A New Hope

Trapper Walsh Series

Part 10 here: https://steemit.com/rpg/@olmech/a-promise-to-keep

Before I made my way down to the main floor, the two children were already banging on the door. I wondered to myself how this evening would go as I had never been around kids at all. I tried to think back on my own childhood but it was a useless effort because out where I grew up there was only what had to be done. I had never been able to just play or run loose without a care in the world. Everything we did was carefully planned to provide an existence for ourselves and every waking moment was spent on that effort. Of all the people I have ever met, these children in this city were the most puzzling to me. They spend all day running, playing and laughing. They did not need to worry about what they were going to eat or how they would replace their clothes. They did not have to worry about the elements or being attacked by something that wanted to kill them. Here in this city, kids could just be...kids I guess. It was a hard thing for me to wrap my head around.

As I opened the door I once again had to stop the two kids from shooting around me on both sides.

"Now hold on just a minute. I promised you two that you could come in and look around but first there has to be a few ground rules for this adventure. You may walk through the house carefully and look at whatever you like, but do not touch anything unless I give permission to do so. From what I can tell, most of the stuff in here is over two hundred years old. Some of it is very fragile. The other thing that needs to be cleared up is that we do not really know each other. My name is Walsh."

The boy spoke up saying,

"I'm Pete Pembroke and this is my best friend, Nina Rodriguez and we won't touch anything Mister Walsh. We have just heard so many stories about the things that are in there...things that nobody has ever seen before. Now may we please come in?"

I stepped to the side to let the kids in and the two of them immediately began taking it all in. They methodically made their way through the house looking at every single detail in wide-eyed wonderment. They seemed to know a little about everything from the pictures and posters on the walls to the baseball items. When I had first seen these things, I thought they were interesting but I really did not know the history about any of it. How could these kids know so much about stuff that was over two hundred years old I wondered?

It had taken the kids a full hour to see everything on the upper floors and we had made our way down to the basement. Nina immediately went over to the desk with the computer.

"Pete, look! He has a working computer with a whole box of holotapes!"

Nina then looked up at me and said,

"May I please look through the holotapes Mister Walsh?"

I replied,

"Go ahead Nina. I don't know anything about them anyway."

Nina then went through the box carefully examining each tape.

"These are all games and old movies Mister Walsh. May we play them?"

"Some other time perhaps Nina. It is getting late and I have much to do tomorrow."

By this time Pete had found the door leading into the grow room where the plants were.

"Wow! You have gotta see this Nina!"

Nina made her way over to Pete and they walked into the room looking at all the plants. It was then that something dawned on me. Both of these kids were scrawny and even though neither of them had said anything about wanting the food, a look into their begging eyes had betrayed them. Over the counter in the basement kitchen was a box full of plastic bags. I reached up pulling it down and gave each of them a bag from the box.

"Go in there and fill these bags up with the best food you can find" I said to them.

After the children had filled their bags with food I had them follow me back upstairs. I grabbed my backpack that I had left by the door and pulled out two bags of the jerky I had brought from home and put it in their bags. I then looked down at them saying,

"I have enjoyed this evening with you but now you must go home. Maybe we can do it again sometime soon so I can get you to teach me about computers and baseball."

Pete then spoke up rather gleefully saying,

"Oh that would be swell Mister Walsh! I can tell you all about baseball and Nina knows about all there is to know about computers. Just let us know when you have the time."

"I will. Good night Pete. Good night Nina" I said while opening the door.

I just stood there in the doorway as I watched them walk off till they were out of sight. I closed the door and walked over to a chair and sat down. Those two kids had really pulled at my heart in ways I could never have suspected. Through sheer coincidence our paths had crossed and whatever joy this visit may have brought them was equally shared by me. For a brief moment the hard, cruel world I was intimately familiar with had been replaced with sharing and understanding. It was a feeling unlike anything I had ever experienced and it had revealed an emptiness within me I had not known was there before. Those kids had not even made it home yet and I already missed them.

I had to force my thinking back to the business at hand with a great deal of effort. Somehow I had to set aside this new hope in humanity by reminding myself of the reason I was here in the first place. Blood must answer for blood after all.

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