down to his waist and loosened the tie on the sling shot’s ammo bag.
“Other people know about this cave,” said jean-jacket. “Getting here first doesn’t make it yours. I figure I got just as much a right to it as anybody.”
“Why you talking to this guy?” said high school. “Let’s toss him off the mountain.” Dad looked back and forth between them.
Jean-jacket paused, as if considering the idea. “Cops. We can’t let him go.” He sighed. “They’re pretty busy, those that ain’t falling down sick, but someone might get interested.” Eric loaded a ball bearing into the sling shot. His hands trembled and he could barely hold the leather patch around the shot.
“You going to do it?” said high school. Eric got up on his knees. They were both looking at Dad. Eric took a deep breath and pulled the shot to his ear.
Then Dad moved. He planted both hands on high school’s chest and pushed. The young man yelped as he stumbled back and tripped over the mattresses. Dad dove to the back of the cave. Eric let go of the shot. The lantern burst into a hundred shards of glass, and the room went black. “Run, Dad!” Eric yelled. He turned and sprinted on his hands and knees out of the crawlway. He stood too quickly at the entrance, slamming his back into the rough ceiling, and then he was out and running to a boulder above the cave entrance. He wanted to be higher than them. He loaded another ball bearing into the sling shot and spread a handful more on a flat spot where he could easily reach them. The entranceway was fifty feet away. An easy shot. But he was gasping. Where was Dad? A bearing rolled off. He didn’t take his eyes off the entrance. One minute passed. Two. He wiped sweat from his eyes. A flicker of movement a hundred yards away. Maybe a squirrel. It kept moving, and then it grew longer. An arm. A head. Dad squeezed himself out from under a rock. Another entrance, Eric thought. He wanted to yell to him, but he was afraid the men would come out any second and know where he was. They shouted to each other in the cave. Eric couldn’t hear their words. He figured they hadn’t found flashlights, and they were feeling the way out in the dark.
Dad climbed to a cairn of rocks higher on the slope and dug into them.
“Here it is!” hollered jean-jacket as he stepped into the light. High school joined him, and they both shaded their eyes.
Eric pulled the shot back, not sure what to do. If they moved toward Dad, he would shoot them, but would the shot drive them off or just make them furious?
Dad yanked a long bundle wrapped in canvas from the rocks and started untying the rope that secured it. The men saw him. Jean-jacket pointed one direction for high school to go, and he went the other. Eric let go of the shot. The ball bearing hissed and nailed high school.
He went down, holding his arm. “Hell, hell, hell!” He rolled under a scrub oak in plain sight. “I’m shot!” Jean jacket ducked behind a rock. “I didn’t hear anything.”
“Must have had a silencer.”
“How bad?”
High school took his hand off his arm and looked at it in wonder. “There ain’t no blood,” he said. “But I think it’s broke.”
Eric rose and aimed at jean-jacket, who saw him.
“It’s just a goddamned kid!”
Eric let go and the shot smacked loudly into the rock by jean-jacket in a small puff of rock dust. The ricochet whined into the distance. Jean-jacket dropped out of sight.
“He’s just got a damned sling shot,” he yelled. “It’s not like he can kill you.” Dad stepped onto an overhang that looked down on all of them. “I can,” he said and cocked the shotgun he carried. On the pinnacle of rock, the sun high behind him, he looked ominous and deadly. “Time for you men to go home.”
Jean-jacket stood. Dad swung the barrel in his direction. There was a long silence. Then jean-jacket put his hands on his head. High school did the same, and the two marched down the trail. “We’re coming back, suck-nuts!” screamed high school when they were almost out of sight. Dad didn’t move. The shotgun pointed toward them until they got on their motorcycles and rode away. Eric sat. Dad jumped from the overhang and sat next to him.
“You did all right, son,” he said.
Eric gazed at the dirt between his feet. He didn’t want to look at Dad. If he hadn’t fallen asleep, this wouldn’t have happened. “I thought you were going to die,” Eric said finally. Dad patted him on the shoulder awkwardly. “I thought so too.” He broke open the shotgun. The chambers were empty. “I didn’t have shells in it.”
Eric stared, open-mouthed.
Dad said, “I got in a hurry when you started shooting at them. I forgot to load.” A voice above them said, “Good thing I didn’t.” Gravel skittered down the slope. Eric looked up. Mom, holding Dad’s .20 gauge, picked her way among the cactus and granite. “Someone has to have some sense in this family.” She answered Eric’s unasked question. “I went out the back door when they came in the front. Watched the whole thing.” She smiled. “Sure scared me when the lantern went out. You shot it?”
Eric nodded.
She looked down at the highway, where the line of cars rolled slowly westward. “Will they come back?” Dad snapped the shotgun closed. “No. I don’t believe they will.” Eric said, “They said they would.”
“I think they were sick, Eric. Sick people do desperate things, but they don’t live long.” Dad stood and brushed dirt off of his pants. He helped Mom stand, and they walked hand in hand to the cave. Eric, walking behind them, began to laugh. He laughed so hard that he had to sit on the trail.
“What is it, Eric?” said Mom.
Eric looked at them both again. Their hair was dirty, clothes smudged. She stood over him, shotgun balanced on her hip. Dad rested his gun on his shoulder.
“You look…” He laughed even louder. “You look… so different.” He rolled onto his back, short of breath.
Dad held his hands out and examined himself. “Well,” he said, “it’s not Norman Rockwell.”
Chapter Three
A DAY WITH WOLVES
A sound woke him, or perhaps a flash of heat lightning from the clouds that still hung in the east. He couldn’t tell. His right shoulder throbbed where his stone bed pressed through the sleeping bag, and his backbone felt compressed and warped. He sighed comfortably. These were the sensations he associated with sleeping outdoors. He looked for star patterns for the time. When he’d drifted off, the mountains to the west were just touching Gemini, which would have made it around 9:00, but now Ursa Major, the Big Dipper, was a couple of degrees off the horizon. The world turns, he thought, as it always does. He figured it was 2:00 a.m. or so.
He identified the constellations: Bootes, with brilliant Arcturus anchoring it; Draco snaking around Ursa Minor, the Little Dipper; and right at the cloud line, Hercules facing the next brightest night light, Vega. Clouds hid Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Cygnus, Capricornus, Pegasus and Aquarius. His dad used to sing a song about the “dawning of the age of Aquarius.” Eric pondered on it for a moment, trying to come up with the tune, but he couldn’t.
He stared into the sky. One good thing about the Apocalypse, he thought, is the stars shine brighter without city lights to wash them out.
The air murmured distantly like a deep, deep growl. He guessed the storm might be fifty miles away and slowly approaching. He remembered how Huck Finn described thunder as a “rumbling, grumbling, tumbling down the sky towards the underside of the world, like rolling empty barrels down stairs, where it’s long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know.” That was Troy’s favorite part of the book when Eric had read it to him years ago. Troy had sat on his lap and turned the pages night after night by the uneven light from a kerosene lantern. Sometimes Eric could read eight or nine pages before Troy’s head sagged, and Eric would carry him to bed.
Lightning flickered again, like a far away flash bulb, and Eric flinched. Something moved at the rock’s base. He saw it in the corner of his eye. He rolled to get a better look, but the ground was absolutely black to him. The lightning hadn’t been that bright, but for a moment his eyes were blinded to whatever the starlight might reveal. Gradually, though, he made out the outline of the rock he lay on, and then the clumps of grass below it, and then the asphalt road he’d been hiking, a silver path in the dim light. Nothing moved. He strained his eyes watching the
