The Survivors (11 page)

“No, honey. Saturday means it's your turn,” her father says.

Clanging the bucket loudly against the doorframe, Sarah heads outside to the well. Emily immediately starts to bounce around her pen and clack her front hooves high up on the boards.

“I can't play,” Sarah mutters. “Not now.” During her third trip with a full bucket, she looks up. Miles and her mother
putta-put
through the woods. Miles, a maniac for saving gas, kills the engine so that he coasts down the hill, dust flying, Nat hanging on tightly behind him.

“Groceries. Mail call!” Miles shouts. He dismounts and slaps dust from his pants.

“How'd it go?” Artie asks.

Nat slips off her backpack and glances at Miles—who shrugs and grins. “Just your basic trip to the grocery store.”

Nat lets out a long breath.

Art narrows his eyes. “Did something happen?” he asks quickly.

“Yeah, the volcanoes,” Miles says.

“Here,” Nat adds, handing the heavy backpack to Sarah. “Put away the groceries. I really need to relax.”

“I have to do everything around here!” Sarah groans.

For Miles and her parents, Saturday and Sunday are no different from any other day. For Sarah, the weekend feels like a week. Time slows down. The cabin gets smaller and smaller, especially after sundown.

That evening her mother reads and her father lightly but continually
tap-tap
s his fingers as he reads music charts and listens to his headphones. Miles pores over Mr. Kurz's logbooks. “Look, Sarah—he even kept track of how much per month he spent on tobacco.” Miles is so engrossed in the narrow ledgers that he actually calls her by her real name.

“How interesting,” she says sarcastically. She glances briefly over Miles's shoulder at the cramped handwriting, the tidy columns of numbers.

“He smoked more in the winter,” Miles observes, “like twice as much.”

“Who wouldn't?” Sarah mumbles, glancing around the cabin.

“We'll all be smoking by spring,” Nat says. It's a joke, but no one laughs.

“‘December 1949; one Christmas card, ten cents,'” Miles reads.

“One Christmas card,” Artie says, looking over. “That's sad.” He actually listens sometimes.

“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.”

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 chuckle 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.