Beginning of Time

Early Time

I stuck to my promise never to go from the cave alone. My promise, however, crumbled into many pieces—and not because of anything I could have helped. One time Big Stick left the cave to gather food, and he did not come back. We already needed food badly when he left. He waited until he could wait no longer, showing that he did not want to leave me but could not take me with him—that there was trouble on the air in the land of the Sharpspears. He knew that bands of the Yellow People had been coming into the land and that there was war upon our world.

But at last he had to go—and because of the danger abroad, he refused to take me with him.

And then he didn’t return.

When I could bear the hunger—and, yes, the sense of grief—no longer, I left the cave myself and climbed down the cliff face into the forest below. I cannot say that I cared whether I lived or died at that point, but my hunger had overpowered my willingness to starve myself to death in mourning for my lost Big Stick—for I did believe he had died. I could not think that he would stay away from me for any other reason.

I immediately fell into trouble. I had no sooner started off into the forest than I heard thrashing about. They came close enough that I could smell them. Meateaters. A band of Sharpspears. I moved away from them—only to come close to another band of them. Turning again and then a third time—helped by my hunger—made me lose my sense of where I was.

I kept moving. I did manage to find food and water, but then I heard a band of Meateaters nearby again—very close—and I just turned and slipped away. I walked and walked, without knowing where I was going. When I eventually came to a clearing, I saw that I had moved very close to the land that rose up sharply to meet the sky.

I heard voices, but they weren’t the primitive grunts of the Sharpspears. It was some sort of language—some means of way of making each other understand by sounds they made with their mouths—but it wasn’t the language of the Gentle People either. It was more complex, and it was spoken in differing tones, almost sing song. Strangely, though, it was harsh as well as sing song. Curiosity got the best of me, and I moved as quietly as I could across the clearing to a fringe of trees on the other side. The forest wasn’t thick here, though. There was another clearing beyond—a strange clearing, as it was really like a path, but much wider than ones the Gentle People made between their village and field.

And when I got to where I could see who was making the harsh sing-song noises, I was amazed—and numb in shock. There was some sort of wooden cart on the cleared path. It had round circles of wood at its corners that raised its platform off the ground. At the near end of this cart was a long wood stick that curved up. A strange-looking man—yellow skinned and slanty eyed—stood near the cart. He had a thing, such as the Gentle People wore, covering his tube, but it was dirty, and he was standing this side of the cart. He had a wooden yoke around his neck and his wrists were bound to the end of this on both sides. There was another yoke beside him, but it was on the ground. Tied to it and also lying on the ground was another man such as the first. A third man, covered in a white cloth, also yellow skinned and slanty eyed, was standing beside these two and was beating the man on the ground with a whip.

I should have turned and fled. But even if I had, I would have run into the small party of other yellow-skinned, slanty-eyed men who were stealing in behind me.

As, yoked to the wagon and straining along with the other man to pull the cart up the side of the land reaching for the sky, I tried to think on what was happening to me and why I was here, I chose to think that it didn’t matter. Big Stick had not come back. I had willed myself to be no more. The pain and strain of pulling this cart—and knowing that another had died in this yoke before me—spelled my fate well enough.

On the other side of the mountain, I was astonished to find new wonders. The Yellow People sheltered not in the forest under branches, nor in a cave, nor even in the grass piles of the Gentle People. Their shelters were made of wood and were squared off in neat four-sided bundles.

I didn’t live in one of these shelters, though. And the only times I went in one was when the man with the whip pulled me into one and slapped my thighs open and made groaning sport of my hole with his penetrator—which gave me no problem, his being much smaller than that of Big Stick.

Where I was sheltered was under a tree, tied by leather strips to the trunk of the tree. There weren’t even low branches for me to hide from the rain and sun under. Whereas the Yellow People lived in wooden shelters—and had mastered the leaping, hot flickering fingers that warmed within rock containers inside these wooden shelters—I was sheltered no better than I had been when living among the Others. Much worse.

For untold changes of light to dark and back to light, when I was nudged awake in the dark, I would be handed a bowl with sticky and watery grains of white food in it. Happily, no one of the Yellow People tried to make me eat meat, although they themselves ate fish from the waters. Then, before light returned, I was herded with others, some Yellow People, some Sharpspears, but all as enslaved as I was, out into a water-covered field, where I soon learned along with the others how to work with growing and dividing and growing the white sticky grains that I was given to eat. They were filling, though, so I could not be sad about that.

During my time with the Yellow People, I slowly began to understand that the sounds they made had meanings and to learn what some of these meanings were. I never, however, was able to make those sounds myself. There were just too many of them and they were too complex—and the Yellow People sang them just too quickly. I was awed, though, that these people not only had fields of food plants they laid out nearly like those of the Gentle People, but also that they had wooden shelters for themselves and carts that moved over the ground and a way to move many thoughts and meanings to each other.

As the world became cooler again in another cycle, the water was drained from the fields and we harvested the grains, which were put in tightly woven baskets and loaded onto the cart with the wood circles at the corners.

Then, once again, I found myself bound to the yoke of this cart—for that was what it was, a land vessel to carry the baskets of sticky white grains—and I was helping to pull the cart back up the side of the land reaching for the sky. This was only slightly less backbreaking than trying to keep the cart from running over and crushing me on the way back down the other side.

We seemed to be moving on the same wide path where I had first encountered the Yellow People, and pushing toward the ribbon of sand that ran into the broad sea stretching to the horizon where the first light after the dark rose in an eye-torturing disk.

We were struggling along, with the man with the whip jabbering harsh sounds at us and flicking us when we weren’t moving fast enough, when he stopped jabbering in a gurgling sound. I looked around in time to see him crumple to the ground with a pointed stick running completely through his chest and out his backside.

Sticks were flying all around us, and the other Yellow People, who had been walking around the line of carts that others like me were pulling, began falling down or turning this way and that with their own pointed stakes at the defensive.

I have no idea how long this went on, because I felt a stinging pain in my shoulder and looked down in surprise to find that I too had been struck through with a pointed stick. I went down like a rock, with my last feeling being of rolling down between the two circles of wood at the front of the cart I had been pulling.

When I woke, I was feverish and sensed that I was jabbering in some variation of the Yellow People’s language. My arm, which was covered in leaves, felt like it was too hot for me to bear, and my eyes could not focus.

Through a cloud, I saw a huge body of a male leaning over me, lifting my head and pouring water into my mouth from a soaked piece of white cloth. Not knowing what I was doing, I had the vision of the white cloth being just like that which covered the Yellow People. Only later, when I was more aware, did I find out that this was exactly what it was.

I knew that the man giving me the water was a Meateater Sharpspear. As a habit, this realization caused me to painfully open my thighs, ready to receive him. That could be the only purpose for him trying to revive me.

Later—I know not how long ago later—I opened my eyes gain. The fever was gone, and my vision was clear—or at least not nearly as cloudy as it had been before. I saw that I was in a cave and I was alone, although I heard grunting and humming sounds coming from the dark recesses of the cave.

I dragged myself to a sitting position and winced at the pain in my shoulder. But I saw that the leaves were the right ones—the ones that would pull any poison from the pointed stick out of me and would help heal the wound.

I was in pain, but it was not too bad. And the pain told me that I was alive. That in itself was a surprise—whether a good surprise or a bad one I did not know.

I managed to get up on my feet. I would have moved better on all fours, except that the pain was less on my shoulder when I stood. There was a thick stick near the mat I was on and I used it as a crutch.

I moved slowly, but deliberately, toward the back of the cave, toward where I heard the sounds of a man coming from. I could see that it would be no use moving toward the mouth of the cave. Its floor was not at ground level. Beyond the ledge outside the cave, I could see the tops of trees. I would never escape that way.

And I was tired, so tired. I had no idea what new dangers and difficulties faced me now, but I decided that I would face them—that I would find this Sharpspear and lie under him—and then maybe he would let me go, go to another world. Surely whatever world there was out there after this one, it would be less cruel to me than the one I had existed in to now.

When I got to the back of this chamber of the cave, I saw that there was another chamber beyond it. And that the second chamber was filled with the light from the dancing orange and red miracle that some of the worlds I had lived in seemed to know how to make—but that my own world of the Others did not.

The Sharpspear was crouching, facing the wall of the cave. The wall was covered in colorful drawings—drawings that started to flood back into my memory as both my mind and eyes cleared.

Big Stick was painting on the wall. A new episode to our story. The story of my return to the cave. And to him.

He turned and looked at me and opened his arms wide. I looked down at the stick I was leaning on. It was Big Stick’s carved cudgel.

Present Time

“I tell you I did not undermine you in the acquisition of those stone carvings. I would never do anything like—”

“Gloria told me, Timothy. She told me that you revealed our bid to the Houston Museum so that they could outbid us.”

“Gloria is a bitch, Jay. If anyone did it, she did. You know she’s been trying to break us up. I think she has eyes for you herself.”

“Here, give me a leg up. It looks like a cave entrance up there. And I don’t know. I just don’t know. I thought you cared.”

“You don’t know how much I care. I’m here with you now, aren’t I. This wasn’t the wisest place to be—and I told you so. There are still headhunters around here. One of the Rockefeller boys disappeared near here, you know. They never found him. And Amelia Earhart.”

“Shut up, Timothy, and give me that boost.”

The two men made their way up to the ledge in front of the cave mouth.

“Would you look at this?” Timothy said in awe, as they entered the cavern. “This might go back to earliest times. There definitely was habitation here. Look, they had fires out there on the ledge outside the opening. They knew about fire.”

The two spent an interminable time examining everything in the cave that possibly could have been linked to human habitation. But at length, Jay had worked his way to the back where there was another opening into the darkness.

“There appears to be another chamber behind this one, Timothy. Come, bring the flashlights. I want to see if there’s something—”

“Holy-moly, would ya look at that—?”

The two of them stood there, in awe, for several minutes. They trained the beam of the light back and forth over the wall of the second chamber. There were cave drawings—and in color, in whites and yellows and browns and reds all across the back wall. They had difficulty determining where the drawings started and where they ended—assuming there was any progression there at all.

“It’s magnificent,” Jay uttered when he could speak.

“Yes, it’s almost arousing. It gets my juices going. I haven’t seen anything like this outside of the caverns of France—maybe not even there,” Timothy answered in a voice laced with wonder.

“Only almost arousing?” Jay asked. As if in answer, Timothy came up close behind Jay, nuzzled his throat, and brought a hand around to cup his crotch. “OK not almost then,” Jay whispered. “You feel it too, don’t you? Something almost sensual, sexual about this cave.”

The two held there for a few moments, lost in the connection, Jay slowly rocking his pelvis against Timothy’s cupping hand. But a bird cawed out at the cave entrance and, almost in embarrassment,” the two broke and moved away from each other.

Trained scientists that they were, the two moved to find the beginning of the story being depicted in crude, but artistic, drawings on the wall, once they recognized that it, indeed, was a continuing story.

It was thirsty work, and Timothy went back to the main cave to retrieve their water canteens.

“It’s a love story,” Jay called out at length, having followed the progression along the wall. “It’s obviously the life of two men devoted to each other. And it lasted to the death. Here, at the end, the smaller of the men crouched over the larger one. Unmistakably tears falling on the dead lover. And this last panel in a decidedly different hand than the rest of it. And, oh my god, come back in here, Timothy. I think there are a couple of skeletons back here.”

Jay stood and turned. Timothy was standing at the entrance of the second chamber. He had a strange expression on his face and his arms were half raised, cradling an object. Jay looked closely and saw that it was a staff—a cudgel, really—intricately carved and notched.

“I found this on a high rock ledge in the other room.”

“Quite a find,” Jay said. “The museum will love it. You’ll no doubt get the assistant curator position you’ve wanted now. It must be eons old.”

“I want you to have it. This will be your find. I didn’t undermine your acquisition of the rock carvings that went to the Houston. And I want to make you believe me by my giving this to you. You will rise to curator on this.”

“Put it down, Timothy.”

“Why?”

“Look into my eyes, Timothy. You’ll know why then. The love story on this wall is deeply affecting and suggestive. I believe you, and I apologize for doubting you—and I am in the mood.”

“Here? Now?”

“And why not? This seems to have been the perfect love nest. The walls do not lie.”

Timothy fucked Jay there, on the floor of the cave, on a tiger skin, preserved over the centuries by the protecting dryness of the cave. Jay lay on his back, his eyes turned toward the wall carvings, picking out the several times depicted of a larger man fucking a smaller one, in the same position Timothy was fucking him—his knees under Jay’s buttocks, raising Jay’s pelvis for a straight angle for Timothy’s deep penetration, while Timothy held Jay close with an arm under his waist and sucked on Jays nipples—and thrust and thrust and thrust.

Some desires and melting positions had never changed over the ages, not since the beginning of time.

-Fini-