“They kept us on the perimeter road until the shooting was over. The Red Cross gave us
painters masks soaked in cologne as we walked in.” I sniffled. “Haven't worn any since.”
Bonnie nodded as if she’d had enough of my reality, then she began talking about her later
high school days. This time, I reciprocated with a mixed sense of victory and relief, the tea
eventually became wine, and we ended up talking about primarily pleasant personal events until
it was time for me to work on my screenplay, and I went home.
I didn't bring any of my work to our next few meetings because Bonnie did not address
where I had constructed my cage in my last offering. On the other hand, she brought fewer pages
of her own work, which were so cryptic in their brevity that I understood little more than her
apprentices were acting increasingly eccentric and subservient with their customers. I read the
second of two instalments while sitting at her kitchen table after lunch:
A group of ten to thirteen year old youths from the commune came to the market at the end of a
selling day to ask their nineteen and twenty-year old apprentice friends/brothers and sisters for help
resolving a dispute. They first explained their problem to Eirik, who bit his lower lip and shifted his
weight from side to side. At the same time, the nearby butcher's apprentice grunted to the rhythm of
scrubbing his cart, which sounded like punctuation to the children’s sentences.
Believing he had considered every possibility, Eirik finally said, “Rohwan is much better at this
kind of problem.”
The youths turned to face the butcher's apprentice, who ignored them until the young flautist,
Mahrli, asked him what he thought they should do.
“Do about what?” Rohwan said, huffing through a brisk series of scrubs.
Mahrli again laid bare the problem, but just as she finished, the apprentice's fingers slid into an
awkward corner. Holding his injured hand aloft, Rohwan walked to the river's edge to clean the slight
wound; all of the youths waited quietly until he came back to his cart and went about his business.
At this point, Brendah, the bee keeper's daughter, came out from behind her display to purposefully
pace off the distance from her station to Mahrli. Thirteen paces. Turning around, she walked back six and
half paces and sat in the middle of the ring of carts, staring at her feet. With a quick exchange of glances,
the youths sat in a semicircle around her. Village kids toting their mother's purchases home found this
funny, a few of whom bothered to taunt the commune youths regardless of their well-known affliction.
Finally, Brendah intoned with mild surprise that the answer was right in front of her. She uncrossed
her legs, unthreaded the leather calf bindings of her left sandal, and began a painfully repetitive
description of how the youths should tie their sandals until the harvest festival, three months hence. The
last of the village children lost interest when Brendah did the same thing with her right sandal, ‘for the
benefit of those who could not distinguish her right from theirs.’
This comment caused Rohwan to burst into laughter, and Mahrli thanked Brendah on behalf of the
group, all of whom retied their footwear as Brendah had directed them…
I looked up from the pages, and Bonnie asked me what I thought about the entire section.
“I think yesterday’s section, where the apprentices coddle the public, was about money.
They're saying, I will treat you well, and you will buy my stuff, but they’re young, and they
crossed the line between being pleasant and sucking up.” I flipped through the current pages.”
The kids respect the apprentices, but the apprentices were indifferent or abusive, so I'm guessing
they knew they had tried too hard to please customers and they were making themselves feel
better. Somewhere down the road, I assume your teachers will straighten that out?”
