The Scavengers Read online

  And now we are ready to go.

  16

  OUTSIDE THE BARN, THE LAST BIT OF PINK HAS LEFT THE SKY AND morning has begun. “Okay, boys,” says Toad. I always like how peacefully he says this. No big holler or crack of the whip, just two quiet words. Frank and Spank lean into the leather traces, and with a creak of the axles the Scary Pruner rolls out the barn door. Arlinda draws open the gate and as we pass through, Toad blows her a kiss. Arlinda giggles, then closes and bolts the gate behind us. Toad has to turn Frank and Spank sharply so they can squeeze onto Cornvoy Road without touching the BarbaZap. As we pass beneath the shadow of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, he grumbles, “That fight ain’t fully fit,” and raises one eyebrow in such a way that you know he’s still waiting for his chance to get even.

  Just beyond the gate Cornvoy Road widens out and turns into a large parking area where the trucks gather as they wait to pass through the BarbaZap gate into the Sustainability Reserve. During harvest time, Arlinda takes crates of her pies to the parking area and sells them to the drivers. You can’t have that many trucks coming and going without spilling a little corn, so there are always GreyDevils scrounging around, desperate for just one kernel. Sometimes they get in horrible fights, with them moaning and slobbering and clawing at each other. Every time the giant BarbaZap security gate rolls open to let a truck through, the GreyDevils try to get inside too. The Sustainability Security crews push them back with rubber bullets and water cannons. They use the rubber bullets so they don’t accidentally kill any of the truckers, but I bet they’d rather use real bullets.

  Once we’re past the parking area, the BarbaZap jogs back out and we’re right back beside it, making our way down the gravel two-track that used to be Toad’s driveway. As high as the BarbaZap is, the corn is even higher. The stalks are like small trees. Because URCorn grows like its roots are soaked in rocket fuel, it can be planted and harvested twice a year. This is the first crop of the year, and already the ears are three feet long and thick as sausages. “Boy when I was a back,” says Toad, looking at the URCorn and shaking his head, “the gerontologic-stopwatches had a saying: ‘Knee high by the Fourth of July.’” It takes me a second to figure out “gerontologic-stopwatches” means “old-timers,” but then I look at the URCorn and shake my head too. It will be twenty feet high by the Fourth of July. “’Course any corn you can plant in March is gonna get a head start,” says Toad. “Don’t have to worry about frost when you’ve got the ladybug juice!”

  Asian beetles—we call them ladybugs—have a sort of antifreeze in their blood that allows them to survive subzero weather without dying. They can be little ladybug ice cubes all winter, then come back to life in spring. When the scientists at CornVivia figured out a way to extract the antifreeze genes and insert them into URCorn, they suddenly had a corn plant that could survive an early frost, a late frost, or even an early June freak blizzard.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I read about that in one of your magazines. In an advertisement that showed a big cob of corn but all the kernels had been replaced with ladybugs. Like that was a good thing. I about gagged.”

  “Yep,” he said, “bat was thack when CornVivia moonshine-unit had to advertise.”

  “Before the government took them over?” I asked. I had already figured out that “moonshine-unit” meant “still.” I’m getting pretty good at this.

  “Weeaahhlll . . .” When Toad says “Weeaahhlll,” it’s a sign he smells a rat. “Weeaahhlll . . . ,” he says again. “They didn’t call it a takeover. They called it Patriotic Partnering.”

  He’s right. I remember seeing that phrase in the old newspapers. “What do you really think, Toad?”

  “I think somewhere somebody’s makin’ a lotta money, that’s what I think.” I can always tell when Toad is getting serious, or really wants to make a point, because he lets the word tricks slide. “Once CornVivia was the government’s officially approved corn planter, they didn’t have to advertise. They just had to keep the corn comin’. They’re the only ones can grow it, and they’re the only ones can sell it. And what the government doesn’t use to feed the people in the Bubble Cities, the government can sell to other governments. That’s where the real money comes from.”

  I look at all that corn, just a few yards away behind the BarbaZap. There are thousands and thousands of acres in this county alone, and not a single kernel for us. But it is so beautiful. A green like you’ve never seen, the rows packed as tight as comb tracks and the bristling tassels all the same height, like a blond man’s flattop haircut.

  Toad once told me that when he was a child he loved to walk deep into the cornfields and lie on his back between the rows. He could see little bits of sky through the leaves, and he said it made him feel like the only person in the world. On the hottest summer days the corn grew so fast he could hear it crack and snap. Today, by the time the afternoon sun has been up awhile, the URCorn will be booming and rattling like some yahoo is whacking the stalks with a bamboo fishing pole. Toad had to put his ear to the stalk to hear the old-timey corn crack; with URCorn you can hear it forty feet away.

  Right now though, the sun is just rising, and the corn is quiet. At the end of Toad’s driveway, we come to the old county road. “Haw!” says Toad, but he doesn’t have to, because Frank and Spank know where we’re headed and are already turning left.

  The old road is pitted and weedy, but it’s mostly flat, and Frank and Spank plod so placidly we only feel the worst bumps. Even though it’s quiet now, I constantly move my hands from my SpitStick to my ToothClub to my pepper-pea stash, memorizing their positions so I can snatch them into action without thinking when the time comes. I’d feel safer if we had weapons like the Sustainability Security crews, but the government outlawed guns before the Bubbling (although just like electricity and gasoline, they get to keep theirs), so we make do with whip-bows, a salt-tossing Whomper-Zooka, and one very cranky rooster. I asked Toad once what it was like to have to turn all of his guns over to the government. He raised one eyebrow and said he only knew how it felt to “surn tome” of them over. I suppose there’s a reason he knows how to make gunpowder. But Toad has also told me many times we want to fight off the GreyDevils, not kill them off. It helps that the GreyDevils are rarely armed with anything more than rocks and sticks.

  As we approach the curve that runs along the edge of BeaverSlap Creek, a solitary figure appears. Toad elbows me. “Friend or foe?”

  I grin, because he says this every time we make this trip, and we both know the answer before I give it:

  “Depends on whose side yer on!”

  It’s Toby. Son of Tilapia Tom. Toby isn’t quite old enough to grow a beard, but already he stands over six feet, and his arms are the size of a grown man’s legs. He too is wearing homemade armor, but his is all flat black. When you’re as big as Toby you don’t need decorations and doodads to make yourself look fierce.

  Toby is gigantic, but he is also graceful. He carries a fight-stick the size of a fence post, but he can flip and spin it like kindling, and he can fling a whip-bow arrow so accurately you’d think it was strung on a string. And if a GreyDevil comes in close, Toby can drop the graceful stuff and fight with nothing but muscle and fist. Toad once told me that before the Bubbling, Toby’s father made his living as a fighter—sometimes in a cage, sometimes on the street. He taught Toby a lot about fighting, but you’d never guess because they’re both so calm and quiet.

  A second figure appears, hulking even larger than Toby: his father, Tilapia Tom.

  “Mop o’ the tornin’ one-plus-one ya, Tobe and Tommy!” hollers Toad as he pulls the oxen to a stop.

  “Mornin’,” says Toby softly. And that may be all we hear from him for the rest of the day. For Toby, two words is a speech. I jump down and help load several wooden crates filled with dried, smoked, and salted fish. Then Toby climbs into the backward-facing chair at the rear of the Scary Pruner, where he will spend the day making sure we aren’t attacked from behind.

 
The Scary Pruner rolls forward. Our next stop will be Nobbern. When I look back at Toby, I see his shoulders, ax-handle wide and thick as a buffalo hump, his body rocking gently to the roll of the road, his head swiveling left to right, as it will during the entire trip. Just the sight of him guarding the tailgate is enough to stop most GreyDevils.

  A mile past Toby’s place, Toad veers Frank and Spank off the road and up the ramp leading to the interstate. As we merge into the northbound lane, I think how weird it is to be clunking along at the speed of oxen over the cracked and weedy concrete where cars and trucks used to whizz back and forth.

  The southbound lane is in much better shape, because the government maintains it for the cornvoys to use during harvest seasons. When harvest is in full swing, the cornvoys are really something to see—long lines of roaring trucks blasting black clouds of smoke into the sky through exhaust pipes that are made of shiny chrome. Many of the drivers decorate their trucks with flags and bright stripes and zigzags of paint—just like the Scary Pruner. The trucks also have big steel grates on the front to catch anything that gets in front of them. Toad says the grates are called “cow-catchers” or “brush-busters” but I call them “GreyDevil graters.”

  The cornvoy drivers are rough and cheery and almost all of them will give you a big grin and a wave if you wave first. Toad says the drivers get paid by the load, so as you can imagine they don’t spend a lot of time worrying about safe driving. The government and CornVivia like the arrangement because the truckers are not working for either of them, and they are disposable. If one of them crashes, or if one of their trucks breaks down, there’s always someone else ready to jump in because being a cornvoy driver is kind of like being a cowboy in one of the Wild West cowboy books Toad used to read. You can pretty much do what you want. They follow only two rules: haul as much URCorn as possible as fast as possible.

  Frank and Spank plod along. I can hear songbirds in the weeds and parrots in the trees. The sun is warm, and I’m beginning to bake in my armor. My eyelids are getting heavy. I’m thinking how delicious it would be to let the Scary Pruner rock me to sleep. And then, just as my eyes are about to droop closed, behind a tree trunk I see movement.

  A shabby figure, pulling itself up from the ground.

  A GreyDevil. Just now waking from the previous night.

  “Shise and rine, Washer-Slosher!” hollers Toad. The GreyDevil is standing now, or at least holding itself upright by clinging with one hand to a sapling. With its other hand it is holding its forehead. It is in no shape to move, but from beneath the hand I can see its red and yellow-rimmed eyes following us.

  By the time we’re headed back home, that GreyDevil will be a lot more perky.

  And it will have a lot more company.

  For now though, we just roll along. We see a few more GreyDevils, but they just stare at us as we pass.

  Two hours later, we arrive in Nobbern.

  17

  WHEN TOAD TURNS THE SCARY PRUNER UP MAIN STREET, I TRY to imagine how different it must have looked when he and Arlinda came to be in the parades. Nobbern isn’t really much of a “town” anymore. It’s like a ghost town, only the ghosts have been replaced with real people. On the outskirts, a lot of the buildings have been burned, and the ones that haven’t burned have fallen in. All that remains has been torn to bits by scavengers. Closer to the center of town, more of the houses are still standing, although they look like they’re abandoned—until you see someone peeking out a window and realize that house is still a home. Little things like that make me think I have it pretty good out there on Skullduggery Ridge in my station wagon.

  Nearer the center of town, the buildings start to look a little better, and a little busier. Even without electricity or gasoline people find ways to trade and travel and survive. Here and there you’ll see a steam engine vehicle, or an old car powered by a contraption called a gasifier, which uses wood for fuel. Some people have horses and mules, but most people walk. I asked Toad once why he didn’t fix up one of his old steam engines.

  “Don’t wanna ride next to a giant hot water bomb,” he said.

  “Then why not get a horse?”

  “A hay-burner?” he snorted. “Too jumpy, too spendy.” Then he said, “Lottom bine? Peam stower or porse-hower, you’ll wear yerself opposite-of-in keeping either one hed and fappy.” He paused, and pointed at Frank and Spank. “Dem dos oxii is all the horsepower I like-dough-knead. Plus, any knucklehead can traise and rain an ox.”

  All along Main Street, people stop and stare at the Scary Pruner. We do make quite a sight, creaking along at top Frank-and-Spank speed, Monocle running his happy laps, Hatchet flapping his wings and squawking like a flea-bitten vulture with a lung disorder.

  “Greetings and salutations!”

  It’s Al the blacksmith, his voice booming from up the street. His round belly is draped in a leather apron that reaches from his chest to his knees. A big hammer dangles from one hand while he waves at us with the other. Toad carefully pulls the Scary Pruner to the curb, and even before it comes to a stop Al is poking and pulling at the scrap iron. “Oh, I like that,” he says, holding up a piece of angle iron. “Oh, that’s a beauty,” he says, patting a steel shaft we pulled from an old corn picker. But even as he’s talking, I notice what I always notice about Al: his apron is clean, his hammer (which is now propped against a chair on the sidewalk) doesn’t have a single nick or ding, and all the while he’s talking he’s having to raise his voice to be heard above all the clanging and banging back inside the blacksmith shop—where his wife, Freda, is doing all the work. Arlinda told me once she can’t imagine what Al is good for “other than the fact that if the bellows go bust, he can blow hot air.”

  The clanging stops, and out through the shop door steps a woman with hands like hams and a blond braid thick as a ship’s rope. Al scoots to her side.

  “I’ve initiated the intake process,” he announces, hooking his thumbs behind the straps of his spotless apron. He’s trying to look and sound important, but beside Freda he just looks like a little boy playing dress-up. She doesn’t even look at him. Instead she nods her head at Toad, reaches into the Scary Pruner, picks up a pair of trailer axles like they’re toothpicks, and carries them up the steps.

  “There’s some top-grade stuff here,” says Al, scooting along behind her, his hands empty. “Regrettably, during my appraisal I did detect some rust pitting, so I am professionally compelled to recommend a small deduction.” Toad looks at me and winks.

  “Also, I—ohf!” Al is prattling right along on Freda’s heels, and when she stops at the weighing scale, he rams his belly button right into one of the axle ends. While Al clutches his jelly belly and gasps for breath, Freda weighs each axle, scribbling the number in a grubby notebook. Leaving Toby to guard the Scary Pruner, Toad and I haul the rest of the scrap into the blacksmith shop. It’s dark and black and hot in there, and smells like scorched metal. It always makes me think of Emily Dickinson’s poem “The White Heat.” There’s a blacksmith in that one. Al has his breath again, and as we work he scurries back and forth with us, jabbering away and stopping once to fussily brush a cinder from his spotless leather apron. He never does actually touch anything made of iron.

  Toad hands a sewing machine leg to Freda, and Al butts in. “Darling, as your beloved metallurgist, I must remind you that cast iron is prone to cracking.”

  “Al!” says Toad, clapping one hand to his chest like a fainting maiden and pretending he doesn’t realize Al is talking to Freda. “You don’t have to call me darling!”

  Al splutters, and Freda smiles faintly as she weighs the sewing machine leg and moves on to the next item. The way she studies every piece, you can tell she’s already imagining just how she might use it. When the final chunk of scrap is weighed and accounted for, she and Toad review the list together. Then Freda writes a number on a slip of paper, circles it, scribbles her initials beside the circle, and we go on our way. “Pleasure doing business with you,” bubbles Al
, following us out to the Scary Pruner. “We are honored to repurpose your recyclables.” He shakes my hand, and his palm is as soft and pink as a piglet snoot. Back in the blacksmith shop, Freda is already hammering away.

  Next we stop at the grocery. Toad and I carry in Arlinda’s pies and preserves and the hams and bacon, and some of Tilapia Tom’s crated fish. Then Toad produces a list put together by Arlinda and hands it to the grocer, who brings us salt, flour, and other basics we can’t make ourselves. When we’re finished, the grocer tallies all the things we brought in minus all the things we’re taking, scribbles a number, circles and signs it the same as Freda did, and hands it to Toad.

  We call these numbers BarterBucks. After the Bubbling, money was worthless. A lot of the banks were robbed and looted, but it didn’t do the thieves any good because the money wasn’t useful for much more than starting fires. For a while people just traded directly with each other. That works for some things, but the trouble is that Freda the blacksmith doesn’t have the salt Toad needs, and the grocer isn’t going to trade a bag of salt for the axle from an old manure spreader. Instead, Freda writes down how many BarterBucks she’s willing to pay for our iron. Later today, Toad will take the paper to Banker Berniece, who works out of the old bank building. Banker Berniece will subtract the number from Freda’s account and add it to Toad’s account.

  For keeping track of everyone’s BarterBucks, Banker Berniece gets a percentage of everybody else’s BarterBucks. Basically, Banker Berniece is a banker with no money. In a bigger, faster-moving world, this system would never work. But here in tiny Nobbern it works just fine because everybody knows everybody else—including Banker Berniece. If she doesn’t play fair, word gets around, and no one will trust her or trade with her. Same goes for her customers.