by Linda L Zern
“Sun, there are too many people that go by here on the road. The dogs will give us away. The people will eat them if they find them. We need to find somewhere else to be—”
She started to splutter and object. Rex whined.
“Quiet.” The dogs dropped and cowered on their bellies at his order. They had learned hard lessons while they’d been running the neighborhood. “We can’t even eat this rabbit here.” The thought of cooking the marsh rabbit made Stone’s mouth water. The last meat they’d eaten had been a week ago, a can of Vienna sausages that had fallen out of someone’s backpack. It was just luck they’d found it, rolled up under a palmetto leaf along Van Arsdale.
Stone shook his head. “Someone will smell the fire, the meat cooking. They’ll take the dogs. We can’t stay here so close to the big road.”
“We can go to Mister Wayne’s. You know, Daddy’s friend. The one who sold Mommy honey with the waxy stuff inside. We could go. Walk there and come back when we need to. He might even have food and stuff.”
Stone sighed. Mister Wayne’s was a pretty good idea and he was a little bit upset he hadn’t thought of it sooner. Mister Wayne and his two hundred acres tucked far, far away from the highway, down dirt roads, back in the Florida backwoods. Maybe he’d be there, a grownup with food . . . It was getting hard to think about anything else. Food.
He gave Sun a nod and said, “Get your stuff. We’ll go tonight. I think the moon will be out, so we won’t get lost. We’ll follow the riding trail, where we used to ride our ponies.”
The dogs never barked—not once since they’d come back to Uncle Jordan’s and they didn’t bark on the way to Mister Wayne’s, even when there was scurrying and rustling in the underbrush. They’d changed. They weren’t pets anymore. They were hunters, quiet and serious.
Sun carried her stuff in a pillowcase they’d tied up on the corners with an old rope. Stone had snuck into Uncle Jordan’s house a while back to get their go bags, but they were gone. That was the world now: finders, keepers; finders, takers.
The moon lit the sugar sand trail with a warm glow. It was easy to keep to the path. Sun got tired about halfway, but Stone wouldn’t let her stop. When they reached Mister Wayne’s bunkhouse, they saw the soft, happy glint of gaslight. Light in the dark, it was like magic the way it made Sun cheer up.
She chirped, “Look, Stone, Mister Wayne has a lamp.”
But it wasn’t Mister Wayne with a light in the window waiting for them. It was a boy who came to the door with a crossbow, arrow notched.
“Who are you?” He poked the arrow at them, but it was just a toy, the tip made of soft rubber.
Sun slid behind Stone. “We’re Sun and Stone.”
“Why are you here?”
“We wanted to see Mister Wayne, he’s our friend, and we’re trying to—”
“Hide. I bet that’s it. Right?” The boy dropped the end of his silly toy and didn’t wait for Stone to say anything. “We’re hiding too, all of us. Do you know the secret word?” Inside the room, tucked behind the bunks and chairs, were seven or eight children, peeking out at them.
When Stone pulled open the squeaky screen door, Sun grabbed his back, pinching him.
He shot back at her, “Ouch. Stop that. It hurts. What are they going to do, kill us with a toy arrow?”
“We need to find Mister Wayne.” Sun slid out from behind him, put her hands on her hips. “We didn’t know there was a secret word. Forget it.” She jutted her bottom lip out, looking for a fight.
“He left,” said a little boy about six years old. He’d climbed out from behind a wooden crate. “He’s been gone for days and days.”
“Did something happen to him?” Stone asked.
“Nope,” the first boy said. There was more confidence in his voice than he had in his eyes. “He’s coming back. He went to the store to get more stuff.”
“Who are you?” Sun had a talent for getting to the heart of things.
A girl, taller than Stone, stood up from behind the bunk tucked in the corner, farthest from the puddle of light. The little girl she’d been holding toddled along the bunk’s edge.
The big girl called out, “You should come inside, the mosquitoes are flying in. They’re awful.” She tugged at the white cotton nightgown she had on.
Sun picked at Stone’s sleeve. “But we don’t know the secret word.”
“Forget that.” The girl rounded the end of the bunk. “That’s something Brian came up with. There’s no secret word. I’m Gabby. Mister Wayne is my grandpa.”
A little girl, about four, said, “We have Cuties.”
Gabby ruffled the girl’s hair. “Not Cuties, but tangerines. They’re old and dry, but they fill up your tummy. Right, Carrie? Back in bed with you. Brian, let them in.”
“We have dogs.” Sun announced as she stepped into the bunkhouse. Children popped up to see for themselves. A little boy walked to the dogs, his hands outstretched like a sleep walker. When he got to Rex he buried his face in the dog’s thick fur.
The screen door slapped shut behind Sun and Stone. A handful of moths skittered around the hurricane lamp on the table in front of the bunkhouse window. Outside, a coyote pack sent up its weird yipping howl under the light of the fat moon. Queenie and Rex tipped their heads at the sound. Eyes stared at them from around the bunkhouse like owls peeking from the hollow of a rotted tree.
They sat on a log overlooking the stream where the blackberries grew in thick patches. “My grandpa brought me here from Titusville after the sky turned the color of water colors. Do you remember?”
Stone watched his sister pull her shirt off of the blackberry thorns as she tried to fill her cup with berries. He nodded, because he did remember the night the sky went green and pink and blue.
No one in his neighborhood had understood what it meant back then.
“He came as soon as he saw the sky. He wanted my mom to come out here too, but she wouldn’t. Said she’d come later. She didn’t, and now he’s gone too. It wasn’t for food. We have that. He always worried that we would need food if we couldn’t get it at the stores or McDonald’s.”
“Then why? Why did he leave you?”
Gabby pointed at the children picking blackberries. “Because he was a kid by himself when he was little after his mom and dad left him alone. So, Grandpa started collecting them, all the ones that are getting left alongside the road, who don’t have moms or dads anymore. He found Brian at the edge of the ranch, lost and hungry. He was the first one, and then he went looking for the rest of them.”
There were seven found-children, plus Gabby, and now Stone and Sun—ten altogether. They were busy picking blackberries or trying. One of the little ones bent down to drink out of the stream that ran next to the blackberry patch. Gabby yelled, “Don’t drink that.”
Stone took off. But it was Sun who reached the little girl whose name was Daisy first, pulling her away from the stream.
“Dirty. Don’t drink that,” Sun scolded. “You’ll get the poops.”
Stone nodded.
The little girl started to cry. They did that, cried easy and a lot, the little ones. Sun wiped mud from Daisy’s hands.
Stone said, “Go up there, get Gabby to give you a drink from the good thermos.”
Instead of obeying, the little girl stuck her thumb in her mouth.
“Take her to Gabby.” Stone pointed to the girl watching them from the log on the sand hill overlooking the stream. The cow pasture beyond the stream had filled up with head-high weeds and grasses.
Gabby smiled at Sun and Daisy and held out her thermos. Gabby was only ten, but she knew a lot about picking blackberries and drinking out of streams and keeping kids from getting sick, and her smile had a way of making Stone feel happy all the way down to his shoes. Gabby’s hair stuck out in tuffs of black, springy curls. Her skin glowed like a polished brown acorn.
Queenie and Rex followed Gabby around like puppies, bringing her their daily prizes of rabbit and soft-shelled t
urtle. They recognized a pack leader when they saw one.
Brian and his brother raced through the overgrown grasses beyond the stream. Gabby was good at keeping an eye on them without making the others feel like they were being watched. Stone was tempted to join the boys playing hide-and-seek in the open field, but something about being alone without grownups to make them behave had Stone staying close to Gabby. They were in charge. Nobody said it. But it was true.
Stone went back to his seat next to Gabby. They sat together, not touching, but close.
“Do you know I’m ten?” she asked, after filling her mouth with ripe blackberries.
He was embarrassed to tell her that he was only eight-and-a-half but almost nine. Almost nine seemed close to ten, but Gabby was so clever and brave. She seemed older than ten. He kept quiet.
“How old is your sister?”
“Seven. She had a birthday.”
The children’s laughter floated up and over the tall, fluttery grass of the big, open pasture. They chased each other through the twists and turns and trails winding around the clumps of dried weeds. The spring had been mild this year—no terrible storms, no scary lightning, not yet—but the sunshine was still a comfort after the cool of the nights. The sun still brought comfort.
Gabby offered Stone a handful of fruit while the children played tag. Seemed like blackberry picking was over. Maybe somebody should yell at the kids running around—tell them to get back to work. Stone shrugged away the thought of being the one to try to make them behave. Gabby was ten. Let her do it.
At the edge of the soft roll of overgrown pasture, a huge black buffalo lumbered out of the hardwood hammock, raised its block of a head and sniffed the air. Gabby jumped to her feet and started waving her hands in the air.
“Get them!” she yelled to Stone as she ran down the hill. Queenie and Rex chased after her, excited and frantic at her sudden panic. “It’s a buffalo. It’s rancher Kennedy’s old, bad water buffalo from his fancy animal ranch. He’ll kill the children.”
Stone called out their names: “Sun, Brian, May, Daisy . . .” but he didn’t know all their names. He just fell to chanting, “Hey. Hey. Hey. It’s a bull. Mean horns.”
The group popped out of the overgrowth like gophers. Gabby picked up a broken branch as she headed at the bull. She waved the branch at the muddy beast. “Here. Come here.” One of the littlest kids tripped at the stream’s edge, rolled in the mud, and flopped on his belly. “Help him. Help that one.”
Gabby kept waving the branch over her head, yelling and waving, but the bull buffalo didn’t budge. Instead, it seemed more curious than scared, shook his head at the noise and confusion. The dogs ran ahead of the girl and reached the buffalo before her, barking their heads off.
Stone counted heads. They were all here. “Sit down. Head for the bunkhouse if that thing comes this way.” He headed down the slope and across the stream. Blackberry brambles raked his arms. “Queenie. Rex. Come back here. Gabby, stop! The kids are good. Come away. Come away.”
The buffalo slung his horns at Rex. Queenie barked harder when Rex yelped. Gabby grabbed at Queenie’s collar, trying to drag the big dog away.
“Stop. Stop. It’s okay.”
Rex whimpered and tucked his tail between his legs. Queenie broke free and charged the buffalo. It knocked her backwards, head over tail. She landed on her side and lay still.
Stone wrapped his arms around Gabby’s waist and pulled her backwards.
“No. No. The dogs. They’re hurt.”
“Leave them. You can’t win. You can’t.”
A gunshot popped. With a stupid look on his face, the buffalo braced itself. A trickle of blood ran down its nose. Gabby staggered and tripped backwards onto her bottom. Stone fell next to her. The buffalo crumpled where it stood.
An old man, his dark face covered in scratchy white whiskers, hustled across the field. He bent over huffing and puffing when he reached them.
“Gabby Girl.” Bent over at the waist, he braced one hand on his knee and the other on his rifle. He sucked wind.
“Gabby?” This must be his friend’s grandfather, but Stone needed to hear it from her.
She sat up, staring at the dead buffalo in front of her. “Hello, Grandpa.” She pointed. “He’s a pretty good shot.”
The old man looked up and smiled. His smile made Stone think of a happy Halloween pumpkin, smiling a toothless smile.
“Okay, Boy,” he said, exhaling loudly. “Help me with this.” He pointed at the dead animal still trickling blood. “If we hurry we’re going to be eatin’ steaks for a while. Crazy old bull got loose after the electric fences went away. Knocked down the wire and wood and just walked off into the woods.”
Gabby crawled to Queenie and started to cry. The dog lay flat out like a popped balloon.
Stone knelt next to the girl in the dirt. “It’s okay, Gabby. We won’t have to eat her. We can bury her because your grandpa got the big cow. We can eat the buffalo. It’s going to be okay.”
She pulled away from Stone, horrified. “Why would you think we would eat Queenie? That’s horrible. She was a great dog.”
It shocked him that she didn’t realize how terrible it was “out there” beyond the puddle of lamplight in the bunkhouse of their ranch. How could she not know that people were eating their dogs and cats and maybe even Uncle Jordan’s white horses, their ponies? How could she not know? Stone felt Mister Wayne’s eyes on him. He met the old man’s stare, saw the way he shook his head as if he knew the things Stone wanted to say to his granddaughter. He didn’t want her to know how bad it was “out there.”
Children formed a semicircle around the Stone and Gabby and Queenie.
Mister Wayne looked over to the group, studied the trouble in front of him, and pointed at Stone. “Who are you?”
“I’m Stone, and that’s Sun, my sister. My dad bought honey from you. We didn’t know where else to go.”
Gabby’s grandfather studied them with serious dark eyes.
“That your dog?”
Stone nodded, biting back the lump in his throat.
“Well, that was a good dog, but you’ve still got another dog that probably needs some tending and we still got all this buffalo to butcher. Gabby, hug yourself and come on. We’ve got work, and that can’t wait.”
Mister Wayne handed Stone a folding camp shovel. “Dig it here. It’s a nice spot for a good dog. You others, go fetch me all the buckets you can find to carry this water buffalo in, and we’ll get started on saving our supper from the varmints before it gets dark.”
Rex belly crawled up to Stone, licked his leg, and then sniffed Queenie’s body. Sun, tears dripping from her chin, ran her hands over Rex. The dog flinched when she hit a rib. Hurt but not dead.
Gabby turned and started walking to the bunkhouse. Rex limped after her.
Grandpa Wayne fed them big steaks of grilled water buffalo. It was tough, but it filled them up and tasted like hope.
After they were full, the old man patted the kids at his table on the head, sent the little ones off to nap, and let Sun rattle on about how Mommy and Daddy would be coming to look for them any day.
“And we’ll pray for that, won’t we Gabby Girl?”
Gabby nodded and crawled into her grandpa’s lap. “But they can stay for now, right?”
“As long as they want.” He gave Stone a searching look. “But ‘till then would you like to learn a bit about turning an old buffalo into some happy meals? We could use your help, me and Gabs.”
Stone liked the idea of helping. He could tell Sun liked it too. “Just until Mommy and Daddy come back, okay Sun.”
He smiled his happy pumpkin smile, stuck out his hand to shake, and said, “Let’s go make happy meals.”
Gabby’s grandpa showed Stone and the others how to cut the buffalo meat as thin as paper, so they could drape it over the rack he used for drying it out. He showed them how to dry the blackberries on the cookie sheets over the open fire. The children had the
job of running back and forth to the woods to gather the right kind of wood to keep the fires low and steady. They cooked buffalo meat for hours and hours and hours, all night long, until it crumbled, same with the berries.
Grandpa Wayne, with the glow of hot coals in his face, told them about the buffalo from the next farm that had busted down the fences when the feed and water ran out, when the electric fence quit working. He talked about how the buffalo cows followed the crabby old bull into the woods. Running wild, they roamed the woods and fields now.
He made it an adventure. He made it exciting to think about living like Native Americans that had to hunt buffalo for their dinners.
When the meat was dry enough, he set Gabby to grinding up the crispy strips of meat and the crunchy blackberries. She liked the job. She used a slab of marble and a hammer and a rolling pin to pound it to pieces.
He showed Gabby and Stone the blocks of kidney fat he’d saved from the wild pigs that rooted around the ranch and pooped in their water, making it unsafe to drink. He taught them the difference between the kidney fat that would harden to a block and the soft body fat that stayed spreadable like butter.
He showed them how to render the fat, skimming the cracklings out of the clear, melted fat. He used a big cast iron witch’s kettle for the stuff they had to melt.
Some of the little kids had the job of swishing the flies away from the buffalo meat and the cooking fat. He showed them how to mix the crumbles of meat, the powdered berries, and the fat that dried like wax. Pemmican was one name for the food they made. Buffalo meat pemmican. Indian happy meals.
That’s what Grandpa Wayne called the bars of fat and meat and fruit—power bars, Indian power bars. He said they had everything a person might need to stay alive in troubled times, and done right, they’d last for a goodly amount of time.
Goodly. That’s what he said about time. Stone wasn’t sure how long a goodly amount of time was, but he was pretty sure it was longer than he or Sun wanted to wait to go back to the barn to check for their family.