Modern Day Cavegirls - Jane 02

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This thing has a few things going on concurrently so it's a little tough at the start to define what happened first in the format of a linear story.

But I understand the frustration that some have experienced. So I'd say that in terms of the timeline, then Modern Day Cavegirls - Bobbi's Story is first, since the background with Damian happened long before anything.

Modern Day Cavegirls - Jane ought to be read next and Modern Day Cavegirls would be last.

Probably not simple, but I think that'll work.

Now this one. Yikes.

This chapter opens much later, maybe a month after Malikah came to stay with Bobbi.

But most of the chapter is set on the afternoon of the day that Su-jin meets Jodi. So that I don't lose anybody, it happens on the first page below.

Sorry about all this and from now on, I'll just go back to writing chapter one, chapter two, etc.

0_o

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Jane turned to leave the grocery store just at closing time and she heaved a small sigh of relief. She'd been out doing some aerial application all day and about halfway through the afternoon, it suddenly came to her that she had no food in the house. She could have just called Bobbi, but she hadn't wanted to -- just in case Bobbi took the oversight as something that might be indicative of a lack of foresight, if Jane was going to handle the agricultural division one day soon.

And the rest of the afternoon, Jane had given it some thought and decided that it probably did at that, so she was determined to pay more attention to mundane matters.

And of course, she was trying to come up with a path forward -- such as what she was going to eat that night.

As it worked out, the timing still fit and she was able to head back in time, put the Air Tractor to bed and get her paperwork done before the jumped onto her e-bike and zipped over to town. By then, it was a little after eight and she knew that the place closed at nine.

The day had been a warm one and Jane was looking forward to a long shower to wash off the long day's sweat and then cool off before she ate her dinner.

She didn't see very much of Jodi-Lynn these days and she only caught brief glimpses of Su-jin at work. Unless she had some issue, she didn't spend a lot of time in the offices and while she might get the Agricultural division one day soon, the fact of the matter was that she was the only Ag pilot unless her father was flying. So just as Bobbi ran the transport side pretty much as a single operator, Jane herself was now a one-girl show too.

Bobbi was a little scarce these days as well, but Jane knew the reason for that. When her sister wasn't flying or driving her business forward, she was maximizing what time she might have with Malikah before the singer had to return to Chicago.

At the store, she checked out at Susan's aisle -- since Susan was good enough to wait for her to finish her shopping before closing up. Now it was Jane's turn to wait so they could talk. It had been a while.

Susan was one of those girls who just seemed to radiate beauty. She was ash blonde and willowy with a healthy complexion like God just noticed her being born one day and waved at her or something. Jane had always held the belief that if Suzi wasn't here in this place, but was in London, or Paris, or New York, she'd be a model by now.

It wasn't until later that Janey had figured out that agencies only need a very few models like that. They weren't dangerous or wild-looking enough, she supposed.

Jane and Susan were near the same age and they'd been friends forever but for a gap when they were about eleven or twelve. Their friendship actually predated their naming conventions. Bobbi still called her sister Janey, and there was maybe her father as well. Everybody else called her Jane.

But between themselves, they were still Janey and Suzi to each other and that was fine.

"So what's it like, having a star around the place?" Suzi asked and Janey shrugged, "I hardly ever see her, to tell you the truth, Suzi. I didn't know much of anything about it when she came to stay for a while.

I've run into her a couple of times and I really like her, though. It's a little like you're seeing the world through her eyes when you talk with her about anything -- at least out here. She's got this really interested viewpoint that you just have to like."

"Don't you mean an interesting viewpoint? Suzi offered.

Janey shook her head, "No. I meant it that way, the way I said it. Malikah sees everything here as new to her, and if you're talking to her at the time that it kicks in, you just get taken along in a way. I really like that. Like ...

Well, we've been here all of our lives, so we look out and we don't even see the mountains at all. But she can't miss them every time. I went for a walk with her one time, because she asked me to so that she didn't get lost.

How the hell can you get lost here? Anyway, we just ended up near the outskirts of town, facing the airport and she told me that the scenery between where we were and the mountains looked like a place to her called the Sahel, and of course, I didn't know what she was talking about. I looked it up later and her description to me made it make more sense. Like I'm sure that she considers the Sahara to be more of an entity and a home than just a desert."

Janey turned to Suzi, "If you think about it, well I think that's where the magic in her music comes from -- from that way of looking at things."

"Whoa," Suzi laughed, as she put her pen down from balancing her till. She reached out and put her hands on Janey's shoulders, "Are you sure you're really Janey Sorrensson and not some clone living in her place? That was a little deep."

Jane shrugged, "Yeah, it's me."

Suzi laughed a little more and pressed down gently with her hands.

"What are you doing? Janey asked, starting to grin.

"I'm trying to save my friend's life, is all," Suzi laughed, "'Cause if you're NOT a clone, then you're liable to float away on me, talking like that."

She removed her hands, "Anyway, I love her to death now. She promised me her second album and also a DVD of one of the concert dates on her tour and she kept her promise -- coming up to me right in the store alone one day last week. They shoot them at every show. The one she gave me was shot in Philadelphia."

"So what's it like?" Janey asked.

"She warned me that it might be boring, since the camera angle never changes," Suzi said, "But she's wrong, because if you watch it like that, you get the feeling that you're in the band, since that's the way that they all see each other when they play. You just lose sight of Malikah a few times in the second half of the show. That's when she really lets go and pours it on and sometimes she's right at the edge of the stage, talking to the people down at the front."

"I'd really like to watch that some time," Janey said, "if you wouldn't mind lending it to me someday."

"Sure," Suzi smiled as she put the till cash into a burlap, lockable pouch and walked to put the pouch into the cash drop box. "I didn't think that you liked her stuff that much. Me? I could listen to her albums over and over ... since I have."

"It's different when you know the person a little," Janey said, "I can't even describe it, really. She's just so ... Malikah. I've never met anyone like her in my life.

You know those people who ...

How to say this? Those people -- they might be related to you or they might not be -- the ones who just hug you and you don't want it and all you wanna do is get clear of them and then run like hell?"

Suzi nodded, laughing, "I know!"

Jane's smile faded then, "Malikah is like that -- only she's the only one that I've ever met who makes you want to hug her back because you want even more. She's not like the others that you just want to get away from. They've always felt to me like they wanted to take something from me.

Malikah feels like she's giving to you."

The few others of the store staff were gone now, each one saying a quiet goodnight to Suzi and Janey as they walked to the front doors slowly.

"Bet it feels nice," Suzi said, "that she and Bobbi are together."

Janey looked at Suzi who just chuckled, "Come on Janey, We've known each other all of our lives. I don't know how it came to me, exactly, but I just knew about Bobbi one day. From the second that they walked in here together -- and they weren't all over each other or anything -- I knew that Malikah was Zinzi and I knew that something had started between them. I think they make a great couple and I'd bet that it's just what your sister needs more than anything.

I've always admired her for her strength and her drive to do what she does."

Janey nodded, "It is nice in a way. With Malikah around, Bobbi is ... wait for it ...

Bobbi is almost serene. It was a little unsettling to see at first.

She's waiting for Damian to come back home to Angel Fire. That's the last step in her plan for the company. She figures he'll be done with whatever he's doing in about a year."

They chatted a little longer and then Jane had to go, but she promised that they'd get together over the next week.

She loaded her stuff onto her e-bike and nailed the throttle to get to the farm.

Jane had a ... well, a dirty little secret hidden there -- not that it had been the plan, exactly.

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A few weeks before - on the day of the whole blow-up with Sujin and after repeatedly getting both barrels from Bobbi, Jane had been miserable and she blamed herself. She didn't want to go anywhere or even be seen by anyone who knew her. She just wanted to be left alone to feel shitty.

After Su-jin had gone to town in Jodi's truck, Jane had gone for a bit of an aimlessly wandering walk and she ended up near the old machinery shed of the farm. There was the old loft in there above everything and years ago, Jane had cleaned about half of it out.

The reason for doing that was lost to antiquity if anyone asked her about it. Really, she'd wanted a bit of room to play in. So she'd moved a ton of old things and swept for what had seemed like a week before she put her drum kit up there along with an old stereo which had a cassette player that still worked. She'd liked it up there, and then she'd found an old bedframe and a mattress. She'd gotten some cleaner and went to town and after that, she had a place to play in a different way -- without the constant threat of interruptions which always seemed to happen while living in the farmhouse.

But life moved on and she wasn't fourteen anymore either. Bobbi had come home from the Air Force and life had been busy ever since with getting the company started and all.

That day, Jane just wanted to go up there to see if there was anything that the mice hadn't carted off since anyone had gone there. She thought about the bed and then had a slight hope that it was still there and not ruined. The loft was not closed off to the outside world completely. She figured that the chances were slim, but she wanted to go anyway, hoping that it wasn't' too hot up there to sit and feel stupid for a while as she cried.

As she came near to the man door and not the huge one, Jane thought that she heard clicking -- rapid clicking like you'd hear if someone was using a ratchet to turn a socket on a bolt. She stood still and listened, sure now that it was what she was hearing. She knew that Rose and her father were out of town.

So who ...?

She tried to open the door, but found that the small hasp was in place on the inside, so she fished in her pocket for her pocketknife and slipped it in through the crack. When she pushed up, the hasp came off, but it made a sound. She opened the door quickly and stepped inside.

Too bad it was dim in there and she was coming from the full New Mexican daylight. She couldn't see much of anything -- but she heard the running steps over the hardpacked dirt floor.

She said nothing. She only listened to get the direction and waited for her eyes to adjust. When she could see a little, she stepped forward and looked around.

She had a hell of a time keeping her eyeballs in her head for a little while.

There was tons of ancient farming equipment in there. There always had been for longer than Jane had been alive -- a lot longer. City folks have always made jokes about how farmers tend to be frugal -- so they never throw anything away.

Need a new tractor? Well get one, but don't scrap the old one, not if it still runs a little. You never know when you might need the old girl one day, right? Jane didn't miss the fact that the tires were all inflated on every one.

To illustrate and perhaps show how rural frugality worked, the first ancestor of the famous Ford F-150 had a different name way back, but it hadn't been offered for sale as a street vehicle. Most of them weren't sold through car dealers. Most of them were sold by Ford farm equipment dealers -- who'd had to haggle and deal with tight-fisted farmers who were there to buy a farm vehicle. That's why those first ones only came with one brake light and one windshield wiper -- because the farmers just couldn't see the sense in spending money for the other one. This huge old shed was full of all of the old machinery from the farm.

What Jane was looking at was three long-dead tractors moved in a row and looking like they could be fired up and rolled out the big door to make a few dozen go-rounds pulling a plough set or maybe a baler. She began to explore very quietly, trying to listen as she did and wondering just what the hell ...?

Not many people knew of it, but due to Jane's humble beginnings, the man that she thought of as her father was actually her grandfather since he'd adopted her to raise himself because one of his own sons -- Jane's real father - wasn't worth spit.

Her grandfather had served in Vietnam as an Air Force pilot for a time. Her great-grandfather had been in his grave before she'd been born and he'd been a Navy pilot in the war. Jane had heard the tale from her grandfather about how there were legends of mean-spirited little things known as gremlins who seemed to delight in fucking over aircraft -- usually late at night - to make them unserviceable, meaning not fit to fly and fight.

But she'd never heard of them in a civilian context, not that she believed a word of the legend. So who had done what she was looking at now? A reverse gremlin? One who liked to fix things instead of fucking them over? It didn't make sense.

She turned a little and almost fell over. There was the old Norseman, a rough bush transport plane that her great-grandfather had bought as surplus after the war and never used much. It was the single largest thing in the building with its wings looming everything else. The last time that she'd even looked at it, it did not look like it had flown through Hell.

It looked like Hell had come looking to find it.

Now? It looked a little tired, but not much and there wasn't a lot of dust on it, either. She walked that way and saw that the tires weren't flat and that they were not the ones that she remembered which had been flat for decades. They were the spares that she knew had been in here under tarpaulins.

She walked up to it and reached for the door handle. The last time that she'd even been this close, she'd been a girl who'd loved to climb up and sit in the dirty old pilot's seat and pretend for hours, peering through the grimy glass over the faded old instruments.

Well the instruments were still faded -- but there was no dust at all inside the aircraft and a few repairs had been made. She got out again and looked around, finally deciding to say something.

She called out, asking who was there and she heard a very quiet gasp. Next, she heard footsteps running again toward the large door at the back, and Jane tore off in that direction.

As she ran, she heard sounds like someone trying to start another piece of machinery and she knew that it was a motorcycle.

There weren't any rideable motorcycles stored in here, as far as she knew. When she neared the back, she saw a person kicking over an old Harley-Davidson Servi-car, the three-wheeler that was used by many businesses long ago and Jane knew enough about bikes in general to know that it had been out of production since the 1960s. The engine started just as Jane came abreast of the vehicle, ten yards off to the side. She wanted to see the person, but she knew that she didn't have time right then.

Because she knew what that person was trying to do and even what they'd do next.

When the Harley idled evenly, the person jumped off and ran to the big rear door to open it and get away.

But they found Jane standing there with her foot holding down the lock so that the door couldn't be opened.

At first glance in the dim shed, she thought the person was a raggedly-looking boy, but she only got the one look. Realizing that the way out was gone; the figure spun and ran back the other way, all the way to the other end and out of the door there.

Jane stood with her mouth open.

Who was that?

And above all, why?

But Jane wasn't stupid.

The Harley wasn't one of the large beasts that they made today. It was only a 750, not a 1200 or even larger. She looked down at the tops of those cylinders. It was a knucklehead, so that meant that it was even older.

And it was running.

She knew why too. The idea was to leave the trike running and dash out of the other door, hoping that Jane would run that way, then a quick run back to open the door and ...

Jane turned the ignition off and she pocketed the key with a small smile.

'Nice try,' she thought.

After that, she went to the rough-hewn wooden stairs which led to the loft and walked up.

What light there was up here during the daytime came in partially through the screened-over ventilation covers out on the roof. Most of it came in through the gaps which had grown between the old planks of the roof, where the shingles had fallen off. There had been no gaps when the building was built, but over time, the old wood shrank a little and now bars of light alternated with wide stripes of dimness on the wooden floor below.

She saw the bed and also that it was being used at night since it was wearing clean-looking sheets. There were a few magazines lying around, bike mags, and some old Popular Mechanics which must have belonged to her great-grandfather way back.

There were also a couple of skin mags and it made her smile to see them there. They were the kind favored by old men and teenagers forever, probably contributing to the sustained success of the pulp and paper industry in a major way.

Just from tissue sales.

She hadn't gotten a clear look at all, but she now doubted that he was an old man. Well, a very freaking quick old man to be able to haul ass out of there the way that he did, if he was.

She looked around a little more; there wasn't a lot of garbage lying around. Actually, it was neater than the way that she remembered seeing it the last time that she'd been up here.

Jane was intrigued now. Whoever this had been, they'd found things that she hadn't when she was looking for furnishings in this shed. There was a small and ancient nightstand next to the bed, old but clean and dust-free.

She stepped over and opened the drawer and saw ... something which made her smile.

A steely dan lying in a clean shop rag. She pushed the drawer closed.

Jane thought that the person might still be a boy -- but she kind of doubted it now.

She turned around as she heard slow and careful footsteps coming up the creaky wooden stairs and she waited.

The creaking stopped and there was only silence then, while whoever this was stood at the top of the stairs and looked at her, though she couldn't see even a shape out that far in this light while Jane stood in a square of light under one of the vent covers.