Before the Strandline- the Story of Stone

by Linda L Zern

  Daddy wasn’t driving his police car any more. Nothing worked in it: the super cool computer, the sirens, the radio stuff, and it was out of gas.

  He took Stone and his sister, Sun, to Uncle Jordan’s house in their old grandpa’s rattle-around pickup truck. Sun loved riding around in Dad’s old truck. He always let her have the windows down because there was no air conditioning. It was fun to stick your hand out of the window to feel the wind; hand surfing, that’s what Daddy called it.

  But this time Dad wouldn’t let them roll down the windows, and it was so hot and stuffy it made Stone’s head hurt. Even with the windows up, they could hear the sound of gunshots that boomeranged around in the dark. Daddy didn’t slow down, not when they heard the guns shooting or when they passed the stop signs. When he came to the broken stoplights he went faster, sometimes swerving around car accidents that blocked the roads. They drove with no headlights.

  In the dark neighborhoods, house fires glowed like hot stars fallen to earth. The firemen had run out of water days and days ago. People were just walking away from their burned-up lives. Stone couldn’t imagine where they were going to walk to since everything was so dark now.

  Uncle Jordan’s place on Van Arsdale sat in the darkness behind a coral-colored wall. He knew the color; he’d help his uncle paint that wall. The gate was locked tight. The padlock hung like a lump of coal. Daddy skidded to a stop in front of the wall.

  He growled, “Out. Hurry up. I’ve got to go.” He hurried to help them out.

  Sun blinked hard at the way he ordered them out of the truck.

  Daddy never growled at them, never, especially not Sun. She grabbed her Going to Grandma’s suitcase. The pickup truck door squeaked when he yanked it open. Daddy had forgotten to oil the door again.

  “Come on, Stonewall Jackson, grab your go-bag.”

  Wow, Daddy used his whole name. This was serious. Daddy reached in and grabbed at the collar of Stone’s shirt, pulling him out of the truck. Stone stumbled, off balance. He fell onto the gravel of Uncle Jordan’s driveway.

  “Daddy!” Sun’s voice had gotten all high and breathy. She was scared. Tears sparkled on her cheeks in the moonlight.

  Daddy must have heard her, heard the fear that was growing in both of his children. He braced himself against the truck’s door as he reached down to help Stone back onto his feet. “I’m sorry, buddy. I just . . . just need to hurry. Sun, sweetie, don’t cry. Because you are my Elizabeth Sunshine. Right? Please. Hey, why don’t you go and rattle the lock on the gate, make some noise? Wake up Uncle Jordan. He can’t know we were coming.”

  Stone brushed at the grit on his pants.

  Daddy squatted in front of Stone, kept his voice low and intense. “Seriously. I’m sorry, bud.” Daddy’s hands came around him in the darkness. “But I’m going for Mommy at the hospital, and you’re going to have to take care of Sun until I get back.”

  Daddy’s shirt got damp and wet. Stone cried without making any noise. He was afraid if he made noise, he wouldn’t hear the sounds of his father leaving him, comforting him: the hush-hush noises, the light tap, tap on his back when his father patted him.

  “Uncle Jordan will help you and keep you.”

  “Daddy, what if you can’t find Mommy? What if they won’t let her come home?”

  “I will. I can do it. You know that I don’t lie about stuff I promise you.”

  “I know, Daddy.”

  Behind them, Sun clanked the padlock against the metal gate, bang, bang, bang.

  “Stone? Do you trust me?” Stone nodded against his father’s shoulder. “Okay then.” He straightened, picked Stone up, and slung him over the metal gate. “Go, find Uncle Jordan.” He picked up Sun and dangled her over the fence. “First, help me. Grab Sun before she falls.”

  Stone reached up for his sister. They tumbled backwards to the ground. Sun’s suitcases plopped on the driveway next to them, and then Stone’s Ninja Turtle Backpack.

  “Go. Hurry inside.”

  Stone didn’t think that Daddy turned around to wave goodbye, but it was so hard to tell in the darkness, even with the moon’s light. They went to find their father’s brother.

  But Uncle Jordan wasn’t home, and he wasn’t in the barn with the big fans, and his horses weren’t there either, the beautiful white horses that he loved.

  Stone dragged Sun to the back of their uncle’s house. “Crawl through, Sun.” He never locked it, the dog door, and she was still little enough to squeeze through. “Then open the door for me. I’m hungry. Uncle Jordan will be back soon I bet.” She shoved through. The back door clicked open.

  The house smelled all locked up like a big closet stuffed full of boxes.

  “He’s not here. Nobody’s here, not even Rex and Queenie. I’m hungry.” Sun climbed up on the leather couch, stood up, jumped twice, and then bounced onto her bottom. Uncle Jordan wouldn’t let you jump on his furniture more than once or twice. Grownup rules, but where were the grownups?

  The house was dark. The fridge was empty. The dog dish had some chunks in it, but Stone wasn’t that hungry yet. He used his Ninja Turtle flashlight to check the pantry—nothing easy like cheese doodles, no bread. Too bad. He dragged a bar stool to the kitchen counter, climbed up, and started to sort through the packed cabinets.

  “Hey! How about this fruit cock-a-two stuff?” The picture of juicy chunks of peach and pear made his mouth water. Sitting on the couch, Sun bounced on her butt without answering, but she did clap.

  “Okay, then. Here it comes.” Stone pulled the drawers out, searched for the can opener, but it was gone, or he was being stupid and couldn’t find it. He looked again—butter knives, spoons, a potato smasher, a big hammer thing to bang on meat and stuff. “Sun, I can’t open the can.”

  She started to sniffle.

  Stone hated when she pouted around. She wasn’t a crier, but she sure could sniffle. “Don’t,” he commanded. “I’ll think of something.”

  He started at the first drawer. There were some tools and a couple of hunks of wire. The screwdriver might work if he could pound it with the meat pounder. He pulled open the drawer with all the junk in it, saw the bottle cap pry-off thing, and pulled it out. “Maybe this is good. We can drink the juice.”

  Sun stopped sniffling and came to stand next to Stone’s elbow. He punched a hole in the top of the can, started to pour the sweet syrup into a coffee cup, but not much came out. He tried again. Same thing.

  Sun said, “Poke it again. Mom always pokes the cans two times.”

  And it worked. He filled the cup up and handed it to her. They were going to need more than sugar syrup. Stone studied the can, turning it around and around in his hand. Trying something, he started to punch holes all around the rim of the can. If he couldn’t open the can with a can opener, he’d poke it open. The lid fell into the can. “Hooray! Look at this.” He poured the fruit into another coffee cup. “Get spoons.”

  Standing up, they ate every drop of the Fruit Cock-A-Two.

  Something scratched at the front door. Stone clicked off his flashlight and saw that he didn’t have to tell Sun to be quiet. The scratching got louder. Glass shattered. A big man’s hand reached through the broken window of the front door, searching for the lock. Stone grabbed Sun’s hand, dragging her out of the kitchen. Something, a kind of voice in his head, told Stone to keep going, head to the barn, because whoever was here, breaking in, was going to look everywhere inside the house. Go. Go. All the way to the barn. Hide. Hide. In the loft. In the secret room in the loft!!

  “Don’t open the door,” Stone hissed. “Go through Queenie’s door again. I’ll follow.”

  Sun dropped and craw
led. Stone pushed after her and got stuck halfway. “Sun, help me. Pull me.”

  She grabbed his hand, tugged.

  Stone heard the man banging around in the pantry, searching the shelves.

  “I forgot my suitcase. It’s by the couch.”

  “Forget it. Pull harder.”

  She grabbed his hand with both of hers and leaned back. Stone bucked hard, then twisted. He popped free. “Come on. Come on. He’s in there, taking stuff.”

  He crawled out and they bolted for the barn.

  The secret room, their hidden room, was tucked behind a false wall in the hayloft. Through a maze of hay bales that Uncle Jordan stacked for them to play in, crawl around, and hide behind, they raced to reach safety.

  They loved it, having the privacy of it, the small cozy comfort of their secret room. There was a chalkboard on the far wall and a little table where they made pirate treasure maps and Valentine’s Day cards for Mommy and Daddy. They’d made a list of things they wanted for Christmas and hidden the list in a box on a kid-size bookshelf, but in the dark all they could see was a glint of starlight through a skylight in the roof and dark shadows through the narrow, dusty window next to the chalkboard. Above them a weather vane shaped like a flying pig spun with the wind. They could hear it click when it made a full circle.

  “Sun,” Stone whispered. “We’re going to sit in here until we can see the daylight in the roof.” She sniffled. “Don’t cry, Sun.”

  Outside, frogs sang and rejoiced when the sky broke open and rain slammed down. The barn’s metal roof vibrated with the sound of the storm. Cozy. They would be safe enough until the man left. Stone scooted into the corner of the room farthest away from the swinging door. Sun found him in the dark like a puppy and cuddled up next to him. The rain banged and bounced on the barn roof, loud enough to keep anyone from hearing the sound of Sun’s sniffling. They fell asleep.

  They came awake to the sound of gunshots, close enough to make Stone smack his head against the wall behind him in surprise. It wasn’t one gun—Stone knew what that sounded like. He’d been to the gun range often enough with Daddy. This was a lot of guns. Sun was awake, cowering under their little table.

  “Is it Daddy? Is he back?”

  Her voice sounded half strangled. She had her mouth pressed against her knees. She jumped every time she heard the popping explosion of gunfire and bumped her head against the table top with each shot. Stone sat in one of their two chairs, the one with My Little Pony written on it. He looked at her under the table.

  “Sun? I hope it isn’t Daddy. Maybe it’s Uncle Jordan and the man who broke into his house.”

  “Isn’t Daddy? But what if it isn’t ever going to be Daddy?” Her voice rose on a hysterical note.

  “No. That’s not it. I hope Dad isn’t in a shootout with bad men, not for us.”

  Below them, men’s voices, hot and angry, filled the barn. The shots slowed but didn’t stop.

  Stone dropped to his knees, remembering the floor under the ragged rug. It was slats of wood that formed the loft and the floor to their secret room. He peeled back the rug and pressed his eye to the crack in the wood. There were three men. He could only see the top of their heads. One of them held a lantern. It was hard to tell what they were wearing. If he could just see what they were wearing, maybe he’d be able to tell what they wanted here in Uncle Jordan’s empty barn. They seemed dirty, but it was so hard to tell. He pressed his face harder against the gap in the planks.

  A stray gunshot thunked into the secret door but it wasn’t a shot from the men beneath them. It came from outside. People outside the barn. Bad people. The men inside had run here as a last stand. Stone played enough video games; he recognized what might be happening. A man in the middle of the group threw back his head. Stone gasped. It was Uncle Jordan, and he was down there. Somehow, he knew that they were up here, hiding. Uncle Jordan shook his head, said something to the others and then walked out of Stone’s sight. Maybe he’d found their stuff, Sun’s suitcase, his backpack, and that’s how he knew about them. Maybe.

  Another gunshot made Sun yelp. Stone crawled to her, dragged her from under the table, and pushed her back against the chalkboard. “Quiet.”

  Uncle Jordan shouted, “There’s nothing here for any of you. They came for it a week ago. We need to move out.”

  A shotgun blast answered him. Sun was booger crying now, too hard to talk. Stone covered her mouth with his hand and gave her a little shake. “You have to stop. Uncle Jordan doesn’t want those men to know that we’re up here. Shut up, Sun. Shut up.” She licked the palm of his hand.

  “Yuck. Why did you do that?”

  “Stone, it’s burning. Something is on fire.”

  She was right. Smoke drifted up to them . . . If the barn was burning . . . If they were trapped . . .

  Stone could feel Sun’s body shaking, her breath coming faster and faster. He yanked her to the window. Flames danced in the surface of the tiny retention pond underneath the window. The barn was on fire.

  “We have to go.”

  But their hay maze in the loft would be a blazing furnace. The heat from beyond the door was sucking the air out of their hidey-hole. It was getting hard to breathe. Sun started to cough. Smoke drifted under the door.

  Between coughs, Sun muttered “Stop, Drop, and Roll,” while she tried to stuff sheets of construction paper in the cracks of the wall. “Stone, the floor is getting . . . hot.”

  Stopping, dropping, and rolling wasn’t going to be of much help this time. Even if they broke the window it was too skinny—they’d never fit through. It was no dog door. Up. They had to go up to get out.

  “Sun, help me. Get the chairs.” Together they pushed the table against the wall, piled the chairs on top of each other. Stone climbed on the top shelf of the bookcase. It shook under his weight, but it would hold, had to. Stone reached up. The skylight was loose. He pushed it out with both hands. A black square of sky dotted with stars waited for them.

  “Come on, Sun, we can slide down the roof.” She looked so scared. “Come on, up. I’m going to crawl out and then help you up. We can do it.” A puff of smoke filled the room. “You come on. Now. Sun!”

  She climbed on top of the table, then the chairs. From outside, he helped pull her onto the rippled surface.

  She clung to him as they crab-crawled over the metal roof. “I don’t want to fall and get hurt.”

  “No, we’re going to jump on the sawdust pile.” Fire crackled and crawled toward them. They crept to the edge. Sun lost her hold and started to slide. Stone reached over and grabbed for the strap of her overhauls. She squealed, her feet dangling over the edge.

  “Stone!” she yelled.

  “Sun, I can’t hold you.” His fingers cramped, but she was too heavy. Her body weight dragged him down and over the edge with her.

  Stone rested on his back in the pile of sawdust. “Bleeeeckkkk . . .” He spit wood chips out as he sat up. Sun was quiet. He couldn’t hear her. She’d gone over the edge first. Had she missed the pile of sawdust?

  “Sun? Sun?” Stone searched through the pile of sawdust with both hands, tunneling through the soggy chips of wood. He was drowning in gloom and the sharp smell of wet pine. “Sun!”

  A hand reached out and grabbed his shirtsleeve. He yelped and rolled away from the ghostly hand and landed at the base of the pile. He looked up and whispered, “Sun, is that you?”

  A shower of wet wood dust rained down as his sister scrambled down to him. “Sorry. I couldn’t breathe good and talk. I had to wait a minute.”

  He threw his arms around her.

  Somewhere inside the barn, a beam cracked and fell. The building shook.

  “We have to go. We have to go.” He pulled Sun out of the wet woodchips, grabbed her hand, and ran away from the glow of the burning barn.

  They hid in the fancy church building next to Uncle Jordan’s property. Someone had broken the locks on all the doors, and it was easy to creep inside; they watched Uncle
Jordan’s barn burn until the rain came back to put it out.

  And they kept hiding. When the crowds of hungry scarecrows walked down Geneva Highway heading to the bigger roads that led to the river, the ocean, somewhere else, not where they had been, Sun and Stone watched from the ruined barn. The fire turned out to be lucky after all. No one bothered with a building that looked wrecked, and so they hid.

  But it wasn’t enough. The walking away people left nothing for Stone and Sun to eat. They were like hungry bugs eating everything in every garden. They walked through Uncle Jordan’s abandoned house as if it belonged to them, ignoring the barn with its collapsed roof.

  Sun got pretty good at scrounging around for leftovers. She was always thinking of places to look for food: barns with oats and grain, stashes tucked away in forgotten closets, pantries, and garages. But it was never enough. Not until the day Queenie and Rex showed up, bringing a rabbit with them.

  “Stone!” Sun cheered. “It’s Queenie. It’s Uncle Jordan’s Queenie Girl and Rex Boy.”

  Queenie laid the rabbit on the ground inside the barn where Sun and Stone had started to drag the odd bits and pieces they were collecting: the table from their playroom, coated in black soot but not burned, a little three-legged stool they’d found in a field. As the people fled their hunger, they left behind so many interesting things.

  “They found us. They came back and found us. Do you know what this means?” Sun said.

  Stone pushed Rex’s big, wet tongue away. Rex had a big half-healed cut on his shoulder and they were both muddy and thin.

  If the dogs had come back thinking there would be more to eat . . . Stone picked up the rabbit, thinking of how far it would stretch between the four of them.

  “It means that Uncle Jordan might find us, and Daddy and Mommy.”

  The people walking and limping by had started to make Stone think that it was stupid to stay and starve. Maybe they should go too, find something better than this tumble-down barn.

  But Sun wouldn’t hear of leaving, especially now that the dogs were back.

  “Don’t you think so? Don’t you think that they might be coming back?” She buried her face against Queenie’s filthy neck. The big German Shepherd plopped onto her butt.