On a dark night on a dark road in Northern Los Angeles oncoming white lights suddenly slanted and went askance from the roadway. But the vehicle didn't stop - instead it immediately regained it's straight-on trajectory and came again towards them and thundered by. They continued on a hundred yards and there they beheld the reason for the vehicle's plunge from the road - a sight that would lead them, after many days and pathways inexorable, to the magic discovery of Harriet's Journal.
Harriet's Journal
By Michael SpringthorpeAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2012 Michael Springthorpe
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4634-4438-9Chapter One
Harriet first began keeping a journal when she was six months old. She didn't write anything down—writing is not easy for possums, especially babies, but she kept everything in her mind. She lived with her mother and siblings in a big oak tree in an area that Don, the grey dove, told her was called "Toloo kalake". Don knew many things but she didn't get to see him as much as she would like because, being a possum, she mostly hung out at night when most of the birds were asleep and there were mainly cats, who were nasty, and sometimes dogs—who just wanted to chase a possum on sight! She didn't like her five siblings much, they were loud and noisy especially the eldest one, Reould, who told her she had a big nose. She loved her mother, who wore herself thin running about keeping her eye on all the babies and teaching them, but her father was a dark and distant figure. Sometimes she would see him several trees away, laying along a branch and gazing sullenly, but he would never even acknowledge her wave. She loved Prilty, a tiny possum from the fir tree on the other side of the grassy field, who was actually a couple of days older than Harriet but who seemed always like a little sister. She was very good at getting those little green kernels out of the centers of the nut-flowers on oak tree saplings. She would just stick her littlest finger into the edge between the kernel and the cob, twist, and out they popped—ready to eat. She tried to show Harriet how to do it but every time she tried the kernel broke into a myriad of tiny, slimy pieces and the two friends would laugh so much.
An old, big house that's windows were boarded up was at the back of the big field. Those strange, weird, vertical "humuns" who never climbed trees or flew but hung out on the ground all the time and went about in big, noisy "carzzz", as Don called them—some of those had lived there but they had died long before Harriet was born, and now just a single man-humun lived on the grass field in a big box with wheels.
One day, in the Change of Colors time, when the sugar is full in the green leaves and they turn to many different reds and golds and browns, Prilty told her about a great feasting that would take place at chestnut and sycamore trees in the gardens of a human-house on the other side of the black strip. That was the place beyond the walls and gates of their green field, where the "human cars" whizzed by day and night and where they had never been allowed, and in fact had never dared to go before. But Prilty was adamant. They were getting older, they were almost full-grown and it was time they explored some things on their own without having their mothers nearby. And there was one other thing that Prilty was excited to tell her—at the Feasting there would be boys! Harriet thought that Prilty was a bit too concerned about boys. She would always point one or another out to her and say "He's nice" or "He's quite good-looking" but whenever they came near she would say "Hi Scrawny!", "Hi Jerk-Face!"—but Harriet knew she was interested. As for Harriet she didn't much care for them—those that she knew like her brothers and others that she'd seen, seemed rather stupid—always rolling around and punching one another, they couldn't sit still for a minute. She knew her mother would never agree to her going but Prilty said they would only be gone a short while and nobody would miss them. She didn't know, she worried about it and she was terrified of the black strip. But yet the idea of going to the Feast, the more she thought about it as the time came nearer, the more it seemed strangely interesting to her.
Soon the day in question, or rather the night, came. Prilty waited at the bottom of Harriet's tree. It was quite dark now and all of the others had gone out to forage. Harriet had pretended she was still asleep when the others left, she felt a bit sneaky about that but still, she reassured herself, the two of them would only be gone a short while. She clambered down to meet her little friend and together the two ambled off down the gravel driveway towards the big gates. They squeezed through them, that was easy but suddenly they were beyond the walls of the field for the first time. Harriet felt her heart pounding and she took some short breaths, Prilty touched her arm and gave a reassuring smile. They walked across the grass verge and then the white gravel part and now the Black Strip was before them. Harriet said "Perhaps we should go back", but Prilty said "Don't worry. There it is!" She pointed to a big white stone house behind black gates just across and down from where they were. There were no cars about, the black strip was quiet and still. "It's easy, watch," said Prilty, and off she bounded across the black strip to the safety of the white gravel on the other side. She turned and waved then gave a two-fisted arms-raised signal as though to say, "Yah, I did it!" Now it was Harriet's turn, she took a deep breath—no cars about—and Prilty called her! Or did she call her? Did she say "stop"? Her voice was faint that far away and the noise made it harder to hear. She was on the black strip now but Prilty was waving and saying "No!" "Why `no'?!" "Go back!!" screamed Prilty—the noise before was a "carz" noise from way down the black strip. Suddenly the noise was so loud and white light flooded the black strip around her—then a terrible high squealing sound began—she sat bolt upright and saw but couldn't hear Prilty's anguish. Then a great heavy shadow was above Harriet—a terrible iron-heavy shadow and before the next moment of time had passed she felt as though her head had been broken apart. Her scream of agony was choked by a throatful of her precious blood—light fractured in her and a deep, dark water of nausea filled her up. Pain like slabs of burning matter fell through her, through her neck, through her shoulders and all down through her body, and greasy, fat globs of blood flopped onto her hands from her nose shredded inside. Then numbness came—like everything had gone hard inside her. She felt as though she was beginning to fall—not to the ground but into herself. Deeper and deeper she fell, further and further—a fall without end into black unconsciousness.
Suddenly there were legs around her, human legs, like a cage around her—voices and shouts and screaming sounds and all the while the dark, heavy shapes whizzed by spraying light. Dear Prilty, was she hit too? She was across the black strip though. Still the blood bubbled out of her nose, she pawed at it but oh it hurt so much she couldn't bear to touch it. Suddenly she felt swirled around and she was falling, no—skidding, no—backwards—on all fours—her head rocked with horrible new pain, her claws tried to grip but couldn't—her tail was being pulled, pulled! She was off the black strip on green grass. She ran blindly a few steps and collapsed in deeper grass. She spewed up blood. She spread-eagled on the ground as though the earth and grass would draw from her all her bilious agony. How long she lay there she didn't know.
The next thing she became aware of she was lying on something cold and hard and with bars around it. And she was inside something—some big room with windows and with humans in front of her—and then the room started to move and she realized it must be a "carrz" they were in. But it wasn't bumpy and loud—as they rolled along this one was smooth, and as soft as her mother's touch.
Her head felt like a giant, burning heavy thing and it quaked with her heart's beating. She felt dizzy when she moved her eyes and the sickness melted through her when the dizziness came. Blood, like a slow worm, came from her nose and on her lips it was a sickly sheen—with her thickened wad of tongue she could feel it and taste it and in it gritty bits of teeth. And her jaw, it felt like the marrow in the bone had been replaced with broken glass.
And what was this thing she was lying in? With the bars on it she thought it was a birdcage. Yes, the man-human that lived in the box-on-wheels had just such a cage, with a bright yellow bird in it that sang loudly and sometimes all day long. Once, her brother Reould crept over to the cage to see how loud the bird would sing from "inside my stomach", but all he got was hit over the head with a broom and angry human words yelled at him as he ran away. She couldn't help laughing a little on the inside when she thought of that, but even that hurt, rippling pain through her.
Now, as they journeyed on and on, the strange high-low dark-light hum of human voices cantered near her—the throbbing mass of her, breathing barely, drifted into a kind of dream somewhere between full unconsciousness and waking. Images of her mother, Prilty, her family, the oak tree and the green field swirled in her—all these scenes pushing away pain to the edges of her, only then to have it ebb back over-turning peace.
At last the rolling stopped, and this time for a long time. She felt the cage lifted up and carried, then a cold, wet spongy thing full of salty water was put into her mouth and rubbed around her lips. The fresh wetness felt good but the salt now began to sting all through her mouth and down into her throat. Pain banged through her and she gave a big sigh and tasted again the blood in her breath. She felt lifted from the hard floor of the birdcage and put gently into a big box that had in it the warmest, plumpest bedding she had ever laid upon. The box closed up and light disappeared and soon there was no noise at all but her heart's beat. Now sleep came quickly upon her and she fell into its soft, dark hands not knowing if she would ever wake.
Small holes of milk-colored light appeared along the rim of the top of the box and fell on her face, and she opened her eyes. Or did she wake? Surely she was awake—for surely no death could be still so painful so long after it had occurred. A brick-dry block of matter is what she felt like—that every tiny and large ache and thread of pain had woven, in the night, into a congealed, furry lump of evermore dense hurt.
She heard a door open and large amounts of light gushed into the room and the top of the box came open and there was the man. He spoke gentle but unknown words to her and pushed the top of a small bottle between her lips and sore, broken gums. Liquid squeezed out and went through her like a sparkling stream, refreshing every part of her. It took away nausea and in moments seemed to soften hard pain. Then he closed the box and darkness returned and she slept again. Later he came back and gave her to drink, through a long needle-like thing, a delicious pink liquid, creamy and so good.
Soon, laying constantly in the aching dark, she began to lose all sense of time. She slept—she woke or was woken—she drank the sparkling water or delicious pink stuff—she slept again. She didn't know if it was day or night or how long she had lain there. She guessed she must be waking and sleeping on the same time-rhythms as the humuns as they cared for her, and she idly wondered whether she was becoming a day-possum and would lose touch with her moon-child vibrations.
Then, something most strange occurred. They always talked in kindly tones to her, the man and the woman, as they tended her, but they were just a blur and their words mostly made no sense. Only by listening most carefully and repeating some words over and over to herself could she slowly get a sense of some of them. But something they began saying she could understand straight away—and she could not believe it! They were calling her by her name! "Drink, Harriet." "How're you feeling, Harriet?" How could they possibly know her name was Harriet? This was truly significant.
After a while she started to get taken out of the big room and into the "house", she guessed it was—when she was given the liquids—and she became aware that there were others living there besides the man and the woman. There were birds, she could hear them singing and talking, and she saw a brown and black cat sitting upright and looking at her from a distance. Each time she saw the cat it was sitting upright and looking at her from a distance. And there was a black and white dog who was like a bulldog, only handsome. His name was Billy, but he was so boisterous, my goodness, when he met her he started jumping all round the box and she thought he would jump on her so she just had to try and bite him. This hurt her more than it hurt him but even so after that he more often looked at her from a distance, like the cat.
Now, it seemed scarcely possible to believe, but after several days and several nights more of mostly sleep and more sparkling water and delicious pink stuff, and even a couple of times soft, soggy "cat-chow" type food, she was beginning to feel better—stronger—the pain was no longer in all of her. Her head still ached and her jaw hurt most of all still—it felt out of place or something, crooked or something, on the left side, and pretty much full of broken teeth, and she eased the pain of it by doing an extra big yawn every so often—she didn't know why that helped but it did. But she no longer felt nauseous or bloody inside, or near to death. Now they (the big man and the fair woman) took her, one twilight, out of the big room and put her box down in a garden—straightaway she could smell flowers and plants—her nose was working good in that respect. The man lifted her out and put her on grass. It felt so wonderful to feel grass and earth again. She couldn't see much, her eyes were still foggy, but she walked slowly about—a small step at a time—and sniffed many plants—an aloe vera and a cactus and a jade tree and a beautiful blurry pink and white rose. And then, for the first time since she couldn't remember when, she had a sudden urge to "leave the room" as it were, and to her great satisfaction everything worked perfectly! This was a good day.
The following twilight she began again to groom herself as had always been her habit on waking. She must have looked a sight all these injured days, her matted, bloodied and frazzled fur and bent whiskers. Her hands and feet, when wetted with a little saliva, were perfect combs for unmatting and glossing her white and inky black coat and for smoothing and brushing her eyebrows, whiskers and face. She took great pride in this.
As more days went by and she was lifted out of her box for a few hours she began to discover more wondrous things about this place. At first all her steps were slow but after a while she tried a scuttle, and then loped a little in her characteristic way, and once, feeling a spray of rain (or was it a garden hose?), she even ran—a kind of speeded-up lope. The man and woman seemed to find this amusing. She never thought her running-style was something to cause laughter—she'd seen humans run and that was funny! In her still "foggy-eyed" state she bumped into a magical thing—the dark trunk of a huge tree, right in the middle of the garden. She felt tired even thinking about climbing it at this stage—so high into the sky did it's bright, hazy forest of red and gold leaves seem to reach. Up the pathway, away from the garden, were more treasures. A stairway made of wood and iron went up to the landing where the front door of the house was. This she discovered by climbing it—one slow step at a time. How many steps? She could only count to "five" and as she went she counted "five" twice, and then "four" and she was at the top. She didn't know what number that was so she made it 554 steps. That seemed a lot, but the climbing was very good exercise for her.
Across the pathway were more trees. Three cypresses nearly as high as the stairs grew along the wall there. It seemed their foliage was all woven together and would make an excellent place for nests, but she couldn't climb them yet—unlike the stairs they were straight up. She wasn't the greatest tree-climber at the best of times she knew that. It wasn't so much the climbing-up as the climbing-down. She would always get to that point where the branches weren't low enough to the ground for her to wrap her tail around and stretch herself down to the bottom—she would always just "let go" and land, sometimes on her hands—but more often on her head! She had heard how it was best to dig your nails into the trunk or stretch one's tail around the trunk and she wanted to work on that.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Harriet's Journalby Michael Springthorpe Copyright © 2012 by Michael Springthorpe. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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