“Barter with what, for what?” his mother said. “Willing, honestly, sometimes you’re such a know-it-all! When the only thing you’re really proposing is that we all become homeless! I’ve seen enough of it. There’s no romance in it.”
He shouldn’t take her insults personally. “We’ll stay there only as long as it takes to prepare.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake. To prepare. For what, the Rapture? So we can open our arms in a field to await the lord’s redemption, or the landing of an alien space ship?”
They didn’t have time for this. “Take warm clothes,” Willing directed. “Wear multiple layers so you don’t have to carry them. Remember to bring something waterproof. Fill the plastic bottles in the old recycling container with tap water.” (The city hadn’t picked up recycling—a quaint practice—for a year and a half.) “Take ass napkins. Plenty, because we won’t be able to wash them. If you salvage any food from the kitchen, be discreet. Prefer backpacks to luggage. Luggage attracts attention, and it’s too easy to steal. If you have any cash, put some of it—enough to be credible—in your pocket, or an outside compartment of your pack. Put the rest in shoes, underwear, or rolled inside balled pairs of socks. That way, if they ask for our money before we go, we can give them the obvious money. And whatever you do, don’t get mad at Sam and Tanya. The more angrily we behave, the more they’ll feel justified in acting rash. We can’t seem unpredictable. Remember that we were going to have to leave anyway. They’re doing us a favor.”
In the basement storage area, Willing replenished the inflation of the bicycle tires. He grabbed his toolkit, panniers, and some bungee cords, as Lowell railed in the background that “protection of private property is the primary responsibility of the state!” Willing couldn’t help but smile. Some people just couldn’t shift their paradigm.
He was feeling better, after attending to his previous task. He hadn’t checked the rubble behind the furnace for a while, but they were safe. If he said so himself, it was a very good hiding place. Interesting, that his mother never asked about them. She was afraid she’d be arrested. He wondered if they even did that anymore—arrested people.
As he locked the bike to a parking sign outside, Willing saw his grandfather hunch into the basement stairwell. Carter set something on the steps, and stooped over it with his blanket. Looking up, he put a finger to his lips.
It wasn’t clear what Carter was up to, but the crazed expression he’d worn since the fire had grown wilder. Willing didn’t want to attract Sam’s attention, and this wasn’t the time for lecturing his grandfather about complex systems entering disequilibrium. He settled for a fervent head shake to discourage whatever half-baked scheme the old man had concocted, while mouthing NO, DON’T and crossing flattened hands back and forth—universal code for Forget about it! But Willing was merely an underestimated sixteen-year-old grandson, and Carter E. Mandible had been on the brink of killing someone for two solid years.
Darting back to the stairwell, Willing pointed toward the interior: Get back inside. Carter pulled the blanket around his neck and glowered. He wasn’t coming.
Uneasy, Willing joined the assembly in the living room. Sam looked worn out. He wanted them to leave in that ordinary pooped way that you want guests who’ve outstayed their welcome to go—so you can get a start on the kitchen, have a nightcap in peace, watch the news.
“Money,” Sam said. They emptied their decoy pockets.
“House keys,” Sam announced next, extending a basket from the coffee table like a church collection plate. “I don’t want visitors.”
As the evictees lined up in the foyer, Sam did a half-hearted search of their bags, prodding the nose of his weapon into unzipped compartments with the cursory poking of a jaded museum guard. Unfortunately, he did confiscate the partial loaf of bread that Willing’s mother had stashed, despite Tanya’s standing sentinel over the kitchen. But he allowed Kurt to take his saxophone. Having lost all she owned, Jayne had no possessions, and hung back in her blanket by the stairs as the others slumped outside one by one. She must have been trying to stay warm for as long as possible. She’d had a long day.
“What the hell is that?” Sam asked as Nollie reached the doorway. The carton looked much too heavy for a woman on the cusp of seventy-five.
“Foul matter,” Nollie said.
“Howl fatter,” Luella said behind her. “Prowl patter. Mewl fitter, cowl tatter, whole sitter. Peter Piper picked a bowl of beer batter…”
“Someone get that hag out of this house,” Sam growled. Unwrapping his wife’s reins from her hitching post, GGM tugged Luella out the door.
“Manuscripts, of my books,” Nollie explained. “They may or may not be worth something to anyone else, but they are worth something to me.”
Sam opened the flaps, and sure enough, the box brimmed with rubber-banded printouts. “Jesus, it takes all kinds, doesn’t it?”
Sam now hung on to Bing with the habitual clutch of a parent hauling his kid on errands, and Jake looked jealous. Carrying her second son’s coat and backpack, Avery wasn’t leaving without her youngest. Otherwise, they were down to Willing and Jayne when Sam surveyed the stragglers sharply. “Hey, where’s that surly codger who threatened to stage a sit-in?”
Willing’s gaze was drawn to a motion behind their captor. To cover the telltale glance, he supposed hastily, “Carter—my grandfather must be in the bathroom.”
Looming on the stoop in the open doorway, Carter raised both hands high behind Sam’s back. As his blanket flew backwards, he plunged a gleaming foot-long implement into the interloper’s shoulder. Sam bellowed. With a concurrent whoop, Jayne flapped her own blanket over Tanya and Ellie’s heads, trapping the younger woman’s arms, wrapped around the girl. The gun went off. Bing howled.
Yanking the foreign object from his right shoulder, Sam reeled to train the handgun on his assailant. After hurling herself onto the floor, Tanya kicked Jayne off and thrashed from the blanket. She swept up Ellie and retreated behind her husband. Avery rushed to her son to examine his foot. The tussle was over in seconds.
“What the fuck is this?” Sam brandished the two-pronged silver weapon, which came to two delicate points, now dark and wet. It was an elegant utensil, whose exquisite design he didn’t seem in the mood to admire.
“Asparagus tongs,” Carter declared unapologetically, eyes wide and black. He nodded at the gun. “Go ahead. Make my day.”
“Darling, begging for suicide-by-creep is not what that expression means!” Jayne cried, picking herself up. “It’s only funny if you’re Dirty Harry with a Magnum, not an old man with asparagus tongs!”
“Out, all of you, now.” Sam jerked the gun.
“You shot through the toe of my son’s shoe,” Avery chided. “His foot will freeze out there. At least let me get another pair from downstairs.”
“No more Mister Nice Guy. Go.” Sam’s shoulder was bleeding, and he didn’t seem like one of those mythical hard-asses oblivious to pain.
Jayne, Avery, Bing, and Willing filed out to join the rest on the sidewalk, where they could hear the click of the lock on their own front door and the rattle of its chain being secured. The same sounds soon emitted from the entrance to the basement.
“Dad, I know you meant well,” Avery said, arm around her whimpering youngest, whose left tennis shoe flapped open. “But that derring-do was dangerous. It’s a miracle the bullet missed Bing’s foot, and his toes look burned.”
“Asparagus tongs?” Nollie said. “Carter, how about a fucking knife?”