had changed direction, and a series of notes sounded as the air poured through the gaps in the mud chinking of the round house.
Cappy stood up and stared at the round house.
Angus made the sign of the cross.
Let’s bug out, said Zack.
We crushed the Hamm’s cans along with the others, piled them in a piece of plastic, and tied them together to bring back for Angus to sell. Then we put the fire out and buried the rest of the trash. I tied the gas can to my bike with a shoestring and we took off. The shadows were long, the air was cooling off, and we were hungry the way boys get hungry. Irrationally hungry so that everything we saw looked tasty and all we could talk of on the way home was food. Where we could get food, and eat food, a lot of food, and quick. That was our concern. Zack’s mom would be at bingo. Aunt Star was either flush or broke, never in between, and it was a Saturday. By now, she’d have spent what she had and probably not on food. Things were lean that week at Cappy’s house, though his dad possibly had stew. Doe’s bachelor stews were a crapshoot, though. Once he added commodity prunes to his chili. Another time he left some bread dough overnight and a mouse burrowed into it. Randall got a slice with the head and Cappy got the tail. Nobody could find the middle. My friends didn’t mention my house, though before what happened we would definitely have showed up there on a raid mission. Whitey and Sonja’s place was on the way, but I hated it when my friends talked about her. Sonja was mine. So I said they would be working at the gas station. Our other prospect was Grandma Thunder. She lived at the retirement home in a one-bedroom apartment with a full kitchen. She liked to cook for us; her closet was bursting with commodities that others traded to her.
She’ll make frybread and meat, said Zack.
She always has canned peaches, said Angus. His voice was reverent.
She has her price, said Cappy.
Just don’t anybody bring up balls or say the word twat.
Who would say that word around their grandma?
It could come out by mistake.
Come? Don’t say come.
Don’t even mention cats. She’ll say pussy.
Okay, I said. The list of topics not to mention while we stuff ourselves at Grandma’s is balls, cats, pussies, dicks.
Don’t say head, ever.
Don’t say wiinag, don’t say anything that rhymes with the f-word or the word cock.
Don’t say crotch, prick, snatch, you know, like snatch at something. She will take it wrong, believe me.
Don’t say horny, don’t say hard.
Don’t say hot or tit or virgin.
I have to get off my bike, said Angus.
We all did. We put our bikes down. Avoiding one another’s eyes, we mumbled something about going off to take a piss and each went off alone and in three minutes relieved ourselves of all those words and then came back and got on our bikes and continued riding onward, taking the back road past the mission. When we got into town we rode over to the retirement home. I was feeling guilty about having written just LAKE to my dad, so I called home from the lobby. Dad answered on the first ring, but when I told him that I was at Grandma Thunder’s, he sounded glad and told me that Uncle Edward was showing him my cousin Joseph’s latest science article and they were eating some leftovers. I asked, even though I knew, where Mom was.
Upstairs.
She’s asleep?
Yes.
I love you, Dad.
But he had hung up. The words I love you echoed. Why had I said those words and why into the phone just as I knew he was replacing it on the cradle? That I had said those words now made me furious and that my father had not responded singed my soul. A red cloud of anger floated up over my eyes. My head was light with hunger, too.
Come on, said Cappy, coming up behind me, startling me so my eyes filled yet again that day, which was too much.
Shut the fuck up, I said.
He put his hands up and walked away. I followed him down the hall. Just before we got to Grandma’s apartment I spoke to his back, Cappy, I’m . . .
He turned around. I put my hands in my pocket and scuffed my shoes on the floor. My dad had refused on principle