by Robert Reed
“Scare them,” Cody corrected him. “All right?”
“But how’s he going to pee and stuff?” asked Marshall. He glanced at Jack and wondered, “Where will you wash? You want to stink?”
“I’ll go home and shower, you dick. What do you think?”
Beth asked, “Won’t they miss you at home?” She squinted, not understanding what she heard.
“They don’t care,” Jack assured her. “Just go ask if you don’t believe me.”
“What’ll you eat?” Marshall persisted.
“Canned stuff. Wild stuff. Whatever.”
“We ought to vote,” Marshall decided. “Can Jack actually live in our treehouse? That’s the question.”
Cody thought it was a good idea; so did I. I knew Marshall was just jealous that Jack was getting his own way. Sure. And Beth couldn’t see why he wanted such a thing. “You’re too young to be alone up here,” she told him. I saw her breathing, then she said, “You’re leaving your family. Your home,” and she made a soft whining sound.
Jack glanced out an east window, shrugging once.
“Jack stays,” said Cody. “His vote makes three, and he wins.”
Beth said, “Ryder? Do you always do what Cody wants?” She was angry. I knew it when her bright eyes focused on me.
I said, “I thought it was a good idea.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because it’s what he wants,” I began.
“Is it?”
“He’s happier here, sure.”
She shook her head and wondered, “What if everyone did the happy thing? Would that be right?”
I blinked, trying to think—
“Ryder? What about obligations?”
“But it’s different—”
“And duty?” she whined.
Jack was staring at Beth now.
“Sometimes,” she said, “you disappoint me, Ryder.”
Now I was angry. “Cody’s mostly right,” I countered. “She almost always knows what to do.”
“You’re sure?”
“Mostly.”
“You think Jack’s old enough to live here?”
I looked at Jack, and he seemed so very much like a little boy—
“Beth?” said Jack. “Butt out of it.”
Beth sighed and shook her head, then she sang one soft, sad note. I was watching her now. Her eyes were fixed on some point far beneath the floor, her head still shaking, and I felt sorry for being angry and tried to say something nice. Only she didn’t hear me. She couldn’t hear me. She was sitting on the long bench, tangled up in her thoughts.
Jack brought a foam pad and an old water-cooled sleeping bag into the treehouse, plus extra clothes, canned food and frozen food and his assorted snake equipment—liquid crystal records, maps and numbers and such, with cloth sacks for carrying the snakes and lucky sticks for whipping the ground or pinning the big ones in one place. He slept on the long bench and used a portable burner to cook his meals, and he stored his gear in one of the maze’s dead ends. Cody made him clean the room every day. It was part of the deal. And Jack seemed happier than I could remember him being, with something fresh in his eyes and quick in his honest smile.
I had to wonder what had happened in the Wellses’ house. Really.
And what would happen when cold weather came again? Jack couldn’t stay up in the oak with the snow and ice. No way.
“You should have seen the storm,” he told me one day. “Did you hear it? Last night? Wind and lightning and me just holding on!”
I had slept through the night, unaware.
“A lot of noise,” said Jack, “and maybe ten drops of rain.”
“Yeah?”
“And I heard it scream afterwards,” he told me.
“The dragon?”
“It was close.” He pointed at two spots on the pasture. “It screamed twice, and you know how fast it was moving? About as fast as Cody runs in the open, on good ground.”
“It’s sure quick,” I agreed.
He was watching me and thinking something. “Nobody’s catching them anymore. Did you notice? They’ve gotten too smart.” He said, “I’m glad I never tried nabbing them. Really!” Beans and beef were heating over the burner. “And this big one? I really like having it around. Just knowing it’s close. You know?”
“I do,” I said.
He dipped a finger into the bubbling sauce. “Want some?”
I was hungry, yes. But dinner was going to be served at home in a little while, so I said, “Thanks, no,” and left Jack to eat by himself. I arrived to find Dad cooking and the TV full of news. “It’s the big attack, Ryder,” Dad said. “They’ve finally squared away the D-day.”
I sat at the kitchen table and watched shuttles standing in rows on the blasted dead ground of the moon. “Ten days,” said the newscaster, “and our future will be determined by several thousand brave soldiers. The most powerful army ever created, and it will be launched with considerable fanfare, its purpose as noble as any ever imagined!—”
“Yams?” said Mom. She brought a plate of yams from the oven.
I said, “Thank you, yes.”
“This animated sequence,” said the newscaster, “shows the assault as it is supposed to happen.” I saw tiny shuttles maneuvering around the moon’s moon, nests sparking and teams of soldiers being dispatched to fight their way into the deepest regions. They would plant nuclear explosives. And more explosives—enormous hundred-megaton charges—would be placed in the nearby space, all lunar-based artillery aimed and waiting. At a preplanned moment, at a preplanned position, the full-scale attack would blow the moon’s moon to ashes and gas and hot light quickly fading. “Neat and quick and thorough,” said the man’s steady, knowing voice. The TV simulation ended with a brilliant flash, then blackness. “Simulations and endless practice,” he claimed, “have made the army ready, and according to all accounts, our soldiers are eager to do their jobs.”
“Eat,” prompted Mom. “It’s getting cold.”
“Ten days,” said Dad, and he winked at me. “It should be quite the show, Ryder. Don’t you think?”
Mom began to eat, her fork clicking against her plate.
“History in the making,” said Dad.
“I don’t like history,” Mom responded.
Dad waited, then he said, “You did in school. I recall—”
“I meant being stuck in it, Kip.” She sighed and looked into her steaming food, never blinking.
Then it was nine days to go.
Then eight days.
It was afternoon of a blazing hot June day. Marshall was with me in the big room, Beth and Cody were on the roof and Jack was scouring the pasture for any snakes foolish enough to come out in this heat. “We’ve got somebody on the west,” Cody yelled. “Someone coming.”
I lifted my head. I had been reading.
“You know him, Ryder?”
He was a neighbor kid, sure. I remembered his face and name and age—seven years old, and small for seven—and he crossed the bottoms and climbed the short slope with his gaze fixed upwards at us. I remembered where he lived, way past Beth’s house. I saw the jade-colored house and his folks standing in the front yard, each with a bambi on a leash. Then I breathed and blinked and came back to the present. The kid wanted to talk to us. I watched him summoning the courage, then he asked, “You got any shovels?” with a brittle little voice.
Cody poked her head over the edge of the roof. “What do you want?”
“You got anything to dig with?” the kid wondered.
Cody asked, “Why?”
He didn’t want to say why. He rocked from one foot to the other, then back again. He said, “I’m not supposed to use my dad’s tools.”
“So what are you digging for?” Cody persisted.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“We want to dig a hole,” he whined.
What was Cody thinking? I didn’t understand. We didn’t loan tools to a
nyone, not ever. I looked down at the kid’s eager face, and she asked him, “Where are you putting this hole?”
Beth’s face came over the edge, her black hair streaming downwards.
“Where are you digging?” Cody asked again.
“Oh,” he said, “over there,” and he pointed in some random wrong direction. I looked at his face and stance and knew he was lying.
Jack came up behind the kid, saying nothing.
“So what are you chasing?” asked Cody.
The kid wheeled and saw Jack. Beth said, “Don’t do anything to him, Jack,” and scared the kid without meaning to do it. Fear came up into his face, into his eyes, and he bolted. He was down the slope and running with a frantic, clumsy motion, and Cody shouted, “Keep on him!” She gripped the edge of the roof and swung out into the air, holding tight and coming feet-first through a window. In an instant she was beside me, and I watched the kid and Jack racing across the green bottoms. Cody was telling Marshall to hurry and help with the shovels. Now! She had a feeling—
“What?” He looked up from a puzzle, interrupted and angry. “What’s going on?”
“Ryder?” Cody shook my shoulder. “Come on.”
Beth crawled down through the hatch. We threw shovels to the ground, then it was quick through the maze and across the bottoms, Cody prompting us all the way. I still didn’t understand. Neither did Marshall. “What’s the point? I don’t get it!” We climbed the slabs and heard voices—Jack’s voice and then a couple of kids talking to him—and we pressed up into a stand of second-growth trees where the light was dim and cool and damp. Jack was standing beside a lone beam of sunlight that showed dust in the beam, and three kids clumped past him. Jack was asking, “What’d you see?” Then he turned and told us, “Something went down this hole. They saw something.”
Cody threw her shovel into the earth, the sharp blade knifing deep and the handle standing in the air. Then she breathed a couple times and looked at the kids, smiling.
There were two boys and a girl. They rocked in place and hunted for escape routes. Cody said, “Boo!” and lifted her arms, spooking them. Then she jumped and grabbed the boy who had come to us, and the other two shrieked and fled. I heard them running in the shadows, then there was nothing. Cody was smiling. She showed her square teeth and told her captive, “You know what I’m going to do to you? Do you?”
He went limp in her arms. “What—?”
“Kiss you. On the lips.”
Horror came into the boy’s tiny face—
“I’ll use my tongue,” she threatened.
“Don’t!” he squealed.
“What went down that hole?” she asked him. “Tell me!”
“It’s ours,” he said. “We saw it.”
“What’d you see?”
“Nothing.”
Cody pursed her lips and bent toward him—
“That dragon thing!” he cried. “It was lying right here,” and one hand lifted, pointing at the packed earth and the sunbeam.
Marshall came forward, his face intense. “What hole?” he asked.
“Let me go,” said the boy.
“This hole?” said Marshall. “Tell me!”
“I saw it. It’s mine!”
“It’s got to be here,” said Marshall. “It’s the only one big enough.” He lifted his shovel and drove the blade into the earth, cutting roots and the heavy moist soil. The hole had been dug long ago by some animal, its sides smoothed by use. I started helping Marshall with the digging, and Beth told Cody, “Let him go. You’ll hurt him.”
“You didn’t see a dragon.” Cody shook the kid. “Did you?”
“I did!” He was angry to be doubted. He said, “It was white and furry and this big,” and he stretched his arms to show that it was longer than he could stretch. “It went down there, and it belongs to me. It’s mine!”
“So catch it.” She released him, pulling her shovel from the ground and telling him, “Help us dig, and maybe you’ll be the one—”
“That’s not fair!”
“Yeah,” Cody agreed. “It’s not.”
“I’m getting my dad. He’ll whip your ass.”
Cody looked at me. “His dad worth shit?” she wondered.
I remembered the man with the bambi on a leash. He was fat and pink and not much taller than her. I said so.
She told the kid, “Go on then. Get him,” and she laughed.
The kid turned and ran, vanishing, and I started to dig again. I smelled the exposed earth and the root saps, and soon Cody was telling me to help pull the loose soil away from the growing hole. She’d bring up the big clods herself. With Marshall. “Some stroke of luck, huh?” she asked Marshall. “You know what tipped me off? When I saw that kid coming toward us. He was wrestling something. In his mind. And he was sort of playacting while he walked, using his hands—”
“I’ve got dibs,” said Marshall. He grunted and jabbed with the shovel, his hands already blistering. “I call dibs!”
Cody stared at him for a moment, saying nothing.
“Don’t quit,” he said. “Dig! It might get away!”
Jack wasn’t helping. I saw him sitting on a slab of concrete, rocking it and watching us with his face showing nothing.
“There you go,” said Beth. “There.” She was picking worms and the moist fragments of worms out of the shovel-chewed clods, then she put them on quiet ground and coaxed them into digging. She seemed possessed with the work, singing a string of la-la-la’s, and I found myself moving to the rhythm of her song.
Cody was sweating. Her arms were pumped full of blood, and her face too, and when she moved the drops of sweat would fly in all directions. Once she drove the shovel like a spear, striking something solid. We heard the clang, and I paused to look into the growing pit. A crescent-shaped wound showed on the surface of some concrete block. A few more shovel strokes showed one edge of the block. The animal hole curled beneath it, vanishing into who-knew-what.
Marshall dug with his blistered hands, and Cody helped him.
They got beneath the block, bringing up bricks and pieces of bricks—red and dirty on the outside, red and bright at their core—and Cody paused and studied the bricks. She said, “You know what it is? I bet?”
Marshall grunted and brought up another clod. “What?” he muttered.
“Just a minute.” She dropped to the ground, crawling into the pit and forcing her hands and then her face under the concrete block. When she came up again, she said, “A well. It’s some old well capped with this thing,” and she swatted the block one time: Whap!
“The dragon’s in there?” asked Marshall.
“Trapped, I’m guessing.”
Marshall said, “Trapped,” without sound. Then he grunted and worked until an entire side of the old well was exposed. Our pit was deep and wide, bricks missing from one spot at the well’s lip. A badger or something might have slipped through that hole at one time. Now the dragon had made it its home, I realized. Cody told Marshall to quit digging, and again she climbed down as far as possible, putting an ear close to the dark spot. She didn’t move for a long while. Then Marshall asked, “Do you hear it?”
“Something,” she said. She climbed back out again.
“What’d you hear?”
“Your damned heart beating.” She stared at Marshall. “Settle down. We’ll get it for you somehow. Don’t worry.”
The pit grew even larger, clods and a few more bricks scattered on the ground all around us. The concrete block was entirely exposed, and the neck of the well too. “What do you think?” Cody asked Marshall. “We sure can’t squeeze through that gap there.”
“We’ve got to move the cap. This thing,” said Marshall. He jumped onto the block and dulled his shovel with some wasted stabs. His hands were a sorry mess, I saw. But he didn’t seem to notice, concentrating on the problem. “If we had a real big lever,” he said. “Maybe we could—”
“Maybe,” said Cody.
“I don’t
think so,” said Beth.
Marshall looked at Jack. “Please?” he asked. “Go and get us some axes, okay? And my net too?”
Jack glanced at Cody.
“Go on,” she said. Then she turned to Marshall. “What are you using for a lever?”
“A tree.”
“Which one?”
“That one. It’s good and straight.”
Cody stared at Marshall for a long moment, then she went to the tree and swung her shovel with both arms. The curved blade struck the trunk with a dull thud. I saw a slice of bark cut free and the sappy meat beneath it. She swung again and again, and Marshall did his best to help. But there wasn’t any coordination between them, and his poor hands were so raw that it was agony just to hold the handle, much less aim and swing and strike with any force.
He quit. He had to quit. We stood watching Cody chopping at the tree, and Marshall whispered to me, “We’ve got it finally.”
I said nothing.
“What’ll she say?” he asked. “When I show her?”
“Your mom?”
“She’ll just shit,” he said with enormous, crazy satisfaction. He shook his head and smiled and took a long, ragged breath. “I’ll bet she’ll just shit.”
Jack returned with axes and the net. I helped Cody chop, and my hands were sore inside a minute. The tree’s wood was springy and damp and I couldn’t do much more than bust away the slivers. It was Cody who drove her blade deeper every time. She made the whole tree shake. Beth was sharing Jack’s concrete seat, their knees near their mouths. Marshall himself couldn’t stand in one place, and he was pacing and planning and making us nervous.
Cody finally paused, wiping sweat from her face and saying, “You ought to hang the net now. Get it where you want it.”
“Yeah!” said Marshall. “I will.”
The tree wasn’t large, no, but it took a lot of pounding before it tilted and dropped. Cody had to shove it. Branches in the canopy snapped, and the sunshine fell onto us while the last of the trunk bent and broke; and then the tree was lying at our feet with the faintest traces of a wind making the leaves move. I looked up at the patch of clear blue sky. Cody said, “Okay, boss. Now what?”
Marshall said, “Drag it over. Shove it right in here!”