humans and ran inland. One of them was carrying something, but I couldn’t tell what it was. I watched them until they vanished inland.
People chased them for a short distance, but the dogs were too fast. Someone’s property was lost-someone’s food, no doubt.
I was on edge after that. I got up, moved to the inland end of our wall, sat there where I could see more of the beach. I was there, sitting still with the gun in my lap then I spotted movement perhaps a long city block up the beach. Dark forms against pale sand. More dogs. Three of them. They nosed around the sand for a moment, then headed our way. I sat as still as I could, watching. So many people slept without posting watches. The three dogs wandered among the camps, investigating what they pleased, and no one tried to drive them away. On the other hand, people’s oranges, potatoes, and grain meal couldn’t be very tempting to a dog. Our small supply of dried meat might be another matter. But no dog would get it.
But the dogs stopped at the camp of the mixed couple. I remembered the baby and jumped up. At the same moment, the baby began to cry. I shoved Zahra with my foot and she came awake all at once.
She could to that.
“Dogs,” I said. “Wake Harry.” Then I headed for the mixed couple. The woman was screaming and beating at a dog with her hands. A second dog was dodging the man’s kicks and going for the baby.
Only the third dog was clear of the family.
I stopped, slipped the safety, and as the third dog went in toward the baby, I shot it.
The dog dropped without a sound. I dropped, too, gasping, feeling kicked in the chest. It surprised me how hard the loose sand was to fall on.
At the crack of the shot, the other two dogs took off inland. From my prone position, I sighted on them as they ran. I might have been able to pick off one more of them, but I let them go. I hurt enough already. I couldn’t catch my breath, it seemed. As I gasped, though, it occurred to me that prone was a good shooting position for me. Sharing would be less able to incapacitate me at once if I shot two-handed and prone. I filed the knowledge away for future use.
Also, it was interesting that the dogs had been frightened by my shot. Was it the sound that scared them or the fact that one of them had been hit? I wish I knew more about them. I’ve read books about them being intelligent, loyal pets, but that’s all in the past. Dogs now are wild animals who will eat a baby if they can.
I felt that the dog I had shot was dead. It wasn’t moving. But by now a lot of people were awake and moving around. A living dog, even wounded, would be frantic to get away.
The pain in my chest began to ebb. When I could breathe without gasping, I stood up and walked back to our camp. There was so much confusion by then that no one noticed me except Harry and Zahra.
Harry came out to meet me. He took the gun from my hand, then took my arm and steered me back to my sleepsack.
“So you hit something,” he said as I sat gasping again from the small exertion.
“Is your baby all right?” I asked.
“He had scratches and sand in his eyes and mouth from being dragged.” She stroked the sleeping baby’s black hair. “I put salve on the scratches and washed his eyes. He’s all right now. He’s so good.
He only cried a little bit.”
“Hardly ever cries,” Travis said with quiet pride.
Travis has an unusual deep-black complexion— skin so smooth that I can’t believe he has ever in his life had a pimple. Looking at him makes me want to touch him and see how all that perfect skin feels.
He’s young, good looking, and intense— a stocky, muscular man, tall, but a little shorter and a little heavier than Harry. Natividad is stocky, too— a pale brown woman with a round, pretty face long black hair bound up in a coil atop her head. She’s short, but it isn’t surprising somehow that she can carry a pack and a baby and keep up a steady pace all day.
I like her, feel inclined to trust her. I’ll have to be careful about that. But I don’t believe she would steal from us. Travis has not accepted us yet, but she has. We’ve helped her baby. We’re her friends.
“We’re going to Seattle,” she told us. “Travis has an aunt there. She says we can stay with her until we find work. We want to find work that pays money.”
“Don’t we all,” Zahra agreed. She sat on Harry’s sleepsack with him, his arm around her. Tonight could be tiresome for me.
Travis and Natividad sat on their three sacks, spread out to give their baby room to crawl when he woke up. Natividad had harnessed him to her wrist with a length of clothesline.
I felt alone between the two couples. I let them talk about their hopes and rumors of northern edens. I took out my notebook and began to write up the day’s events, still savoring the last of the chocolate.
The baby awoke hungry and crying. Natividad opened her loose shirt, gave him a breast, and moved over near me to see what I was doing.
“You can read and write,” she said with surprise. “I thought you might be drawing. What are you writing?”
“She’s always writing,” Harry said. “Ask to read her poetry. Some of it isn’t bad.”
I winced. My name is androgynous, in pronunciation at least— Lauren sounds like the more masculine Loren. But pronouns are more specific, and still a problem for Harry.
“She?” Travis asked right on cue. “Her?”
“Damn it, Harry,” I said. “We forgot to buy that tape for your mouth.”
He shook his head, then gave me an embarrassed smile. “I’ve known you all my life. It isn’t easy to remember to switch all your pronouns. I think it’s all right this time, though.”
“I told you so!” Natividad said to her husband. Then she looked embarrassed. “I told him you didn’t look like a man,” she said to me. “You’re tall and strong, but…I don’t know. You don’t have a man’s face.”
I had, almost, a man’s chest and hips, so maybe I should be glad to hear that I didn’t have a man’s face—
