He stayed well between the coastline and the mountains, though he considered that it would not be so hot in the mountains. Still, every day made it clearer: he had really done it. He had accomplished his task, and he was going to make it home alive to share his discoveries. He now knew that he was close enough to home to get there before the season changed. There was no winter, no exotic terrain, no language barrier, and no insanity or uncertainty on his part to get in the way. He knew exactly where he was going and what he would do when he got there. The further south he went, the less frequently he sought shelter at a settlement. He still stopped often to ask for food, but he nearly always now slept outdoors. He didn't want to lose any time, when every hour he spent walking brought him closer to his home village, his friends, and the cabin he shared with his uncle. He wanted to know how Roy was doing. How was he coping with years of living alone? How had the council done in looking after him? If he'd caught cold in the winter, Charlinder was going to give them all an earful of hell, even if it meant he had to lie low for months before he presented his learning center plan. He couldn't wait to tell Roy all about the madness that was Gentiola. In fact, part of him wondered if anyone aside from Roy could be trusted to know the reality of Gentiola's life.
It was well into August when he returned to the area he knew so well and never imagined he would love so much. There was enough food in his bags that he didn't need to stop at a village. The people in the neighboring communities knew him, and they knew he'd been gone, and he didn't want to risk any of them telling the Paleolans he'd returned before he got there himself. He would be happy to talk to all of them, just as soon as he'd shared the story with his uncle.
Charlinder went to sleep on a patch of soft grass when he was tired from walking and it was too dark to move safely anymore. He sprang up the next morning, and before the sun reached its full power, the Paleola village was in view. As soon as he could find a stream, he took out his knife and shaved himself down to his previous smooth-facedness, because if he walked into Paleola with a full beard, no one would recognize him.
When he first caught the outlines of those buildings, Charlinder had to stop walking for a moment and take in the sight of it. After all he'd seen in the past--had he really been away for over three and a half years?--all that squat, uninspired architecture looked like the most mundane, antiquated, dull, safe, comforting, honest, perfect sight in the world. He kept walking, and then he started laughing. If anyone could have seen him, they probably would have thought him sick in the head, but nobody could see him, so he didn't care. He laughed.
The first people he spotted were a man and two small children near the edge of the wood that bordered the northwest of the village. The man wore a cloth sack on his back and periodically squatted down so the children could load more stuff into it. They were gathering twigs for kindling. Charlinder came closer to them, slowly, wondering which of the Paleolans this man was. As he approached, the other man noticed Charlinder and went bolt-still to stare at him. Could it really be...?
The other guy called out first. "Char? Is that Charlinder?"
There was no mistaking the voice, but, of all people..."Kenny?!"
"Oh, shit!" he answered. Kenny ran up, the twigs clunking together on his back, and jumped at Charlinder so vigorously they both fell to their sides on the ground. Charlinder had to laugh some more with Kenny hugging him. "It's really you!" Kenny exclaimed once he let go.
"You didn't think I'd stay away forever, did you?" Charlinder demanded while getting up.
"Well, we didn't know..." Kenny began. "Hey, boys!" he called to the toddlers. "Go to Spinners' Square and find Mimi, tell her to get her bubble-butt out here right this minute!" he commanded, at which the wide-eyed little boys scampered off. "She'll probably come out here to brain me when she hears them use that language," Kenny explained.
He didn't know who Mimi was, but more importantly, "Kenny, who are those kids?" he demanded while they strolled into the village at their leisure. What was Kenny, of all people, doing with a pair of toddlers gathering kindling?
"You won't believe it when you hear it."
"So tell me just for the heck of it."
"They're my nephews!"
"I don't believe it, man! What's going on?"
Kenny explained what had happened. As it turned out, the little boys were the twin sons of one of his cousins. The family was doing just fine until her brother was injured in a fishing accident and died from the resulting infection when the twins were babies. Kenny began spending more time with the mother and her younger sister and helped look after the babies, during which time he considered doing a sibling adoption with his cousins, but he was unsure if he wanted to be the family man with both of them and all their kids. He was indecisive for a while, and was "about to grow a backbone," as he put it, but the following winter showed that there was more pain to come. The older sister left her toddling sons with their young aunt one day and must have slipped on the river bank and fallen into the Paleola in a place where she couldn't just swim back out. Her family didn't know what had happened to her until some guys from McKinley further down the river drove their cart into Paleola one day with her frozen body in the back.
With his aunt mourning the second loss of a child in less than two years and his younger cousin missing both of her siblings, Kenny asked his aunt if he could move into their cabin and help in raising the twins. She agreed, and a few months after that, Kenny and his remaining cousin adopted each other and were the primary caretakers of the twin boys.
"Can you believe it? I'm a family man now!"
"It looks like you are! How does it feel?"
"Char, it's the craziest thing ever. Sometimes I wanna kill those boys and sometimes I don't know where I'd be without them. You know Jess, my older brother? I think he's gonna be a family man, too!"
"Who else's brother died?"
"No one’s!"
He explained how a young woman from another neighboring village (Paxtonville) had grown tired of her father beating her and decided she would have better luck as a Paleolan. The girl needed a place to live, so Kenny's mother took her in, and she bonded with Jess. She had taken up the textile duties for him, and they were talking about adopting each other. While he had not heard it said in so many words, Kenny was also fairly sure that the young woman was shagging Bruce. As in, Yolande's brother. In the ensuing months, said Kenny, getting along with him had become much easier.
"He’s not only a lot nicer, he’s even a pretty cool guy!"
Charlinder and Kenny shared a vigorous, knee-hitting laugh over that.
"He's still Faithful, of course, but whatever. Oh, speaking of that bunch, Ruthie and Robert went and joined the St. Pauls!"
"What?!"
"Now this you've gotta hear," Kenny began, with more gravity than his usual tone. "They both got tired of our godless heathen asses and figured they'd be happier somewhere else. So they packed up and moved into St. Paul and before long they both paired off and got married, and it sounded like they were doing just fine over there, but whenever Robert came to visit he was always begging his mom to bring Eleanor and come join him and Ruth over there. And she was having none of that, and she kept writing back to him and Ruth to bring their families and come back here, and the rest of us all figured it could only go on for so long before they just gave it up and lived apart. So I was taking bets with my brothers on how long before they gave up the game, and then their mom won."
"What do you mean, 'their mom won'?"
"I mean Ruthie and Robert packed up their families and came strutting back in here like they never left. The council allotted them each a cabin and they're still here."
"Whoa, whoa!" Charlinder protested. "You mean to tell me we have married couples living in Paleola?"
"Crazy, huh?"
"And then there'll be kids living here being raised by their natural fathers."
"Already are, man!"
"How do the spouses feel about being here with all you libertines?"
"They get along with us just fine," said Kenny. "I was surprised when I got to know Ruthie's husband; here I thought she'd pick out a real shithead, but he's a good guy, I think you'll like him. Robert'll never let you near his wife, though."
"Why not?"
"Because she's hot, and we know all about you."
"What is that supposed to mean?!"
"Don't make me spell it out for you, man!"
They went back and forth like that for another minute or two until Charlinder wanted to move on and hear more.
"What else do I need to know about?"
"What, did you think we'd all stop having lives around here just because you were away? Yolande has a little girl now--my doing, of course. Miriam's got two more grandkids-- speak of the Devil, there she is!"
By "Mimi," Kenny must have been using his nephews' moniker for Miriam. The twins came scampering back to Kenny while Miriam stood in place, unable to say or do anything except gape at Charlinder.
There was a crowd gathering, all buzzing to each other about whether it was really him, and Charlinder spotted Darrell approaching in the distance. They could make their demands of him later. Charlinder headed towards Miriam, who didn't move but started hyperventilating as he came nearer. He threw his arms around her and swung her around in a circle.
"It's good to see you again," he said when he'd finished.
"Char..." she began, "oh my...Char, darling," she attempted, but couldn't finish as she was crying too hard.
"It's okay," he said, laughing and patting her back. "I'm back now, and I'm not going anywhere."
"I can't believe you're here!" Miriam sobbed into his shoulder.
For the first time, Charlinder addressed himself to the throng of Paleolans staring at him. "You all thought I walked out of here and died, didn't you?" They laughed. "You can't get rid of me that easily!"
"Let go, Miriam, we all want a piece of Char," said another familiar voice to his right. There was Phoebe holding her arms out to him. Miriam, with some difficulty, detached herself from Charlinder, who hugged Phoebe while a small voice demanded, "Mama, who dat?" from below. Next came Nadine, with a small child clamped to her side, who looked rather relieved when his mother stepped away from Charlinder. Then there was Yolande, who snatched him up while a more-grown Stuart, with a pretty toddler clinging to his waist, stared at Charlinder as though struggling to remember a ghost.
"It feels great to be back!" he announced once they were all finished hugging him. Miriam had by now stopped crying and most of the crowd had walked away, presumably to tell the rest of the village about Charlinder's return. Kenny and his nephews stayed. Nadine, Phoebe and Yolande stayed there next to Miriam. Darrell was nearly there. "And I'm so happy to see you all, I'd love to stay right here all day, but I want to see my uncle!" he said, and started walking in the direction from which Darrell was coming.
Kenny grabbed his arm and held him back. Charlinder turned back to find that Kenny looked totally serious, as grave as Charlinder had ever seen him.
"What's the matter?" demanded Charlinder.
"Just wait, okay?" said Kenny.
This was completely bizarre; he looked over at the women and found that they had all lost their smiles; Darrell reached their group and Miriam looked at him rather than at Charlinder.
"Hello, Char," said Darrell, struggling to catch his breath. "When did you get back?"
"Just a few minutes ago!" said Charlinder. "You're looking very well, Darrell, but where's Roy?" he demanded. "Is my uncle trying to hide from me or something? Are you all playing a joke on me?"
"There's no joke," said Phoebe, who, like Miriam and Nadine, failed to meet his eyes.
"Then what am I doing here?!" he shouted. "I'm gonna go find my uncle and tell him to clear off my side of the cabin!"
"Your uncle can't see you, Charlinder," said Darrell. "He isn't here."
"Okay, now you all are acting really weird," said Charlinder. "Where is my uncle, if he isn't here? He didn't run off and join the St. Pauls or something stupid like that, did he?"
"He didn't run off," said Darrell, who took hold of Charlinder's upper arms as if he might fall over, as if Darrell could support his weight if he did. "If Roy were here, he would have been the first one to run down here and see you. I'm sorry you have to hear about it this way, but your uncle died last year."
"What?!" he reacted.
"It was a hunting accident," Darrell explained. "He fell out of a deer stand and broke his neck. He must have died instantly, there was nothing I could do for him."
Charlinder couldn't understand any of their behavior. There was Miriam, looking at him like a baby that needed to be held. There was Kenny, acting like something was about to explode. There were Yolande, Nadine and Phoebe, cuddling their toddlers like they couldn't wait to get out of there, and Darrell, telling him some April Fool's tale about Roy falling out of a deer stand.
"We'll take you to see where he's buried," Darrell continued, "after you're settled in."
Miriam grabbed Charlinder's hand and tugged him up the hill. "You're going to stay with me and Benjamin for now," she instructed. "We had to give away your cabin, but we saved your bed."
"Yeah, all right," he said. He let Miriam lead him uphill by the hand to the cabin where she lived with her brother. He would figure out what they'd done with his cabin later.
They arrived to find Benjamin already assembling the frame of a bed in the unoccupied corner of his and Miriam's cabin; the mattress was still rolled up against the wall. Benjamin allowed Charlinder to help him with this task, but also looked at him in a way that he didn't like. Why was everyone watching him like he was about to fall apart? He'd just walked around the Earth and lived to tell about it, so surely he was made of sturdier stuff than they seemed to think. When he found Roy and told him about this...Roy would find a way, certainly, to make this look amusing rather than annoying.