by Elle Casey
I acted like I was going for her just to make her flinch, and she didn’t disappoint. She jumped so far, so fast, I almost didn’t see it happening. The empty pot was on the floor and her knife was out and ready in half a second. The sound of the pot clanking around continued, but she was still and ready to fight.
“Stay back,” she said, a six-inch blade in her hand. “I’ll stick you like a dang pig, you come any closer.”
I laughed, easing up my stance. “Relax, Katy. I was just kidding.” I settled back down, tipping my bowl up to my mouth and slurping up the rest of the broth, ignoring her so she’d calm down. “So tell me about these attack ewes.”
Jackson walked off the porch. “Follow me. I’ll show you the ewes.”
I put my bowl down on the steps and walked down to be with Jackson, leaving everyone else behind to finish their meal. A moment later I heard sounds behind me and found Bodo coming up behind us. He still wasn’t talking to me, but at least he had my back. I let that warm me a little and help me ignore the fact that he’d been spending an awful lot of effort on hurting my feelings and acting like an immature ass.
***
We approached a shed-like structure that couldn’t possibly have been big enough to house more than a couple sheep. Maybe four, max. They must be really small ones.
When Jackson got to the front of it, he reached for a flap on the side of the wall. I realized then that it had wire mesh on it.
“What are those? Air holes?” None of this made any sense to me.
Jackson laughed. “I guess you could call ‘em air holes if you want. Me, I call ‘em cages, but whatever. It all works.”
He opened one up and reached in, pulling out something very small and gray.
“Dat’s not a ewe,” said Bodo, drawing even with me.
Jackson turned to fully face us. “Well, it’s a part of the ewes.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Something tells me we’re being mocked right now.”
“I think so too,” said Bodo.
“Nah, it ain’t like that. You just misunderstood, and I figured it’d be more interesting to show you than to explain it.” He held out what looked like a pigeon. “This here is one of the members of the Triple Bar D EWS. The Early Warnin’ System we got set up with some friends in this county and a few nearby.”
“Pigeons.” I said simply.
“Well, carrier pigeons to be more specific, but yeah. Little birds.”
Bodo stepped forward, his hands held out. He was speechless.
Jackson pulled the bird back towards his chest. “You can’t touch it. Birds need special handlin’. It ain’t for everybody.”
“Bodo’s an expert,” I said. “He raises hawks.”
Jackson frowned. “That’s the only threat to the EWS … them damn hawks an’ peregrines an’ owls. Damn vultures.” He held his bird up near his neck now, stroking its feathers gently as he frowned at Bodo.
“I will not hurt your birdt. I swear it. I love birds of all kindts.”
I could hear the plea in his voice, and even though he was being a buttbasket to me, I hoped like heck Jackson would let him hold the dumb bird.
Jackson thought about it for a couple seconds and then extended it out to Bodo. “Here. Just be gentle.”
“Of course.” Bodo took her into his hands, being sure to keep her wings close to her body and turning her against his lower chest. “How didt you train dem?” He looked down at the bird, rubbing her head with this thumb.
“When we heard that the world was gonna go in the crapper, we worked at school on some projects to help prepare. Then when school kinda died off, we just kept at it. One a-them was this carrier pigeon project. We’ve got message points all over Florida and Georgia now too.”
“That is … friggin’ amazing,” I said, totally blown away. “You mean these birds actually carry messages?”
Jackson smiled proudly. “Heck yeah, they do. Look. Here’s one we got a couple weeks ago.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a narrow strip of paper, handing it to me.
I looked at it, but it was just a bunch of letters and numbers that didn’t make sense.
“Is this some kind of code?” I asked.
“Yup. We made it up ourselves.” He rocked back on his heels and then his toes, obviously very pleased with himself. And he had a right to be. This was one of the most amazing and hopeful things I’d seen since walking onto the prison grounds.
“What does this one say?”
Jackson walked over and pointed to the codes. “Says here … ball-biter at Everglades prison. Can send friends.”
Bodo laughed. “Oh, dat’s funny. You’re famous, Bryn. Da testicle girl is in da prison.” His shoulders were quaking with laughter.
I punched him in the arm. “Shut up, jackass.” I turned my frown on Jackson. “You’re making that up. Not cool.”
“No, I swear to God, I ain’t. I can’t teach you the code ‘cause, you know, you’re a hot target and if anyone catches you they’re gonna torture the secrets outta ya, but you can believe it. That’s what that message says.”
“Who sent it?”
He flipped the paper over. “This one here came from the Amazons.”
My jaw dropped open. “You know the Amazon bi … wenches? Over there by the ocean?”
“Yeah. Everyone does.”
“But that’s almost a hundred miles from here!”
“So? Our birds can go that far. They’re champions.” He frowned at Bodo and took his bird back. “Only thing that ever gets in the way of our operation are them birds of prey.”
“I can train dem to leaf your birds alone,” said Bodo, speaking in a rush. “I can do dat! Dey can live togedder and dat will be okay. It’s not a problem.”
“You serious?” asked Jackson.
“Yes, I am completely serious.” Bodo held out his hand for a shake. “I can’t train all da wild birdts, but I can train da ones I work with.”
“How many you got?” Jackson shook his hand.
“Only one now. And she’s kindt of lost. But I will have more later.”
“Good. You go on then and train that pigeon killin’ out of ‘em. These birds are critical to our EWS.”
“How does it work?”
Jackson stared at me for while, long enough that it made me uncomfortable. I battled with myself but forced my hand to stay still, even though it wanted to check my nose for stray boogs.
“Okay, fine. I’ll tell ya. But you gotta swear on your life and your boyfriend’s life that you ain’t never gonna tell none-a them kid-eaters what I’m gonna say.”
I crossed my heart with my finger. “I swear on all that is holy. I swear on the cattle you’re going to give me and the people of Haven.”
“Well, we ain’t come to an agreement on that yet, but I get your meanin’.” He turned around and walked with the bird back to her cage, putting her inside. Once it was closed again, he came back to us. “All our birds have leg bands. We put ‘em on when they’re just babies. They grow up and the band is permanent. They’re foot’s too big for it to come off. We can put messages like that one you saw inside the band.”
“But how does the bird know where to go?”
“Before all the world went to crap, we taught ‘em. And we’re fixin’ to teach some more, too. It’s dangerous, going out there, but we gotta do it. The birds ain’t gonna live forever.”
“How do you teach them?” asked Bodo, staring at Jackson intently.
“They teach themselves, basically. They’re amazing creatures. We put them in a small portable cage and bring them about a mile away the first time. We let ‘em go and they fly home. They always fly home. Every day we do it again, only farther and farther away each time. Eventually they can go from really far and always come right home.”
“But how do they know where home is if you have them in a cage while you transport them?” I asked.
“They use the magnetic fields in the earth and smell and sight. I’m t
ellin’ ya. They’re like magic creatures, these birds. Without them, we’d be in the dark all the time. I can’t tell you how many times they’ve saved our bacon.”
“But how do you send them somewhere else?”
“Well, that’s the tricky part. See, we have to get new birds trained all the time, because we can only get them to go two places: home and to their food stop.”
“Food stop?”
“Yeah. This is kinda recent in the evolution of carrier pigeons, actually.”
He looked so serious and sounded so academic, I was picturing him lecturing a university class, even though he definitely sounded like a redneck more than a professor.
“Used to be they only went one way. But somebody smarter-n me figured out they’d go where their food is too, and that they didn’t need to roost where their food is necessarily. So we rigged it up for them to have food at one stop and their home at the other. They can go back and forth between those two places, regular as clockwork, couple times a day.”
“So that explains you getting messages to and from the Amazons. But how do you get other info? Or don’t you get other info?”
“Sure, like I said … we get info from all over the state. You can imagine it like a connect-the-dots kinda map. I have links to the Amazons and Cracker Barrel and a few other places. And they have links to spots I can’t quite reach. We just pass messages along, like that silly game my sister used to play when she was little: operator. Only it’s more reliable ‘cause we ain’t countin’ on the birds talkin’. They just take the same message from point to point.”
I was too stunned to speak. These kids had done something so amazing, I wouldn’t have even dreamed it could be possible: communication over long distances. Networking on a massive scale. And secret, like a spy ring. They could totally thwart any attacks planned by the canners.
“I want in on this,” I said, feeling as passionate about it now as I did the cattle, maybe more so.
Jackson smiled. “I’m real glad to hear you say that, because we need a contact down there. Even though it’s a little worrisome that you have such a fat target on your head, the benefits are way more important now. But if you don’t mind, we’ll train someone else on the codes, and not you.”
I nodded like a crazy bobble head. “Yeah, no problem. Whatever you want.”
“You can teach me,” said Bodo, holding up his hand halfway. “I already know how to take care of birdts.”
Jackson frowned but nodded his head. “I’ll think about it. There’s time to figure that out. Why don’t we head back to the house and see what we can do about outfittin’ you to leave?”
We were just walking away when a bird appeared out of nowhere.
“Ya’ll go on ahead. I’m just gonna grab this message first.”
Bodo and I walked back to the house.
“That was the most amazing thing I think I’ve ever seen,” I said, hoping he’d respond. I didn’t want to be talking to myself all the way back to the house.
One of the larger dogs jogged over and walked next to me, giving me the willies. He was huge, and he didn’t seem very friendly. It was more like he was making sure I went where I was supposed to go.
“It is the second most amazing thingk I have ever seen. I think dat Nina is more better, but da pigeons are good. Definitely good.”
“I just can’t believe none of the Miccosukee or Creek knew about this. It would have been so helpful for them.”
“Dey alwayss wanted to be alone. Dey wanted to hide out dare, not talk to udder people.”
“Isolation is not the answer,” I said, mostly to myself. Isolation was the best way to become a sitting duck as far as I was concerned. And the idea that we’d have a network of friendly spies all over the state was just blowing my mind. I could see peace on the horizon. Real, lasting peace. I was almost giddy with it.
We reached the porch to find all of the kids sleeping, even Chantal.
Katy was sitting in a rocking chair with a big metal needle and some yarn.
“What’s that?” I asked, walking up the steps.
“Crochet. Ever done it?”
Thoughts of Winky sitting there like her crossed my mind. “No. Never.”
“I’m makin’ a blanket. Can never have too many of ‘em in the winter seems like, now that we don’t have any heaters anymore.”
She was right. Even in winter, Florida could get cold. It made me glad we were staying in a place that had tons of blankets and sheets already made. Hopefully, by the time we’d need to make more, we’d have looms, sheep and everything else that was part of that equation.
“So ya’ll want some cows, eh?”
“Yeah. We really do. And we’d be willing to trade something for it, but I guess we’d have to go get it since we came here with nothing.”
“Well, you brought us these here hands. I guess that’s a pretty fair trade for a bull and a cow.”
I felt a little sick. “I’m not sure I’m cool with trading people. Sorry about that.”
She shrugged. “Whatever. Your call. But we ain’t just gonna let you take two animals from our herd ‘cause you’re the ball-biter. Gotta have more juice than that.”
I sighed heavily. “Please don’t call me that anymore. It makes me sick to my stomach, and I really don’t want to see that stew come up and land on your front porch.”
She stopped crocheting and lifted an eyebrow at me. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Don’t push it. Seriously, that’s a memory I’d like to forget forever.” I shuddered for effect.
“Whelp, I have to say, I admire a girl who’d go that far to live. I might’ve died that day if it were me.”
“No, you would have bit the guy too.” I sat down in front of her feet on the porch.
“Ha! Then I’d be the world famous ball-biter, the girl all the kid-eaters wanna kill.”
“Why all the hate?” I asked. “I mean, it was just one fat asshole who’d had too much to drink and thought he was going to rape me. Why do I have such a big target on me now?”
“Well, the EWS say it ain’t just that. I guess you also kicked a few butts up near Orlando and caused a ruckus out by the Amazons’ place. And those particular kid-eaters were all related somehow. They move up and down I-95 keeping in touch. They do it the old fashioned way, though - using cars and motorcycles.”
“They’re going to run out of gas eventually.”
“Yeah, maybe. Or maybe they’ll figure out or find an alternative energy source, who knows. We just gotta hope they never catch on to our EWS is all.”
“What could they do to it? I mean, countries used them in the old wars, right? And they weren’t a secret, but they still worked.”
“Yeah, but if them cannibals know where the control points are, they could come in and smash us up and kill the birds. We’d have to start all over, and it’s work, let me tell you.” She sighed. “I ain’t complainin’, though. We got a good thing going on here, and even if someone comes in and smashes us up, I know we’ll press on. We’ve got friends now. More than we ever had before, really, even when the world was all put together right. And what’s funny is, no one seems to care anymore that Jackson and me grew up on a dirt patch and talk different. We’re all judged by how we survive and what we do for others now, and that’s all right by me.”
I looked around, out into the mostly empty fields and at the dogs goofing around with a stick in the dusty yard. “But don’t you get lonely out here with just your brother to keep you company?”
“Nah. Well, maybe a little. But that’s okay. It beats being dead.”
“You know, you could come live with us.”
“In a prison?” She chuckled. “No, thanks. Our daddy spent most of his time in one-a those places. I ain’t in a hurry to continue that particular family tradition.”
“It’s not like that, though. We’re turning it into a nice place.”
“I’m sure you are. And maybe someday we’ll join you. Who’s to say what to
morrow will bring? But I thank you for the invite. That’s awful generous of you. I know you got a lot of mouths to feed there.”
“Yeah,” I said, falling back into the reality of my life and why I was even here in the first place. I stood. “We gotta get going.”
Jackson came walking up at a fast clip from around the corner, taking two steps at a time. “You’re right. You gotta go now.” He pushed past me and into the house, letting the screen door slam behind him.
“What’s got into him?” asked Katy, no longer rocking or crocheting.
I shrugged. Whatever it was, it didn’t look good. I stood, suddenly nervous. “He got a message from one of your birds right before I came back here.”
Katy jumped up and ran in through the front door, abandoning her yarn and needle on the chair.
“What does dis mean?” asked Bodo softly.
I turned to face him. “I hope there’s not a problem at Haven.”
Jackson came bursting through the front door with a shotgun in each hand. He came right up to me without stopping, shoving the heavy weapon at me. “Take it.”
He stepped to the side and did the same with Bodo. “Take it.”
He reached behind himself and pulled a box out of his pants. “Take these. They’re shells. You have to go. I expect to get those guns back when I see you next.”
“What’s happening?” I asked, fear straining my voice.
“Your friends in the Glades are in trouble. The Miccosukees. You need to get down there and fast if you want to help.”
“How do you know that?” I nearly cried, freaking out about my friends and what Jackson’s words actually meant for them.
“Amazons got the message from the ‘hood near their place. Big old group-a kid-eaters are headin’ that way. You gotta move quick.”
He ran down the stairs and around the side of the house.
I stared at Bodo, searching for solace or something in his expression that would make me feel better. He looked as panicked as me, though and was no help at all with calming my racing heart.
