Free The Scavengers by Michael Perry Page A

rectangle of light as Toad steps out onto the porch.
    We pack the last of the day’s goods on the Scary Pruner . Mostly it’s food: jars of jam, salted ham, smoky cured bacon, and a batch of Arlinda’s fresh pies, carefully wrapped and protected in the light wooden crates Toad builds. It’s all I can do not to sit right down and eat every one. Next we go over the whole load, checking every rope, lock, and latch to make sure everything is safe and secure.
    Finally, Toad turns to me and says, “Whomper-Zooka!”
    If you didn’t know better, you’d think Toad had stopped talking weird like Toad and started talking weird like Dookie. But the Whomper-Zooka is an actual thing. Toad cobbled it together using an old coffee can, a broken leather harness, and a stovepipe. It has two wooden handles and can be hung from my shoulder on a leather strap, but on trips to town in the Scary Pruner we mount it on a swivel in the crow’s nest. Toad calls it his “hillbilly artillery,” but rather than bullets or cannonballs it shoots saltpowder, which we make by mixing homemade gunpowder with rock salt. We’re not trying to kill the GreyDevils, just get rid of them, and the rock salt is perfect for that. It isn’t deadly, but it gets in their skin and burns like crazy. I guess you could call the Whomper-Zooka a pest remover.
    While I get the Whomper-Zooka and stow it in the crow’s nest, Toad hitches Frank and Spank. Toad raised them from the day they were born, and now they’ve been pulling together for ten years. He says they’re the biggest pair he’s ever owned. They are gigantic but gentle, standing patiently as we hitch them in place and drape them in chain mail Toad made from twisting fine wire into thousands of little loops while he sat beside the woodstove. It took him three winters to finish. The chain mail can’t protect them from everything, but it’ll handle most things any GreyDevil might throw our way. To protect their eyes, Toad made them each a pair of goggles with steel-mesh lenses. He calls them “oculator protectorators.”
    Toad also made a miniature set of chain mail for Monocle, and I fasten it around him as he bounces up and down. Monocle loves to go to town. Toad has built a plank walkway around the Scary Pruner so that Monocle can patrol the perimeter, and the boards are worn smooth by his paws. When I finish fastening his mail, he leaps to the plank and trots his first loop of the day. He always runs clockwise, of course, so his good eye is pointed outward.
    Toad takes one last walk around the Scary Pruner . Then he pauses before Frank and Spank, scratching their ears and looking long and gently into their goggled eyes. This is the most vulnerable part of our traveling show. Toad can protect their flanks with the gigantic bullwhip he keeps in a holder beside his seat, but the one area he cannot reach is the front of their faces—their big, wet noses. If a GreyDevil grabbed Frank or Spank by the nose, they could steer us off the road and tip us over.
    But we have a plan to prevent that.
    “Procure the secret weapon!”
    I roll my eyes and lower my face mask. Our secret weapon is currently across the yard in the chicken coop desperately trying to announce the new day.
    “Cock-a-doodle . . . aaack-kack-kack-kack !”
    That’s right.
    Hatchet.
    Our secret weapon is a demented rooster.
     
    Hatchet may be on our team, but he’d still love to peck me bald and scratch me silly. Flexing my fingers in my gloves, I stride off toward the chicken coop. This could be the biggest battle I face all day.
    When I return, my helmet is knocked sideways, my breastplate is scratched, one of my pheasant feathers is bent, and there is a drop of blood on my chin. But Hatchet is clamped in my gauntleted hands.
    Toad just grins.
    In the middle of the yoke, right between the oxen’s two giant heads, Toad has rigged a perch made of two dowels in the shape of a T, and this is where Hatchet roosts, tethered in place with