Both Darla and I glared her to silence.
“Help Max out if you feel up to it, Ed,” I said.
“I’m okay today,” Ed said. “Little shaky is all.”
“We’ll send out two digging teams,” I said. “Alyssa and Ben, and Uncle Paul and Anna. One hole per field today. We’re looking for soybeans—maybe the mold won’t have affected them—or maybe we’ll get lucky and find some clean corn.”
“Got it,” Uncle Paul said, trying unsuccessfully to stifle a coughing fit.
“You sure you’re okay to go dig?”
“I’m fine.” He practically growled his answer.
“Darla and I are going to take half our seed stock and head into Warren to try to trade.”
“You be careful,” Uncle Paul said. “Whoever torched the old farm is probably still there.”
“I’ll be on the lookout for my fan club,” I said.
“I’ll bring him home safely,” Darla said.
Uncle Paul nodded.
“Okay,” I yelled with false enthusiasm, “let’s find some food!”
Nobody cheered.
Darla and I hid Bikezilla outside Warren and sneaked in, sticking to streets where most of the houses were abandoned. It was just as easy as the last time we’d done it, three weeks before. There were no sentries, no walls, no effort whatsoever at defense. The town was smothered in a blanket of denial even deeper than the snow.
Belinda was at the front desk of the clinic. “Good to see you,” she said. “We were talking about you this morning, wondering how you were getting on.”
“Good to see you too,” I said. “Is Doc McCarthy around?”
“He’s with a patient.”
“Mind if we wait in one of the exam rooms? I don’t want anyone to know we’re here.”
“That’s fine.” Belinda led us to the last exam room along the hall.
Darla and I talked about food while we waited. What our favorite foods were before the eruption. A Mulligan’s deep-dish pizza for me, county fair roast turkey legs for Darla. Our favorite ice cream: Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream for me; Haagen-Dazs pineapple coconut for her. Our favorite vegetable: tempura fried green beans for me, anything made with a potato for her. And so on. There’s nothing as interesting as food when you’re starving.
When Dr. McCarthy came in, the first words out of his mouth were, “You look even thinner. You getting anything to eat?”
“No,” Darla replied.
I said, “We got the greenhouse—”
“Can we trust you to keep this secret?” Darla interrupted. Dr. McCarthy nodded. “Doctor-patient confidentiality and all that.”
“We got the greenhouse working. If the soil’s warm enough, we’ll plant tomorrow. But we’re out of food, and we’ve been on short rations for three weeks.”
“No rations at all yesterday,” Darla said.
“Town’s still got plenty of pork, and we wouldn’t have any at all if it weren’t for you. Let me try to talk some sense into Mayor Petty.”
“No,” I said, “it won’t help. If he shares food, it’s an admission that he owes me. I don’t think he wants to admit that to anyone, even himself.”
“What can I do?” Dr. McCarthy asked.
I passed him a bundle of seeds wrapped in part of an old T-shirt. “Take these. Tell Petty they’re yours, and try to trade for at least four hog carcasses. More if you can get them. That’s half our supply of wheat and kale seed.”
“All right.” Dr. McCarthy took the bundle and zipped it into one of the pockets of his coat.
“Do you mind going now? I want to get back to the homestead before dark.”
“I’ll do my best,” Dr. McCarthy said before he turned and left.
A few minutes after he left, someone knocked on the door of the exam room.
“Just me,” Belinda called from outside.
“Come on in.”
She opened the door and stepped in, carrying two small baggies of Froot Loops. “We’ve got two bags of these left. We don’t need them to treat scurvy anymore— everyone’s eating kale from the town’s greenhouses—so usually I give them to kids as a treat.”
“Save them for the kids,” I said.
“Thanks,” Darla said, reaching out to take the two baggies.
Belinda smiled. “I’d better get back to the front desk in case someone comes in.”
We ate the Froot Loops one at a time, savoring them. They practically exploded in my mouth, so sweet that they made me dizzy, a riot of brightly colored chemical flavor so radically different from our usual gray diet that they might have been food for panchromatic aliens.
We ate about a third of the Froot Loops and then put the rest away to share with the others. We didn’t resume the
conversation until the Froot Loops were packed away out of sight. Then, of course, we continued talking about food.
Nearly two hours passed before I heard a knock on the exam room door. I opened it and found myself face-to-face with Mom. She had a pillowcase over one shoulder, and over the other I could see Rebecca standing behind her.
Mom started forward, arrested herself mid-step when she saw Darla, and then recovered, holding her arms out toward me, asking for a hug. I stepped into her arms, patting her on her back.
Rebecca followed her through the door, and my forced smile metastasized into a real one. I disengaged from Mom and wrapped up Rebecca in an enthusiastic hug.
“There’s almost nothing left of you, Bro,” Rebecca said. “Going to start calling you Beanpole.”
“You feel a bit pudgy, Sis. Gonna start calling you Rotunda.”
“It’s not funny,” Mom said. “You’re dangerously thin— do you even weigh ninety pounds?”
I shrugged. I had no clue what I weighed. Mom moved as if to pick me up, but I backed away. “We’re doing okay. We’ve just got to get through this rough patch until our greenhouse starts producing.”
Mom hugged me again, which only annoyed me. She hadn’t even acknowledged Darla yet. “I wish you’d move back to town. I couldn’t bear it if I lost you.”
“If things get bad enough, we will. I’m not going to let anyone starve to death.”
Dr. McCarthy entered the room, which was not designed to hold five people. Darla slid onto the counter, sitting with her legs dangling off the floor and freeing up some space for the rest of us. My heart fell when Dr. McCarthy pulled out the packet of seeds I’d given him from the pocket of his coat and handed them back to me.
“No luck,” he said. “Petty won’t trade. Says he doesn’t want people amassing private hoards of food.”
“Makes sense,” Darla said. “If he controls the food, he controls the people.”
“Claims the town has enough seed,” Dr. McCarthy said. “I know you didn’t want him to know the seeds were from you, but after he’d turned me down I told him, trying to convince him to at least loan you some food until you’re on your feet.”
“And he wouldn’t,” I said. I wasn’t the least bit surprised. “No.” Dr. McCarthy was frowning. “Sorry.”
“I was at the mayor’s office when they talked,” Mom said. “I tried to convince him to share.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “We’ll figure something else out.” Mom dropped the loaded pillowcase she’d been clutching on the exam table, making a loud thunk in the tiny room. “I gathered up all the food I had. And Dr. McCarthy and Belinda contributed some too.”
“What will you eat?” I protested.
“I’ll work something out with Bob.”
Since when had my mom started calling the mayor by his first name?
“Maybe we’ll tell him we were robbed,” Dr. McCarthy said, “or I’ll ask a few of my patients to help out. Or we’ll go hungry for a few days until the next food distribution. It’ll work out.”
I said, “We can’t—”
“Yes, we can,” Darla said firmly. “We can pay them back when the greenhouse starts producing.”