Free Under the Beetle's Cellar by Mary Willis Walker

done that every day, and now there were four left. He turned to Walter with a smile. “Four more days is the answer, Mr. Bus Driver. Until Friday, which is Passover and Good Friday. Very good Friday.”
    Samuel Mordecai pushed Walter aside. He was six inches taller and his long arms rippled with muscles. Walter resolved to double his daily push-ups.
    Mordecai addressed himself to the children. “Now, Lambs, I want y’all to sit around and talk, discuss what I just told you about the final signs and prophecies. Mr. Demming is going to lead you in discussion and prayer. When you’ve done that, Martin will come to hear what you talked about. Then he’ll bring you a meal to nourish your bodies in preparation for your glorious day.”
    He waved his Bible. Then he stepped out of the bus into the pit. He reached his arms up the hole, and with one quick motion, he hoisted himself up. His legs undulated upward. A shower of black earth sprinkled down long after the black boots had disappeared. Then came the grating sound: the wooden platform they used to cover the hole being dragged into place.
    As if all twelve had agreed on the need for total silence, no one spoke or moved. Walter sat down and closed his eyes. He’d struck out again. He was useless. He had accomplished nothing, not one thing.Each day they got closer to death—he had no doubt death was what was waiting for them on Friday—and he was unable to do a thing to change that. He couldn’t even do anything to ease the kids’ misery while they waited to die. He needed to figure out something else. Maybe if he got another chance to talk on the phone, he could send a message of some sort.…
    He heard the raspy bark of Josh’s cough. He opened his eyes.
    “I’m so hungry,” Sandra whined. “Mr. Demming, I’m hungry.”
    “Martin will bring us something to eat after we talk about what he said and after we tell Martin about it. Then we can eat.”
    “But I’m so hungry I don’t know if I can wait,” Sandra said.
    Walter looked at the little girl in the front seat. She was a tall, skinny eight-year-old with thick glasses, mocha-colored skin, and an Afro haircut that had, in the past six weeks, grown into a tangled bush of kinky curls. The shape of her hair in the back reminded him of the shaggy crest of the roadrunners he saw in the field behind his house. And with her long legs and tendency to tilt forward when she walked, Sandra really did look like a roadrunner. He felt the urge to sketch her and wished he had paper and pencils, but they had run out of paper six days ago, except for his emergency supply.
    “I want to eat now,” Sandra insisted. The earpiece of her glasses had broken off in a fight with Heather and afterward Walter had managed to hold it together with the discarded Band-Aids Mordecai dropped on the floor after scraping them off the window. Walter had molded several to form a large lump at the corner of her glasses. “I’m hungry, too, honey,” Walter told her. “It sure feels bad, but maybe we need to do something to take our minds off it until Martin comes.”
    “Mr. Demming,” Hector said, kneeling on his seat, “I was thinking. Last night when Jacksonville got caught by the Barbecue Tongs, why didn’t he just fly away? You know, before they grabbed him. He saw them and all, so he could have just split.”
    Walter stood and turned around to face the kids. He leaned against the seat and did a head count. Eleven. The faces appeared as small pale blobs in the dimness. He took one long deep breath and let it out slowly. “Well, Hector, remember that when the Barbecue Tongs surprised him, Jacksonville was in a narrow alley. Now, you have to picture this: Jacksonville is a full-grown adult turkey vulture and when he spreads his wings out”—Walter stretched his arms out wide—“they measure six feet across. To give you an idea of how long six feet is, I am five foot nine inches tall, so Jacksonville’s wingspread is three inches