The Scavengers Read online

  And there, nearly invisible in the cavelike darkness, sticking out of the mud, is a miniature boomerang. “Dookie!” I gasp, and reach for it. Moving too quickly, I slip and fall forward, scraping my cheek on a gritty, mud-covered root. I stretch an arm out to catch myself, but the heel of my hand slides right past the boomerang and bumps into something at once soft and solid. At first I want to yank my hand out, but then I pat the object and . . . it’s a foot!

  A small foot. Just the size of . . .

  “Dookie!” I holler.

  “Dookie!” I holler again. I squeeze his foot. There is no reaction. The foot is cold, and I panic now, desperate to have him out of there. I tug and yank at his ankle, pulling backward with all my strength. I am breathing hard, and hollering “Dookie!” over and over, loud now, not caring who might hear. By the time I pull him out I am wild-eyed and weeping again, my hair a sodden tangle. I gather him up tight: Dookie, my snot-nosed, whiny-shorts, cranky-pants, angry-making brother, all loose in my arms like a flat balloon. I stop crying. Somewhere within me comes strength I didn’t know I had. I hold Dookie tight and pull my shoulders back square, and I strike out for Hoot Holler.

  A long time later when I get to the security gate I’m too out of breath to whistle. Instead I call Toad’s name, over and over, and then Toad pulls the gate open, and for once in his life he doesn’t say a word, just takes Dookie from my arms, carries him into the house, and places him ever so gently on a blanket beside the woodstove, which is roaring with a fire.

  Arlinda goes straight to work cleaning Dookie’s wounds, applying patches and poultices, putting cool cloths to his brow. The worst bruise is above his right eye. There is an egg there the size of a bar of soap. Dookie moans and moves a little now and then, but he will not open his eyes. When Toad pulls Dookie’s eyelids up and shines the jacklight in his face, Dookie’s pupils squeeze smaller.

  “It’s a good sign,” says Toad, but his voice is very solemn.

  We move him into Toad’s taxidermy room, which is filled with animals Toad stuffed using directions from Daniel Beard’s book. All afternoon I sit among the cockeyed, crooked creatures and wait for Dookie to awaken. I hold his hand, and sing the songs Ma used to sing to him when he got upset. I watch him for the slightest flicker of recognition, but there is nothing.

  At nightfall I go to the barn and bring my blankets into the house so I can sleep right beside Dookie. Tripod follows me in from the barn, and I’m glad, because I’ve never needed the comfort of her purring as much as I do now. When I get settled, I reach over and give Dookie’s hand a squeeze. He doesn’t squeeze back. I keep his hand in mine while I try to sleep, which seems impossible. How can I sleep not knowing where Ma and Dad are? Or if they’re even alive? Every time I close my eyes I see smashed doors and shattered glass. Every time I put my head down I hear my heart in my ears and flash back immediately to the sound of Dookie’s heart vibrating the roots of the Shelter Tree. Squeezing my eyes shut, I put everything I have into listening to Dookie’s breathing; in and out, in and out, quiet and steady, a sound like the surf of a faraway ocean I’ve never seen, and slowly, wave by wave, I drift out on a peaceful sea of sleep.

  Sometime in the night I wake. I don’t take a breath until I am sure I can still hear Dookie breathing. There is faint lamplight from the kitchen and when I rise up on one elbow I can see Arlinda has moved her rocking chair in beside the stove and has been sleeping sitting up, her head tipped to her chest, a candle guttering on the stove. She must have heard me move, because she opens her eyes and raises her head. Quietly, I rise from my blankets and go to her. She puts out her arms and I sit on her lap like I am a three-year-old and lean my head into her chest, and she holds me while I cry. When I finally look up I can see her cheeks are wet and shiny too.

  “Oh, Arlinda,” I say, when I have my breath again. “It’s so awful . . .”

  “It is, child,” says Arlinda, and I feel confused. Why is she agreeing? Why isn’t she trying to comfort me?

  “I won’t give you false comfort,” she says, in the gentlest voice, as if she has read my mind and my question. “Something awful has happened. That is where we begin. Moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day.”

  “But my ma . . .” I’m crying again.

  “We don’t know, child. We don’t know.” It feels so good to have her arms around me. She holds me for a long time, and then, ever so softly, she says, “We know that we have your brother. And that he needs us now. That is where we begin.”

  I stand up, thumbing tears from my face.

  “That is where we begin,” says Arlinda again. I feel the quietness of her voice spread inside me. I turn to go back to Dookie and see Toad, standing in the bedroom door. He steps backward into the darkness, but not before the candlelight glistens on the tear tracks down his own cheeks.

  Back in my blankets, I take Dookie’s hand again. Arlinda snuffs the candle, and this time when I close my eyes, rather than broken boards and shattered glass I see a tiny light winking, as if from a great distance: Love, Mom . . .

  27

  BY THE FIRST MORNING, DOOKIE IS RESTLESS. BY THE SECOND morning, he is opening his eyes. By the third morning, he rolls over, looks at a cross-eyed stuffed muskrat, and whispers, “Fshazzle,” which in most folks’ case would be a sign that his brain was addled, but in Dookie’s case is just the sort of thing he always says anyway, so it’s hard to tell.

  Then his eyes flash to mine. “Sh-shibby?”

  “No, Dookie,” I say, gently. “No danger. You’re safe now.”

  Then I turn away, so he won’t see the tears in my eyes.

  I leave Dookie with Toad and Arlinda and return to Skullduggery Ridge to look for any sign of my parents. I search every inch of the ransacked shack, looking for scuff marks on the floor, for bits of cloth, any hint of what might have happened or who might have taken them. Under a broken chair in a dark corner I find Ma’s Emily Dickinson book. I snatch it up and clutch it to my chest.

  Outside, I lift every bit of junk, peek under every stone. I crawl through the chicken coop on my hands and knees. Returning to the front door of the shack, I walk in ever-widening circles, marking my progress with peeled and sharpened aspen sticks, moving them out six feet every time I make another round. Every morning I walk new trails. In the evenings I armor up and skulk from bonfire to bonfire, spying from the darkness, hoping to catch a glimpse of Ma and Dad.

  I see nothing but GreyDevils.

  One day, before I leave to search for Dad and Ma, I take Dookie outside. He walks slowly, blinking in the light. We stroll over to the fish tanks, but when I hand him his underwater water-telescope he shows no interest. I hand him a boomerang, and he studies it like he’s never seen one before, then lets it drop to the ground. “How ’bout berries, Dookie? Let’s pick some berries.” Dookie always liked picking berries out in the brambles behind Toad’s barn. But now he is standing stock-still and staring straight up into the sky.

  “Dookie?”

  “Sh-shibb . . . Shib . . .” He can’t get the word out. I look around quickly. What possible danger could there be? We’re only a few feet from the house and inside the safety fence.

  “Sh-sh . . .” Dookie’s hands begin to flutter. Then his arms stiffen. And then he drops to the ground, his whole body jerking and twitching.

  “Toad! Arlinda!” I holler, and they both come running out the door, but there is little we can do except kneel beside Dookie and make sure he doesn’t hit his head on something hard or cut himself on something sharp while he’s flailing.

  Dookie has never had a seizure before. It has to be the hit on the head. He is foaming and chewing and clenching his fists and paddling his feet. Eventually the clenching stops and the paddling slows, and then he is still again. I check that he is breathing, and he is. I feel his pulse and it is thumping along. As I let go of his wrist, his eyes blink open.

  “Fshazzle.”

  “You okay, Dookie?”

  Slowly he rolls over to his han
ds and knees. Then—still slowly, like he’s moving in molasses—he stands.

  “Dookie—you okay?”

  He bends to pick up the boomerang at his feet, holds it up before his face, then spins and sends it whirling into the air. It flies out beyond the barn, curves up and out of sight behind the tall silo, then comes winging back into view headed straight at me. I hit the dirt, flailing like I’m having a seizure of my own, and the boomerang clangs off the hood of a junk car.

  Dookie dances around me, pointing and giggling. Then he grabs the water-telescope and runs off to spy on the tilapia.

  I’m so happy to see him up and around I don’t even give him a noogie.

  28

  EVERY DAY I SEARCH FOR MY PARENTS, OFTEN WITH TOAD AT MY side. But on the one-month anniversary of their disappearance, I tuck my ToothClub into my belt and prepare to leave the farmhouse on yet another search only to find Toad standing before me, blocking the door.

  “No more.”

  I look to Arlinda. Her eyes are filmed with tears, but her voice is firm.

  “No more.”

  I narrow my eyes and stick my jaw out, but inside I know they’re right. In another time, I might have been able to run around in search of my parents until I died trying. But here in the AfterBubble world, every day that I spend wandering and searching is a day I am doing nothing to feed myself or Dookie. It’s a day I’m not pitching in with Toad and Arlinda.

  I don’t like what I am being told, but I know it is how it has to be.

  “You—we—will never stop searching for your parents,” says Arlinda, who has been watching Dookie for me all this time, “but you can’t keep walking the same circles.”

  I know what she means, even though it’s hard to hear it.

  I decide it’s time to move back up to Skullduggery Ridge. Toad and Arlinda have told me that Dookie and I are welcome to live with them now, and I couldn’t imagine life without the Hoppers—especially now that Ma and Dad are gone—but I feel like Dookie and I need to reclaim our territory. To hold it for all it’s worth. I admit my pride is probably getting the better of me, that there is some selfish part of me that wants to prove myself by taking Dookie back up the ridge, but I’m in no mood to fight it.

  Toad and I pack tools and lumber up the ridge and spend several days repairing doors and getting things cleaned up and squared away. We rebuild the shack and cellar doors and reinforce them with steel strapping. We set the chicken coop right and Arlinda sends two more laying hens up to join the one that had been left under the tree. Last thing, Toad fits an old sheet of clear vinyl in the shattered windshield of the Falcon. “Dome-say we’ll rix it fight,” he says. It was good to hear him talking silly again, although his voice was solid and serious.

  When we have the place put back together, I hike down to fetch Dookie. Together we climb back up the ridge, and together we begin our new life as orphans.

  Hatchet and the parrots still squawk every morning, the GreyDevils and solar bears are still dangerous, and even with Dad and Ma gone, we have to keep living and working. When Toad and Arlinda hatched out a batch of chicks, they gave three to Dookie, and every day he tends them so gently I’m not even sure it’s him. He holds them tucked beneath his chin and hums quietly. I keep scavenging for scrap and building whirligigs from Daniel Beard’s book. On the days I go down to help Toad sort scrap, Dookie comes along and spends the day staring at fish and flicking miniature boomerangs. On the days I go to town with Toad, Dookie stays in the house with Arlinda, helping her bake but mostly sitting in the taxidermy room having mystery conversations with the cross-eyed muskrat.

  On every trip to town with the Scary Pruner I watch for any sign of Dad and Ma. In particular, I keep an eye out for GreyDevils wearing any of their clothes. That’d be about the worst thing I could see, but at least it would be a clue. It’s the hardest thing, not knowing: Dead? Or alive? Either way, at least I’d know what to do with my heart.

  I miss them so much. I have Dookie, sure, but I feel like a boat with no keel, moving forward but sliding sideways now and then. I keep up the tough talk and steady face for Dookie’s sake, and even for my own sake—sometimes you have to fool yourself into being strong—but I feel hollow where my heart should be.

  Every day while I am working I puzzle over what happened to Dad and Ma. Something about the attack doesn’t make sense. It could have been GreyDevils that came up the ridge to plunder Goldmine Gully, but they rarely travel that far—although there was the GreyDevil I saw on my way down the ridge that day. But even if a stray GreyDevil wandered up this way, it’d be even rarer for them to be organized enough to manage an attack like this.

  The other thing that was weird was Ma and Dad being gone. It was possible that something had gone wrong and Ma and Dad were overwhelmed in the attack. But what didn’t make sense was them being utterly, completely, without a trace, absent. GreyDevils don’t take prisoners. They might kill or maim in order to get what they want, but they’d leave your body behind. And as far as taking someone hostage, they haven’t got the attention span to come up with a plan, and if you’ve ever watched them howl and swirl at the sight of a kernel of URCorn, or pitch over on their faces after drinking PartsWash all night, you know they’d never put it together to hold someone prisoner and arrange a ransom.

  As horrible as it was to consider, I had been ready, in my searching, to find their bodies. But to find nothing?

  It didn’t make sense.

  29

  ONE THING I DIDN’T THINK ABOUT WHEN I DECIDED TO MOVE BACK to Skullduggery Ridge with Dookie was how much work it would be just keeping track of him. I don’t know how Ma did it. He’s forever wandering off. And now I’m always worried about him having a seizure and hurting himself. I can’t leave him alone, so I’ve had to move out of the Falcon and into the shack with him.

  Yesterday when Toad and I finished scrapping and I came to get Dookie from the house, Arlinda met me at the door with my supper wrapped in a cloth. “Leave the boy down here tonight,” she said. I could see Dookie in the kitchen, playing spoons.

  “No, I . . .”

  “Leave him here. Toad and I are jerking fish tomorrow. Dookie can run the net.” Dookie dropped his spoons and stood up, grinning. He loves to dip the tilapia from the tank before Toad guts them and Arlinda preps the fillets for drying and smoking.

  “But I should . . .”

  “You need the time alone,” said Arlinda. “We’ll see you day after tomorrow, when you come to help Toad load the Pruner.”

  I started to step back off the porch, then stopped.

  “Go,” said Arlinda.

  I sleep so hard in the Falcon that the parrots and Hatchet’s crowing don’t wake me until the sun has climbed high into the sky. I get up, let out the chickens, and then crawl right back into Falcon and sleep until noon. I eat some fish jerky, drink some water, and sleep some more. Now I’m awake again and the sun has crossed the ridge into late afternoon. I can hear the rumble of cornvoy trucks in the distance. Harvest is in full swing now.

  I make some tea, pull The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson from the glove box, where I’ve been keeping it since the shack was ransacked, and sit on the hood of the Falcon. For a long time I just hold the book in my lap and stare out across the distance. Sometimes the grand view makes my heart soar; other times it makes me feel hopelessly small. Today as I stare out over the world I am feeling the weight of Emily’s words on my lap, and how she scratched them out, one by one, all alone at her desk. I used to think it was weird how Emily never wanted to leave her room. How she got to where she would only peek out from behind her door. I understand that now. This old station wagon is my Emily room.

  In one of her poems Emily wrote “To fight aloud is very brave, / But gallanter, I know, / Who charge within the bosom, / The cavalry of woe.” I guess the Whomper-Zooka would be “fighting aloud.” But what I am facing now—losing my parents and facing my own cavalry of woe—that’s much harder. Toad can teach me how to fight G
reyDevils, but when it comes to fighting the sadness in my bosom—my heart—I need Emily. I think Emily is telling me we are more than one part, and we have to balance all those parts. And there is a part of my soul or heart, or whatever it is that makes us us, that Emily wrote down for me all those years ago. It was like she was writing notes to me.

  I remember Ma saying that sometimes she felt the only person who ever would have understood her heart was Emily. I remember asking her if she wasn’t worried that Emily was too gloomy. If Emily’s sad poems might drag Ma down and actually make things worse. “No,” said Ma. “No, sometimes you just want to know someone knows. Knows the trouble you feel. Knows the thing the people closest round you can’t seem to understand.”

  She paused for a moment and looked out over the countryside.

  “Someone,” she said, “who knows your lonely. Not someone who knows you are lonely. Someone who knows your lonely.”

  Now I whisper that to myself. “Someone who knows your lonely.” Sometimes I feel like Emily knows my lonely so well that I don’t even have to read her poems. Just holding the book is enough. The words speak softly to me from between the covers.

  I open the book to a poem called “The Mystery of Pain.” Emily writes about how when we are in pain we cannot even remember what it was like before we had the pain. I think about how lost I have felt since Dad and Ma disappeared, and how it’s hard to even remember the happy times.

  Now I start reading Emily’s poems one after the other. As fast as my eyes can scan. Page after page. “Weak tea, Maggie,” I hear Ma saying, and I know she wouldn’t approve, but the poems sweep everything away. I’m not even reading them, I’m swimming through them and not stopping to come up for air.