Scarlett Hopper's Arc

Chapter 8 of 33

The lattice held through the night. In the morning Scarlett walked the rows and found the tomato shoots darker, standing straight. The crows shifted along the top of the wall as she passed. One dropped a beak-full of feathers and stared at the ridge. She followed its look. Three thin trails of smoke rose above the rocks. The scavengers were closer than before, and they were staying. She knelt by the dog at the gate. He sat with his tri-colored coat dusted gray, one blue eye and one brown eye fixed on her. She put her hand on his ruff. "Show me who's in charge up there," she said. He held still. Then he pushed a picture into her head: a man at a fire, older, gray beard, a bad limp, cutting a strip of something dry with a folding knife. Two others waited on him before they ate. He handed the first strip to a boy, maybe ten. Scarlett stood up. She filled the watering can, soaked the beds twice, and cut a squash from the vine at the end of the row. She wrapped it in cloth and laid it in the wheelbarrow with two jars of beans and a bundle of chard. She pulled the tool bag out and left it on the step. Only the shears went with her, in her back pocket. She walked the track up to the ridge with the dog at her hip. The crows lifted from the wall and followed in a loose line, then peeled off and settled in the dead pines above the camp. Three faces turned when she came into the clearing. The old man was closest to the fire, knife open on his knee. The boy stood behind him. A woman with a rifle stepped sideways to cover the path. "I'm the one growing the food," Scarlett said. She set the wheelbarrow down. "You've been watching. I know." The old man did not stand. "We were going to come down tonight." "I figured." She lifted the cloth off the squash. "Every eight days I'll leave a share at the split rock below the ridge. Squash, beans, greens when they come in. Enough that the boy eats." He looked at the crows in the pines. At the dog. At her hands. "And?" "And you don't cut my wall. You don't come past the thorn line. If someone else moves on the district, you tell me first." He closed the knife. "Name's Bern. That's my grandson." He did not name the woman. She did not lower the rifle, but she stepped back onto the path. Scarlett left the wheelbarrow. She walked down with the dog and an empty jar in her hand. Halfway to the house she understood what she had done. She had fed them. In eight days she would have to feed them again, and the beds were not yet enough to feed them and her both.