Alex (fatheralex) wrote in thefield, @ 2009-03-25 22:51:00 |
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Current mood: | accomplished |
So a priest walks into a casino...
Who: Alex & Quinn
Where: the smoking pit
When: Day 12, afternoon
What: ministry of a different kind
Quinn was down in the dumps, that was for sure. He hated having to be so immobile. Sitting next to the fire and breathing in woodsmoke all day long was giving him a smoker's cough and he was worried about his skin. He was starting to wonder if his was becoming as well-smoked as the haunch of grazer in the little smoker they'd built when the eastern scouts had returned not long ago. The scent of meat was filling the clearing again and with a painful groan, he pushed himself up onto his feet. It took a moment for his breath to come back and he let himself have those minutes. He checked the distribution of the coals under the radiator, poking them with his long stick and adding a few more chunks of wood. On top of the radiator were Ryan and Helena's clay creations. Ryan's had a bit more noticeable finesse than Helena's had but that was alright, for a beginning she was trying. She had also said that if she couldn't master the arts, she would master the practical and start making clay bricks. Worst came to worse, she thought they could brick up the area around the tree. Deciding it was probably okay for a few minutes, he wandered to investigate this little smoking hut thing. It wasn't hard to recognize the priest who was also looking at the smoking hut. "Hey there, father," he said, his voice gruff from all of the smoke. "You build this thing?" he nodded to the small hut that was little more than a teepee'ed cookfire with the haunch spitted over it.
"No," he shook his head, "I carved it," he indicated the meat. It hadn't been a graceful or skilled job, but it had been done and he hadn't cut himself or destroyed the knife. He was sure Kenneth appreciated the latter. "How're you doing today?" he asked, noticing that while Quinn was moving slowly and carefully, he was at least moving. He was healing. That was good. He had offered the man the sacrament of the sick when he had arrived and Quinn had declined so he did not offer it again, but he was glad to see that he was doing better. "I'm not much for building things. Plumbing was more my thing...not that I'm any good at that either. I just always had to go see about the plumbing when it broke at the church."
Quinn chuckled painfully. "Well, if you wanted to build us a proper bathroom, plumbing and all, Padre, I'm sure everyone would line up to shake your hand." He didn't suspect the priest did much for the approval of his fellow castaways, but it was a joke anyways. "Whoever built this little smoker though, it's working." It must have been Bazzer or maybe the marine. A lot of the wood in the forest was hardwood and all of the little trees had a different fragrance. This one smelled really nutty and he thought it would complement the meat well. Not that he had tasted grazer. There was the distinct chance that it tasted like nothing he could identify. "Have you tried the grazer meat yet?" he shot the priest a curious look.
"If I knew how..." he thought an indoor bathroom would be a Very Good Idea, even if it was just a his or hers. Or a his and hers. Somewhere where it was unlikely that someone might stumble across you doing your business. Awkward, especially if it was someone of the other gender. Unlike some of the men here, Alex was not willing to bare his skin or take care of his needs in front of the ladies. Nodding, Alex examined the smoker, walking around it, "Yeah. Tastes like chicken," he replied cheekily then took pity on Quinn and said, "Not really. It's sort of like beef, but gamier. Maybe like venison?" he'd only had venison once or twice, not enough to really remember it on his palate.
Quinn snorted. "You missed all of the eleboar. It tasted just like pork. We had bacon while you were away." He chuckled and nodded to the tree where Bazzer was hanging his skins. The massive quilled hide of the enormous animal lay stretched out next to the even larger grazer. "You guys must have had to leave a lot of that grazer for the laughers, judging by the size of that skin." His stomach rumbled hungrily, thinking about all of the meat. It was awesome having it back on the menu again. He'd heard that a lot of the sweetgrind had been hauled back as well. Maybe someone could get into pounding that to flour over the next little while. Quinn would have done it himself, except his chest would explode in agony with the movement.
Mmm, bacon. Now that was something he wished he'd been here for. Oh well, "It's Lent right now," he said, "Well, I think so. It's hard to do without a calendar or knowing where we are in the calendar here, but no meat on Friday's. If we only knew when Friday was," it bothered him somewhat, but he was trying to be pragmatic, "I think we've given up quite a bit for Lent though, unintentionally," his gaze went to the giant hides and he thought they were looking good. The librarian seemed to be getting the hang of...something. If it was tanning the hides, he wasn't sure, but he was trying. "We tried to bring back as much as we could, but there was only so much we could handle. The grasslands go on for a while. I tried to run it one day and had to turn back," he was a distance marathon runner. For him to have to turn back, that was significant.
Quinn nodded, though he couldn't really imagine what the grasslands looked like. It was getting easier and easier to imagine that all there was to this world was this forest. Quinn spent a lot of time buried in thought, attempting to grasp what had happened to them all as he tended the campfire. He found it really easy to imagine how tribal groups felt that their rainforest went on for all of eternity. How island cultures imagined they were the only land in the entire world. It was easy to forget civilization even as they all longed for it. For many, this place would seem hopeless and for hours on end, Quinn sat and despaired that they were all just waiting to die by one of the many means this forest had to offer. And yet, they had a leg up over early man since they were all modern educated, to varying degrees. But even he and Payne and Clay, arguably the least educated out of the bunch, could make and understand the simple tools. Wheels and pulleys. Levers and wedges. They had already brought technology to this place, boiling water and smoking meat. His brown eyes were fixed on the rough smoking hood, the corner of his mouth curving upward. The Lent comments went right over his head. "I wish I could have gone. I like to run, myself." Quinn had been an avid jogger. It was part of his regiment to stay fit. He could see himself training to be a distance runner in this place, if that's what they needed him to be.
"We should run one day," Alex suggested, "Do you do marathons or just for fun?" he ran marathons. Triathlons really, but he somehow didn't think swimming or biking would be needed too often here. He'd started marathons when he'd been in college and began triathlons when he had turned 30 as a way to fight against aging. Not against aging physically so much as an aging spirit and the preconceived notions of what being 30 meant. Now at 32, he'd done quite a few of them and loved it. Priests were encouraged to have hobbies and interests outside the church, so long as they remembered their primary focus and duties. "I guess now it doesn't matter, it's all for survival. Amazing how your point of view can change in an instant. Living day to day to survival of the fittest. Really makes me appreciate our ancestors, let me tell you."
"I've been thinking about them, too," Quinn said with a nod. He didn't really know where he came from. His mom was a mottled American mutt, that's for sure. She knew there was some Irish in her and probably other flavors of Brits as well, given the last name. Though she'd sometimes made comments that lead him to believe the Landry name came from some Cajun ancestry in Louisiana. So that meant French. French and maybe some Native American as well. Of course, he had no idea about his father. He'd never met the man and he sincerely doubted that his mom could pick him out of a crowd. "I've never run a marathon, but I've got a five mile run worked into my cardio workout." Quinn was not a large man and already he was noting some loss of muscle mass since arriving in this place, with an inability to exercise the way he normally did and insufficient food. "I'll probably have to work back up to that slowly once I can draw a deep breath without crying like a baby."
That was why Alex had said 'one day' and not 'one day soon.' It would be a while before Quinn would be able to run at all and certainly not more than 26 miles! "How fast did you run the five?" he asked, curious. It was always interesting to see the time for runners. Long distance runners like Alex took seemingly forever to run a simple five miles, he could do 26 miles in about 2.5 hours. He was no where near Olympic speeds, but he was happy with the endurance. A short distance runner could run five miles in what seemed to be nothing flat, but didn't have the endurance he had. One wasn't better than the other, just different. "Anything in particular about your ancestors?" he asked, going back to the more serious topic. Alex hadn't thought about his own specifically so much as humanities.
"Anywhere from forty minutes to an hour, depending on how much I drank at the tables the night before." He chuckled, not at all repentant. His face fell as he was questioned a little deeper about his ancesters. There was no reason to lie, especially to the priest. "Uh, I was just thinking about how I don't really know much about where I come from. I don't think my mother so much as knows my father's name let alone where he comes from, who his people are. And she doesn't like talking about the past as it relates to herself either." He shook his head, still watching the smoke as it seeped out from between the rawhide's stitching over the smoking hood. "I think she's probably Cajun, at least a little bit. And I wonder how they did it, settling into those Louisiana swamps? Or if I've got some Native in me, is there some sort of genetic memory that'll help me live in this forest or out on the plains?" He shot the quiet blonde man a quick grin. "Silly shit like that."
Alex listened carefully, nodding. What he said made sense, "An American mutt," he agreed. "Sounds a lot like me, too. Sort of makes you wonder, nature versus nurture and all that. Nothing silly about it at all. Humans are a pretty hardy group, we're able to survive in the hottest of heats and the coldest of colds. Most animals can't do that. My brother and I, we're Irish twins, if you know what that means?" he glanced at Quinn then explained, "He's not quite 11 months older than me. So we grew up like twins, same grade in school and whatnot. Anyways, our mother...don't know who she is. She put us up for adoption when I was an infant, we were adopted by an Irish family. I know she was Hispanic, but I have blond hair and fair skin. My brother's hair is only a little darker. Don't know who our father is or if we even have the same one. We were raised Irish Catholic in a very Irish Catholic neighborhood...but you're possibly more Irish than me. Or less. I don't know. What I do know, is that regardless of our backgrounds, we make our choices here and now. No one else. And we're not genetically predisposed to being adapted to living in a desert or on the plains any more than we are to anywhere else, except for our minds. Our minds let us adapt to all of it and more." That was longer than he had meant it to be. Oh well. "That does explain how I ended up named Alessandro Callahan, though," he grinned at that. It always seemed to confuse people.
Quinn nodded, wondering how they got on to the trip where they tell each other their family histories. "So I guess it's just up to what we've seen on tv then, huh?" He smiled ruefully at the priest by his side. "So you took a run. Twenty six miles you said?" Quinn just imagined, running straight out into waist tall grass and maintaining it for twenty six miles. Maybe landing on an animal path. "What sort of things did you see while you were out there? Any animals?" Other than the grazer they were watching smoke. That was faily obvious.
It was sort of hard to describe, this entire place was so different than Earth, "I ran for about two hours in one direction, I don't know how far it was, but less than 26 miles. Maybe 20? Maybe a little less. Grass. Purple grass, a lot like the field here, but bigger. Not a lot of animals, but I saw birds and bugs. Lots of little tiny gnat like things. Nothing like squirrels or rabbits or anything like that. I stayed there and rested for a while before heading back...I couldn't find the end of the grass. Prairie, I guess," he shrugged, unsure, "It went on as far as I could see. No trees or shrubs or anything," it had been disconcerting. Was that what it was like on the Oregon Trial trying to cross the prairie on covered wagons? Bizarre.
Quinn, too, could imagine that experience. It must have been a little bit like losing your mind. Running and running and, even though you know you are going forward, never really getting anywhere. "Where did you guys spend the nights then, if there were no trees?" He knew that the laughers went out into the field. He could hear them howling in amusement all the way into the easter woods. They were fast bastards. He had no doubt that they could cover a good chunk of the prairie once they opened up into clear ground and could run flat out.
"On an island," well, it wasn't much of an island. The river widened considerably just before veering away from the plains and there was an island in the river. It wasn't incredibly large, but it was big enough for a herd of grazers to spend the night and the water was at least 6ft deep. "Turns out they can't swim," which was incredibly useful knowledge. "We slept on the ground and the grazers could care less. It was really nice actually, not to worry about falling out of the tree in the night," Alex couldn't speak for everyone, but he had slept extremely well, even without a pillow or blanket and such. Unlike some of the others, he did not share his bed either at night for warmth, comfort, or any other reason.
Quinn gave the pradre such a frankly envious look that he was actually speachless for a minute. "Wow, grazers and sleeping on the ground? I might have to kack myself off a hunk of that meat, pack up my blanket and head off for this Shangri la you found." He shook his head, one hand unconsciously scrubbing over the dirty bindings around his ribs. He really should just take it off. It was stained with blood from the eleboar. Quinn just wasn't sure what kind of mess he'd be in when the bindings were gone. "I'd kill to be able to lie flat at night." Curling up slightly in a hammock hurt his ribs. He rarely actually slept at night due to the pain.
"Should I worry for my safety?" Alex asked, joking. For all that he hadn't been much use in defense and the like, he had no qualms about carving up the grazer that had been killed. "I'll trade you sleep space if you want to see if it's any better where I am?" he offered. He had sort of been sleeping on a branch with his back to the main tree instead of in a hammock since his blanket wouldn't hold the weight. He had found that out the hard way as it had begun to rip a little his first night, but the tree wasn't so bad. He was just paranoid about falling out though so far he hadn't had any problems. This also helped him avoid sleeping with someone else. Even platonically, the idea sat uncomfortably with him, he didn't have a problem with others doing it, but he couldn't.
"Nah," Quinn said with a chuckle and a grin. "It just hurts to be rolled up a little all night, you know?" His own blankets were holding up just fine and he even had his top sheet to add a little bit more warmth on the breezier nights. No one had crawled into bed with him yet and that was fine with Quinn. None of the women here really did it for him, though Jeri might have, if she'd hung around at all. She'd been cute and a little bit on the disarmingly smart side. They'd showed up together, sort of. On the same day, at least. Now she was gone and he didn't really know what to do about that. He'd gone looking for signs of the women but he just couldn't make it very far before he had to rest. He hated the limitations.
The disappearance of the women bothered Alex, but he hadn't said anything. There was no indication that they had been taken or killed, it looked like to all intents and purposes they had left on their own. That was their choice, though Alex didn't hold much hope for finding them alive later. He did know that he would incorporate a little memorial service for them in his next service in a couple days. Give people a chance to discuss their disappearance and whatnot to hopefully help them. "Broken ribs hurt," he agreed, "Unfortunately, breathing is sort of important to living. I broke a couple years ago. Nothing serious, but I was glad for the pain medication. That you're doing it without...even if it is out of need and not want, it's impressive. And you're still helping out," he was impressed and pleased. Not that he was the group leader or anything of that nature, but it was still good to let others know they were appreciated.
Quinn looked a little bit sheepish at the acknowledgement. "Well, if I'm gonna be lounging around the camp I might as well keep the home fires burning." He averted his gaze, looking back at the smoking hood. "How long until that hunk of meat is smoked through, do you think?" It had only been a day since he'd had meat before but he was actually salivating for more. Funny how things changed? He's always been a meat eater but since arriving here and experiencing real hunger for the first time in his life, where he couldn't even steal to feed himself, that love had just gotten stronger.
"Not sure," Alex was not a cook at all, "Maybe a day? I think it would depend on how thick the meat is. As me about Catholic doctrine, not cooking!" he laughed, "I am sorely ill-equipt for this place. Not sure that knowledge of saints and apostles is much help for survival and creating...whatever it is. Society. I'm willing to work and learn, but I'm not very knowledgeable on my own, except perhaps having seen Dances With Wolves," it was something that he was embarrassed about, but he had been learning. He had learned a lot so far about how to survive. He was trying.
Trying was really all that any of them could do. Quinn nodded. "Well, you'll fogive me if the fate of my soul has taken a back burner to the fate of my body." He didn't say it with anything but mildness, no sarcasm intended. He wasn't trying to mock or cut the priest, just stating the facts of his priorities. "It's good that you're here, though," he added. "Hope is important when people go through such a drastic change. Hope and faith go hand in hand, right?" He arched a questioning brow at Alex. "I'd say that just your presence keeps some of these people from flying apart at their seams." Carlita, for one, thought the priest was odd but he had caught her following Alex with her eyes, like she was expecting him to come over and deliver her a message at any moment.
"Can't argue that," he replied, "The spirit is just as important as the body, but at the same time, it can be nourished in a variety of ways, not only by some religious authority lecturing from a pulpit. Or a fallen tree log. No one needs to be told that God will provide if they sit hapless or that they will go to hell if they do or don't do something right now. God helps those who help themselves, which is what we are doing. And He provides...assuming we can figure out how to use what we've been given. We're not helpless or witless. We're not sitting benignly by without free will...we couldn't control coming here, but we CAN control ourselves and make the best of things now that we are," he said. Preaching down at people wans't really his style anyways. "Of course, a good game of monopoly is also pretty good too," not that they had monopoly, alas. The best they had was stories and discussion around the campfires at night.
The mention of a bored game resonated with Quinn. He'd been so incredibly bored since he arrived that he was honestly willing to believe that maybe he'd suffered a worse headwound than he had though. Maybe hed gone home, fallen into bed and died. This place was clearly Hell, since Quinn Landry couldn't run, jump or fuck anyone he was attracted to. But a board game would help, wouldn't it? Hell, he'd sell his soul and accept an eternity of brimstone and hellfire if he could just have a deck of cards! "We should make one," he said mildly. "I mean, a game board. Chess or checkers wouldn't be too hard." They had penknives and pebbles and wood galor, after all.
Now that was something Alex could do. Or even Quinn. "Checkers is simple enough, chess only a little harder. Or Chinese checkers. Sure," the idea was a good one, though he attributed the idea to Quinn, not to himself. "Even something like tic-tac-toe if we have some loose dirt and a stick. The seventh day is a day of rest..." this idea definitely had some merit. "Can you do this?" he asked, not meaning was he intelligent enough, but could he physically handle it? "Or would you like some help? Don't want to cause you needless pain." He suspected quite a few people would appreciate these games.
Quinn thought about that for a moment. "Well, I've never tried to carve anything before but I think I can do it," Chess peices would be rough but they were more representational. Everyone would know a rook was a rook, a king was a king. Wasn't there a guy with them now, named Rook? "Maybe a backgammon set?" He chuckled. He thought he wouldn't have a problem in the least, becoming sort of a pit boss, a games master. Maybe he'd even find some cards some day? Have a real casino night. "I'll start on them tonight. If I can find a knife to borrow, maybe I can take some chunks of wood to work on up in the tree." No sleep while the laughers did their thing and the pain his chest drove him crazy. He could focus on something else.
"I play backgammon," Alex nodded, he would go looking for something to use as a game board. "There's only one way to find out if you can carve anything," he said, patting Quinn on the shoulder. Normally it would have been a manly pat, but not with his hurt ribs, "and that's to try. Won't know unless you try. And if you suck, then you'll improve. Sort of like Bazzer and his skins," that just looked like some bizarre science experiment, but the kid seemed pleased with it. Alex knew they weren't very different in age, but Bazzer came off as so much younger than he was.
"Or Helena and Ryan with those damn clay pots," he mumbled, brows drawn together, as Quinn fell into thought. "Thanks, Alex." His dark eyes snapped back up to lock intensely for a moment on the priests before the corners crinkled and he grinned. The yellowed bruises looked less like a grim mask today than they had. It may be something small but games were important to civilization. Horseshoes, that was another easy game to build right? Or maybe lawn bowling? Fuck, there had to be dozens of things he could set up. Maybe this up coming sabbath day could be a games day as well. It might be just the thing to buoy a few sagging spirits. Including, most definitely, his own.
"Anytime," Alex replied, getting up to see what needed to be done for dinner that night. It was usually the biggest meal of the day since they could go out and find things to bring back to eat. The smile was good. Everyone here needed something, contributed something. And Alex didn't need religion to lift their spirits, it just helped.