‘Tiglet! Open all hatches!’ Tiglet, Calvin’s third favourite bear, sat atop a dented bucket in the corner. He did not open the hatch; just sat there, staring at the genny like all the work in the world was going to do itself. One of Tiglet’s eyes had started to come loose, and Calvin knew he’d have to get handy with a needle and thread if he wanted Tiglet to keep his eyesight 20/20.
‘Man, you sure are lazy, Tiglet. If Fozzo were out here, why you know he’d pitch in. That bear’s got a good work ethic. It’s okay, though. Y’all just sit there, relaxing. Make old Calvin do all the work.’
Tiglet did not seem to mind this course of action one bit, and stubbornly continued sitting on his bucket. Calvin unscrewed the genny cap his own self, as he knew he’d have to. There wasn’t a bear on this whole farm, he thought, that knew how to do an honest day’s labour.
He finished topping off the genny and lugged the significantly less weighty can back to the racks. It took only four tugs on the ripcord to get the generator chugging along, making that nice steady noise Calvin liked, the one that meant he could turn the lights on and cook his meals up good and hot.
‘Job done,’ Calvin said, gathering up Tiglet. He exited the barn and latched its big red door behind him. Calvin ambled over to the farmhouse, swinging the bear merrily by one arm. He could see Fozzo sitting on the porch, probably waiting for him to make breakfast. Well, that bear could have cereal as far as he was concerned; eggs were for workers, powdered or not.
‘Stay right where you’re at, boy.’ A voice spoke behind him.
Calvin spun on the spot, almost dropping Tiglet into the ash and filth that coated the ground.
‘Goddammit, boy, I done said freeze!’
Striding over was a man dressed in rags. A bandana covered the bottom half of his face, and a John Deere cap most of the rest. His eyes peered from the gap in between, creased and as blue as penny marbles. Calvin noted that the man looked as though he’d run his whole outfit through a wood chipper before deciding on getting dressed that morning.
‘Where your folks at?’ barked the man through the rag that covered his face.
Calvin stared, his fingers tightening reflexively around Tiglet.
‘You deaf? Don’t you make me ask twice.’ The man drew back his raggedy coat; an AR-15 peeked out.
‘My pops is with Uncle Jake,’ Calvin managed, as loudly as he could.
‘They gone then,’ the man said, looking around the property, as though he were considering putting a bid on it.
‘They’ll be back, soon too. You better scoot, mister. Pops has got a fierce temper, you wouldn’t wanna be around for it.’
‘Yeah, well I guess he ain’t met me yet,’ the traveller said indifferently. ‘Where’s your food at?’
‘I got cereal, you want some of that?’ Calvin gestured animatedly towards the house. The cellar within was stocked well enough, but nowhere near as overflowing with bounty as the barn, the shelves of which groaned under an amount of pickled and canned goods so extensive it could’ve fed a small town.
‘Sure. You show me what you got in there, kid,’ the traveller said, unhooking his gun from the underside of his coat and fitting his finger insider the trigger guard. ‘No tricks. This gun’ll turn a grown buck to hamburger – think on what it’ll do to your face.’
‘I ain’t no liar. We got cereal, I was about to fix Fozzo a bowl till you showed up.’
The traveller shooed him on to the porch with a wave of his gun barrel. Calvin scampered up the steps, grabbing Fozzo on the fly. Calvin had only seen one other person since the mess of ash had fallen: Chrissy Draper, who’d run the farm north of theirs. She’d walked past in the night while it had still been pouring soot, wailing and hollering. Calvin had gone out to ask her if she knew where Pops was, but she’d been naked and crazy. He knew better than to bother naked, crazy people. Calvin held the door open for the man to walk into his home. Hospitality, Pops used to say, was something a man should take pride in. Not that he’d been a particularly studious practitioner of the art himself.
‘Whoo-ee, you got a nice place here, all right. Boy, this is like a goddamn oasis!’ The man did a little jig on the spot, waving his gun about in the air like some fool.
‘If I feed you up, will you get on your way, mister? I surely don’t want my pops to get back here, seeing I’ve been feeding half the county.’
The man pulled down his bandana, releasing a filthy beard that looked like it hadn’t seen soap nor water since it’d started sprouting. Calvin thought he saw something move in there – maybe a bug or a tick, he thought. The man bellowed a hollow, jagged laugh.
‘You don’t know how right you are, boy. Why, I bet we do make up half the population of this whole county, right now. Maybe the state.’ The man wiped his eyes with the bandana and shoved it into his pocket. ‘Sure, kid. I’ll eat and be on my way. I’m certain that there’s a place just like this, with food and warmth and whatnot, just down the road a ways. I’ll shack there.’ The man’s eyes were narrow slits, they told Calvin that, like as not, this filthy stranger had no intention of upping his sticks any time soon. Not now he’d found a place so nice to set them.
‘Okay, I’ll fix you something then,’ Calvin said, leading the man into the kitchen. Tiglet and Fozzo were too small to sit at the kitchen table, the seats on the wooden chairs were too low. Calvin had had to construct makeshift seats by arranging old books into a kind of throne arrangement for them, one each, on top of the table. Pops definitely wouldn’t have approved, but there really was no other way to seat them that Calvin could think of.
‘What’s with all the bears? You got the fag gene in you?’ the man said, then spat something thick and green on to the clean hardwood of the kitchen floor.
‘You ain’t got no manners,’ Calvin muttered.
‘What you say?’ said the man.
‘Nothing,’ replied Calvin, as meekly as his pride would allow.
‘That’s what I thought.’
Calvin opened a cupboard and rummaged around, selecting his least favourite cereal. He put it on the table and brought over a bowl, spoon and some powdered milk he’d mixed up the day before.
‘That’ll do for a start,’ said the man, pouring a mountain of flakes into the bowl, haphazardly sloshing milk over it, getting most on the table.
‘That sign out front; what it say?’ the man asked.
‘You can’t read?’ Calvin replied.
‘Don’t get smart. Punks that get smart get hurt,’ the man said, through a mouthful of bran fibre.
‘It says: “Beware of the Bear”,’ Calvin muttered. The stranger sat at his table burst into gales of laughter. Cereal sprayed from his braying mouth, splattering the table and floor.
‘You are a funny little retard. I can tell your daddy sure did love his sister a whole lot. Do you have to concentrate much when you walk?’ The man tittered like a baby being tickled.
It seemed to Calvin that something might have broken up in the stranger’s head. He remembered Mrs Draper and hushed himself. No use arguing with crazy. You’d be a fool yourself to try, he thought.
Calvin poured a glass of bottled water for himself, and one for the stranger. His jaw clenched, and Calvin had to keep in mind to loosen it. He got the impression the stranger would notice any hostility, and might react in a way Calvin might not be best pleased with.
‘You seem pretty well stocked here,’ the man said, looking over the kitchen, his eyes covetous like a magpie’s. ‘I could get used to good living like this.’