There was nothing from the Streamers’ camp. They were the Streamers again, nicely impersonal. Lynn chose not to think of them as Eli and Neva. Especially with no smoke rising after such a cold night.
She raised the binoculars again and searched for Stebbs, not finding him. If he was off gathering water at his mysterious source, she might be able to spot him on the return trip. Half an hour passed with no movement. Disappointed, she laid the binoculars on the shingles beside her. Twenty minutes later, a thread of worry had traced its way through her heart. Was he injured? Had she been too forceful with him last night when she threw him off balance? Had she hurt his leg?
A flash of red caught her attention and she snapped the binoculars back up. Stebbs emerged from inside, yawning and stretching. He patted his midsection a few times before sitting down on a large stump near his door. Lynn checked the sun. It was nearly ten in the morning. “Lazy asshole,” she muttered.
A rustling sound and the flight of several disturbed grasshoppers caught her attention and Lynn dropped the binoculars, snapping the rifle up to her shoulder. Below, Lucy burst out of a clump of grass, empty palms desperately smacking at the grasshoppers. A lump formed in Lynn’s throat.
“Hey,” she yelled toward the ground. “You don’t have to do that anymore.”
Lucy looked around, trying to find her.
“Up here,” Lynn called. “I’m on the roof.”
The little girl shaded her eyes and waved when she saw Lynn. “I don’t have to do what?”
“Eat grasshoppers,” Lynn explained as she climbed down the antennae. “I’ve got real food here.”
The girl made a face. “I wasn’t going to eat them. Who eats grasshoppers?”
“Uh, nobody I guess,” Lynn fumbled, forgetting that the boy had never fessed up to Lucy about what he was feeding her.
“I was catching them for you,” Lucy continued. “Eli always was saying that they made Mama happy, so I should catch as many as I could. I thought maybe they’d make you happy too.”
“It would make me happy if you didn’t come busting out of the grass like that,” Lynn said. “Don’t surprise me when I’ve got a gun. I don’t want to—”
She broke off, unable to speak around the lump that had gotten bigger.
“You don’t wanna what?”
“I don’t want to shoot you by accident.”
It began to rain. A lovely blessing for many reasons. Years ago, Mother had the insight to run a drainpipe from the roof down into the bathroom. The jagged edge of the rusty pipe was jammed with a piece of flannel that Lynn jerked free. A tide of rusted water and leaf debris came first, spilling into the bucket she’d brought. Once the rainwater ran clear she let it fall down into the tub to supplement the hot water she’d dragged up from the basement.
“Wuzzat?” Lucy’s nose wrinkled at the smell of the rotted leaves in the bucket.
“Just rotting stuff,” Lynn said, swirling her hand through the water to test the temperature. “This’ll even out in a second, and I’ll plug the pipe so it’s not dripping rainwater on your head.”
The girl shrugged her indifference and continued to pick at a scab on her knee. “Why don’t you turn on the faucet?”
Lynn sighed and rested her head on the side of the tub. “I told you, I don’t have running water. That’s why I was dragging buckets up from the basement.”
The mundane task of boiling water had brought quizzical Lucy to the edge of the cookstove, climbing onto a chair to pinpoint the exact moment the bubbles started forming on the surface. “How do I know when it’s boiling?”
The question had brought Lynn to an abrupt halt. “I don’t know, ’cause it’s . . . boiling.” The answer hadn’t satisfied Lucy, so Lynn had explained the concept of bubbles and steam. “Haven’t you ever boiled water?”
“No,” Lucy had said defensively. “Why would I?”
That response combined with the request to turn on the faucets caused Lynn’s own curiosity to flutter. “Where are you from anyway? What were you doing out in the woods?”
“Entargo,” the girl answered, testing the water with her fingertips.
Lynn stopped stirring the water. “Entargo,” she repeated. “The big city?”
“Yeah,” Lucy said, blissfully unaware of the effect her answer had. “We lived there my whole life, ’til we had to leave.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Don’t know. We just did.”
Lynn hadn’t known many people in her life, but the flat line of the girl’s mouth was familiar enough to her. There would be no more conversation along that line.
Lynn stuffed the flannel rag back into the end of the drainpipe, ignoring the spray that spattered her as she fought against the flow. She dug into the linen cupboard for a thin washcloth and a bar of flat white soap, handing them to the girl.
Lucy looked at the bar in her hand. “What’s this for?”
“It’s soap. To wash with.”
The girl looked dubiously at the bar, then sniffed it. “It doesn’t smell like the soap from home.”