Scarlett Hopper's Arc

Chapter 22 of 33

John set Scarlett on the kitchen table. Blood had soaked through her sleeve and dripped onto the floor. Maranda pushed past him with a bowl of hot water and a strip of clean linen. She did not ask permission. She cut the sleeve open and turned the wrist to the lamp. "Through and through," Maranda said. "Clean hole. Lucky." "Doesn't feel lucky," Scarlett said. "You are alive. That is lucky." Maranda poured the water over the wound. Scarlett bit down on her own arm. Maranda packed the hole with a paste that smelled like garlic and pine, then wrapped it tight. Her hands worked fast. She had done this before. "Seven bodies at the gate," Scarlett said. "Ash wind comes in four hours. They rot, we lose the beds." "Marcus and John are already on it," Maranda said. She tied the bandage off. "You stay here. You bleed again, I tie you to the chair." Scarlett looked out the window. Marcus was pushing a wheelbarrow through the gate. His tool bag rode on top, spades and shears stuck out the pockets. John walked beside him with a can of fuel. Duke followed at John's heel, the big dog's tri-colored coat streaked with dust, his curled tail low. One blue eye and one brown eye tracked the ridge for movement. "Duke says the road is clear," Scarlett said. The image had come through soft — empty gravel, no boots, no smoke. "Then let them work." Maranda pressed a cup of water into Scarlett's good hand. Outside, Marcus and John dragged the first body onto a tarp. Marcus took the shoulders. John took the boots. They hauled it past the split rock to the bare lot beyond the wall, far enough from the beds that ash and smoke would not settle on the crops. They came back for the next. And the next. Duke stood watch at the gate, ears forward, giving Scarlett a picture every few minutes — two men working, sweat on their faces, the pile growing. By the fourth body Scarlett was on her feet at the window. By the sixth, Marcus had stopped to drink from a jug. John poured fuel over the pile. The match caught. Black smoke climbed straight up, then bent east as the first push of ash wind arrived. Marcus came in through the back door. His overalls were streaked with dirt and worse. "All seven. Burned clean of the beds. Wind's taking the smoke off our land." "Good," Scarlett said. He looked at her wrapped wrist. "You should be sitting." "I know." She sat. John came in last, closed the door against the ash, and set the empty fuel can down. The garden was safe from the dead. But the soil past the split rock was scorched now, a black patch where nothing would grow. Scarlett had traded one problem for another. Tomorrow that ground would need her hands.