The Survivors Page 8

  “Wonder who he sent it to,” Nat says.

  “Probably to himself,” Sarah says.

  Miles looks up, suddenly angry. “What do you know about him? You never even met him.”

  After supper, as a gesture to Miles, she picks up one of Mr. Kurz’s account books and looks through it. “What’s ‘logwood dye’?” she asks.

  “For trapping,” Miles says, his eyes lighting up. “He boiled his traps in water, paraffin, and this kind of black dye, which takes away the human scent and lubricates the iron—plus prevents it from rusting.” As he talks, his eyes go ever so slightly crossed—not crossed really, but sort of blank: He’s pulling stuff back from Mr. Kurz. She remembers that look from back home when, as kids, they played Memory, a matching game that Miles always won. His brain is the tiniest bit scary.

  “Trapping, ick,” she says.

  “By the way,” Miles announces to everyone, “we all need to learn how to shoot.”

  There is a moment of dead air.

  “Why?” Nat says.

  Miles rolls his eyes. “To protect ourselves. If Dad and I are off somewhere, it would be nice to know that you and Sarah could handle a gun.”

  “Me? Shoot a gun?” Nat says. “That will be the day.”

  “I could try,” Sarah says suddenly. “I mean, at least learn how. Get my northern-girl thing on.”

  That night Sarah arranges her sleeping bag in her corner of the new bedroom—which smells strongly of pine. Miles has drawn a line down the middle of the floor: her side, his side. She decorates her “room” with her favorite stuffed animal (a purple-and-black zebra), a picture of her and her friends from fifth grade crammed into a photo booth at the state fair, along with stuff she has collected near the cabin: a weathered pine knot that looks like a little galaxy; several smooth stones from the river; and an open, empty clamshell: her mother-of-pearl butterfly. By candlelight she starts to read her favorite vampire novel, but all she can think about is Ray. She stares at the little yellow flame of the candle, then checks her watch. Only about thirty-six hours until the weekend is over.

  In the morning, she wakes up before Miles—before everybody. No surprise there; she fell asleep around nine P.M. As Miles breathes heavily in his bag, she slips on her clothes and heads to the outhouse. The air is chilly but clear; the eastern sky is purple and pink.

  On the path to the outhouse, she stops. To the far side, by their “burner barrel”—a rusty old fifty-gallon drum in which Miles burns trash—is movement: It’s the gimpy dog, pawing through garbage. He has tipped over the whole barrel.

  Her first instinct is to shout “Shoo!” or “Go away!” But for some reason she doesn’t. She watches. The dog is so intent on finding something to eat that he doesn’t see or hear her. He’s totally ugly: a torn ear, long ago healed, split into two flaps; a gray muzzle; and that crooked and dangly right rear leg.

  Suddenly he turns and sees her; he hunches down as if to run. But he has also found a scrap of fish skin that hangs from the side of his mouth like a skinny tongue.

  Sarah slowly squats down. His yellow eyes follow her. Still watching her, he gulps down the fish skin, then resumes his pawing.

  “You’re making a mess,” Sarah says softly.

  His nose continues to nudge through the scattered garbage.

  “What’s your name?”

  As she raises up slightly, he growls, but it’s not a scary growl. Sarah really has to pee, so she stands, keeping her posture low, and eases past. Her movements, slow and nonthreatening, seem to work. He doesn’t run.

  When she returns, he’s gone. With an old rake, she comes back to clean up the mess and set the barrel upright. As she works, she raises her head and gradually stops moving; slowly she pivots her face to look behind her, into the brush. The old dog, almost perfectly camouflaged, watches her. Once her eyes stop on his, he melts backward into the brush.

  “Brush,” Sarah says. “That’s your name.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  MILES

  OCTOBER ROLLS ALONG LIKE SUMMER, warm and hazy and dry. Miles skims the front page. The unnaturally warm weather is a result of the earth’s heat trapped under the worldwide dome of dust, including sulfurous compounds from the volcanoes, their gas miles up in the air, that react with oxygen and water to form aerosols that continue to linger worldwide.

  “In other words, a yellow freaking mist with a hang time of two to three years,” Miles mutters, and tosses aside the newspaper. “Who writes that stuff?”

  “Did you say something?” Artie asks, popping out one earbud.

  “No,” Miles says, and heads outside the cabin. He gets his nature facts not from scientists or the news but from keeping his eyes open. That, and from Mr. Kurz’s notes on the local birds and critters. Robins, finches, wrens—should have gone south a month ago, but they’re still here chirping and fluttering as they feed on bugs and seeds. Nature is one tough mother, but she takes care of the survivors. In the woods around the cabin male ruffed grouse, or partridge, are calling. Boom … boom … boom … boom-boom … boom-boom-boom—boomaboomabooma! go their wings as they stand on logs and beat their wings in the air. The sound is like someone trying over and over to start an old tractor. But really it’s the sound of life moving forward despite the volcanoes.

  Artie comes out of the cabin wearing his work gloves. “Let’s do our thing,” he calls to Miles.

  Gathering firewood is what Miles and his father do best: saw up dead trees—most of them blowdown—then cut off the limbs with a short axe (Artie is the axe man) and later dice the logs into blocks with a vintage but very sharp two-man crosscut saw. Artie on one end, Miles on the other. Back-and-forth strokes, not fast, not slow, but with a steady rhythm. A beat, almost. Power chainsaws are cheap—there are plenty of used ones at Old But Gold—but they are also stinky, dangerous, and loud. A chainsaw engine can be heard for miles.

  They knock out one long pine tree, then take a break to catch their breaths.

  “Watch this,” Artie says to Miles.

  Miles straightens up to see.

  With the short trimming axe in one hand, his father steps off five paces from a big standing dead tree. Like a tennis player bobbing backward for a serve, he swings the axe over his head—and launches it in a one-armed throw. The shiny axehead whips its handle end over end in the air—until the whole thing clanks against the tree trunk and falls to the ground.

  “Dang,” his father says. “I stuck two in a row yesterday.”

  After the firewood is cut, Miles heads over to work on the little winter stall for Emily. Sarah has been helping him with that on weekends and after school; when it comes to Emily or that stray dog, she’s always right there. He has hardly pounded two nails when she shows up and stands there, watching. Micromanaging.

  “How’s Emily going to stay warm outside in winter?” Sarah asks.

  “Her own body heat,” Miles says. “That’s why her shed has to be small.”

  “She’ll freeze to death!”

  “We’ll put down a thick layer of sawdust, then fill it up with leaves. She’ll be totally cozy.”

  “She’d better be,” Sarah grumbles.

  “Well she ain’t sleeping in the cabin,” Miles replies, banging home another nail.

  “She’s not sleeping in the cabin,” Sarah says.

  “That’s what I said,” Miles answers.

  A flock of about a dozen ducks flies over low. They are mallards—green-headed males and dusky brown females. The lead duck cups the white undersides of its wings for a touchdown upriver. They’ve been coming and going, morning and night, in the same landing pattern for the last few days. Miles cocks his head. “I’m going hunting,” he says suddenly, and hands his hammer to Sarah.

  “We have to finish this!”

  “Keep nailing boards,” Miles says. “I won’t be gone long.” He takes his shotgun and heads along the riverbank.

  The mallards are just upstream, out of sight in thin yellow reeds; they chuck
le and quack and bob. Staying low, Miles creeps closer until he is within shotgun range. A big greenhead male floats into the open; Miles raises his gun. Never shoot more than once during a day. One shot, and nobody knows for sure where it came from. It’s the second shot that tells them where you are. His finger tightens on the trigger, but a brownish female mallard paddles into view, blocking his shot. A mother duck. Three smaller ducks paddle behind her—a little family—and Miles can’t bring himself to pull the trigger. She flutters through the reeds, and immediately the little ducklings swim behind her, pecking at the water. Miles squints. Leans forward to look closer. The duck family is eating wild rice. He should have remembered this—the wild rice—from Mr. Kurz’s stories.

  He stands up suddenly—the mallards quack loudly and flare straight up from the water—but he doesn’t shoot. Instead, he heads quickly back to the cabin.

  Sarah spots him as he emerges from the brush. “Did you get anything? I didn’t hear you shoot.”

  “Didn’t want to shoot. Got something better. Put down the hammer; we’re going wild ricing!”

  In the battered, camouflage-painted canoe (another score from Old But Gold), he and Sarah paddle upstream. His shotgun lies in the bottom of the boat, along with two skinny sticks. Use wooden sticks: one to bend the rice plants over your canoe, the other to knock the heads off. That’s what your flail stick is for. Bend and flail, bend and flail. If the rice beds are good, you can make a hundred dollars a day. Me, I only riced for what I needed to eat. One sack of raw, green rice was plenty. Then you have to clean it and dry it—parch it slow over a wood fire in a big iron kettle, one that’s heavy enough so the rice won’t burn. Most people are not good at parching. They want to cure it fast, but it takes time....

  “I don’t know what I’m doing,” Sarah says.

  “Just paddle,” Miles says to her.

  “I knew there was a reason you put me in the back.” She groans.

  “The stern,” Miles says. “I’m in the bow.”

  “Where do I paddle?”

  “Right through there,” Miles says, pointing to the rice bed. The stalks tower head-high alongside the canoe—and grains of rice fall at first touch.

  “Slower!” Miles calls back to Sarah. Clumsily he works the two sticks. Lots of rice falls into the water, but more and more of the little heads fall into the canoe. Gradually Miles finds the right rhythm and touch.

  “Ick—the grains have little green worms!” Sarah says.

  “More protein,” Miles says.

  “They’re sharp, too,” she says of the little rice spears; she tries to brush them off, but they stick to her jeans.

  “We’re lucky there’s any rice left,” Miles says. “Keep going.”

  They work back and forth through the river bend for an hour, until the bottom of the canoe is furry and thick: a shaggy carpet of raw, green rice.

  “Can we go home now?” Sarah whines.

  “Okay, okay,” Miles says. As they leave, a flock of mallards wheels high overhead, then banks to make a tight circle above the rice bed. “Thanks,” Miles murmurs.

  “You’re welcome,” Sarah says, clanking her paddle.

  He doesn’t explain.

  As they paddle downstream, there is brown motion in the undergrowth. “There’s that dog!” Miles says suddenly. On the shore, he lurks from tree to tree, following them home.

  “Brush!” Sarah calls. “Hey, Brush!”

  “Don’t encourage him! And never feed him,” Miles says. “That’s why he hangs around—he knows we have food.”

  “Maybe he used to live here,” Sarah said. “Maybe he was Mr. Kurz’s dog.”

  Miles spits sideways into the water and keeps paddling. “He would have to be, like, a hundred dog years old. He’s just a stray dog who’s not going to make it through the winter.”

  “He could live with us and be our watchdog,” Sarah says.

  “He only has three good legs. Great watchdog.”

  “What will happen to him?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Miles says as they head on a straight course downriver.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  SARAH

  AT SCHOOL SHE STAYS INVISIBLE except on the tennis court. The coach lets her play—red-shirt status, which means she’s “unofficially” on the team—and today she is panting and sweaty after beating Carolyn 6–3 and 6–1. As she tilts up her water bottle, Ray approaches the chain-link fence. She pretends not to notice him until the last second.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “Oh—hi, Ray.”

  They pause to watch the green tennis balls fly back and forth.

  “Haven’t see you around much lately,” Ray says.

  “You either.”

  They are silent. Then Ray says, “Remember that football game?”

  “Yes.”

  “You said you’d talk to me in school.”

  “I do talk to you!” Sarah says, turning.

  “But not talk-talk. You know, like ‘quality time.’”

  Sarah giggles. “It’s not like we’re going steady.”

  Ray’s face reddens slightly. “You know what I mean.”

  She is silent. “Sort of.”

  They watch Mackenzie, who is also watching them—and because of it misses the ball.

  “Lucky shot,” Mackenzie snaps, and slams a serve straight at Rachel, who ducks. To the side is Mackenzie’s dad; he often comes to watch practice.

  “Hey, Sarah, want to step in?” Rachel calls. She is limping slightly.

  Sarah glances at the coach.

  “Why not?” the coach says.

  On the court, Sarah bounces the ball twice, then lobs a nice serve to Mackenzie’s forehand. Slowly they volley back and forth; and from the rhythm, and the sunlight on the clean and tidy court, her mind starts to drift. Back home. Home-home to the suburbs, where the biggest problem she had was going over her cell phone minutes. Back then, she and her mother had their I’ve-had-a-really-really-bad-day signal: holding two rackets. It required the other—no questions asked—to stop everything and come hit tennis balls.

  Only now does Sarah understand how cool that was—how she and her mother didn’t have to say anything; they would just volley back and forth. She and her mother with their tennis rackets and the furry green balls that they hammered back and forth until one of them called “Enough!” One time they played until they could barely walk back to the house and were laughing and bumping into each other as they scarfed down leftovers and then just lay on the soft carpet by the big fireplace. They left the television off and for two hours talked about things. About Sarah’s friends. About her mother’s clients. About life. Things like that didn’t happen too often back then. But Sarah now had to admit one thing: If she had to live in a small cabin with someone’s mother, hers wasn’t all that bad.

  “Hey!” Mackenzie calls as Sarah’s hard serve skips past her.

  “Come on, Mac!” her father calls. “Pay attention out there!”

  “Sorry!” Sarah says; she sneaks a glance toward Mackenzie’s father, who stands, watching. She has to get a grip, remember where she is. Who she is. But Ray is watching; she goes after Mackenzie harder: hitting the corners, dropping soft ones with reverse spin just over the net.

  “You really can play!” Mackenzie calls; there is accusation in her voice.

  Sarah answers with her hardest serve of the afternoon—directly at Mackenzie. The ball ricochets once and catches her in the belly.

  “Ooomph!” Mackenzie grunts as the ball dribbles off. She clatters her racket into the corner, where it bangs off the fence, and then she stomps off the court.

  “Nice strokes, Sarah,” says the coach. “I knew you were a player.”

  Behind the fence, Mackenzie’s dad folds his arms across his chest.

  Mackenzie will not speak to Sarah for the rest of practice and leaves with her father without even looking at Sarah.

  The next morning in school she is smiley again. “Sorry I was such a bitch
,” she says.

  “Hey, no problem. I was playing way over my head.”

  “It’s just my competitive nature,” Mackenzie says. “Sometimes it comes out wrong.”

  Sarah shrugs. “I know what you mean. And really, it’s no big deal. I’ve forgotten about it.”

  “Anyway, I was thinking,” Mackenzie says, “you and I could be doubles partners. We’d kick butt!”

  “That might be cool,” Sarah says, which is a lie.

  “So let’s practice late tonight,” Mackenzie says. “My dad said he could drive you home.”

  Sarah frowns as if she’d like to stay and practice but can’t. “I need to be home right after practice. We have to … take our boat in. For the winter. All-hands-on-deck sort of thing.”

  “I could help,” Mackenzie says. “We could stay over at your house tonight!”

  “Ah, it’s kind of a mess right now. We’re doing some remodeling. But when that’s done, sure.”

  Mackenzie shrugs. “Okay. So how about a sleepover tomorrow tonight at my house? That will give us extra practice time.”

  Sarah thinks of the hot shower, the bathtub, toilets with actual running water. “Okay.”

  At the cabin that night during supper—fresh northern pike from the river and newly parched wild rice—she mentions the upcoming sleepover.

  “Fine, I guess,” Nat says to Artie.

  “Sure,” Artie says, sorting out a tiny Y-bone from his fish.

  Miles is silent, then mutters something under his breath.

  “What?” Sarah asks him.

  He shrugs. “Pretty soon you’ll be staying in town all the time.”

  “It’s just a one-night sleepover,” she says.

  “You’re gonna dump us for hot running water and toilets,” Miles says.

  “Hot water and soap is a good thing,” Nat says. They all look at Miles.

  “And, by the way, what are you pounding on all the time over by the sawmill?” Sarah asks.

  “Nothing,” Miles says quickly.

  On Thursday night, after a long practice and a deliciously long hot shower at Mackenzie’s house, it’s time for dinner with the Phelps family. Jane is cheerful as always, but Mackenzie’s father is quieter than normal. Mitzy, who has her own chair and cushion, peeks up above the tabletop; her little dark eyes follow the food bowls as they are passed. Every once in a while Jane slips Mitzy a tiny bite of food.