The Scavengers (8 page)

Ma and Dad are silent. They seem to be staring past the barn, past the Sustainability Reserves, even past the GreyDevil smoke, to some place I can’t see. It’s hard to tell if they are even hearing us. They are right here, but it seems their minds are far in the distance . . . or the past. They never talk about life before Declaration Day. When I do ask, they say the past belongs in the past. But looking at them together there, I decide to ask about the past anyway.

“Ma,” I say, “how did you and Dad meet?”

They look at each other for a second like neither one knows what to say, then Ma smiles.

“We were in college,” says Ma.

“She was a word nerd,” says Dad. “Always with her nose in a book.”

“Your Dad saw me on a bench reading Emily Dickinson,” says Ma. “He stopped and said she was his favorite poet.” Then Ma giggles and gives Dad a little shove. “I found out later everything he knew about her he’d looked up on a computer ten minutes earlier.”

“And what did you study, Dad?”

He looks at Ma again, like he’s deciding how to answer.

SPLASH!

“Henry!” says my mother, and I realize Dookie is nowhere to be seen. His pie plate is empty on the grass. We all leap from the porch and run around the house toward the sound of the splash, and we’re all thinking the same thing: the tilapia tank. Sure enough, there at the foot of the ladder is the water-telescope, lying in the grass as if it’s been dropped.

“Henry!” says my mother, for the second time. In the footrace to the tank she beats everybody, and now she is on the top rung of the ladder, hoisting Dookie out. Ma often seems worn and weary, but right now she is fierce and bright.

“Henry!” she says for a third time. Dookie’s head is lolling around, but his eyes are fluttering, and the minute Dad takes him from Ma’s arms and places him on the ground, he begins spluttering and hacking, and you have never heard such a beautiful sound.

Toad climbs down the ladder, a fish spear in his hand. Dookie must have been trying to stab tilapia while spying on them through the water-telescope. Apparently he leaned over too far, and when he lunged with the spear, in he went.

“Oh, Dookie,” I say, kneeling down to hold his soggy little hand.

Dookie is staring off into space somewhere past my left ear. Weakly, he mumbles something.

“Shibby . . . shibby . . . shibby . . .”

Huh?

Flap-flap-WHACK!

Hatchet.

Honestly!
I think, even as I’m flopping over sideways.
That rooster has got to go
. Toad pulls him from my hair and gives him a quick dunk before launching him toward the coop, where he hides behind the hens and makes soggy clucking noises.

Arlinda and Ma take Dookie into the house to towel him down and get him some dry clothes. When he comes back out he is belted into a pair of Toad’s red long johns. They’re all baggy in the butt and the cuffs are rolled up above his ankles and wrists. I take one look at him and snort right out loud, but Dookie being Dookie, he doesn’t give two hoots how he’s dressed.

To get back to the shack before dark, Ma and Dad have to leave now, so I hug them good-bye and let them out the gate. Dookie darts ahead of them, a ragamuffin in a red union suit, zigzagging his way up the trail, stopping to say hello to a toadstool.

I help Arlinda with the dishes, then go to the barn to prepare my armor.

I made it myself. Shin and forearm guards from stovepipes trimmed in rabbit fur, a breastplate cut from cowhide and strips of steel from a car door, a pair of Toad’s old welding gloves restitched to fit my hands, and a helmet made from a steel dog dish I found in Goldmine Gully.

As I lay each piece out, I’m excited about going to town tomorrow. I always am. I am eager for the chance to see something other than Skullduggery Ridge, eager to see faces that don’t belong to my brother, Dookie, and eager for the sights and sounds and smells of civilization. Eager just to move. But as I check over each piece to make sure it’s in good shape, and when I turn and see the
Scary Pruner
loaded and waiting, I am reminded we aren’t just getting ready for some hippity-happity picnic trip.

I put my helmet on and wiggle it to make sure the chin strap is tight. The helmet is covered in spatters and zigzags of paint left over from when Toad painted the
Scary Pruner
, and I attached pheasant tail feathers to the temples. I pounded patterns into the leather of my breastplate and then dyed the patterns with berry juice. My gloves are beaded and I punched ventilation holes through my arm guards in a swirly pattern. I decorate my armor because I think it makes me look a little fiercer—although I’m not sure the GreyDevils even notice. It does make me
feel
a little fiercer. Sometimes that’s just the difference you need.

I know there will be danger, but it makes me proud that Toad trusts me to come along and help out. Some people would think it was weird that my parents would let me do this, but we live in a world where each of us has to do what we do best, no matter what our age. I asked Dad once why he didn’t help Toad on these trips to town, and he said it was because he had to stay back and guard our place, and Dookie, and Ma. I asked Toad the same question, and he gave the same answer. But something about the way they said it made me think I wasn’t getting the whole story. Plus if Dad was really worried about protecting us, why would he wander off like he does? Sometimes I think the older I get, the less I understand grown-ups.

Toad and Arlinda have always let me know I am welcome in their house, but just as I prefer to sleep in the Ford Falcon when I’m home, when I’m down in Hoot Holler I prefer to sleep in the barn. I keep some blankets and a pillow in my armor locker and sleep on some straw in one of the old horse stalls. There’s an Emily Dickinson poem that goes, “
The soul selects her own society, / Then shuts the door.
” The first time I read that one, I smiled. I’m not mad at anybody; sometimes I just like to be alone. Well, except for a three-legged cat; whenever I sleep out here Tripod curls up beside me and purrs me off to sleep.

When my bed is ready, I step outside. The final light is fading. From the top of Skullduggery Ridge, I hear a whistle: three long and three short.

My family is safely home.

15

WHEN I WAKE UP, THE BARN IS DARK AS A BAT’S BUTT.

We begin our town trips this early because GreyDevils are useless in the morning. They’re all scattered, lying wherever they flopped when the last bonfire went out and the final drop of PartsWash went gargling down someone’s raw throat. By early afternoon they’ll start to prowl and gather up in their ragtag packs, looking to steal anything they can to trade for PartsWash.

I get dressed in the glow of my jacklight, then open the barn door. Over Skullduggery Ridge the very first gray smudge is starting to show. I can see a lamp in the Hoppers’ kitchen window, and the door opens into a yellow rectangle of light as Toad steps out onto the porch.

We pack the last of the day’s goods on the
Scary Pruner
. Mostly it’s food: jars of jam, salted ham, smoky cured bacon, and a batch of Arlinda’s fresh pies, carefully wrapped and protected in the light wooden crates Toad builds. It’s all I can do not to sit right down and eat every one. Next we go over the whole load, checking every rope, lock, and latch to make sure everything is safe and secure.

Finally, Toad turns to me and says, “Whomper-Zooka!”

If you didn’t know better, you’d think Toad had stopped talking weird like Toad and started talking weird like Dookie. But the Whomper-Zooka is an actual thing. Toad cobbled it together using an old coffee can, a broken leather harness, and a stovepipe. It has two wooden handles and can be hung from my shoulder on a leather strap, but on trips to town in the
Scary Pruner
we mount it on a swivel in the crow’s nest. Toad calls it his “hillbilly artillery,” but rather than bullets or cannonballs it shoots saltpowder, which we make by mixing homemade gunpowder with rock salt. We’re not trying to kill the GreyDevils, just get rid of them, and the rock salt is perfect for that. It isn’t deadly, but it gets in their skin and burns like crazy. I guess you could call the Whomper-Zooka a pest remover.

While I get the Whomper-Zooka and stow it in the crow’s nest, Toad hitches Frank and Spank. Toad raised them from the day they were born, and now they’ve been pulling together for ten years. He says they’re the biggest pair he’s ever owned. They are gigantic but gentle, standing patiently as we hitch them in place and drape them in chain mail Toad made from twisting fine wire into thousands of little loops while he sat beside the woodstove. It took him three winters to finish. The chain mail can’t protect them from everything, but it’ll handle most things any GreyDevil might throw our way. To protect their eyes, Toad made them each a pair of goggles with steel-mesh lenses. He calls them “oculator protectorators.”

Toad also made a miniature set of chain mail for Monocle, and I fasten it around him as he bounces up and down. Monocle loves to go to town. Toad has built a plank walkway around the
Scary Pruner
so that Monocle can patrol the perimeter, and the boards are worn smooth by his paws. When I finish fastening his mail, he leaps to the plank and trots his first loop of the day. He always runs clockwise, of course, so his good eye is pointed outward.

Toad takes one last walk around the
Scary Pruner
. Then he pauses before Frank and Spank, scratching their ears and looking long and gently into their goggled eyes. This is the most vulnerable part of our traveling show. Toad can protect their flanks with the gigantic bullwhip he keeps in a holder beside his seat, but the one area he cannot reach is the front of their faces—their big, wet noses. If a GreyDevil grabbed Frank or Spank by the nose, they could steer us off the road and tip us over.

But we have a plan to prevent that.

“Procure the secret weapon!”

I roll my eyes and lower my face mask. Our secret weapon is currently across the yard in the chicken coop desperately trying to announce the new day.

“Cock-a-doodle . . .
aaack-kack-kack-kack
!”

That’s right.

Hatchet.

Our secret weapon is a demented rooster.

Hatchet may be on our team, but he’d still love to peck me bald and scratch me silly. Flexing my fingers in my gloves, I stride off toward the chicken coop. This could be the biggest battle I face all day.

When I return, my helmet is knocked sideways, my breastplate is scratched, one of my pheasant feathers is bent, and there is a drop of blood on my chin. But Hatchet is clamped in my gauntleted hands.

Toad just grins.

In the middle of the yoke, right between the oxen’s two giant heads, Toad has rigged a perch made of two dowels in the shape of a T, and this is where Hatchet roosts, tethered in place with an ankle bracelet and a length of rawhide. The rawhide is attached to an old spring-loaded dog-walking leash—if Hatchet can’t get back to his perch, Toad pulls a string and—
zooooop!
—the leash reels Hatchet right back in.

I deposit him on his perch while Toad secures his ankle bracelet. When we back away Hatchet tut-tuts and shakes out his wings, but then he settles in and puffs his chest out like he was born to be a hood ornament.

Finally, Toad puts on his armor. It’s much plainer than mine and looks more like heavy-duty work clothes, except for his helmet, which is an actual shiny red firefighter helmet from the days when he volunteered on the local department. Most of the time the helmet hangs on a hook behind Toad’s seat. When Toad reaches back and grabs the helmet, you know it’s time to check your weapons. When he reaches up and flips the visor down, well then you know things are about to get real busy.

And now we are ready to go.

16

OUTSIDE THE BARN, THE LAST BIT OF PINK HAS LEFT THE SKY AND
morning has begun. “Okay, boys,” says Toad. I always like how peacefully he says this. No big holler or crack of the whip, just two quiet words. Frank and Spank lean into the leather traces, and with a creak of the axles the
Scary Pruner
rolls out the barn door. Arlinda draws open the gate and as we pass through, Toad blows her a kiss. Arlinda giggles, then closes and bolts the gate behind us. Toad has to turn Frank and Spank sharply so they can squeeze onto Cornvoy Road without touching the BarbaZap. As we pass beneath the shadow of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, he grumbles, “That fight ain’t fully fit,” and raises one eyebrow in such a way that you know he’s still waiting for his chance to get even.

Just beyond the gate Cornvoy Road widens out and turns into a large parking area where the trucks gather as they wait to pass through the BarbaZap gate into the Sustainability Reserve. During harvest time, Arlinda takes crates of her pies to the parking area and sells them to the drivers. You can’t have that many trucks coming and going without spilling a little corn, so there are always GreyDevils scrounging around, desperate for just one kernel. Sometimes they get in horrible fights, with them moaning and slobbering and clawing at each other. Every time the giant BarbaZap security gate rolls open to let a truck through, the GreyDevils try to get inside too. The Sustainability Security crews push them back with rubber bullets and water cannons. They use the rubber bullets so they don’t accidentally kill any of the truckers, but I bet they’d rather use real bullets.

Once we’re past the parking area, the BarbaZap jogs back out and we’re right back beside it, making our way down the gravel two-track that used to be Toad’s driveway. As high as the BarbaZap is, the corn is even higher. The stalks are like small trees. Because URCorn grows like its roots are soaked in rocket fuel, it can be planted and harvested twice a year. This is the first crop of the year, and already the ears are three feet long and thick as sausages. “Boy when I was a back,” says Toad, looking at the URCorn and shaking his head, “the gerontologic-stopwatches had a saying: ‘Knee high by the Fourth of July.’” It takes me a second to figure out “gerontologic-stopwatches” means “old-timers,” but then I look at the URCorn and shake my head too. It will be
twenty
feet high by the Fourth of July. “’Course any corn you can plant in March is gonna get a head start,” says Toad. “Don’t have to worry about frost when you’ve got the ladybug juice!”