Camp Sunrise: Pappa's Song
Posted on 16 Mar 2023 @ 8:49am by Chief Petty Officer Ibis Xeri
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Korix, Camp Sunrise
Timeline: MD08 Morning on the island (following Camp Sunrise: Senselessness)
1212 words - 2.4 OF Standard Post Measure
After her cry Ibis dusted off the boy and put her forehead against his, for his sake doing her best to reassure him that her wave of sadness had passed and the world was right again. “Thanks Ikemba. You’re right. There’s no sense in crying over what we can’t change.”
He seemed fine with that, and wandered away nearby, picking up a thin, curved, whiplike branch. There were a number of them scattered on the ground all around the shack, all cut in similar lengths. Wallace had collected them from the briars and peeled the thorns off then scattered them all over. “This is pick up sticks,” Wallace had said, demonstrating how to use one hooked stick to gather another. He passed the stick to Ikemba and the boy had been, well, hooked… which had often kept him out of their hair while they did chores. He was now able to collect a hookfull at once in a sweep, and load his stick up until the weight bent it too far and dropped the load. He’d figured out the limit and would shake them off into a pile. Magically, the next day, all his sticks would be around the camp again, as Wallace and Ibis and Olivia would take the time to scatter them around when Ikemba wasn’t looking. What had begun as a distraction was turning out to be a good coordination builder.
Putting out the fire with a little sand, Ibis raked the little pit clean again, ready for the evening fire. She collected the pot and three dishes and rubbed them off with sand before setting them aside to be rinsed and then sanitized by the heat of the sun, once she eventually managed to bring around some more clean water.
She assumed the fourth breakfast plate was still with Olivia in the Winetrout shack. The door was still closed. “Olivia?” She called. There was no answer.
Ikemba was back again, throwing down his stick. “Pappa,” he said. “Pappa play.”
“You want to play Pappa’s song?”
“Pappa play.” Ikemba confirmed with one sharp nod.
“Okay, Ikemba.” Ibis tried to make sure to always give him what he asked for if he said it outloud. It seemed like the best reinforcement. “Aunt Ibis will get it down for you.”
She pulled open the door to their shack, kicking the doorstop stone in front of it to keep it open. The door itself was the main way to let light in. Along the top of two of the walls there were little hand cut slats under the eaves for ventilation but they only let in a little light when the sun happened to be setting or rising on either side of the shack. When she’d been bedridden and Wallace had taken her in, she used to tell time passing by the light in the slats. Before taking her in, and later the kids, the shack had originally been just Wallace’s. It was central to everyone’s build, since they’d still been organizing themselves like a crew around the highest ranking officer at the time. Her original bunk house was part of a triplex lean-to she had shared with two other women. Rachel and D’zenthi had actually moved out before she had, shacking up, kinda literally, with other crewmates and leaving her the only bachelorette in their old triplex.
It wasn’t that she had been short of invitations. Things had just gotten… very real. People were deciding who they wanted to possibly live out the remainder of their lives with and the only guy on the island she’d take that seriously had made it very clear about her chances with him back when they’d first shipped out on the Sunrise. She hadn’t planned on making any new advances on Wallace and, to her mind, no one else made the cut. More than one fella had pointed out how she had been very outspoken about the Sunrisers having kids again one day, implying they could help her out with starting the trend. But in spite of her rhetoric, lending a hand to Laura made Ibis witness to enough miscarriages, stillbirths, and deliveries gone very wrong that the terror was forever drilled into her nerves. Having babies was the trenches. And she was secretly mortified.
When Rachel had died in childbirth, Ibis had been assisting Laura. Her own nightmares often still featured Rachel’s anguish. She had suffered so much. Jimoh couldn’t bear waiting at the door, pressing his way in and taking Rachel’s hand and trying to shake her, talk her back to him. Laura still had to act— even with the distressed Marine right there crying over his wife, they had to C-Section Rachel to get to the baby. Ibis had assisted, handing her the tools they had scrounged or made for Laura’s archaic surgery supplies. The scene had been so visceral, so intense, that while she was participating in it Ibis felt as if she weren’t in her own body. But the replays in her dreams were vivid. Usually they crescendoed with Ikemba’s first piercing wail.
What had she come in here for again? Pappa’s song. Right.
Snagging the multipurpose bucket that served for furniture, Ibis picked her way over the mats to the side wall where something akin to a dulcimer was strapped to a peg. Wallace had hung it at a convenient height for himself, so Ibis had to use the pail for a stool to bring it down.
It was hefty, being made out of scraps of welded steel. Jimoh had found shift labor in one of the fabrication floors. He’d secreted a lot of materials to fabrication and back for joining or cutting. A guitarist without a guitar, he’d tinkered with making his own instruments. The most difficult thing was strings, but heavy nylon cording was plentiful for packing and while it didn’t quite ring, he’d managed to figure out a good body shape to help the dull plucking to be heard around the evening cook fires. The day they buried Jimoh, Wallace had collected Ikemba in one arm and the dulcimer under the other.
Ibis got it off the peg and climbed back down from the pail, hefting the instrument outside to Ikemba.
“Here you are, sweetie. Play Pappa’s song for me.” Ibis set it out for him. It was too heavy for his lap, so Ikemba would strum at it on the ground.
He just ran his fingers over the strings again and again in open tuning. Wallace kept the strings fresh with new nylon when he could get it, so the sound wasn’t unpleasant as much as it was repetitive.
Ikemba placated, Ibis put her fists on her hips and took in several deep breaths to steel herself for the conversation no one wanted to have and search her own soul for a calm, reinforced center. Flicking her braid back she squared her shoulders and marched herself towards the scariest thing Starfleet expert combat Marine Major Porter Wallace had ever met: Olivia Winetrout, aged thirteen and full to the brim of spit and vinegar.
