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

He did so and then continued to shovel it in. When Pap saw that the kid was scraping lines of juice along the bottom of the bowl, he pushed his own bowl across, which was still mostly filled. The kid hugged it into himself like a fiddler crab and continued to tuck in.

“How ’bout’cher parents?”

He stopped eating at this. Through a mouthful of food, he mumbled, “Parents?” His voice was small and ground like a scratched record.

Pap nodded. “Parents. Yer Ma or Pa?” When the kid didn’t answer, Pap asked, “Well, how old’re you, anyway, son?”

The boy stared at him intently, continuing to spoon food into his mouth and offering nothing in return. Pap rested his chin on a fist and sighed. “Shit…”

“Shit.”

“Don’t use that word.”

The boy’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “Why?”

“Ain’t a nice word. Cain’t go ’round talkin’ to people that-a-way.”

“You said it.”

“I know, that’s differ’nt.”

“Why?”

“Hell, cain’t shut up now, can yah?”

“Sorry…” The kid went back to eating.

Pap tapped the table with his finger to get the kid to look back up at him again. “Don’t be sorry, son. It’s okay. I like the way you talk. Got a good voice on yah.”

“Okay.”

“Goan an’ finish up that bowl, now.” He leaned over and glanced at the pail. A few lazy bubbles floated up to the water’s surface. “Here in a while, we’ll get’cha a bath.”

“Bath?”

“Sure. Scrub you down with water. Make you clean, see?”

“Why?”

“Well, yer grimy as all git out. Reckon theys some stowaways in yer hair; we’ll shorn that down a bit. Anyway, we gotta do it if’n yer gonna stick around; I won’t have you in my place like this fer long. You’ll see. You’ll feel like a new man once it’s settled.”

“New man.”

“Yip,” Pap nodded. “Reckon so.”

When the pail came up to a boil, Pap transferred it to a larger plastic bucket and taped shut the stove vents. Then he pulled up another pail of water from the barrel and poured that into the bucket and swirled it all about with an arm, confirming it to be comfortably hot.

He led the kid into the bathroom, braced himself, and told him what he intended to do. To his great relief, the kid disrobed without comment, and Pap took that to mean that he must have never been abused in such a way. He felt a slight weakness in his knees when he understood this to be so; he hadn’t realized how greatly he dreaded learning otherwise.

He sat the boy on a stool in the middle of the tub and went to work on the hair first. Using a large cup, he dumped a bit of water over the head and then began to work some soap into it. It refused to lather up at all no matter how hard he scrubbed or how much he added. When he figured out what that must have meant, he excused himself to go put another pail of water on the stove. Then he came back and went to work on the kid with a vengeance. He washed his hair out three times before the water would finally pour through clear, occasionally spilling a bit of the warm water down the kid’s back to keep him from shivering, and then lathered up a washcloth so vigorously that the bar of soap fairly disappeared altogether. He scrubbed the boy bright pink, working every bit over that he could get at. When he got down to his waist, he wetted and wrung out the cloth, reloaded it with soap, and handed it over to the boy.

The boy looked down at the washcloth in his hands and asked, “What?”

Pap gestured between the boy’s legs and said, “Goan. See to yer unmentionables.”

The boy looked down at himself, seemed to understand what was intended, and began to scrub.

“Give yer bits a good goin’ over, son. I expec’ theys some taters was fixin’ to grow down there afore long.”

The kid continued to work away at things, all the while Pap would pour a bit more water down his spine when he saw the gooseflesh prickle up again. After a while, he said, “That’ll do. Now up and get’cher tailpipe.”

“What?”

“Yer back end. Where y’all squat from.”

The kid understood this. He set to with a vengeance, and when he was done, Pap had him sit down again and went to work on his legs, followed by his feet, working the rag in between each toe and dislodging such grime as he hadn’t even expected. He couldn’t even feature how a grown man of decades could get so filthy, let alone a child just on the other side of toddlerhood.

He left to get the fresh pail of water, mix it in with more barrel water and brought it all back to rinse the boy down thoroughly. When he was done, he was amazed at what he saw. The kid was brown all over, some kind of ethnic type like a Mexican or some such, with not a mark or blemish over his entire body, save the bruising from his attack. He’d never seen anything in his life that looked so unspoiled and had certainly never expected to see such after the world ended.

Pap wrapped the kid up in a thick towel and sat him on the edge of the tub. He sat down on the floor in front of the kid Indian fashion, still every bit as tall as the boy, and trimmed the nails of his fingers and toes with a small set of clippers. Then he lifted up to sit on the toilet, butterflied the cut along his scalp (though it had ceased to bleed already), and with a set of sheers proceeded to clip every last bit of hair from the boy’s head, getting as close down to the skin as he could manage.

“Ain’t as close as it ought to be but I figure it’s about as good as a kick in the teeth. We’ll take you down to Manny’s later on and clean it up.”

“Why’d you cut it off?”

“Eh, just a wash ain’t enough to get the nits out. Needs a special kind of shampoo an’ I ain’t got it. So, we’ll clip it off an’ start over.”

He brushed the hair into a bag and tossed it into the fire pit outside. When he came back, he went to work on the boy’s ears with some Q-tips, using four on each ear and needing every bit of them to get the job done.

When he was finished, he looked the kid over, still sitting as he was on the edge of the tub wrapped up in a towel.

“Feel better?”

The kid nodded. “Get dressed now?”

“Naw, not in them rags. Gonna burn them along with all else. I’ll grab you somethin’ fer tonight an’ pick you up some fresh duds tomorrow.”

Pap grabbed a cotton t-shirt from the back bedroom and pulled it over the boy’s little head. The bottom of the shirt stretched down below his knees, and the neck hole was so wide that at least one of his bird-like shoulders poked through no matter what they tried. Finally, Pap took a hank of twine and tied up the excess material at the back of the kid’s neck, like a bun of hair. After that, it all fit together a might better.

“Is you house broke?”

“House broke?”

“Know enough not to foul yerself when you squat?”

“Foul?”

“Poop!”

“Oh. Uh-huh. I know how.”

“Well, thank heaven. Have a peek out yonder window. See that shack?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s where you do yer necessary.”

“Necessary…”

“Poop out there, okay? If’n you got to whizz, y’all just go ahead and let it go into the dirt.”

“It’s dark.”

“Yeah, but that ain’t no hill for a stepper. You give me a nudge if’n you got bi’ness out there. I’ll fetch a light an’ walk you out.”

“Kay.”

“Alright, then. Let’s us have a drink an’ chaw the rag a bit.”

He led the boy out into the front room, sat him down on the couch, and wrapped him up in a blanket. He lit the candles scattered around the room, stomped out of his boots—shaking his head ruefully at the mud caked around their edges—and went down the back hallway for a bit. When he came back, he had a bottle of Knob Creek, a fat glass, and a cardboard box.