Not that he was any poster-boy himself, and I’m sure the question was on the rude side, but if you can’t be rude to a guy you catch torturing a giant cricket, who can you be rude to?
“Maybe because the gods, if you believe in them, already played a trick on me. How would a big fellow like you know what it’s like to be a little fellow like me, not even two dozen hands from ground to crown?” A whining note had come into his voice, the tone of someone who had—in AA lingo—a ring around his ass from sitting on the pity-pot.
I put my thumb and finger together and rubbed. “See this? It’s the world’s smallest violin playing ‘My Heart Pumps Purple Piss for You.’？” Piss came out perfectly, I noted.
He frowned. “Eh?”
“Never mind. My little joke. Trying to tickle you.”
“I’ll go on now, if you don’t mind.”
“Do that, but my dog and I would feel better if you’d put that knife away before you do.”
“You think just because you’re one of the whole ones, you’re better than me,” the little man said. “You’ll see what they do to ones like you if they catch you.”
“Who will?”
“The night soldiers.”
“Who are they, and what do they do to ones like me?”
He sneered. “Never mind. I just hope you can battle, but I doubt it. You look strong on the outside, but I think you’re soft on the inside. That’s the way folks are when they don’t have to struggle. Haven’t missed many meals, have you, young sir?”
“You’re still holding the knife, Mr. Peterkin. Put it away or I might decide to make you throw it away.”
The dwarf jammed the knife into his waistband, and I sort of hoped he’d give himself a cut doing it—the nastier the better. Which was a mean thought. Then I had a meaner one: suppose I reached out and grabbed the hand that had held the red cricket’s legs together and snapped it, as I had Polley’s? As sort of an object lesson: this is what it feels like. I could tell you it wasn’t a serious thought, but I think it was. It was too easy to see him using a chokehold on Radar while he used his dagger on her: prink, prink, prink. He never could have done it when she was in her prime, but her prime had been years ago.
But I let him pass. He looked back once before he went over the rise, and that look didn’t say Well met on the City Road, young stranger. That look said Don’t let me catch you sleeping.
No chance of that, he was on his way to wherever the rest of the refugees were going, but it wasn’t until after he was gone that it occurred to me that I really should have made him drop the knife and leave it behind.
6
By late afternoon there were no more tilled fields and no more farms that looked like they were working at all. There were no more refugees, either, although at one deserted farm I saw handcarts filled with possessions in the overgrown front yard and thin smoke rising from the chimney. Probably a party that had decided to get under cover before the wolfies began to howl, I thought. If I didn’t come to the house of Leah’s uncle soon, it would be wise of me to do the same. I had Mr. Bowditch’s revolver and Polley’s .22 popgun, but wolves tended to travel in packs, and they could be as big as moose, for all I knew. Also, my arms, shoulders, and back were getting tired. The cart was light, and at least there had been no more mudholes to power through, but I’d pulled it a long way since leaving Dora’s.
I saw Mr. Bowditch’s initials—his original initials, AB—three more times, twice on trees overhanging the road and the last time on a huge rock outcropping. By then the blob of sun had dropped behind the trees and shadows were engulfing the land. I hadn’t seen any dwellings for some time, and I was starting to worry that full dark might catch us still on the road. I really didn’t want that. As sophomores we had been tasked to memorize at least sixteen lines of a poem. Ms. Debbins had given us two dozen poems to choose from. I had picked something from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” and wished now I had chosen anything else, because the lines were just too apt: Like one, that on a lonesome road doth walk in fear and dread, and having once turned round walks on, and turns no more his head…
“Because he knows, a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread,” I finished aloud. I put down the poles of the cart and rolled my shoulders while I looked at AB on the rock. Mr. Bowditch had really knocked himself out on that one; the letters were three feet high. “Rades, you’d bark to alert me if you saw a frightful fiend behind us, right?”