The Savage Boy

10



“ALL MY SKINS is ruin’t!”

Early light had turned the night’s carnage golden. The Boy listened to the man below.

“This one, that one over there! Hell, Danitra, all of ’em.” Then, “Maybe ’cept this one.”

The Boy listened from the shadows of the bell tower.

You be careful now, Boy! There’s little good left in this world.

“Might as well come out!” thundered the voice. “Seein’ as how I saved ya and all such.”

He knows I’m here. And he has a gun. Not like the rusty “AK Forty-sevens” and broken “Nine mils” we would find sometimes. His gun is different, like a polished piece of thick wood. As though it were different and from some place long ago.

For all that Sergeant Presley had tried to explain about guns to the Boy, he’d never guessed one would’ve made such a sound, like the crack of distant thunder heard from under a blanket.

He patted Horse and climbed up into the high arched openings once more.

“There ya’re!” roared the man.

He was barrel-chested and squat. He wore dusty black leather and a beaten hat, hair dark and turning to gray. He stopped his cutting work to look up from one of the lions, holding a large knife in his bloody hand.

“These are mine,” he said and turned back to his business with the hide. “Any more in there besides you?”

The Boy said nothing.

“That means nope,” said the stranger.

“My horse.”

“Well you better get down and get him out of there.”

The Boy continued to watch the man as he skinned the lion, swearing and sweating while he made long, sawing cuts, then stood, wiped his knife and pulled back a great streak of hide.

“C’mon boy. I got work to do. No one else here but me and my horse and Danitra. She’s my mule.”

He set to work on the next lion.

“This one’s even worse than the last! That was a mess. Coulda done that better myself. What tribe you with, boy?”

The Boy said nothing and continued to watch.

“You with them tribes out in the desert?”

The Boy remained silent.

“Well pay it no mind. I’ve got to get these hides off and cut some meat. So if you don’t want to be a part of that then I’ll ask you to get your horse out of there and move along.” The man stood staring at the Boy, his bloody knife hanging halfway between forgotten and ready.

“My horse is injured.”

The man wiped the knife once again on the leather of his pants and spit.

“Well, get him out of there and let’s take a look. I know a thing or two about horses.”

The Boy climbed down the side of the bell tower using the wooden slats exposed after the attacks of the lions. At the bottom, he began to remove the debris blocking the entrance as the man returned to skinning the dead lions.

“It’s bad.” The man spit again as he ran his hands across Horse. For a moment Horse grew skittish, but the man talked to him in a friendly manner and Horse seemed to accept this as yet one more thing to be miserable about.

“Not the worst. Best we can do for him is get him up to the river, the other side of Reno. Good water there. We can clean the wound and get him ready for the fever that’s bound to be come. If he can survive that fever, then, well maybe. But fever it’ll be. Always is with them cats.”

I’m not ready to lose Horse, thought the Boy. It would be too much for me right now. First you, Sergeant, and now . . .

Ain’t nothin’ but a thang, Boy! You do what’s got to be done. Without Horse you’ll be finished in a week.

“Name’s Escondido. I’ll lead you up to the river—goin’ that way myself and I’ll show you the path through Reno. Now get to work and help me with these hides, then we’ll be movin’ on out of this forsaken planned community of the future.”

The Boy stared at the ground.

“That’s what you was holed up in when I found you,” said the man called Escondido as he pointed first to the bell tower and then the rotting timber. “Someone was building a neighborhood here on the last day. Never got finished. See all that rotten wood? Frames for houses. This bell tower was probably the fake entrance. Make it seem like something more’n it was. They would’ve called it some name like Sierra Verde or the Pines. Probably something to do with the bell tower. Bell Tower Heights! Yes siree, that’s what they woulda called it. Old Escondido knows the old people’s ways. I was one of ’em, you know. I lived in a house once. Can you believe that, boy? I lived in a house.”

I’ve got to do whatever it takes to save Horse.

“How far is this river?”

“Be there by nightfall. We don’t want to be in Reno after dark, that’s for sure.”

“Reno wasn’t nuked?” “Nuked” was a Sergeant Presley word.

“No. But it looks like a big battle was fought there out near the airport. So the city might as well have been nuked. Strange people live in them old casinos now. Had a partner used to call ’em the Night People, ’cause they get crazy and howl and cause all kinds of havoc at night. Last two or three years when I crossed over the Sierras I liked to avoid Reno. Got into a bad spot there one time about dusk. It was a bad time, even with my guns.

The Boy followed Escondido’s gaze to a bent and broken horse. Its hair was matted and lanky, and it cropped haphazardly at what little there was to be had, as if both tired and dizzy. In the worn leather saddle, the Boy saw two long rifles.

“That horse ain’t much to look at. But best part of him is he’s deaf, so when my breech loaders go off he don’t get scared and run off.”

The Boy worked for the rest of the morning scraping the hides of the lions as Escondido finished the skinning and then cut steaks from the female. He built a small smoky fire and the meat was soon spitted and roasting in the morning breeze.

“We got to eat these now. It’ll be a long day gettin’ through Reno. Then we still got to ride up into the hills to reach the river.”

Once the mule, Danitra, as Escondido called her, was saddled with hides, they sat down next to the fire and ate.

“How much water ya got?” asked Escondido through a mouthful of meat.

“Not much. I’ll save it for Horse.”

“There’s no water worth havin’ between here and the river, so keep that in mind. Don’t go gettin’ thirsty. I’ll trade you some for that old Army rucksack you got there on your horse.”

The Boy continued to chew, putting Escondido’s offer away until later, hoping the heat and dust would not force him to trade Sergeant Presley’s ruck for a mouthful of water.

THEY RODE OUT of the bloody camp. Escondido’s nag could do little more than trot and so the pace was slow. Escondido filled the silence of the hot afternoon with conversation and observations, all the while watching the crumbling remains of the world for shadows and salvage.

“Was tracking them lions for three days before they got onto your big one. I heard him roar and I knew I’d lost ’em. Couldn’t get a shot off on ’em all night. But I knew I had to find ’em before they got into that fight. Hides’ll be ruined and Chou’ll make his usual fuss ’bout it and all. Still I got ways and means. What tribe did you say you was with?”

When the Boy didn’t answer, Escondido continued on.

“My family came from out of the South. I had another name. Prospero, my mother used to call me. But, in the little refugee camp we started out in, they called me Escondido. That’s where my family had been before the bombs: a place called Escondido. Tried to ask my papa where that might be. All he said was that it was gone now. A fantasy place.”

And . . .

“I cross over the mountains beginning of summer every year. This year I got a late start. Mountains is gettin’ weirder every year. You know about the Valley? No, don’t make no difference, you don’t look like them people. Say, was you born that way or’d you get bust up when you was little?”

And . . .

“What was you doin’ out here? This part of the desert ain’t safe. Though for that matter, what part is?”

Don’t tell anything about ye’self, Boy.

“You don’t say much, do you? Is that your tribe’s way? Don’t say much?”

It was afternoon by the time they crossed onto the dusty streets of Reno. Buildings lay collapsed or shattered to little more than rusting frames that groaned in the sudden gusts that came in off the desert.

In the silence of late afternoon, shadows turned to blue and Escondido continued to talk in a low whisper though he would stop when they passed piles of rubble and twisted metal that lay across the wide thoroughfare leading into the heart of the darkened city.

“The people, the tribes, savages all up in the mountains, everywhere I’ve gone, they wear hides to show what mighty hunters they are. Now up at the trading post in Auburn, everybody wants hides so they can trade with them savages. Them lions, if’n they’d been perfect, woulda fetched a high price from old Chou. That’s a shame. A perfect shame.”

Ahead, each of them could see the rising pile of bleached casinos crumbling around a bridge that rose over the wide avenue they would follow. A bridge that connected two of the ancient palaces and seemed to loom over the road like the wingspan of some prehistoric dead bird.

Escondido withdrew one of the rifles from its saddle holster and rested the butt on his thigh as he gave a soft chick, chick to his nag.

Then he looked at the Boy and drew his finger to his lips.