Free After the Snow by S. D. Crockett Page A

reckon.
    I shrug.
    “Me da—” She stop a bit. “He came out to the hills wi’ us on the pony. Da’s a ponyman, and he said we were going to grow some oats and trap some animals til the spring. We camped down by the water north of here, by the power lines.”
    “So you’re stealers,” I say.
    But she aint listening.
    “Tommy was happy there. Da found the little house then. It was cold, but we had the fire to start wi’ when we had wood. The woman wanted to go back. ‘Callum, I want to go home,’ she was always saying. She always wanted to go back.”
    “Where?”
    “To the city—where d’you think? And the food ran out, and we ate the pony, and me da only talking about the boat that’s going across the sea. And Tommy started to get sick.”
    “Why didn’t you get to the power lines and wait for a truck—I seen them go along under the pylons there. Government trucks.”
    Mary look at me serious. “But they’re going to want to see Da’s papers and know then he took the pony. And if we go back to the city … how are we going to find the boat back in the city?”
    She scrape the bowl with the spoon now, but she gone a bit quiet-looking all of a sudden, thinking bout her dad again, I guess.
    “What boat?” I say.
    “The boat that’s going to take us away.”
    “There aint no boats on the mountain.”
    “I can’t eat wi’ all this on,” she say, and she take the gloves off. “But thanks for making them.”
    “It aint nothing.”
    “Wish our kid Tom had a coat like this. He wouldn’t have died from the cold then, would he?”
    “I don’t know,” I say.
    Maybe he’s dead cos he got no food and no dad, I think to myself. Or maybe it just been sick bugs inside him, who knows?
    “Do you think the dogs got him by now?” she say, eyes open all wide.
    I want to say yes, cos it’s true—they gonna snuffle in that old house and tear his dead flesh apart pretty quick—but I look away and tend the fire a bit cos it seem better like that.
    “They will, won’t they?”
    I shrug my shoulders again.
    Mary lie down and pull the coat over her head all quiet—I reckon she knows. I see her from the corner of my eye. I got a bit to think on though cos half my plan is taking the girl to the road and leaving her there, but if she’s right about needing papers and everything I aint so sure.
    I mean I can spot a hare run and tie up a good snare—I can do that in my sleep—and there been plenty of things I can do good better than that, but I aint really got no clue about papers and trucks and city people.
    “Mary? … Mary?”
    “I want me da.”
    Mary been crying again.
    I go outside, cos that’s another thing I aint got no clue about. Crying kids who lost their da and Tommy.
    I reckon the world been a scary place full with gruesome things, but I aint seen much of it. I aint even been to the city. I mean even that girl inside the wincone been there. My dad live in London before, and he say that’s the biggest place—but I aint seen that either, just what he tell me cos London been a proper long way under the power lines, and I been born on the mountain, but he come up here around about the time of the troubles, before the snow got so deep only government trucks gonna make it.
    He come up here long before that, cos he say he can see how London look after a few long winters and no food, and he aint never going back, and I say, How it gonna look, Dad? cos I really want to know.
    He say it gonna look bad, Willo, with people all mean and angry on the streets cos they been pretty mean and angry before the food stop coming in big trucks. They been pretty mean and angry when they got hot water and power coming out the wall, he tell me.
    It sound like London aint been too great even before the snow and the troubles come, but Dad say no it aint been that bad. Just all the bad things been waiting, kind of hiding under the ground like the grass wait under the snow for summer to come. Except they aint been good