Joe's Bio

EMAIL: authors@wnwg.org
 

      Thomas Caine broke camp at sundown and rode out onto open grass lands. In his saddle bags he carried a map, a compass, and some light provisions. What he left behind were the carbon remains of Julia’s letters that still smoked in the embers of his fire.
       For a long while after sunset, he rode toward Polaris, following the natural swell of the land.  A full Hunter’s Moon lit his way and cast a pale light on the prairie sea.
       Around midnight ,he stopped on a bluff and took out his binoculars. Scanning slowly to the north, he saw the first “man pillar” that marked the southern boundaries of the Tribal Lands. He thought for a moment that he could be mistaken, but then he saw the Great Crow perched on the brave’s broad shoulder.
      “Almost there, “he said as he nudged his horse into a gentle trot. 
      By 1 A.M. he had reached the first “man”. Up close the giant figure became only a tall stack of polished river stones. Its human qualities were a product of distance, light, and shadow. Even the crow, perched on the brave’s shoulder, disintegrated into a jagged amalgamation of quartz and slate.  Under the crow’s wing he stopped and gazed down at the note that his father had written on the map two decades ago. It read, One Guardian every quarter mile until river. Stop at third.
      Tom rode over the waves of the solid sea as he followed the Guardians. Twenty years ago, when he had been a boy of eight tethered to his granddad’s saddle horn, the up and down motion had made him laugh. Back then Gramps rode point in front of Tommy and his pony. Dad, for his part, held back to “Watch out for them Kansas ky-yotes.”
      Now, the two men who had raised him were 18 years dead, and he was alone. Just as he was meant to be.
      “It’s just how it turned out,” he had told Julia just three days before at the dance. “The fire. The years in the Wichita Boy’s home. It all taught me that I was meant to be alone.”
      Julia touched him gently on the cheek and said, “I will send you a sign. Come home to me, Thomas Caine.”
      On the way out of the brightly lit barn, Dr. Colwell had stopped him and said, “Remember son, signs are sometimes like the Guardians. A lot depends on your point of view.”
      All these memories, both near and distant, receded from his mind as he approached the next stone sentinel. Now he had to be careful not to…
      The front hoof of his horse came down on the rock and he knew he was there.  Dismounting, he guided his horse a step back. There, under the outline of a hoof print, were the names: EDWARD, ARNOLD, and THOMAS CAINE ‘68. Beside the names in a much smaller hand, there was a trace of his own carving that read, Leo lites.
      All this time and it was still there. It wasn’t overgrown or erased. Some might say that it was a minor miracle in itself….if you believe in such things.
      With a smile, Tom spread a blanket across the stone and lay down on his back. Without looking, he knew that it must be 2 A.M. It wouldn’t be long now.
      At that moment, a streak of bright light passed over his head. It was fast. It was bright. It was beautiful. Instantly he was eight years old again. 
“You’re seeing the Leonid meteor storm, Tommy,” Grandpa explained. “When I was your age back in ‘33, there were even more. The sky was just filled with falling stars. See, the meteors seem to erupt from the Leo’s mouth.” 
      “The lion is roaring stars, Daddy!” Tommy had said to his father who was trying to settle his son’s nervous pony.
      “Yes, son,” his father had said. “That’s something that your mother would have said…” Here, Arnold Caine’s voice trailed off before he continued, “You just remember this birthday, Tommy, and keep your heart open to wonders of the world.”
      The grown up Caine tried to count the streaks, but soon there were too many. More and more came until hundreds of falling stars filled the whole dome of the night sky.
      “This is what grandpa saw when he was a boy,” Tom said to his horse which looked down on him. “You could live 10 lifetimes and never see this.”
      In his mind, he could see Julia’s face. That all- knowing look was in her eye.
      “It’s going to take more than that,” he said.
      Then suddenly it happened.
      A searing ball of flame, about the size of a peach basket, shot just past the shoulder of the next Guardian to the north. The rush of sound - a high pitched whistling whine - caught up later and sent a shock wave through the air.
      Caine sprang to his feet and grabbed onto the reins. With one hand he steadied the horse, while, with the other, he focused his binoculars on the stone Guardian, about an eighth of a mile away.
      Under the bright glow of what the Kickapoos called, ‘The Buffalo Moon,’
Tom saw that the crow, and a portion of the figure’s shoulder, had been knocked into the grass.
      How many people in human history have ever witnessed a meteor impact? He knew that there could not be many.
      Again, Julia’s image and words appeared in his mind and again he pushed them down. “Not yet,” he told her, as she faded from his mind.
      Cain mounted his horse and trained his binoculars along the seared line of grass leading out from the Guardian’s shoulder. It took him time, and he knew that he was unlikely to see anything, yet still he tried. He was just about to give up, when he saw it. 
      A tree-- one of the rare trees that you could see out here -- was on fire. It was rooted near the peak of a grassy hill, and it was blazing away.
      Tom kicked his horse into a full gallop and set out toward the burning tree. As he rode, he thought of Julia and her hours of scripture reading that had taken up a good part of their courting time.  If she were here, she would be quoting to him the passage about God, Moses, and the burning bush.
      “I take your point,” he said to the chill night air.
      When he finally reached the tree, he found that the whole hillside was now in flames. At first, common sense held him back. Then, his boyhood memory of waking up to find his cabin on fire filled his brain. He knew that there was no possible way for him to stand aside and watch anything burn.
      Cain went to war. He drew his shovel from his pack and, with his kerchief pulled up over his face, waded into the smoke and fire. He fought long and hard, and finally he won. After a long struggle, there was only one more burning patch at the base of the tree to smother. 
      Caine approached this last remnant of fire just as the sun was rising behind him.
With a feeling of triumph coursing through his veins, he struck this last bit of flames a conqueror’s blow… and snapped off the scoop of his shovel on something hard that lay under the burning tree branch. Then he stepped back and looked at what he had done.
      It was simple, really. The last blow of his shovel had cleaved the meteor in two.
He guessed that diamond cutters did this all the time on purpose. He, on the other hand had done the same thing by accident.
      It was about the size of a turkey egg. The inside of the stone was cut clean and showed the tell tale wicker pattern of an authentic meteorite, just like in Grandpa’s book. Caine saw that some of this “wicker” contained black, gray, and golden flecks of minerals all scattered around the core in a random pattern
      Or was it?
      Caine stood up and walked around this piece of stone, a gift from the constellation Leo, and saw it.
      There, just as plain as day --well, he had to tilt the stone up a bit and crouch down on his knees -- was the profile of a woman looking back at him.
      It was the woman who loved him. The woman who offered him a true life.
      Later when the stone was cool enough to pack away, he wrapped it in his blanket and tied it to his saddle bag. He figured that Homily was about a four-day ride from here.
      That would be all right.  With a bit of good luck, he would arrive on Julia’s birthday with a very special gift.

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