Joshua Gayou - Commune - The Complete Series - A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Box Set (Books 1-4)

The kid was about twenty feet away, not higher up or lower down the slope; just off to the side, crouched low-like on his heels with scrawny arms wrapped around knobby knees. He wore pants so tattered they might as well had been described as shorts, and his arms were bare up to the shoulders. His hair was dark, greasy, and matted down over his head in clumps. It had been his presence and more specifically his burning, watchful eye that brought Pap back from his nod. He lay there unmoving, drawing his mouth down into a low pucker to pull his cheek out of the way, and eyed the kid slant-wise. He reckoned the kid knew he was awake; must have heard his breathing change.

He smacked his lips slowly and said, “Come t’yer senses, aint’cha, piddlee’o?”

The boy said nothing.

“Fine,” he said. He boosted up onto an elbow and tipped back his hat. He squinted through sleep-gummed eyes at the boy. There was a dried runner of blood down the side of his head; more drops running over his shoulder.

“C’n y’all unnerstand me?”

He nodded.

“Let’s call that a start, then. Hungry?”

The kid tensed rose into a half crouch. Pap raised a hand and made calming noises, trying to make himself as relaxed as possible. When the kid lowered back down to his haunches, Pap said, “Damn, son. Reckon you wouldn’t bite a biscuit.” He stretched his neck out to look beyond the grass at the kid’s feet. He wore a mismatched pair of shoes, grubby toes and heels exposed where the soles had simply given up.

“Tell yah h’what, kid. I got me an appetite on an’ I aim to see about it. Some hard work like sleepin’ the day away makes a feller like me peckish, see? Ah’mo amble up the way to my place an’ heat me up some chili. Ain’t the real stuff, but… she’ll do in a pinch. Got me plenty for two.”

He sat up and crossed his legs. Gratified that the kid didn’t bolt, he said, “Why don’t’cha come go with me? Know yer hungry. What d’you say? Let’s git some food in that belly.”

The kid only watched him, saying nothing. There was no indication that Pap had been heard or understood. Pap sighed, rose carefully to his feet, and said, “Well…”

He began to pick his way down the slope, straining his eyes to find the best places to step in the low light. When he got halfway to the first house, he paused and looked back up the hill. The kid was there, still twenty feet away from him, which at least meant that he was following along. Pap hid a smile and continued his track back to the road.

Pap had claimed a home for himself down on Redmond; a small blue home with a bit of a porch, a few bedrooms and a living area downstairs, a tiny attic, and an old-fashioned kitchen. It sat on a goodly plot of land; not expansive by any stretch of the imagination, but goodly, and the place was close enough to the resort that he could get up to see Clay in a hurry when he came in over the radio. He made an easy pace back, strolling along and looking back behind himself every so often. The kid was back there, always, removed by a distance of some twenty or thirty feet, eyeing him warily like a stray dog that couldn’t afford to pass up the chance of a meal.

When he climbed the steps of the porch, he fumbled about with his keyring before unlocking the door. It was colored in white paint that had probably been rolled on about a hundred years ago; flakes of the stuff peeling up off the surface and fluttering in the breeze like tree leaves, underneath was the grey no-color of sun-faded wood. He turned back to regard the kid, who stood out on the edges of the lot by the fence, though he was at least standing inside the yard. That seemed a hopeful sign.

“Well, this’ll be it, boy. Come on in, now.”

He stayed out by the fence, showing no sign of coming along.

“Look, kid, you want some supper, y’all got to come in. I ain’t feedin’ strays off’n the porch like wild ’coons. Tell you h’what—I’ll leave this’ere door open for you. Y’all wanna et; just come let yerself in. I got to get her all goin’.”

He hung his hat on a hook by the door, passed the front room into the kitchen, washed up at the basin, and began to pull the items he would need from the pantry and surrounding cabinets. Taking great pains not to look for the boy out the window, he pulled open the door of the old stove, scraped the ashes into a bucket he kept by the counter, and set new wood into the belly to light afresh. Making a small bed of kindling, he took the box of matches from the windowsill, lit one, and lay it in. When the flames picked up, he placed the stick wood over the flame and let it grow, and when the time was right, he pulled over the bucket and banked the fire with the ashes of the previous. Then he closed the little iron door, licked the pad of his finger, and tapped it atop the plate.

He cracked open a couple of cans of chili, poured the contents out into a large sauce pot, and laid it by on the stove. With that done, he pried a long sliver of wood away from a piece of firewood, lit it in the stove, and then used it to light a candle. He took the candle and moved through the kitchen lighting the rest against the fast approaching evening. When this was done, he went back to the stove, lowered into a chair, and stirred his pot occasionally with a crooked, wooden spoon.

The chili was beginning to steam in the pot when he glanced up and saw the boy standing in the kitchen entryway, looking just about like the smallest creature he’d ever encounter.

“You shut my door?”

The kid shook his head.

“Goan back an’ shut my door. Then come back here an’ we’ll see about yer supper.”

He disappeared from the entry into the dark front room like an apparition. Pap heard the front door click gently into place and, a moment later, the boy had returned.

“I cain’t step away from this, or she’ll burn an’ stick. Theys a bucket over by the basin. Scrub them hands up a touch an’ I’ll lay you out a bowl.”

He did as instructed, and when he turned back to look at Pap, the Texan gestured to a seat at the small laminated dining table set out in the middle of the kitchen. It had metal sides and matching chairs and looked like it’d been sitting there since nineteen-fifty and seven. The kid took the seat closest to the exit and began to swing his feet. They must have missed the floor by a good seven inches.

Pap took the pot from the stove, divided the contents betwixt two bowls, squirted in a dollop of dish soap, and scooped a bit of water into it before leaving it on the counter. He pulled out a drawer, grabbed two spoons with blue plastic handles, and stabbed each one into its own bowl. Then he got a pail, filled it from the water barrel outside, and set it up on the stove top.

He took the bowls and came to the table, pulled his chair out with a hooked boot and lowered into it, taking pains not to look the boy in the eyes. He set the bowls onto the table and then pushed one of them across with a fingertip.

He sat there staring at his own bowl, waiting. When he heard the kid’s spoon scraping the inside of the bowl, Pap grabbed his own spoon and set to.

They ate together in silence for a time, the boy making unconscious grunting noises as he chewed and swallowed. After a while, Pap asked, “C’n you talk?”

He nodded, spooning in another mouthful.

“What’s yer name, kid?”

The boy paused for a moment, then shook his head.

“Cain’t you remember?”

Another shake of the head.

Pap sat back in his chair and whispered, “Damn…” He watched the kid eat a while, noting how much lighter his hands were compared to the rest of his arms but that his skin was still a rich shade of brown. His huge eyes were dark, and the curve of his cheeks pulled down into a sharp little chin under a bowed mouth. He noted a wad of chili grease seeping from the corner of the kid’s mouth and took a towel from the sink. He laid it on the table, slid it carefully into the boy’s territory, and said, “Wipe yer mouth, son.”