Olan Thorensen - Cast Under an Alien Sun

Yozef stopped, looked around at the three men, and waited to see the reaction. There were a few seconds of silence; Yozef could almost see the gears turning. Carnigan broke first. He had raised his stein at the punch line and was swallowing when it hit him. The mouthful of beer exited in a fine spray. Fortunately for Yozef, he sat next to Carnigan and the expellant centered on Filtin Fuller, sitting opposite. Carnigan choked for a second on beer that remained in his mouth, then swallowed and roared in laughter. He slammed his stein onto the table, further reducing the beer level within it, and pounded the table with his other hand. The table was sturdy enough to have held the weight of an elephant—which was fortunate. The sprayed-upon Filtin laughed as loudly, although Yozef couldn’t be sure whether it was because of the joke or Carnigan’s reaction. The third man seemed to lack a fine sense of humor, since he smiled but didn’t laugh.

Oh, well, you can’t win over everyone in an audience .

Yozef, inordinately pleased with himself, sipped his own stein and waited for Carnigan to regain control. When it happened, it almost cost Yozef serious injury, as the big man slapped him on his back, causing his diaphragm to impact the table edge. Once he could breathe again, he heard Carnigan.

“A good one, Yozef,” bellowed Carnigan. “Never heard that one before.”

Several neighboring tables had witnessed the explosion of mirth and beer, and two men leaned over and asked Filtin and the other drinking companion what was so amusing, possibly because none of the regular customers had ever seen such a display from Carnigan. Thus did the joke travel among the pub’s thirty or so customers within several minutes.

“Another one, Yozef, tell us another one!”

Hey, maybe I have a career here as a comedian. I wonder if there are gigs that pay coin?

By now, most of the customers either stood near their tables or turned at their seats to listen.

“One day I came here to the Snarling Graeko for beer. As I got to the door, there stood Sister Norla.” The referenced sister was the “nurse” who was the first person on Anyar Yozef had seen when he awoke at the abbey. The matronly middle-aged sister was an accomplished caregiver, although somewhat prim. On her bad days, and Yozef experienced several when he first arrived, he thought of her as Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest . He had also heard her comment several times on the evils of too much drinking.

“Naturally, I was surprised to see sister Norla outside of a pub. Then she spoke to me. ‘Yozef,’ she said, ‘beer is an evil that clouds men’s minds and strays them from doing better with their lives. At least in your case, you have no family to go without food and clothing when you spend your money in such dens, but both your money and time should be spent elsewhere.’

“‘Pardon me, Sister Norla,’ I said. ‘With all respect, have you ever tasted a beer?’

“‘No, never,’ the sister asserted.

“‘Then how can you know for sure it’s evil?’

“The sister thought for a moment, then said, ‘You’re right, my son. Just to satisfy you, I am willing to try a beer. Naturally, I can’t go into the pub myself, but if you would bring me out beer in a cup, I’m willing to try it.’

“So, I went into the pub and asked the owner, ‘Could I have a beer in a cup?’

“The owner shook his head in disgust. ‘Is Sister Norla still outside?’”

Instead of an explosion of laughter, this time it built like an ocean swell that starts low, then grew until it crashed on the beach. Some got the punch line immediately, while others had to think about it, and some had to have it explained. Like the wave, when it fully broke, the pub was fortunate to be constructed of strong timbers. Yozef had assumed Carnigan to be the loudest person in the pub, but his position was bumped down one slot by the pub owner himself, who had come over to hear why so much laughter centered on their table.

When the wave subsided, there were demands for another joke. Yozef obliged with a few more—none with quite the impact. He was thus grateful when other customers offered examples of humor. By the tenth joke of the impromptu comedy club, even old stale stories were hilarious.

Yozef finally finished his second stein and debated a third when the sounds of splintering wood, a loud thud, and a man’s scream cut through the noise of simultaneous voices. Yozef jerked his head toward whatever happened and could see a knot of men forming near a keg of beer resting on its side on the floor. The pub’s festive mood transformed into panicked voices, and the scream morphed into cries of agony.

Yozef followed his three drinking companions to the knot of men. A keg five feet long and two and a half in diameter lay next to a broken-wheeled cart that must have been transporting the keg. The source of the initial scream and now moans was an elderly man with one leg under the keg.

The pub owner shouted down the turmoil and ordered Carnigan and several of the larger men to help him get the keg off the man writhing on the floor. The keg being too heavy to lift outright, men placed a wooden block under one end of its curved side, and the men heaved on the other end to tilt the keg onto the block. As the men put everything they had into lifting the end of the keg, others pulled the man away. His pinned leg was gruesome. The keg had rolled onto the side of his lower leg, snapping both lower leg bones in several places, since it bent twice in different directions. Yozef could see two sharp ends of shattered bones protruding through the man’s pants.

Men shouted and milled about, until the pub owner yelled, “Willager! I saw your wagon down the street! Get it up here! We have to get him to the Abbey.” A man ran to and through the door—presumably Willager. “Carnigan. I’ll get a board, and you and your friend get him on it and out to the wagon.”

Friend? Is that me? I’m no medic!

The board appeared, and Carnigan barked at Yozef to help him get the injured man onto it. By then, the man was in shock and only groaned as they slid him onto the board. Carnigan gestured to one end of the board, which Yozef interpreted that he was volunteering as an EMT whether he wanted to or not. Outside was a flatbed wagon drawn by two nondescript horses. They laid him and his board on the bed, climbed on next to him, and the wagon owner, Willager, got the horses and wagon moving at a moderate pace to avoid more jarring than necessary.

Another pub customer rode ahead to alert the abbey, and an open main gate awaited them. They pulled up to the hospital and a waiting wooden gurney attended by two men and a woman. They gently but efficiently transferred the old man to the gurney and wheeled him inside. By this time another wagon arrived with a gray-haired woman who followed the gurney, crying and wringing her hands.

“His wife,” someone whispered.

Yozef and Carnigan followed them inside, not with any specific task in mind, but simply trailing behind the flow of people as the victim was moved into a receiving room. There, several medicants appeared in orchestrated movements, reminding Yozef of emergency rooms. By now, Medicant Dyllis had appeared.

“Get him on the table,” Dyllis ordered. The gurney crew sat the man on the edge of the table, then were shouldered out of the way as Dyllis and a sister rotated the now unconscious man and laid him down on the wooden surface.

Cadwulf Beynom, the abbot and abbess’s older son, appeared at Yozef’s side and led him and Carnigan out of the room. “They will take care of him now,” he said.

“A nasty break,” said Yozef. “I hope they can fix his leg.”

Carnigan shook his head. “I would pray so, but from the looks of it, they’ll have to take it off. Too much damage. At least, it’s a low break, near the foot, so he’ll only lose the leg below the knee.”