ALLUSIVE AFTERSHOCK

by Susan Griscom

  Before I skinned the rabbit, I cut off one of its front feet and pierced a small hole through the top. I found some more twine amongst the debris, wound it securely around the end of the foot and then placed it in my pocket. Later I’d need to soak the foot in water and something like Borax or baking soda, and I was hoping to find a box of one of those in what used to be the kitchen. I was almost finished skinning the little guy when Adela joined me. She hadn’t wanted to watch, but curiosity must have gotten to her.

  “So I guess your dad showed you how to do this?”

  “Yeah. We’d take off every other weekend to go hunting or fishing.”

  “I’m beginning to feel very lucky Max and I stumbled upon you the other day.”

  “Just beginning?” I shrugged, wondering when Adela would start trusting me more than she did Max. I took the rabbit to the fire Adela built, stuck a stick through the carcass, and placed it on two forked branches I’d found.

  Adela followed me to the fireplace and sat in front of it. “Well, no, not just beginning, but now I’m realizing how handy you are outdoors and ‘thankful,’ I suppose, would be more appropriate than ‘lucky.’”

  “I’m sure Max would be able to do the same.” I didn’t particularly want to talk about Max but I thought if I mentioned his survival skills, something nice about the guy, I might have a better chance of winning her heart.

  “No, I don’t think Max has ever been hunting. Maybe fishing. His dad is … um … was different from yours or even mine for that matter. He knows wine.” She laughed. “Except for that awful tasting stuff in the barrel.”

  “That wine hadn’t aged yet. The stuff from the bottle was good.” I wasn’t out to put Max’s dad on a pedestal, but the man did know how to make some tasty wine.

  Adela frowned and I ignored the befuddled look on her face.

  “My dad drank a lot. He didn’t care if I drank wine with dinner sometimes. He figured it was better if I drank at home and learned how much I could handle than be stupid with my friends and drive around half shit-faced. He meant well, in his demented sort of way. He had a good point, though the last couple of years he was too drunk most of the time to realize I didn’t have any friends. He was oblivious to the rumors kids made up about me at school. He really was a good guy and a good dad until my mom died. He loved my mom so much. When she died, I think a part of him died with her. So in a sense, I lost both my parents the day my mom died.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No need. I didn’t really mean to lay all that crap on you. You have your own grief.”

  She studied her hands and then rubbed them together over the flames of the fire.

  “Cold?”

  “Hmmm …” she nodded and sneezed.

  “Yeah, it’s going to get colder. We should try and keep this fire going throughout the night if we can.”

  “What or who started the rumors about you?”

  I didn’t want to answer that question. I wasn’t sure I should, but then I supposed Adela ought to know the truth. I just wasn’t sure she was ready to hear it. I looked at her and smiled, then turned my attention to the rabbit and remembered the foot. “Can you keep an eye on the rabbit while I go look around and see what we can find to baste this little critter with?”

  She nodded and I went to the area of the ruins that I thought had been the kitchen and scrounged around through the debris. The counters had collapsed, the cupboards lay in pieces and most of the contents were spread all over the place. Broken boxes, once filled with cereal, pasta and other dry goods lay scattered around. I smiled when I saw a little orange box. Baking soda would have to do. I picked it up, found a small plastic bowl amongst the rubble, and stuck the rabbit’s foot in it. I used a tiny bit of water from our supply. I knew it was wasteful, so I was careful to only pour enough in the bowl to cover the foot, about an inch. I sprinkled in the baking soda and stuck the bowl in a spot where Adela wouldn’t see it and went back to search for spices.

  I spied a drawer still fully stocked with seasonings. There was a refrigerator too. I opened it and nearly fell back from the stench. Electricity had been off for a week and mold had grown over everything inside.

  “Now that’s just gross,” Adela said, standing next to me with her hand over her nose and mouth and I quickly closed the door.

  “How’s the rabbit?”

  “It’s fine. Cooking. I wanted to see how it was going in here.”

  “Good.” I walked over to some remnants of what must have been the pantry and pushed some boards aside. “Adela, we are in luck,” I said, as I held up an unopened jar of orange marmalade. “There’s peanut butter here, too and wow, a loaf of bread.”

  I opened the cellophane encasing the bread and smelled it. “It seems okay. Woohoo! This is going to be a fine meal.”

  I took the jam to the rabbit and spread some all over the belly and around the legs.

  “That looks yummy. I’m glad you cut off the head so it can’t stare at us with those cute little bunny eyes.” Adela shivered at her own words and I couldn’t help but smile.

  We fell silent for a minute and watched as the marmalade bubbled around the meat.

  Adela broke the silence. “I’ve never had rabbit before. What does it taste like?”

  “Well, let’s see. The texture is similar to chicken.”

  “Um … all semi-exotic things taste like chicken.” She laughed.

  “Right. Like frog legs.” I grinned. “Except this has a unique flavor, which will vary depending on the age and diet of the rabbit. It’s got a gamey taste and the older it is, the more gamey it will be. But I’d say our little friend here is about a year old, which means he should be rather tasty.”

  “How can you tell how old it is?”

  “I can’t exactly. I’m just guessing. There’s really no way to tell. But judging from the color of his teeth and claws, I’d say he is rather young. Wait. I’ll be right back.”

  I got up, retrieved the rabbit foot from the baking soda solution it had been soaking in and rejoined Adela by the fire, holding it in a rag. “Here, you see?” I pointed to the little paw nails. “The claws are still pretty smooth. As a rabbit gets older, the nails become coarse and ragged. I looked at the teeth, too and they were still fairly white.

  “I’m preparing this for you. It’s a good luck charm. I’ll have to find a chain or something to put through the hole at the top. But in the mean-time, the twine should work. It needs to soak overnight to help preserve it so it won’t smell. Then you can keep it in your pocket and when things start to get too scary or you start to lose hope, you can rub your fingers over it and maybe think of me.” I turned away at that last part, embarrassed I’d even said it, and poked the rabbit over the fire to check if it was finished.

  Adela placed her hand on my shoulder and kissed my cheek. “Thank you.” Then she turned away, stroking the wet rabbit’s foot with her finger. I smiled.

  Chapter 25

  ~~ Adela ~~

  We ate. Boy, did we eat. Court was so right about our meal being tasty. I was rather reluctant to eat a poor little rabbit at first, but after he spread the orange stuff over the top, it started to sizzle and smell really yummy.

  The rabbit tasted so good and we had been starving after walking all day. We didn’t say one word the entire time we ate, only grunted and made “mmmm” sounds. After we finished eating most of the rabbit and a couple slices of the bread, I sat back against the wall, rubbed my sleeve over my mouth, and sighed.

  Court leaned back next to me.

  “That was delicious,” I said.

  “It was pretty delectable if I do say so myself.”

  I closed my eyes, fully sated, but quickly opened them when I remembered that Court never told me about how the rumors about him started. There were all those stories about what a “freak” he was, about how he could make animals do things. Of course, now I realized those kids were really just scared of something they knew nothing about, but at the time, I had my doubts,
just like them. Some of the kids were actually afraid of Court. The way he communicated with animals and his keen sense of people and his surroundings was awe-inspiring. The way he handled Big Blue the day of the first earthquake, talking to him as if he were a person, the way Blue responded by shaking his head and with his delighted whinnies and neighs, I could see how a rumor like that could get started. But from everything I’d ever witnessed or known about Courtland Reese, I knew he’d never hurt anybody, unless his or my life were at risk.

  “You never told me how the rumor started,” I said.

  Court shifted his weight beside me and I picked up my head and stared at him. “If you don’t want to tell me, it’s okay. I understand.”

  “No, you don’t understand and I don’t want to tell you. Not yet, anyway.”

  That was a weird answer but I didn’t press the issue. Maybe I didn’t understand, not completely. There was a reason Court wasn’t telling me. I didn’t know what it was but I figured it was a good one.

  The sudden silence in the air was enough to make me want to scream. Not wanting to dwell on Court’s reticence, I said, “Hey, how about some of that hot chocolate Cooper gave us?”

  “Sounds good.”

  I poured water into the two tin cups and placed them on the grill Court pulled out from the stove he found buried under the rubble.

  I sneezed again. I couldn’t wait until that warm water was ready. My scratchy throat begged for some warmth.

  Once the water was hot and we mixed in the chocolate we sat back against the wall and sipped the warm cocoa as we stared at the stars. I was right; the warm liquid soothed my throat as it went down.

  Court pointed out several constellations, some I knew but most I’d never heard of, especially the ones with Miwok names. I snuggled against him, wishing he would kiss me again, but a part of me knew that would be so wrong, considering where it might lead now that Cooper wasn’t sleeping a few feet away. In the cellar, it never seemed as intense, the kissing, so I hadn’t given it much thought.

  “How did you learn all this stuff anyway? You seem to know more about so many things than normal boys.” The minute the word “normal” left my lips, I wanted to bite my tongue off. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that you are not normal. I mean … well, you’re smarter than any boy I’ve ever known. That’s what I meant by normal.”

  “That’s okay. I like being thought of as not your average school boy by you. How else am I going to steal your heart away from Max?”

  I sat up, hugging my knees to my chest, and placed my forehead on my arms. I wasn’t sure if Max owned my heart anymore or not, but I still cared for him. I’d spent most of my life thinking he was “the one.” I did hope he was okay, wherever he was. “Well, I’ll probably never see Max again and it’s not like we were boyfriend and girlfriend or anything. We’re just friends. That’s all.” I kept my face down and fought back the tears welling in my eyes. I didn’t want Court to see me crying over Max.

  ~~ Courtland ~~

  Jeez, Court. What the hell is the matter with you? Why did I keep bringing up Max? Adela was doing fine without me reminding her of Max all the time. She hadn’t kissed me again since earlier on the road and that was just to prove a point, which she managed to do very well.

  I knew she worried about her family but there really wasn’t much we could do about them at the moment. Only time would tell. We needed to focus on ourselves if we were going to stay alive.

  I closed my eyes, searching my mind for another topic just as the ground started to shake again. I was too tired to do much of anything. Adela started to get up but I held her down. “Nowhere to go,” I said. “Just stay with me. We’ll be safe here. There’s no roof or anything to worry about falling on us. If we move away from the wall, a tree could fall on us. We’re safer right here.”

  When the rumbling stopped, I kissed Adela on the top of her head and scooted down into the sleeping bag. “If you stay up there you’ll freeze to death. Care to join me?”

  She snuggled in with me and within a few seconds her breathing became heavy and I knew she was sleeping. I lay awake for a little while longer and watched the stars until I finally drifted off to sleep too.

  I awoke to sprinkles on my face and Adela stirring beside me.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Damn, it’s raining.” I pulled the sleeping bag up and over our heads and we stayed like that the rest of the night. At first, it was just a light rain and we were fine. But then the water fell down in dime-sized droplets, pounding against the outside of the sleeping bag. I heard the sizzle of the fire going out but stayed beneath the covers; there wasn’t much I could do about it and besides, it was still dry and warm inside the bag. I silently thanked Max’s mom for buying waterproof sleeping bags. I wrapped my arms around Adela’s waist and pulled her close against me. She didn’t seem to mind.

  ~~ Adela ~~

  It rained on and off throughout most of the night. Morning finally came but the rain stayed. “We’d better just pack up and move on,” Court said as he took the rabbit’s foot out of the solution, dried it off on one of the kitchen towels before wrapping it with a dry one and handing it to me. “Here, stick this in your pocket. Once it stops raining and we rest somewhere, we’ll put it in the sun to dry.”

  I smiled and stuck it in my pocket. “Thank you, Court.”

  We pulled the backpacks onto our shoulders and took off without eating or drinking anything. The rain came down in buckets, but once we were back in the woods, the tall evergreens with their abundance of leaves and pine needles covered the path and managed to keep it pretty dry. Still, sprinkles here and there and large drips from branches continued to make it through the cover above.

  I sneezed and wished I’d had a tissue. I stuck my hand in my pocket—that’s where I would have kept it if I’d had one—and fingered the rabbit foot. He was right. I would think of him every time I touched it.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I think I’m catching a cold, though. My throat is scratchy and my nose is run … Ahhhhchooo.”

  We walked for about an hour, and the rain subsided a bit. We didn’t see a single home or person. Court led the way and I stayed about three paces behind him. “I think maybe we are too deep into the mountains; it might be a while before we find shelter,” he said, glancing at me over his shoulder.

  “Maybe there will be something around this curve and we can rest. Why don’t you rub that rabbit’s foot and maybe we’ll get lucky and stumble upon something with a roof.”

  We turned with the trail and Court came to a standstill holding up his hand for me to stop. He turned and put his finger to my lips in a shushing gesture. He didn’t say anything and I took his cue to stay quiet. He motioned for me to squat and he went down at the same time. We stayed hidden behind some bushes as a black bear walked across the path thirty feet in front of us.

  Chapter 26

  ~~ Courtland ~~

  The bear knew we were there, I sensed it. But I also sensed the bear knew we were not a threat. He didn’t want any more to do with us than we did with him. Good thing we weren’t carrying any food. That bear would have headed straight for us and we would have had to give up our packs and make a run for it.

  When the bear had gone far enough away, I turned to Adela. “It’s clear. He’s gone.”

  She stood shivering with tears dripping down her cheeks. I took hold of her arms, pulled her up, and held her in mine. “It’s okay. Shhhh, shhhh. It’s okay. He doesn’t want anything to do with us.”

  “It’s just … I was …” she sucked in a sob, “afraid I would sneeze and give our hiding place away.” She rubbed her eyes, coughed and then sneezed again. Her face was flushed. I placed the palm of my hand along her cheek and ear. Her skin was warm under the wet strands of hair.

  She’d been coughing and sniffling constantly. I was beginning to worry about how sick she might be getting. “Let’s keep walking. We need to find shelter before you cat
ch pneumonia.”

  Adela’s knees buckled and she went down. I picked her up and tried to move quickly but it seemed the faster I walked the harder the rain came down. I could barely see and water dripped from my nose. I began to worry about finding a place. The rain pelted down on her cheeks. I tugged at the hood on her jacket, pulling it up over her head and down over her forehead. It wouldn’t stretch any further, so I turned her head to the side and pulled the hood over her face, giving her nostrils just enough exposure to breathe.

  We trekked on for about another half hour. I wanted to make sure we were far enough away from that bear but I didn’t think Adela would last much longer. I looked beyond a couple of trees and spied a large piece of plywood just begging me to come and get it.

  I set her down between two trees. Her legs were wobbly and she sank into the wet leaves. “Stay here.” I shrugged off the backpack and walked over to the board, which looked perfect, about four feet by three feet. I carried it back and wedged it in between the two tree trunks a few feet above Adela’s head. I couldn’t have asked for a better fit. The plywood slipped in at the wider space between the trees a little higher up and came to rest right at the curve where the area between the two trunks narrowed.

  I took the small tarp out of the pack Cooper had given me, unfolded it, and placed it on the ground close to Adela’s hip. “Scoot onto this so you’re not sitting on the wet ground.”

  I spread the rest of the tarp out and sat next to her. I unrolled the sleeping bag; the outside of the was drenched but the inside was still dry so I pulled Adela against me and wrapped the dry side around us. We stayed huddled under the plywood while the rain poured down around us. The wind picked up along with the rain and it howled through the trees, biting against our faces. I shielded Adela the best I could with the sleeping bag. My dad used to say, “Son, there comes a time in every man’s life, at least once, when he must face the fact that he has been beaten.” I never wanted to believe him. He was always drunk when he’d start spouting out stupid sayings like that, and I didn’t want to think that this was one of those times. But through everything that we’d been through over the past week, I thought maybe, just maybe we were close to that point. Adela’s fever only got higher as she sat shivering next to me. We needed a fire but there was no way to start one in the rain. We also needed some ibuprofen to bring her fever down.