Ben Bedard - The World Without Crows

“Want to hear a story about John?”

Eric nodded.

Lucia smiled. “We’d been in the cellar for weeks at this point. This place was damp and dark and it smelled like, like—”

“Old socks,” Sergio helped with a smile.

“No,” Lucia laughed. “Not that. It smelled like lint. Like hot lint.”

“Which you get from old socks,” said Sergio.

“Anyway”’ Lucia said, ignoring her brother. “We were all so sick and tired of that place. Three people living so close together. All day, all night.” She laughed again. “We’d been eating canned beans for days. And John suddenly says that we should cook something different. Leaving the basement was so dangerous, we tried to talk him out of it, but he said we’d all go crazy if we ate another bean. So he left. There was nothing we could do about it.”

“When John made up his mind,” Sergio said, “John made up his mind.”

“He came back hours later with an armful of food,” Lucia said. “Just random stuff. Like spaghetti and canned fish and those little cans of pink sausages and bags of dried fruit. So much stuff!”

“But none of us knew how to cook!” Sergio laughed.

“That’s not true,” Lucia said, smiling. “I can cook, I just can’t cook what he brought. It was all just random. What can you do with spaghetti and dried fruit?”

“So anyway,” Lucia continued. “We all cooked together. And it was very serious too. We argued about everything. What to put in what and all that. In the end there was this like huge pile of stuff on top of spaghetti.”

“I don’t even know what was in it!” Sergio laughed.

“It was so disgusting,” Lucia said. “So gross, you have no idea! We laughed so hard! John laughed hardest of all. He had risked so much and the meal was so bad!”

“You almost couldn’t eat it!” Sergio laughed.

Eric smiled, but he didn’t think it was funny.

“We ate it all too,” Lucia said.

“Yeah, we ate it all,” Sergio agreed. “Hard to keep it down!”

Then they dropped back, laughing, returning to Spanish. Somehow, Eric thought, they all felt like a group again. It was John Martin’s last gift to them. He had saved them even in his death.

That night, in the flickering light of the fire, Eric sat by Birdie. He returned her pink backpack and she smiled and pulled out her crayons and paper. She lay by the fire with her legs in the air behind her. Eric lay next to her and watched her draw. Eric couldn’t remember ever feeling so happy and content, and at the same time, determined and heartless. He would never be separated from her again. Nothing was more important to him, not even his own life. He would not be separated from her again, and if he had to kill to make sure of it, he would not pause or doubt himself for an instant.

“Why’re you crying?” asked Birdie, looking at him suddenly. She looked back at her picture with a frown. “This is supposed to be a happy picture.”

“I know it is,” Eric answered, wiping his face. He hadn’t known he was crying and it was embarrassing. “I don’t know, Birdie. I’m glad you’re here, that’s all.”

“Oh,” she said. She smiled at him and then turned back to the drawing.

Eric watched her add orange tears to a smiling face.

They were down to a cup of rice and a bag of beans. They had to make a supply run.

It was strange how quickly they seemed to forget everything that had happened. Although Eric knew he would never be the same person he was before he lost and found Birdie, they crept to the edge of the forest and surveyed the nearest town as if nothing had changed. They knelt down together, and Sergio nervously licked his lips as he looked at the town. Birdie sat next to Eric, watching the town and clutching his hand.

Lucia was the only one who seemed different. There was none of her usual stoic braveness obscuring her fear. Her trepidation was naked on her face. She bit her lower lip.

“I don’t know, Eric,” she whispered. “This place. It’s just. I don’t like it.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Eric said. “We need food.”

“There’ll be another town,” she said. “There’s always another town.”

“Just like this one,” Eric answered.

Lucia didn’t answer, but when Sergio muttered something encouraging to her in Spanish, Lucia stopped him with a hiss. “No me gusta,” she told him. Sergio looked away, more nervous than usual.

“It’ll be all right,” Eric said. He felt angry with both of them. They needed food. “This is another town, like any other. We’ll get in, get some food, and get out again.” Then a welling up of anger and annoyance came suddenly from inside him, and, before he could stop himself, he added, “Of course you don’t like it, you think I like it? We have to do what we have to do. That’s it. Don’t make this harder.” His tone was acidic, like his own father’s when he mentioned his mother.

Lucia looked at him and blushed, deep and red. She looked like she had something to say, but, instead, she swallowed and turned back to the town.

Eric felt a warm glow of power, followed quickly by regret and then he felt slightly ill and dizzy. He took a deep breath to steady himself, and then stood up and walked out of the forest toward the town, not looking back to see if the others were following him. He knew they were.

The town’s name was Wallingford.

It was a small town with large houses and a narrow road. Once it might have been described in a travel book as “sleepy” or “quaint.” Now it seemed like a vast temple for the dead. The roads were clogged with abandoned cars and trucks. It was quiet, except for birds and the wind and their footsteps on the asphalt. On the side of the road was a burnt out truck, its hood up. It had the look of a dead thing whose jaw hung open. One of its fenders was whiter than the rest. They walked by it with a solemn silence, as if it were a corpse that demanded respect.

They searched together, instead of splitting up. They could no longer imagine leaving each other’s sight. The first few houses were empty and looked like they had been looted already. One of them was burnt on the inside. The kitchen was a cave of ash, and when Eric looked in, he saw a blackened corpse, all charred bone, with its head stuck in the black remains of a gas stove. Eric turned Birdie away, but he was pretty sure she had already seen it. Birdie had seen a lot already. She’d seen worse.

When they re-grouped, Lucia looked nervous again. Sergio, picking up on his sister’s apprehension, was beside himself with fear. He kept moving from one foot to the other.

“Hey man,” he said to Eric. “There’s nothing here. Let’s try the next town.”

“No,” Eric said angrily. “We’re here, we need the food, we’re doing it.” He didn’t know why he was so adamant about it. Sergio made a whining sound, but then cut it off, as if he had betrayed himself. Lucia put a comforting hand on her brother’s shoulder, but wouldn’t look at Eric.

They continued down the street and then came to a large, sprawling light blue house with gray trim. The upper story was all gothic gables, and the largest gable, which hung over a large window and the entrance, was topped by a cast iron fence. It looked fortified, a wooden palisade of a house. Eric stopped in front of the white picket fence that ringed the yard and listened to the wind in the maple tree in the yard.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Sergio, staring at the house.

“It was probably an inn or something,” Eric said, without looking at him. “It has food inside. I know it.”

He didn’t know it. He just didn’t like the look of the house. It was a challenge to him. It mocked him somehow. It seemed to say, “You’re a fucking coward, Eric. You don’t dare come in here. Your mother ruined you!” Eric stood in front, motionless.