Thomas J. Ratliff: World Traveler

Jonathan Garrett

A Journey

I always figured that I’d never leave the boundaries of my home town. There wasn’t any bad about that, really, because at the time I thought that I was perfectly contented to stay right there for the rest of my life. It was a very small and very poor town, far out of the way of the merchant caravans that wound their way down from mountains every spring. It was the kind of place that no one ever left and no one ever came to, at least on purpose.

Then one summer, a pestilence came upon the land and several in the village died because of it. My parents were among those to be lost, the local healer said they were just unlucky and that there wasn’t anything that anyone could have done about it. To say that the event changed me is an understatement. In a matter of days, I lost everything that tied me to that land and everything that I had ever cared about.

The night after they died, I slipped off into the darkness, no destination or purpose in mind. I simply left the village that no one ever left. For nearly a week, I walked straight ahead, neither taking note of my surrounding or attempting to figure out where I should go. I don’t know how far I walked, but in the end the lack of food or water, which seemed to pay no attention to, took its toll on me. In a forest, I do not know where, I collapsed under a tall cedar tree.

That would have been the end of me, should have been the end of me, but luck, or maybe fate if you want to call it that, intervened. Some hours later I awoke. At any moment I expected to feel the sharp but swift bite of some forest dwelling animal, but it never came. My mind was still so foggy from exhaustion, starvation, and dehydration that it took me several minutes to realize that I wasn’t in the forest at all.

Something soft lay under my head and some large and warm was wrapped around me. Heat was coming from somewhere a few feet away and I could hear a merry crackling that felt familiar somehow.

“You’re awake, I see.” A man said.

I opened my eyes and turned toward the sound. He was an older man and his grey beard was neatly trimmed. He was wearing a hunting cap and a long, brown coat. The hilt of a gun protruded slightly from a holster on his hip. He noticed that I was looking at it.

“Oh this?” He asked, “Don’t worry, son, I don’t mean to do you any harm. Otherwise you’d still be out there in the forest.” He laughed then, as if to himself, “I can’t say that I expected to find you when I left this morning.”

“Where am I?”

“This is my shack,” he replied, “It’s in a forest neighboring one of the major highways for this part of the world. Another day or two and you would have made it to Mektalis, by my reckoning.”

“Mektalis?”

The old man nodded. “It’s the capital of this area, though some might dispute what ‘this area’ means exactly. Been like that for a while, all those city folk and their fancy way of dress don’t have much else to do aside from bickering amongst themselves about this or that. Me? I prefer being where it’s quite, you can do a whole lot more thinking out here than you can with all that racket from those electric autos they drive around in all the time.”

“Auto?”

He frowned at that. “You sure don’t know much, do you? “Well, no matter, if you’d just tell me where you came from I can help you get back.”

“I’m not going back,” I said sullenly.

“Not going back?” He said slowly, “Now why would that be?”

I didn’t say anything, but he seemed to catch on quickly enough.

“I see,” he said calmly, “It’s the kind of situation.”

He stood up and grabbed a small cup of water from a nearby table. I drank the water down almost in one gulp.

“My name’s Jacob Miller,” the old man said, “I’ve never had the pleasure of raising a son before, but I suppose I can help you out. At least for a while. And you?”

“Thomas,” I replied, “Thomas Ratliff.”

I learned much from the old man in the time that I spent with him. It seemed like I was someone that he had been waiting his entire life for, someone who he could talk to about his life story and who he could impart his wisdom to. I learned how to shoot a gun, how to hunt for deer in the woods, and more things besides.

Those years were among the best of my life and I would treasure them forever. Too soon, however, the old man died, just as my parents had. I didn’t run away like the first time, though. That wasn’t who I was anymore. I got shovel out of the old man’s tool shed and dug a hole out behind the shack. Then I solemnly buried him in it.

My life was at a crossroads then. I could stay in the shack and continue to live the life started by the man named Jacob Miller. Or I could forge my own trail and see what lay beyond the boundaries of that forest. Eventually I picked the latter.

There was food left in store and a bit of money. I took all I could find of both and put them in a large backpack. I was about to set out on foot when I a thought occurred to me. The old man had never said anything about the large shed behind his house. It was always locked and he’d never once opened it in my presence.

Despite feeling a bit guilty about it, I shot the lock off with the old man’s revolver and then pushed open the large, sliding door. The inside was lined with shelves and metal boxes filled with odd trinkets and tools. In the center of the shed was something that I had never seen before. It looked a bit like the carts that the people in my hometown used to transport wheat in from the fields, but those had all been pulled by horses or oxen. This was something else entirely. I didn’t see any hitch on it and it had four wheels instead of just two. Was this the “auto” that the old man talked about from time to time?

The auto was old and had spots of rust here and there. I hadn’t the first clue how to make it go, but that didn’t stop me from trying to learn how. Days passed as I went over every single inch of it, meticulously inspecting and cleaning each part, always looking for a method to the construction. It took a while, longer than I had anticipated, but soon enough I had it figured out.

I changed out all of the liquids in the auto for what I hoped were more of the same that were resting in huge drums in one corner of the shed. I gently turned the key and the contraption sputtered a few times and then settled into a quiet rhythm. I slowly pressed down one of the pedals and the auto lurched forward, startling me with its suddenness. The steering wheel felt comfortable in my hands.

There was a wide world that lay before me and intended to see it all.