. On a different day he would have stopped and cleared it. Today he was hurrying to pay a visit to his elderly father. Jim had encountered something that, until last night, he would never have believed, had he not seen it. Perhaps his father could provide some answers.

Jim finally made his way out of the wooded lands and onto a hard road, and made a right turn. It was the first sign he had seen of any activity by a snowplow. He sighed, settled back for an easier drive, thought about the place he had left that morning, and mentally recounted the events of the previous day.

As he had done hundreds of times before, Jim had loaded a pack with what he needed for a weekend at his remote cabin. Then he had driven well off the beaten path to an uninhabited, densely wooded area in northern Pennsylvania. When he reached the place where he would leave his Jeep, he wheeled it off the road. A few hundred yards further through the brush and trees, he parked, as always, alongside a large gray boulder.

From there it was a long, difficult hike through rugged, forbidding terrain to the cabin site. There were narrow ravines, steep hillsides to scale, and large rocks to clamber around. That was probably why the cabin had been built using only materials that were on-site. The nearest building supply store didn't make helicopter deliveries.

Jim's father, Everett, was the real outdoorsman. The way he had told it, when Everett had been a younger man, he had been hiking in a remote area and found something unusual; a clear, cold artesian spring flowing on the top of a mountain. The mountain top was somewhat flattened. At one end there was a rounded hill on the weather side that blocked the wind, to a degree. At the other end of the flattened area were some vertical rock formations that stood there sentry-like, and that were oddly uniform in shape and size. The area of the flat spot was about seven acres, and it was as heavily wooded as was the rest of the mountain, covered with both native hemlock and big hardwoods.

Everett had immediately fallen in love with the site, and resolved to find out if it could be purchased. He discovered that this mountain and thousands of acres around it were owned by a mining company, and he was able to afford about four hundred acres of this mountain land, simply because it was considered inaccessible. The only right of way he got was a smile, a handshake, and a footpath. It was all he wanted.

Working by himself and camping at the site, it had taken him two years of weekends and vacation time to construct the one-room, 16-foot-square cabin, using an axe, an adz, and little else. It was one of the reasons Jim loved the place as he did, because his father had cut the trees, laid up the stone foundation, constructed the cabin and built the fireplace with his own hands. Even the planks that served as flooring had been hand-hewn and fitted. The only items he had packed to the site to complete the cabin were the old iron barn-door latch that you lifted to open the door, and glass panes for the four windows.

So now that Everett had become too old to make the rigorous hike to the cabin, he had passed it on to his only son. Jim, who had been a college student, then a G.I., was now a senior engineer, nearing retirement. Jim's ex-wife had her own ideas about what was important, and Jim's only son was uninterested in the outdoors.

Jim took his dog Wiley along for company, and now, tending the cabin was his hobby. He packed things in every weekend in warmer weather, and at least once a month during months like this one – January. He had managed to wangle a four-day week from his employer, and that made it a lot easier to go there regularly.

Most people who haven't seen northern Pennsylvania would be surprised to learn that an area like this actually exists in a populated state. But in the northern half, population is concentrated in cities and the areas near them. There are still broad areas that are sparsely inhabited, and within them are smaller areas with no residents at all. Where the population is very sparse, people live more like they want to live than most people would ever believe.

Best described, you leave them alone.

But no one lives in the area around the cabin, partly because it is privately owned. There are no rivers or other bodies of water around it, the things that encourage human settlements, and certainly no towns within the range of a reasonable commute. There are no poles and wires within ten miles of the cabin. The closest thing to running water in the surrounding area are the wet-weather runs. These are short-lived, rapid streams of runoff water that live and die in perhaps a day or a week. They appear with the melting snow-pack or after heavy rains, leaving near-vertical dry skeletons of gray sticks and half-polished rocks to prove they had existed, and would return.

Out there, wherever one narrow, stony road crosses another, you might find a weather-blackened old house on one of the four corners, with tall thistles and clusters of orange day-lilies growing where there might have been a yard. It's not at all likely to be occupied. Somebody's dream just stretched a little too far out, once upon a time.

So, early the previous afternoon, Jim had arrived with Wiley at the cabin. He dropped his pack on the little front porch, took the two steps up to the front door and lifted the latch. There was no need for a lock on the door up here. He started a fire in the fireplace with the dry wood he had left in the rack, and Wiley lay down immediately in front of the fire, appreciative of the warmth.

Jim carried the cast-iron tea kettle out to the spring, some fifty feet away. Despite the guaranteed sub-zero temperatures on the mountain top each winter, the little spring had never frozen over. Jim gazed at the stream that emerged and filled the pool, and watched the water run through the ice to a big rock, where it disappeared from sight. In the pool there was a strange, almost indescribable iridescence to the water. It was not apparent at all when you looked at it in a clear drinking glass. Also there were bubbles of gas that rose through the water from the silted bottom of the pool.

He half-filled the big kettle by dipping it into the pool, then filled his cupped hands and drank deeply. The taste of that water! It didn't just slake thirst, it made him feel better after drinking it. Jim always carried water back for his father at his request. He missed it while he was gone.

Turning to walk back to the cabin, Jim thought he caught a glimpse of something moving in the trees beyond the cabin. It was there and then it was gone, and he wasn't completely sure he'd seen anything. Nevertheless, the experience was so unusual that he felt a little spooked. Jim's eyes did not usually play tricks on him, and despite being more than sixty years old, his hearing was acute and his senses were sharp. His senses were particularly sharp now, and he stood stock still and watched the spot where he thought he'd seen motion. Nothing.

What Jim did notice was the absolute silence. No wind, no birds, no rustling leaves from some small creature moving in the forest, sounds that were common up here, even in winter.

He stepped carefully to avoid making sounds of his own, and made his way back to the cabin. That silence was a phenomenon he'd noticed before. He and Wiley might be sitting on the front porch in the middle of July, and silence would envelop the area, not a sound from anywhere, not even from insects. It seemed that his dog could hear the silence. Wiley would sit up and raise his ears, and he would look this way, then that way, as if watching for something. He would never get off his rump, he would just sit there at attention. This might go on for up to half an hour. When Wiley would lie back down and relax, other sounds would begin again, too. Strange.

Jim himself was an average-sized man, with a square jaw and an athletic build. Like his father, he had aged extremely well and might have easily been judged to be a man of less than forty. But his father was now ninety-eight and was generally in good health, so the genetic predisposition made sense.

Jim knew it would take hours for the little cabin to begin to warm up. He kept himself warm by using a big bow saw to cut more wood from the many wind-fallen limbs that littered the forest floor. By the time he had added new wood to the big ranked woodpile next to the cabin, darkness had begun to fall. There had been only about an inch of snow on the ground when he arrived, but new snow was starting to come down.

Turning to the tasks at hand, Jim heated up the big jar of beef stew he had packed in, checked the stocks of dried foods he had accumulated over the past months, and he and Wiley ate. The wind was picking up outside, making that deep roar like an oncoming freight train as it came through the trees. Jim got up from his seat on the pine-needle-filled cushion and looked out the window. Then he opened the door and stepped outside.

Out here, it was both sparkling and dark, an odd combination anywhere, but in this place. It was a scene of enchantment, with wind-driven, swirling flakes lit by the moon. Jim knew this was one of those pictures that could never be captured either by camera or on canvas. The cold had a scent just as does heat. More snow had been driven onto the sides of the trees than had reached the ground. The posts that held up the front porch were plastered with it, like frosting on the side of a layer cake. Jim knew it would soon collect on the ground, and it looked like it might get deep. He went back inside.

Jim considered turning in early so that he could get on his way back out in the morning. Ordinarily he might have stayed another day, but deep snow made the hike difficult for him, and even more difficult for a dog. Two feet of snow would make it perilous, and three would be a real problem, and it wasn't at all unlikely. He had snowshoes at the cabin, but Jim had already been in situations where he would carry Wiley for a while, and he preferred not to have to do that. It was too far to go. He got up and stoked up the fire to push the cold a little further back into the bare logs of the cabin. The wind was pushing drafts in around the shivering panes of frosted glass. The fire, doing its part to wage war against the encroaching cold, crackled and spit little bursts of short-lived sparks while casting orange and black shapes on the opposite wall. The old teakettle was steaming by the fire, keeping water ready for breakfast oatmeal and coffee. Jim was totally relaxed, and considered getting up and making a cup of coffee, and turning off the mantle lantern.

The fire had begun to burn lower again, and the wind had actually stopped. So very quiet, unusually so. Was this another of those periods of extreme silence? He could see through a window the falling snow was coming faster, coming straight down now in big flakes. At least that was still moving, although it too was completely quiet. For a moment Jim could have sworn the fire stopped crackling, and he began to wonder if he'd lost his hearing. Wiley's ears were perked.

Suddenly a chill flashed through his entire body. He had very clearly heard the creak of a plank on the front porch - followed then by distinct, heavy footsteps! Not the clump of boots. But footsteps! There could not be anybody out there. No chance! Wiley's throat rumbled up a deep growl as he suddenly rose and pressed his shoulder against Jim's leg. The chill was so cold that Jim felt completely numb, and he knew it was fear. Wiley's body was shaking too, and that bothered Jim the most. Wiley had never shown fear of anything. He glanced around the room for a weapon. Why had he not brought a rifle along? Who was there? Or what was there?

Jim's thoughts came like rapid-fire. He settled on the kindling axe and the heavy fireplace poker as weapons. Jim tried to firmly and deliberately pat Wiley on the head as he slowly moved to pick them up from the stone hearth. It was a distance of but three feet, and his dog moved with him as he got up and firmly grasped the tools. There was no bolt on the door! Was it a bear?? Jim knew better - a bear wouldn't make footsteps you could hear, on the heavy wooden planks. And they damn well shouldn't creak at all, the planks were too heavy! Suppose it was a big deer, or even an elk, up here? It was not that kind of a sound...suddenly Jim yearned for firepower, and wished he could reach over and flick on a revealing porch light.

There was no need. It was too late. Jim saw eyes, peering through the window! Seven feet or more from the height of the porch floor, if it was an inch. That porch floor was more than a foot lower than the plank floor of the cabin. Dark, round eyes with whites, yet narrowed and clear even in the low light from the mantle lamp. Huge eyes, set wide apart. Fur, there was fur, dark brown mingled with gray. All around those huge eyes. No nose that Jim could see. He couldn't see a nose. He couldn't think.

Everything went dark.

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Jim slowly came to, with Wiley's head warming his chest. Wiley whined anxiously and licked Jim's face. Gradually he realized that he had fainted! Two tours in Southeast Asia, faced with death a half dozen times, and he had fainted. It had seemed surreal, but not surreal enough. It had sure-enough been there.

Jim looked at the fireplace to get an idea of how long he'd been out. The fire had burned a bit lower but was still there, and it was still dark outside. Jim looked at his watch. It had only been about ten minutes, but Wiley seemed to be worried just about his master, no longer acting fearful. Whatever that thing was, it was gone. Jim gratefully added wood to the fire, wedged a chair against the wooden handle of the plank door and curled up on the cushions with his dog, grateful indeed the dog was there. They would wait for morning. Jim slept only intermittently and fitfully, and listening. He only heard the gusting wind.

Daylight finally came, and Jim rose and stoked up the fire. The old cast iron tea kettle had remained hot, and he stirred up some instant coffee in a tin cup. But after only two swallows, he just had to look. Jim pulled on his parka, laced up his boots and shoved his way outside, pushing back six inches or so of fresh snow that had drifted onto the sill in front of the door. More than a foot of new snow was on the ground.

There were no tracks in the snow that had blown onto the porch, just a heavy handmade chair that had been there as long as Jim could remember, now lying on its side. But walking to the end of the porch, where the wind swirling around the cabin had kept the snow from covering them, he found two tracks. Big tracks! Greater than 16 inches in length, and almost half as wide. Not clear in their features because of snow drifted into them, but man-like in every respect. The heel, broad and deep, was over four inches wide. The ball of the foot, more than six inches across. More importantly, they were two steps taken one after the other, a left foot and then a right – five feet apart. Jim gazed out into the green and gray trees, thick and snow-covered by the wind. All he could see were the trees.

What the hell, Jim reasoned. This was not the Pacific northwest.

Jim's recollections came to an abrupt halt as a traffic light appeared. He'd been driving for a while and the sun was getting low in the sky; his father's home was just two blocks away. As the light changed, the urgency that he'd felt earlier returned, and he drove the Jeep through the intersection.

Jim pulled up briskly in front of his father's house, a large cottage with a full front porch and gingerbread trim. He all but ran to the front door, he knocked quickly and then he and Wiley burst inside. Wiley barked and bounced with typical canine happiness. Everett was sitting at the kitchen table, reading his evening paper over his own cup of coffee. He looked up and saw the expression on Jim's face. Jim couldn't, or didn't say a word. He truly didn't know which it was.

“So, Jim? What's going on?” Everett put down his paper. “Were you to the cabin this weekend?”

“Yes,” Jim replied, “we came back because of the snow. But there's more.”

“Mm hmm?” Jim's father was beginning to smile now. “See something?”

Jim looked a little annoyed. “Yes, Dad, I believe I did. And I sure would like to know what the hell it was that I saw! Please tell me what you know. Everything that you know.”

If Jim hadn't had the respect for his father that he did, the answer might have angered him. Everett laughed out loud, settled back in his kitchen chair and said, “Well, that might take a while. What things that I know do you want to hear?”

“You could damn well tell me what I saw.” Jim's face was beginning to redden.

“You know I will,” said his father. “But first I need to know just what happened.” He took a sip of his coffee. “Did you bring my water?”

Jim took the canteen from his belt and handed it to his father, who unscrewed the cap and drank deeply. “This stuff keeps me alive.” he said, and he looked up at Jim. “Literally. Sit down and tell me about your experience.”

Jim did. When he was finished, Everett was looking at the table, obviously deep in thought.

“What you have seen,” he offered, “is your purpose.” Everett looked up at his son. You,” he added, “are the Protector. That's with a capital “P”.”

“My purpose?” exclaimed Jim, “The Protector? Come on, Dad, do you know what it is?”

“Easy there, Jim, there is a lot to know. If you settle down and think about it, it will all make sense and will all come into focus.” Smiling again, Everett added, “Shouldn't take much more than five or ten years.” He laughed, almost gleefully. “Here's how it is.” He sat back again. “Jim,” he said, “when I bought that property I didn't know what kind of place it was, to be honest. But I really couldn't buy it.”

Jim replied, “What do you mean, you couldn't buy it? You've already deeded it to me.”

Everett smiled again. “I mean no man can ever own it. All I bought was man's claim to ownership. It's reserved. It belongs to all of God's creations. That's every living thing. That's you and me too.” He took another sip from the canteen. “This water is the best proof of that.”

Jim asked, “How so?”

“Well,” said his father, a puzzling little “I-know-something-special” lopsided smile on his face, “I bought that place when I was thirty-four years old. That was, oh, 1916.”

Jim's jaw dropped. “Dad, you're ninety-eight years old!” At first Everett just chuckled.

“So you think maybe I'm finally losing my grip, do you?” He laughed and shook his head slowly. “Nope. Everything I've told you is true, except my age. The property was indeed owned by a mining company. I bought our little piece of it when I was thirty-four. I built the cabin, then later the Great Depression hit and I had no work, like a lot of other people. Everyone had a different way of dealing with it. Some people took whatever work was available, others moved around looking for work, some people who were fortunate enough to have land, lived off of it. I was a single man, so I moved to the cabin. I lived there, almost never left it, for over ten years. When I came back down out of there, I wanted a job, I wanted companionship, I wanted a woman. I soon realized that everyone I knew had aged ten years, but that I hadn't, in fact, I appeared to be younger. The only explanation was that amazing water. Because I'd no sooner left the cabin to look for a job, that I began to miss it. And instead of a damned job, I got another damned war!”

Jim looked at his father in total amazement. “Dad, are you sure about this? I mean, what am I supposed to think?”

“Son,” he said, “Look at the deed to the property. I know you never have because you would have noticed. It's proof that its last previous transfer was in the year nineteen-hundred and sixteen.” Everett leaned forward again. “ I have lived through two world wars, and by choice I fought in both of 'em. I made it through the Depression and through Prohibition. When I married your mother, I was good and ready. That was in 1949, and I admit, she thought I had just bought the property in the mountains and was 35 years old. You came along in 1950. Now if you want to think I'm crazy, check the deed!”

Now it was Jim who was looking down at the table. Jim considered himself to be a level-headed man. This story seemed beyond belief. But his father had never been one to tell stories, there were so many questions, and his father had not even mentioned the creature Jim had seen. So he raised his eyes, not his head, and peered with wrinkled brow at his father. “So would you mind telling me what I've seen?”

Everett hesitated. “You saw Msileni. Muh-si-leh-ni. It's, God help me explain, it's Shawnee. He's probably been there longer than I've been alive.” Then he got up from the table and walked to the refrigerator, and said, lightly, “Let's get something to eat.”

Jim didn't raise his head, and didn't move for a bit. Then, amused by the seeming ridiculousness of the whole idea and the incredulity he was feeling, he grinned. Then he got up to help prepare some supper. He fed Wiley, and they sat down to eat.

After a while, Everett began to speak. “Jimmy,” he said, “I want to explain so much to you. I know it's a lot, and I know it's going to be hard. Let me start by telling you where we are now. That water is the greatest asset I know of on the planet. It does not deliver immortality, it does provides some longevity. You haven't been sick a day in your life past the age of eight, have you? That's how old you were when you first visited the cabin, and drank the water. And you know well, you don't even look forty.”

Jim thought about it. That much was true. He had never been sick, not even while he was a G.I. And everyone he knew remarked about his apparent youth.

His father continued. “I did tell you one other thing that wasn't true. I didn't discover the spring on the mountain top while hiking. I was sent.”

Jim looked sharply at his father. “Sent?”

“That's right. There are Shawnee legends, and some of them are at least partly true. Then there are things that are not talked about, except among the elders. And there are, still, elders.”

“And you are gonna tell me you are Shawnee?” Jim's face displayed an incredulous grin.

“Well, not entirely.” Jim's father grinned right back. “I'm part Norwegian, and definitely I am an American. I've Shawnee blood, nonetheless.” The grin became a smile. “And so have you.” He continued, “The place where I built the cabin is a special place. It is the lifelong task of the Protector to see that it remains undisturbed by man. Because of the life-giving water, and because it is the home of the Msileni. The whole area was legally owned by a mining company. In 1916, core-drilling was not being practiced, and the area was bought on speculation. It was explained to me that as Protector, it was my task to use my own initiative to regain legal control of the land. Because if mining had occurred, the source of the water might have been interrupted.”

A realization struck Jim. “What now?” he cried. “The whole state is being subjected to drilling for gas! How do we stop that??”

“Well, we can't,” his father replied. “There's a worldwide energy crunch, and there's a lot of money at stake. There's a method to their madness, it's madness nevertheless. Poison the water for centuries to get gas for a year. But they can only get so close, it was the very best I could do. So we own it.”

Jim gasped. “Now you are showing your age! The cabin is on just about four hundred acres that we own! The source of that water could be far from that little plot!”

“You take me for a fool. 'My mother didn't raise no fools.'” He smiled again. “I mean, we own it.” Everett rose from his chair and moved a rug to one side, got down on one knee and removed a floor tile, then opened a floor safe. He removed a packet of documents and handed them to Jim. “Of course, this deed is also on file in the appropriate courthouse. I haven't deeded it to you yet, but it's in my will. The land holdings of the mining company. I bought them out. I got the mineral rights too, of course.”

Jim looked over the deed, amazed. Finally he asked, “Okay, I'll bite. Where did you get the money for that? A secret stash of American Indian treasure?”

Everett replied, “Oh, not exactly. I used Norwegian smarts. I marketed the water.”

“What?”

“It was the only asset I had. I figured that even then, in 1918, the secret of the water might be duplicated if it could be analyzed. And maybe it could be – but not in 1918. I am convinced it's not something discoverable through an inorganic chemical analysis. I think it's something from Mother Nature's kitchen.”

“Anyway, I packed enough of that water out to fill two five-gallon carboys, and traveled to New Jersey. There I met with a chemical company executive. I told him I'd never reveal where the water had come from, told him it was from somewhere in West Virginia, and the best I could do was to convince him to drink a pint of that water every day until gone. He drank one glass, and agreed. It hadn't cost him a cent.”

Jim's father continued. “I took a hotel room, and gave him my address. Within one month, he came knocking on my door. I agreed to ship him one carboy of water a month for one year. He could drink what he wanted, and analyze it all he wanted. In return he would make me a single cash payment of five hundred thousand dollars. I took the money and left, and arranged with a freight company to receive the shipments in West Virginia, and to re-ship them to New Jersey with the West Virginia return address. I paid one freight agent very well. However,” he continued, “I only had to ship one carboy. I've always read the papers, and he was an important and very rich man. The guy was hit by a bus, a new 1918 White. He was killed. Nobody ever came looking for the water.”

Everett continued. “At that time, that much money was more than enough to buy out a struggling mining company. I invested the rest to pay the taxes. I invested it well, and truth be told, you really don't have to work.” He smiled again. “Don't faint on me now.”

“Not funny!” said Jim, who was truly not amused. “You actually are the legal owner of all that land around the cabin site? Thousands of acres? And what if I don't want to be the Protector?”

“Tell me you don't want it,” his father replied. “I'll know you're lying.” Then he added, “By the way, the beast is friendly, just shy. It's in his nature to stay scarce. They are usually only ever seen when they are outside of their habitat. I had to let you find out for yourself, and honestly, there is so much more to know.”

“Like what else could there be?” responded Jim.

“Like, “they” means there are others. And, you are not the only Protector. There is one other. And you must go with me to meet with the elders. I would suggest that we do that really soon.”

Jim realized, that was the one thing that might finally put this entire situation back into the realm of reality. As much as he'd loved and trusted his father, it would be helpful, in this case, to hear it from others. He spoke up. “I will very much look forward to that.”

“One other thing, and then we'd best call it a night. Spend some time at the cabin. Take some time off work, leave Wiley here with me. Msileni will be more likely to allow himself to be seen. Trust me, he already knows who you are. And, drink the water. You've got time.”

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