Now he was noisily dancing about the cabin!
Anne gaped at him, wondering if the end was near. She watched as he bounded up the ladder and tickled his sons to grouchy consciousness, to hug them, to coax them out of bed and down to the rough boarded floor. She blinked and nodded sadly, watching him skip to the liquor box, pull out their precious cognac, splash it carelessly into four tumblers and gaily pass them around, all while interjecting whoops of mad delight.
He shouted, “It's coming! It's coming! Ha! Got it! No-yes, yes! So simple! So supremely, stupidly simple! Listen—listen!”
They huddled before a roaring blaze while he shared with them his new knowledge. “Look at us---look. We're failing here, at this. Why? Simple. We're not native. Not of this earth. Wait, give me a chance. The Aborigines, the Eskimos, the Pygmies: they are native earthmen, right? Not us. We are not them—they!”
“Oh yeah,” said Jake. “Then what are we?”
“I don't know - I don't know what we are. Or where we’re from. But I know with all my brain and these hands that we are not earthmen - or women.”
“Earth-people—persons!” quipped David, leaning against Anne.
“How about Earthen?” said Anne, and they raised their fists and shouted,
“Earthen!”
Now sobered, she said, “Darling, it's a lovely theory, a pleasant soothing fantasy. But how does it change anything here, now?”
“Oh it does, it will! Don't you see?” he implored, his face aglow, his eyes alight with madness. “We don't fit, we don't belong. We are guests here. Not hosts, guests. Somewhere up there is a planet waiting for us. We'll find it, I know we will. But until we do we've got a job, a big job. Jake, when you're a guest how do you leave somebody's house?”
“Uh, the way you found it?”
“Exactly—exactly!” Now he sat back, breathless. He swallowed and said slowly, “We must restore this planet to its natural state, its own raw, balanced, ever changing way.”
He smiled tentatively, hopefully. To signify he’d finished, he took a sip of his cognac. “Well? What do you think?”
At first they clucked uncertainly. Oh, boy, was Dad serious? Anne frowned, sighed. Not daring to scoff at the man they almost worshipped, and yet they were unable to grasp, let alone accept his fanciful suggestion. It was too contrary to all their schooled knowledge, their beliefs. But as much as they tried, they could not refute nor shake its outrageous yet oddly reasonable premise. One by one they playfully shot arguments at one another until they accepted that his fantasy could invade, occupy and take hold of their reality.
Anne made them a breakfast feast. And then, although bone weary, bleary-eyed and hung-over, they burst through the rackety door ready for the day's work with a fresh, near-breathless vigor. And they sang with it all the day long. Something finally had begun to work for them. They would falter, they knew. But this startling new theory would revive them, keep them going.