Cal listened, took a step inside, listened again. When he reached the far side of the kitchen counter and saw the entirety of Jack Breadwin, he stopped in his tracks.
“Jesus,” he said.
THE BOYS RUMMAGED IN THE DARK GARAGE FOR A TARP AND SOME fish poles. Fish pocketed a barlow knife he found on the workbench, along with a piece of flint he knew was in the top drawer of his grandpa’s toolbox. The packing went quickly.
They made such lists before, planning for battle or escape. They once climbed into the hayloft of the barn and spent an afternoon planning in case the Iraqis ever attacked Claypot. Fish’s dad had been a tanker in Desert Storm, so the boys knew all about fighting Iraqis. They spent hours deliberating over the list. A radio would be good to have, but they decided it was better to be battery-free, to prepare to survive with bare essentials. They would escape into the Mishicot Forest—a wilderness that stretched for more than a hundred miles through Marigamie County’s northern region. The southern edge of the forest stopped at the fields of Fish’s grandpa’s farm, and Burt Akinson’s too. They would need fish poles, and pocketknives, and a flint, and tarps, just like the mountain men, the kind of men who could walk into a wilderness and not walk out until they were good and ready. “Mountain men usually have a sack of pemmican,” suggested Bread one summer afternoon. In school, he’d learned how Indians made a paste of meat and spices and then pounded it flat to dry. The boys tried making pemmican, drying a baking pan of bacon and hamburger meat in the sun on top of the milkshed roof, but it turned green in two days, and neither boy could lift it to his mouth. “We’ll pack Slim Jims if we ever need to take to the woods,” Fish said, scraping the pan into the weeds. “Slim Jims are as good as pemmican.”
Tonight, their planning paid off. They knew what to gather before they arrived. As they crept along the fence line behind the barn, they saw Fish’s grandpa’s truck pull out of the driveway. The taillights turned onto the asphalt and sped off toward Claypot. The tires chirped as they left the gravel.
“He’s in a hurry,” said Bread, who had stopped shaking enough to speak again. “He knows, doesn’t he?”
A cow stirred in the stable behind the barn and stamped its hoof in the dirt. It huffed through its nose. Fish saw its startled eyes glimmer in the moonlight. “Easy, girl,” he said. “Easy.” During the three years Fish had come to know his grandpa, the man had never left for town after dark. He was a man who retired in the evening, on the porch or on the sofa, a wedge of Red Man in his cheek, with a newspaper or a ball game on the TV. As the taillights faded into the darkness, Fish knew that his grandpa knew, which only confirmed his need to flee, even more than the gunshots in Akinson’s field. To stay here would be worse. His grandpa would try to hide him, and would never turn him over. There would probably be a standoff like the one Fish once saw on Channel 13, down in Texas, in Waco. No, it was up to Bread and Fish. They had to get away and survive, alone, somehow.
“We’re in a hurry too,” said Fish in a quiet voice. “Come on.”
As the boys loaded backpacks, Bread started asking questions about where they were going. It was obvious to both boys that they would take to the forest. But it wasn’t obvious what they would do once they got in there, where they would go, or how far. Fish had an idea forming in his mind, but knew it’d be wrong to lie at a time like this.
Bread poked through an open tackle box, handpicking the better fishing lures. When he stopped and turned to face Fish in the moonlit garage, Fish stopped packing too. Bread stood still, a crankbait dangling in his fingers, the way a boy stands still when he feels tears coming on in front of his friends.
“Do you think he hurt?” Bread’s whisper filled the garage, the night itself.
Fish swallowed.
“My old man,” said Bread, “when you shot him?”
Fish couldn’t tell what the answer to that should be, or what Bread would most want to hear. Bread’s old
